LOS ANGELES -

Author’s Note: I want to thank Jessica Larsen for the photo that she took during her recent travels in Varanasi, India.

Let’s go back to the very beginning / get in that car / get behind the wheel / rev the engine to pure devotion / our each and every dream – sparkling motion / relearn brake, gas, and clutch / not so much to speed us through these streets / but to clearly see that our each and every action ripens into results / bad equals bad / good equals good / it’s not some tricky math / nothing like finding the perimeter of all human suffering / what it is is the world coming from us / not at us / karma driving school

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Picture the scene:

I was twenty-four. My San Francisco band was on tour. The night in question: we’d just finished playing the 7^th Street Entry in Minneapolis, opening for The Celibate Rifles. The show had gone extremely well. Me, manning drums. Dave on guitar, Jim on bass. A great big rush and blur of wailing voices, whiskey and heartache-strung guitars, adrenaline drumsticks. Think thrashy folk music: the bastard lovechild of REM and the Violent Femmes after a long night of ecstasy and crank snorting.

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Picture the scene:

I was fourteen—a confused puberty stew of zits, girl craziness, cracking voice, and crippling shyness. It was summer. My family and I were spending a week in a small Wisconsin town. My dad had driven me to a swimming area across the lake from our cabin. He told me he’d pick me up in a couple hours. Said I should stay put—swim, girl watch. Not to walk the three-mile stretch of lonely country road back home. I agreed. But after less than an hour, I’d had my fill of the murky brown water, and the locals that looked straight out of Guns & Ammo magazine.

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The late-night June sky was exceptionally clear, rabid with wild stars. As I walked home from a Silverlake bar, I witnessed the usual constellations—Orion, Ursa Major. In addition, I spotted new, undiscovered formations. I named them all: Zardoz, Love Bullet, Moonlight’s Motel.

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I guess you could say I got in on the ground floor.

Along with Brad, Dawn, Zoe, Reno, Blaine, Lenore, R Kent, Kip, Boose, and others, I was one of the original writers when TNB first launched three years ago.

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1. Stuff just keeps blowing up.

2. Every hour of your life ends in a cliffhanger and split screen.

3. Your co-workers are either moles, model-gorgeous, or out to kill you.

4. Your average day consists of shootouts, plane crashes, and nuclear bomb explosions.

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 1. “Supernatural Superserious” – R.E.M.

It starts like this: the immediate slash and burn of guitar. And a voice reminding us that there was once a time in our lives when we were ghosts, so supernatural/superserious in the face of this occasionally cruel world. Pasts we can hide from, pasts we can ignore, rediscover, reinvent, or simply embrace and accept as they are. As we are.

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Author’s Note: I recently completed a new spoken word music video entitled, “Mistake.” To a great degree, I have the extremely talented and gracious Christopher J. Burdick to thank for this. He also directed and shot my last video, “If I Were a Bond Girl.” If you haven’t had a chance to see it, please search it out on You Tube. Lastly, a big thanks needs to be given to Erin Tylski. In both “Bond Girl” and “Mistake” she has patiently put up with so much crap, all in the name of art. Or so-called art.

With that, here are the words to “Mistake.” And right after that, the video. I hope you enjoy!

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1. Learn how to disco.

2. Or semaphore.

3. Study for next period’s oral French exam.

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When you read this I hope you know it’s about you. Cause whenever I’ve tried to be your friend all you’ve done is stabbed me in the back. Strung my hope out on crack. Sure it hurt like hell, all those times you did me in. Promised me the moon then drowned my trust in your bathtub gin. And while they say denial is the first step of the grieving process, with you I’ve gone through that and anger, depression, second-guessing, then around the moon and back. But screw that noise. Save that off-key song for the soul-sucker that delivers your Fisher Price sex toys. 

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The panty hose was the hardest to get on. Every inch of the way, the elastic material constricted movement, bound blood, itched the skin. Next came the Flamenco-style dress: luscious red velvet worked carefully over my outstretched arms, head, and shoulders. After that: female hands lovingly applied mascara, rouge, eyeliner, and lipstick. A mirror was finally held before me. I gazed at my reflection and ran my tongue across my lips. They tasted cherry: very, very cherry.

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Last night on Hollywood Boulevard:

The street was teeming with thugs, clubbers, haggard hookers, way too clean-cut trust-fund punk rockers, homeless people huddled in shadowy doorways, tattooed love gods, gin-soaked goddesses, and wide-eyed tourists with the seeming ability to turn their heads 360 degrees to snap pictures of everyone and everything around them.

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Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a maleficent ex-Vegas lounge singer with an overactive middle finger that ultimately caused him to get kicked off Survivor, Project Runway, and Dancing With The Stars all in the same day.

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Author’s Note: In Part 1 of this post I discussed my tumultuous relationship with my father, and how we finally began to bond once he saw my band perform. He became so hooked on the band, in fact, that he toured with us for a brief period of time and ended up at a show in New London, Connecticut. That night the club was paying my band twenty-five bucks and a case of beer to perform three sets. And since we were all sick it was our mission to get rid of the beer, as we’d already had problems with the cops and didn’t want to compound those problems by driving around in a NyQuil haze with a case of beer in tow.

And so we started our first set…

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It was me on drums. Jim on bass. David on guitar. We were three ragtag guys from San Francisco, collectively known as Blue Movie. Our sound was like The Violent Femmes and Husker Du engaged in a threesome with R.E.M.

It was February, the dead of winter. We’d already been touring for two months. We were sick as dogs. We’d chugged so much NyQuil, and had downed so many over-the-counter cold remedies that our stomachs had turned into drug stores.

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A number of fires are currently raging throughout the Los Angeles area:

There’s the Sylmar ‘Sayre’ Brush Fire.

The Corona, Yorba Linda ‘Freeway Complex’ Fire.

The Montecito ‘Tea’ Fire, and Triangle Complex Fire.

There seem to be more fires than there are Jacksons:

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Maybe this is a story about my weird car karma as of late.

Or maybe it’s about the thing that happens when you think your day is going to go one way, but fate takes you down another street altogether different.

Or maybe it’s about my need to walk through LA a little bit more.

Or maybe it’s about the thing that happens when you’ve lived in a city for too long.

When the daily grind of life sets you on autopilot, and you move through your world with half-open eyes, as if you’re on one long vaguecation.

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I’ve come to realize that when certain people leave your life they can still occupy a huge part of your heart. Their goodness and grace; the sound of their laughter; how they moved in their skin; how their skin felt touching yours; all those memories and more can get so locked inside your heart that it’s sometimes hard to make room for others.

If I had to rent out the remaining space in my heart it wouldn’t be very large. At best the size of a small studio apartment.

I can see the add now:

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Like a Russian mobster tattoo
This is you forever inked into my flesh
Telling the story of us

That story’s name: Butterfly, Moon, Bed

Born of dream, motion, and light
That story tells how you took the stones from my heart
Lifted me into the sky

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

In Parts I & II of This Post:

I’d been asked by the school nurse to give my fifth grade boys the puberty talk. A couple problems, though: First, I’d never given anyone the puberty talk. Next, the nurse had asked that I refrain from discussing too much about sex while giving the talk.

Yeah right, I thought. That would be like trying to discuss the Theory of Relativity without ever mentioning E = MC 2.

Still, I felt I owed it to my students to do whatever I could to help usher them into manhood.

And so came the day when I showed them the puberty video. Some were amused. Most, however, were stunned to silence.

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