Lemon Splashy

"Holy Fuck! said Emily.

That phrase, the ultimate mixing of the sacred and the profane, pretty much sums up the weekend.  From Vegas to Phoenix and in all that will unfold from this weekend, "Holy Fuck!" is appropriate and perfect.

Holy Fuck.

The roast was fun, hopefully fun for all.

My favorite part was Andrew, who I've mentioned before (maybe not here) is kind of a genius.  It was kind of an in-joke and didn't go over that well, but the brilliance of it was so there.

Item! Captain Don't Give a Fuck demoted to Private Climate Controlled!

In other news ... blips, blops, and whatever comes alphabetically between them.

I think I might have to record a whole Let's Kill Uncle album in one shot.  Hm.

Copper!

"... And he swam and he swam all over the dam." - A Week in Review

Last Thursday:

Level II showcase performances - the kids rocked out!
Folks performed as The Foundation and that was pretty sweet - things were moving and grooving.

Friday:
PNP rehearsal - funky, fun, and weird.  Went on location at Phoenix Ranch Market which is splendorous!
Show that night was okay ... not horrible by any means, but I think missing some energy.
Went to a friend of a friend's party (with first friend in tow) - fun, crazy, swimming!

Saturday:
PNP show - I felt shaky about my camera work and direction, but my actors rocked out and had a good time.  Kim is the best runner ever!  (I'm usually shy about naming names just because I don't want any weirdness, real or perceived, but I'll make an exception here.)
Blast from the past from Detroit popped up and it was good to meet their acquaintance again.
We all dipped to Rose & Crown for a good spell.
Met with friend (and friend of a friend, and yet another friend) @ Pre-Bianco's bar.  Laid back ...
Back at Rose & Crown, Dangerville strikes!
Slide to benefit concert at Brickhouse and stick around for about 15 minutes as it wraps up.  So many good people came together - hope it helped.  Bought a t-shirt, and made a contribution on my behalf and on one of our students' behalf.  Goodness breeds goodness and multiplies it - multi-ball!
Back to Bianco's and Rose & Crown - chilling.
Catch a ride to the p-a-r-t-y, craziness & fun ensues, dancing, wrestling, Dangerville STRIKES!, ridicu-drinks, cell phone usage under the influence, or at least, an influence.
A drink drunk under the name Lemon Daniels gets redubbed Jack Lemon!
Bob saves the day again!  Swim, swim, swim!  Sleep, sleep, sleep!
I'm racing the sun and winning (sometimes!).

Sunday:
G rehearsal - pretty loose, some fun stuff, good conversation, the level of reconnection and enjoying each other feels good.  Then, to the YouTubery!
Watched Bill's Window into the Soul of Humanity for a bit.
PIF meeting - mega, new people, sights & sounds, whee!
Catch some Raiders in prep for new Indy - wow.
Pick up bike at last known place in downtown.

Monday:
Dangerville show with Mount Righteous!  Hello the Mind Control - so young, so good!  Hooves - loud & plenty!  Do I taste some south in indie's mouth - it was good!  Dangerville - hm. good, but I think a little dampened by long days and some sickness that made its presence known.  Things probably had more spunk in rehearsal, but even that was a good thing! Mount Righteous!  Holy cats!  So good, so awesome - as musicians & songwriters, and as good people.  Quality Bikini time with them!  Can't wait to see them again, their songs haunting the halls of my mind.  Sleep eventually.

Tuesday:
Geez - I think I took a breather.  Oh wait!  Just a tiny breather, but not before stopping by A Shot of Java after work.  Saw poet friends - lots of love.  Took some in, and even churned some out.  Read from K.Pat's chapbook, improvised a poem, then partially scribed one about a beloved local figure - neat.  Hugs make it all good.  (Another exception - go catch Jonathan Strandifird at the Lazers of Sexcellence show tomorrow @ Bragg's Pie Factory in Downtown Phoenix.  He will delight and amaze you with his command of words and stage presence.  Rock. On.)

Wednesday:
Post-work ... Got to swing by my fave of fave, home away from home, lover of all lovers (in town) - dancers there, but not the ones I expected.  Hugs!  Twins & cousins!  Swung by friend's place, talk before the travel.  Good stuff.  Head to Scottsdale to meet new friends that feel comfy like old ones, among old friends whose comfiness is always lovely like new.  Fun times.  Malibu promotion - free shots, but the headdress dance is the winner!  Congo dude plays with conviction.  Also, we're in the lands of departures, entrances, exits, arrivals - gumbo-style.  One friend crossing country-lines.  Another doing the same in a different directiong but with a ring on hand and vows to be said (or at least paperwork to be signed).  Yet another (Filthy Rich!) friend(s) heading off for a short while.  Good times ... never fade, ever glow.

Thursday:
Wow.  Thanks, Ms. Nature.  Plans blown all over the place by the merciful wind.  That's okay ... pieces will get picked up as they need be.  I don't want to settle at the bottom of the snowglobe, shakeups help, but also need some good grounding.  hm.  Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, ad infinitum

I will be an old man soon, but I will be happy - it was just my time, fellas ... it was just my time.

(Um, these scraps were hiding somewhere ... and the auto-save brought them back from limbo ... had forgotten all about this.)

The intro to "Thriller":

"I'm not like other guys."

---

- I'm in a rage.
- Oh yeah, why is that, G?
- 'Cause the racists: they say we act like rats in a cage.  But check it, every night in the news, we prove them suckers right, and I got the blues.

---

Stevie Wonder's "Love's in Need of Love Today"

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"Candle in the Wind (Ben's Song)"

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"Just a little bit of heart and soul!"

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"Where it's at."

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Hadoken.

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CP3

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Echo effects

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Back it up or back it up.

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Plummeting.

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Wings of wax.

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The intro to "Thriller":

"I'm not like other guys."

---

- I'm in a rage.
- Oh yeah, why is that, G?
- 'Cause the racists: they say we act like rats in a cage.  But check it, every night in the news, we prove them suckers right, and I got the blues.

---

Stevie Wonder's "Love's in Need of Love Today"

---

"Candle in the Wind (Ben's Song)"

---

"Just a little bit of heart and soul!"

---

"Where it's at."

---

Hadoken.

---

CP3

---

Echo effects

---

Back it up or back it up.

---

Plummeting.

---

Wings of wax.

---

Let's just throw them all away!

Let's erase the internet!

Let's have a parade up to the lip of an active volcano!

Whee!

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I thought I posted you like a 17 lifetimes ago!

I have little business posting on LiveJournal - there are about a million other things that I have to get done!

Yet and still ...

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I guess I've been thinking about how we go in and out of phases and, really, how people phase in and out of our lives.

There's always a touch of sorrow not being around people that I had gotten so used to having near me all the time.  I've had amazing bonds with people, thought that I couldn't navigate the daily tangles of life without their presence, love, support, and good humor.  There's always a little bit of drift that comes in at some point, though, and that's always a little sad.

Where are you going, How Things Used to Be?  Don't walk so fast!

Let me hold on to you just a little bit longer, HTUtB - don't take away your warmth so soon and too fast!

Then other folks slide in and fill up that empty cup!

They're not replacements and their purple drink doesn't taste the same as the green stuff which never tasted like that sparkling red which was way different than that crystal blue persuasion.

Nobody tastes like chicken broth and the realization that the people who aren't as close as your shadow anymore are probably out being wonderful with other people, maybe other people who need them more than you, if that's possible.  It's hard to fathom but the comfort in knowing that other people are being comforted eases the sting of a slowly peeled band-aid from a cut that's long been healed.

Staring at the scar, though, feels like an echo resonating in your chest cavity.  It's a radar signal bouncing off of constantly shifting solid masses, never really quite finding much of a read off of anything.

Bwock ... bwock ... bwock.

The periscope ups, but when the submarine is fully submerged, it's just a silly notion - merely a vestigial reaction to not being used to the darkness.  The water's murky anyway - a slick and oozing sheet of contstant veils; thin, flattened tongues rolling with the sneakiness of crude oil.

Amongst the muck, a soiled bird hits a tainted land.  Its wings heavy, dripping stalagmites or stalagtites depending on which way is up.  The bird knows, though ... the bird knows down, because that's where it will stay until someone can lift it up to the sunlight and remember what it might have been like when its little lungs rose and its hollow bones wouldn't have snapped so easily.

I think that, ideally, friendship is simple and easy.

Then, things pop up that are hard.

It comes down to knowing / figuring out the responsibilities one has a friend and figuring out how to best achieve those responsibilities.

At the same time, that sounds so corporate mission statementy.

---

I saw that Walgreen's was advertising Ped Eggs on their outdoor dot-matrix signs.

I didn't know what a Ped Egg was and since it was just after Easter, I thought maybe it was some Paas product.

A few nights later, my questions were answered by a random infomercial that I watched as I tried to defragment my tired mind via the white noise of late night television.

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I happen to have awesome friends.

Yes, that's it.

These strands of time, where physical discomfort & irritation get their wires crossed & confused with emotional distress & release.

Last night, I stopped in real quick like for the first night of Necromancer and whipped up a couple of quick haikus for the haiku round of things.

The first one was to Beth, a fun acquaintance who was on her way out as I started scribbling syllables.

"I'm writing a haiku - what should it be about?"

"Cupcakes!"

In the past couple of months, cupcakes (or cuppycakes, as Cookie Monster called them) have been swarming around me and tempting me with their sugary charms.  A friend (who happened to create some delicious cupcakes herself) and I discussed how cupcakes have gotten hot & trendy all of a sudden.

Anyway, here's that one:

O, cupcake - trendy
yet quaint, customized frosted
temple of sweet death!

The second one was for another friend:

The contours of your
face slice my wrists, but only
across the street, girl.

===

This morning, I flipped through some channels and came across a quick blip of Curious George in a spacesuit, floating around free of gravity's shackles.

Man - that monkey!

===

I finally listened to the Foot Ox CD after putting off buying it for a month and then once in my hands, holding onto it in silence for a week.

It's that supergoodness, friends.

Teague's doing his thing (with French Quarter) across the country, but please do catch him and buy his merch when he's back in town.

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Havens tafting!

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AsXuZk9ZfYWv9hbZMtsr6h.8vLYF?slug=ap-jordanbackhome&prov=ap&type=lgns

"For all these kids that are going to benefit from this, hopefully we have another Michael Jordan here somewhere in terms of their success," Jordan said. "Not Michael Jordan per se in terms of basketball. Someone who just believes in their dreams and aspires to be the best person they can be."

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"When U Love Somebody" - The Fruit Bats (Thanks, Steph!)
"Harder Better Faster" - Daft Punk
"True Affection" - The Blow
"Ten Things" - Paul Baribeau
"The Glory" - Kanye West
"Peacebone" - Animal Collective
"I Feel Like Dying" - Lil Wayne
People Who Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World - Andrew Jackson Jihad

===

A clay jar whose broken pieces have been scattered and interred just below the earth's surface.

There's only so much dust you can sweep away.

There will always be dust sneaking beyond what your eyes can see.

The only thing you really end up doing is moving the dust in a direction it likely would've eventually have ended up.

Sweep your heart out and I'm sure there will still be dust within a 300 foot radius of you.

Sweep!  Sweep!  Sweep!

Dust prevails.

===

Paul Baribeau - "Ten Things"

Right now, all you have is time, time, time
but one day that time will run out
that's the only thing
you can be absolutely certain about

===

As amazing / crappy as this morning was and as much promise / dread as the rest of the day and evening hold, nothing can take away the fact that I saw the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile (license plate - Wisconsin: YUMMY) today.

I basked in its glorious shine of meat byproducts and sodium nitrate in automoblie form.

It was so splendid that the Farmer John's Sausage RV was sneaking about (true story).

So, whatever may uplift / befall me today and the days that follow - I win and I will share this victory with all who need it!

A friend of mine once clarified the truth about the statement "love conquers all."

It isn't that love is all-powerful and able to triumph over insurmountable odds; it's that everyone eventually succumbs to it.

I think that's an important clarification.

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"Love is really all we need ... except that love really isn't all we need." - AJJ

I've seen and heard the word "twee" used about a million times in the past month.

I had somehow escaped hearing it and hearing of it even though I think I've been drowning in a sea of twee for the past few years.

The end was the best part.

Everyone was shrieking at each other - only the loudest of insults & slanders rising above the cacophony.

Then, with a thunderclap as loud as a steam engine, it was as if the sky had cracked.  It was - a pterodactyl! - much to everyone's slack-jawed surprise, emerging from the heavens and snatching the child into its gaping maw, and with it the commotion and vitriol of the past 24 hours.

Our collective eye glazed with astonishment and skyward admonishment.  We blinked and stared at each other, silence falling from our lips.

Then, we went home.

Circuitous

"This robot is defective - we can't let it out of the factory, much less into the showroom," exclaimed Professor Hyacinth.

"Well," Dr. Jeffers replied, "he bears all the costs of having been constructed.  We might as well let him loose and see what happens."

"It'll perish out there!"

"Probably."

Hyacinth sighed.

THE END

Best leading Onion article in a while:

14 American Apparel Models Freed In Daring Midnight Raid

A hearty toast to whoever wrote this.