Monthly Archives: February 2007

Story of a Song: Jesus, NC

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There were many songs that were not written by Bob Spelled Backwards that we still consider to be “unofficial” Bob songs. “Jesus, NC” by 3-five-7 is one of them.

How the Song Came About
In North Carolina, at least during the 90's, there was a popular vanity plate that people would place on the front of their car that looked just like a North Carolina license plate except where the slogan “First in Flight” usually is was replaced by “You've got a friend in” and the place where the license # would normally go said “Jesus” and then “North Carolina” appeared along the bottom just like a real license plate. Mike and I were walking around one day when we saw one of these and started making fun of it. Finally one of us said something like, “Where is this Jesus, North Carolina, and who is this friend that lives there? Perhaps I should visit. Is Jesus on the map?” And so forth and so on. It was inevitable that it would become a song.

Jesus, NC
by Mike Shaffer et al (with the words of our lord in red)

I walked into Jesus, NC on a Sunday by the railroad tracks.
Jesus was standing on a Jesus street corner and he looked a little taken aback.
He said, “Why's this town named after me? The crosses on the churches are a mystery,
If I never see another one again it's all the same.

I looked at him, he looked at me. And as the cars drove by we could clearly see,
The tags from the DMV, that bore his namesake's name.

And they said, “You've got a friend in Jesus, North Carolina”.
That's a town I'll never see again.
If Jesus lived in Jesus, North Carolina,
He'd be confused each time the mail came in.

I said, “Jesus, you're a carpenter, won't you build me a full scale…
Stephanie Seymour?”
He said I'd love to hammer your abstinence away but I don't think I can bear to see nails today
and I just can't carry lumber, any more.

Well he looked tired and I look beat, so we went to get a bite to eat.
He didn't look both ways before crossing the street, and the smoking license plate that landed at my feet said,

“You've got a friend in Jesus, North Carolina”.
That's a town I'll never see again.
If Jesus lived in Jesus, North Carolina,
He'd be confused each time the mail came in.
'Cause it'd say Jesus, God Street, Jesus, NC
274603
Well the mailmen are all Satan any way.
Jesus, God Street, Jesus NC
Why do they send these bills to me?
I'm the savior of man, I'm the son of God,
I don't have a social security card.

Well, Jesus was arrested, and the decimated auto towed, too.
He said “You'd think they'd let me out, but here's turn about:
The jail's named after me, too”.
Why did they imprison me? That big ass rock was enough for 3 days straight,
I sweated till I had the fever, I had to break down and invent the lever.
And is sweated really a word any way?
I don't know.
It's got absolutely nothing to do…
with the fact that

“You've got a friend in Jesus, North Carolina”.
That's a town I'll never see again.
If Jesus lived in Jesus, North Carolina,
He'd be confused each time the mail came in.
'Cause it'd say Jesus, God Street, Jesus, NC
274603
Well the mailmen are all Satan any way.
Jesus, God Street, Jesus NC

Why do they send these bills to me?

I'm the savior of man, I'm the son of God,

I don't have a social security card.

And if I did, the number would be 3.
My social security number would be 3.
Immediately following the father,
then the holy ghost.
You know, I sure don't mean to boast,
But without me, you wouldn't know what year it was.

(I'm going to be a little bitch and not post the mp3, because it's available for sale right there to your right. Hey, a guy's gotta make a buck, right?)

Am I Dead or Alive? (Updated)

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How would you prove it to me that I'm alive? I've come to believe that the entirety of reality as I perceive it is created by the definitions that my mind has assigned to it. I don't think it's possible for anyone to prove to me that they really exist outside of my mind. If you pinch me, and it hurts, it is because my perception has defined the pinch as a source of specific physical sensation. What about a song I hear that evokes an emotional response, surely that couldn't be a figment of my imagination? Why not? I've written songs in my dreams that I never would've written while awake. How do you tell if you're awake or dreaming? You might say, it's easy to tell when you are awake. Why is that? Is it so easy to tell when you are dreaming? Everyone has dreams they are sure are real until they end, how can we be sure of anything being real. Besides, what is real? I had mentioned definitions. We each shape reality by a framework of definitions in our mind. If we can change the definition, we change reality. We actually only change how we perceive that aspect of reality but how is that different? It has been theorized that every one of us has the power to change the past, simply by believing it to have been changed. We never realize that we've changed the past, because all of the memories are changed at the same time. This calls to mind an experiment I read about called the “Double Slit” experiment. It was originally devised in the 19th century to try and determine if light were a wave or was made up of particles. It was reworked just recently involving a device, a filter, that counted photons as they passed through the slits. I won't bore you with the intended purpose of  the experiment, but instead will talk of the unexpected effect. They found that the nature of light, as perceived, actually changed when measured. They shone a light through two slits, the wave properties of light caused an interference pattern on the projection surface. This was expected. However, when they activated the device to count the photons as they passed through the filter, the interference pattern vanished. So, when they shone the light expecting an interference pattern, due to the wave nature of light, that is what they got. However, when they tried to measure light as particles, the wave pattern vanished, leaving light behaving as though it is particles rather than waves. But it gets even stranger. There were three ways to run the experiment, photon counter on, photon counter off, and running the experiment, and making the decision whether or not to turn on the photon counter later. I know it doesn't make much sense, but the results are astounding. They got the same results as always when they turned the counter off or on. But, they ran the experiment (Which was analyzed by a computer giving them the results after the fact) without deciding whether to turn the counter on or not, then deciding after running the experiment, to turn on the counter (or off), the result was always as it would've been had they made the decision before running the experiment. How do you explain this? Let me tell this experiment in an analogy. It's like placing a camera in a room with a timer to take a picture at a particular time. Then, either turning the lights on, or off. If the lights were off, you get a picture of a dark room, if they're on, you see the room. Simple? With this experiment it was like they put the camera in the room, let it snap the picture then, after the picture had been taken, deciding to have the lights be off in the room. The camera would have taken a picture of a dark room. If the decision had been made, again after the picture had been taken, to have the lights on in the room, then the picture would reveal a lighted room. It is as if light itself responds to the decisions we make, to reveal what we expect to see. This is evidence that decisions we make actually do affect the world around us. This begins to sound very much like lucid dreaming. In a lucid dream, you can change reality all around you because it is all taking place inside your mind. The only limit is that of your imagination. But now, we begin to see that we have the same effect on waking reality, although the scope may not be the same.

So what does this have to do with me wondering whether I'm alive or dead? Well, it seems that in waking reality our decisions affect the universe, at the very least, on the quantum level. When dreaming, our decisions also affect reality. And if we can have dreams that we cannot distinguish from waking reality, how do we know we are not dreaming right now? And what is death but a dream from which we cannot awaken?

EDIT: Danielle's comment below contains a link to a wonderful little cartoon from the extended version of “What the Bleep do we Know, Anyway” (A must see!) about the Double slit experiment that illustrates it much more eloquently than I have above.

(For those of you expecting the usual Saturday “Lyrical Saturday” or “Story of a song” installments, I've decided to move them to the middle of the week, since they are easy posts I can make with little free time. I'll reserve the weekend for postings that I spend a bit more time and thought on.) (Well, it was Saturday when I started typing this. It's now Sunday. Bah.)

Epic Dream 2: The Squire, the Princess, and the Mysterious Sword

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I was just having a chat with my friend Lindsay, and we touched upon the subject of dreams for a bit. That got me to thinking about dreams so I thought I'd go ahead and share my second epic dream with you all. Epic dreams, at least for me, are not like normal dreams at all. They are cohesive, telling a very clear story. They don't have the random stream of consciousness changing of events or environments that are typical of other dreams. And, it's always as though I'm merely witnessing the events of the dream through the eyes of the character I'm inhabiting, which often isn't me.

This dream typifies that description. The main difference between this dream and my other epic dreams is that this dream is merely a scene, a sliver, of a larger story instead of containing the entire story beginning to end. What is typical when I have dreams like this, that are merely scenes, is that upon entering the dream I gain a innate understanding of the whole story, everything that happened leading up to the moment the dream begins. That does, however, make telling the dream a little tricky. I can't start at the beginning of the dream because I'll need to give you the exposition that I was given at the beginning of the dream before the events are retold. I'll try it!

The Dream of the Squire, the Princess, and the Mysterious Sword


Like my reading habits, my dreams more often inhabit the world of science fiction, rather than fantasy. So it's a bit unusual for me to have a dream set in a castle, involving swords, squires and the like. However, one of the defining characteristics of fantasy is the presence of magic. This dream was wholly without magic (unless we talk about the sword, and we just don't know much about that). So I'll just go ahead and call it a Medieval Dream. There. All better.

Back Story
As I join this story, already in progress, I come to inhabit the point of view of the main character, The Squire. Once I begin to see out of his eyes, I immediately understand the history behind the story, and the events leading up to the scene that I now witness. I am The Squire. I was an orphan who was left on the doorstep of a noble Lord's castle. The lady of the castle found me and, being of kind heart, took me in. I did not come alone. With me is a hastily scrawled note which reads “please give this child shelter, and teach him the ways of a knight, for his destiny is to save us all”. (Or something like that, I'm paraphrasing to cover for spotty memory). I also arrived with a finely crafted, ornate sword of unknown origin. The Lord of the keep, a knight, was not interested in raising someone else's son, but since his wife had failed to give him a son, he reluctantly agreed. I was raised with all the privileges of one of noble birth, and learned the ways of knighthood. However, The Knight would never accept me as his own, and viewed me as some sort of punishment from god for his sins. He felt that he was not given a son because he had offended god, and that my presence was to be a reminder of that. As a consequence of his never treating me as his own, I grew up never seeing his daughter, who was close to my age, as a sister. As time progressed and The Princess and I grew into our teens, it became clear that there were feelings between us that were not those of siblings. Perhaps she took notice of the way I excelled in all my learning, and how I took to the art of combat with an unnatural ease. Or perhaps she merely took pity on me, as my continued efforts to gain a feeling of acceptance with my adopted family were thwarted time and again by The Knight. The Lady passed away one summer, after taking ill for some time. The void she left behind left me very much ill at ease, as it had been her kindness that had always kept The Knight from sending me away to live as an orphan should. But on her death bed she had made him promise to finish my training, and to accept me as his squire. I didn't understand that his irritation with me also stemmed from the shame of the whispers he heard about how he couldn't bear a son of his own, and how he had “found a bastard” to train as a squire, which was downright scandalous. So it was this set of circumstances that set the table for The Knight's discovery of a budding romance between the bastard he had reluctantly accepted as his squire, and his daughter, the noble Princess. In his rage he banished me to live in the stables, and took away my sword. The one that had been left with me when I was abandoned, and the only tie I had to whoever it was that had abandoned me. If it hadn't been for The Princess's pleas, and reminding The Knight of his promise, this would've been all the excuse he needed to finally be rid of me, once and for all. But The Knight was a busy man, and the keep was large enough where two clever, enterprising young people can have a secret romance without the head of the house finding out. I took to climbing the ivy up the wall to The Princess's room while I was on break from my duties about the keep. It was there, one afternoon, that I, the dreamer, joined with the story already in progress.
Dream Begins

As The Princess and I shared shy glances and shyer conversation, I noticed something.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Then, after a pause, “Horses!”
I sprang up and ran to The Princesses balcony, which overlooked a courtyard and the main gate to the keep which was standing open, as it does in times of peace. I reached the balcony just in time to see a dozen or so horsemen round the corner, weapons drawn. The dreamer doesn't know who these men are, or why they're here, but The Squire seems to have some idea. He/I sprang into action.
“Stay here!”
“What are you doing!?”
“Bar the door behind me, open it for no one. Remember how we used to climb the tresses to get on the roof? If they try to come through the door, go to the roof. I will find you there.”
“Wait!”
I was already through the door. I could hear the sound of screaming servants and breaking glass down below on the main floor. It dawned on me that my sword had been taken away, and I had no idea where it was. I would have to do without. The Knight, by now in his late 40's, was caught almost completely by surprise. He hadn't gotten the chance to put on any armor, but he was still holding off a couple of attackers at the main entrance.
“Where is my sword!?”, I shouted.
“There's no time! Grab anything, don't let them get The Princess!” (I don't know what these attackers were after, but I didn't think it was The Princess, and neither did The Knight. One can only guess it was the concern of a father for his daughter that made him drop all other concerns.)
So, as I came down the main staircase, I kicked out one of the wooden supports from the railing to use as a makeshift club. Then I proceeded to mop the floor with several well armed attackers using, essentially, a stick. Something awakened in The Squire at that moment. Something that had laid dormant because it had lacked the sense of self one gains from having a family, awakened. The Squire finished off the attackers, and The Knight could do nothing to hide his astonishment at the turn of events. I felt something welling up within The Squire/myself that unlocked a sense of understanding. The Squire was beginning to understand his destiny. This overwhelming sense of understanding was enough that I, the dreamer, was kicked out of The Squire's point of view at that moment, and I woke up…

I don't even know if The Squire and The Princess lived happily ever after.


Mark Weighs in on the Latest Celebrity Gossip

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OMG! There is, like, soo much going on with my fave celebs these days, how do I keep up? So I'm totally going to give you the lowdown on the latest, and shed the light of my own wisdom on it! Read on!

Britney Shaves her Head

Issue:
Britney Spears totally shaved her head! OMG! She has no hair!

What I think:
I COULDN'T GIVE A FLYING RATS ASS. I was busy reading up on the polar ice caps, which, if they continue to melt at their current rate, will inundate most of Florida, NYC and India in a century. Perhaps the lack of hair on Britney's head will cause more of her body heat to dissipate into the atmosphere, thus fueling global warming. No? Then why am I wasting half a brain cell talking about it?

Anna Nicole Smith

Issue:
Whoa! Anna Nicole died of mysterious causes just months after her son also died of mysterious causes!

What I think:
IS THERE NOTHING ELSE GOING ON IN THE WORLD? It took Britney shaving her head to get Anna Nicole stock footage off of CNN. People die every day. Lots of them. Many of them from mysterious causes. But, most of them were never in Playboy, so we feel free to ignore them. I'm sorry, I don't care how you say it. A celebrity dying will NEVER be more newsworthy to me than a regular person dying, unless the person's celebrity status is a result of some significant contribution they've made to the world. I feel for her family, and her newborn daughter, but no more than I feel for the woman who was killed on the freeway in California last week and her family. So drop it already.

Brad Pitt and <insert love interest of the moment here>

Issue: Did you hear the latest about Brad and Angelina?

What I think: Nope.

And people wonder why I don't watch TV. You know what's a more pressing issue to me? How about: How the hell did I get this black ink all over my arm? I haven't used any pens or anything today. Is someone sneaking around with a sharpie? I mean, really? Good thing I'm wearing black today.

 

I could keep this up all day, but that would require me to actually look for actual celebrity news, and that would kill valuable brain cells, so I'll refrain. Besides, I'm sure you get the picture by now. Listen, America is the country in which the people have the power. This is still true. So how is power kept by those we've lent it to? Well, how about conditioning the populace to look the other way while the power is abused and solidified, and freedom is drained away? What better way to hide the enormous red flags and blinking neon signs that say “Warning” and “Danger”, then to condition the populace to pay more attention to the lives of the pretty people than they do to their own?  Listen, I know I'm paranoid, but I'm not paranoid about things that don't make logical sense. Here we are, spending our time thinking and talking about Brad and Angelina instead of noticing the world slipping away all around us. We're bombarded. Airport TVs, grocery store checkout lines, every television station, radio stations, they all talk about the same thing: Nothing important. Meanwhile, unknown to most, the president tries to pull funding for the last public owned (and therefore not corporate controlled) news outlet, PBS and NPR. Did anyone notice that? Did you hear about it on the news between stories about Britney and Anna Nicole? I didn't think so. The sad thing is, most people are so conditioned, so used to it, so brainwashed, that they honestly don't care about the things that matter any more. And they certainly don't care to do anything about it.

EDIT: Since writing this article, a conversation broke out among my co-workers about Britney Spears that is going on as I type. I usually just sit quietly and wait for the subject to change. Am I the only one who feels like he's on the wrong planet?

A Belated Retelling of the Wild West Baseball Quest

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7 games, 6 stadiums, 8 days. This is how I spent one of my vacation weeks last year. What made it work is that I took my dad with me. My dad LOVES baseball, and seeing how he enjoyed this trip would've made it worth it even if I couldn't stand baseball. But fortunately, I've become quite a baseball fan myself. Now that I have an able forum to tell of this trip and include some photos, I figured I'd go ahead and share with you all.

Day one, Saturday July 15, 2006
Atlanta Braves vs. San Diego Padres at Petco Park, San Diego, CA.

This first game was more of a dress rehearsal than anything else. My dad wouldn't be meeting up with me until Monday in Arizona. This game was a treat from my work, which meant I had to sit with a bunch of co-workers. These co-workers don't bother me at work, but at the game, they really started to get on my nerves. They were more interested in socializing than watching the game, and were contstantly standing up and talking to others that were behind us, blocking everyone's view. In fact, while they were doing that I missed the longest homerun in Petco Park history. Here' how the scoreboard told of it 2 innings later:

This game also featured a quality start from future hall of fame pitcher, John Smoltz

Brothers
This game also featured a brother vs. brother matchup between San Diego outfielder Brian Giles and Atlanta second baseman, Marcus Giles. (Marcus Giles has since been signed by the Padres, so the brothers are now teammates).
Atlanta won this game in a blowout, which messed up my reputation as having good Padres mojo. The padres had been 8-1 in games  I had attended prior to this one. Now, 8-2.

Day two, Monday July 17, 2006
Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Arizona Diamondbacks, Chase Field, Phoenix Arizona
So Monday morning I hop in the car and begin the 7 hour journey to Phoenix. My dad flew in to Phoenix airport from North Carolina, and met me at our hotel. Due to the heat, we felt like being lazy, so we ordered a pizza and ate in the hotel room. Then, for some unknown reason, we decided to walk to the ballpark from the hotel. It was only a few blocks, we thought, so why not? We soon find out why not. We walked a little over a block, and had already consumed all of the water we had bought. It was 117 degrees. I thought I was going to die. Those of you that know me know that I am very warm natured, which means I handle the cold very well, but I don't handle heat well at all. So we caught the first city bus that came along going in the right direction, and rode the rest of the way in bearable, air conditioned comfort.
Chase Field:

This game featured the first pitch being throw out by adorable ice princess, Sasha Cohen.
(not to be confused with Borat comedian, Sacha Baron Cohen)

The home team Diamondbacks won this one, which is good because we were pulling for them. My dad was pulling for them because he lives in Arizona most of the year, so they're basically his home team. I was merely pulling against the Dodgers, because they were battling the Padres for first place in the division.
Brothers
Once again was featured a matchup of brother vs. brother. This time it was LA outfielder JD Drew vs his younger brother, AZ Shortstop Stephen Drew. Younger brother Stephen got the better of this matchup, because he got his FIRST major league hit AND stolen base.

Older brother JD was hit by a pitch and had to sit out the rest of the game.
When JD Drew was hit by a pitch, a flamboyant fan cracked everyone up by shouting “YEAH!! HIT 'EM ALL!!”. I turned around to find myself confronting the first Mo-llet I've ever seen.

Day 3, Tuesday July 18, 2006
Philadelphia Phillies vs. San Diego Padres, Back to Petco Park
Yes, I watched a game at Petco Park, drove to Phoenix to watch a game, then drove BACK to San Diego for another game. Get off my case. It was vacation. My mojo was back in order by now, after working for the Diamondbacks, and it resulted in a win for the Padres as well.

This game featured San Diego ace, Jake Peavey, who always seems to pitch well when I'm in attendance. I was treated to a duel between him and Roger Clemens the previous year in which both pitchers pitched a complete game. Peavey and the Padres won 2-0 that night. They would be victorious again this night. (Mojo: 10-2). .

Day 4, July 20, 2006
Cleveland Indians vs. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Ahaheim, CA.
First, let me get out of the way how rediculous the Angels' new name is. LA Angels of Anaheim? Well, with the San Diego Chargers (football) finding it difficult to build a new stadium that has resulted in rumors of them leaving for LA, why not call them the Los Angeles Chargers of San Diego? It wouldn't be that much more of a stretch. C'mon. But I digres…
 
We had no real rooting interest in this game, so my mojo had no effect one way or the other. One thing about this game is that it was HOT. Now, the majority of this trip just happened to coincide with one of the worst heat waves in recorded history. How convenient. I already described my near immolation in Phoenix, but this wasn't as bad as that. I did, however, get very badly sunburned. Blasted sun. Sheesh. Here's Allstar Angels Outfielder Vladimir Guerrero:

We then headed back to San Diego for our last off day at home. We didn't get to go to a game, although there was one at Petco that we were tempted to take in, but we did watch it on the idiot box.

Day 5, July 22, 2006
St. Louis Cardinals vs. Los Angeles Dodgers, Dodger Stadium, LA, CA.

There's nothing like the baseball experience in LA. And that is both good and bad. Nobody wants to experience LA traffic, and that was bad. Also, LA fans are notorious for showing up in the 2nd inning and leaving in the 7th. That I don't get. Why pay all that money for tickets to a game then skip nearly half of it? To beat the traffic? Who knows? Oh well. Once again we were pulling against the Dodgers and the Cardinals came through for us (Mojo: 11-2). Here I had to have a famous “Dodger Dog”, which was ok. Later in the game I went to get some garlic fries (mmmmmm) and some ice cream for my dad. I got back nearly 3 innings later, with no ice cream for my disappointed dad. I waited in line for more than 2 innings. For non-baseball fans out there, that's more than 40 minutes. Other fans in the line informed me that Dodger Stadium was known league-wide for having the worst concession service. The service actually was nice and friendly but it was that slow, so low marks for them. From our seats, we had a nice view of the sunset and the famous Hollywood Sign:

As for the stadium, there really is no better place in all of LA county to build a stadium than Chavez Ravine. It's no wonder that they have stuck with Dodger stadium for so long. (It's the 4th oldest major league park).

Brothers
There were no brothers playing head to head in either of the LA games, however, The angels featured catcher Jose Molina, and his brother, Yadier Molina was catching for the Cardinals at Dodger Stadium. The “Catching Molina's” have a 3rd major league catcher brother, Bengie, who plays for Toronto, but used to be teamates with Jose with the Angels.

Day 6, July 23, 2006
There was no game this day, it was an off day. But, it was a great day for a nice, sunny drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, our next stop. We grabbed a hotel room in LA (With a lovely view of a brick wall and an air conditioner that kept cutting off, causing me to wake up sweating) and headed out in the morning up Highway 1/101 up the coast. It was a very enjoyable drive, for the most part, and we stopped to get some fresh picked cherries and fruit along the way. It is a difficult road to follow, at times, and we lost our way more than once as it  wound into and back out of small coastal towns. Then, in the middle of nowhere, we heard a high squealing sound and a pop. My dad was driving. He asked what that was, I didn't know. A few minutes later, we noticed it starting to get warmer. And warmer. And warmer. We decided to stop at a gas station to check things out. The gas station thermometer informed us that it was 118 degrees. We didn't need it to tell us that. I took a look under the hood, and in my infinite car mechanic knowledge, I could tell that the belt that drives the AC compressor and the power steering had snapped. What was worse is that it seems to have snapped because the compressor pulley had seized up. We could either finish out our journey without air conditioning and power steering (Did I mention it was a record breaking heat wave?), or stay in this small town until a mechanic could help us out, which would be Monday. We soldiered on. After about an hour, my dad said that since the AC wasn't working, we should roll down the windows to cool it off. I advised him that it wasn't a good idea, but dad's always know best, right? Wrong. He rolled down the two front windows and after about 15 seconds, rolled them back up, screaming in agony as all the hair had been singed off his face, and the flesh had burned off his scalp. A grinning, hairless skull faced dad looked at me apologizing for having rolled down the window. After I managed to extinguish myself, I told him that at such extreme temperatures, fast moving air wasn't necessarily cooling. I then stuck my head in the cooler, which was by now a cool, refreshing steam bath. Eventually, our charred remains made it to my brother's apartment in the bay area, which would be our home base for the remainder of the trip.
A self portrait on the highway of hell:

The little fire warning placard in the corner says it all.

Day 7, July 25, 2006
San Diego Padres vs. San Francisco Giants, AT&T Park, San Francisco

(That's my dad and brother on the lower left)
Now here was a good game. The cool breeze off the San Francisco bay even managed to make the temperature bearable. The Padres led for most of the game until the Giants came back to take the lead in the bottom of the eigth inning. Things were looking bad, as Giant's closer Armando Benitez took the mound to try to finish off the Padres. However, Padres reserve outfielder, Termel Sledge hit a solo home run to tie the game. After my group stood and cheered the Homerun, a grumpy Giants fan looked at me and said, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes, are you going to hang your hat on that?” to which I replied, “I guess it's hard for you to recognize a 100% steroid free homerun?” He didn't say much more after that. In case you're wondering, I was referring to Barry Bonds' steroid tainted quest to overtake Hank Aaron for the number one all-time spot on the career homeruns list. He was currently at 722 at the time of this game:

The Padres took the lead in the top of the 10th, and Trevor Hoffman came in to secure the save, and the victory. (Mojo: 12-2).

Day 8, July 26, 2006
Boston Red Sox vs. Oakland Athletics, McCaffee Collesium, Oakland, CA
My old friend and roomate Scott joined my dad, brother and I for this last game of the trip. I have to admit, though, that McCaffee Collesium was by far the worst of the venues we'd been to thus far. I'm not sure how it is for football games, but it was merely adequate for baseball. The outside has an unnattractive concrete bunker look to it:

(Buddy Scott, on the left, with Dad and Brother)
This game featured many star players on these two accomplished American League teams. Barry Zito was starting for the A's, vs the powerful bats of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz for Boston. Boston definitely got the better of the matchup, and won in blowout fashion. Most fun matchup of the game: Pitcher Kiko Calero vs. batter Coco Crisp. Kiko vs. Coco. Sounds like an episode of Pokemon. So, we bid a reluctant fairwell to the baseball portion of the vacation (We were full blown seamheads at this point) and we escaped without so much as purchasing  a foam #1 finger.

The morning before that last game, I put my car in the shop. I decided it was better to have it all fixed before the journey home than to drive it several hundred miles (and through LA traffic, again) with no power steering, not to mention the further suffering from the heat. But, I stuck around in San Francisco for a few more days to visit friends, museums, and do some sightseeing:

And, $1200 later, I drove my newly repaired car back home and collapsed in exhaustion from waaaay too much driving for one week. Oh, but I snapped this one last picture when I pulled in the driveway:

Now that's what I call a road trip.

Story of a Song: Used to be My Heaven

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This week's installment is one of the older Bob Spelled Backwards songs. In fact, you could call this Pre-Bob. There were a handful of songs that Josh O'Connor and I wrote together before we joined with the rest of Bob. We had formed a heavily Spinal Tap influenced “mock” band called “Soundbox”. We wrote 4 songs that would later be used by Bob and/or Great Awakening. “Used to be My Heaven” was one of them, along with “Stupid Woman”, You're My Girlie” and “Alternative Girl”. Josh and I also joined together in writing the song “The Girl I Love is Dead”, joined by Mike Shaffer, that would become the biggest “hit” of Great Awakening. The “band” Soundbox was mainly influenced by Spinal Tap in that it wasn't ever supposed to be a real band. It was a group of imaginary characters, and we wrote the above songs as those characters. This is why the aforementioned songs happen to comprise the core of Bob's most masogynistic songs. All of these songs were written in the same spirit as the well known Ben Folds Five song, “Song for the Dumped“, in that they were mostly post-relationship, angry break-up songs. All tongue-in-cheek, of course.

“Used to be My Heaven” is a song sung by a person to their former lover about how they were going to die of mysterious causes that couldn't possibly be pinned on the singer.

Used to be My Heaven

You used to be my Heaven,
But now you are my Hell,
But, baby, I think you'll die before me

Don't call the police, Ain't nothin they can do.
Cuz it won't be yours truly, that puts an end to you.

Keep smoking all them cigarettes, at least a pack a day.
You're drinking too much coffee, or at least that's what they'll say.

You used to be my Heaven,
But now you are my Hell,
But, baby, I think you'll die before me

Get two hours of sleep at night, for at least a month or so.
I think I see Porphyria, coming down the road.
And if I am subpeona'd, I'll have nothing to hide.
For the coroner's report will simply say it's suicide.

You used to be my Heaven,
But now you are my Hell,
But, baby, I think you'll die before me
And, baby, I bet you'll die before me.

The song was already attached to my Valentine's rant here. It is also available for purchase to the right———>

Shameless Self Promotion and Vertigo

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If you're paying attention at all, then you saw some new additions to the right hand column. I've opened SNOCAP music stores for myself (which will include Jiffylust, Great Awakening, 3-five-7, my solo stuff, and eventually Magnuson and earthShine) and for Bob Spelled Backwards. I won't bother to embed them into this article, since they're right there to the right. I've had SO MANY requests for old tunes by old bands that I've spent a lot of time uploading different sets of 4 songs to the MySpace player on my profiles. So I figured it may be worth it just to make them all available to everyone all the time, even though it isn't free. I've set all of the prices to a default of a buck, but I'll figure out an appropriate price at some point. The price can't go below 39 cents, or I'll lose money, and we wouldn't want that, would we?

For the past couple of days I've been suffering from a mild case of Vertigo. I can still walk around (and even played racquetball) with no problem, but yesterday at work, I leaned over in my chair to pick up something off the floor, and suddenly I felt as though I were falling over out of my chair, even though I wasn't. I sat up quickly, momentarily disoriented, but regained my bearings right away. So, for now I have to be careful when leaning over for any reason, and even get the sensation that the room is spinning when I lie down in bed. So tell me this, if getting drunk can make the room spin, will it make it go away if it is doing it while sober? Not that this is bad enough to drive me to drink at this point, but maybe I can justify taking a couple of days of work or something.

To those who are Taken, Happy VD.

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I don't mean Taken as in abducted by Aliens. Of course, there are those among us who believe that the opposite sex is from another planet, so maybe it is the same thing.

Over the vast course of my experience being single, as compared to my brief jaunts in the world of the taken, I've come to believe that Valentine's day sucks more for those with significant others than for those without. Of course, this isn't universally true. I just speak to the poor saps who's partner will set a judgement of them into stone based on the events of this one, ”Corporate sponsered, love-themed Merchandising Day” (thanks Kat) or as Danielle put it “…unimaginative, consumerist-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative and shallow interpretation of romance day”. Now, I know Kat and Danielle are taking the ultra-pessimist view of V-day, but both these comments share one truth in common: Valentine's day has been hijacked by capitalism as an opportunity to guilt love-struck citizens out of their money for fear of insufficiently displaying their feelings for their partners through the monitary expendatures on this one day of the year. If you, or anyone you know, has EVER judged a significant other by their actions or lack of actions on this one day, despite their actions every other day of the year, then go ahead and dump them. You'll be doing them a favor and you deserve to be single. Now, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, here. If you are with someone, you should at least know whether they have pre-concieved notions about this abhorried “holiday”, and make it clear to them how you feel about it before ignoring it altogether. But, if someone dumps you because your actions or the amount of money you spend on them on this one day was not to their expectations, then you are the lucky one. I just hope you hadn't married them already. Listen, I just resent society as a whole telling me that I have to buy my girlfriend something today, and telling her that she should think less of me if I don't. Why do you need society telling you how to be in your relationship? We are brainwashed since birth to believe that on certain days of the year (V-day, christmas, birthday, anniversary) we have to buy things for our significant other or we are bad mates. Screw that, I say. Live your life as a good mate, and celebrate those days with some time together and a mutual acknowledgment. That should be sufficient.

In honor of V-day, I'm posting the lyrics for a Bob Spelled Backwards song called “Used to be My Heaven”. I have also attached the mp3.

You used to be my Heaven,
But now you are my Hell,
But, baby, I think you'll die before me

Don't call the police, Ain't nothin they can do.
Cuz it won't be yours truly, that puts an end to you.

Keep smoking all them cigarettes, at least a pack a day.
You're drinking too much coffee, or at least that's what they'll say.

You used to be my Heaven,
But now you are my Hell,
But, baby, I think you'll die before me

Get two hours of sleep at night, for at least a month or so.
I think I see Porphyria, coming down the road.
And if I am subpeona'd, I'll have nothing to hide.
For the coroner's report will simply say it's suicide.

You used to be my Heaven,
But now you are my Hell,
But, baby, I think you'll die before me
And, baby, I bet you'll die before me.

Dozing off at work

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I should sleep more at night, so I sleep less during the day. However, when I fall almost but not quite asleep, that's when my brain does weird things. Today was no exception. Don't worry, my head didn't write any more country songs.

My job doesn't use enough of my conscious thought processes to keep my waking mind busy, so my thoughts are always wandering off and getting themselves into all sorts of trouble. Today I was contemplating what it must be like, mentally not physically, to die. Like if someone were to shoot me in the head right now, would my consciousness continue disembodied? If so, would my last thought be frozen in my head? I was thinking about this, and how a movie director might portray a death scene from the 1st person view, when I dozed off for a minute. I had a bizarre little dream about a little girl leading me into an underground tunnel where the tip of a crashed spacecraft had broken through the ceiling, and we were apparently searching for possible survivors. Then I did that little head bob thing you do when you wake up because your head was falling over with nothing to support it. It happened again, and I had another bizarre mini-dream, but I can't remember the second one.

The most humorous example of this sort of occurrence happened to me while in college. I was in one of my psychology classes. This class was particularly boring because the professor was retiring at the end of the semester and didn't feel like putting any effort into the class. So he just read to us from the text book every day. The upside of this was that I could either go to class or read the textbook, and I wouldn't have to do the other. And, he was giving easy A's as a parting gift to us all. But I digress. In this class I once dozed off in my famous “Taking notes” position (With my head supported in my left hand propped up on the elbow, and my other hand holding a pen at the ready, pointed at the paper). I had a min-dream, for some reason, that I was playing soccer. Unfortunately I wasn't asleep enough. I dreamed about kicking a game-winning goal, and then, in real life, kicked the living daylights out of the desk in front of me. Fortunately for others, but unfortunately for me, the desk was unoccupied. With no weight to hold it down, it went flying across the room, crashing into the wall under the chalkboard. Of course, everyone was staring at me with a mixture of amusement and terror, not least of which was the professor. Needing a quick excuse for what had happened, I said, “I thought I saw a bee come in the (open) window, and I was trying to kill it…I missed.” After some deserved mocking laughter, I put the desk back where it belonged and class resumed. No one else dozed off in class that day.

Music is 90% inspiration and 10% perspiration

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What is the nature of the creative mind? How does inspiration work? Have you ever written/composed/painted/etc anything that just seemed to fall out of you, like it came from something other than you and you are merely a conduit of some kind? Are you tired of me asking questions?

There's an old saying that music/art/writing/whatever is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. For me that is rarely true. Unfortunately I am innately lazy, and if it were as the old saying goes, I'd probably never finish anything beyond that 10%. In fact, one of the purposes of this here blog is to force myself into a more workmanlike approach to starting and finishing creative projects. But what makes it hard, particularly with my chosen field of music, is that I so often just vomit out a completed piece of music with little or no effort at all. In fact, even in a band situation, 90% of the best things I come up with are on the very first effort. If another band member is introducing a song, an idea for a song, or a riff/chord progression or bass line, the very best thing I will ever come up with for it will be the very first thing I play, without thinking about it or processing it, just letting it come out and trying to stay out of it's way. If we are jamming on something for the first time, I will come up with at least 4-5 parts and melodies or whatnot that can go with it. I will very likely never come up with anything very good to go with something later on,  beyond that first effort. This is why I have so many songs that are 2/3 finished. Because, I come up with the initial riff or progression or melody, and then immediately find a great complimentary second part to be a chorus or bridge, but never am able to come up with that elusive 3rd part to round out the song. Many of my songs are finalized having only 2 parts. This is one reason I really enjoy collaborations with other artists, they can usually add those finishing touches that didn't make it out of my head at the initial creation of the song.

I have written songs in my sleep.

Or, something has. I've woken up having written a completed, extremely cheesy Nashville pop-country song in my head while I was dozing off. Here are the lyrics for it:

The sun will still rise when you're not here,
But the mornings just aren't right, somehow the day now seems less bright.
My heart will still beat when you're not near,
But this old heart is telling me, there's somewhere it would rather be.

I can be thankful for my health,
At least that's what I keep telling myself.

And I can live without you,
I just don't want to.
I can go on, I can be strong.

I can sleep without you,
I guess I'll have to.
I can still see the sun rise, through the tears in my eyes.

I can live without you,
But I don't want to.
No, I don't want to.

That song is complete in my head. Done. I can hear the vocalist (which isn't me) and all the instrumentation. And it happened while I was asleep. Yes, it is a cheesy pop-country song. No, I don't like it. No, I'll probably never do anything with it save maybe trying to sell it to some Nashville type. But this isn't the only country song my head has written without the permission of my consciousness. Here's part of another:

I'm only easy when you're not crazy.
I'm only with you when you're not gone.
If you want me to love you,
And put no one above you
Then you'll have see our problems through right and wrong.

I don't know why I'm giving these examples. I've also written a complete Flamenco guitar piece at 3am after waking up and feeling a need to grab my guitar. I don't listen to a lot of flamenco. My most technically difficult jazz piece was written in the middle of the night on one of my sit bolt upright in bed needing to grab my guitar moments, too.
     I've concluded that whatever part of my brain it is that fuels my inspirations, whatever clicks “on” that allows music to flow effortlessly out of me sometimes is somewhere closely related to the part of my mind that activates during REM sleep. My often bizarre and occasionally epic but always unusual dreams suggest this as well. However, for me, creative “juice” seems to be finite, and has a daily amount that can be exhausted. I can sense when I'm out of juice, and know when it is best to leave something on the back-burner until I can approach it with a fresh supply.

This is why I love improvisational music. It is spur-of-the-moment, instant creativity. Nothing gives me more pleasure than reaching into my ass and actually pulling out something that doesn't sound like it came from my ass.

Next time I'll discuss the difference between creating music with my hands and creating music with my head.