More Self-Aggrandizement

True love is the devil's crowbar

Hi kids!

I'll be signing books (I say that, but who knows? people need to show up for me to actually sign anything!) at the Barnes and Noble in Canton, CT this Thursday at 6:00. I've got cool Generation Dead wristbands that I will give away to anyone who smiles at me. I told people at the NEIBA convention that the wristbands were good for one free drink at the hotel bar but a) I didn't specify which hotel and b) it was a total lie.

The B&N is at 110 Albany Turnpike #305 in Canton, CT. They have coffee and books, I have wristbands and a full pen. Any zombie that comes will get a wristband for each wrist.

Also, I'd like to thank Chris Ohm, who did an interview with me for his school newspaper. You can read the interview here atNews in a Click. Please check it out, if only for the really cool photo that Chris did that accompanies the interview. I think the girl in the photo looks very Margi-esque, how about you? And thanks, Chris, for trying to help me sound intelligent and interesting!

Oooo Weee Oooo He Looked Just Like that Dude from Winger

I was fortunate to be in Boston with an old friend (Lord, did he look old)last night, someone that I went to both high school and college with. Of the many halcyon memories that we sifted through, we did an extensive deconstruction of all of the concerts we went to back in the day, not only the big arena shows (Danny's Fun Fact: I was almost killed coming home from the Monsters of Rock--Metallica, Van Hagar, Scorpions, Dokken, Kingdom Come. I was sitting in the shotgun seat and woke up just in time to scream at the driver, who had fallen asleep and was in the process of drifting over three lanes of traffic towards the concrete barrier. After narrowly avoiding a deadly collision, he asked me how I managed to wake up just in time, and I told him that I had a dream where the ghost of Cliff Burton was yelling at me to wake up and get out of his dream. We pulled over and pounded a six pack of Jolt cola immediately after) but also club shows and the local stuff we saw while at UConn.

I asked him if he'd ever seen Avant Garde when he was there, and I was disappointed when he said he hadn't. Avant Garde looked like a hair metal band, all spandex and hairspray, and lyrically they could stray into hair metal territory with songs like "Never Forgot" and "Standing in the Paris Rain",which are songs about being all sensitive with girls. Musically, though, I thought they had more in common with bands like Fates Warning or Metallica than Poison--the song "Renaissance" off the demo tape in particular has a great twin guitar riffs and some wicked drumming.

They were five kids from the high school that bordered UConn, and I thought they were great. I heard them play two or three times, and ended up buying a tape they were hawking at the shows. Here it is:



I thought they had real promise. The songs were original and catchy. They cleary spent some time crafting both their songs and their presentation, but they also seemed to have a sense of humor and fun about what they were doing. There's a partial song on the tape called "Free Fall" that they sang as "Tree Frog" during one of their sets, which they and their fans, myself among them, thought was pretty hilarious. I remember being particularly impressed by their drummer, a tall red headed guy who set up his kit in this weird vertical way. I think he played at the front of the stage with his back to the audience, so that everyone could see what a titanic skin basher he was.

I think I saw them twice, and would have gone to see them again but they stopped playing locally. I heard a rumor that they'd all gone to L.A. to seek their fortune. I looked forward to them maybe getting signed and producing a whole album, but instead I never heard of them again until about a year ago.

I kept the tape, though. It was one of the few that I kept after my Great Cassette Purge of 1995. I listened to it quite a bit, and was smart enough to make a copy so as not to degrade the original, and I've since burned the songs to mp3 and have them on my iPod. And, ha ha! You'll never get them! And they're awesome! Ha ha ha ha!

Sorry. A year or so ago I read somewhere that one of the Avant Garde guys--the guy I actually bought the tape from--was Rivers Cuomo of Weezer fame. This kind of broke my brain for a bit, mainly because Rivers is now one of the least metal-y looking guys in rock, and also because I'm huge Weezer fan. I have most of their music on vinyl, which I mention to quell any doubts about how hardcore a fan I am. "In the Garage" off the blue album could practically be my biography.

My old friend (I was just kidding about him looking old, that was just me being bitter about him having retained more of his hair than I did--he showed me the bag he keeps it in) now works at Harvard, where Rivers graduated from not that long ago. Isn't that cool? Why do we say "small world" when the tiny moments of synchronicity like this actually expand the realm of possibility?

One of the other things that my friend and I talked about is some of the ways kids will differ from our generation (X) as time passes. X'ers use Internet tools like Facebook, etc. to track down a small percentage of friends we regret losing touch with. Contrast this with the youth of today, who have grown up attached at the e-hip with everyone they've ever gone to school with since the age of seven. Instead of tracking down forgotten chums and teen sweethearts, y'all will spend the rest of your lives trying to cyber-ditch all those people who just won't go away. I feel bad for you, too, because ditching is a lot harder than finding.

Sorry, kids, but history will prove me right on that one.

In the meantime, Weezer have a new album. You should get it

Wish You Were Here

Today the world lost Richard Wright to cancer. I've written often of my love of Pink Floyd and I'm quite sad about this.

But I've decided to become despair's greatest foe. On Saturday we invited a puppy to come live with us and here she is:



She's a ten week old beagle and her name, which we didn't change, is Star. My wife and daughter call her
"Stargirl" (Kim read and loved the Jerry Spinelli book of the same name) and my son calls her "Star". I call her, alternately, Deathstar, Superstar (a la Mary Catherine Gallagher) Ishtar, Starro the Conqueror, Dog Star, Meatloaf, or some other incredibly clever nickname I haven't thought of yet. Actually my favorite thing with her right now is to call "Starchild!" with the weird echo-ey voice Gene Simmons uses to tell Paul Stanley (Starchild) to use his mystic power of super-eavesdropping in the classic film KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, which you can (and should) watch in it's entirety on Disc One of the second KISS Anthology DVD set.

Ole Starro is a good dog, she didn't come housebroken but seemed to know instinctively that outside is where the deed is done, and she hasn't whined or howled at night at all. The kids are pretty smitten, and she seems to be smitten with them as well.

Tonight I plan to sit Star on my lap, program Wish You Were Here, DSOTM, Meddle, and key selections from my extensive Pink Floyd bootleg collection onto the iPod, and start reading Infinite Jest for the fourth time.

Words Fail, Sometimes

I just learned through a message group I subscribe to that a personal hero of mine, the author David Foster Wallace, took his own life last night. His novel Infinite Jest is one of my favorite books. He was only 46.

I don't have the words to express how I feel right now.

Kiss of Life

May 2009!

WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! The jacket copy has spoilers for Generation Dead, so read that one first, or avert your eyes!


Click image to supersize:

Faced

I've had both a MySpace account and a Facebook account for three years. I can't even remember why I signed up for them, but a current friend send a friend request--my first--for these services a couple weeks ago. How pathetic is that, to be friendless for three years???? I feel kind of like Homer Simpson when he found out there was a "No Homerz" club. Anyhow, I'm now "Live" on those services now, although I'm not really sure how to use them and make them all pretty yet.

And in a delightfully synchronistic moment, a post came in here and in Tommy's blog today that I'm putting front and center here:

manicboo said...
Hey! I'm totally new here and I have no idea if this is the right way to be doing this, so apologies if I'm making some terrible faux pas...Basically I just wanted to let you know that my friends and I have created a group on Facebook for fans of Generation Dead, because we all love the book and want to share our opinions and ideas with other fans, as well as hopefully encourage more people to read it!The link to the group is below (hopefully I'm doing this right!) I hope you'll check out the group and approve of what we're doing - the group was only created a couple of days ago so members are a little thin on the ground as yet, but we're sure that'll soon change!Thanks
Maz
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32978435947&ref=nf

Wow, thanks, Maz! I'm honored and touched (in the head, but still)!

I hope they let me join...

Makes No Sense At All

I didn't see any Ouija Boards, deer, or pheasants on my run this morning, but I was beset upon by yamaglatchis. Only my mastery of the ancient art of Crewka Crewka saved me.

The things I do for good health.