cadillac ranch

i realized today on the highway that i'll definitely drive a mid-life crisis car. because at the rate i'm going, i won't be able to afford a cool new car until i'm more than half dead. and you can bet your ass i'm not going to deny myself the thrill of owning a cool brand new car once in my life just because i'm too old.

so i decided to stop chortling at old guys in sunglasses and cool sports cars. because hey, they could be in the same boat i'm going to be in. and when i'm in that boat, i'm not going to want some young whippersnapper calling me a douchebag.

i'm sitting 2 rows behing the penalty box tonight for rangers/canadiens at madison square garden. so i'll talk to you tomorrow unless i take a 100 mph puck to the eye.

abort retry ignore

in case you're keeping track, all the recording i tried to do on saturday sounded really shitty when i came back to it a few hours later. but that's no big deal and i'm not sweating it. it'll get done when it's good and ready to.

i sat down here tonight to pontificate about goodbyes (the permanent kind) and how it feels to have to say goodbye to a person or a place or a thing, and whether given a choice i'd rather know if and when i'm doing something or seeing someone or going someplace for the last time. and if i must know, how to go about preparing? is it possible to prepare?

i wrote a lot about it, too. symbolism, sentimentality. but then i just erased it.

i guess i must've struck a nerve. on myself. can't remember the last time that's happened.

i've got the mighty ducks on vhs

i'm writing now to give my throat a break and to let the house warm back up. i'm at my parents' place in connecticut, trying to record 'triple deke' in the basement with one microphone in one take. it's proving more difficult than i'd hoped.

see the thing is, the basement is super quiet, except when the furnace comes on. so you have to turn the furnace off. but then if it's a day like today, it's kinda cold in the basement and having the furnace off doesn't help much. in fact, the whole house is pretty cold now becuase i've been down there hollering for an hour with the furnace turned off.

so my voice keeps cracking like a choirboy's towards the end of the song, so i'm drinking some tea (celestial seasonings peppermint) and letting the furnace warm up the house a bit while i take a break.

anyway. hopefully i'll finish this song this weekend and put myself one step closer to finishing this record. it'll be nice to have the opening track in the bank. may your weekend be as majestic as the snow-capped rockies on the morning after winter's first gentle kiss.

ps: i might go to a native american gambling establishment tonight.

i won't be sleeping well tonight

they're fighting again. the couple who live above me. 3rd night in a row. horrible nasty screaming matches. i can hear every word.

he hates her family. doesn't want them coming over every day. they have their own house. stay out of his (we live in an apartment building, he does not have a "house"). and i just lie in bed listening.

it happens in short bursts. then a door slams. someone tries to cool down. can't. open the door and start it again. eventually he'll go to sleep on the couch and i can finally fall asleep in my bed, about 10 feet below her while she's probably crying herself to sleep. i can't hear that part.

squeaky swings and tall grass

i am sitting here listening to npr stream on my computer right now. death cab for cutie is playing a show in washington, dc at the 930 club, and it's being broadcast all over the country.

i wonder if it's occurred to them how cool that is. if they huddled before the show tonight and said "guys, this is kinda big. i know our record is selling like crazy and everyone loves us and god bless the oc but we're playing live for the whole country right now like we're fucking springsteen. are we ready for this?"

thing is, they're not. they are a fucking great band. and sure a lot is lost from stage to mic to encoder to router to windows media player. but i've listened to my dad's old tapes from when they would broadcast an entire springsteen show on the radio. and this is not that.

they are playing "summer skin" right now. that's my favorite song on the new record. and it sounds good. just not as great as i wish it did.

i don't know what the point of this post is. i'm totally enjoying this show and i don't mean to rag on it. and god bless npr for doing shit like this.

yeah, i really don't know. but they say this whole thing will be archived after it airs. maybe you should check it out if you get some time.

i sure do talk about springsteen a lot.

oh megan, i wish it was that easy.

god damn. i have been trying to write a first sentence for this for like 45 minutes. i think i'm going to settle on "god damn."

my friend chris asked me the other day why i write music. because he writes it too and once in a while we ask each other and our answers usually are close to the same after we get through all the bullshit. but i don't want to put words directly into his mouth so i'll really only talk about myself here even though i already namedropped him.

so the first thing you usually say is you do it for girls. i don't know why, but basically everyone says this. like "i want a girl to hear my music someday and fall for me madly." but the truth is you want a girl who doesn't hate your music and is madly mad for the rest of you which is more important because your songs don't age and you do. and she does, too. yeah man. that's the girl you want.

so then you say you want to change the world, or that you have something inside you somewhere that you think the world might like to hear and you're trying to make music your voice or something, but that's bullshit too. because you know you're not going to change the world. bono isn't really changing the world (though he'd tell you differently i'm sure) and let's face it, you're not bono. and there is nothing you can say that hasn't been said before. all you can do is try to say it your own way and hope it resonates with someone.

and you get about that far and then you realize you just nailed it. you do it because you want to be for someone what someone else was for you. you want someone to hear a song and feel the way you felt when you first heard sic transit gloria...glory fades or the other megan or fucking thunder road. can you do that? probably not. but you only live once...might as well give it a shot, right? anyway, you imagine some real satisfaction in that kind of connection.

or you can just be a dick and say you do it because you like to. which is true, but i mean, come on. let's scratch the surface a bit, shall we?

i wasn't really going to write all this out because it's kinda crazy and i doubt many people care but i was reading a really long post by another great friend of mine named dave that really got me going. and this started out as a response to him but kinda got off track so i figured i'd just toss it up here with all of my other nonsense.

he called the shit poo

let's lighten the mood, shall we? this is a little more scatalogical than i usually like to get with the written word, but anyone who knows me personally knows i am capable of much worse. whatever. here goes.

i had this crazy dream the other night where i was a secret government interrogator and i needed information. and i had a special interrogation technique which i'm sure is majorly illegal in real life but at least i wasn't shooting anyone in the kneecaps like jack bauer. i would put a plate of dog poo in front of them on the table and douse it with rubbing alcohol*.

then i'd light the shit and say "you tell me what i need to know or i'll stomp this fire out with your face." and of course, if they didn't talk, i had to do what i had to do. eventually, they all talk.

what do you think that says about the kind of person i am?

* rubbing alcohol, in case you didn't know, is highly flammable. or inflammable. those words mean the same goddamn thing. why on earth?

maybe we could cut someplace of our own with these drums and these guitars

i was just going through old emails in search of something, and found something else entirely different and all but forgotten. i am moved to blog*.

this is why you save love letters long after love's departure, why your closets are full of dusty shoeboxes of photographs and keepsakes. and, i guess, in this day and age, why way back in the deepest, darkest corners of your hard drive lurk the clusters of 0's and 1's that you've done your best to disremember.

there's a reason you don't just throw them away like magazines you've read and know you'll never return to. you keep these things because you know someday you might stumble across them again. and you crave that impact. like the best punch in the stomach you've ever had. but it only works if you've really forgotten.

i had written when i was feeling especially morbid (although i remember thinking i was being poetic at the time) that life doesn't amount to much more than what people will remember about you. something about kind words at a funeral, and what an injustice it is that we don't get to attend our own. i don't remember what i wrote exactly (though from what i can remember i'm not impressed with my originality), because i didn't find what i wrote...it's long gone and it doesn't matter anyway. i found the response, from a friend with whom i've since lost touch.

today's gut-punch is brought to you by the forgotten insights of an old friend who always saw right through you and still liked you anyway.

* to use the word 'blog' as a verb is reprehensible and i am deeply sorry.

mama's got a squeeze box

i forgot to mention the most important part (least important). i bought a children's accordion at this place called pearl river in nyc which is basically a place where you can buy all kinds of random shit (made in china) for super cheap. it works more like a harmonica than a real accordion because pulling and sqeezing the same key make a different note, but i'm gonna learn to play it and write a song featuring it.

and that is a promise.

which i will break.

do you think your security can keep you in purity? you will not shake us off, above or below. scottish friction. scottish fiction.

so i had this whole emo plan today to write an open letter to everyone who ever done me wrong (or done me right) all at once like every sentence would be about someone different but i would write is as just one letter.

but instead i went to digitallife with my friend john to see some dorks and video games and then we drank quarts of beer from this japanese place in soho and now i feel like my head could roll off my neck and i'm sure as hell not about to air all of my business i've ever had with anybody in front of you nosey people right now.

at the convention i got a "geek squad" monitor brush which i can use to get dust off my screen instead of just using my hands like i used to. progress.

i'm gonna order a burrito for delivery from fresco tortilla. i don't know what you're gonna do.

win one for the kippur

today is another day i am off work for a jewish holiday. i went to the dmv. see, even when you have a valid driver's license from another state, you've got some hoops to jump through to get a ny license. and since my old license expired, i needed to do it.

a visit to the dmv is basically the worst thing imaginable. there are lines, but nobody in any line knows what they're in line for. or at least, they won't tell you. and everybody who works there hates you. even little old ladies who try to chip through the tough exteriors of these people can't get through and leave with their tails (or shawls) between their legs.

i just realized it's totally unoriginal to write about a dmv trip. everyone has done it. i just wanted to use the word obfuscated, because i was reminded today what a great word that is. so now i went and used it. moving on.

i've listened to idlewild's record warnings/promises a few times in the past few days and i finally get it. that band is fucking brilliant. i met them one time and was a total douchebag and just held out something for them to sign rather than try to engage them in conversation (even though there are a million things i would've loved to ask them). it is one of the few times i've been starstruck in my life. regardless, roddy woomble is one of the most gracious-even-though-he-doesn't-have-to-be rock musicians i have ever met.

omgwtfbbq

there is a bbq joint in soho (i can't even remember what it's called) that i went to last night which, based purely on food deliciousness, is the best bbq joint i have ever been to.

if you take atmosphere into account then wes' rib house in providence still gives it a run for the money. their flowering onion (absent from the menu at this place in soho, tisk tisk) is a good preview of heaven, which it also serves (along with the rest of your meal there) to bring you a little bit closer to in a temporal sense.

so anyway. while we were there my friends and i were a bit...boisterous. and as we got up to leave the 3 or so tables that surrounded around us all got deathly silent and gave us the stink-eye.

god damn that was some cold shit.

it's raining in baltimore, baby

well, i don't know if it is or not. but it sure as hell is raining in monroe, ct. i'm here because it's my old man's birthday, and we're going to celebrate when he gets home from work. in the meantime, i've spent most of the day battling a headache and reading old issues of rolling stone, which my parents inexplicably have a subscription to.

in the august issue there's a great feature on coldplay that reminded me how much i like that band even though i think x&y kinda sucks.

i am only posting right now because i've been reading magazines for a very long time and can't bear the thought of starting another one.

i played my dad's old guitar for a little while but i can't find a pick anywhere in this house and i really wanted one so i just quit.

i took the dog for a walk but it's pouring and she didn't want to go very far because she wasn't the one who had an umbrella. so basically we turned around right after she did a huge poop in the middle of the street.

in the city rainy days are different. you can't hear it hitting the roof.

it's never going to heal if you keep picking at it

i've posted what looks to be the final version of "new york city" at all the music sites. check it out when you get a chance. i think it sounds pretty good.

i'm not sure how the whole record is going to go just yet, but i'm pretty sure the 2 new songs that are up will be the last 2 on the record, in the order they've appeared. so you can let me know if you think that's dumb.

and i guess you can't see the image of my horrid moustache on myspace unless you join, so if you don't want to do what all the cool kids are already doing, you can check it out without joining anything at pulverradio, all you gotta do is put your mouse over the thumbnail on the bottom right. that picture isn't going to stay there long because the more i look at it the more i get creeped out by myself.

i put myself at the mercy of the court

ok i put the picture of my shady moustache up at myspace. for the benefit of everyone (read: david and only david) who expressed an interest. mostly i put it up because i'm a glutton for punishment and i welcome your comments. my mom said i looked like "a chicano high school kid trying to look tough." see if you can top that.

let the record show that the moustache lived for approximately 15 minutes before i lost my nerve.

also there are now 3 songs completely done for the record. i am on a roll.

also i am a dirtbag.

also i wish i kept the moustache.

this is one difference between guys and girls

this weekend i shaved but i left the moustache. then i took a picture of it with my lame camera phone and sent it out to a trusted ally to see what he thought. he liked it, but i didn't have the balls, so i cut it anyway. but i saved the picture. it's dirtbag-rageous.

100% of the females i've shown it to think it looks disgusting.

100% of the dudes who've seen it think it rocks.

i myself am kinda obsessed with the idea of a really ratty moustache and promise to do it at some point. but probably not anytime soon.

maybe i'll put the picture up somewhere where you can see it. you know, if you want me to.

lest we forget why we're here

the record is coming along surprisingly well. only two songs remain completely unrecorded, and all the rest are in various stages of completion on the mixing/editing end. i listened very loudly to what i've got so far in the car today and i have to say i'm really happy with it. for whatever that's worth.

i have a couple days off of work this week because of the jews. i plan to be entirely unproductive, and try to recharge my batteries a little bit.

how's this for emo?

when i was in high school i tried out for the soccer team 4 years in a row and got cut 4 years in a row. i was just thinking about how much that sucked today because i had breakfast at tom's diner in brooklyn (go there, the harvest pancakes with sweet corn and cranberries are the greatest thing on earth that you can consume and still safely operate heavy machinery).

when you're waiting for a table there's a guy who comes around and gives you cookies and coffee and orange slices. and i was reminded of ayso soccer way back when i was a kid and it was always someone's mom's job to bring sliced up oranges for halftime. if there were a pie chart somewhere representing my sweetest childhood memories, ayso soccer would be responsible for a good chunk of the pie.

tonight i am going to drink like i mean it.

some red handed sleight of hand

the setting: briarwood. a sleepy urban/suburban neighborhood in queens. nights are quiet here, except when they are occasionally pierced by the sound of a car alarm. always the same alarm, always only for a few seconds before it's deactivated.

it is a mystery as old as time itself. or at least, as old as my occupancy in this 3rd floor apartment in sleepy briarwood.

today i caught him. the guy who just opens his car door and lets the alarm screech instead of deactivating it before he gets in. he is a middle aged asian man driving an old beater of a minivan. and he lives in my building!

in typical mikey fashion, i said nothing. but i know what he looks like now, and i know where he lives. and i have a whole drawer full of stinkbombs here. and one of them has his name on it. metaphorically that is. i don't really know his name.