CEX SUB CON

2012-01-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

Starting a tour, playing a bunch of really old songs that hadn't practiced and could barely remember, etc. Denny Bowen was the drummer (?) and it seemed we hadn't even really talked much about it beforehand, I gave him a set list and we walked around the venue, a deep, black-box theater. I watched a snake crawl around in the grass outside, anxious, trying to remember lyrics.

Later, somebody gave me a set of small flutes. When you played them, a snake head slowly appeared from the far end. If you kept playing, the snake would come out. I was nervous about them. I played one at the apartment, though. The snake plopped onto the ground and Pierre grabbed it by the neck and started running around as fast as he could. I figured it was probably OK if Pierre wasn't scared. But then Pierre stopped running and fell over. My heart exploded. The snake slithered off.

2011-10-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

Turns out there's a bunch of dead white rats, bloated with and a little bloody, floating in the big watery tub that our dinner came out of. It's pretty gross but somehow I don't feel too worried about it-- I think the dinner floated in vacuum-wrapped plastic and also got cooked? Nobody seems very worried. There are also some dead white rats in another place.

Nobody knows if Justin Bieber is a boy or a girl and I intend to find out by hooking up with him. It takes a while and I have to joke a lot with him and eventually it is hard to tell who is joking and about what, but I'm pretty sure he's a hermie. But then I get his underwear off and it turns out, nope, he's just a regular boy. I feel like I've wasted a lot of time and decide to try and take the video that I have of the experience to Ed Schraeder and see if I can pass it off as a skit for his show.

2011-10-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

I'm driving, in Japan, I'm late for the first day of tour. I don't see a small grey car pulled over on the shoulder and collide with it and it turns out that there are five naked people in it. Holy shit, it's two members of DMBQ & three members of Boredoms! What a strange coincidence, I think. I ask if they're OK and also why they are naked. They say it's no big deal and we don't need to call the cops-- their little grey car is totalled but they don't care, they also have a red van and they'll just get in that and drive away. The nakedness had something to do with a silly, spontaneous orgy. I don't understand but I'm late so after they drive away I drive away, too.

I get to Richie's parents' house, where he is letting me stay for a night. It is huge, and I don't think they know I'm there, and Richie isn't there yet, and I'm wandering through room after room, all very sparsely furnished, if at all, and I'm looking for a bathroom, but all the bathrooms I find have no toilet in them yet. I finally do find one but while I'm in it I can hear some deaf lobbyists outside start doing some really depraved stuff. I come out of the bathroom to find one of them mouthfucking this girl who is on all fours backwards, like when you crab-walk, but her head seems to be on backwards, so her chin is pointed at the floor and not the ceiling as it would be with a normal human. Then I realize it's not the girl's real face, that she has a different girl's severed head stuffed over her real head. I want to hang around and maybe take some notes cuz I can tell these deaf lobbyists are going to do a bunch of depraved stuff nobody could ever imagine, and that would be great to use in a story, but I've got to get to the show.

I get in a van with my band, which includes J Hova Hopper on bass and two guys I've never seen before. I hope they listened to the songs and played along with them and got super tight because we haven't practiced together once and I'm nervous. We drive at about 15 mph through very crowded alleys and in and out of warehouses that are full of piles of completely disparate junk and have big sections of their roofs torn off. We don't use any actual roads. We find the bar where we're supposed to play and it's tiny and packed with 40-somethings and I don't see a stage, and we're many hours early, and I'm nervous, but the bartender seems optimistic and encouraging.

2011-10-08T09:44:00.001-07:00

I can hear some music from the other room, and I can tell it's Marumari playing his new guitar-based stuff. It's great. I tell someone near me what it is and that I like it.

2010-09-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

A short older guy who i've seen around town but never taken seriously shows up at my house unexpectedly with a retinue of grinning gangsters. They tell me they heard i move midlevel weight and they want to help me get into highlevel dealing. Its obviously a weird intimidation/extortion thing, but i don't tell them im not a dealer and i kinda play along with them when they talk about me paying them $800 for my first shipment. The short guy doesn't really address me, and a japanese guy with long curly hair enthusiastically does most of the talking. At one point he pulls out a little derringer, and when i glance at it he points it right at me. I flinch. He laughs and points it at my bed and pulls the trigger, and a tiny blast of white powder covers my green sheets. He explains its a military-made substance that will kill anybody who inhales it and that i ought to mop my bed thoroughly then put the sheets in the washer. I do my best to pretend like i believe him, wondering if its flour or clorox or what. One of the gangsters leaves the house and reappears at the second story window in my bedroom, leaving a note on the sill, then climbing a sketchy tree branch back down. They all leave and i get the note then lock the window. The note is written in awful handwriting.

I drive a car through crowded city streets. Its raining. My windows are up. At every stop light, some dismal looking person tries to get me to roll down the window and they all derisively call me " tough guy" when i don't.

2010-07-02T11:39:00.001-07:00

I'm playing a set at this large version of America that kind of seems situated just north of where I used to live in Pilsen. There's a huge room with a concrete trench full of shallow water in the middle of it, and my set somehow clears the room. With the laptop still running I go outside to see everyone smoking in a little lot between two garages, and I get a smoke from Creature who hugs me and begins to explain that she stepped out for a smoke and everyone else in the room followed, but as she's telling me this I see a narrow beam of light shoot out of the far garage and hear the sounds of cops putting handcuffs on someone. As soon as I see a bulky uniform appear I grab Creature's hand and we run.

2010-06-04T08:39:00.001-07:00

A show in a fabulous apartment complex, where all the apartments are on the first floor and linked by little patios which in turn give way to cobbled paths around tiny gardens. There are multiple sliding-glass doors which open out onto the patios in every apartment, but no windows at all above the first floor that are bigger than little slits, and the building looms large with smooth, undecorated concrete. It feels like a swank prison that people would voluntarily enter. Everyone around is in a great mood. I am, too, even though I keep pulling tiny stiff sharp wires from between my teeth. It's almost as if someone sewed my trap shut with a guitar string, weaving it in between my choppers, then snipped the string so I could open my mouth again. Also, I can jump at least 9 feet in the air and float down gracefully, so I do. I bounce around the twisting internal courtyard of this building until I finally find a set of short, fat Classical-looking columns that seem to open up into whatever exists outside of this building. Policemen shine flashlights in my direction from out there, and talk to one another in serious tones. I bounce back towards the show. Also, I saw Waz try to kiss Lexie and succeed.

2010-04-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

At a college. I enter a building that has about five feet of water on the floor. There are some inflatable rafts around, I float on one and a girl I know floats on another one and Melvyn has one, too. Later, we leave and go to a different building where we have to wait in a line to strap on a little harness attached to a small indoor crane that then lifts you up over a railing to the second floor.

2010-04-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

I found a silver dollar in my room and couldn't remember where it came from. Later, IRL, a girl at Spro who invited me to share her table (it was full up) paid with a silver dollar.

2009-12-15T11:57:00.000-08:00

Leaving a little cafe with some group of people I barely know, trying to get to another destination on time, but it’s unclear if this will happen. I don’t seem to care too much, though, about that— I’m with this group more out of some external compulsion than free choice. We step outside into a bustling downtown, on a street that posts up skyscrapers just a few blocks down the road. Above them, there are green fireworks exploding. I smile at them. This city seems kind of Japanese-looking to me.

Fireworks continue. I can see hot ashes sprinkling down on the road two blocks up. And then I can see huge panicking throngs of people running in every direction just a little further past that. Someone next to me points out the helicopters that can be seen over the area. “They’re bombing!” the stranger shouts. They? A foreign country could never put helis in our airspace…
It becomes increasingly clear that a chaotic massacre is taking place close by. I am drawn to it, weaving through the fleeing people to eventually come to the eye of the storm. It’s a boy with messy hair and a black army jacket. He looks about 13 and he’s followed by a girl who is at least five or six years older than that. She carriers a duffle bag and very casually loads guns for the boy. As he runs out of ammo in one gun, he passes it to her and she gives him the new one. She looks amused, almost delighted— he seems pretty dispassionate. Somehow it is understood that whatever is going on with bombs and explosions and flying debris all originates right here, with this kid.

I follow him for a short time watching him methodically shoot people. Then I clock him in the back of the head with candelabra. He goes unconscious. I look around for his female companion but she has vanished. I pick the shooter up in my arms and carry him back to the cafe I had just been at. There are no more fireworks, but the streets are full of ragged and bloody people moving wounding bodies and wailing. On the way, I try and tell a few people that it’s OK, that I have the perpetrator in my arms, but they all seem too preoccupied. Before I can get all the way back, he seems to be coming to, so I take off his jacket and wrap it around us both, tying it in front, making a little sack to wrap my arms around. I can feel him try to flex his legs but there’s not enough room in the sack.

I get to the cafe and explain to the parents and police there that I have the kid who did it. When I untie the jacket, though, there’s nobody in there. I’m completely confused, try to retrace my steps and where he might have escaped, but can’t figure out how it happened. They make me a junior police anyway.

I work on a case with Lester Freeman and Geoff, an old friend from high school. We are trying to capture some drug tycoon. It takes too long, though, for us to get all the evidence we want, so the case is closed and we get assigned to a new one, a pretty weak one. Geoff and I are able to finish our work on it very quickly and I decide to visit my parents’ old house in Baldwin and chill out for a while. My parents are living there again. I poke around the place and feel actually pretty relieved to see it again, and ready to enjoy that yard like never before. It’s nice out, pleasantly warm. The picnic table is set up next to the driveway. I decide to bike up to Jacksonville and rent a video game, and while I’m up there my dad calls me on a cellphone to ask if I really know this old black guy who showed up at the house. I tell him that the guy is a detective and he’s a little gruff but that they would definitely get along if he just talked to him a little. My dad starts choke up and tells me some things about Ronald Reagan I’ve never heard him say before in a tone I’ve never heard him use.

I go back home to find Geoff and Freeman at the picnic table. Freeman looks so bummed. He asks me what I’m up to and I tell him I felt like I could relax for the first time in a long, long while, so I was going to take advantage of it. Geoff tells him something similar about his own plans, then I ask him what he’s going to do. “Try and put a stop to some evil,” he says, picking up a manilla folder full of papers off the table and standing up. It’s obvious he’s going to use all his time off to go back to work on our old case.

“OK,” I say, “Let’s do it.”

I go inside and tell my parents I’m taking off. My mom has two kittens now, two playful little white and grey twins, and Melvyn is in there cautiously checking them out. When I leave I start running.

I run through all the neighbors' yards and keep going, until I’m on a farm. The ground seems like it was recently frozen, all kinds of hard, twisted little crags sticking up in the dirt. I keep running full-bore until I realize I’ve somehow entered a fenced-in field. There’s a balance-beam like construction in the middle, and I go jump up on it and look around me for the first time in a while. There are four animals in this pen with me, grey animals, and at first I think they’re donkeys until I realize at least one of them has huge horns. The horned one notices me, too. I try to remember what Roby told me about being in a pen with bulls— you’re not supposed to look at them, I think. And if you move slow— or is it moving slowly in a zig-zag pattern? Or is it moving sideways? You’re supposed to be able to move some way and they can’t see you. I think. The horned one takes a run in my direction, but he passes under the balance beam. The fence closest to me is high, I’m not sure if I could get to it and up before one of these bulldonkeys fucks me up. The next closest fence has barbed wire at the top. The other bulldonkeys have notice me, too, now.

2009-09-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

I'm riding over a beach in a square metal tub that's tethered to some kind of motor vehicle. A lot of people are walking beside, I'm the only one in the tub. There are some 20-ft owl-like creatures standing around with an orange fungus growing on their arms and backs-- the group that I am with presumes they are sick and is a bit bummed. The creatures seem not to care about us passing through this beach. One of the owls has a face like a smiling sock monkey and I laughingly yell out to Roby to watch out because it looks like it wants to play.

2009-08-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

There are highways tangled as far as the eye can see, most of them elevated, looping around each other, dipping and rising and making long, wide curves. There are some cars but somehow the large group I am in is able to walk on them without too much trouble. We all carry weapons and frequently encounter other groups that we must shoot. The guns are only air rifles, though-- it hurts when you get tagged, but the majority of shots don't really put you down.

At least that's my understanding until I see a guy near me get hit in the eye with a skinny, three foot long bolt. After our group redoubles our efforts and scatters the assailants, I pick up a strange crossbow off the ground. It's very light, made of red and black plastic, and folds up very easily. The game has changed.

2009-08-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

Big party at Thomas R's house, half older professional types and half freaky employees, not much intermingling. I am concerned with finishing four exquisite pewter masks, each which represents a different character, three of which have little smooth red orbs for eyes. The fourth has narrow slits for eyes, a large brow, and a sneaky grin. I explain each character to someone I work with: the fourth mask is Maradin, the shapeshifter. It is late, and the neighborhood outside the house is dark and silent, but people still socialize gently in various parts of the house. I put the masks on a wall above a dark purple couch, no one sees me do it, but some of my coworkers know that I am the one who made them-- no, not made them: I've only "finished them."

The older people find them and immediately hate them. In a short period of time, 7 of these people are murdered. I know that I committed the 7th murder, and still hold the razor blade I used to slash the man's throat in my pocket... but my memory is not right and I am unclear as to whether I was responsible for all of them. Well, in a way I don't feel responsible for any of them-- it has something to do with the masks, I never would have decided to kill anybody on my own. Thomas and the remaining guests suspect the masks and the murders are linked as well, and the police are called. "Don't say anything to the cops, it can only hurt you, even if you haven't done anything wrong" I tell myself. They come and look through the house-- the cops interview the older folks and ignore the rest of us for now, although none of us are allowed to leave the building. No one seems willing or ready to indicate that I have played a pivotal role in the appearance of the four masks. I decide to escape. I leave through the backyard, ducking my head wildly whenever I see movement in the windows.

I am in a car for a while. I decide that I need to go back in. Somehow, the fourth mask is suddenly in my possession. I put it on. I can look like anybody I want to. I look like somebody else, just a random face I have never seen, and go back in the house. Then I take the mask off and look like Rjyan again. A cop notices me sitting on the couch-- I'm too afraid to feel for the razor, lest the police notice. I go into another room and answer two easy questions before returning to my original strategy: "Look, shouldn't I have a lawyer here before I say anything at all to you?" The cops aren't pleased but they don't turn up the pressure.. the agree that I can have a lawyer and go to question someone else elsewhere. The fourth mask is back on the wall, but I don't remember putting it there.

2009-08-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

I go to show after show. There's a basement show in a basement I've never seen before. Crazy Dreams Band plays and I talk with Lexie and Nate. After that, a bunch of people walk through a temperate night to get to a coffee shop with a lofted second floor. There's a new Mortal Kombat game up there that I try to play. It's after 4AM and a small crowd of people of various ages assemble to watch N*Sync play a reunion show. We look up and there seems to be no roof, there's a stage high in the air above the coffee shop. All the buildings in the area have had their roofs somehow temporarily erased and we all sit at watch the huge Jumbotron. It doesn't seem like that many people have showed up for this show. It also seems like Timberlake and "that other kinda famous one" are having a contest to see who can hold the mic farther away from their mouth, while "the other three" clutch them close like rappers. Maybe the two famous ones are trying to do the other guys a favor? I debate whether or not it's too late to have coffee and decide that if I have to walk home, it's probably fine.

GAMESHOW

2009-06-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

My friends are filming a new spin-off of Ed’s late night talk show in a giant storage room in Hopkins hospital. I get there early while they are still setting up and start drinking some of the horrible Estrella Merlot I got from work the other night with ice and club soda. The room has a really high ceiling and a very dusty concrete floor— it looks more like an unoccupied space at the Copycat than something that would be in the hospital. Hardly anyone is there but the people involved in the show. They explain that this spin-off is more of a crazy game show than a talk show. They run through a bit that has to do with metal fans, it’s pretty funny. They offer to let me play the role of some guy who holds nonsensical cue cards, and I declare my desire to wear some kind of headset, vaguely remembering a similar character from a show I saw when I was little— maybe YOU CAN’T DO THAT ON TV?

A lot of people I know slowly start to arrive, ready to party. Folding chairs are set up across from a broad makeshift wooden stage, on which there is a desk and behind that, a bed with pink sheets. Karl shows up and asks for some of my wine concoction, handing me a nice glass mug. I try to give him exactly half. He says it’s not that bad.

I take off my shoes and put them near the entrance to the room, where I spot Morgan Freeman coming in, looking around, putting his coat on a chair and then leaving again. I race to the back to tell Connor about it. Connor is at the desk, busily preparing with Ed and Adam, and doesn’t seem to believe me. I aimlessly walk around, on two occasions cracking unintentionally very corny jokes: the second time Lexie and Waz, who are eating take-out food at a table in a far corner of the room, holler me down for the corniness (in good humor) and I holler back (slightly embarassed.)

It seems to be taking a long time to get the show going. I haven’t drank much but I feel tired. I get into the bed behind the desk and pull the covers over me. It seems like everybody involved in the show is too busy to notice or care, and I fall asleep. I figure it will be taken as a gag when the show starts and I wake up. It’s hard to tell when the show starts, though. At some point some girl I have never seen comes back trying to find someone to operate “the light table.” Not knowing what else I might/should/could be doing, I volunteer. “What exactly is a light table and what am I supposed to do with it?” I ask on the way across the room. She’s thin and conventionally pretty and total type A personality.

She shows me a strange, budget-looking contraption that basically seems like a long overhead projector covered in little carved wooden characters, each of which has a square wooden block on top of it. I am supposed to remove the squares to reveal words. The letters don’t seem to be arranged in any order, though, and I get confused fast— how will I know what squares to remove if I can’t see the letters until after the blocks are taken away? She is too busy to explain thoroughly, but I get the sense she doesn’t know and is just trying to fulfill her assigned duty. There are some other younger, conventionally pretty girls hanging around the light table talking to each other. I admire them for a moment before returning to the task of trying to figure out how in the hell me revealing random letters is going to be entertaining.

The show begins and a very familiar theme song is played. The room is big and I can’t quite tell what’s going on by Ed, the desk, and the camera. Other people far from that part of the room continue to talk and carry on, as well. Some of the characters under the blocks I reveal aren’t even letters or numbers, but just simple letter-like shapes, most of which seem to be crude variations on the simple heart shape. I come to understand that have to re-take the opening part of the show two or three times, but I don’t really hear why. The girls around the light table continue to talk of unrelated things.

Jeremy plays a familiar-sounding song on an acoustic guitar. I didn’t know he did singer-songwriter stuff. The song is quite long. Then it’s time for my part. I’m hoping that only the projection of these letters will be seen on camera and not my confused fuddling with them. I nervously keep pulling blocks off the letters, revealing nothing that even comes close to a word. Ed talks while I do this, and occasionally the audience in front of him makes noise, but none of it is intelligible to me. I try to crack jokes about the strangeness of this game to the girls— they’re friendly enough.

Mercifully the light table bit ends, me still clueless as to whether I completely bungled it or not. It appears that Jeremy is playing the song again now. I decide to go find my shoes and snoop around to see if Morgan Freeman came back.

I find neither of those things, and then the show seems to be over. Everyone is milling about and talking quite loud now. I return to the light table and one of the girls there, a platinum blonde, starts talking to me. I can’t hear her so I have to put my ear right up next to her mouth. She laughs about how confused she is about what kind of show this is, and I agree, and she puts her face really close to mine, and I assume she couldn’t hear what I’d said and go to repeat it, but she kisses me. I freak out a little and disengage without trying to seem freaked out. I mumble something about needing my shoes, intentionally using the room’s noise to obscure what I’m saying, then take off into the crowd.

I still can’t find my shoes, but Adam from the west side is near the entrance, and so is George from Oakland, and we have to go clock out, apparently, so we can get paid. The office where we do this is in another building of the hospital, and it is then that I realize that we are 24 floors from ground level. Riding the elevator I try to imagine Swearingen and Bullock talking during a long elevator ride and decide that tall buildings are both a cause and a symptom of the pussification of the American male.

We get to a lobby. The girls from the light table are there and they all greet us warmly. One of them has a leather jacket on now, the back of which bears a hand-scrawled message something along the lines of “I got titfucked on Goatse.cx” and I realize that this girl is either some kind of aspiring netporn star, or netporn journalist, or something along those lines. (Some intuition causes me to discard the idea that she’s one of those dimeadozen dirty autobiographical sex columnists, fake Sex-in-the-city types or whatever.) We hang in the lobby for a bit, waiting for something. Three jocko dudes come in the front door and one of them immediately begins loudly talking shit about the girl in the leather jacket. I tell him and his friends to keep moving, to go do whatever they have to do in this building, and after giving me a triple stinkeye (but no backtalk) they all do. I watch them join a group of about 20 other jockos that I hadn’t noticed before, congregating at the other end of the lobby. I get nervous. Adam and George bid farewell to the girls and we walk outside, into the snow, to walk over to the building where this office we need to get to is. I wonder if that huge mob of jockos will fuck with those girls again. My socks get really wet but it’s not as annoying as I expected it to be.

We take another long elevator ride to a classic office, cubicles and computers and all that. It’s crowded with people from the show— all trying to get paid for participating in some way, I suppose. Some round black lady shows me how to log in and out of the computer and I get the impression that I am expected to be doing this often.

Not sure what else to do, I wander about the office and find an unoccupied computer that seems to be in the middle of some ancient trivia game. The graphics are unmistakably EGA, which charms me, and I try to play it a little. It’s asking questions about a movie I know I have seen but only vaguely remember, the demon-themed movie by the same guy who directed the 1942 flick CAT PEOPLE. One question involves the shape of a huge flying beast that resembles a demonic inside-out uterus, a part of the movie I don’t recall but which seems extremely interesting. The next question involves a floating mass of deformed breasts and another asks which character’s semen was stolen to create the floating mass of deformed penises which flies about shooting poisonous sperm. The simple EGA animations of these characters look absolutely amazing.

2009-05-21T11:22:00.001-07:00

I realized my dad moved all my reggae 12s to another part of the house.

ANOTHER NUTSHELL

2009-05-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

A giant, ancient theater topped with luxury lofts whose name is written in neon above the marquee, where the collective moniker of a group of my friends is written in less luminous script. There's only 2.70 minutes on the burner. There's a pair of unsecured networks apparent from the sidewalk out front, where young ones have just begun quietly queuing en masse, but for some reason I can't seem to get on either network. I put my handheld gaming/internet device back into my backpack, rezipping it quickly before too many flies escape. I walk down the block, turn into the parking lot. Two guys dressed as cops are conversing by an orange cone near the alley that undoubtably leads to the rear of the theater. They direct me back to the front entrance.

An hour or two later I am in, and an hour or two after that I am pushing against a crowd of people, trying to exit through the front door. The crowd is so thick that I am wedged, slowly shuffling against the influx, I can feel my two bulging bags pushing against people I cannot see and I can feel their discomfort through the bag. I keep an apologetic and patient look on my face-- every grill that gets close to mine responds with unmistakable frost. I'm paranoid, for sure, but I think its a safe bet that many of these mumbles are frustrated requests that I use a different door, for a dedicated exit surely exists elsewhere in the building. I'm using this one, though. It doesn't seem unreasonable, to me, to want to come out the same way you came in.

WELL GODDAMN THIS CANNOT BE A GOOD SIGN

2009-05-04T19:59:00.001-07:00

American society has collapsed into a frenzied bloodhunt and me and a small crew of heads are somehow in this area that feels like a cross between a exurban cul-de-sac and a small resort village. We have a house, not sure why or whose, but I'm pretty sure we have some kind of legitimate claim to it. It's big and we find a few guns around, including an awesome rifle with a scope that I sling over my shoulder. Some people try to sleep (we ran a long time to get here) and some people are just panicky and unfocused. I am keeping my eyes on the windows on the top floor (the house has 3 floors, probably a basement, too, although I never get near it for fear of getting trapped down there and executed too easily) watching this little hill behind the house, and the closest neighbor, for signs of violent maniacs. Pretty soon I see a bunch of dudes coming over the hill and they all carry guns. I start yelling for other people to take up spots at windows so we can fucking blast these guys, but one of my crew objects-- the guys with guns are all black. "We've been watching all manner of motherfuckers kill each other like it's nothing all day, we can't fuck aorund right now!" The objector persists, and manages to convince other people in the crew that we should be arguing instead of shooting. "Look-- fess the fuck up," I scream, "You don't really give a fuck about racism, at least not about 'fixing' it or whatever-- all you want to do is feel superior while you criticize and castigate from an impregnable position!" They don't get it. I try to explain that this behavior needs to be left in the past, that the collapse changes everything and these intellectual "gotcha, you crypto-raciss!" shit was never really righteous, it was all about shaming people, never did a damn thing to better anybody's actual existence, only make weird guilty crackers without black friends feel better momentarily about themselves. The argument doesn't stop, though, more people are shouting, trying to get some words in. I turn back to the window to see dudes running at full bore towards our spot. I raise the rifle to my shoulder and take a shot right through the closed window. I watch this dude crumple behind the spreading spiderweb crack in the glass. It turns out I'm Annie Oakley with this little scope attachment. One of my crew joins me at the next window and we repel the gang trying to move on our spot, but we don't actually fall all of them, which makes me sick to my stomach, I know they're going to regroup and return. Also, it will turn out that we've attracted the attention of the closest neighbors, a little McMansion full of (honky) cops (ex-cops at this point, really) who still dress in uniform and think they can trick us into letting them into the house by saying they're going to help us. There's no argument here-- nobody is trying to let them in, but it's obvious that their arsenal is intense so we don't open fire on them either, just stay ready until they leave, threatening to come back and fuck us up big-time.

The first group returns first, though, and after a lengthy shoot-out in which I completely run out of ammo and see most of my crew shot to pieces, the two fat bastards that head up that particular posse come in for vengence. They act so chill at first that there's nothing I can do but sit silently on my knees with my hands on my head while some mook pokes me in the back with the barrel of his gun. There's a rape I am forced to watch in which the rapee begins to act like she's all into it, multiplying the gross line-crossing intensity of this oneiroscape exponentially. I'm abruptly shot in the head by the henchmen behind me before it's over.

2009-03-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

A young lady bearing a striking resemblance to the chick from CEMETARY MAN is quite pleased to wear furry ears and a smudge of makeup on her nose while crawling around on all fours. I introduce her to some strangers as my kitty, _____ (name I can't remember.)

2009-01-08T12:26:00.001-08:00

Running around this giant mansion on a very sunny day, trying to get all these palm-sized kittens collected up so we can go. My family is rolling in some kind of winnebago and I don't know why we took the kittens out but they're running all over the house. I chase a little black and white kitty into a kitchen where it goes on top of a refrigerator and hides in a small space between a cabinet and a microwave. I move the fridge and pull it out and it seems like the kittens are having tons of fun running away from me. Guys in suits with guns aren't into it, though. They chase me. They're led by a guy who looks way too much like Cheney-- it's got to be intentional. When I've got almost all the kittens, only missing one or two, Cheney gets the drop on me. I walk backwards towards the front door, and he aims his pistol and squeezes the trigger. For a moment, my adrenaline pumps and I'm ready to spring at his face-- somehow he missed. He sees my fight-or-flight and laughs and holds up the gun-- it's a cap gun. All the guns were cap guns. He laughs.

2008-12-30T10:37:00.001-08:00

In a maze of woods, lying high up on a branch under a big scratchy blanket, watching a lot of dog-walking squares walking past and getting scared by a group of really skinny, jet-black wolfy panthers. When I come out of the tree and really try to figure out how to get out of the woods myself, I am carrying a briefcase that is twice as deep as a normal briefcase, and made entirely of metal. It's empty. Vampires start to walk the woods and I hit one in the face with the briefcase.

2008-09-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

I'm holding a glass of some drink while standing on the balcony of a beachfront hotel room, watching a band from Baltimore set up their gear in the tide. There's maybe 6-7 other people milling about this hotel room, I'm guessing we're all on tour together. The room is pretty high up, 6th+ floor. (9th floor?) There's a modest crowd milling around on the beach down below.

The band starts playing. Small waves break on their amps. I haven't heard them before, I look at someone else on the balcony and make a pucker face. They comment that the band doesn't sound that great. "Sounds like legos," I say. I turn to go inside and the music abruptly stops. The singer of the band, a boy with a short brown beard, tells the audience there's some technical difficulties and invites them to visit the hotel room I am currently in for a while. I roll my eyes as loudly as I can.

2008-08-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

Liz Flyntz shows me how to operate four video cameras which are stationed around a giant mansion that functions as an asylum for retarded people. I have a video screen which is squared off into four sections and I can use a joystick to pivot the cameras and turn them around. The retarded people run around and scream and seem to have fun. Somebody argues over whether or not it's OK to make a documentary about the retarded people but Liz argues that the rest of the world needs to see how they actually live in this asylum. If it's not OK for people to see it, the place probably shouldn't exist.

Some really weird bugs emerge from a plastic egg and fly onto the wall. I'm freaked out by them, they're too complicated and bright yellow to be normal bugs. Somebody squashes one of them and the other flies away.

I return to messing around with the cameras. I adjust this one, then that one, and then the next-- but then the view in the top left of the screen shrinks and shrinks and it seems the camera is falling from wherever it was stationed. The view doesn't disappear though, as I would figure it would if the camera was disconnected from its proper place. It must be wireless. It hits the ground and sits aimed up at the place where it used to be. It can see the ceiling, which none of the other cameras are able to see because they are too close to the ceiling and don't pivot that way. I imagine that the footage from the fall will most definitely be used in the final documentary, you couldn't fake a shot like that, even if it is just of a receding ceiling.

2008-07-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

On tour (of course.) Huge house full of kids, almost all of them are younger. Tie dye shirts, headbands, neon. I keep thinking I’ve put down my cellphone somewhere which sends me into a panic— the idea of not being able to even text Roby surrounded by this kinda element is anathema, of course, and I’m putting a brave face on it because there’s kids here who seem really psyched and also fragile and the tiniest I-smell-shit face might seriously send them into a moody funk which I know will in turn disgust me and there is a wide chasm between our particular takes on those two states, a chasm over which further negotiation is not really possible and any progress will require mediation. But there will be no mediator. (Peacemaker? Who did Jesus actually make peace between again? I’m not being sarcastic, I really want to know. I guess I never got the impression that all those people who put down their stones went on to welcome the foxy sinner they had intended to brutalize into their community. [Sort of the problem about those kind of communities— the ones that appoint themselves the authority to punish, I guess: you can’t get outside. You’re either in or you’re brutalized into.] Putting down the stones, OK it’s a temporary peace, and I’m even willing to believe the bastards might not have killed her the next day. I think it was much more of a possibility back then, before all the distance and depersonalized propriety introduced by the more modern and more formal courts did.)

SO perhaps it is all chess to me. And I am losing a lot of pieces. But I value annihilation unconditionally, purely: if my own alone I am able to engender and enjoy I will not be selfish. Deep down, I think the idea that speaking reverentially of total annihilation might be a pose is itself a pose. We all pay closer attention when total annihilation becomes part of a story. Whether it’s a story on a news television show or in an epic action movie, in a history textbook or a sick comic: impending annihilation makes it easier to care. And it is hard not to revere such a powerful, Earth-changing force when you live in a world where things never change, except to get more lazy, and less original, and more convenient, and more vapid, and more volume, and more artificial, and so much compression, and ever more expensive.

We all start walking in a great big, meandering line out of the house. There’s so many. Hundreds. In a row. I have little conversations about the show with them. Not in any detail— only just, “Here we are, at the show, yep it’s the show. Some people are here, some people we know. We’re at a show tonight.”

In the distance there's a huge highway, glorious fourlane on either side. The line approaches it over a very long period of hours that just fly by due to everyone’s cheery demeanor and the genuine sense of euphoric anticipation I can smell all over them. We enter some kind of trench that looks like a pool, a long narrow pool, and it's filled with chlorinated water like a pool, too. The line moves into the pool and the water goes up to my shoulders. It runs parallel to the highway, but from the pool you can see all eight lanes. The highway is in the distance, it feels like we’re looking up at it but we must be looking down if we can see the whole thing, right? It’s so full of cars. And the cars are never stopped, or slow— but their flow doesn’t fluctuate at all. There is basically a steady and tightly confined beam of cars that never ceases, like molecules moving in opposite direction.

I have anger, does it matter where it originates? You point out calmly that my anger originates some place low and at some distance behind where I have assumed to be the source, as if this makes it go away. It doesn’t go away. And that’s why knowing the proper source of the anger is not information as valuable or powerful as knowing the proper receptacle for it. I believe I have written enough by now to make it clear that I have not selected the receptacles for my anger arbitrarily, or on some kind of whim.

We’re in the water, walking, talking, winding, this line of a thousand children. Some guy starts pushing his index finger hard into a space between my ribs, five inches beneath my nipple. He walks up to me and pushes with his finger right hard in that spot. I try swinging my arm and it swings so slow through the water. He keeps backing off and then approaching again to jab me in the same spot with the same outstretched pointer that he never relaxes or flexes.

Later, seemingly on a whole different tour. A tour with Lil’ Frodo. And others. From here. (A future RR?) In a huge house, it’s a house show. But this house is some kind of mansion. So many stairs, stairs going up and up and up. There’s a big line of kids, like the last line. I’m always moving somewhere with a few people ahead and behind, and the knowledge that there are even more people ahead and behind them, and we talk the whole time we’re moving and act even like we’re just in some transitional period, like when you’re in the elevator with people you don’t know on your way to the sixth floor of the H&H, or getting a ride home in someone’s car with other people who are getting rides home from the same driver. But we’re walking in the line, following where the people just in front of us seem to go— they’re talking, too, everyone’s talking and waiting and going to this show. At some point, people start sleeping on couches and on the floor, the show is tomorrow, I guess, and we all kinda find little nooks and spots to crash in the immediate vicinity of where we were in this line that is threading through the entire house and ending up (presumably) in the room that the show will be in. I text Roby, tell her about things, observations she would understand or value or discuss with me, it makes me feel a little better, more positive, and I am able to get to sleep, too.

I wake up and meet a bunch of people. The line disintegrates, I think, even though we all seemed to sleep with an unspoken assumption that it might be necessary to resume with it this morning, but I get the sense that now that most people were finding breakfast, finding their friends, and treating the whole house as the venue. It was a rich person’s house, very nice, very sparse, huge furry pelts on the walls. I meet an older woman. She is dressed gaudily and smiling in a very forced way, trying to make me feel welcome, so welcoming it is clearly sarcastic in that tactful, rich-matron way that says, “An inhuman amount of energy and effort is being expected of me right now, but I will rise to the occasion because I must, and I am strong enough to do it! Only because I am a fucking amazing and kick-ass hostess will I now pull off the impossible depth of servitude everyone here obviously expects of me!”

I assume this is the mother of the kid whose show this is, so I heap a few praises on him as a peace offering, to show that I am an exceptionally courteous freak and not like these other beasts who demand she play the role by refusing to subtly acknowledge it’s subtext, ie: the SOS flare she shoots off from the points of her teeth and from the punctuation of her polite jokes. She makes little of my praises, sweeping them aside but without malice: We’re already cool, you and I, you don’t have to do that. I feel pleased that we’re communicating on this level right off the bat. I assume that when you get older you waste less and less time testing the waters.

I follow her to the room where the show is going down. We play by house rules: no open bitching or kvetching like we can do at normal shows. We’re onto the next step: locate the martyrs and rally them with beautiful speeches. The more martyrs willing to symbolically carry the cross of our hostess, the more spectacular this gathering will be. Lack of sacrifice is what makes a party suck. REAL sacrifice— money has never counted, that is why Jesus’ second most important action (after the stones) is throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. Giving up your money is not a substitute for actual sacrifice: God doesn’t ask that you tithe 10% to the church because he’s some kind of ghostly banker or because he wants gymnasiums built behind the rectory: he’s making the point that he knows what the fuck money is about but he’s not interested in it. Taking 1% would be too confusing to you who reject the meek and the poor on principle. He takes 10%, a tiny fraction of 100%— which lesser powers strive to obtain from you even now.

I remember about my hair and the FBI: FEMALE PUSSY INSPECTOR shirt with it’s screenprinted bright pink new-age vagina, the leafy cunt from which a great mob of kokopellis and dead darwin fish are emerging, and I realize she is proud to be accompanied by a leper, because she knows I understand about the importance of sacrifice and that I will help her. The fact that I will be a leper while I help her elevates her, and that by elevating the hostess, the one who has sacrificed herself for the good of the party, we elevate the event. She is the living symbol of the event and we must sacrifice her properly, seriously, and not just abandon that job to one or two close to her and frolic like dogs, thinking that an undirected experience will spontaneously reach any kind of elevation comparable to that so assuredly achieved by a real sacrifice. So we must follow her lead and acknowledge her suffering tastefully in the subtext of our interactions and we must make sure that we hold nothing back for it is not only her last party but it is her death party.

Some funerals, most funerals, are the sad parody of this ritual. They are humans trying to offer up one of their own conveniently just after that person had dropped dead of their own accord. You wouldn’t eat a rotten old corpse that had been cooked, but you expect God to? They dress and weep as mourning might be signified in an old play, their friends line up to express their condolences, and gesture toward the elevation of the dead through somber, plodding speeches while physically lowering the body into a deep place where they would never accidentally see it.

The only funeral that seemed even remotely convincing to me was one I attended held in the church of a man my mother suggested might be a confidence artist. He spoke for a long time and there were spotlighted singers and a multimedia slideshow. These are not the things that made it convincing, but I suppose they are physical manifestations of that thing.

The show is in a garage, a huge garage on the bottom floor. The ceiling isn’t too high and the only stairs down are iron and turn in a tightly-clenched spiral, sort of what I remember the stairs in the Statue of Liberty feeling like. There’s a table set up and most of the cast of The Sopranos is sitting there. And David Chase. The actors all seem to be in character, though. I take a seat at the table, expecting the hostess to sit beside me but I see she’s gone off to some other place just after I sat down, she’s talking to somebody else now and her back is to me. I remain at the table and Chase ceremoniously begins some kind of discussion. It is obvious the actors expect more of the audience to be paying attention. Tony Sirico is amazing to watch in person, I soon find out.

There is a young woman at the table I don’t recognize. She seems shy, kind of tame, perhaps a little too modest for my taste, but she is pretty. I quietly ask her while someone else is talking (drawing stares, although Tony doesn’t stop talking and everyone else pretends not to notice me after exchanging stinkeyes) who she is. She explains that she is the mother of the boy who set up the show. I didn’t expect that. She’s older than me, but not by much— she seems too young to be the mother of a child old enough to want to see Lil’ Frodo. I don’t heap praises on the child this time. I never had any genuine praises for him in the first place— he seems totally normal and our brief meeting did not lead me to believe exploring him any further would be a satisfying experience.

James Gandolfini seems personally hurt that so many kids, especially those still coming down the stairs, are not listening to dialogue the actors at the table are having. David Chase is putting a good face on it and I can’t tell whether or not it’s diplomatic or if he really doesn’t care about these little kids. His presence here must have something to do with the rich woman I had followed earlier.

I join the conversation and am not ignored. The actors seem to have all written this whole thing off mentally already so my intrusion doesn’t seem to bother them so much and it appears that since I deliver my lines feigning the whole time that I am honestly not aware that I am in the middle of a performance, they improv around me. If I had broke kayfabe, I bet one of them would have walked off, or maybe even slugged me.

When the dialogue finishes they all get up hastily to retreat to some other part of the house, or maybe leave entirely. I don’t try to approach them, I find a door outside and start ascending some wooden stairs that lead up to a series of different decks. There’s a line, though, so it’s slow going.

2008-07-07T11:50:00.002-07:00

I’m in an airport in Texas, about to fly home from a tour, but looking at the series of little colorful pictures that represent the various destinations of my flight, I realize it’s not really going anywhere near Ba’al timor. I see that the flight is crossing the Atlantic at least once— I’d love to go back to England, which this one little picture with the beefeater in it obviously indicates— but there are a few other pictures in the sequence that are labeled in another language. Is this word here beneath the spinning blue lady the French-Canadian word for Montreal? If it is, that might be the closest this plane is getting to my house… I decide to take the next leg of the flight to southern Florida. It’ll put me on the right coast and at least there’s a layover afterwards where I can plan my next move. Maybe there will be an easier way to get home that will present itself.

I fall asleep right after takeoff. As the plane circles the Floridian airport, I’m awakened by an announcement from the captain. I look out the window and it’s late at night. I also see what appears to be a giant King Kong in a suit and hat thrusting his fists into the air next to a semi-circle of burning debris. The captain acknowledges that this seems unlikely and says he’s going to fly in a little closer, and if it looks really dangerous, we’ll go to another airport. We end up landing with no more explanation and I follow the rest of the passengers off the plane, through the terminal, and onto a boardwalk that is filled with people.

I walk along with the surging crowd, past a really interesting building that looks like some kind of gigantic hybrid of an amusement park Haunted House and a Lazer Tag place. There are huge sculptures of Lovecraft-looking beasts outside, stooped and snarling humanoids with ridges on their backs and limbs and nests of knotted tentacles hanging from their mouths, all of them in the same shade of yellow wax that looks soft and sweaty in the sun. The sculptures are cool but there are only really two different ones that are repeated along the side of this very long building. I can’t remember the sign that hung above… Kumpovol? Campovol? The place was called something like that, in red lettering that was maybe supposed to be reminiscent of bloody fingernail scratches clawed into some old wood. I stop and tell my posse— GZA, my friend’s little brother, and the ghost of my ex-girlfriend— that I have to check this place out. We go down a stairwell and the first door we come to leads to a room where a big party is being held. A bunch of jocko tourists are watching some sporting event on big TVs set in the wall around the bar. There’s a doorman and big, purple double-doors. I peek through the door as it swings open and see a lot of watches and bracelets and hairy arms coming out of rolled-up sleeves from button-down shirts: not my scene. At the top of the stairway, back on street level, there are a few picnic tables underneath an overhang. The posse and I decide to wait there until we can find out more about this place.

My friend’s little brother disappears and reappears a little while later to announce that the Lazer Tag part of this establishment is down another set of steps just inside the double-door of the party room. He says it’s not like a Lazer Tag where you shoot other people but one where you walk through a creepy, winding maze with rooms decorated to look like swamps and creepy New England sea-side towns and you shoot giant Lovecraftian monsters that jump out at you, supposedly like the fearsome wax beasts that stand along the side of the building. There are a lot of people walking up and down the boardwalk, a lot of people at this party, people always going up and down the stairs.

Some younger kid who senses from my looks that I’ll be sympathetic, approaches and hands me a laminated card that’s maybe 11” high by 6” wide. It’s divided into eight squares, each one depicting a portion of a screenshot from some NES game. The first 7 are all of different appearances of some piano-playing man in a suit and hat, sitting at a piano with a slim, flapper-looking babe next to him in a feather boa. The final shot is of a King Kong in a suit, presumably the final boss of whatever game the other pictures are from. The kid enthusiastically explains to me that this card is proof that the King Kong I saw at the airport was racist and wants me to agree with him. GZA, either bored or creeped out by this kid, quietly signals to me that he’s going to go check out that party. I try to politely shoo the kid with the laminated card away but he insists on explaining the entire ending sequence of this game to me in detail, how the piano man that appears innocuously in the background of several levels turns out to be the final boss, and how he and his flapper babe morph into giant King Kongs (their clothing grows to fit their new incarnations— his hat does, too) and how before you fight him he sings a song into mic while a spotlight shines on him.

Then Yao Ming and his manager show up. I’m saved from the kid by Ming’s manager’s pushy insistence that she talk to me right away. Ming sits smiling at the picnic table with me, the manager remains standing, too caffeinated to sit. She reminds me of the favor Ming did me a year or two ago— one I didn’t ask for, I remind her, but Ming interrupts to explain how needlessly generous the favor was regardless. The manager continues to explain how Ming is going to be a master chef now and he needs me to return the favor by getting in touch with my “contacts” and getting him a cooking show on cable.

It turns out Ming is some kind of extravagantly rich dilettante, and that before he decided to be a great basketball player, he had varying success in a few other careers: one of which was music, which is how he and I know each other. I tell the pushy pair that I don’t have any “contacts” at the moment who would be able to just hand Ming a cable cooking show, and try to leave it at that, but they’re so insistent I find myself telling them that they’ll have to at least give me time to talk to the “contacts” I do have to see if they know anybody who might be able to help. Ming reminds me again of the old favor he did for me, and I remind him again that you can’t give just somebody something completely out of the blue and then call for repayment later. He is unmoved by my arguments, always stressing the extreme generosity of his original kindness to me. I suggest that he might be able to easily get a show on PBS without my help— he seems into the idea, likes how he might be able to spin it as the most community-oriented of cooking shows— the most generous.

I abruptly announce I’m ready to try out the Lazer Tag game, gambling on my hunch that there’s no way Ming’s manager would do a frivolous thing like that (she’d never do anything where she might appear out of her element, you know?) and that Ming won’t do it either if it means his manager won’t be with him. The kid with the laminated card has been lurking nearby and now perks up, obviously planning to invite himself along. The ghost of my ex-girlfriend criticizes the hour at which I usually wake up.

2008-07-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

Big party in big house, there's a room in the basement that opens into a little bricked-in courtyard that contains a patio and pool. It looks nice, I check it out and plan to go in there, but first I continue exploring the place. Upstairs, some kind of show just happened. Some people are taking down their gear-- a big band with like 7 or 8 kids in it, smiling Rainbow Coalition-type group with lots of instruments, keyboards, cheap hand percussion like shakers and shit. One of the guys in the band has a really large girlfriend who sits at a laptop doing ebay during their set and while they take down. I look over her shoulder to try and see what she's ebaying but I can't really tell, looks like she's got her own ebay store, though.

I go back downstairs to the pool room and find that the entire room is under a few feet of water. A skinny guy with long-ish brown hair and glasses tells me that he might be the one responsible: he was throwing around some glitter and thinks that maybe glitter has clogged up the pool's filters and caused this flooding.

2008-07-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

It's early in the afternoon and I'm just back from a trip and trying to contact an important girl. I am waiting around the house of some people I barely know, calling this girl and leaving messages and waiting to hear back from her. I am ready to leave the house but will not do so until I find out where this girl is and find out where I can meet her.

Time passes and I am still waiting for the call. One of the guys who lives in the house tries to be friendly, but I am too anxious because I have not yet heard from the girl. A girl I knew from a long time ago is here, too, and is very excited to see me, but I am too preoccupied to be excited with her. I excuse myself and wander through the upstairs of the house, eventually finding a bedroom that I enter, shutting the door behind me. It seems to be the bedroom of a young boy, although I find it hard to believe anybody young enough to explain the decor of this room would live in this particular house. I stand on the bed, with my shoes right on top of an oversized and brightly-colored comforter, listening (again) to an old voice mail message left for me by this girl I am looking for, hoping there is something there I missed before which will relieve me of the anxiety I feel.

There is nothing new in the message, and I don't pay attention to any of the other voice mails I have saved, instead scrutinizing the framed posters that hang on the bedroom's walls. They are curiously all fireman-themed. To my right hangs a poster with some robotic, skeletal firefighters-- looking kind of like dollar-store Terminators-- and right beside it is a poster of The Simpsons with Homer dressed as a fireman, clutching an out-of-control firehose. His two eldest children are also hanging on to the huge, whipping firehose, while Marge and the baby look on worried from the grass below. On the wall to my left is a more traditional poster honoring the heroism of American firefighters.

The important girl calls me. She is at some guy's house, some guy she doesn't know. She met him in the woods today. Two of his friends, though, are people I kind of know, people I have seen around, and they are there, too. I try, but I cannot convince the girl to leave that place and come meet me.

2008-06-23T17:32:00.001-07:00

For weeks we've been getting hints that a particular Asian country might attack the US. Then one night on the news we see a man in a parka standing next to a huge hole in the middle of a landscpae of ice. He's holding a microphone-- he's a reporter. He tells us that it's possible that the US has shot a nuclear missile into the Arctic Circle. As of now, there is no confirmation whether or not the US really did this or what the motive might be. There is, however, what appears to be a slow stream of lava coming from deep inside the hole.

2008-06-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

Middle of a tour. Show at a hotel-resort in North Carolina. It's short, it's only 5:30 PM when both bands are finished. Not a big crowd. All my merch gets wet because it gets put inside some kind of bar on top of a bunch of ice that melts over the course of the show. I'm worried that the record jackets are going to stick together when they dry and rip when I try to pull them apart.

One of the other guys on the tour comes up and asks me what I think of driving straight to the coast after load-out and taking a 7-hour ferry ride to Atlanta. "You go out into the ocean and save a bunch of time that way." I like boat rides, so I tell him I'm into it. He tells me that we might do it, there are some other factors that need to align properly if it's to go down. I wonder what they are.

2008-05-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

In a car, Roby and I in the back, driving a short distance away from some kind of fest where we had just watched a band play under a small white tent to an audience of about 14. I think the fest was almost over and everyone else was watching some other band at some other stage that I didn't get near because it was too crowded. I met a hilarious guy with dreads that I cracked jokes with too much and so I didn't really pay attention to the band and I cannot describe them for you. But anyway in the car Johnny was driving and I was sitting behind him and somebody else was in the passenger seat and Roby was beside me. I dozed off, slouched down in the seat with my head on my own shoulder for a pillow, like I've seen Gooby do, and when I woke up I thought I saw a barn coming right for the car. I wanted to yell out but I was sleepy and slow and remembered that I might do that too often when it's not called for, yelling at the driver. But we did hit the barn. We went right through one wall and hit another and the hood crunched just as I hoped it would.

Nobody was hurt, though. The car was still drivable and we drove home. It was a rental, I think, but no insurance. It turned out that the fourth guy in the car had witnessed an abduction in Cairo and he was being hunted down for extradition to a jail there, although I was pretty sure he was just a random witness and wasn't even fully aware of what he had actually seen.

2008-05-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

Almost a dozen bands are playing at Floristree and I’m one of them meant to go on near the end. It’s been a while since I’ve played and instead of hanging out there at the space I’m hanging out on a boat docked nearby. The boat is big. Below decks there’s a room that’s like a lobby/restaraunt/bar of a nice resort hotel, and some stairs that lead down to a handful of cabins and up to a lounge area. I don’t know most of the people here except for Steve Olson. Some of them look like they are on vacation— like maybe this boat is a kind of hotel.

I rode a bus from Floristree to get to the boat. We crossed a Baltimore I have seen at least once before but never while awake. It’s long and there’s water along the eastern edge, like Chicago, but it’s more narrow and there is more of a NYC level of skyscrapers going on.

In the boat, I go to the counter where a woman is selling food. There’s a lot of different things you can buy, like a tupperware containing 8 poppyseed bagels stacked on top of one another, or a tupperware containing 8 flavored cream cheese bricks stacked on top of one another, or hot dogs. I pull two bills out of my pocket— a five and a one curled into a tight tube— and I uncurl them and I look at the glowing menu above the counter (it includes a few pictures of gourmet-looking hoagies) and at the lit display case where the bagels and other tupperware-wearing delicacies are kept behind glass. I talk with the lady about what I ought to get with my six dollars and I believe I did get something but I can’t remember what it is now.

I take my food item to the lounge and talk to Steve— we try and discern what the deal is with the other people on the boat. Our guesses are amusing but we assume they are probably not very accurate. It’s getting later and later and no one has called me to tell me whether I ought to be back at the Floristree yet. I feel anxious about that but not anxious enough to turn my cell on. Mark Brown is around here somewhere, I think— he’ll tell me if it gets too late, right? I walk to the stairs that go down to the cabins and notice that the stairwell is almost completely full of water. The bottom level is definitely completely full of water. I turn around and tell Steve that we should get the hell off the boat because it’s sinking.

Other people keep walking around like the water problem doesn’t concern them, as if it were being attended to by some professional already, even though I can’t find any evidence that anyone besides me has taken it seriously enough to mention out loud. I’m creeped and I make my way out of the boat. Steve goes to find somebody else he knows on the boat and I don’t see him again after that. When I get out of the boat I’m naked except for a towel wrapped around my waist.

Instead of being docked at a dock or any noticeable maritime location, leaving the boat dumps me into a dark parking lot. There’s lots of people around, the kind of steady, clumpy, dumpy crowds you see walking from parking garages to Camden Yards when there’s baseball games. No one points out my nudity but it’s embarassing. I get a City Paper to hold casually at crotch-level while I walk across the street to a lit-up bus shelter.

I recognize a guy there sitting on the ground— curly, dark hair and nearly-olive skin, tall and slim and smiling and has smiling eyes and I think he comes off a little like a Greek Big Bird. He recognizes me, too. We don’t know each other very well—I don’t think we’ve ever actually conversed to any depth— but I am happy to know anyone at all at this bus stop and the big Bird-Man is always nice to everyone who engages him and we make much out of having seen each other a few times before. He doesn’t mention the fact that I am almost naked.

I watch a big crowd of like 7 or 8 fat high schoolers get into a fight on the opposite sidewalk. I can’t tell how serious the fight is but it looks funny and I try to watch even though the big Bird-man keeps standing in my way, blocking my view (but unintentionally.) I don’t tell him he’s in my way— I’d hate to tell the big Bird-Man he’s in my way and then have to see him smile and apologize because then I’d start apologizing and smiling and the idea of us smiling and apologizing to each other over something neither of us really care about makes me feel dark, so I just skip the whole thing. The fat kids are probably all friends just horsing around, anyway.

I can tell it’s a lot later than it was before, I might be missing my set— the whole show, really. What would I play anyway? Is anyone going to notice I’m not there? Is anyone going to be sad? I can’t imagine who would be sad, and trying to think about where my phone might be seems like a painful process, so I decide to just wait for the bus and ride back to Floristree and just deal when I get there. I cross the street, though, to sit next to a wall away from the bus shelter where my nudity is all lit up—- I don’t want people to think I’m getting off exposing myself at the bus stop or something.

When the bus turns the corner, it stops with its headlights right on me, and I hold up my paper and my arm to shield my eyes. I can’t see how many people are on the bus but I imagine it’s probably full and they’ve all got to be laughing at my naked ass. No one has mentioned it yet but I can’t believe they’re not all noticing. I turn around and go behind the little wall and back onto the boat. It’s tilted like crazy now, and water is up to my neck in that lounge area. The lobby and cabins are totally submerged. A big black goat is loose in here, too, and doesn’t stop following me around when he sees me. He walks around a railing in the center of the lounge that’s still dry, the last thing dry in the room. He can only walk on 3/4s of it though because the tilting has put one corner of it into the drink. I wade around with water up to my chin, trying to stay out of striking distance of the railing while the goat, obviously frustrated, follows and snarls and sniffs maliciously.

2008-05-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Hilarious return of the classic: first day of tour, just a few hours before the show starts, in some town that looks cousin to Blacksburg or Bloomington or possibly Athens. I’m in a new band with Matt and two other guys. I’m the just-singer. I make a set list of all Alice In Chains covers and I am more excited about this set than I have been about any show in the last few years. Maybe ever. No seriously, maybe ever— I’m better at this now, I’ve never been less afraid of audiences or more convinced that I know how to effortlessly put all the effort I can into leading them right up to my rib cage so they can peek in between the slats...

I close my eyes and visualize how nuclear the room will go when we hit the opening notes of “Would?” to start our set. I run over the lyrics to “Rotten Apple” and “Brother” in my head, focusing on my favorite verse from each song so that if I get nervous and forget some words, I can just repeat those really awesome verses every time. It wouldn’t be so bad:

“My-eye-eye-eye-eye /
gift of self is raped /
My-aye-aye-aye-aye /
privacy is raped /

(I know this maybe isn’t the actual line here but it’s how I always sing it)

“And yet I find, and yet I find /
repeating in my head /
If I can’t be my own /
I’d feel better dead.”

(The “Brother” verse I like is, of course, the bit that talks about the bloodstained roses “because my hand is / pulling them hard as I can.”)

I could sing those verses over and over and I could make the crowd love it— we could make the songs twice as long and I could sell it, I know I could have them singing along with me and we’d take it up a notch every time, until everyone in the room knew exactly what the fuck we were singing about and why, until the guys in the band would just kinda stop playing and just stand on the stage baffled and amused by the sea of heads roaring the same words, no longer needing the crutch of the drums and distorted guitar to be able to feel the song happening. I hope to God no asshole starts clapping when they do that— when they stop playing their instruments I’m sure some turd will start the clap which will spread like syphilis through the crowd, turning my huge wall of voices into some gospel parody, I’d have to do something to make sure nobody clapped when the guys stopped playing…

But in the back of my head I know that Matt’s not going to want to play even one Alice In Chains cover, that very shortly I’m going to have to sing at least thirty straight minutes of brand newborn originals whose tunes I am, at that moment, unable to conjure mentally— Layne and Jerry are wailing away in there, my skull is the only practice space they can meet up and jam in anymore. I am powerless to evict them while they are singing together, I wouldn’t do it even if I could, I just won’t, I can’t even imagine a song that has nothing to do with bloody hands or gifts of self…

I walk across the stage, surveying the monitors and the outlets and nodding to myself and mumbling like pediatricians sometimes do during exams, not really talking to anyone, just trying to bring all the authority I know how to wield here to the front, to the ready. I still have my set list in my hand, and when I turn to look at something on the stage behind me I turn fast and deliberately and the paper makes a crinkling noise as it moves in the air. I talk to the sound guy and anybody else he talks to, looking as fast as I can for things besides this show and this stage that we might both like to talk about and really digging, not letting the conversation end at the first convenient spot or even the second— I talk and talk as if I had forgotten we were even there for a show, as if the concept of treating a sound guy like a waiter or butler had never even occurred to me and all the while I’m trying to tactfully discern whether he’s a pothead or not. When I gesture, I gesture with the hand that holds the set list and it whups and whaps whenever my hand flies out in some direction. My set list is written in Sharpie, and I still have the Sharpie in my back pocket, and some distant part of my brain wonders whether it’s our team’s only Sharpie, which would of course mean that if somehow the set is decided by whichever list looks the best at a real fast glance, there would be no choice but to at least open with “Would?” and see how it goes…

Do the other guys know the notes and chords and shit for “Would?” Matt almost certainly doesn’t, but I know he’s good enough that he could fake it if he wanted to. At this point I admit to myself I will probably not even bring up Alice in Chains to him, I will probably hide this set list in my bag and look at it again when I get home…

2008-03-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, so first there's this rampaging wyrm underneath of Baltimore. Mechanoid, probably. It comes up spontaneously and wrecks buildings and people and cars fall and get buried under rubble. Nobody can tell when or where he will rise up next--- so our first step to stopping him is to rent a couple helicopters. The idea being, of course, that if we can watch the attacks from above we might be able to see some kind of pattern and begin to anticipate the wyrm's movements. My team is completely freelance here, no support from anyone, but luckily there are car rental places that have helicopters, and also fortunately driving a helicopter is pretty much only as difficult as driving a box truck, something I've done multiple times. I go rent one by myself and land it on the roof of the H&H. I guess I'm early or something because I then procede to go towards and lie down and look up at the beautiful blue sky and take a little nap.

I awake to the sight of a few other helicopters dropping a strange net over top of the H&H. It's not a densely woven net-- looks like a grid made of single cables spaced wide apart. At first I'm sure I'll be able to fly my helicopter up and out through it but as it is lowered my hopes for that are dashed-- the grid is just tight enough to keep the chopper in. I get worried (it's a rental) but I get more worried by the fact that there's a police cruiser parked on the roof now, too, and an old policeman is walking towards me. I grab my bubbler and try to move it into my pocket nonchalantly, like I'm just coincidentally waking up and have assumed the cop is here about something or somebody else. He smiles when he gets close and announces his (totally dubious, of couse) charge, telling me I'm a child molester. I smile back and tell him he's overplayed his hand-- shoulda gone with something more plausible, because now I know for certain somebody with a lot of political clout is trying to stop me from figuring out this business with the wyrm.

Later on I'm in a small rancher-style house in a town called Ghost Walker. It's right next to a man-made lake that used to be part of a tiny lil roadside tourist trap-- you'd ride a little submarine around past paper maché divers and scubamen and sea creatures and underwater speakers that played plinky music, General Midi kinda stuff. The subs are all gone but some of the paper maché sculptures are still down there. I call up Mark Brown on my cell and talk for a long time about something. At the end of the conversation I tell him to remind me to tell him about the time I worked in Ghost Walker next time we talk.

2008-02-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

I see somebody familiar walking outside through the sliding-glass door in my parents' old basement. I'd know that bright-orange goatee anywhere-- it's JP, who I haven't seen since 9th or 10th grade. I let him and a younger girl that's with him in. We talk about how the house has changed-- "When I was in college," I tell him, "My parents put in a pool, but they filled it in again sometime since then." I gesture to the part of the yard where I assume the pool must have been. JP remarks on the apple tree with all the skulls in it and then offers me some tickets to a comedy showcase that's happening tonight. It's hosted by my uncle, the psychiatrist. JP was involved in some experiments my uncle did, it turns out. "How did you get out already?" I ask.

JP explains that the first couple times the experiment was run, my uncle and a group of people would live in a locked-down environment, a place they couldn't leave, and they'd have all their food and supplies and shit in an accessible place where everyone could see how much was left. When they did this, the experiment would run for weeks before they'd be tapped out. But in order to end the most recent run of the experiment early, in time for the comedy show, my uncle changed the experiment a little. First he made it so nobody could see how many food or supplies were left. Then he divided everyone up by age and gender, and you spent most of your time with that subgroup, away from the rest of the participants. Apparently, when they did this, the food and supplies ran out quickly and the experiment ended much, much earlier.

2008-01-29T13:02:00.000-08:00

I throw on the lights and there are the bodies. I hadn't seen them when it happened, but I'm seeing them now, splayed in all different directions, and of course at that exact moment two little old ladies and a tiny white dog come around the corner. I'm relieved, really, that I don't have to look at the mess by myself-- that, actually, I probably won't be by myself ever again after this point. There's a head from the jaw up sitting on the ground near my feet, it landed upright and makes eye contact with one of the old ladies. She looks for a moment and then looks at me, angry. She speaks but not to me-- to her friend. From what she says I discover that she thinks I'm trying to trick them--- and she's angry, I think, at my assumption that she'd be frightened by my gory fakes just because she's old, female, or both. They walk on with their noses in the air, even the little white dog.

Somehow this makes it easier to get to work. I move and burn the bodies without any more interruptions.

2008-01-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

While getting ready to play a festival in Scotland, I get a detailed vision of my next movie: it's a lot like PLANET EARTH, with the lingering shots and the so-HD-it-looks-CGI and the orchestra music, but there's no narration, and the subject is an eight year-old girl with Downs Syndrome.

2008-01-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

In the parking lot, a white van pulls up and sprays us with bullets fired from a loud automatic weapon. Miraculously, I'm only grazed, and Steve is untouched, but I can still hear the sound of the gun rattling in my skull.

We go inside, though-- Steve, Craig, and I. They seem ready to continue on with our day and I'm embarassed because I keep thinking about how that van probably followed us all the way from the airport and I never ever think to look for cars tailing me like that and they could just run up in here and spray the whole place again, couldn't they? I'm nervous, and it's showing, and the lady behind the counter asks what I want. I pretend I'm interested in some miniature Super Nintendo games they have under glass. I reminisce about particular backgrounds in a particular fighting game, trying to take my mind off the shooter.

We walk through a school to get to a recording studio. On the way, a girl explains all the things that are happening in town tonight, and it's like half a dozen things, most of which I would be interested in checking out if I wasn't leaking a little pee every time somebody closes a door anywhere in the building. Steve and Craig express interest in most, if not all, of these events, and my stomach drops-- I don't want to ruin this trip, but the only thing I can think about is getting away from public places asap.

We go back to the school. A lot of ppl I went to school with are sitting at long folding tables, writing out nametags and shit. I see a few I should probably say hi to, but I keep fixing my gaze on vague things in the distance so it looks like I'm looking for something for some important reason and can't talk at the moment. It works.

We leave to walk somewhere else. We walk up an paved incline towards a mall or something. There's a really tall apartment building behind us with a million window-units looking like cyborg barnacles. I notice that there's a thin sheet of water running down half the incline. At least I think it's water-- I bend down to touch it with my finger and I hear a laugh from the direction of the apartment building. I want to to start running, but the ground is wet, and I don't want Steve and Craig to think I'm a total pussy if this laughing is unrelated to the earlier shootings. I don't hear any shots, but I walk faster.

2008-01-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

Driving a van full of kids around, we stop at a gas station that's next to a hotel. For some reason we have to stay here for a long time, sitting on the curb. Two women emerge from the hotel, one of them is screaming. "You want to take my money?" she screams at the other women. It looks like one is only partially dressed and has a bedsheet wrapped around her. The screamer keeps walking, right past us, but the other woman catches up and attacks her. I realize we have to leave because the fat man who runs the gas station is looking for me, although he doesn't know what I look like because I'm a lot older than when he last saw me.

Drive to my parent's old house in Baldwin. Relatives are getting in the van now. One of my uncles has a girlfriend who seems a little off. Roby and I sit in the kitchen and overhear her tell somebody else that she's (the girlfriend has) started doing crack again. But just a little bit. Seconds after she enters the room, I make a comment about her doing crack and she gets real offended. I realize I didn't mean to let on that I had heard, but I couldn't think of anything else so as soon as my mouth opened, I said it-- I said, "So how is more crack going?" or something like that.

When everyone's in the van, we depart. There's a DVD player in the van and somebody puts in a video that seems to be just a camera on the dashboard of a van, pointing out towards the road as the van drives through a rural part of England. Somebody says this is footage of how to get to wherever we're going from Leafy John's farm. On one hand, this seems good, because I don't know how to get where we're going and I'm driving. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure we left from my parents' old place, so we're not in England, so I don't know how the video will help. On the other hand, I kind of know Leafy John so maybe I could ask him about it. I turn around and ask him. He says not to drive on any of the bamboo ramps that are set up around the farms, they're not safe.

We drive up a stone stairway. The middle of the stairway is cut out, it drops straight down, so it's maybe more like two narrow stairways side by side. In the little hole in the middle, at the bottom, a young monkey sits with a chick he found. The monkey smooshes the chick up against his one eye gleefully, hurting the shit out of it. Then he smooshes it into his other eye until the chick is dead, then he eats it, happily. There's blood on and around his eyes and I can't tell if it's his or the chick's.

2007-12-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

I saw a girl I hadn't seen in a long time. She showed me her room, which was much cleaner and fancier than I ever would have imagined it to be. There was a framed black and white photograph on the wall which depicted, among other things, two apples. She said the apples represented two asses.

2007-11-28T14:35:00.000-08:00

A little guy named John follows me around crowded hallways. At first, he's just kind of weird, but a slow hostility builds in him as he continues to pursue me. No one takes any notice of the fact that when I step into the air it takes a few seconds longer than usual for me to hit the ground. Slowly, the kids filter out of the halls and I'm alone with John, in a short section of hallway that ends in two big heavy double-doors that lead into a stairwell. Without saying anything, I deliver a vicious kick that sends John face-first to the floor. After hitting the ground, he's motionless. I duck behind the double doors just as a vice-principal turns the corner and rushes to inspect John's body. I watch for a second through the doors, which are still slightly ajar, but when I turn to go down the stairs, the doors close with a loud bang and the vice principal becomes aware of my presence. I jump into the air and start swimming.

2007-11-26T14:52:00.000-08:00

As I feel the katana blade enter my right shoulder, I think, "Oh-- this is how my dad wants to teach me, by making me think it's a real life-or-death situation. If Hemingway knows what he's talking about, I shouldn't feel this wound for a few more minutes."

2007-11-17T17:19:00.001-08:00

Playing in a one-off cover band with a bunch of much older dudes at a bar in who-knows-where Pennsylvania. My parents are there, and Roby. A girl I had a crush on senior year of high school shows up and I greet her. The drummer of this band I'm in is really tall and really serious about this show. He has long, meticulously-styled hair that's dyed dark black and he spends a lot of time setting up his drums and a mic for his vocals. I'm the lead vocalist of this band, but besides the first song (The power of love) I don't know what else we're supposed to be playing, and I don't know hardly any of the words to The power of love as it is. Of course, I don't consider the ramifications of these facts until the set has started and I'm mumbling into a microphone. The song begins and I feel that sickening feeling in my stomach that I've missed an obvious vocal cue and the audience knows it. Luckily, the front of the stage is covered in stacks of huge speakers and monitors. I waste some time trying to climb them, but they're too wobbly and seem like they might want to come down. Also luckily, we're playing first so hardly anyone is committed to watching us anyway, the audience are mostly either outside or sitting down on couches against the far wall of the room. The room is dirty, too. I can sort-of hear the drummer singing in the monitors, and he sounds pretty into it, which is fine with me. I do some silly flourishes on what I hear him say, then make my way to the front left corner of the stage and try and do Noel Fielding's Mick Jagger impersonation. The crowd seems more confused than amused, but they're not getting burly or anything. Four old punks (2 male, 2 female) walk in and stand right in front of the doorway-- deciding what they think of this band, I think. I tell one of the guys who is holding 2 home-made purses that he's got two purses made out of the same material my wife made a purse with.

2007-11-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

Somehow I flew into Portland and arrived at a gas station. I wanted to go to a shop on _______ Street, but I had no idea how to get there, and the map drawn in blue Bic on a torn-up piece of loose-leaf didn't extend but a block or two past _______ Street. I took it out and looked at it again, just in case one of the streets I could see from the gas station parking lot happened to be one of the 3-4 streets on this little map.

"_______ Street?" asked a high-pitched voice from behind me. I turned to see a boy of maybe ten years lounging confidently near one of the gas pumps. He had a little red bubble goose on and a toothpick in his mouth. "You don't want to go there."

"Oh, is it bad?" I asked.

"Yep. You'll get jacked," the boy replied.

"Well," I said, smiling, "Keep in mind that I'm from Baltimore-- is _______ Street really all that bad?"

The boy laughed and introduced himself, then told me he had something we wanted to give me. We walked to one of the cars that was getting fueled-- an SUV. He popped the back and I saw a short stack of large canvases individually wrapped in big billowy plastic bags. He pulled a canvas from the middle of the stack and handed it to me-- it was a portrait of the little boy.

"You paint?" I asked. It was a pretty good portrait.. for a ten year-old painter. Just then, a woman approached. She looked like the young mother of a precocious prodigy-- stylish glasses and styled hair, but with a certain 6-8-year lag in the clothing department. I introduced myself to her and she asked me a lot of friendly questions, then offered to drive me to their house instead of the shop on the sketchy street that I was trying to get to. I took them up on it and got in the car.

So we get to the kid's house and I meet his dad, who reminds me a lot of Cosby-- not only in his build and his mannerisms, but because when we get there he's comically trying to wrestle a snake that's wrapped itself around his two best friends, a diminutive Korean doctor or scientist and a lanky off-duty policeman. We laugh and I find out that my Uncle Bear is coincidentally visiting this place, too.

Uncle Bear takes me to a Weird Al show in a small tent, where Weird Al is DJing hard-ass drum and bass tracks with his posse (which includes the same Korean doctor or scientist in a different outfit) and doing a pretty bang-up job of it. Every once in a while he cuts the volume to half and picks up a mic to introduce somebody who's won a contest. This time, it's a Weird Al impersonator who, at first glance, looks exactly like "classic" Weird Al, but upon closer inspection appears to be actually a quite-different looking man with a really good costume on. The real Al passes the mic to the looky-likey who begins to tell jokes. It's easy to tell that audience didn't think they were going to be any good, and so the hearty laughs that follow his first joke have a satisfyingly genuine sound: "What do you say to a Spangeless? Save it, Spange-Less."

2007-11-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

So we jump out of the plane and hover a long way above the bay. It's not noisy or destabilizing at all, it's like treading water but a little less strenuous-- you do it with your chest instead of your legs. There's five or six other people I just met (we're staying with them, we're on tour) with me-- they do this all the time but it's my first time. I start to sink a little and it suddenly occurs to me that this might be harder than they're making it seem. I yell up, "Hey, I'm kind of sinking, am I doing something wrong?" They're all nonchalant, "Oh just come back up here. Take smaller breaths." I start to feel like there's really no point to doing this if I'm just going to be anxious and all. I look down at some docks and some warehouses down below.

2007-11-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

I'm in LA, sitting at a table in a nightclub, watching a band that's compromised mostly of ex-members of Guns and Roses, incl. the almighty Slash. He looks good. The singer is this kid Josh who used to play guitar in my friend Craig's mathrock band but who moved to NYC a good many years past. He wasn't a lead-singer type, more of a mathrock-frontman type, but now he's the semi-confrontational lead singer in Slash's new band. It's not a big nightclub and the audience is all sitting at tables with drinks. Abruptly, Josh leaves the stage and jumps on a table and starts hitting the wall. I starting howling and cheering, because although it looks kind of silly, I am always excited about the effort in these sorts of things. The rest of the audience, though, starts shooting me the stinkeye and takes me for a heckler, and it appears Josh suspects something similar. He comes over to the table I'm sitting at with my girl and picks up a plastic glass that used to be full of water and chucks it right over my girl's head. Not close enough to be scary but close enough to make some kind of aggressive impression. He does it again with a handful of napkins. All the sudden, I'm surprised to find myself shoving all the cups, plates, silverware, etc. right off the table onto the floor with a loud bang-- so there's nothing else for him to throw, right? He walks back to the stage, but the audience all clearly now think I'm some aggro asshole.

Just then I notice that someone else is singing--- it's the guitarist, who has a really dated wavy longhair style pulled back to a ponytail. All their other songs have been hard, but obviously this guy is on some George Harrison shit or something and gets to play his weenie sensitive ballad. He's singing kind of off-key and very pussy. I forget about the lead singer and look at this man's face. I can see how nervous he is. I can see him thinking that it isn't going well, that the audience wants more of the hard stuff. I start to sweat, start to forget that I'm not him, even though I would never write or sing a song as wussy as this one.

2007-11-04T09:33:00.000-08:00

I'm in school, there's a surprise math test, it's on some type of calculus I've never seen before which has numbers in two columns that some operation has to be performed on. I don't know what the operation is, though, because I've been skipping class for a long time. I was going to skip again today but I figured my attendance might get low enough that I'd automatically fail if I didn't start going again at some point. When I realize there's no way for me to divine the necessary operation by simply staring at the numbers, I walk out of class, pull my right foot over my right shoulder from the back, and start floating around. A freckle-faced soccer player named Ryan laughs and asks what I'm doing, and I demonstrate how, if I hop with my left leg while my right is hanging over my shoulder, I can jump really high and float back to the ground gradually. If I jump at an angle, it's kind of like flying.

I fly to a weird, scrappy house in the woods where most of the kids I know who go/went t MICA are preparing for an art show that I am also a part of. The place looks like a YMCA haunted house two weeks before Halloween-- like, it's not ready at all, but nobody seems worried. In the room I am supposed to be doing something in, there's a giant hot dog painted on one wall that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. Next to it, there's a big empty space. At the bottom of the empty space someone has started to draw the outline of a crawling baby in black spray paint, but they've made it much too short. I explain to some girls that the baby should maybe be bigger because all the empty space makes it look kind of crappy. They agree. I ask if we have to paint over the bad baby, and they say yes. Someone starts painting over it with silver paint. The wall's previous coat isn't silver, though. I decide to go home. My right leg is still hanging over my right shoulder this whole time.

I hop out of the house, pull my leg off my shoulder, and start running. I run to the road and run in the road, going faster than I can really manage. I fall down onto my butt and slide down the road at a quick pace. The road gets hilly and I wonder if I'm somewhere near Dickeyville. It's going to take a long time to get home, I think. I start to wonder if it's a bad idea to slide in the road-- will cars not see me? Maybe I should stand and try to run on the side of the road. I get upright, still zooming faster than I can manage, legs flying all over the place. I see a car in my lane facing the wrong way, but luckily it's parked. There's actually 2 or 3 cars parked behind it-- it seems like someone's extended family has either just arrived or is just leaving from some kind of holiday get-together. I run past their cars but I have to touch the hoods to get around them-- I wonder if they care but I'm going to fast to see. I start listening to AM talk radio somehow as I continue flailing/falling/flying down the road.

The radio show I can hear has a guy with a stereotypical Jewish old man voice for a host. He is talking to a caller with a similar voice who is describing a thing called "Psychotron"-- apparently a term used by local Jewish conspiracy buffs to describe a secret revival of the KKK that is currently underway. The caller talks about a man named Michael Caine who is either a cop or friends with cops and whose tactless barroom boasting has revealed some of Psychotron's secrets.

2007-11-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

I got a ride from Max to the westside, but Roby decided not to come. The westside was mostly indoors-- something like five or six square blocks of abandoned buildings had been joined together, their roofs connected. You would walk into one building and find that all the walls inside had been torn down except for the outermost walls, which had a few different doors in them. The doors would lead right into the next building. There was a bazaar-like atmosphere because a great many people were living and working all in this giant ubersquat. There were little shops set up and offices, although there weren't many walls between them. I found my friends Steve sitting at a desk working on a computer, sporting a beard I'd never seen on him before. He was glad to see me. There were merchants selling guitars and inflatable colored dogs, among other things. Some of the buildings in the ubersquat just served as alleys in between other buildings, and it seemed like no matter how many doors I went through, I still couldn't get my bearings. I was originally walking with Max and four other people I'd never met, but I lost them somehow and ended up outside again. A street urchin guy getting off of work with a group of other dudes pulled a switchblade and grinned.

2007-10-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

I decided to go to Japan to play shows again, even though I wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not. Maybe nobody there had heard any of my newer stuff-- or, based on what I had seen and heard of the last few newer Japanese bands that had come through Baltimore, maybe they were onto such a futuristic tip over there musically that my stuff might not hold up next to the average Japanese act. Whatever the case, my first (and only) time there was amazing and frightening and wonderful and I've wanted to go back there more than any other place I've visited. Somehow it worked out so I decided to go.

I planned to go alone, but not by plane. Instead I went to Olympia, on a hunch. Once I was there I went to the water, where there was a gigantic fortress on the water-- Olympia's famous port, one of the major hubs of the American import/export game. Beyond it I could see hundreds of ships, too many to count and steamers mostly. They were coming in and going out, docking, unloading-- it was noisy and crowded and quite beautiful to look at. My only luggage was my brown backpack, from which I pulled a deflated inner-tube, mostly white but with some pink and purple geometric designs on it, thin zig-zag lines and some tiny staircase shapes. I walked through the hubbub of the port and was easily able to get to the water's edge, where I blew up the inner tube and waded in.

Next thing I know, I was floating into a very similar port-- in fact, it was so similar I was initially convinced I had come right back to Olympia. I approached the port from one end, paddling myself up onto a grassy bank. It was only at this moment that I wondered how wet my laptop had gotten. My hair wasn't very wet, which gave me some hope. I thought it might be possible that only one side of the laptop would have been submerged during the trip and that it might be totally fine after it dried. I decided that this was "most likely" because I didn't want to think about what I would do about these shows in Japan if I didn't have a laptop. I pulled my cellphone out of my pants pocket-- it had been submerged in the water for most of the trip, and the display was acting weird, but it still seemed to respond somewhat when I pushed on the keypad. Maybe that would work fine after it dried, too. I put it back in my pocket and decided to focus on trying to get to wherever it was that I needed to be, but as soon as I walked up the grass and onto a paved walkway, I was almost immediately accosted by a young girl in a fancy dress. She was pretty, with brittle red hair piled high on top of her head-- she was clearly at some kind of special function. She was not into my presence, though, and explained that she and her group had rented this part of the port weeks ago and that I couldn't be there. I told her I was just leaving but she acted as if I had said the opposite, and continued to argue with me about her group's exclusive rights to this part of the port, so I just walked away, fiddling with my cellphone. She was white but once I cleared the high arching entrance of the port I realized I had in fact actually made it to Japan.

It was busy and crowded, with lots of signs I couldn't read sticking off just about every building. Japanese people were everywhere-- especially in diners. About every third building seemed to be a diner, the same kind you might see in any American metropolis, with the same clinking coffee cups and silverware, probably the same greasy food, too. As I walked further from the port, the streets became more and more narrow, until I was in a world of alleys, something like a roofless mall crossed with a dystopian labyrinth. At a few points I had to actually enter and walk through diners in order to keep going. I was starting to panic at this point, realizing that even if my phone did work I had no number to call, and no idea how far away my destination might be-- it might be on the other side of town. Part of me wanted to relax and allow myself the possibility that since I was charmed enough to actually make it to Japan on an inner tube, the place I was looking for was probably really close and I would probably just know it when I saw it, as long as I wasn't clenched up and freaking out.

I kept walking, scrutinizing signs written in entirely alien characters, trying to find some other way to evaluate them that didn't involve language. Eventually, I found the place-- a venue, but also a restaurant and hostel, full of kids, many of whom were from out of the country and could talk English to me. I wasn't supposed to play until the next day but I was welcomed in by a few of the people there. I couldn't figure out who exactly was in charge, nobody seemed to talk to me for very long before disappearing or directing me to some other part of the place. I walked down some stairs into a wide room with rice-paper walls and a long, low table that people were sitting around on pillows. At the head of the table was a smiling guy with a giant cubical cardboard box. I sat near him and another kid seated nearby explained they were having an auction. Up next were some figures for a tabletop fantasy wargame. I'd never played it but they looked cool, and supposedly it was a set that was only released in Japan. The guy next to me won it for like 80 yen. I didn't have any money on me, but when another set of Japan-only figures for the same game came up, I made the second bid. The first bid was 180, I bid 190. I thought about bidding more but didn't think I should actually win since I couldn't pay. I did win, though. I explained that I didn't have any money, so I didn't get the figures, but I wasn't too sad about it. Another guy explained to me that a package was coming for me tomorrow and in Japan it costs 80 yen to receive a package. He said that he or someone else who lived at this place would pay it for me and I could pay them back after the first show, which I thought was very kind.

I put my backpack down in a room that had a lot of bedrolls on the floor near the front door of the venue, then I walked around. It was a big place, taking up multiple buildings. I went to a dancing area with a bar that was almost empty and flirted with a girl from Europe. She wasn't that into me, though. That's all I can remember.

2007-08-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

I went to my parents' old house in Baldwin, which contains the entire cafeteria/auditorium of Carroll Manor Elementary. Tons of people of all ages and colors are sitting around eating, including a real vivid elderly Italian gangster with huge glasses who I recognize from somewhere, but can't completely place. My parents are nowhere to be seen, though, but for some reason I don't feel any anxiety about the huge crowd that's assembled here.

Van Halen is there, and they play an amazing show, on a huge indoor stage that somehow fits inside the house. David Lee Roth sings and X-Pac is the bassist. After the show, I'm standing in the backyard when I look over my shoulder to see the sweaty dudes coming out of the house with white towels draped over their shoulders. I'm surprised by how humble and normal they are. People keep coming up to them to tell them how good the show was and they seem grateful for the compliments and totally willing to chat a bit with any of their fans. I feel awed that such a bunch of old school rockers could play such a good show. I think about saying something to them, too, but I end up just hovering nearby and eavesdropping on their conversations with the fans. I notice that X-pac looks a lot bigger in real life than on TV and I wonder how he hooked up with Van Halen.

2007-04-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

My school and another school are participating in an art and music show being held at a big mansion in the woods. Bands are playing and art is hanging up and teachers and students from both schools are walking around getting ready for the thing to start. The mansion is about as big as a mall--- in fact, it may be this same giant mall I've visited on other nights, just relocated to the woods and stripped of all its commercial elements. Every student has a room to sleep in after the show. Other students from my school include Dan D, Kevin O, and Mark B. Some of our bands are going to play, as well as some bands from this other school, and paintings and drawings and sculpture from students of both schools were on display throughout the part of the mall-mansion near the room with a stage. That room had a familiar kind of classic blue assembly-hall carpet and those uncomfortable stackable chairs arranged in rows in front of the stage. Everyone was running around getting ready, it was kind of chaotic.

I start to feel uncomfortable in my clunky dress shoes so I spend a while looking (unsuccessfully) for this pair of And One slip-ons that I have. During my search, though, I found something else--- "blasting caps" hidden throughout one of the rooms, underneath sculptures and behind paintings. I was concerned and began intentionally eavesdropping on some of the other school's more sinister-looking teachers and discovered that many of them were packing pistols-- as well as some kind of grudge against my school. We had done something-- some kind of prank or something, I guess--- that embarassed them and they were going to actually kill us all in retribution.

I told Dan and Kevin and Mark and we all nervously tried to figure out what we might be able to do, despite being completely unarmed, to prevent our deaths. (btw, I used the phrase "blasting caps" a lot in this dream and everyone I said it to seemed to know immediately what that meant.) For some reason just out and dipping wasn't a possibility-- none of us seemed willing to forego playing the show, even though it required us to remain in this place with people who had murderous intentions towards us.

I looked for my And One slip-ons and a way to prevent the massacre of my schoolmates nervously for a while before finding D, K, & M again and letting them in on the only plan I could think of: we should get as many kids as possible to strip naked and streak through the stage area, causing a commotion that would require the teachers to go into regular disciplinary-teacher mode, trying to control us. I figured that if they pulled guns and shot us when we were obviously unarmed (and unclothed) the other kids would be way more frightened than if we waited and let them initiate whatever plan THEY had concoted to dispatch us in spite of the public setting. Before the dudes from my school could even all agree that it was the best plan, I went and found this popular fat kid from the other school and told him that I knew about his teachers' plan to murder us and that it was very possible that some of his own classmates could die, too, if there were explosions and gunplay, and that if the show was disrupted by naked kids from BOTH schools that the scheming teachers would be certain to balk and forego killing anybody in favor of more traditional forms of disciplinary action-- at least until they had control of the situation again, which (imho) spontaneous nudity could pretty easily put off for quite some time.

I woke up just as the popular fat kid from the other school was telling me whether he and his crew would streak with us, but I didn't get to hear his answer. I was drenched in my own sweat (irl, that is.)

2007-03-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

First time ever I've been cut up with razors and knives, and this happened repeatedly. It didn't hurt very bad but I was unable to not freak out and try to get away whenever it happened.

This is the second time in as many nights that I can remember being in a state of flight from people who want to hurt me for hours and hours and hours-- last night, though, I wasn't quite as good at getting away from them. I received multiple cuts all over my arms and chest. Didn't die, though, and always managed to elude my attackers eventually, although it always turned out to be a momentary escape.

2007-02-19T15:12:00.000-08:00

The setting and other contextual details are completely lost, but at some point, someone told me that my teeth were rotting and I realized that it was true, and that I hadn't even been entirely ignorant of this fact but for some reason hadn't been able to think about it in such simple terms: "My teeth are rotting." I had this forlorn feeling that I had been treating the situation as if it was much more complicated than it truly was, but that I could no longer pretend that it wasn't a very simple matter, you know?

It wasn't the crux of the dream-- just the one thing that happened during its course which I remembered two hours after getting out of bed.

2007-01-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

Last night I was in school again for the first time in a while. It was a new school I had never seen before. There was this dude named Sullivan who was kind of like an older Tony Bennet and I saw him walking around the halls and got psyched. I tried to talk to him but he was way old and kind of confused and hard to understand, but he was real smiley, and somebody else told me that the school pays him to hang out. He doesn't ever sing, though, apparently, and nobody but me seemed to think it was cool that this old celebrity was hanging out at our school.

At some point later in the dream, Matt Papich was playing a guitar with 3 necks. The top and bottom one were 12-string, the topmost being shorter than a usual guitar neck, and the one in the middle was just regular.

2006-12-11T15:11:00.000-08:00

I'm back in school again, and I'm suprised how many more black kids are in this class than there usually are in the classes in my dreams.

I start talking to the teacher about a trial I was at yesterday. I think I was a witness. It was a sexual harassment case against another teacher at the school-- a science teacher. I'm having trouble remembering which teacher it was though... Mr. Miller or Mr. Schrieber? I'm worried that my lack of clarity on this point is making my whole recounting of the trial rather suspect. I'm not lying-- I was there, it's just hard to remember which teacher it was. The teacher who is asking about the trial seems very concerned--- maybe there's a witch hunt going on.

I sit down around all these kids who are talking up a storm. I try to talk to them but they don't think I'm that funny. I didn't do the homework that was due today and, thinking about it, I remember that I hardly ever do homework and that I should probably just drop down to honors english instead of fucking around with GT. I try to remember my rationale for staying in GT english-- I guess it's just because I want to be able to hang at the highest level in SOME subject, but only one. An english specialist.

The girl next to me starts being not unfriendly. She shows me her shirt, which is a light-up christmas shirt depicting an apartment building in the wintertime. I tell her I think it's pretty cool and she offers to show me something REALLY cool. Somehow she causes the image on the front of the shirt to zoom in, closer to the apartment building. The glowing neon lines that make up the apartment get bigger and new details emerge. You can see in the windows of the building, and there are animated barbie-esque dolls in there. I beg her to zoom in closer so I can see the faces of the dolls better but she says they look too scary and just pans around the building instead.

2006-11-26T15:09:00.000-08:00

I was backing a car down Manor Road. My old friend Geoff was in the back. I was trying to ask him how he liked "Age of Mythology" because moments ago we had left his house and I saw it on a bookshelf. It was real hard driving in reverse on a major road and trying to figure out if I was in the right lane using the reflection in the rearview, and I think Geoff was occupied with something as well, so I never got to know his feelings on the game.

When we got to my parents' house, we watched a giant aircraft fall out of the sky and land on somebody on the ground.

2006-02-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

I'm hesistant to admit this because it's so awful, but it's not like it's totally my fault: Tony Cox, Gary Coleman (oh for fuck's sake) and a weird, red-haired hick midget named "Buckle Toof."

I looked this up in a Jungian Dreamsigns Directory and it said, "DAMN, son, you are broke!"

2006-02-23T15:08:00.000-08:00

I leave the airport without picking up this t-shirt I've had made at a store there. I forget what it says on the front, something which includes my name. I walk from the airport to the beach house, which doesn't seem to take that long, but when I get to the oceanside, I realize that it'd be better to go get the shirt now. I'm meeting some friends soon and I want to get the shirt and get back to the ocean before we're all supposed to go somewhere together.

As soon as I start going back to the airport, I realize I don't really know the way. It becomes obvious that walking there and back is going to take too long. I keep going, however, and soon a little girl overtakes me. She's walking briskly ahead of an older woman --perhaps her mother?-- who is berating her and throwing rocks at her. Walking along, picking up rocks, throwing them, and shouting. Ignoring the older woman, I tell the little girl it's going to be OK, that the older woman won't keep after her much longer. Some time after that I'm inside a car, putting Smartmedia disks into my samplers, testing out the songs that Sand Cats are going to play at the show tonight. I'm surprised at how great they sound, even a new one I don't remember writing. Roby is driving the car. We decide on a set list. Then we get to the mall.

A show, of course, is happening in this large mall. People live in the mall, too, of course. The show is in a spacious but crowded apartment. I walk around the show and ask a few questions of the kid that is in charge, but there's not much for me to do. I sit in the front room, where a few white love seats are pushed against the wall. There are people sitting all around this room, but no one is talking. The sound of the conversation from the next room, where the instruments are (but where no band has begun playing) is deafening. The girl next to me is a thick-enough redhead with freckles on her face. I turn and start talking to her. I find out that her name is Rhonda. She's very shy. My phone rings, and she totally withdraws from the conversation, before I've even answered it.

I go outside and press the button for a gold elevator. There are two girls inside of it. I press the button for the first floor.

2006-02-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

Everyone at school has been rounded up, thousands of people. Teutonic, mustachioed musclemen with crew cuts herd us into various places-- I am part of a large crowd that's standing on some bleachers. Two helicopters circle overhead. One is directly above us, firing into the crowd, and nobody really panics even though people on the bleachers are dropping dead. I notice that the helicopter never fires at our backs, and I slip under the bleachers and run away from the direction that everyone is facing.

I run to a house. Roby and I have to play a show in the basement. We play and the samples sound really, really good. I'm shocked at how good they sound. I don't remember making them. But I want to smoke, so I tell Roby I'm going into a closet to smoke. There's a crowd of kids standing, watching, but we haven't fully told them we've started so I figure they can just wait some more, listen to the loops. I go in the closet and puff but not for very long. It's a large closet with cement floor and a green wooden door. Some kind of old heating pump is in there, too, and the far wall has some kind of bricked-up window in it. When I come back out, the samples have stopped. Some pedals have fell off the table where my shit was set up. It takes me a very long time to put the pedals back together, their cords are all tangled up and some are missing. While I put them together, one of the samplers somehow continues playing a loop. It's very, very long. It's basically a full song all by itself, minus the vocals. I listen to it while I fumble with the pedals but the whole time I'm worried that everyone is bored and waiting for our set to actually start. Musclemen arrive, and I notice them coming down the stairs into the basement, so I scoot.

I come to a ballroom-- there are about two hundred or more of these Teutonic musclemen here. I walk among them with no problem although I know that they are supposed to be looking for me. They are all getting ready to be a part of a large play, so maybe they're too busy.

I leave and find a shopping plaza. An old lady comes out of a windowless CVS and I ask her where she lives. She tells me that almost all the houses around here are empty because the musclemen have taken everybody away. She's got a plastic bag with some peanut butter and some boxes of fancy crackers in it. I thank her and take off, trying to beat her to her own house. When I'm there, a lot of people I know are there, and they seem only vaguely aware of the impending danger of the musclemen. I go to the basement just as the musclemen arrive. There's a similar closet to the one I smoked in before. I have the feeling that this house is my parents', although I have never seen it before. In the closet there is a bricked-up hole, from which I can pull the bricks rather easily. Once the bricks are removed, I find a hole that is just about too small for me to squeeze through. Beyond it I see some old heating pumps. It's possible there is more beyond the pumps-- like a tunnel, perhaps, but I can't get myself through the hole. I leave the closet just as the musclemen are coming down the stairs. I find a window in the back of the basement, open it, and pop out.

I come to a large, old apartment building. The kind that was once just a mansion but has been cut up to make separate luxury units. My dad gives me a video tape, it's a message from a real actor to Joan Hiller, who has auditioned for a role in a Hollywood movie. The actor is some kind of fantasy mash-up of Jeremy Irons, Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich-- guys that style, all combined into one uberactor. He looks into the camera and explains to Joan how actors used to have to train for years and do extremely difficult and demanding things to prove their skill, but then people like musicians and movie stars started being put into leading roles in Hollywood pictures, which degraded the art. From now on, the uberactor says, only real actors will be in movies. No musicians, no wannabes-- nobody but those who have been tested and proven.

The video makes me mad. I become determined to be in a Hollywood movie. My dad is late for a big play, though. I ask my sister if we have two leashes so that I can bring both of my kittens. There's a purple leash under the sink, I know, but I'm not sure if there's another leash. I try to put my belt around Melvyn, over his head and around his arms, but it's obvious he'll be able to slip out if he tries. I wonder if it will be OK to bring them to the theater without a leash. I hear Fine Young Cannibal's "Good Thing" on some kind of PA system and it includes the line, "Good thing, I have no arms."

2005-12-28T15:06:00.000-08:00

I didn't want to leave him there, but it's hard to think clearly when actual zombies are rolling up the hill and clearly psyched with bloodlust. So after a short, quiet protest, I ended up taking off alongside my sister into the woods. There was no other way to go but into the woods.

Somehow, my dad made it away, too. Later on he found us with a group of other people who had made it away from that first zombie attack. It was obvious all of us were a hair's breadth from total mental breakdowns, but standing around a bunch of strangers had the helpful effect of forcing everybody to keep at least a modicum of sanity and coherence. We walked together until and the braver ones among us talked, they tried to figure out where we should go without mentioning the fact that we were fleeing from the undead.

Eventually, we came upon a bunch of abandoned structures in a clearing. They were all different sizes, all some kind of cross between a water tower and a cabin. Everybody seemed a lot calmer, and so we separated a bit to explore. Some people went swimming in a pool that was there, and then people actually started laughing. There was one woman who had a blue button-down shirt on, and she unbuttoned it all the way so her tits were free. And she just ran like that, ran in a straight line through all the buildings, with a smile on her face. Maybe she had been waiting to do something like that all her life. There was another woman who was in the pool and it was obvious that her skin was slowly turning bright blue. Otherwise, she seemed fine, though, so nobody said anything.

The next time I saw the tits-out woman, I didn't realize that she had changed. She looked almost exactly the same, and her blue shirt was still hanging off her arms. But as she got closer, I saw that her face was different.

2005-06-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

I'm in a school, a college, and there's a gameshow being taped live. The room where the gameshow is being taped is a large, dark room with some vaguely futuristic decorating-- lots of slim, shiny steel bars, black leather, neon lights. The place is full of enthusiastic kids, two of which are selected to compete against a computer. They sit in a reclining chair, like a dentist's chair, with some weird gloves on, and a monitor in front of their face. The competition involves them singing very upbeat, very Christian songs while the computer berates and mocks them. The crowd is really, really into it. The gameshow host, a young & predicatble gameshow host archetype, tells them their scores, which isn't in "points," but in McDonald's chicken nuggets. I'm baffled and try to leave.

But I can't find my way out of the school. Tons of businessmen and women in suits carrying digital cameras and cell phones are rushing around like it was an airport. I find another young guy who is trying to get out of there and we accidentally go into a kitchen where a dude who looks just like a tougher, meaner Michael Chiklis is about to deliver a baby from a girl who works in the kitchen. Some guy holding a weird laser gun is knocked out on the floor and there's a bunch of thin, young girls standing around. I pick up the gun and try to shoot the bald dude but it doesn't work. I read the little LCD screen on the gun and deduce that it needs to be charged up to "200," but the bald guy is closing in on me and is very angry, so I throw the gun to my companion and grab the bald guy's forearms. He's shocked that I am able to keep him from grabbing me, and so am I. As I struggle with his arms I realize that I am, to my surprise, totally stronger than this big dude, and I use his own fists to punch him in the face until he's unconcious. The girls all run away, and I grab the laser gun back and shoot it at the wall. A single, skinny lightning bolt comes out of it, hits the wall, then a bunch more laser/lightning bolts descend from the sky and electrify the wall. It doesn't do any damage to the wall, but I figure I should keep it because it can probably fuck up the next dude that tries to grab me.

I make my way to my homeroom, which is full of kids. I'm naked but nobody seems to notice. I go to the 5-drawer file cabinet that is my "locker" and look for some shorts, but the first drawer I open is full of drug paraphenalia, and the second one is full of women's panties, bras, and garter belts that are all made out of the same scratchy fabric that straps on backpacks are made out of. Some bras are on the floor, too, which makes me think someone has been going through my "locker." I try to find the shorts and put away the stray bras worried that someone will think I'm trying to dress up in girl's underwear back here. An old lady, the teacher, comes to me and tells me I need to use a real locker and not this file cabinet. I tell her I never got a real locker. She tells me to go get a real locker. I'm still naked.

2004-12-08T15:04:00.000-08:00

There's a show I'm supposed to play and I don't want to play it.

I'm at my parents' house, which is gutted because they're selling it, and I find that there are many large rooms that I've never been in, rooms that are hidden behind other rooms-- for instance, a shower that could fit 5-6 people comfortably and has a small one-way window looking out into the bathroom I remember as a child. One of the hidden rooms still has a rug and a television in it even though the rest of the house has been cleared of all furniture.

2004-12-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

I'm at a hip record store with a list of LPs to buy. They don't have any Kate Bush records, which bums me out. They have a Bowie record called ENTER SANDMAN but it's just a 5-part goblin play that I already have a record of under a different name.

The new Kid606 record is there but the tax on it is really high. I know I should save my money and just ask Miguel to send me a copy in the mail. They also do have the new The Blow remix of Mogwai, which I am curious to hear. The art on that one looks a lot like the ATTITUDE 12".

Later I'm going to Sunday school. I have to walk there, it's in a schoolroom tucked away in the wings of a huge, ornate cathedral. I'm walking with a younger boy and trying to explain to him that he needs to learn about existentialism so he can catch up and appreciate Sunday school from the other side, post-rebellion against church. I can't believe he's never heard of existentialism, and I feel like a tool using that word out loud to him over and over again.

2004-11-11T15:03:00.000-08:00

I keep trying to go into this house, but a guy with greasy dark hair and a crappy trenchcoat keeps moving me out of it with his mind. A friend of mine calls the house over and over on the phone. One time they accidentally answer it, "411 Miniatures?" We open the phone book and find out there's a comic book store called 411 Miniatures run by two guys, one of whom was in that house and the other one, we assume, is the guy moving me with his mind.

But it turns out that the guy who was moving me is the BROTHER of the guy listed in the ad as the other owner. "Where is he?!" we yell after walking into his house. With this knowledge, he can't keep me out. He tells us to find his mother. "Oh, so your brother is with your mom, huh!"

We go find the mom. Sometimes the other brother, who we cannot see, he controls the mother's voice and body. She doesn't seem to be able to stop him from doing it. We tear off her shirt and there is an ear on either side of mom's ribcage. There's two eyes under her breasts and a nose. There's a shallow mouth where her bellybutton should be. It was the other brother.

In the end we didn't know if the brother was controlling the mother or if she was faking and maybe controlling him. Maybe it was all some kind of weird trick.

2004-10-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Roby and I are at some beach, and I am a little confused and annoyed because we are paying for this 50-some year-old black man in a suit to come to the beach and join us. Roby thinks she wants to marry him.

I think about it a lot before making my argument. I think I have a good one.

"But our wedding was so insane and spectacular! Now you're just gonna marry this old dude on a beach? That's lame. You can't follow up our wedding with this, it's disappointing."

Roby is too excited about her idea of marrying this old guy to really consider my argument. She's all smiles.

I go in to some bathroom and start yelling at some guy that's in there.

"Who are you!? Tell me who you are!" I yell. The guy has glasses and long, dirty black hair and a stupid beard.

When I yell at him, he seems amused. He's smiling, I think he thinks it's a game. "I dunno, who am I?" he says, grinning.

"Who are you?" I yell. "I know why you're here!"

2004-10-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

I’m in some unfamiliar town—maybe it’s in Florida, or Virginia, and I’m staying at my friend’s parents’ house in the suburbs. It’s a great house and his parents cook great food. It’s summer outside, too, and I’m on tour, although it would appear that I have a day off to visit my friend (who is on tour with me)’s parents. It’s almost 5 PM, though, and I tell my friend that in order to get to Atlanta before too long, we’re going to have to leave soon. My friend, however, and his parents, insists that I take their family car and go to Atlanta myself. “It is only a five hour drive,” they say. “That’s not so bad to do by yourself.” I am a bit overwhelmed by their generosity. “We will meet you there tomorrow.” I cannot believe they would let me take their car without their son along with me. It keeps getting later and later and I worry that I might not make it to Atlanta before midnight.

When I finally get away from the house and on the road, Roby is with me. She wants to stop for food before we go. I am a little lost in a maze of rural side-streets but I locate an Asian restaurant called Buddha-something that looks like it might have some cute snacks. We park at a parking meter and walk towards the restaurant. We see a tall Asian guy in a yellow sweatsuit taking out the garbage. For some reason, he kicks this white business guy in the head two times, then in the ribs. The kick to the ribs seems to really devastate the business guy and he doubles over howling terribly. The dude in the yellow sweatsuit resumes taking out the trash. The kicking man and his kicking seem to arouse a feeling of déjà vu in me.

We go into the restaurant and a young Asian girl behind the counter politely informs us that they don’t seat people or server food for another fifteen minutes. I am in a hurry to get on the highway and I tell Roby that I am not comfortable with waiting fifteen minutes, and then spending more time here sitting down to eat—I think we should get on the road and stop for food later. She is disappointed. I offer that we could get some drinks to go and take them with us. By now, however, a bunch of other people have come in and are standing in line. We get in line, too. A man two or three places ahead of us in line receives the same kicks from the yellow sweatsuit-guy—we think he might have been rude to the girl.

When it comes our time to order, Roby goes to the bathroom and I lean over the counter to tell the girl I want two bubble teas. “We don’t have bubble tea,” she says. I point to the chalkboard behind her, which lists “Bubblesa” as one of the kinds of tea they have. She tries to explain to me that means “iced tea” and not the kind of “bubble tea” that I want. I make a very clever remark that I can no longer remember, and she becomes incensed and tells me that all I am good at is criticizing her and her brother. I can see that she is livid and I walk from the counter and grab Roby, who is just emerging from the bathroom. I take her outside and we go towards the car, which is initially a little hard to locate. We start running toward the car, thinking of the kicks.

When I’m almost to Atlanta, it’s a bright summer day outside and I’m inside a new rental car with Roby and my male friend and maybe one other person. We’re zipping down the highway and my friend is at the wheel. We turn off to use a left-side exit and find ourselves driving around a long, curving exit-ramp. I turn to Roby and say, “Did you see a car just coming the wrong direction towards us?” My male friend nonchalantly requests that I take the wheel from the back seat while he retrieves a CD from the console between the front two seats. He shifts his body around while he digs around in the console and it makes it quite hard for me to see the cars on the road from my awkward position. “I think all the cars are going the wrong direction!” Roby says, although she is not panicked. Cars start honking at me. I am confused because there are no wrong-way signs and I did not see or do anything which would make me think that I am the one going the wrong way. I try to pull some fancy maneuvers to get around the oncoming cars and nearly succeed, but just before I am able to reach the right-hand shoulder, a white sedan pops out from behind the cars in front of me and hits our car head-on. It doesn’t even dent our fender, but we watch this white car and it’s sole occupant bounce backwards into the grassy hill beyond the shoulder and come crashing down, which shatters the windshield. Everyone in my car falls silent. I am worried that maybe I killed somebody and will have to go to jail, but I am also wondering if I will escape all culpability because we’re paying an extra eleven dollars a day to the rental car company for the optional Loss-Damage Waiver.

So we’re in Atlanta, at some kind of weird coffee shop show space, sitting on a bed with a canopy that is against a wall and has a nearly see-through piece of fabric that hangs down from the canopy, like a privacy drape. I’m there with Roby, she is sad about the car accident. I tell her that it’s OK, she and the others should keep going with the tour, I would stay in Atlanta until things were sorted out. There is a movie being projected on a screen just outside the little drape, and I am trying to talk to Roby and also pull the drape back in order to see the movie. It’s a weird animation about a guy who tries to do a puppet show for some people but they keep stopping him from doing it and making him leave. I say to Roby, “Hey, watch this movie, it’s got puppets in it!” but she doesn’t seem to care much. I terminate the conversation and devote all my attention to trying to figure out the movie but I’ve missed too much and am frequently interrupted by people at this coffee shop.

I ask my uncle Mike if I can have another one of the pages of the paper, because the movie has become a comic and I am on a couch in my parents’ living room with my uncle Mike. Between us are a bunch of newspaper pages with the various parts of this story in it. It is a weird and sad story. My uncle starts telling me that it has many allusions to other movies, and I tell him I figured as much but am not very familiar with the films being alluded to. He begins to list them. The one which is of most interest to me is a movie from the 80s about a depressed artist who believes that he is supposed to do something great and important but who cannot find any support or interest in his artistic endeavors, and sinks deeper and deeper into depression with each successive failure. At the end of the movie, the artist is masturbating and his ejaculation becomes the San Francisco Bay. Most likely there is some sci-fi element involved--- my uncle does not explain how his ejaculation becomes the San Francisco Bay -- but the movie sounds really good and I make a mental note to rent it.

I grab the most recent newspaper in a final effort to understand this animated story but it has no pictures at all, just writing by the story’s eccentric author. I don’t feel like reading the writing. I look up at the TV and a tiny little ghoulish green face, covered with slime, is being cradled by a man’s hands. The little ghoul is whining, and soon his whines become coherent: “Blood! Blood” The little ghoul crawls along the man’s palm to the base of his thumb, where there is a pink tattoo of some weird geometric design. The ghoul-baby bites his skin and gets blood all over its face, then turns on its back and rubs the blood all over its face and body with tiny gross hands, crying happily, “Blood! Blood!” I turn to my dad, who is sitting on the fireplace hearth, and ask him if this is the movie called “Ghoulies.” My dad replies that it probably is. Then I look back into my own hands where I am holding a scaly, black purse with a couple of these ghoul-babies in it. I close it up and throw it on the floor. “We should probably burn this in a fire, right?” I say, rather calmly. Realizing that the babies might crawl out, I grab a poker from the fireplace and push down on the opening of the evil, scaly purse, to keep anything from pushing its way out.

2004-08-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

I'm in a school that is kind of like a mall crossed with a small stadium. I'm in a classroom that's up on a mezzanine level, looking out onto a courtyard that resembles a football field. There are lots of classrooms facing into this courtyard. To the left and right above us is a balcony on which these dudes are shooting tear gas grenades into the various classrooms. Some kind of siege is going on. Most of the other kids in the classroom I'm in are hiding behind desks. When tear gas grenades start coming in through the windows, I try to get people to run to the other side of the room so they're not in the blast. I whack one of the grenades back out the window with a chair, after it lands right near me. Then I go to the back of the classroom where there's a rack of shoulder-mounted rocket parts. I put a rocket into a launcher and creep along the wall so I can pop my head around the corner and put a rocket up on the balcony. I do it successfully, but the rocket doesn't explode right away, it just sits between two girls who are each holding small grenade launchers. One of them freaks because of the rocket and I watch her fall off the balcony to the courtyard below. It's grisly and I feel bad about it, but I have to look away quickly because they balcony dudes open fire in my direction. I sneak out of the classroom into this mall-esque setup and see a rack of shitty old rifles behind the glass wall of a different, empty classroom. I smash the glass with the butt of my rocket launcher and take a few rifles and give them to the cowering kids in the classroom, then look back out into the courtyard warzone where these two hipster kids that are on my side have busted out right into the courtyard, which I think means that we've "taken" it. The dudes on the balcony are outgunned and give up.

2004-08-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

I'm in a huge crowd of people when I notice a guy and a girl (the guy about a foot taller than the girl?) with pieces of red fabric braided into a single braid on the side of both of their heads. I don't know how old they are but they make me feel young. I do not recognize them and I don't think they see me. "Hey!" I think, "Somebody else has a red piece of fabric braided into their hair? I thought that was my thing..."

2004-08-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

I'm in this back yard that is full of people, most of whom I don't know. There's a man that has it in for me --like, I think maybe he wants me dead-- and he can turn into a hamster or rat. He is currently in rodent form in a fishtank that is on a pedestal in the middle of a fenced-off portion of the yard. The fenced-off part is overgrown with tons of weeds and tall grass and branches on the ground. I am talking to the rodent-man quietly, and he says something that makes me think he's going to get me real soon. I start screaming at him, causing a scene, because everybody thinks I'm just yelling at a hamster in a tank-- a hamster that a lot of people have been going up to and checking out because it's kind of a cute thing to have in the yard. The hamster gets out of the tank and runs away really fast, hopping a little bit. I run after it and do a really good job of not losing him, but I can't get quite close enough to grab him. People think I'm crazy, I guess, as I chase after this little hamster that is really a man. After a couple moments of following this guy and trying to grab him, I realize I'm no longer chasing a hamster but a tiny cheetah cub that must have been living in the overgrowth and frightened by my mad scramble to get the mouse-guy. I decide that the mouse-guy won't be a problem for now because there's so many people paying attention and I think that if I can catch the little cute cheetah cub, who is soft yellow like a chick with some thin white and black tiger stripes (no cheetah spots) that they will not think I'm crazy or at least forget about it while they pet the cheetah baby.

2004-08-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

We're playing a show at some college. Roby has a friend here so she's off hanging out with her friend while Cale and Make Believe and I set up our gear on this little stage at a coffeehouse. The stage has that grey carpet that's like a bunch of hard little nubs, like the kind they sometimes have at kindegartens. We play and there's no breaks in between any of our songs. Then Make Believe plays and then we go outside for a while and see Roby sitting on the curb and then, like 20 or 30 minutes later, we all come back into the coffee shop to do one last song. All my gear is packed up in its box and I think, "Should I take it all out again or maybe just one or two pieces and play on this song like that?"

2004-08-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to work for some family that knows my family. I've never met them but they're upper middle-class heads and they're nice. They have a huge house with nice carpets and furniture and knick knacks and those glossy mahogany coffee tables. There's about 500 people walking around their house and walking up the street to some kind of Christmas pagent. I walk there, too, and I walk back. I'm by myself.

2004-07-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

I'm at a family gathering at a large resort. I guess it's a resort, it's not very nice. It's kind of like a sprawling farm with lots of places for visitors to stay. There are a lot of family members here that I've never actually met. I am not thrilled about being here, but there's a girl I like around and I'm trying to spend as much time in the same rooms as her as possible. It's not totally working out as well as I'd like, though.

I walk outside and it's dark and there's some art outside. There's some straw on the ground, too. It might rain soon, or maybe it already rained. One of the pieces of art is an old-looking wooden shed, made of thick, dark wooden boards with black cast-iron hinges and little doors like you'd see on an antique stove. It doesn't have a big door, but the front wall is set back a little bit so that the roof hangs over, and you can stand under the little bit of roof and look at the hinges and doors and at a TV screen that is set into the wood. On the screen is footage of you, looking directly into the camera which must somehow be inside the screen. The footage is time-delayed, though, so when you make a face or thrust your hands toward the camera, you don't see it actually happen for a few moments, followed by all the confused expressions you made after the screen didn't show you your thrusting hands or goofy face. Every once in a while the little doors open and instead of coo-coo birds coming out it's a wobbly head, your head. I see my own blue-ish head wobbling out of one of the doors and I think, "Wow, I wonder how this art knows how to take my head off of my shoulders and the things behind me in the camera!"

2004-07-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

I’m standing on what feels like a boat. I think it’s just the street, though. But it drops off sharply on either side. It’s like a street made of a bunch of concrete boats chained together. There’s some other kids on the “boat” that I’m on. There’s a multi-level blimp up in the air above us, and we’re near an airport, because planes keep showing up really close to our heads, flying over and down the direction of the street. They’re these new kind of planes, one guy is explaining how they’re the newest kind and they have four of some specific new engine part instead of having just one like the old ones did. They have a special new name, too, and they look a little bit futuristic and cool. One kid is flipping out about how close the planes are, he thinks he’ll be able to touch one, they’re that close. I’m standing near the edge of the street, facing away from the drop-off, and I watch one plane get way too close to this delighted kid, then soar up drunkenly and almost hit the blimp. It dawdles in the air for a while before it falls to the ground near our part of the street. We’re safe from the explosion and I’m actually quite excited about having been able to watch the whole crash and see it coming. We can’t see the wrecked plane, though, which bums me out a little, but we’re just too high up and since the street drops off so sharply, we can’t get a vantage point of the actual wreckage.

I have to fight somebody later and I throw them to the ground by pushing on their shoulders. I am a lot better at fighting then I thought and it makes me feel strong and powerful. “I am a tall guy,” I think, “Of course nobody should want to fuck with me!”

2004-07-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

There’s a school but it’s secretly being used as a jail and I am the newest member of a syndicate that is going to free the prisoners. We stage a bloody coup and I get to use a big gun to shoot down security guards, who come in waves and waves. We have smoke bombs, too, and in the smoke I run to the room where the prisoners are sitting in their orange jumpsuits. I blow open the lock with my gun and run into the room followed by two other members of my group. I am really excited and I shout, “Guess who’s free, motherfuckers?” and notice that some of the prisoners look confused, like I might be there to shoot them. They’re tough-looking guys—long, dirty hair and tattoos, real generic prisoner-types. I tell them that our “headquarters” is a classroom on the same level and that anyone who wants to help fight can go there to get a weapon, but anyone who wants to just leave should follow me down the escape chute. We find it quickly—it’s dark, a cross between a laundry chute and a waterslide. I get in even though I’m really scared about what might happen if the school’s security forces have located the exit of the chute and are guarding it—what if there are dead bodies blocking the bottom of the tube and we get stuck in that tiny space? It’s really, really long and I have lots of time to think about it as I fall face-first down the cramped hole.

There’s a soccer game later and some of the prisoners and some of the guards are playing. I am full of energy and run all over the field. I am not really good but I hustle hard and get in the way of the other team’s players.

2004-07-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

Somebody shoots somebody else and I am very upset. I don’t actually talk to the shooter but I talk to somebody else about how wrong it is for him to be actually shooting off a gun. I’m sorta dealing with it as if this guy had just gone to a party and broken a lamp or TV set and left or something. I’m upset, but not in the right way.

2004-07-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

I’m at school, in a math class that I have been skipping for the past few months. My speech teacher, Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is-with-the-white-hair comes in to get something. She doesn’t say anything to me, or really even look at me, which bums me out because I have been skipping her class for at least two or three months now, too, and I have no intention of going back there. I wonder in my head how I’m able to pull this off, to skip these classes all the time and not get totally fucked up for it.

There’s a show, though, that I have to play. The sound-girl is wearing a white shirt and she has long, dark hair and glasses and she’s overweight. Another guy is playing keyboard and laptop for me (not Cale, though—this is some jocko dude) and I’m playing laptop and we’re supposed to do a total Stars of the Lid ripoff set. I don’t know what the venue is but it looks like a slightly smaller version of the room 606 & I played at ATP. There’s not that many kids in the room because we’re the opening band. The sound in the monitors keeps getting quieter and quieter and I try to compensate by turning things up on my mixer but it doesn’t seem to help. We’re sorta line-checking but all these kids start standing around looking at us and things are running late so we just kinda keep going and just figure we’re doing our set now. Which is a terrible idea, especially since we’re doing Stars of the Lid ripoff material. At some point during this first song, I walk out into the audience and hear that the music in the house is really, really quiet. The sound girl keeps getting up and leaving the desk and I keep asking her to turn up the sound, but every time she does it gradually gets quieter and quieter again in the monitors. I don’t remember how the show ends, but it does.

A little later, I get into an altercation of some sort with a trio of boho-hip-hop-at-the-height-of-boho-hip-hop looking folks—two dudes and a chick. One of the dudes has a kind of thugged-out do rag on, though. The chick looks just like an angrier Lauryn Hill. I don’t remember what the altercation was about, though. I deftly avoid getting my ass kicked by do-rag.

I have to go to a banquet, though. I don’t know if it’s a banquet about my dad, but he’s got something to do with it and that’s why I’m there. My sister and mom are there, too. There’s a lot of fancy-looking people seated on one side of a long banquet table with a white tablecloth-- so many that I can’t see t hem all. Most of them look old and rich, though. We eat good food and I act quiet and a little aloof, like I would at any type of event like this, family-related function. Then these stewardess/waiter-type people start pushing carts down on the other side of the banquet table, handing out these prizes or gifts to most of the people at the table. My sister gets some kind of weird toy bunny that’s still in the packaging. My dad gets some kind of really specific computer or printer adapter that I look at and wonder why this company or hospital or college or whatever organization is in charge of this gathering, why would they get something so weirdly specific? Like, it’s an adapter for a very specific type of printer. Most of these gifts are like this—consumer electronics seemingly randomly grabbed off the rack at Circuit City. A photographer is following behind the two or three cart-pushing waitress/steward gift-distributors, taking pictures of some people happily holding their prizes. He stops and tries to take a picture of my sister smiling with her eyes squinted shut holding this bunny in front of her face, but this older, white trash woman waddles behind her holding some giant stuffed animal—some grey Pokemon-looking thing. She’s trying to get in the picture and the photographer is holding off on taking it because he doesn’t want her in it, but she seems to be pretty oblivious to this. An old lady is washing her hands at a sink behind me and saying something about it, making disparaging remarks about my father. He is being himself, friendly and laughing, and I don’t understand why he doesn’t do something about this bitchy old woman. The old woman is wearing a pink old-lady suit, and muttering about my dad. I get really pissed. Then I hear the people to my right talking shit about my dad, too. I turn and realize that sitting one person away from me is the boho-hip-hop trio. I look at them for a second then put both of my middle fingers in their faces and say, “Fuck you, you shit-talkers. You don’t know my dad.” They get livid and insinuate that violence might happen but they get up and leave without doing anything.

I get up and run to the end of the banquet table, where there are stairs going down. There’s 3 railings in the stairway, and I hop on top of them and slide down the railings on my feet, sometimes having to jump to avoid breaks in the railings or switch my feet between different banisters. It’s a long, long stairway and people are going up and down it but I avoid them easily. I’m sliding down the rail so fast. There’s windows above my head and sunlight coming down on me. When I finally get to the bottom, I’m back in school and I run right towards this red school-door that’s in front of me. I push it open and there’s a little tiny paved path for janitorial vehicles that’s going across the side of the school, and then a grassy hill that’s really steep, then the curb and a real road. A black limo –a classy one, like a Rolls Royce, if they make limos—is sitting at the curb. The door opens from the inside. My dad is the one opening it. He tells me to get in, that we’ve got to get to the airport and get on our flight to go home. I get in.

2004-07-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting at a table in a really weird, plush restaurant that’s not too busy, and at the table with me is the GZA. He’s smiling. I ask him when he and RZA are gonna get a television show, and how I think it would be amazing if they did. He laughs and is real polite, all like, “Oh, I don’t know about that…” I have to get up and go to the bathroom, so I do. I walk to this bathroom that looks like the bathroom of a rich person’s house. It’s really narrow and there’s a candelabra of black wrought-iron in front of me, jutting out and I feel like it’s really in the way. There’s music coming in through speakers in the ceiling, very triumphant-sounding, glorious, airy music. It’s pretty loud for bathroom music.

I walk out and I’m in the lobby of my elementary school, Carroll Manor Elementary. There’s tons of people here. I go out on the front steps and there’s tons of people on the steps. I run into someone I know and tell them I’ll be right back to chat. I go to the parking lot and get into a car with my ex-girlfriend Katie (I think.) We’ve got to get to Dulaney High School. She’s driving this little silver speedy car, a really nice one, and she’s driving too fast. We pull up over the curb and start driving on the grass to avoid the traffic in the high school parking lot and then we see like four or five cops. They stop us and tell us to get out of the car. Sensing that they’re going to frisk us, I take the little green change-purse-esque zipper bag that I keep my drugs and drug paraphernalia in and put my phone over top of it in one hand, then pull them both out of my pocket, using as much of my hand as possible to cover the bottom of my “works kit” so it looks like I’m just holding my phone, and I throw it in Roby’s spare shoulder bag, the one with lots of cat hair and the patch of a bunch of mountains on it, which I have in the car with me because I’ve been borrowing it from her the last 3 weeks. The cop who is standing behind me goes through my pockets and then reaches in the bag and takes out my little green pouch. They don’t even say anything, I just know that I’m now busted for drugs which is a big deal. I’m really stressed about it but they basically let me leave and go to school.

I walk through the hallways and tell somebody about how I’m busted for drugs now but instead of going to class a bunch of us go outside and stand on the ridge of a mountain. There is harp music coming out of the sky, like it’s being piped in. I think it sounds beautiful and we climb the grassy mountain, looking out at an amazing scene with clouds and mountains and green valleys. I turn to Cale and start laughing about how perfect the harp music that’s coming out of the sky is, and he laughs, too, and agrees. Soon other kids we’re with are all laughing and climbing up the mountain. The harp music is really, really loud.

2004-07-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

Tim Kinsella puts on a parachute and jumps out of the plane we’re in. It’s not a passenger jet, it’s kind of like a more realistic version of the X-Men’s plane or something. So now it’s just Cale and me in the plane, and we’re flying pretty close to this river that runs through the middle of this sprawling amusement park, like Disneyland, with Houses of Blues and other theme-park shopping and theme restaurants around—mostly shit like that, with some rides. The place is awesome—really clean, really shiny, very impressive. But the plane is going really fast and getting really close to the water and I tell Cale that I don’t know what to do, so he should just get out of the plane and I’ll take the blame for crashing it here. It hits the water and it doesn’t explode, it just spins and flips and maybe a wing breaks off, as if it were a plastic toy that was tossed along the surface of a lake. We get really wet but we’re OK, we swim to shore, where there’s a Planet Hollywood or Planet Hollywood-esque restaurant that some meathead bouncers are guarding, velvet rope and line of high-maintenance bitches and all that. We know that the bouncers are reporting us to the park security on their headsets. I tell Cale to take off but I stick around hoping that they’ll show up and I can take the rap. I’m really sure that nothing bad is going to happen to me. When the security doesn’t show up soon I get lonely and decide to go find Cale and Tim, and I sneak off while the bouncers are talking to some girls in strappy heels.

2004-07-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

There’s this huge, end-of-the-year thing going on for school, involving a giant bicycle race through a huge, weird cavern. The bikes are special bikes that send information to a Nintendo of some kind, so while you physically bike around, other kids are watching a TV screen with a video game on it, and their friends who are on bikes are in the video game. I am in the race and I am doing OK, even though there are certain parts where it is almost impossible to pedal because the incline becomes really suddenly steep. Also, there are big crowds of students doing other things that you have to bike through, which is dangerous. It’s a really long race, it’s taking over an hour even though the area for each lap isn’t all that huge. On my 3rd lap, I feel somebody’s hand on my back, pulling at my shirt. I protest, but the smiling student to whom the hand belongs informs me that stuff like that is totally OK since it’s a video game. “Alright,” I say, “Then you’re gonna see some real Road Rash shit now!” I push a different kid over with one hand as I pass him, his bike and everything falling right over, and I can tell it hurts even though this “is a video game.” I decide to try and just win on speed.

I notice a huge screen above me that has peoples’ high scores from earlier games at this end-of-the-year party. “MC Lickatung” has all the high scores for a sit-down Mario Kart tournament. “MC Lickatung” is the Instant Messenger name my friend Elizabeth used to use, and I haven’t seen her in a while, so I’m determined to find her. I don’t know where to start looking, but I see this kid Greg that she used to like, and I wonder what he’s doing here.

The race ends abruptly. I go to my locker but I can’t remember the number, just the combination. When I find out which one is mine (with some help from this big jock named Ramas) I forget the combination. I try a few things and luckily my third try is correct. The locker is empty, though. I pick up my backpack and start running for the front of the school. I know that something changed and my bus used to be one of the last to leave, but recently it’s always been one of the first and I have missed it every time. As I’m running, I bump into my friend Jake’s mom who offers me a ride home. I tell her I really want to try and make the bus but I end up talking to her for too long and once I finally make it outside to the front of the school, my bus is gone, I can just tell. I take out my cell phone and call Jake’s mom to see if she’s left yet. She hasn’t. I get in her car and find out that we are on our way to Ocean City and that my sister is going to be there.

2004-07-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

I'm in this video store, it has no windows. And bins of used VHS tapes, rows of bins, and then shelves on the wall and even on the triangular ceiling. So video tapes are right next to your head at all times, old video tapes. There's 2 levels, too. And it's cramped and dark, with tons of videos. I'm here with my dad because we're going to see John Sales do stand-up comedy. I went to middle school and high school with him and in middle school he was like the biggest cut-up. Class clown on a steroid. And now he's doing stand-up at this video store and I got tickets in advance and there's a lot of people here, and they laugh at all of his jokes. They really like him. I'm psyched for the guy. But for some reason I leave out of this back door, a door customers aren't supposed to use in the bottom floor.

2004-07-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

I'm riding my bike down Damen Avenue, past the Kedzie Industrial Corridor or whatever it is called (this is in the city of Chicago) and down by the United Center. There's not a whole lot of stuff along the right side of the road (if you're heading south) on that stretch of Damen and the sun has just gone down and it's just gotten dark, and as I am passing this empty parking lot to the right, an old blue pickup truck pulls up like it's going to come right out onto the road, so I slow my bike up a little just in case the dude doesn't see me/doesn't care. As I get closer, I see that the dude does see me, and he's an old black man with a grey beard. Then I notice that there's a yellow rope tied between two poles blocking off the exit that this truck is aimed at, and I figure that the guy has slowed up not so much because of the white kid dressed like a little boy who is coming down the street on his bike, but because he noticed the yellow rope, too. But I am wrong. After I pass him, he drives out onto the street, and I look back over my shoulder and watch the yellow rope snap SPI-GANG! He pulls out fast and then rides pretty slowly in the far left lane, never passing me, a guy that's just on a bike, all the way to Roosevelt.

2004-06-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

I call this girl and apologize for not having returned her call before.

It's the morning and I just woke up. I ask this different girl, one that I woke up beside, if I should wear flip-flops for the second day in a row. She says that she really wants me to wear them today.

2004-06-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

I'm supposed to play two shows in a row in this shitty dive bar. The ceiling is really low. I'm first of three, opening for some band that I really admire. A lot. And that I'm kind of friends with (it's not anybody I've actually toured with before, though, I don't think.) The first night, for some reason, I start abusing the crowd, calling them names and making fun of them, and after three songs I'm taken off the stage by the guy who runs the club and told I can't play there the next night. Some other stuff happens, I guess, then the next night I come back and my friend Height has been tapped to replace me. I feel kind of bummed that he didn't tell me that they asked him to replace me, then when I watch his set he starts totally ripping into me, on the mic, during the songs, pointing at me and totally dissing the shit out of me. After like 3 instances of this, I walk out, while he continues to berate me.

The club is next to a lot of abandoned cars, refrigerators, rusty construction equipment, and a small crashed plane. I walk across this gravel lot and go into the woods. Back deep in the woods I become a part of this group of kids that is in possession of a totally bloody, ripped up rabbit. It belongs to some little girl whose house we are next to. We have to get into the house to steal something, but if anybody sees us we will be killed. It's just this nice, suburban-family house in the woods, but apparently there are multiple dudes on watch for us. Luckily, we have this trick that we can do (there are maybe 8 of us, and we're all pretty young)--- we can fold ourselves up into our hair. Like, my whole body fits underneath of my hair, and then my hair gets greyer and thicker, and looks like some kind of head-less vague animal quivering on the dead-leafs-and-sticks-ridden ground. We have to hum while we do it, though, because apparently this makes us seem more like furry animals and less suspicious. We do it once when we see some dudes, then I pop up and go into the house. It's just a regular, suburban-family house with nice mahogany tables with knick-knacks on them, but it scares me. I know that somewhere in the house is the little girl whose destroyed rabbit we have (real rabbit, like a pet, not a toy) and if she sees me I am very afraid of what she might do.

2004-06-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to slap this girl that I know on her stomach but she's not letting me. I'm really mad at her. She keeps pushing my hands away, and I see that she's knotted her shirt so it stays up about halfway up her stomach. I can't get the knot out, and in the midst of my anger I start wondering why she would wear her shirt this way---- it's not like her at all.

2004-06-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

This guy shows me this art book. It's high-quality --- looks like a bunch of ads from Vice Magazine or some fashion douche rag like that. He says that every girl on these pages is a girl he dated and then decapitated. I tell him that that's gross and that I don't believe it. He tells me that no one believes him either, that's why he gets away with it, and every expensive-looking book he publishes like this gets him completely out of the woods in the investigation of the girls within's' missing-person/homicide cases. I'm not sure if I believe him but I don't want to talk to him anymore.

2004-06-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

There's this old teacher with a beard and glasses and a plaid button-down shirt, and I'm in an empty department store after-hours where he's got his desk with all his papers and stuff and empty coffee cups strewn about right in the middle of the store, mixed in with the displays. So there's beds around and chairs and stuff that's for sale, and a bunch of desks, and this one desk has all his stuff on it. I'm really winded, and I sit down at his desk and start poking around the papers. This teacher is walking around, maybe getting more coffee?

Before I know it, there's a drumset in front of me, and I'm holding drum sticks. Ryan Shelkett is playing a guitar and this young version of that same teacher (who I've never actually seen before) has an electric bass slung around his shoulders and he's holding a microphone and making up lyrics to this thing tune that we're improvising. There's no stage, it's like an old gymnasium with wooden floors, and just a little bit of light from a single lamp that allows me to see Ryan and the bassist. I know there's an audience in the shadows but I decide not to look at them-- I'd rather not know how many people are there. I play some dumb stuff on the drums before the bassist/teacher asks me to switch with him. He's not feeling the stuff that he's singing and wants to hear me improvise some words. I take a long time getting up from the drum stool before I pass him the drumsticks and grab the mic.

2004-06-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

After a school assembly lets out, I find a friend of mine standing still in the hallway, facing me. She obviously did not go to the assembly like everybody else. She says, "I think we should do it."

"Do what?" I ask, feigning complete ignorance/innocence. I don't think we should do it, but I am afraid to tell her this.

She takes my hand and leads me through a series of small-ish box-shaped rooms that have some futuristic-looking furniture in them, but easily ignorable furniture. The walls are grey and probably made of metal. The ceilings are maybe 14 feet high. Each room looks basically like all the others.

2004-06-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

I’m at a party, it’s really late, and I don’t actually think I drink anything, or see myself drinking anything, but I’m completely wasted. It’s really late. The people at this house party are all strangers to me, and I feel outside of all of them, alien—alien enough that they don’t think anything about me, they just look, don’t have an immediate instinct as to where to put it, then they move on, it gets no more thought. For some reason, though, I am here and I am trying to go to sleep. There aren’t many people and most of them seem to be trying to go to sleep, too, everyone sleeping on beds in different rooms and all of us lying down in our clothes. I lie down with this girl but I can’t fall asleep, so I go into the hallway and lean against her sister. Her sister is a little younger. I wonder if anyone thinks it is sketchy that I was in bed with the first girl and then leaning on her sister, I wonder if anybody thought that “something happened” in the bed. I am pretty sure nothing happened but I begin to doubt myself. Nobody talks to me but nobody seems weirded out that I’m there—like I said, there’s no reason to think about it, everyone has plenty of other things to occupy their brain. Somebody decides that we should all go to the movies.

It’s a really fancy theater lobby. I’m still wasted. I approach the concession stand and space out looking at the menu, which I cannot read, and space out when the overweight girl working the register asks me for what I want. The person in line in front of me, who is waiting to receive the food she has ordered and paid for, says something about my spacing out but I don’t catch the gist of it—whether it was a little harsh or light-hearted, I don’t know, and I find myself talking in that voice I usually use when I’m around a lot of people I don’t know and trying to act totally unafraid—a little extra-friendly, wordy version of my best impression of Richie Molyneux’s party-speech. As I start talking, I find I can’t really maintain my balance, and as I start tilting forward, I lose control of my mouth and all these words keep coming out of me, ending with, “There’s not a problem, is there? Everything’s cool, right?” in a tone that is way more confrontational than I want. Internally, I panic—I am not used to losing control of my mouth like that. The girl behind the counter couldn’t care less, though, and my panic, at least for the moment, seems unnecessary. I try to order some food by basically guessing and agreeing with the girl behind the counter, but I don’t pay any attention to the exchange because I’m too busy in my own head trying to figure out why my brain is unable to do multiple things at once anymore.

I think I order a small bag of popcorn and some kind of orange drink. I move to the left to wait for these things. There is a guy on a barstool sitting with a drink at that end of the concession counter, I didn’t notice him before. I start talking to him but I have no control over what I’m saying. I start rambling on and on in a drunk-guy-on-the-train type of way and I am sure that I have never been this guy before. All the kids from the party who I came with are out of the lobby now, either in one of the theaters or gone. I can’t stop the words that are coming out to this guy who clearly doesn’t care. I can tell he’s getting annoyed. My words and voice make me sound completely oblivious to the fact that he’s annoyed but inside my head, I know exactly what is going on. I don’t understand why it is going on. I feel tired and wish I hadn’t come to the movies, wishing I was in a bed somewhere.

2004-06-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

I'm in a turret on the top of a small submarine. A famous record producer is piloting the submarine, in a glass-enclosure that is half-exposed on the top of sub, like a bubble. He is talking to me and showing me how great the submarine is, and I am excited. He's bald, too. The submarine starts submerging but my turret doesn't work right-- it's supposed to suck me down into the sub but only my waist and down goes in. Water is around my arms. The producer seems a little frustrated, he doesn't know why it's not working right.

Later, there's a house full of people. I've never been here but it's cool, it's a great, spacious places. Lots of rooms. Very wide floors. Everybody here is a college student or a guy in a touring band. I see a bunch of dudes walking up the short little grass hill that's between the sidewalk and the front door, and I get scared. But they're just more band dudes. They're really nice, actually. I fly around the house, gliding slowly in a lying-down position, but I don't talk to anybody much.

2004-06-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Basically just one specific anxiety I have been having the past 2-3 days played out with slightly different actors in a very realistic way, although I guess there was some Hollywood-style time-compression on the narrative. I can't remember the exact story or the new names that people had, but I'm pretty sure it involved being on tour this summer. I have this image stuck in my head of a girl with straight brown hair and tinted aviator sunglasses, really fashionable sunglasses, and she's got a tank top on. I don't know who she is or what she was doing but she was, I think, a big part of this dream. Did she have a tattoo? Nothing is clear--- maybe she didn't.

2004-06-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

I have a jacket, a sport coat, and a bag with a camera in it. I'm at a school but it's night-time, it's some kind of extra-curricular workshop or activity or something. I also have a bright red scarf that I can wrap around my face quite quickly, and a samurai sword in a slender black sheath. A woman in her 50s is leading a group of kids in some kind of game like that one where you walk around and shake peoples' hands and one person is designated as an "assassain" or something, and while shaking that person uses his index finger to covertly stroke the inside of the palm of the person whose hand he is shaking. Except in this version I actually get to brandish this sword. I don't remember exactly how it works, but I was really good at it. I needed to put my jacket and coat and camera bag somewhere, though, so the teacher explained how to open any of the lockers that are in rows outside of the school. I went out and opened one and it was full of somebody's books, as I expected most of them to be. I went around to the front parking lot and tried some of the lockers there, but they were a different kind of locker that didn't open with the same button-combination as the ones on the side of the school. In the parking lot there are two disembowled campers--- as in, there is the driver's seat and steering wheel and dashboard and windshield and front tires, but everything behind the driver's seat is missing, and the body of the car just lays on the ground. There's two of them like this. I consider putting my stuff in the glove compartment of one of these campers but I don't think it'll be safe, which is when I realize that I can just put these things in my car!

I have apparently driven the Wayback Machine (1996 Ford Taurus Station Wagon that was accidentally destroyed at the end of 2002) here, so I go put the code into the door and throw my coat, jacket, and camera bag on the passenger seat, then lock the car again. When I go back into the school, there are a LOT more kids than there were when I walked out, and the game is underway. I twirl the scarf around my face and take out my sword.

Later, it's daytime and I'm at a school I've never been to before. It's my first day here. It looks like a combination of the little bit I've seen of UMBC's campus and the Carroll-Manor-Elementary-on-a-steroid that I see sometimes in my dreams. After one class, Scott Gould and I go to the bathroom to smoke. He has this tiny, tiny little pipe that is very thin and little and we smoke out of it quickly. We decide to skip class and we walk around the school. After that class, the bell rings and we go up to the top floor of the school and smoke again, missing our next class. I think a younger boy or two has joined us by this time. When the next class begins, our group heads outside and starts smoking again. Scott goes on about how great this pipe is but I feel like I'm not high at all. Outside, we walk up to a group of three younger girls and a boy. Two of the younger girls--- one is white, the other is black---- start giving us some shit, telling us to get away from them. I go and sit on a short cement wall very close to them and ask, "We're friendly people. Why are you guys being unfriendly when you haven't even met us?" One of the girls steps forward and starts talking a lot of shit. I tell her to calm down and ask her where she's from. She says Baltimore city, and I ask what part. I forget what she told me, but I say, "Hey, I lived in Waverly for a while," and this does seem to mean something to her. She sits in between Scott and I and Scott passes her the pipe. She still seems a little on edge but she's much less hostile.

2004-05-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

I join this band. Zach Hill has apparently moved to Baltimore and plays drums for these other kids, one of them looks a lot like Steve Malkmus. I'm gonna play guitar in this band. We play a show at a bowling alley/arcade where the celing is really, really low. It's dark inside, smoky-- I think I've seen this exact venue in a different dream, but never in real in life. We're playing this show but I've never rehearsed with them. I'm confident about it anyway. We start playing this song when for some reason everyone else in the band stops and starts playing something doofy-- like "Happy Birthday," but not exactly "Happy Birthday," but like that. I get bummed out. After the show I get on this ride with some girl, a little car that goes really fast down this long lane in the arcade-- really long, way too long to be in a building--- and you hold a little plastic gun and shoot different faces and targets that are against the left wall. When you hit the faces in the right places, little plastic eggs full of candy or toys come out of one of those hen coin-op machines at the end of the lane. The girl and I ---something about her reminds me of Janis from MEAN GIRLS--- grab as many eggs as we can hold in our hands after getting off the ridiculously long ride. I see some of the band kids cleaning up their equipment and decide that I've made up my mind to quit the band.

Somehow, the back patio of my parents' house is right outside of this venue, and all the band kids are sitting there. I tell them I'm not going to play with them anymore, and start walking up towards my parents' garage. One dude, who reminds me of my old friend Kevin, is really nice to me about it, calling out to me, saying something that I don't really acknowledge.

I go back to the front of the venue somehow. I'm standing there, talking with that girl I shot the plastic gun with and her friend. Suddenly I'm aware that Mr. Kachurak, my eleventh-grade Spanish teacher who kind of resembeled The Penguin, is looking for me. I open up the door that I am leaning on, the door to a NYC-style walk-up apartment building, and I duck in the tiny lobby of the building. He starts opening the door so I book up the stairs. The staircase is really narrow and I'm sure there's not going to be another way out up here, and he's not going to just stop pursuing me.

2004-05-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

I'm in high school. This girl Becky who used to live across the street has come back from wherever she went for lots of years and is a new student at the high school I'm going to. She's had a major boob job and collagen in her lips (which are slathered in bright-red lipstick) and her skin is really pale. A lot of people remember her from elementary school when she lived here and went to elementary school with us, but everybody's different now, especially Becky. On her first day back at school there are some problems and she walks out of class, then it is somehow it is decided by a group of young boys who like sports wearing bright orange shirts that I am the best person to talk to Becky and make sure she's OK, help her transition into this high school from wherever she was before.

So I have to go to find her, and me and this group of orange-clad young sports-boys leave the school and walk into the woods. In the woods we find this huge, nice house that has been built into the side of a gigantic tree. There are some suburban families visiting this place-- there are lines to get in. Apparently, there's an eight year-old girl that lives in this house with her parents. The parents are at work now, as they are every weekday, but the girl stays home and conducts tours and shows people the house. The house is tricked out with multiple extravagant and complicated Rube Goldberg inventions that this little girl creates. She demonstrates their use to the suburban families that come and pay to see them. She is very well-spoken for her age--- I don't talk directly to her, but I hear her addressing some touring families. The little orange-clad boys I am with all seem to be very smart, too, although they are indistinguishable from one another. I see Becky in the house, but I am not sure how to get to her from where we are standing, on a platform built on the gigantic tree.

2004-05-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

I'm in a house I don't recognize. It's very white inside. I've got to practice with this new band for a show that is very soon-- maybe later today? Something causes everybody to have to leave the room to go into a back room I've never been to-- I think they are changing their clothes or putting something away. My sister is somewhere around here, too. Christy Carlson Romano kisses me on the mouth, to my surprise. We get into a white bed and make out. The door to the room that everyone is in is in the same wall that the headboard touches. They are taking a long time, and Christy and I get undressed and fool around. The door starst to open and she tells me to hide under the sheet. I do, even though I know it's going to be really obvious that a body is under the sheet. She says something to one of these guys that I'm practicing with, it's sorta awkward but nobody makes a big deal. I get up to get this practice stuff underway.

2004-05-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

I wake up in my bunk in my quarters in a large, grey, chunky spaceship. Huge spaceship, shaped kind of like a wedge of cheese crossed with a rock from the quarry. I feel a little hungover, but not from the previous night-- from lots and lots of nights, from a whole era. I am tired as shit, and an old man -- a Pete Postlethwaite-esque guy, real proper and butlery-- politely informs me that I'm needed in the cockpit. I drag myself there with resignation.

There are a handful of other people on the ship and most of them are younger than me. I am not in charge officially, nor am I a part of any military or otherwise organization-- I am merely on the ship, and something about me (have I been on a lot of spaceships?) has the crew here looking to me for leadership. No one goes into light speed without checking with me first, to see if I think we have enough room to make the acceleration without smashing into anything.

I'm not sure if we were trying to get somewhere specific or what. There was a touchscreen I used to help set the course of the ship and it had planets and asteroids on it, some of which were marked with big icons-- a different fancily-dressed woman on each place marked this way.

2004-05-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm playing a video game that requires me to be inside the game. It's an army game, and there's some kind of intrigue going on at an army camp in the Mid East desert. I am sneaking around the tents of the camp trying to avoid the soldiers, especially this one Asian guy with thin wire-framed glasses who maybe is specifically looking for me. I find this girl that I am looking for and we escape into a city that is definitely Baltimore, going to a tall, brick apartment building I have never seen before but that this girl lives in. On one of the balconies that face the street on the building, I see another girl I know wearing some wicked black heels and thigh-highs. This girl goes into her apartment right after I see her but I can't tell if she saw me or not. The girl I found in the army camp is younger than me but she has a really nice apartment. To my surprise, we get to dry-humping.

2004-05-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

There is a college in Baltimore that is based around one huge building on stilts, surrounded by a few smaller, satellite buildings which are connected to the large building by different bridges. Mostly rope bridges, although fairly sturdy ones. I am just beginning my first year at this college and I don't know anybody, except for Keith Becraft who I stumble on while I'm trying to figure out how to get to the other side of the main building. On one side of the main building is a chasm, and a long bridge goes over it connecting the main building to the city. In the chasm is a small forest where blonde-haired thieves live. If you somehow fall off the large bridge over the chasm, you can't enter the main building from the forest, you have to go back and climb the slowly-rising embankment to leave the chasm and find the bridge and cross over to the main building. I am having trouble doing this, although I only see one thief and he doesn't bother me, he just runs really fast and gracefully away when I look at him. Anyway, I bump into Keith who is with some other younger kids. They are going to get a shuttle into downtown so that they can go see wrestling. I don't think I am invited but I contemplate following them anyway, thinking, "Maybe I should stay on campus and try to meet some cool girls?" But instead I decide I will go on the shuttle with them--- I can always decide to skip wrestling and try to meet some cool girls in the downtown. My dad shows up briefly, he is going to wrestling, too.

Finding the shuttle is hard, we make a stop at Keith and his friends' room. I look through their CDs and notice they have a DVD of the movie OLD SCHOOL. I think that maybe I should join Keith and his friends' nerdy frat because at least they aren't trying to be something besides themselves and the rest of the school will probably love them for it in a year or two. I think that I have to start packing CDs I want to bring on tour with me when I go on tour in a few months.

We get downtown. We go into a mall and make a beeline for the ATM, but the line is too long. Keith knows about another ATM outside so we go out a door and find an even longer line for that ATM, but we stand in it anyway. I talk to some girls that seem really judgemental and I think we talk about pot but I don't remember exactly how it went down. I remember thinking that they didn't like me even though they weren't making that completely obvious.

Eventually I did get into the wrestling but I didn't sit down, I crawled through the arena looking for something or somebody. The wrestlers were all over 7 feet tall and most wore elaborate, almost ceremonial, masks. A lot of them were dropping from the ceiling to beat each other up. I could barely notice, I was looking for something or somebody else that I was convinced was at the wrestling place.

2004-05-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

It's right after the last day of high school, but I'm older. But for some reason me and a lot of people my age that I remember are at the 7-11 in Jacksonville, Maryland. Standing around, waiting. I feel a little uncomfortable and decide to try to deal with it by being loud and confident. I talk with the guy behind the counter about the new fruit flavors of some weird health drink, and about some ranch-flavored chips that have been dipped in mangos. All these kids are waiting around for a party to start. There are two high school senior girls in their pajamas filming everything on a consumer-model video camera. Some busses arrive with teachers and students on them, and everyone starts rushing towards the tennis courts beside the 7-11.

I never really find out what exactly people are supposed to be doing. A bunch of people have their names read by a teacher standing in the tennis court but it seems like no one is paying attention. I get on one of the busses and it drives somewhere that it is night, where a bunch of kids are finishing taking a test in a large storefront-- like an Office Depot that's been emptied and filled with those chair-desks that lecture halls have. We're all disappointed for some reason-- I think we wanted to go in that building? We keep driving and it turns back into day, but not the next day-- the same afternoon that I first started waiting in the 7-11.

I think about going home. I get in a fight with a really tiny kid a few seats behind me--- I'm sitting at the very front, behind the driver, and the two teachers who are on the bus for some reason are sitting across on the other side of the aisle. The little kid is really small but has some real coarse language for me-- apparently I hit him with a ball or a rock or did something like that to him a while ago. I don't remember it, but I tell him I'm sorry if I did and try to squash the beef. He seemed ready to really let me have it, but drops it when I refuse to get amped up myself. We start talking. He mentions that the girls shooting with the video camera don't have any underwear on, and he uses some slang acronym I'd never heard before that means a girl with no underwear on. I tell him that it doesn't really matter because they're both buckled and he laughs. I ask where the bus is going and he says Kansas City. I think that maybe I should get off before the bus pulls out of Jacksonville again and go home, so at the stoplight of Sweet Air and Jarrettsville Pike, I lean forward and ask the driver where the bus is going. He says "Tennessee, maybe North Tennessee County," and I ask him how long that drive is and he says "Maybe 1 or 2 hours."

I think, "Hmm, I wonder if I should get off the bus. I'll probably just end up going home since I didn't know many of the kids at the 7-11 or the tennis court--- I'm not even their age or attending this school anymore..." but I don't really have anything to do that day, and the bus is in motion, so once we pull away from the light I'm pretty much going to Tennessee with these kids.

2004-05-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

There's this big boat, like a cruise liner, that these high school kids have rented for the "big game," and they're on the deck, but it's obvious nobody else is on the boat. I am not on the boat. I am watching it on a TV. I think I am near the harbor the boat is in, though. The kids on the boat are dressed up in school colors.

I'm going to class. The campus is as big as a city again, but it's a totally different city. Getting from place to place involves walking into an office building, going up flights of stairs, exiting through a different door, going into a parking garage, going down a bunch of stairs and through a service basement to get to the subway. I run into Justin Timberlake and he recognizes me and asks me what's up, all familiar-like. I am kind of bewlidered and am not sure how to play it, so I play it like of course JT recognizes me. Then it turns out he thinks I'm some dude named Eric, but he's pretty nice about it. We both have to go to class so we continue on in opposite directions. There's nobody else in the subway.

I'm in a class. We're all sitting around a huge rectangular table and we're watching some video we're working on. "Do I fall down all the time?" I ask, watching footage of myself falling down by accident. Everyone agrees casually that yeah, I'm always falling over. I get up and accidentally fall, and while I'm falling towards the ground I'm suddenly very sad that this is who I am, this guy that always falls on his face and it's kind of funny but kind of weird because it happens so often. I decide, while still falling, to go with it and make my fall more exaggerated. Then I just stay on the ground, face down, and don't move. Nobody bothers me. I try to think really fast, come up with a solution to this problem before I get up, but I know I can't stay down for too long or it will be awkward.

2004-05-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

I have just gotten finished eating a meal at a camp for little kids, and now I'm walking down the streets of Manhattan, talking on my cell phone to Julianne, telling her the whole story of Ben Valis, how he was in these bands and he started the best all-ages club in Baltimore and then moved--- but I'm being really, really detailed and taking a long time. As I'm walking, some girl with a lot of freckles and light hair recognizes me and I have to wrap up the phone conversation because freckles starts walking up alongside me like she has something to tell me, even though I've never seen her before. At the end of my Ben story, I tell Julianne that just recently I read in the newspaper that Shepherd Fairey has pledged to give Ben and his new dance-squad that he's started 9% of the profits from all that Andre the Giant stuff that Shepherd Fairey sells.

2004-05-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

Somebody died.