It's Hotter Than A Mutha F*&%$ Out Here

And I am dark, dark, dark.
I saw a French man in a thong on the beach.
I mean, seriously
WTF?!?


I don't have the ability to upload photos and tell my tale(thus far) but here's something sweet and weird and heart breaking from Mr. Come Pick Me Up, from his own blog.
Lots of insight into bar crawl gossip me and the boys use to discuss back in the day!


OH!
And a belated shout out to roomie #1, my dear old friend and all around pantsless wonder, Mr. Mark 'Watdawg' Watson, who will soon be off here to play him!



FACTS ABOUT ME.(Ryan Adams)
1. I never dated Alanis Morrisette. But she is very nice. But I never even went on a date with her. I met her through Ethan Johns and she was just you know one of the nicest people ever and very inspiring so i thanked her several times on a record I made called GOLD which was over-long and maybe half good.

2. I never dated Winona Ryder, but she is my friend and I will always love her. She is so fucking smart and so fucking under the micro-scope I can’t imagine how she pulled through, but no, I was never her boyfriend. I was and am her friend. She is as hot as the sun in a hot tub on itself though and everybody knows that. Also, who she is as an actress totally inspired me and helped me form what kind of artist I wanted to be.

3. I never KICKED OUT anyone from a concert. The Ryman Auditorium (a shit hole in Nashville) has the balls to charge you for security when you play there but if some college kid, and I mean SOUTHERN college kid decides to get wasted and scream through 7 songs of a solo acoustic performance, they could give a fuck. I went into the audience and handed him what I thought the ticket price was (40 bucks) and asked him to leave. I said “you have successfully ruined this concert so here is your money, now will you go home now so I can at least try and give the rest of this audience what they paid for. It did not work as the woman who runs that shit-hole re-seated him and BELIEVE IT OR NOT people CHEERED when he was ushered to a new seat. As most of that concert were people telling him to “shut up” There was NO BAND just myself, and I was joined by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (heroic figures to me) to sing a few tunes and still the man screamed over it. In fact, “Summer of 69” was not shouted when I went to ask him to leave. It was in fact something else. He was so drunk, so very very drunk he did not even know he was there.
The writer who wrote it up the next morning submitted it to AP (the Associated Press) in hopes it would bring him a few extra dollars and some exposure. I have suffered since.
I seriously could give six shits about Bryan Adams or that song. In my opinion he is not a serious artist. His songs have ” implied target market audience” written all over them and in fact he is quite embarrassing in general. Also a piss poor photographer. I guess it is kind of amazing he got to stand next to Tina Turner though. She is rather heroic and an obvious artist. In every sense. Also she was kick ass in Mad Max BeyondfThunderdome and I wish I could coddle her in her chain mail in Barter-Town but that place does not exist.

4. I used to take drugs and drink but I never did that when I was wrirting. Very Rarely. I, like most americans, would seek some kind of peaceful bliss after a bone crushing day. I only used speedballs (snorted not shot) at the end of my drug use, which was parallel to my last romance. I am in recovery for both things.

5. I am not catholic nor baptist. I am quietly converting but by the books, to a much older and less mystic religion which seems to respect God as someone to be feared and not understood, as I fear and don’t understand.

6. I have only dated 5 women in my life. I can count on my hands.

7. I used to want to get married. It was such a huge thing for me, to be claimed. To be someone’s someone. Now I don’t care anymore. I hope I die alone and under a lot of work. I am better for myself and other alone.

8. It is almost two years since I have been sober. Awesomeness comes with this but also much rebuilding. I like myself more each day and surprise myself at how open I can be at the same time TERRIBLY shy or fearful of social situations.

9. I hate HATE country music. I always have. I “reference” it when I make music that sounds like that, the way a director would use water as a backdrop for a svcene with a shark in it. But I cannot stand country music one bit. unless the Grateful Dead are messin round with it. Then it is tolerable. But they were much more than their single parts- we all know they were a machine.

10. I never intended to be a songwriter but it was a snowball effect type thing and it pained me to have to play live because I have stage fright. I just wanted to be a writer and a visual artist and in a metal band.
So I hate what I do sometimes.
Playing in the Cardinals made it possible for me to continue because of their (our) ability to collectively change everything constantly.

11. I am going deaf. I am not sure how or why but I am. It has something to do with an inner ear condition caused by a loud frequency. My inner ear wall burst probably in LA at that blue cave show or in SF at that one. Either way, I had a bad feeling about having that guy as a soundman. He asked questions about what to do the day after I had to go to a hospital to be examined for hearing loss.
Fuck.

so there. that is me.

that is who I am.

I just want to make things. meaningful beautiful things before my time here is done and hopefully encourage people to express themselves, not to clutter the world with art, but so because I think people learn about themselves and find deeper meaning when they create things. It just happens. Somewhere down the line a peaceful submission takes over and out of the grounds of thew soul comes the truth.
and it is usually very condensed and beautiful and worth of investigation.

Also Jennifer Aniston has, or did have, (i dunno) an incredible machine by the looks of that ROLLINGSTONE photo-shoot from god knows when. woah.
i mean, wtf?
”
17:02

Quote
IN OTHER NEWS, “world keeps turning. Decent and Talented people continue to go on with their lives. Somewhere on the fringes of a trendy nightspot a nose begins to bleed, and conversations that began three years ago continue hastily.

5 O'Clock Friday Video- VACATION!

see you in 8 days, suckas!!!

A Little (Come) Pick Me Up

Anyone who has been around me lately (god bless you all) knows that I have been mired in the proverbial shit. This always seems to happen after a show goes down, and as good as the last year was for me work-wise, the come down has been just the opposite. Six straight months of work has equaled three months of abject poopiness. I would like to think that this is the only reason for my miasma, but I know it's only part of a larger truth: I feel stuck. Stuck in a rut like muther fuckin' Jabba the -...well, you get the idea. I keep desperately holding out for some sign, some mongoose in the cane fields magic (thank you, Junot Diaz) that will help me see the light at the end of the - . You know what I mean.

Anyhow, that little something may have happened today. In retrospect I am amazed I didn't flat out crap my pants or spill my beverage, man. Today is Tuesday, and if anyone knows anything about my monkey job, they know that Tuesdays bite the big culo in the sky. I am often asked the same three questions ad nauseam as I sit a lame duck at the info desk in the lobby of the museum, telling people over and over and over that we are closed. At a certain point in the day I always start to lose it and will make up excuses as to why the museum's closed. To wit:

'I would like two times for the museum, please.' (said in arrogant French undertones)

"The museums is closed today and every Tuesday." (said with utter indifference and glazed over smile, trying to both do my job and read ESPN.com at the same time.)

'No! But for why?!?' (arrogant French undertones mixed with genuine disbelief, as if to say, Did they not get the memo we would be visiting today?)

"Because today's the day we clean the andirons and pick up the dry cleaning. Also it's bingo." (said with sly nod as if to indicate 'Sucks to be you. Quell bummer.')

At this point they leave, sometimes in disgust, other times in genuine confusion and disbelief. They are but one of literally hundreds, if not thousands, who wonder in to the space even though there are huge signs everywhere, in ten languages no less, espousing the very same information I just delivered to them. It must be that personal touch that they're after.

ANYHOW-

Today the visitors were really tickling my nuts, to borrow a phrase from The Wire. I had had it. At one point I decided to start keeping track of how many times someone said 'SHIT!' when they found out we were closed. As my luck would have it, the person who said it the twelfth time just happened to be one of my favoritest favorites ever.





There's no way to ever put too fine a point on what Ryan Adams' music means to me. When I was breaking up with someone in the summer of 2001(the girl I moved here with, 7 years ago,Jesus!) Whiskeytown's 'Pneumonia' was the soundtrack to my misery and heat wave. Post 9/11, 'Gold' became my good luck charm. 'Demolition' was in heavy rotation when I met L. 'Rock 'N ROLL' and 'Love Is Hell' perfectly described all the good and bad of that very-good-not-really-very-bad, closest thing I've ever had to a blessed union was. 'Cold Roses' signified a trip(to Texas, natch) with changes on the horizon(double album!) and 'Jacksonville City Nights' was again, another soundtrack of sorts, to my most broken of hearts when everything fell apart. '29' we won't talk about, much like the period I was going through right after the end. And last year's 'Easy Tiger'? Well, as I told my roomie and fellow rambler when it came out last summer, "Sounds like ole' duder's getting older, kinda like us." So yeah,like I said, brother be all up in the heavy rotation in these parts.

So when this gawky, bespectacled-Robert-Smith-hair-having, maroon velvet jacket wearing, dressed-like-the-fifth-member-of-The-Smiths-motherfucker strode up to me and asked if he could get in, I got a little weird. Luckily I was with the Baron, who wouldn't know Ryan Adams from John Adams, so he said in his Pittsburghian, half-deaf, slow burn lilt, "We're closed."

'SHIT!' said Mr. Adams.

Luckily I had time to suss out the situation, and the stakes involved. (O if only I were so smart in pleasure/business, actually business situations, re:readings and their after parties!) I had my big guns ready.

"You know you're the 12Th person that's said that today after we told them the museum was closed." (score one for the tdawg.)

'Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! There, that's like four extra shits. That should bring it up to 16.'

This guy was good.

He then did what they all do, asked if he could get in anyway.(Musician or no, this is always done in some sort of sly and flirtatious way, as if to imply, "Oh come on, it's just little old me! Whose gonna find out? I'll be your best friend!") When I told him I could personally escort him into the galleries because, he was, and I quote myself here, "My fucking favorite musician", he laughed, said 'Right on', and we exchanged a dap. Dude's really tiny, but he's got HUGE hands. That would explain the guitar playing, for sure.

So we talked a few more minutes, mostly about museum exhibitions and the like, and at one point I had to show him that the reason he wasn't getting his member calendar every month was because his membership had lapsed. Seven months ago. It was priceless, in a good way. During all of this, The Baron was confused as to why I was being so helpful and not my terse perfunctory self. As I showed Ryan were to go to remedy his membership lapse and where else he could visit, the Baron leaned over and asked, "Who is that?"

To which I smiled, laughed and said, 'That, Baron, is the mother fucking man.'


I won't say it's a big deal, in the way that all of my friends are getting married and making babies is a big deal, or the way some of these same friends are starting to see their careers take off is a really big deal, because at the end of it all, I'm still the schmuck stuck holding out for what is increasingly seeming like a whole lotta nothing. But I will say this. It was something I needed. Really and truly. For whatever reason, it felt like a sign. Like it was supposed to happen, and lift me out of this, this something not so pleasant.

Like the mongoose apparition appearing to the de Leon clan time and again in 'The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao', Ryan Adams appeared from thin air, and helped my shit get settled, if only for a minute. It meant a lot.

Now where's that mother fucking box set you been talking about?