Resurgence Manifest

My god, has it been two and a half months since I posted on this thing? Yes, it has. The Staff of the Dominion of Cool have been busy little bees. Or not actually. Just disinclined to scribble for the non-entertainment of its very few readers. But we're bored tonight, the Sabres are beating up on Phili, and life seems pretty good. So we thought maybe we'd get a few words down.

I believe I've fairly convinced the Savage to become a harmonica player. Since I am a brilliant saxophonist, and an increasingly tolerable guitar player, and since I can write song lyrics in less time than it takes to fry an egg, I figure it's almost time for me to start a band. Not yet, but soon. Toward those ends, I spent $500 on an Epiphone electric and amp and spent the past week playing blues scales for hours on end while staring vacantly down the freight-train tunnel Madness that is slowly growing darker around my eyes.

In fact, damn all! Even those last of my typed output would make a good song. Let's see what we can do here.

The clock is ticking off minutes that make up my days / blues on the sofa while freight-train Madness descends in a blaze / of darkness down and around my eyes / and another part of America begins to die.

Try again:

The freight train Madness ain't so bad / though it would if it was all I had / But I've got blues scales and a loaded .22 / and I'm sitting here just thinking of you.

And again:

A ticket to ride / the freight train abides / all those of your kind / what you see in your mind / is not an illusion / it's madness' intrusion

Eh, one more for fun:

I road the freight train Madness / when I was at the height of my badness / It taught me real quick / that this country is sick / and now I stay at the station.

I like that last one. I'll have to remember it.

Anyway, I sidetracked myself which isn't really all that difficult to do. I was talking about the band. The Savage is going to pick himself up a harmonica, he claims, and learn to play it. We'll see if it happens. But if it does, it'll be an interesting little act we'll have, and plenty of venues down here in Charlotte, one of our nation's fastest growing cities. We'll play the coffeehouses and shit side-street bars until we get good. Which could be a while. But in those places you can pass off mediocrity as minimalism, and that strategy is something not to be underestimated. I see us playing a lot of Dylan, softer bluesier White Stripes, Petty, Counting Crows, and a bunch of Sherry originals.

We'll call ourselves one of three things: Either something with a cool ambience like "Bluenote" or "Pyramid", something borrowed from a book I've read, a phrase like Kerouac's "Amazing Maniacs" or a paraphrase of Wordsworth like "Trainquil Eyes", or the third and final route, which would be something totally shocking and undescriptive - something like "The Deranged Psycho Mutants" or "The Pubic Hair Barbers."

Uh, okay, let's see. What else can I talk about here? Oh yes, I know. If you read my other blog, then you already know that dinosaurs are apparently not extinct. They exist down here in Charlotte in the form of 8-inch lizards, and they like to hang out around my apartment. I saw another one today while I was sitting outside reading "Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist," (which is good so far). Anyhow, he crawled up on my patio to hang out, which wasn't a good idea because I'm not the type of guy who enjoys socializing with extinct monsters. So I forced him to retreat a couple feet by whipping some ice at him from my glass of Diet Coke, but these green criminals have an odd habit. They think you don't see them if they stop moving, so after my initial barrage or two, he just froze up and stared vacantly as ice reigned down about him. Asshole.

I gave up after I ran out of ice and went back to Hunter. Over the next forty-five minutes or so he inched over to the door to the firewood closet and started climbing up the frame. When I got a new Diet Coke I resumed my air-to-surface ice chunk attacks, but he had himself convinced that I didn't know he was there because he wasn't moving again. Fucker.

Anyways, the whole affair ended with me getting bored, and over the next twenty minutes he lowered himself back to the ground and swung up behind the siding on my apartment. I'll probably see him next in my bedroom and totally freak out. The Prick.

Well, it's good to be back. I'll keep this updated more often now that I'm well-grounded and on my feet in the American South.

Ciao and A Presto.