Day of the Retail Love-In

Not too much to report right now, but I figured I should post SOMEthing to keep my faithful reader(s) satisfied.

On Friday night, Bob and I headed back the the church to finish up the guitar tracks for the Rogues album. It was another late-night session that was made even better by the most pleasant surprise appearance of Jefelefe. Seeing him and Laulau is always an event to be treasured.

As usual, Bob was a total trouper, bending to my insistence on doing "just one more take, Ol' Bean". Hundreds of times. All I have to do is sit there, coax the talent, push buttons and tweak knobs, so Bob's the one who'd ultimately leave the church with shredded fingers and flattened cilia in his ear (the other one's pretty much already gone completely). But that's how he likes it. I did a quick mixdown on Saturday, and the instrumentals are now done: Le Petit Mort, Hottentot (a John Scofield tune), and Jugular.

So, now we move onto vocals. Hopefully we can pull that together within the next couple weeks. All in all, for having done all this on a 4-track, I've gotta say that it sounds really good. Very rich and organic. Amazingly, I didn't make any of them too bass-heavy. One of my favorite parts in this process is making the album cover.

Toodles.

P.S. Rest in peace, Casey.

Oh How...Cute???

So. The Patriots won the Superbowl. What's there to say that hasn't been said ad nauseum? I'm one of perhaps four people who didn't watch it or have a life-changing experience from it, but congratulations, gentlemen.

But now that they've won, there is a merchandising opportunity at every turn. I direct your attention to the picture on the left. Do people actually buy this crap? Who sees that and says, "Oh my God, I HAVE TO HAVE THAT. This void in my soul will be filled at long last!"

Yeah, I know. Most unfortunately, the answer is a lot of people. Probably the same folks who think that a little kid urinating an ANYthing is charming.

Bah.

MISSING:: Scruples

Greetings.

I’ve found that writing these little journal entries that probably a maximum of four people will ever read can sometimes be therapeutic. I get a thought out of my system where it’s usually put to rest with a calming finality. I’m hoping that today’s entry will do just that.

You see, I used to drive into the city every day to get to work. It would take anywhere from one to three hours sometimes. More often than not, it would take me an hour just to get off Mass. Ave, which should have taken *maybe* 10 minutes. I did that for a couple years, and it got to the point where I was just going to ram someone with my car. I can’t believe I actually got to that point, but my “fellow motorists” were (and still are) so childish, petty, and altogether rude, that they actually drove me to the point of wanting to use my car as a deadly weapon. It was at that point that I decided to start using public transportation. So, I started taking the commuter rain into the city.

The commuter rail station is twenty minutes from my house. You have to get there pretty early, otherwise you’re going to miss out on parking. The resident parking versus “anyone” parking seems to be about a four-to-one ratio. Not surprisingly, the “anybody” parking fills up first. Add snow drifts to the mix, and it’s even more sporting. Because of the tight parking, I usually bring my Metro because I can stuff that car in spaces no one in a leviathan SUV or even a Camry would dare tread. Even though it’s tight, I always make sure that the car on either side of me has ample room to open the driver’s side door. I do this for three reasons:

I’m considerate
I have to be able to get in and out of the car too
My car would be on the losing end of his wide- swinging door anyway

How many times have you wanted to pull into a parking space that would ordinarily be free, but can’t because some doofus parked over the line 8 spaces away, thereby causing a chain reaction of people parking over more lines, ultimately leaving 1/3 of a parking space left? I see this all the time and all I can do is shake my head. Too many times have I wanted to just Xerox a million copies of a simple DIE!!! and stuff it under the offending party’s wipers. But of course, that’s just a fantasy I play out in my head to just get past it. I also park at the T station at Quincy Adams, and what a festival of ignorance that place is. I used to think that people who parked like mental patients thereby preventing others from parking actually got ticketed. Nope. They don’t. It must have been a romantic notion that I had invented at some point to calm myself down because what would have been an available parking space in now taken up by a jackass with complete disregard for anyone but him/herself. I’ve never keyed a car, but I can most definitely understand why it happens.

I bought a used Toyota Tacoma last August to replace our trusty little Suzuki Esteem wagon. It’s bright red and Penny and I just dig it. It has zero body molding, therefore it’s woefully vulnerable to parking lot dings and the clueless who carelessly swing their door wide open. So from Day One, I’ve always parked it as far away from other cars as I can. Whenever we go grocery shopping, I usually go to the very last space in the very last line. No Man’s Land; the only place the thing can be safe. When I park at the T station, I try to find a space with a wall on one side so I can get a hair’s width away from the wall on the passenger’s side so there’s no way anyone can hit my door with theirs. I mean, when I park like that, everybody wins, right?

Well, there are no walls at the outdoor parking lot at the commuter rail. There are corral-like structures, however. So I hunker up right next to them for the same reason. Like I did yesterday. However, I opted to back in this time as it’s pretty tight around there and there a lot of people walking to their cars, and backing out into that when it’s night is just a huge pain in the ass. So I got super-close to this corral thing, and I had just enough room to open my door and get out. ME. I didn’t trap someone else; I almost trapped MYSELF in there, just so the person who would ultimately park next to me wouldn’t have to struggle to get in and out of their car. It’s one thing to center your car in the space like you’re *supposed* to, but I gave even more room to the other guy. Just so he would have no excuse to hit my door.

I get off the train last night, and rather than wrestle my backpack into the truck and then slither my way in, I decided to throw the backpack in from the passenger’s side, and then go around and get in. As I open the passenger door, I hear a sickening crunch.

“What is THAT? Is there ice or snow still jammed in the doorjamb?”

No. No, that wasn’t it at all. What it was is that someone hit the truck, I presume while pulling into the space next to me. They hit the lower fender in front of the door, thereby buckling it into the door. So now I can’t open it. My heart and shoulders sunk, and I went around the driver’s side to get a flashlight to see how extensive the damage was, and mostly to check the Acura next to me for red paint. One of the great joys of winter is that there’s always 80 pounds of sand and salt on everyone’s car, so things get obscured. Every corner of that Acura had scratches and dings on it, but I could find no red paint. I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t find any. It’s possible that that sand and salt acted as a buffer and each car’s paint never touched, so I have no case. None. Sure, I could tell my insurance company. That won’t get me anything because it’s basically a hit-and-run and I’d STILL have to pay the deductible. So now I have a door that won’t open and I can’t even take a stab at repairing it until spring.

One time I was sitting at the station, waiting in my Metro because I was early and it was cold out. A guy in a Neon pulls into the space next to me, backing in, pulling out, and backing in again for what had to be 17 times, no exaggeration. He open the door to get out, and throws it right into passenger door. Not in a “whoa, the wind caught it” or “slip of the hand” kind of way, but with kind of force that literally rocked my car back and forth. And he just kept right on going.

And that’s what brings me to my point. When did this start, this complete disinterest/lack of consideration for your own actions? What happened to the days of if you damage somebody’s car, you have the balls to leave them a note? Or if you do it and the other person is right there, ADMIT and apologize, for crissakes! You know, the noble thing? We’re not talking about a little kid accidentally putting a baseball through a window and running out of fear, here. We’re talking common decency and respect. Every time some idiot pulls a stunt like that and doesn’t fess up, I have to pay $500. I used to pay the deductible and get it fixed, but I don’t anymore. What’s the point? Some schmuck is just going to do it again anyway, and chances are I won’t be around to catch them. The same thing happened to my Esteem. Someone pulled into a space and just raked the side of it. No note, no nothin’. It also happened to my CRX. I came out to it in my apartment parking lot one day and there was a huge crease/dent that could only be repaired by replacing the entire fender. Naturally, none of the tenants knew a thing about it.


I often think that I’d be better off just having a beat-up, primered old pickup that screams “I have nothing to lose”. But no, that one would never get dinged. It seems the rule that only the shiny things that you want to keep forever and hopefully looking good are the targets. When my CRX got rear-ended, the body shop had to cut off the rear end and weld on a new one. The day I drove it home from the body shop, I actually got rear-ended. Again. The day my Tracker got totaled because I got rear-ended by a drunk guy, it got thrown into a $60k AMG Mercedes in front of me. The stupid drunk bastard tried to tell the cops that my hitting the Mercedes wasn’t his fault. Oh, I see. I was somehow supposed to be able to control my car while in mid-air because your stupid drunk self drove right underneath me. You’re right. A thousand pardons.

Well, this entry unfortunately didn’t make me feel any better. At the very least, it did get me to start lifting weights again. Rather than sit and fume when I got home, I decided to vent with some actual exercise. Silver lining. Right. My truck is just a thing I will get it fixed (even though I’m horrible at bodywork), and to get this riled up over something inanimate is just a waste of energy. I’ve tried to take the high road and be Zen about it, but it’s tough because I know that people will never change. Ever. And at the rate society is going, it’ll only get worse.
So to the guy/girl who hit my truck, and to all the rest of you self-important, self-absorbed, self-centered inconsiderate cowards, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits. And anywhere else you have hair, for that matter.