AWAKE, THE SLEEPING GIANTS

Will and Nick's return to the blog scene reminds me of a trip to Easter Island only this time the statues uplift from their rooted slumber and cause chaos. If only Kit got the memo.

In any case, Christmas came and went much like "the life aquatic." I'm sorry I wanted something to blow me out of the water here(no pun intended) and more of a kick ass score than acoustic bowie. It makes me feel like the comicbook guy voicing his complaint over the internet. What do the celebrities possibly owe you? Is it just me or aren't things supposed to get better with time? Maybe not, lets cite a few examples-

Weezer-stellar performances with the blue and pinkerton albums but why did you have to put the oh's on repeat with a fuzzy guitar for the next 3 albums.

Star Wars-jim jam jonks is the wave of the future. Its like alphabet cereal but only has J's!

Matrix-Neo...Whoa!

Kevin Smith-From Clerks to Dogma, I think my hair turned grey in response to the rapid deterioration much like that scene in Stephen Kings IT.

I'm going to stop because this is scaring me. I had no idea until I started writing it down. And before you comment that, "Hey its just the Biz's strangle on the artist," remember Beck's never done something uncool. Where there's a will there is cool.

All and all The Life Aquatic was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time and it definitely deserves multiple viewings, only it falls short of Tenny,Rush,and Rocket. The only part of the formula that I've seen change is the addition of Noah Baumbach to the script writing. I'll leave this thought with words from my father, "I wouldn't pay 8 bucks to see it again, it'll be rental." I think I saw Royal Tennebaums 6 times in the theatre but why don't I have the same excitement now. Its like finding out Santa Clause doesn't exist, the tooth fairy is really your parents putting money under the pillow, batman uses a gun, and that Mags is now a Cub. Just a little hurt but the build up was great.

Her is another theory, maybe Wes Anderson got on such a kick about writing about washed up people- Anthony Adams, Herman Blume,Royal Tenenbaum,Chas Tenenbaum,Margot Tenenbaum,Richie Tenenbaum,Eli Cash,and new to the list Steve Zissou. Maybe Wes is causing himself to burnout on purpose for his fourth autobiographical installment. I can only hope.

This is my first interactive picture open for interpretation. Brian and I saw this on the wall on the way over to division street last night. Brian saw Santa in the bottom right corner where as I saw the profile of a lions face if you go up and left from St. Nick. 

Its too cold for music

As I walk into work from my car everyday, I also listen to headphones, bob my head and wear big sunglasses. It puts me in a good mood and I nod to strangers as they move to the beat of the song at the moment. Although as you can guess from the title it was too cold for my cd player to work. So I did the only thing logical, I stuck it too my warm belly and waited for the the cogs and sprockets to warm up. Sure enough after a good stomach toast, the cd player was up and running and I began to bop along to the snow fields of Jackson Park.

Quick note about old people and weather. Once old people hear about any sort of weather news they decide to tell the whole world. I stumbled upon and old man parking guy in the African American museum and he said, "They say its gone be the coldest of the year tomorrow." I of course answered with enthusiasm, "Oh man that's gonna be trouble." I think weather scares old people but is also the only thing that has stayed constant in their lives so they grasp it like a child in a tandem parachute jump. That and church. If I do start my own religion I'll let people have religion in the end of there life. It gets old people to volunteer and also brings comfort in a world of so much inane idiocy.

In the dead of winter(shit can't use that)...In the nuclear winter(damn can't use that either)...In the blizzard wasteland its hard to imagine anything being able to persist amongst the death grip of old man winter. I was thinking about turning the heat off but the thought of Ween turning into a frozen Mr. Bigglesworth scared me so I left it at 55. Then my dad said screw it the only reason you turn the heat on is to keep the pipes from freezing, the cats a fighter and that's the best chance we got. I was like ah yes that's why you're my father. I've decided that learning life lessons from good parenting can be a life long class. In the last year I've learned how to change the oil in my car with the help of lint, kitty litter, and milk jugs. As you can see its no jiffy lube but it gets the job done to a T. I've also learned how to get out of any possible traffic violation. I've gotten into 3 moving violations in the last year and none have gone on my permanent record. It says here one time you pushed a dog by its hind legs like a vacuum cleaner. I was able to get out by being put on probation, taking a class, and fighting the ticket. I felt like citing John Locke and the case of 1782 of the people vs the United States but then knew I wasn't as smart as G. Will H. and decided to keep my yapper shut.

Better switch to the backup engines because half my brain is out

This morning I took a shower and after drying I put deodorant on. Only I forgot to wash the soap out of one of my armpits. That's quite perplexing. I also woke up at 6:30 this morning with high hopes to get work done but fell back asleep for the second day in a row. Can't build a house with good intentions.

Maybe I can't build a house now but will my neural network rebuild the appropriate pathways to get me focused again? I took a class in college where we computer simulated the action potential in your brain and how your mind works. We'll always have computers I guess.

These weekends are additive I believe and although I like to boogie it seems that we are all frying our brains on a regular basis. I keep thinking of the Johnny Depp Ad with the egg and the frying pan and the any questions?

I remember about a year ago I decided to try to go two weeks without any boozies. I really felt my head rebuild. In my head I had little people putting up new drywall and raking leaves into piles. You know general housekeeping and repair. At the end of week two though I decided to wet my whistle at the local drunk tank. I always start out with a fancy schmancy beer like a Bells Oberon...

...Translation in my head....

Oberon walks into the joint with his shiny shoes and twirling cane. "look who's back," he roars. In behind trail little old style goblins like sentinels causing damage to everything under my skull. Jumping in leaf piles, sticking their heads through dry wall, swinging from the ceiling fan...rascals. The repair workers have nothing to do but hide till the coast is clear sunday morning when they pick up their pick axe again and go back to work on the what seems like a Sisyphean task. The dream was over. They saw the high water mark of what could have been.

If the world is a map of the soul then I'm Pangean

I'm always wondering that if Pangea hadn't broken apart then maybe we'd be living in a unified utopia. Maybe we would have retractable tongues as well. There would only be one religion and one holy land or no religion and no holy land. Is it possible that creativity would take a hit as well as we all know arts and entertainment only come out of personal torture and despaired? I have absolutely no Philipsesque articles to back this up(wahhhhh! why don't you subscribe to the trib it will last longer... just do it my father will beat me if you don't...I'm not the first Pip) but I think its true. Also none of us would have been born and my hands would start turning clear on the keyboard much like Marty's brother in the picture from Disneyland.

I've had long discussions with my brother about not believing in anything and thus falling to the evil sounding term of atheism. Which is ever so much different then the rosy fresh smelling term of Agnostic. He can't take that as my answer so he says I believe in love as a religion and walks away. Love isn't a religion. Love doesn't explain the origin of human existence since both love and shagging create human life.

So here, I started my own religion and now I can achieve cult status. What was around before any of the religions started and actually contained all the holy lands. Pangea was and did. It makes perfect sense to believe in. If you look at the map of Pangea it actually looks like a human face.

Ah yes the cham-cham

Friday night's radio gig was a lesson in the making. I forgot to bring any picks to the radio studio so I booked it for JC's and he was happy and willing to offer me three picks of gold weighed against my soul. The set went really well and I'm quite impressed knowing all those that took an effort to hear the show live- JC, Marielle, and Cardboard Inc. I particularly enjoyed doing the interview and showing how this whole Darling vehicle was created out of desparity of living with parents and drinking mooseheads at the local drunk tank. I did start to freak out last fall that if I was going to watch movies every night, my life was more or less the story of a couch and an empty pallet. That is the source behind "Reading Lines." as the opening line is "So it goes, living the movie screen." Comfortability has a way of leading one into a state of matrix induced happiness and the farther you fall in the harder it is to get out. I felt like I was 300 pounds overweight chained to a wall eating dog food. And I'm over 7 feet tall so that doesn't paint a pretty picture. It wasn't that bad but I was also watching a bit to much ben stiller show for my own sake. I knew it was a problem when Jason and I would turn to each and go "Batteries, I'm not a robot" in resolution to any dispute we got ourselves into. After pouring our hearts out over the wavelengths of the radio frequency range we played pictionary at marielle's and the rest of night wrote itself.

Saturday started at 1:00pm in Hyde Park and I had a standard Solonica breakfast which equates to gyro filled omelet. Almost sounds like the best stuffed with the second best eh? And make sure to put it on my diners club card. I made it down to sound check about a half hour late and for some reason my time controlling powers were a little hazy. Better go check to see if that raccoon is chewing at the wires of my antenna again. Everything worked out for the best and it felt like we were playing at an arena. Some highlights from our show would be Tommy making a beeramide only to fall over by the raucousness of Turning Gray. I like to think I was doing a little mind bullet target practice. The rest of the night can best be described as fandemonium with Sainte Chappelle stealing the show. What does that even mean?

Fandemonoum: A state of terror induced by fans connecting minds and defying gravity as the stage rises out of the ground into a tornado of hair, fingernails, and sweat.

The party after the show was great fun and it seemed that all the key ingredients were there: booze, music, late night pokies, and mister crazy thing. I enjoyed when Mr. Blue Skys caused the floor to turn into quicksand as everyone made a mad dash to cut a rug for the survival of the night.

Hid behind the canopy of blue, shade my eyes and I can see you...

Ah another weekend into the orange and blue yonder. First stop 55 ave, Hyde Park. I know what your thinking, pull your head out of the books billy shakespeare, they'll be more tumble weeds than keg parties where your headed. We'll be appearing on "Pure Hype" tonight on WHPK which streams world wide on the web. If you need more info alliterate me about it later. On Saturday we start our Highdive into the BrassRail country of Champaign dodging carnivorous cowboy monkeys swinging off Iron Posts this way and that, that one is spitting, no spitting! If you want me I'll be hiding under the shade of the Canopy Club hanging with my old war buddy colonel rhodes getting high with the ever elusive hooka smoking Nargile all the while praying to our patron Sainte Chappele. Now that was just the meat of the sandwich, for bread we have chosen a delectable KB classic for the bottom bun and a Barnacle alla Benito for the top. Stick a pirate saber through the middle and you have yourself cold cut good enough for Shaver himself(of the infamous highway 50 Shavers gas station).

And its he ho pirates life for me stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains.

Ironic that we threw a pirate party for Joe and my sister when we were sophys in college and now that were graduated and in depends they return the favor.

Its the end of an era.

Sometimes it feels like I'm falling through a sewer shaft on a bungee chord attached to Otto. Each time I fall its because something in my life is fading away and when I hit my head on the sewer cap its when its when it finally hits me. As Pip has alluded to in his 12/01/04 entry titled "We're all growing up and the world around us is getting bigger," getting old isn't a bad thing. To completely change the subject, it was Pip's last show yesterday at the Schubas and although it wasn't perfect it was still a great show to end on. I can still smell the fresh paint.

Mind bubbles

I meant to add more to that entry but ended up getting caught in the flood and carried away. I saw the Bob Dylan interview last night and it depressed me a little bit. Dylan said that he can't create the songs in the way he wrote them back in the 60's. He feels that he is a completely different person now and that he never saw himself as the spokesperson for a generation. Proof was in the fact that he actually did a serious interview and didn't blow it off as is his trademark starting during his youthful hijinx. Times have a changed but its a dismal outlook to have. I find it a rare thing for artists to actually produce more innovative music later on in their careers. One shining anomaly to this group is Neil Young. His Silver and Gold album is my favorite by him and is even though he is crying about wanting to be in Buffalo Springfield again, the music is amazing. As with any intellectual thought, there is always a leaning towards internal-examination. Whats the key?

Whew almost stuck in mind bubble which will circle and circle overhead til your stuck in the fetal position sucking your thumb. The rest of the weekend was amazing as we descended on Madison and played at a club a block away from the impressive capital building. On Saturday we went out of Janet's Janet Day and had a blast at the small bar in Logan Square and besides playing big pimpin had an almost impeccable DJ(actually 2, the 2 owners) ranging from the Cars to Hip Hop. Highlights from the night was Nick walking over 3 miles to get to the bar for only 20 minutes left til close. Good times.

If you haven't looked I'm in the study abroad brocure for 2004-2005.

Tomorrow Darling is playing at Schubas and the show is getting recorded by e-music. We're opening for Cub Country and go on at 10pm.

Hilarity follows suit

This weekend was laced with gold. An early morning snowball fight at 2:30pm on Friday raised the general morale through the roof. From there on I think everyone had a pair of mag wheels.

Looks like the dreams over

That may have been on the simpsons last night but it kinda struck a little deep in the innards of my mind cavity. Life is moving around in circles so much that sometimes you get your foot caught in track and can't enjoy the swirl.

Outside of everything else things are going really good. We leave tonight for a roadtripper up to milhewaaaakay. Does this guy know how to party or wah wah what? From that show we are staying at Gubbas who is one of the nicest ladies in the whole world and also an accomplished world traveler. She has a lakehouse right on Alpine Valley. Ah the memories of riding bikes to radiohead and missing all the traffic back with the only thing to be worried about being a rickety bridge, a warm beer, and an uphill fight with a gearless tandemonium. From there we move on to Mad-town where I'm certain that the song from donnie darko(mad world) gets blared every hour on the hour to give students an idea of where they are at. In any case don't have absolute lodging plans as of yet but wouldn't mind staying at the youth hostel as New Broleans treated us so well with the india house(canopy in back with swing chairs, a pool, and frenchies to get in political arguments with=win win situation). Then its back to the chi for a friends birthday.

Looks like a bender coming round the bend. I've definitely got my foot out of the track and am ready to climb aboard.