 17 january 2000 dressing up ----- ------- ----- "Um ... well ... we went out hiking in the woods behind my house, and we were looking for artifacts... So spoke Angel's 8 year old daughter today, in response to my question about what she did on her day off from school. And all I was thinking was where an 8 year old girl dug the word "artifact" up from... "So, um, artifacts ... like Tyrannosaurus Rex eggs or something?" I replied. Oops, wrong gender. "No, maybe 'artifacts' was the wrong word. It's more like ... historical mementos." My jaw dropped. "Oh, so like a message in a bottle." "Yeah, like that." Malibu has a really good school system, or something ... I was driving her from her house to choir practice, as a favor to Angel, who was out with Ice Dog buying clothes for me to wear tonight at our photo shoot, and eventually at our gig, which, by the way, will take place at 8pm on Saturday, February 5, at Luna Park on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood. Just had to squeeze that in ... The photo shoot itself was nothing to write home about, but something to write here about, obviously, since I'm writing about it. Five minutes behind a curtain changing into my "stage clothes," manufactured mostly by FUBU to make me look like a Backstreet Boy or something. When I saw myself in the mirror, the only adjective I could come up with was "fly." It's something I'd wear to a club if I ever went clubbing, which I don't, so the only time I'll wear it is when I'm playing in the clubs I'll never go clubbing at, which works out since the band owns the clothes and I don't. Black shiny pinstriped parachute pants with a velcro waistband and velcro ankle thingies, a black on black satiny long-sleeved pullover with alternating vertical stripes, and a red terrycloth on black netting vest to complete the ensemble. Not something I'd buy in the store, but it didn't look all that bad. Almost "fly," maybe... The photographer assembled the band on a leather loveseat. Me, Angel, and Selva sitting in the front, the rest in the back. Angel was lying across my lap, trying desparately to keep her left heel out of my crotch. Selva was sitting on the back of the couch, her leg draped over my shoulder. "For effect," the photographer had me put my arm between her legs from behind, so that my hand came up to rest on her left knee. An interesting pose, I thought. And the rest of the band just lined up behind us. The most original thing I could think to say was "Why didn't this happen to me in high school?"
I can't wait to see these pictures.
~~~
I started the morning in Calabasas again. A 9:00 offsite meeting with the key executives and me, hungover and unshaven. Three cups of coffee and an insane amount of boredom later, I found myself back in my office in Malibu, poring over the morning's seventy emails. I nearly lost my mind when upper management "moved the goalposts" on a chat server I was supposed to be installing. It's an issue I need to take care of tomorrow, and something that forced me out of the office early today, to retreat across the street for a stiff martini beneath which I submerged my corporate stress. I know how to play the corporate game so well now, and yet I refuse to play it. Something inside of me is vehemently against it, and that something is a good thing, methinks. It's probably why I haven't made Vice President by now. I choose the band over kayaking at the boss's beach house. I choose a pathetic chance of a social life over cigar+poker night. I choose my life over just living it. Just because I can play the game doesn't mean I have to... And yet recently I find myself with no time for myself. More specifically, no _free_time. Every minute of every day, from waking up to falling asleep, is filled with meetings, coding, email, phone conversations, rehearsal, songwriting ... Songwriting. I finished the new song. It looks damned good on paper, but it'll take tomorrow night, when I teach it to the band, to tell me if it can work in reality. IceDog informed me that the band will be learning it for the Luna Park gig -- all that after I played and sang him a couple of verses on a shitty keyboard last night. If the tune works, it'll work in a big, big way. If it doesn't, well, we'll probably dump it from the set sometime in mid-February.
Personally, I think it'll work.
~~~
Historical note: Monday, January 17th, 1993. Martin Luther King Day. Around 4am. I was lying in bed in this very room. I had just put my paperback book down for the night, turned off the light, and closed my eyes. It came upon me slowly. I felt like I was on a boat, floating yet swaying. I opened my eyes. The whole room was moving. I jumped out of bed, butt naked, and ran to the doorframe like I had read in preparation for a moment like this. A giant boom, like a truck had crashed into my bedroom wall. Braced in the doorframe, I saw AC stumble out of his room ... he had lived in LA for five years prior, while my SoCal residence was just over a year young. His exact words "Chuck, we gotta get out of here, I've never felt one this big." I followed him down the hallway, and heard a huge crash from my bedroom (my six-foot tall bookcase, I later found out, had fallen onto my bed). We ran out to the front porch. It was like trying to navigate one of those fun-houses in the amusement park, where you walk through the spinning tube and try not to fall. So scary, but I was so high on adrenaline I didn't even notice how frightened I was. It all ended 30 seconds later, although it seemed like five minutes. I called my mother immediately and woke her up, told her I was ok, and she went back to sleep. (only later did she call back panicked, seeing the fallen freeways and death tolls on "Good Morning America" in NJ). We walked out on the back deck, the highest point on the block, to witness the city in darkness. Not a light, and not a sound except for the intermittent flashes from blown power transformers and the occasional police helicopter dispatched from Parker Center in downtown. Eventually we retreated to the living room, where we huddled on the floor in candlelight, braving the aftershocks and wondering what the whole thing meant. The damage to the apartment was minimal. My bathroom door was kind of jolted off the frame, but other than that, it was nothing that a couple of days cleaning couldn't take care of. In the end it brought us closer together. Shared experience. Shared strength. Seven years later, I still can't figure it. 4am, monday morning, a holiday. Another day, another time, the damage would have been so much worse, the deaths innumerable. Nature has a way sometime. My bathroom door still doesn't close right. Do I consider that an "artifact" or an "historical memento?" |