pirate apprentice
The Cat Walk, by Donald Byrd, is just an unreal album. Right off the bad, he hits it hard. If you’re throwing a dinner party tonight and have a started goal of people getting boozed up, this well help
Album of the week. Freddie Hubbard just killing it. And ATCQ fans will clearly recognize the sample.
(Source: open.spotify.com)
Coast Line
Dusting himself off, Robert surveyed the scene he now found himself occupying. He melted into the greyness of it all, the ashen stream and the dry, overgrown grasses meeting the charcoal ocean, which, much further out, met the silver, overcast sky.
The air was cold, and without a single imperfection. The offshore wind imperceptible except for the the grasses that bowed towards the ocean, as if trying its hardest to mimick the surf.
A few hundred feet up the shore, Penny, the collie-shepard mix, gave up trying to chase down the deer that was much more nimble than she is, and much more familiar with the terrain. She looked around confused and concerned, wondering what had happened to her human.
Robert squeezed his eyelids, stealing a few more seconds. Then, bringing himself back to his current reality, he took one last glimpse at the photo, adjusted his focus to his reflection in the glass where he checked the knot of his necktie, and, reaching for the door, headed for what came next.
ok nate, let’s dance
sunday, 9:15
gloriously sunny day here. hardly a breeze. enjoyed our time together nate.
saturday, 3:16
what a joke. they were talking category 2 for a little while there. but now, nola is just looking at a tropical storm. the curfew has been lifted. probably not even gonna lose power. all this build up for nothin. (though I’m sure some folks east of here are being hit pretty hard).
worst issue I’ve got is everyone else in the hood is home and also trying to stream shit. making it impossible to watch the seinfeld standup on netflix
saturday, 5:11
nothing doin’
saturday, 3:16
the first rain band arrived a while ago. Some wind, good amount of rain. Now it is just a steady rain, far from a downpour. Hoping doggie’s bladder is doing ok; might not get out for a while.
saturday, noon
neighbors don’t seem all that worried. the response to the question “should I board up my windows” tends to be greeted with a look of “you should have a glass of wine”.
tourists just look amused.
friday, 23:45
a bit breezy. the bar on the corner is full of cheer. the crescent city ain’t swettin’ a category 1. at least not yet.
friday, 18:45.
done: three days of water, enough calories to last three days. full tank of gas. dog food, cat food. cash. important documents consolidated.
tbd: plywood for at risk windows, send insurance company videos of house / possessions and shit, microdose dog doggie xanex to test affects
not gonna happen: waterproof safe to store important docs
Four Years of This?
The Trump presidency is underway. One of his first announcements? He’s going to take the weekend off, get started on Monday. Maybe this presidency won’t be so bad if he only works 5/7’s the amount of time presidents usually work.
But as is typical with Donald, he quickly backtracked on his word, sitting in front of the CIA’s Memorial Walk of Agency Heroea, a sacred site for members of that agency, mending the relationship he damaged by continuing his war against the media.
I’ve never been a politically charged person. I’ve disagreed with presidents and politicians and pundits, but I’ve never been aggravated the way I am today. Likely because the discourse, while rancorous at times and often petty, always seemed professional and civil at the highest levels: ranking members of Congress, Senior members of the Senate, and certainly the office of the Presidency.
Not anymore.
Trump sounds like a junior congressperson from a backwoods enclave trying to make a name for himself. In other words, he sounds like he got into a fight on the schoolyard, and is now making his case in the principal’s office, denying culpability and blaming everyone else for his failures.
And what was the failure? Drawing a smaller crowd than Obama? Who gives a shit! Obama was the first African American elected to the presidency. It is arguably the most historic version of a historic event. Donald’s election is historic, but mostly just because for the first time America elected somebody who is a known asshole. What else about his presidency is historic? And it doesn’t even matter. Do you think Barack gives a fuck? I’m sure right now he is laughing about it, but only because Donald made it a thing. It wouldn’t have been a thing otherwise.
To get into a schoolyard brawl over crowd size isn’t just pathetic, it is terrifying. Is that really the kind of thing The President of the United States going to devote time to? News flash: every waking moment of your next four years has to be marvelously prioritized. To be the president of the United States, you’d damned well better make sure that whatever you are doing at every waking moment is in the very best thing you should be doing for the country that very minute. I have to believe brainstorming ways to discredit the media’s claims of a smaller crowd size is objectively less important than some of the other things on his list of things to do. If he actually has a list of things to do.
At this point, Donald Trump’s priorities seem corrallated to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s: I’d imagine the top thing he would like to accomplish is to shut down the media and replace it with a state controlled propaganda apparatus.
The media, for its part, seems game to fight back, but outside the opinion pages by only portraying facts. Keep it coming: what keeps this country working is the media holding those in the most powerful positions accountable. Without that we would look like Turkey or probably more like Russia. Because there is no doubt in my mind if he could our new POTUS would use his pulpit to bully his way into whatever he wants. That might have worked in Atlantic City boardrooms, but that won’t work here. The stakes are too high.
I crossed the 150 page threshold today, probably about 100 pages left to finish this first draft. I feel like I’m throttling this book into submission. It’s extremely alive, and it’s also extremely agitated. I’m just trying to make sure all the things that need to be said get down on the page. I want all these characters to work their shit out.
Everything I read is informing how I’m writing. I prefer to read short, tight, efficient works. A few poems for breakfast, short stories throughout the day. Those things which seem to be powering my brain in the direction I want to go, I try to sample in small doses, so as to not use them all up.
I just want to burn through this draft as quickly as I can. I’ve mostly lost interest in the outside world. I haven’t had a real conversation in five days. But I know this isolation can’t last. I have some other responsibilities that will begin in two weeks. That’s why I’m treasuring this time now.
I’m serious as a fucking heart attack right now about making this book great.
Off to a good start
I’m sitting outside on a comfy, semi-reclined chair with my foot on the railing, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, Catalina Island slightly to the left, and the Los Angeles basin even further to the left.
You hear the occasional plane coming and going from Burbank, the occasional car on the opposite side of Topanga Canyon, winding down the road that leads down to Malibu, back down to civilization.
The house is an architectural marvel, a hyper modern square house, fully glass walled on the east and west ends, where everything is controlled by iPad: the lights, the heat, the pool temperature, even the sound system in the guest house that sits on stilts 100 yards back from the main house.
It is now 2016, and I am drinking a beer to try and erase whatever traces remain of a night of heavy celebration. My only accomplishments to date are frying some bacon to perfection, and taking in the grand view this house has to offer.
Some of our closest family and friends are with us. Everyone is casually flipping through magazines, instagram, or their own photos documenting the absurdity that was our eight person dance party that went on hours after the ball dropped, accomplishing nothing other than letting the hangover bestow a general lethargy that would be unacceptable 364 days of the year.
Foresight and planning has afforded us the comfort of knowing our rations will last beyond our checkout time on the 2nd, and that preperation will be minimal. A tenderloin to season and roast, a ceviche to blend. Towards the southern horizon, planes glide just above the water as they make their initial accent out of LAX, registering no decibles here. All we have is a pleasant mixture of tinnitus and the Muddy Waters Anthology.
It is a dreamy way to ring in the new year. Down the mountain lurk the realities of the day to day. We’ll get home to our jobs and our responsibilities, and our forever in flux checklists. For now though, it is good to pretend that this is reality. It is a soothing cocktail of feeling carefree and feeling that big things will happen in 2016.
Jamie XX at Bimbo’s
I’ve never really been one for seeing dj’s live. I’ve always been a band guy; I like to see the drummers drum, the guitarists guitar, the saxaphonists sax (is that it? Or is it blow?). Standing around, watching someone DJ just always seemed a little strange to me. A guy or gal in a hoody stands on stage alone and taps a computer, shuffles some things around on a table, ever so slightly bobbing his head to some tunes. If I wanted to do that, I’d put a mirror in front of my desk.
So I was cautiously optimistic when I entered Bimbo’s 365 Club to see Jamie XX. I knew his music well, and liked it, and I love the venue. I’d be willing to take a flyer on practically any act that comes through the place. I figured it would be a fun evening anyway, a few drinks, listen to some music that I was into, catch up with some friends, but I didn’t get my hopes up that I’d be blown away.
He didn’t dissappoint. Throughout the night, Mr. XX artfully created an experience; he very intentionally crafted a tempo to the evening that swung pendulum-like between mellow and amped up, and the crowd took the bait. The high end of the evening came after five seconds of dead air when a melancholy jazz piano riff began to play. The crowd wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, it was a major departure from everything they’d heard so far in the evening. When the raspy, punchy voice of Carmen McRae sang the poignent first lines of the song, the crowd lost it. The lines were “I’m always drunk… in San Francisco…”.
Jamie wove in his well known album pieces alongside on the fly creations. It is hard to tell if he was actually ‘mixing’ his album pieces or if he was simply pressing play, he rarely did more than move around some records, adjust some dials, and bob his head as if to both keep a beat and to say “this is working”. But ultimately who cares, he was throwing a hell of a party.
A highly under appreciated GZA beat.
