An affectionate ode to the Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken," as illustrated through explorations in music, fiction, film and, occasionally, fruit.
I should be brushing my teeth and swishing Listerine, readying myself for another day of paid hyperbole and, what we in the trade like to colloquially refer to as "total and utter BS," but I'm not. Yet. First I'm going to gush about my latest musical obsession, Band of Skulls. As is often the case now that I'm no longer a child in the '70s/'80s devouring Kerrang!, Rolling Stone,NME and Creem with hungry dripping jaws to read up on the next Hanoi Rocks or Pulp, I'm late to this party. Never the mind. It's better to bust in after a few kegs are drained. By then, most of the savages have fallen into a stupor (or slumber), and you're left with the people who want to sit on a tree stump and talk about Rush.
So...Band of Skulls. I listen to Planet Rock on the weekends (streaming, of course) and sometimes I dance around the dial to other UK stations to hear what's being played over there. I kept hearing this band and kept finding their sound an interesting mix of heavy, catchy, infectious and dreamy. All words I look for in my escapism. And then, that wondrous thing happened that only comes around every so often: I found that I'd been unconsciously drawn to this band because a few of their songs (the songs I kept playing over and over, elatedly) were—lyrically—mirrors of things I'm going through in my own life at this exact moment. Which just gave my love more weight. "Nightmares" is my new driving song. When I have the courage to drive. Which I'm finding I have more and more when I listen to the song. And "Bruises" is a close second. I've already pre-ordered their new album, Himalayan. I look forward to more wild animal anger and padded catharsis. Meanwhile, I'm going to brush and gargle. But while the others are tapping pens on steno pads today, flinging the BS, I'll be a million miles away, watching the bruises heal.
Rumor has it blogging twice in the same day is a cardinal sin among hipsters. I hate hipsters, so here's my second post of the day. I'm thinking of starting a separate blog for fiction. Micro fiction to be exact. Since reading The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret, I've been obsessed with the freedom and irresistible challenge of extremely short stories. For a journalism major (just the facts) who wanted to write movies (...and the music swells), micro fiction is my long-awaited peanut butter cup. If I get some together I'll throw them into a separate blog and give you guys the URL. Meanwhile, has anyone besides me heard Jake E. Lee's new band, Red Dragon Cartel?
If so, thoughts? To be journalistically just, I'll hold mine until I've listened to the entire album a few more times, but I've always loved Jake's style.
I'm no parapsychologist, but I'm pretty sure if your idea of the perfect weekend is staying up until 5am Saturday morning after a breathless four-hour conversation about pain, beauty and art; sleeping 'til 11:00; waking to a cold, wet-charcoal day and thinking "Yes!"; and proceeding to celebrate the lack of light with a medley of early Metallica while wishing you had a view of the moors...you just might be a vampire.
I blame whoever gave me my first copy of Hound of the Baskervilles and let me play Help! on my Mickey Mouse turntable, thus infecting me with full-blown Anglophilia by the age of nine (you know who you are). I do not like scraping ice or shoveling 18 inches of snow. Nor do I like the kind of precipitation that can rip your roof off. But I love to be cold and I love rainy days. It brings out my inner Shirley Manson (who's always in there, millimeters behind the worker bee with my Achilles' Heel poised to pummel your teeth in).
Rain gives me the social go-ahead to slow down, which I damn well do anyway, but feel pressured to lie about come Monday morning at the water cooler: THEM How was your weekend? Did you have a good weekend? What did you do this weekend? Did you do anything fun this weekend?
ME Oh, pretty good. I started reading Infinite Jest, plus the first few chapters of Candide, watched a documentary about J.D. Salinger, and outlined an idea for a series of short stories that use geographical metaphors to explore the current emotional state of the average middle class Gen X American within an increasingly insular society. THEM I built a tree house for charity.
Telling sunny types you don't like sweating through your bra by nine a.m. for nine months a year is like telling them you're bringing fetus fajitas to the spring picnic. They'll figure you're either a vampire or a Muslim. So I relish days like today when the joggers, the cross fitters, the triathletes and the yoga booty ballerinas are stuck inside watching Pretty Woman for the hundredth time. Not that I begrudge them their sun. I just need a few dark days to keep breathing.
Push The Sky Away (lyrics) I was ridin', I was ridin', oh
The sun, the sun, the sun was rising from the field
I got a feeling I just can't shake
I got a feeling that just won't go away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And if your friends think that you should do it different
And if they think that you should do it the same
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And if you feel you got everything you came for
If you got everything and you don't want no more
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And some people say it's just rock 'n' roll
Aw, but it gets you right down to your soul
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
Sometimes the universe goads you to keep going. This was the case this morning when I woke up singing "All The Way From Memphis," one of those songs that—after you hear it the first time—makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.
My brain being a database of rock and roll relativity, the song made me think of Joe Elliott (a huge Mott The Hoople fan), which made me think about the Planet Rock radio show he hosts, which made me want to listen online to his most recent playlist. This, and a pound of Peet's coffee, is what got me out of bed. Alas, the UK-based Planet Rock radio player wouldn't load on my US-based Mac. I updated my Flash player to no avail. I tried and tried and tried until it became a quest. But, in the end, I had to give up and load Sirius instead. Which led me to Tom Petty's Buried Treasure, a channel I'd never clicked on before. I like Tom Petty. I like him a lot, but had always assumed his catalog would be flooded with Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers. And it was, but I heard a Neil Young song I'd never heard before ("The Loner") that, musically if not lyrically (or perhaps both) embodied the essence of my '70s childhood. And a Zombies song I'd never heard before ("This Will Be Our Year"). And a Hendrix song (whose title I've stupidly forgotten) that prompted Petty to say, "Wow. If you listened to that song with headphones every day, I'm not sure you'd be able to walk very well."
Did I say I liked Tom Petty? I love him.
Throw in the three seasons of Veronica Mars I've just begun watching on Amazon Prime (never saw the show before), the David Foster Wallace book I downloaded to my Kindle (never read him before), my new Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (I can't wait to learn Muse), and the fact that I'm getting my eyebrows reshaped and I'd say I'm turning a sucktacular week into one kickass glass of frontier spirit lemonade. To keep my chi cranked up, I'm creating a collage of framed black and white photos for my hallway of people I aspire to be like, because they inspire me to be myself. Here are a few of them. Who would yours be?
To quote one of my all time favorite film characters, Bob Diamond, from Defending Your Life, I'd tell you where I've been but you wouldn't understand. And then you'd say, "Try me." And I'd say (to again quote Bob Diamond), "I was trapped in the inner circle of fault." And then I'd make fun of your little brain. So let's skip that awkward moment and just jump back in. Not much has changed. I moved to a new apartment about a week ago, and now I can walk to work. So I don't have panic attacks on the way to work. But now I have them everywhere else. When stuck in traffic in other people's cars. When lost in Olive Garden on my way back from the bathroom. And my favorite, when trying to explain to my therapist, the panic attack specialist, why I can't tell my boss I need to leave early once a week to see my panic attack therapist who refuses to see me outside of her 9–5 office hours. The best part of that story is that when—during a text conversation with her—I told her I was really sorry my work schedule was inflexible and thanked her for all she'd done to that point, and that I hoped we could work out a schedule in the future, her professional psychiatric method of consoling me (the panic attack sufferer) was to completely blow me off. That's right. She never replied to my text and I never heard from her again. I did see her from afar while celebrating the holidays with my mom at a local hotel. I don't know if she saw me. I didn't stick around to find out. I think my exact words to my mom were "Shit! My therapist!" and I dropped to the ground and crab-walked into the nearest gift shop. That pretty much brings us up to date! I'm only halfway unpacked in my new place, which may very well be my optimal way of life. I have what I need but I'm ready to take off. I signed an eight-month lease here and, without going into it because I don't want to ever talk about work in my blog (or its comments section) because God knows who might find it and read it, it looks like 2014 won't be the year I tour Europe signing hardcover copies of my imminent best-seller: "What Would Rob Halford Do?" However, I am spending tonight with Rob Halford. After a crushing day that left my psyche shanked and splintered, I consoled myself by eating a really big sandwich, drinking a glass of chocolate almond milk, and watching my favorite two episodes of Metal:Evolution (NWOBHM and Thrash). So, as I contemplate responsibility, mortality, and Alfonso Cuaron's herpes joke, I am—as Penny Lane instructed—visiting my friends from the record store (okay, so she said to visit them IN the record store, but there aren't any of those anymore, thank you bullshit millennial culture). It's nice to know that after 30 years, no one can cheer me up like those particular friends. And that, after 30 years, my beloved Sheffield boys can still make the mean reds fade away, back into the inner circle of fault.
