Sad Boy

I kinda feel like I got a red hot poker jammed in my stomach. I fucking nuked that relationship I had going and I’m sorta bummed about it. I dunno. I went to a show last night. Teenage Bottlerocket. It was pretty good. I was hanging with my buddy and we were talking. We got to talking about this girl and I brought him up to speed on it. I guess I was just getting frustrated. The last time I talked to her was a month ago. Since then we’ve just exchanged random texts that usually end with me sending one and not receiving one. I hate to be a needy little girl, but I definitely needed more communication. My bud and I were talking about it and he was just like, come clean with her. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. My original plan was just to wait it out. That just doesn’t fit with my personality. I just wanted to be honest with her. It probably wasn’t the best idea to send a text at 1130 on a Sunday night. I just figured it was as good a time as any. I basically just said that the “one text every two weeks situation wasn’t working for me.” I told her that if it doesn’t work for her, then let’s talk more. Or if she just wants to call it a day, let’s just do that. I’ve been fighting the urge to give her the out, because I really didn’t want her to take it. She took it. She basically responded that she has been busy with her divorce, two kids, new job, etc., and that she wishes me all the best. The funny thing is, I didn’t have to wait 3 days to get the response, I got it almost immediately. I was hoping for “let’s talk this week,” but I think I set myself up, and now I just have to accept the fact that I nuked the thing.

Teenage bottlerocket was pretty good. They remind me of the methadones a lot, except that they’re not the methadones which is kind of a bummer. I’d rather see the methadones. The show was at this place called Subterranean. I’ve never been there. Upon arrival, we walked into the vestibule and the music was emanating from the upstairs. I guess Subterranean is a bit of a misnomer, we ascended the stairs and entered the rock area. The place was pretty tiny. I guess it’s a little bigger than the beat kitchen. I wouldn’t say it could hold more than 200 people. I could be wrong there. They have an upstairs area where you can look over the balcony and see the band. We were like 5 feet from the stage and we really didn’t need any better vantage point, our spot was pretty sweet. There were some pretty cool looking punks there. Not really real punks, more posers, but they were getting pretty rowdy. There was a nice mosh pit going. My buddy got in there and mixed it up. I really didn’t. I’m sure I would own right now, I’m in pretty solid shape. I just wasn’t up for it. Some guy was getting rambunctious next to me, so I started pushing him. Then he grabbed me and we started jumping around and smashing into people. I let go and let him get enveloped by the mosh and that was that, I went back to my chill position. I guess Neil from the Lawrence arms was playing drums for TB cuz their drummer had a broken hand. I really couldn’t tell that the drummer was switching and I have no idea what Neil looks like, so I didn’t know until they announced it. That’s pretty cool that he can just sit in and play with about anybody and any time. I’m guessing he’s a TB fan or friend and knows the songs, which would help. Neil also played drums on the Noise by Numbers album.

I’ve got a crazy busy week this week, which is good I guess. I’ll be really glad to get some sleep tonight. I haven’t slept more than 5 hours in the last two days. The A/C is out and it’s like a million degrees in my room. I slept w just a sheet over me last night and I was a sweaty mess. I’m pretty worn down right now, I worked out yesterday morning, then I took the boys for a run. When the boys were done running, I went on another mile or so and I think I put in about 3 miles. Then we went golfing in the afternoon. I was just dying in the heat. Throw the show in there and I’m basically totally spent right now. Today I have the kids and I have to go to a wake tonight. Then tomorrow I’ve got this management training thing at work til 7. Wednesday I have the kids. Thursday I’m meeting with the guys from Red Tape Theatre, then I think I have practice with the new band. I’m nowhere near ready to play the new songs. I haven’t practiced. I gotta try to work in some practice this week. I also need to work out and sleep. I’d like to get a couple of runs in there too. Crazy times.

I have no idea

I’m being semi-stalked by this girl on Match. I dunno. It’s like she gave me the dis (at Interpol like I said), then a day later she checked out my profile. I figured she was just taking one last look at the gorgeous hunk of man that she let slip through her fingers. Then today, almost two weeks later, she checks out my profile again. I’m def not going to check out her profile. I wasn’t that broken up about her moving on, and I don’t have much desire to rekindle it. I did think about it this morning which is a little weird from an esp standpoint. I was thinking about her. I was just thinking that maybe she was really waiting for me to call all weekend and then when I didn’t call til Sunday, she was probably pretty cheesed. I told her I had the kids, and it was Beauty and the Beast weekend. I was literally running all over the place for the entire weekend. There was nothing I could do. It’s tough. I’d like to at least meet up with the punk rock woman, and I can’t find a free minute. It’s crazy. I have the kids Monday and Wednesday, and then I have management training, and that will go late next Tuesday. I have something going next Thursday and I will mention that later. I think I also have practice next Thursday, so that means all weekend I’ll be playing the drums, when I’m not carting the kids all over town for football. It’s tough. Then I have Teenage bottlerocket on Sunday.

I have to touch on a topic here and I think it is fairly well established. There are dudes, friends that I hang out with, that are very good looking guys. In my opinion, hanging out with them sorta raises my stature in the eyes of any ladies who might be around. It’s like very good looking guy, pretty good looking guy with him, it sort of legitimizes you in a way. I’m not saying that I need to be legitimized (but I don’t think it hurts), I’m just saying that by association, you get raised up a notch. I have to ask a woman if this concept is sound, or if it’s irrelevant. It works for girls. A decent looking girl will get more looks if she is with a hot friend. It’s like you’ll check out the hottie and say “She’s out of my league…but her friend…” I can see that happening. The other thing about these dudes is that they are married, so they are off the market. They are perfect wingmen. This is an established concept, the wingman; it doesn’t hurt if your wingman is a good looking dude. That definitely helps. That’s all I’m saying. I think my buddy who balks at the idea of being legitimized is just interpreting it the wrong way. I’m not saying without them that we’re illegitimate, or that we don’t have a chance, I’m just saying that with them, we have a better chance. So anyway, yesterday I saw one of the guys walking down the sidewalk, so I stopped him for a chat. He had to go, and I was thinking about this concept and how I need to hang with these guys more. As I was thinking about this, I was smiling. I was walking across the street and somebody shouts, “Hey buddy!” It was the other guy who is the perfect wingman. I ran into both of them, randomly, in the span of about 2 minutes. Very odd. So anyway I’m going to see Teenage Bottlerocket with the 2nd guy on Sunday. That should be a blast.

Next Thursday I have a very, very important business meeting. This guy at work is in a theater group called Red Tape Theatre. I saw one of their shows and it was really good. The other day, the guy sent around a message that said the Theater was looking for board members. Basically you just attend the meetings, throw out ideas and help out. I really don’t know what you do. So I contacted the guy from the message and I am meeting with him and another dude next Thursday. I am already envisioning how this is going to go. To set the stage: the guys I’m meeting with are Paul and James. We are meeting at a starbucks.



Late Afternoon Starbucks, 3 men sitting on soft chairs.



Me: Thanks for meeting with me guys. I’m really excited about being a member of the Red Tape Theater board.



Paul: No worries dude. Thanks for the interest.



James: I think my latte is decaf.



Me: Ok guys, let’s talk Franchise.



Paul: Franchise?



James: This is definitely Decaf.



Me: You’ve heard of McDonalds right? I’m thinking about taking red tape theater global. We’ll sell Franchises. People will be able to stop in and get a little bit of theater for just a few hard-earned dollars. We’ll have a Shakespeare menu, Mamet, Greek tragedies, it will be a one stop shop. We can even have a happy meal type play for the kids.



Paul: Are you on the level?



Me: Which level? Like Mario Brothers?



James: I love the Wii.



Me: I bet you do.



Paul: I don’t like your idea, but I like the fact that you think outside of the box.



James: We abhor box-thinking.



Me: Ok guys, that was just an aperitif. Now let’s talk Turkey. Literally. Turkey. We can serve Turkey at the shows. People love Turkey and the L-tryptophan will make them too mellow to complain if the play sucks.



James: Like cold cuts?



Me: James, I’m glad you asked. Not cold cuts, this isn’t some dime store operation, we are going to have fully baked turkeys, just like on Thanksgiving. You come to the show, on the way to your seat you are handed a plate with a slab of fresh-cut Turkey breast on it.



Silence



Me: Your thoughts?



Paul: I’m an actor, and I’m actually speechless.



James: Look at the time. Oh dear me, I do have to run.



Paul: I better go with you. We can share a cab.



Me: So, should I expect a call?



Paul: Don’t call us, we’ll call you.



Me: Ok, cool. I prefer it that way. The ball’s in your court…s. See you.



Sorry about that. I kinda got carried away. I’m not sure how the meeting is going to go, but I really don’t think it’s going to go like the thing I just wrote.

I finally finished Atlas Shrugged. It was a book. It still is. It was a book that I hadn’t read. Now it’s a book that I have read. That’s about all. My walk to work went about 2 minutes quicker today cuz I don’t have the book in my backpack anymore. I started a new book today and I don’t think it’s going to take me 4 months to read like AS did. It’s Curt Cobain’s diary. I’m through about 30 pages and I really like it. It’s a much easier read than AS, and it’s basically photocopied pages right from his journal in sort of a workbook type of format. As you can imagine he has some stories, and it’s difficult to determine how much of the story is actually based in fact, the stories are good though. There’s also a lot of random shit strewn about in the journal, and that stuff is kind of annoying. The cartoons are good. He’s an amazing artist. There’s a picture of Eddy, the mascot of Iron Maiden in there and it has amazing detail. It’s hard for me to believe that Curt actually drew it. I don’t think they would put it in there if he didn’t. From reading the book, you can definitely tell that Curt is a smart guy; it’s weird because he’s so unrefined. His education is limited. I’m guessing he barely got out of high school. He has some very philosophical musings and he often makes cogent, coherent arguments about important topics. Then other times he’s just spewing out meaningless drivel and misspelling words. You really get an interesting glimpse at him and you can learn a lot if you care to.

I could talk about other stuff. I had dinner last night with a friend that I hadn’t seen in a while. I know he is very religious and takes his Christianity very seriously. It was fun and interesting. I think it’s interesting when people are very religious. I wonder what they are thinking and how they interpolate it all into their lives. We did talk a bit about God, Jesus and the Bible. It was funny because he mentioned the song 40, that is based on the Biblical psalm 40. He kept quoting from it and it was interesting. He said it meant a lot to him. I believe it. He did keep going back to a topic that amazingly very few people have mentioned to me, reconciling. He asked me a number of times whether I considered reconciling with my wife. I told him that we both had basically moved on. I think maybe one priest that I went to confession with, other than my friend, mentioned reconciliation. Even Priests were saying, “Ok, it’s over, do the best you can for the kids, try to part amicably.” For a while, every time I went to confession I thought I was going to get “a reconcile with your wife” speech and it never came. That’s weird. None of my friends or family (other than this friend) even consider it an option. Once I explained my reasoning for not reconciling, I think my friend was accepting of it. I dunno. It’s just interesting. Oh well. Big weekend ahead. Lot’s of running around. I’ll have more stories next week.

It takes a very steady hand...

I really don’t feel like I have much to say right now. That has never stopped me before though. So here I go. I don’t know if this is embarrassing or what. I guess there is a story here that probably doesn’t need to be told. I’m going to tell it. Back in the day (4 months ago), I was in heavy communication with this girl and we were basically all lined up to bump uglies. She was sending me naked pictures and it was basically a lock. So anyway. I’m talking to her and she’s like, “Yeah, I was hooking up with this guy and I put my hand down his pants, he had like a forest down there, it was a total turn off.” I’m like, “Oh.” I had never trimmed my nether regions. Ever. I saw no need. Everyone I ever hooked with seemed fine with it. It was natural. It was my own personal shower-scrunchi. Well finally the day arrived when I was supposed to go to this girl’s place, so I broke down and weed-whacked my shower scrunchi. It was kind of a bummer, but it was rather nice and breezy as well. As luck would have it, I didn’t make it over to her place, then the whole thing fell apart (I had to diss her) and we never hooked. That was like 3 or 4 months ago when I trimmed back the shrub, and what do you know, it basically had grown back by last weekend. I decided to give it another trim. Last time I used these barber scissors that I had lying around, so I went with that again. Everything was going pretty well. When you trim, you def flirt with danger, especially when you are using scissors. Um yeah. Last time with the scissors. I was just putting the finishing touches on my new ‘do when I snipped myself. It sucked pretty bad. I wasn’t sure what was up, the skin down there is so thin that I thought it was gonna bleed like crazy. It didn’t. I tried putting a band-aid on it, but that really doesn’t work due to the varying stages of shrivel that occur down there. I just basically had to let it go. I wasn’t sure what was up, and I had white undies on. By the end of the day, there were some blood stains in the undies. I put Neosporin on it like crazy, cuz the worst case scenario would be to have it get infected. It scabbed over the next day and was basically back to normal. I think the scab fell off today, so it healed in like 4 days. That’s pretty amazing. That area does get a lot of blood flow though, so maybe that aids the healing process. Yeah. I’m going to have to find a new way to weedwhack my shower scrunchi, that’s for sure.

On to brighter topics. Well not really brighter, but the online dating thing is proving to be a frustrating venture. The one woman I really like, we had a good date, we had some good e-mails, well she really has fallen out of touch. She seems to have a lot of technical problems, with e-mail, phone and text, so basically I have no way to get in touch with her. It’s actually rather comical. She doesn’t answer e-mails, so she def doesn’t have computer access. She has sent me a couple of texts that usually begin “I’m so sorry” and end with a sob story about how one of her devices (cell phone) is not working correctly. As I write this, I realize how much the whole thing strains credulity. I know it really does. I don’t know what my choices are right now. On one hand, I could mentally just give it up and decide that even if she does get in touch, that we’re done. That would be closure. Or I could just chill and when she gets in touch, I can just say “Oh I know you’re busy, I’m busy too, no big deal.” I’m leaning towards that. There’s also the possibility that she never gets a hold of me and that we are done. Well last week I mentioned that I had 5 women in contact with me (not physically unfortunately) and well that number has dwindled. The woman who tried to line me up as a hook-up, she’s gone. No worries. The burlesque dancer never answered my second message to her, she was not a good match anyway. She gone. I had to give one of the punk rockers the diss. She wasn’t really attractive and she wanted me to call her. I just bailed on that. I did exchange messages with the other punk girl, but I haven’t put any time into that, and it’s probably fizzling. Although, I should probably try to line something up with her next week. I got winked at by an African American woman with huge boobs. She’s really cute. I sent her a message, but she didn’t respond. She might not be a match member, either that, or she just wised up. It did say that she was into music in her profile, her one example of this fact, Chicago. That’s pretty awesome. I mean on some level. It’s like if you go through your whole list of favorite artists, you boil it all down to Chicago. Good times.

I’ve got a busy weekend coming up starting tomorrow. The boys have football practice or scrimmages, I don’t know. They’ve got practice tomorrow night and then we are going to the local high school football game. That should be fun. On Saturday we have scrimmages, and then on Sunday I’m going to see Teenage Bottlerocket with my buddy. I’m pretty fired up for that. I don’t know much of TB’s stuff, but what I know I dig, and they def play the style of music I’m into (not really much like Chicago). That’s about it. Keep on rocking.

A lyrical joyride

On OKCupid, one of the questions is “When you waste a whole day and do nothing, how do you feel?” When I waste a day and do nothing, I feel bad. I have so much stuff to do, writing, hanging with the kids, divorce stuff, work, reading, working out, playing the drums, etc. that wasting a day just doesn’t happen. To me, wasting a day is when I do stuff, but don’t get as much accomplished as I should have. I never have a day when I just do nothing. This last weekend was sorta like that for me though. I did a lot of stuff, but nothing major. I worked out every day. I practiced the drums every day. I also saw a couple of movies. I watched some sports, but it’s hard to watch the Sox implode and I don’t watch preseason football. I do have some interesting tidbits from the weekend, and without further ado, here they are.



Practicing the drums. I dunno what was up with drummers from the 80s/90s, but they loved to ride that hi-hat. I dunno what it’s called and I’m a drummer, but basically both sticks pummeling the hi-hat for the entire song. It’s tough. Throw in “Where the streets have no names” and you’ve got a workout. Ok. I got ahead of myself. I’m sort of in a new band. I say “sort of” because I haven’t practiced with them or met them, but it sounds like we have 4 solid players and we are ready to get this thing going. We have Thursdays mapped out as our practice day and I think we are gonna be practicing in Downers Grove, which is like 5 mins from my house. Much better than Park Forest, which was an hour each way. The other band was more serious, which meant that I was never gonna be an official member cuz I can’t go on tour and all that. I just wasn’t a good fit. This one is more like a hobby and that is perfect for me. So the guy that organized the whole thing put together a list of tunes and we all voted on our first 10 songs to learn for practice. We ended up with 14 songs to practice (over an hour of material). On Friday night I went through half the set, on Sat morning I went through the other half. Then on Sunday, I went for broke and went through the whole set non-stop. No mean feat. These songs are hard. Here’s the setlist:



Just like Honey: The Jesus and Mary Chain

With or Without You: U2

Where the Streets have no names: u2

Where is my mind: The pixies

Bittersweet Symphony: The verve

Lucky Man: The verve

Fake Plastic Trees: Radiohead

Ceremony: Joy Division

New Dawn Fades: Joy Division

I am the resurrection: Stone Roses

Pictures of You: The cure

Just like Heaven: The cure

Reptile: The church

Everyday is like Sunday: Morrissey



I’m not so sure about the Verve, but everything else on here kicks ass, and unfortunately most of the songs are really tough for me to play. That’s what practice is for I guess. I think I’ll get them with practice, but the chances of me screwing up live are like 100%. I don’t really care though. I’m def getting ahead of myself worrying about playing live, we gotta practice first. I’m way geeked about the songs though, and the guys seem cool. I think the band’s name should be 120 Minutes.



I had some time to kill on Saturday, I wanted to go see Sundowner, but that fell through. I ended up doing nothing. Well I knocked out a movie that I have been meaning to watch and was available on On Demand. The Deer Hunter. I had never seen it. This movie is over 3 hours. They don’t make movies like this anymore (some would say that’s a good thing). It was good. It was not a feel good movie, it’s the type of movie where you kinda feel like shit when you are done watching it, but it makes you think. I really wanted someone to talk about it with. I bet there is something online where you can go on and discuss movies. I should check that out, or start it up. I think I could write a 20 page paper on the movie, but right now, I don’t feel like I could do it justice by giving it just a cursory comment. It’s a powerful film and if you don’t like to be challenged by a film, then don’t see it. I had some issues with it, some continuity stuff that I’m surprised they messed up. Other than that, it was pretty amazing. De Niro was awesome, definitely a force to be reckoned with.



I ended up with some free time on Sunday night. I was doing Laundry, so I decided to check out another movie. I felt like I crossed a classic off my list and I wanted to do the same thing again. I searched through On Demand, and all I could come up with was…Yentl. I really thought I was gonna hate Yentl, I told myself that if after the first hour I was into it, I would turn it off. I ended up really liking it. I had no idea it was a musical. The songs were not very catchy. The performances were pretty solid, the story was really good. Some of the situations that Yentl got into really blew my mind. They were just things that I never would’ve thought of. It made me really think about screenwriting. How to create a character that will appeal to a wide audience. Well, you have to create the character, suck the audience in, and then put the character in trying situations with difficult choices. That’s all Yentl was, and it worked.



This crap is all boring though. Not much on the dating tip. All I can say is that I stumbled across this profile. It speaks for itself. I did not contact the person. The profile included a pic of the woman naked except for panties. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest and her face obscured by the camera. I think it’s real. Happy reading. I cut and pasted the profile for your reading pleasure below:



At the end of the Kafka story "A Hunger Artist," the title character confesses that he would have eaten, if only he could have found a food that satisfied him. That line is resonating with me, because I am starving, but lately I have not been able to find a food that satisfies me. Save me from making a performance of renunciation by giving me the food I need.

I need you to take me in hand as soon as we meet, to speak to me in low, even tones, to tell me what you'll do to me, what I'll do for you, to let me know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are alpha animal and I am beta, to hold down my hands as you bring my drink to my lips, to take me in a corner where we hope no one will see and tilt my head back and put your fingers deep in my mouth. I need you to take me to your house and hold me and control me. I need you to hurt me, but I need you to know how to hurt me. I need you to bring me to where too much suddenly isn't. I need to be babied and fed and comforted. And I need to be fucked.

Please.

And please, tell me what you want. I could tell you stories of my past lovers, how hard I've worked for them, how I've pushed myself to give them everything they needed, how loving and accepting I've been. Of course, I can only be that for you if you are that for me. And it all comes with time. First, I need to be fucked.

I don't like the words "slave" and "master"; "master" I will call you if it's what you prefer or demand, but I am no one's slave. I prefer "submissive." I will not pretend that I want nothing but to devote myself to someone who doesn't make me feel well-attended to. I am a hungry pet who'll have a lot of gratitude for the man who feeds me, but I would not describe my motto as "I live to serve." I live for a warm, reciprocal relationship in which both of us get what we need. That said, when inspired, enthralled, or in love, I am a very good girl, and depending on the way our relationship developed, I could be willing to be obedient in many settings, not just in bed.

I'm height weight proportionate, in good physical shape, tallish, size 6, small breasts, strong legs, round ass. I have a lovely face with large eyes and prominent features, a farmer's fair daughter type. Pictures of my face make an excellent case for fucking me, and I will send them if you contact me.



Edited by







I’m looking for

· Guys and girls who like bi girls

· Ages 25-46

· Near me

· Who are single

· For new friends, long-term dating, short-term dating, casual sex

·

You should message me if

Someone asked me recently what turned me on in a lover, and I said: physical strength; a low, regular voice giving me orders; a warm, animal smell; bravery; the uninhibited expression of love, or at least affection, depending on our relationship; self-control; deep and manifest acceptance of and appreciation for my body and everything it does; rhythm; creativity and a thirst for variety; tenderness; intuition for what's going on in my body and mind without me having to say too much; patience; and of course, intelligence expressed verbally. That last is crucial. You'll use your words to structure our experience; I want to know you can make them transport me.

Illicit Cheese

I’ve got stuff to talk about today and I don’t know where to begin. I’m reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and I’ve got about 100 pages left of 1170. I’m in the home stretch. It’s not bad. The problem for me is that Rand basically crafted this piece of fiction as a vehicle to expound her political beliefs. Definitely not the first time this has been done, but the first few 100 times it was done, it was done better. In the Fountainhead, the novel was character driven. I would say AS is more political dogma driven and the characters are just vehicles to this purpose. That is my one huge issue with the book. That was until I got to “the speech.” I don’t want to spoil the book for someone who may want to read it (or the movie which I think is in production). Suffice to say, there is a speech at the end of the book and to put it mildly, getting through it was excruciating. I’m through it, bring on the denouement. (spelled right the first time, I’m good!) Ok, so I’m reading through this speech and randomly interspersed in the text is the phrase “blank-out,” sometimes it appears as blanks-out. I can’t figure out what that means. I can’t decide if the publisher was somehow censoring certain words or if it’s just part of the speech. Seriously, when blank-outs appear, it seems totally nonsensical from the context. I have no desire to go back and figure it out and a google search was useless as well. It’s annoying and totally baffling. On deck, I’ve got Kurt Cobain’s diary. Hopefully there are no blank-outs in that.



I had a couple more things to mention about Lolla. I totally forgot to talk about the concessions. I didn’t consume that much there, at least I tried not to, but I was shocked at how reasonably everything was priced. A quarter of a lou Malnati’s small pizza was $3. That was the bargain for me. I pretty much subsisted on Lou’s cheese pizza the whole weekend. That was a good thing. I also had a pulled pork sandwich, that might’ve been three bucks, and a mini meatball sandwich was 2 or 3 bucks. I think a can of beer was 4 bucks. Water was 2 bucks and you only had to buy 1 cuz you could refill at any of the water stations located around the park. I don’t think T shirts were a good deal, but I have so many Ts and they are such a waste. I can really only bring myself to buy a T if it’s $10 and the money is going to a band that needs it. Overall, logistically, financially, sonically, the experience inside Lolla was very pleasant. The crowds weren’t too bad either. Foot traffic made it a little tough to get from one side to the other, but other than that, the crowds weren’t overwhelming.



Ok. Now to the good stuff. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get to the crazy dating night I had last night. Well all online. It started rather innocently with an IM exchange with the girl I mentioned yesterday who I hadn’t made time for. I sent her an IM at about 6 or so, and I was surprised to get a quick response. She was responding from her cell phone. Kinda crazy, she seemed up for talking whereas I wouldn’t have been if someone was IMing me on my cell. I don’t even know how to set that up. We chatted for a while, it went pretty well. She works in Oak Brook, which is a stone’s throw from where I live. I told her we def need to grab a beer sometime to which she replied, “After a day like today, I need some booze!” Guess she had a tough day. Eventually the connection got all messed and I wanted to go for a run, so I did that. This girl is also into punk, so we have something in common there, we’ll see. There’s another girl who messaged me off of match, she’s into punk too, but I can’t decide if she might be mildly mentally challenged. Safe to say I’m not that interested in her. There’s another girl who is into burlesque and open relationships, I had a message thing going with her and she bailed, I dunno what I said, she was cute though. I have no idea what I did to start garnering all this attention, like I said before, maybe some women are trying to line up foot-warmers for the winter, and they are starting early.



There’s one woman who checked out my profile on Match, I had checked out her profile as well, and I just can’t bring myself to message her. I can’t do it, because there is only one thing I want to say, and I’ll get to that later. On her profile she has like 14 pictures and among these pictures are: a pic of her scuba diving, a pic of her deep sea fishing, a pic of the giant marlin she apparently caught, a pic of her on a snowmobile, a pic of her running in a race, a pic of her skiing, a pic of her apparently landing after skydiving, a pic of her at a cubs game, and a pic of her somewhere tropical. She’s really cute, she looks great in all the pix, but I dunno, she just seems too active for me. If I messaged her, it would probably go something like this, “I like your profile, you seem really active. Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just think it would be funny if you somehow got a picture of yourself in a spacesuit as if you had just landed on the moon. You might have to go to the Smithsonian to get something like that, but it would be absolutely awesome.” I dunno. I tried to think of other things to send her, but I can’t in good conscience send her a message without mentioning the fact that she has a million crazy-active interests. I mean who would be a good match for her? Jacques Cousteau? James Bond?



I saved the best for last, I had a first last night (that sounded confusing). I should’ve been in bed, as all good boys should before 10. Instead I was back on OKCupid. I was reading somebody’s journal entry that was really pathetic. It was sad. Then a window popped up and somebody had instant messaged me; first time for that, I don’t even know how to send someone else an instant message. She said hi, I said hi. She said she was at some concert. I always assume the best, so I’m thinking it was someone good, she says she was in Hinsdale (a town close to me, and her, she’s in LaGrange). She saw the band 7th heaven. I surmised from the discussion that she had a few drinks. She was all like, “I didn’t want to come home.” I’m like, “ok.” She sounded like she was all amped up, but out of nowhere she says, “I’m tired, I’m going to bed.” And that was it. So a few minutes later I went and checked out her profile. She was not attractive, but not awful, and quite possibly mentally challenged. Her profile indicated that she was still on line. I’m naïve. I know it, and I accept it. I was way slow on the uptake there, she was looking for a hookup. She wanted someone to meet her out and who knows what. She bailed on me (I def was not going to go out, I ran, and didn’t eat dinner, bed was calling). I’m sure she moved on to find some other dude to hook with. That’s the story. Pretty weird. Lotsa crazy stuff in this day and age

Useless Drivel

Every once in a while I get a wild hair up my butt and I actually seriously consider going to law school. It happened today and I wish someone would beat me up to make it go away. I can think of some good reasons to get a JD (Juris Doctorate, aka Law degree), but going deep into debt to do it is not one of them. A lot of chief compliance officers have JDs. I don’t think they all do; the ones that don’t probably have a shitload of experience in Finance, which imho I do. I’m thinking that I could really progress in my career with a JD. I’m also thinking that taking 3 years to get a JD might not be the best way to spend my time right now. It’s a conundrum for me. On one hand, I want to be a writer, I want to write screenplays, I want to be a creator. Those are dreams (or one dream, I guess), on the other hand I want to be successful and wealthy I guess, and maybe getting a JD and moving up the ladder in my current career is a way to do that. Obviously going to Law School sorta cuts into free time for other things like work, family, writing, breathing. Like I said, it’s a passing thing, like a cold. It will go away soon.

What won’t go away is the ragweed pollen in the air. I hate that shit. It messes me up for sure. The other day my eyes were itchy and I thought “what month is it?” Early Aug? Ragweed. The last few years I haven’t gotten it that bad, but this year might be different. I gotta make sure I’m all stocked up on Allegra. That stuff works great for me, it knocks it right out.

I came to an interesting conclusion today about online dating and stuff. There’s this one woman who I’m kinda interested in, and kinda not. We exchanged information and we are supposed to chat sometime online, that was last week. It’s tough. The kids take a lot of your time. Last weekend was a whirlwind for me, I didn’t have time to get in touch with anybody. The one woman bailed (I mentioned yesterday) probably because of that, I told her I would call her over the weekend. I called her Sunday night. She didn’t answer, and I was glad cuz I could leave a message and fulfill my obligation. Anyway, this other woman I tried to instant message her a couple of times, and we just haven’t made the connection. I sent her an e-mail and said “let’s pick a time and get this chat going.” The fact of the matter is that I’m not that interested in her, and I’m not really making time for her. This is all well and good, but the question is, could this be applied to other people I’m in contact with, who don’t seem to be making time for me? Interesante. I don’t know the answer, it’s definitely possible, and I firmly believe that if someone is interested in you, they will make the time to stay in touch. It’s weird, I don’t know if it’s gamesmanship, but sometimes people just don’t get back to you. It’s all just up in the air. I guess it’s just the reality of it, you just have to be patient and wait it out.

Weird thing. I’m walking down the train platform and I’m sorta just wanting to be left alone, like I always am in the morning on the way to work. I’m never up for a casual chat with someone I don’t know, I just want to chill. I’m walking down the platform and I see an old couple who are long time friends of my parents. I could’ve easily just walked on by. I didn’t. I stopped, confirmed they were who I thought they were (there was no doubt, just an ice breaker) and introduced myself. I talked to them for the 5 minutes before the train arrived. It was really nice. The guy went to Northwestern and used to get us tickets for the NW hoops games sometimes. It looked like they were going on a trip, so I inquired about that. Dude was going on a trip to the hospital to get a growth removed from his colon. Not sure if they were removing the growth or part of his colon. Neither one sounds like a good time. He said it was a routine procedure and that the growth was benign. Ok. It was nice catching up with them. I def feel like I’m taking more chances and just doing the right thing more. I dunno if it’s because of the dating or what, but I feel like I’m becoming a bit more outgoing, and it’s not bad.

Miscellany

Yesterday was definitely a survival day for me. A couple of months ago, during the World Cup, I went out during the week. I can’t remember where I went. The next day at work I didn’t feel too good. Well I felt fine in the morning, but then by around noon, I felt like complete ass and was just stupid messed the rest of the day. I was a little concerned that would happen to me yesterday. I was working on limited sleep (4 hours) and I had to attend a conference with some of my superiors. I ate some breakfast, an English muffin and some fruit. That stayed down ok. For lunch I choked down half a sandwich and ate a banana. Right around conference time, I was feeling pretty good, no delayed repercussions like last time. We went to the conference, and I was really worried that the lack of sleep would catch up with me and I would be nodding off in front of everybody. I actually remained pretty chipper. As far as surviving goes, I did a great job. I’m actually kinda proud of myself for pulling it off. I slept like a rock last night, woke up this morning and worked out; back on track. I don’t know how I made it through that conference. It shocks me that people who reach high levels in any industry, the financial industry in this case, don’t have the ability to speak to a crowd. These guys were mumbling, they were ill-prepared, they were slouching. It’s brutal to have to sit through that. The organizers should know this and at least get some visual aids going and get someone moving around. Watching 7 old people sitting at a table gurgling into a microphone gets old pretty quick. I know it’s dry subject matter, but couldn’t they at least try to spruce it up? In the e-mailed itinerary for the conference, they don’t mention swaps once. Well the whole conference was about swaps. I think swaps affect maybe like 10 percent of the people in the room, and that was all they talked about. When I heard swap I was like, “not our business” and I turned my brain off. I had to fight to turn it back on, just to make it through. I’m sure I got something out of the experience, the cookie was good. Fiji water is so tasty. Fiji is def my new favorite water.

On the dating tip, it’s a crazy world out there for sure. I’ve got people coming and going, and people who I thought were gone coming back, it’s a mess. It’s fun to talk to the people and exchange messages, but I don’t see any dates coming soon. I hope I’m wrong. One woman gave me the diss while I was at the Interpol show. We had never even met, and she’s like “I’m just not sure I can handle the fact that you have 3 kids.” She went into more detail and the text was really long (ATT had to break it into 2 parts). I just texted back, “Thx, good luck to you.” I was gonna text something like, “You’re a special girl, I totally understand, you’ll find what you’re looking for, Don’t settle, etc.” I thought that might make her feel bad, if I said too much. I thought, short and simple would be easiest for her, and she won’t regret the decision (well obviously she’ll regret the decision, I’m fairly certain that all of the women that have dissed me so far will come to regret the decision.) That’s me though, I’m supposed to think that way, aren’t I? I thought that was a little odd though, cuz she winked at me, and my profile says I have three kids. Moving on. I was going through some profiles of suggestions on OK Cupid. One of them was a girl I’ve seen before. She’s very indie, punk rock looking, I think she has green hair in one pic. She’s not bad looking. 26. A little young. She’s not shy about the fact that she likes sex. Which is cool. A lot of people on OKC put sex as one of the 6 things they can’t live without. Most would agree. In this girl’s profile under deepest secret I’m willing to admit, she has: “I LOVE ANAL!!!!!!!” You would think that it was a joke, or that someone got a hold of her profile and messed with it, but I don’t think that’s the case. She’s online regularly; everything else about her profile seems legit. I just think she likes anal, and is obviously quite open about it. I really could say more about this, but I think it would be best to leave it at that. I know you’re wondering if I contacted her, I did not. Too young and I’m not interested in a purely sexual relationship right now.

Half the fun of going to a show is the pre party. I think the anticipation is the best part. The rock is good, although quite often, the actual event does not live up to expectations. I try to keep my expectations to a minimum to combat this effect. Before Interpol, I cruised over to my buddy’s place and his brother showed up later. It was a good time, prolly as fun as the show. The reason we were late for the show was cuz I think we were having too much fun sitting around and listening to records. I was basically playing dj all night, then my buddy says, “I want to hear london by the Smiths.” I was like, “I’m not sure I have it.” Then I started picking through my vinyl, and I pulled out a Smiths record that I prolly haven’t listened to in like 5 or more years. Shoplifters of the World. It’s basically a single that’s the size of a full record (12”). What do you know, London is on there. We listened to the whole thing and man did it bring back some good memories. I prolly bought that record when I was 17. Immediately I thought it’s prolly worth money. I dunno how much it’s worth. It has a picture of Elvis on the jacket. I saw one on ebay for like 100 bucks, that had a flaw or something. I’m not gonna sell it anyway.

On the music tip, there’s a band playing tomorrow night that I kinda wanna see. Neutral Uke Hotel. They basically play Neutral Milk Hotel songs and the guy plays ukulele. I dunno. I listened to them on youtube and they sounded ok. I’d like to check them. I was wondering when someone would throw together a NMH tribute. I’m not wondering anymore. There’s another band playing on Saturday I’d like to check. Sundowner. It’s basically Chris from the Lawrence Arms. I’m sure he’ll play some TLA stuff, so def worth checking. Lots of other stuff on the horizon. The national, Jimmy Eat World, The methadones, Riot Fest, lot’s of rock. Also College Football, Pro Football, kiddie football. I’m gonna be busy. Busy is good.

So Very Tired

Interpol last night. Good show. I was gonna say that I don’t get it, but I really do get it. Bands come out earlier during the week. I thought I learned my lesson at the Pretenders. The last night of their stay in Chicago, they have to get on the road, it’s Monday. It all adds up to grabbing the cash and getting your dash on. The show was supposed to start at 730 with one opener. You figure they will play a half hour, a half hour to set up for Interpol, and Interpol will come on around 9. We get there at 9 and the band is on the stage. The guy at the door said they had been on for 20 mins, I think it was more like a half hour. We were there like 38 minutes and they left the stage and said thank you. For the mathematically challenged, that was 9 effin 38 at night. They did two encores and were done by 10. WTF?! I was thinking more like 9 to 11. I dunno where they have to go, but like I said, they got paid. They didn’t cheat the crowd, they just came out really early. Hopefully I learned my lesson with this one. The other lesson I learned is that just because the waitress buys you a shot of Jack, doesn’t mean you have to do it. What was with that? Both waitresses came over to our table to do a shot with us. Did they think it was our birthday (collectively?) Def wish I had a do-over on that one. I feel pretty ok. I think I would feel fine if I hadn’t had the shot. And if I had gotten to bed before 2.



On to other news. So I finally scraped together the stones to find out what somebody’s deal was. It wasn’t the PDA couple, although I did see them yesterday. It wasn’t the guy with the walker, he’s on deck though. It also wasn’t the most sexually fulfilled couple on Earth, but I did see them today. Hadn’t seen them in a while. It was actually someone I haven’t mentioned before. I don’t think. There is this African American gentleman who has a suped-up wheelchair and he cruises around my neighborhood. I think our neighborhood is fairly culturally diverse (not really), but I don’t think this goes over well with the neighbors. The guy likes to ride his wheelchair in the street, much to the chagrin of the Porsches and Benzes trying to get to Whole Foods. I’ve seen the guy around, he wears a maroon baseball hat and just cruises basically. I totally wanted to know what his deal was. So I’m at my kid’s football practice. I’ve got the windows open in my car and I’m waiting for practice to end. The dude goes cruising by and he says “hi” or something. I was surprised cuz I wasn’t even looking in that direction, so I said “hey.” He had already zipped by though. Then I had to move my car. I saw the dude riding his wheelchair offroad through the grass by the pond. Finally I just thought “screw it.” I got out of the car and waited for the dude to drive up. Physically the guy’s deal is that he is missing one leg right in the middle of the thigh. Other than that, he looks pretty normal. He’s not obese or anything. He’s cruising through the grass and he’s about 5 feet away and I say, “That’s quite an all terrain vehicle you’ve got there.” He stutters out, “I I I wwas jjust down feeding the ducks. They see me coming.” I say, “I bet, they probably recognize you.” He says, “yyeah yeah, they ddo.” Then we chatted a little bit about the weather. He was saying how he needs to get out and cruise around before Winter comes and he’s all cooped up. I get that. He seemed fairly with it, tough to say if he is mentally challenged or not. It was a nice chat, then he motored on out. I was pretty pleased with myself for making the move. That’s one down and I guess 2 to go.

I'm just a blurb

All the grass over by where Lollapalooza happened is dead. I don’t get that. How could three days of people trampling kill the grass? I can see it from my office and it’s all brown though. It was only 3 days, maybe the rock killed it. I really don’t think the rock was either bad enough to kill the grass, or bad-ass enough to kill the grass. I’m trying to think of acts that I saw that may have killed the grass. Seriously, from a bad-ass perspective, nobody killed the grass last weekend. I can’t think of a group that brought it so hard that the grass would die. Nobody is coming to mind. The only band I can think of that might have killed the grass from sucking is Grizzly Bear, and they did play over where the grass appears dead. I meant to put together a list of bands best to worst for each day. I guess now would be an appropriate time for that.


Day 1

Dragonette

Green Day

Against me

AFI

Social D

The soft pack

Royal Bangs

Edward sharpe

Stars

The morning benders

Gogol bordello

Harlem

Rogue wave

Slightly Stoopid

Dawes

Grizzly bear



Day2

Hockey

Soundgarden

The National

Wolfmother

MGMT

Cypress Hill

Mutemath

Yeasayer


I dunno what it is, but I’ve been getting a lot of messages lately on my dating sites. One of them is actually promising, which I think I mentioned in another blog. I dunno what the sudden influx in interest can be ascribed to. I haven’t changed anything. I haven’t posted a journal entry, I should do that, that always generates some traffic. All I can think of is that once fall comes around, people hunker down for winter. I’m thinking that women are looking to lock up a snuggle buddy for the long winter ahead. I know it’s early to be talking Winter, especially when it’s like 90 out every day, but this is just a theory. If the theory holds, then interest should continue to ramp up into early fall, aka crunch time. I’m personally not too concerned about lining up a snuggle buddy, especially if I have to settle in order to do it. Definitely not worth settling just to have a foot warmer for the winter, but I’m not a woman, so who knows, maybe women are looking for footwarmers this time of year. Or maybe my intelligence, boyish good looks, and ample charm are finally breaking through and word is getting out about the best catch out there. That could be it too.

TWisting faded memories

The last few days I’ve been thinking about the past. A couple of funnyish things. I have no idea why I was thinking about these things. I guess cuz my mind wanted to.

When I was like 11 or 12, I think it was Summer. My brother who was about 16 at the time was playing softball down at the fields near our house. I was invited to play. My brother included me in everything when I was a kid and that really shaped who I am today. It was cool hanging with him and his friends. I hung out with these guys; I learned from these guys, I idolized these guys. They were all really cool to me. So I was very excited about hanging out with them and playing softball. I don’t think the game had been going on that long. I was hanging out in the outfield or something. I think I was in the infield. Well this guy comes up to bat and he had kind of a pointy head. Not like crazy pointy, but pointy enough to notice. One of my brother’s friends says to me, “Tell him to ‘give it up missile-head.’” Making fun of people then was not my style, it certainly isn’t my style now, but this guy pressured me into it. So I said it. The guy said something like “shut up” back to me. The guy by me goes “say it again.” So I said it again. The guy batting, the guy with the pointy head says “If you say that one more time, I’m gonna do something about it.” Or something like that. These guys are 16, I’m just like 11, so the guy next to me says “say it again, we’ve got your back.” So I said it again. The guy drops the bat and comes running out after me. I got ready to fight him, but he pulled some Ninja move on me, put his foot behind mine and then pushed me over it. I fell on my ass, felt like shit, started bawling and ran home. I dunno what happened to the guy, but I’m pretty sure he was universally ostracized over that move. I have no idea what the point of that story is. When I think about that guy, I think, “man, I bet he wishes he could go back and undo that.” I wish I could go back and not say that shit, cuz that’s not like me. I’ve done a lot of things that I wish I could undo, I guess that’s life. You have to live with the decisions you make.

So let’s get onto a story where I don’t come off looking like a puss. I’m waiting for the train today and a guy walks by that I recognize. I used to trade in the same trading crowd with him back in the day. I dunno what it is about trading, but a lot of guys who are complete dweebs develop some kind of hard-ass mentality, sometimes those guys get called out. This guy was one of those guys. When I started out on the floor I was with a firm that didn’t get a lot of respect. I was trading, but I was using a machine and I was just there basically to take money out of the other traders’ pockets, so not only did I get zero respect, but people resented me on top of it. I used to bring a newspaper in every day and read it over the course of the day. I used to leave it out so anyone could read it. I get back from lunch and I don’t know, this guy prolly had been getting on my nerves for other reasons, anyway he was reading my paper. He was sorta taking his time. Finally I walked up to him and I said, “Give me my newspaper, I want to read it.” He says, “I’m not done with it.” So I say, “If you don’t give that newspaper, I’m gonna take it, roll it up, and jam it in your ass.” He gave me the newspaper. Sometimes on the floor you had to do shit like that just to show everyone around you that they couldn’t just walk all over you. Good times. I see the guy around. I say hi. I mean we traded together. I let bygones be bygones, but whenever I see him, I always think of that incident.

I thought I had some other stuff to talk about. Not much on the online dating front. I did talk to a woman last night. That was fun. It was a good chat. We talked a little about our exes and stuff. It was funny cuz on my profile, it says divorced. Well I’m not divorced yet, but will be hopefully soon. This usually comes up fairly early in conversations or first dates, just to get it out of the way. I’m a full disclosure kind of guy. So I told her the truth that I’m not divorced yet. Usually that’s enough. The last date I went on, the woman wasn’t divorced yet either. Way back I was IMing a woman and the same thing, she wasn’t divorced yet. It’s not like I’m the only one. Let’s face it, separated is kind of a turn off, it implies that you might get back together with your ex. I’m not getting back together with my ex, so divorced is the right choice. Well last night this woman asks, “why do you put divorced on your profile if you are separated?” So I break it down and go into a little detail about how we’ve been separated for almost two years, that the divorce has been going on for a year and a half almost, etc. The she says, “yeah, I usually don’t have any interest in people who are separated.” Case and point why you don’t put it down, I’d rather have the chance to talk my way out of it than to be dismissed out of hand. She went on to say that she can see how my situation is different, and that she’s still interested. It’s just like, chalk one up for not putting separated. That was just one little snippet and it was an issue we had to deal with, so that was good to get it out of the way. We talked a lot about online dating. It’s really a crazy concept. The stuff that the women have to deal with is crazy. Well not that surprising, basically that most of the guys that contact her are just trying to hook up. I was telling her that I think it’s worse on OKCupid. I think that there are some real freaks on OKC, at least that’s what the girl I took to the Gage was telling me.

I guess bands don’t have to wait long after Lolla to come back to Chicago. Which is good, I mean once Lolla is over, who cares right? I dunno, I guess part of the point of Lolla is to get people in there cuz they think they won’t be able to see X band for a few months. If that notion is challenged, it could affect ticket sales in the future. I’m guessing it’s built into some of the contracts, probably for the headliners. Well the bands that are coming back are The National, Social Distortion, The New Pornographers and Mumford and sons. I would def like to catch the National, I don’t think I want to see Social D again. I’ve seen them a bunch of times and I’m ready to move on.

Mule got lame

Lolla is in the books. I think I covered all of the relevant goings on. One thing I failed to mention is that there was a dude, going around shirtless, that had shaved his chest/body hair into an arrow that pointed down at his peni. That was kinda funny. Also sorta lame and pathetic. I dunno, who knows about these kids today. You would think that after a long weekend baking in the sun at Lolla, that I would just want to cruise home on Monday after work and crash. If you thought this, you would be absolutely right. Well, no such luck. My car has this problem where it dies out at random times. I usually just throw it in neutral, put on the hazards and get it started again. Well whatever problem causes this reared its head on Monday night and my roll and start didn’t work. I ended up on the side of the road with a dead battery. It was like 90 degrees out, so I had that going for me. I called the Illinois department of transportation (IDOT) to get a tow truck out. Well they came out and basically took me and my car to a bad neighborhood right off the highway and left me there. Thanks IDOT, for all that you do. I called Allstate and they sent out a tow truck, they said it would be out in 2 hours. I told them, “In 2 hours, I’ll probably be dead.” Well the people in india do the best they can to help some sad sap in Chicago, but they really don’t have a lot of sympathy I’m sure. So I waited there. I couldn’t lock myself in the car cuz when I had the door closed it was like 100 degrees in there. So I just sat there on some sidestreet with the door open. I got some interesting looks. A couple of cars went around the block and I thought they were creepin on a comeup. They weren’t though. Just as dusk was fading into night, the tow truck, like a beacon of hope, appeared in my rearview mirror. They towed me out of there and left me by a service station in Willowbrook. I had them look at the car. They replaced the battery and alternator, which helped them determine that neither of those things was causing the problem. I guess it’s my ignition switch. What a pain. The thing is on recall, but Acura says I already had the recall work done. I said, “Did they recall the recall? Cuz it’s not working.” I think I’m SOL with Acura. The guy in willowbrook says he can fix it, he just needs to borrow Spicoli’s dad’s tools.

Car troubles. That’s no good. I was thinking about dating the other day. I consulted some ladies that we hung out with at Lolla and got some insight. One of them said that in order to get a girl, you have to be kind of a dick; that women are into the chase and you have to be mysterious to them in order to get them to like you. It’s sorta like the old three day rule. Where you wait three days before you call the girl or whatever. When you think about it, it’s actually counter-intuitive. In order to get a girl to like you, you have to act like you don’t like her. Really?! That’s the attitude though and I have already admitted freely that I don’t have the attitude. I really don’t want to become an asshole. I’m happy with who I am. I don’t think I’m exactly a creampuff all the time, it’s just that I’m pretty laid back, and honesty is really important to me. It’s also important to me to keep things as simple as possible all the time. That’s why I don’t (or rarely) lie, because I don’t want to complicate things (there are other reasons too). It’s the same thing with stupid games, I just don’t want to have to jump through all of these hoops and pretend I’m something I’m not.

Speaking of something I’m not, I’m not in a band anymore. I used to be a punk rocker, now I’m just a suburban dad. So sad. Yeah. Well I guess the band wants to go on tour. Which is cool. I’m very excited for them and it rocks that they are getting out there and bringing the music to the people. But yeah, they told me that I wasn’t a good fit cuz I’m a nerd and not a punk. Well they didn’t put it like that, but that’s kinda what it boiled down to. Or are punks nerds? I think some punks are nerds that just got angry. Maybe I’m not enough of a nerd. Or I’m not angry enough. I think I’m just too normal, and I def can’t quit my job and drive across the country in a van (as appealing as that sounds). They sent me a very polite e-mail and thanked me for my enthusiasm and punctuality. I wish them the best; I really like the music, so I think they have a chance of catching on, if things break right for them. I hope it works out. Hopefully they won’t get into too many fights or run into the issues that have held them back in the past. I def want to check them out live. I think they are playing the Elbo Room on the 21st. Sundowner is also playing that night though, and I’d like to see them too.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOpch8lVjHI

Lollapalooza Day 3

Ok. I better get to day 2 of Lolla before I just plain forget everything and move on. Lord knows I’ve got other news and goodies for you, but I want to get Lolla nailed down first. After the first night of Lolla, I was hoping that someone would be out selling their wristband and I could get one for like $20. Didn’t happen. I didn’t see anyone trying to sell a wristband and I really didn’t feel like standing there shouting out for people to sell me their wristband. Sunday rolls around. I get up, work out, hang out. My buddy gets up. We go grab some breakfast. We get back from brekkie and I’m about in a food coma. My buddy lays down on the couch and pulls a blanket over himself. I’m thinking he’s out. I had some other friends from High School that I promised I would meet at Lolla on Sunday. I wasn’t going to let them down. I also really wanted to see Hockey. Some time around 2, I told my buddy I was gonna roll. He’s like, ok I’ll come. Shocker. Very cool though. We cruised down to get tix and much like the previous day, no one was selling. Finally we stumbled upon some dude who was selling print outs for $60. He seemed legit. I asked him if he would walk us up to the gate (to prove the printout wasn’t a dupe). He said “no.” The he goes, “I’m a ticket broker, these are real. Do you want to take a picture of my driver’s license?” I was like, “no, not really.” So we bought the printouts and they worked. We cruised in and Minus the Bear was playing over on the south side, whereas Hockey were supposed to play up north. We went straight to Hockey.

The sun was just pounding down on us, so we managed to get a decent vantage point in the shade. We chilled there. Got a free show. Some woman with ginormous boobs was slathering sunscreen all over them in plain view of the crowd. Good times. Once Hockey started playing, she was jumping around so much I thought she was gonna injure herself or someone else due to the outrageous flopping. Def a good show. Hockey was solid too. They played all the stuff you’d expect, and some new stuff that wasn’t bad. I would put Hockey up there as one of my favorite performances of the whole fest. After Hockey, we had a short walk over to Yeasayer, so we went and checked them. I’ve listened to Yeasayer before and they get a lot of buzz, but they never did much for me (I would def be into them if they did my laundry or something). YS was ok. I have to admit that their closing song was good, and I may go online and try to figure out what it was. We stuck around in the same spot to check out Mutemath. This hour of the fest would’ve been so much better if The National, Wolfmother, MGMT, or Cypress Hill were playing. It was a lost hour and if any of those bands were playing, I would’ve avoided the major conflict that the rest of the show embodied. MM were good. They played rock. I thought that I didn’t like them cuz I thought they were Math Rock, and I really don’t like Math rock. I think I had Mutemath confused with Mogwai. Mm was good though and I might check out their stuff online. We bolted early from MM to run to the South stage to catch Wolfmother. The rest of the concert was a major frustration for me (until soundgarden anyway) cuz I wanted to see all of the bands and I just couldn’t bilocate even though I tried really hard. Wolfmother rock, they have like 5 songs that I know, but the one I really like is Woman. Well 15 minutes into the set they played Woman. After that, I was basically free to go. So I decided to run to the other stage, catch some of MGMT, See some of The National, then come back for Soundgarden.

We got to MGMT and they were just finishing up some crappy new song. Then they kicked into Kids which was really good, and the crowd went apeshit for it. That was cool. MGMT closed with some crappy new tune. Then we bolted over to the National. The National’s new record is uber mellow. I’m not really into crazy slow mellow stuff like that. But live I thought it was pretty kick ass. The only National album I have is Alligator. My fave tunes are Abel and Karen. I was hoping to catch Abel, cuz I knew they’d play it. The national is also one of those bands that will play their most popular song whenever, not necessarily at the end. Alas, we had to bolt to catch Soundgarden. The Nat played abel, but I missed it.

Soundgarden. We got back a few minutes before Soundgarden came out, we managed to meet up with our friends and we were all systems go. When Soundgarden played their first reunion show, back in Seattle in April, they busted out Beyond the Wheel. If you know the song BTW, you know it’s the song in which Chris Cornell wails like a motherfucking banshee on crack. SG posted footage from the Seattle show on their website and their performance of BTW just blew me away. It was like CC hadn’t aged in 20 years. Let’s go into the time machine. It’s 1990, I was into Soundgarden when they first came out, I was cool like that. I liked that it was metal but it wasn’t, it was punk but it wasn’t, it was grunge. Whatever, so SG came to Chicago and they opened for Danzig. The show was at the Riviera in Chicago, and I couldn’t get anyone to go. There was no way I was gonna miss it, so I went alone. I had to know if Cornell could hit those notes in person, if he could replicate the wail. I was blown away. He was hitting the notes higher than on the record. He was like a vocal freak. It was amazing. I’m just laying the foundation, cuz we’ve got a vocal freak on our hands for sure, and he put in a solid showing at the reunion show back in April. He didn’t have it for Lolla. I have to go on record and say that his voice wasn’t there like it used to be. I think they even played a set that sidestepped some of the more difficult tunes for CC to sing which meant, much to my chagrin, they didn’t play Beyond the Wheel, Hands all over, or The Day I tried to Live. I needed one of those songs. I would’ve loved to have heard, room a thousand years wide, although they did play searching with my good eye closed (opener). I thought the band sounded a little loose at the beginning, but by the end, they were really tight. Some of the highlights: Ugly Truth, Fell on Black Days, Blowup the outside world, Fourth of July, and Gun. The drummer never gets enough credit imho, and I have to say, the true freak in Soundgarden is Matt Cameron. He still has it, and he might even be better than he used to be. Obviously playing in Pearl Jam has kept him sharp. Unlike Green Day who went 15 minutes over, Soundgarden ended 10 minutes early on a weak tune. Kind of a bummer. I would def see SG again, and they went old school, they let the tunes do the talking. No elaborate lights, no fireworks, no goofy antics, just classic iron-forged rock.

Some random notes and thoughts from Lolla. Right before soundgarden, a woman came up to my buddy and said, “I have a friend who is really into ‘the green lantern’ can I take a picture of your shirt?” My buddy was wearing a green lantern shirt. How random is that though? I mean I can’t think of the last time someone asked to take a picture of my shirt prior to Saturday, and then the next day someone asks my buddy the same thing. Too weird. I guess we have good taste in Ts. The green lantern shirt is cool, and GL is kinda obscure so that’s good, but who is really a green lantern fan? I think maybe the woman was just putting the moves on him. I’m pretty sure that The green Lantern was the one super hero that was openly homosexual. Which was quite a milestone back in the day. The biggest bummer of Lolla had to be the conflicts. I guess they have to do it that way, but there were so many bands that I only caught a piece of cuz I had to get somewhere else. This really doesn’t fit well with my personality. It’s like when a band comes to town that I want to see, I feel bad when I don’t see them. If there was a band I wanted to see at Lolla, I had to see them, even if it was only for 15 minutes like MGMT. I would rather do it that way than feel like I missed something. The hipster of the show, the award winner, was wearing greenish faded black super tight cutoff at the knee jeans, a yellow obscure t shirt cut into a tank top, a black belt with a giant Frankenstein head belt buckle, and this really odd leather cap that had a curled up brim. Lot’s of other hipsters with funny mustaches curled up, tight pants, etc. A lot of the young kids were painted up like they wanted to be on the cover of an MGMT album. A lot of dudes were going shirtless. Not enough women were going shirtless. On a whole, the people-watching was an extreme disappointment. I’m not sure what the deal is, but if you are not a hipster, it seems the style is to look as shitty as possible. A lot of people with headbands, bandannas tied around their heads, stupid hats, stupid shoes, I dunno, there was a definite dearth of sartorial awareness. Ok. Creepy moment of the whole show. This guy dressed all in black stands right next to me at the beginning of Soundgarden, he’s short, red hair, red beard, looks dirty. Then I notice, he has open sores all over his arms. I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t want to catch it. I’m pretty tolerant, but I really wanted this guy to go away. Thankfully he did.

Lollapalooza Day Two

I survived Lolla. Good times. One good thing I can say about Lolla, it helps you define what bands you really like from what bands are just ok. I guess this concept is kind of a no-brainer. Well let’s talk about the scam of Lolla first. The scam of Lolla is that they get a lot of decent acts and throw them together on one bill. When you see the names, you think “wow, that’s a lot of good bands.” You sorta get sucked into the idea of seeing a lot of bands, and you lose sight of the fact that not all the bands are bands you necessarily like, and not all of the bands are necessarily good. So the scam is that they sorta pack the thing with known quantities and try to suck in the widest variety of music aficionados and to do it as simply and cheaply as possible. When it comes to the headliner, they have to come strong, and I have to say that a good portion of your entertainment value from the event is derived from the headliner. If you don’t like the Strokes or Lady Gaga, but you do like Mavis Staples (theres’s gotta be somebody with that predilection out there right?) then you probably shouldn’t go to see Lolla on Friday cuz seeing Mavis Staples at 2pm on a Friday just isn’t that great, and then you gotta stick around or bail and at $90 a ticket, that’s not advisable. Enough about the philosophy of Lolla, discussing it is an exercise in futility. No need to overthink a musical event, at the end of the day, if they book enough bands you want to see, then maybe they’ll get you to pay $90, at the end of the day, that is their goal. Obviously they want to accomplish that goal as cheaply as possible, so that’s why they book a lot of mediocre bands to fill it up, and also why some bands probably have to pay to get on the bill. Dunno about that second one, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a band played for free just for the exposure. Anyhoo on to the review.

On Saturday, I was kinda amped for the Soft Pack. They were coming on at 1230. I met my homie and our other buddy over at homie’s place at like 1130. I wasn’t sure if they would be up for heading to the show early, but luckily they were and we rolled. A little precursor to day one, and a theme for me for the whole show, we might have done a bit too much traveling. Going from the two main stages on the south, to the two mainish stages on the north took about 10 minutes if you made good time. Traveling back and forth wasted a lot of listening time, but was good exercise. So we roll to the show and we are outside trying to scalp tix. I have to say, it was a pretty tough tick. I don’t think it was sold out, but I was hoping to get tix for like $50 each day, didn’t happen. We spent like a half hour peddling for tix and the only thing we got was people asking us if we were cops. Nice. Finally our buddy got a hold of some dude off of CL and he was like 10 feet away from where we were. We managed to get 3 tix for 200, $67 each. Not too bad. Face was $90, so a good savings from there. We get inside, get our bearings and go check The Morning Benders. TMB were on the Sony Bloggie stage, a minor stage just south of the two north main stages. TMB are very mellow, they aren’t offensive. Just nothing special. I will probably listen to their stuff again though, def don’t hate them. From the Morning Benders we went over to the Soft Pack on the Bud stage (north). I thought the soft pack was good, they brought their good shit, but they would’ve been better off doing a half hour set. Expanded into an hour they had to bring some weak sauce and that caused us to lose interest. Still like TSP, and will prolly still be geeked when they come up on the ipod. They are a once in a while, one tune on the ipod band, not a listen to the whole album band.

At this point our other buddy decided to go rogue, and go see Rogue Wave. He bailed, my buddy and I grabbed some food, then we went up and checked Harlem. Harlem was ok. Upbeat kinda punkish, didn’t make much of an impression one way or the other. We decided to try to reconvene with our bud at RW, so this was our first traverse from one end to the other. We caught some RW, didn’t find our bud, and bailed to get back to the other side to see Stars. On the way back, we hit a side stage (BMI) and caught a really good act, Dragonette. Supposedly these guys are the next Lady Gaga. They were good. The woman had an interesting voice and they had a live drummer which was good, the other person played synth. They were good, not necessarily my kind of music, but good. We cruised over and caught Stars. Stars is a band that sometimes when they come up on my ipod I’m like “who is this?” and other times I skip the song. Kind of hit and miss. The band was the same way live. Nothing special. We bailed on them and made the ¼ mile trek back across to catch Against Me. AM is good, a known quantity. They delivered even though they said they were only working on 2 hours of sleep. If that is true, they brought amazing energy. Good version of Thrash Unreal. I liked it. My tentative plan was to stick things out on the south side at this point. The only problem, Gogol Bordello was playing. GB is kind of sketchy. I don’t really like them, they are sort of a Russian version of Flogging Molly (who I also don’t like). They play a kind of unplugged Russian Gypsy Punk and it’s kind of a annoying. My buddies didn’t want to stick it out, so we cruised to catch Grizzly Bear. I don’t remember much about GB, but that pretty much illustrates that they were nothing special. I would say they sucked if I could remember anything about them. Ditto for a band called Dawes who we caught like 5 minutes of. At this point we started the cruise back to catch AFI. We stopped at the BMI stage cuz a band was playing with a singer that sounded like old Bono. They were pretty good. The Royal Bangs. Bad name, good tunes, I’m gonna prolly download their stuff.

We finished the trek across and AFI had already started. I don’t know about AFI. They play the kind of music that I like, but I don’t like them that much. Davey Havok brings great energy and their tunes are good, they just don’t really do it for me. They rock though, and one thing we learned is to err on the side of catching a band that rocks over a band that doesn’t. At an outdoor festival, loud and fast is good. AFI play loud and fast, so it was entertaining. I would def lump AFI into that category I mentioned earlier, sort of a filler band that might get people to cross the line and come to the show. I mean Against Me, AFI, Gogol Bordello, Social Distortion. They are all sort of good but not great and appeal to a similar demographic. Social D was next. Our one buddy ditched us to go catch Metric, he said they were really good. This bud ended up bailing on the festival due to gastro-intestinal issues. I was def more into Social D when I caught them at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor (1991). Mike Ness didn’t look like a 50 yr old balding fat dude that looked more at home on a couch with a stained white tank top than on a stage in front of 30k people. What can you do? You can’t stop time. I’m sure I looked better back then too. Social D brought it. They played their tunes. They were tight. They ended with Ring of Fire, and I used to just love that song, now, it’s sorta played out. Slightly Stoopid (horrible name) were playing on the south side after Social D. They are some kind of Sublime-ish reggae, punk, funk, thing. Not a fan. We bailed to go catch Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Dunno what to say about ESATMZ, I think they were ok. We couldn’t really get close enough to hear well. I have to listen to their mp3s. They are one of those bands with like 50 people on stage and I usually don’t care for that much.

At this point, it was getting late and the day had been grinding us down. We powerchugged water, and tried to soldier on, but my buddy was toast. He decided to hang it up. This led me to believe that he would also be out for Sunday as well. We shall see. He bailed. I was gonna stick it out. I wanted to see Green Day. I grabbed a bite to eat. Chilled and just decided to make my way over to get a spot for Green Day. Slightly Stoopid was still playing and they did play a cover of Nirvana’s Lithium which was pretty cool. I decided to go over and get some water before Green Day, on my way, a woman stopped me and said “can I take a picture of your shirt?” I was like “sure.” I was wearing a yellow Mad Dog 20/20 shirt. I was getting comments on it all day, I didn’t realize it was that big of a deal. I guess it had to be memorialized in film. Good shirt. My comment earlier about the headliner being most of the value of the ticket mainly came from Green Day. You gotta give them credit, they have come a long way since I saw them in 1994. They have a full on rockin stage show. They had fireworks which were cool. They have a bunch of crazy antics like bringing people up on stage, having a fan sing longview, doing some kind of weird ska revival. They also play their songs and they play them really well. I’m glad I stuck around. They brought it. They were only slotted for 2 hours and 15 minutes, they went over by 15 minutes. Billy Joe was like “They said they were gonna shut us down at 10 o’clock, but we’ll have to see cuz I’m not gonna be fucking done by then.” They took no breaks. Straight through 2.5 hours. They are showmen, they started as punkers and now they are something else. It was good though.

So that was Saturday. A hot day. I was re-upping on the sunscreen every few hours and managed to get no sun, just how I like it. Drank a lot of water. Didn’t have a beer til I got back to my buddy’s place. Good day. If you are curious how many times we crossed from the North stages to the south, it was 7 times. I’m guessing that’s at least 2 miles of walking. Prolly not a good idea. I like it that way though. I would rather catch a half hour of a bunch of bands than see a band’s whole set.

I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be back for Sunday cuz I didn’t know who I was gonna go with, I didn’t think my buddy would be up. Will I go? Will my buddy go? If I go, who will I go with? Will it suck? Will it rain? You’ll have to wait for the exciting answers to these questions in the next episode.

I really think so

I’ve been thinking lately about writing another screenplay. Guess what the subject matter is…Dating. Yep I have a few scripts in mind about dating. One of them is called Friends with benefits. This will be a shocker of a storyline, it’s sorta like some kind of wonderful, but instead of just being arm-punch buddies with the other girl, the guy is banging her. So there’s that, and then I thought of another one that is sort of in the same vein. It’s actually almost the same movie. So maybe I don’t have 2 scripts here, but who cares. The other one is that the guy isn’t banging the friend, but he’s in a wholesome relationship with someone else, then in a moment of weakness he and the friend bang, and that screws everything up and much like in Requiem for a Dream, it sorta ends on a downer. Did RFD end on a downer? I can’t remember. Maybe I’m thinking of Magnolia. Anyhoo I gotta start writing. Although as you know, faithful reader, I am writing. I hadn’t realized it, but I’ve been fairly prolific. Most of my blog writing goes into one document. I just sorta keep adding onto it, but right up at the top, so it’s in reverse chronological order. Well I just noticed that I’m at the 93 (now 94) page mark. So I have 94 pages of musings. Not too shabby. I gotta focus this energy on a script though. It prolly wouldn’t hurt to fix up my other scripts and get them out there too. I was talking with my boss yesterday and it turns out that he’s a writer. Small world. He has written some stuff. He was not willing to share it, but that’s cool that he writes.

I’m starting to get amped to go to Japan. We had some Japanese people in town. Well it’s my sister in law’s brother’s family. He is American and the rest are, as you can guess, Japanese. They have a place in Yokohama which is just outside of Tokyo. We hung out, we bonded, my son learned some Japanese, and now I have an open invitation to visit. I’m totally going. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how. I don’t know who is going with me (maybe the kids, that would rock). I know I’m gonna go. So that’s on the list. I got a taste of Japanese culture, I got to try a Japanese P B and J. I call it that, because the Japanese kids were attending an American summer camp while they were in town. The dad puts them in the camp so their English will get better. Well for lunch, they were bringing Rice wrapped in Seaweed. Japanese PB and J. The shack I have at my disposal in Yokohama is fairly dope. So dope in fact, that it was featured on Japanese television. The guy had the video on his iphone and hooked it up to the TV. The show was pretty awesome. The fact that the dude was American was played to the hilt. When it started, they were playing Born in the USA in the background, later on, they played some bastardized version of John Denver. The most classic thing was at the end, he let out this “Yeeeeh Hah” yelp. He’s like, “yeah they asked me to do an American type yell.” I told him he did a pretty damn good job of it. If someone asked me to do an American yell, I probably would’ve yelled “Fuck off!” The Japanese are leaving town on Sunday and they do have a predicament. They bought about 9X more than their luggage will hold. The woman was doing her best to formulate a plan last night and it was fun to watch her work on the puzzle. The problem was they had 6 suitcases and about 12 piles of stuff. It just wasn’t adding up. I’m pretty much guaranteeing that they have to ship some stuff back. Ok. I’ll end the talk of the Japanese on this note. One of the items that they hoard into their luggage and attempt to ferret past customs is…Hamburger Helper. Not only do they covet HH, but they throw a party, invite over their friends and they feast on the American delicacy…Hamburger Helper. Pretty funny.

What is up with Lady Gaga? Does she have a cult? I saw separate groups of dudes today, Black gaga t’s, faux hawks, and they looked latin American. Is that her demographic? I guess. I would check Lady Gaga if I had the chance. Tonight is gonna be a prep night though. I’ve got laundry to do, and I should get a good night sleep. Then the rest of the weekend should rage. Stay tuned, next week I’ll have a full blow by blow account of the melee that Lollapalooza purports to be.

It doesn't matter

I dunno what rock I’ve been under, but I had no idea that Beck, of Loser fame, was married to Marisa Ribisi. When did this happen!!!!???! I don’t think I knew Beck was married at all. I thought he got jilted by some woman, was uber pissed, and wrote a pretty good record about it (Sea Change). I didn’t know that he was all healed up and a family man now. In case you don’t know Marisa Ribisi, you might say “hrm that last name does sound familiar.” She is Giovanni Ribisi’s twin sister. As if that wasn’t enough (and it isn’t, seriously), she is also in a relatively well known cult classically famous movie. She was in Dazed and Confused. No, not Mitch’s sister. No, not the crazy bitch, that’s Parker Posey, we all know her. No, Not the kid’s mom with the shotgun. Who does that leave? The freshman girl? No not her, and not the girl from the Kevin Smith films with the annoying voice. Have I dragged this out enough? She is the red-headed afro girl who zips up her jeans with pliers. That has to be one of the most memorable images from the film. I think she also hooks up with Wooderson in the film, another feather in her cap. Well that actress, Marisa Ribisi, is married to Beck and I think they have a kid. Hooray for the Hansens. They need to have 2 more kids, then they could have a boy band and call it Hansen. No one would ever confuse them with Hanson, totally different. Spelled different.



Wow, I managed to get a paragraph out of a minute piece of trivia. Kudos to me. What else is on my mind? The cerebral palsy guy from the train has been in my thoughts recently. I was thinking about sitting down with him and finding out what his deal was. I would totally do it, and I’d like to become his friend (I think, I don’t really know him), I just know that I’m only approaching him to get a story out of him, and I don’t feel right about that. Anyway, I was thinking that the guy is kind of inspiring. He uses a walker, and he plods along like his legs weigh 1000 pounds each. So I was thinking what I would ask him, and I really want to know if he’s ever been laid. I’m thinking he has. I don’t know why. I wouldn’t put money on it, but I have a hunch. I’d also like to tell him that he’s an inspiration to me. That would probably really freak him out. If I ask those two questions in succession he would probably be moving to a different train car. Seriously though, it’s like every step he takes is a little victory for him, and every step I take is a reminder of the fact that I’m not what I could be. It helps to think about it. I mean it’s all an exercise in thought. Why can’t I be happy with every step I take? Why can’t every step be a victory for me too? It’s all mental. Maybe every step is a victory for me and I just don’t know it. Maybe fighting the good fight, doing the right thing, being a good person, and eating a lot of cheetos is a victory. I’m gonna call it some kind of victory. Maybe we’re all heroes. Like Bowie said, “we could be heroes. Just for one day.” I disagree, we can be heroes every day, we just have to think it.



I wrote a bunch of crap that is too personal to put in here. Wouldn’t you like to know what it is? Too bad. Good news on the band front. I think we have a band now. We picked up a bassist. Still have high hopes for playing out and coming to a dive bar near you. Speaking of dive bars, I went to a sweet dive bar up on California somewhere. It’s called Ronny’s. It’s tiny. It’s like if Beat Kitchen (which is tiny) had a little brother. I saw Noise by numbers there. It was a really good time. I had exquisite company, and they played a great albeit short set. I dunno how people hooked onto this place, but it’s booking a lot of punk shows. The Arrivals are playing there next Thursday, and I’d really like to see that. I mean the place is like a garage, anyone would be good there. I’m glad I had earplugs though, it was pretty loud. Maybe I can get my band booked at Ronny’s. That’s the idea.



Lolla is this weekend. I think I’m all set to go Saturday and Sunday. Saturday sounds like a definite. I’m a nerd, so I went on the website and mapped out all the bands I wanna see and made a custom schedule. On Saturday it’s looking like: The morning benders, The soft Pack, Stars, Against me, Gogol bordello, AFI, Social Distortion, Spoon, and Green Day. Sunday: (depending on when I get there) Health, Blitzen Trapper, Minus the Bear, Hockey!!, The Verve pipe?, MGMT/Wolfmother (tough call), The National, and Soundgarden. So I basically only have one person to go with, no one else is really interested. My buddy kinda only wanted to go to one day. Now it’s looking like he’s locked into two. I have someone else lined up to go on Saturday, so that will force the issue for that day. I’m pretty sure Saturday is a lock. Then on Sunday we were supposed to go and meet this girl we went to High School with, so I think my bud will go to that. Or if I go alone, I can just hang with this girl. Plus Soundgarden is playing Sunday, so that is a can’t miss situation. I’m pretty geeked the weather looks good. I’m not sure about the tickets. It might be tough. It’s gonna be hot, but not too hot, and it doesn’t look like rain is in the forecast. It will prolly be pretty crowded. I should be a lot more geeked than I am actually. I love this kind of stuff. Just love it. I love seeing all the bands and all the people, the energy, going from stage to stage, seeing a lot of bands that I like, it rules. Maybe my relative chill attitude is good, maybe I will enjoy it more by the contrast. I won’t have too high expectations. We shall see.