jump

9:26am Termite inspection, strange men in suits checking the corners. I explain different aspects of the construction. Jerry Lee Lewis plays in the bedroom.

11:54am Finish my law midterm, a stellar piece of mundane bullshit that will earn me an A. In the background ESPN analysts are combing the truth of a friend of the chick Favre sexted.

12:32pm Waiting for my sandwich to toast at Subway, Sarai looks at my newspaper and says, "You like to read, huh?" I want to go, "You like to breathe, huh?"

1:02pm I drop my ballot my ballot at the post office as Van Halen's "Jump" plays on the radio.

1:15pm Stuck behind a truck with letters faded, spelling Financial Express Worldwide. All but the capitals are nearly completely scratched and scorched. All you can read from a few cars back is FEW.

1:32pm Overhead in line at the Oxnard College Admissions Office, "So your purpose here today was to prove residency?" "Yes." "But you have no proof." "Well I have this mail." "It's not even addressed to you Miss." "Oh."

1:50pm A diamond winged jet blasts over Hueneme Road between me and the mountains, dips at the base and swings up and out over the water toward the islands.

2:15pm At a stop sign on CI campus, wait patiently while the ladies soccer team marches in cheer to a pep rally. A girl in the middle of the throng is texting. Maybe Favre.

3:45pm A basketball-sized wooden sculpture tumbles off the patio opposite me, crashing in two perfect pieces next to a palm tree, narrowly misses a dog taking a piss against it. Neither dog or owner seem to notice. I pick up my travel guitar and work on the strings

Intros/Exits: a CA Dj Project

For those who don't know, consider this the official announcement.
(See Sept. 17th entry for the promo video)

December 18th-22nd 2010
Intros/Exits: a California/Dj Project

What: we will be visiting different outdoor settings throughout the state, mixing music that fits each particular "venue".

Who: Dj Jon Paul Joe & Sherlock J on audio feed, RedRam on video feed

Where: we'll begin the mix at sundown on December 18th at El Mirage Dry Lake outside of Palmdale. All friends and family in the area who are willing and able to attend are welcome. (Think of a truly scaled down, chilled out version of Burning Man, and you have the vibe). Details and driving direction questions: nightdrives@aol.com

Our trip will include the Tehachapi Windfarm, random fields in the Central Valley, the James Dean crash site, Big Sur and Golden Gate Park. All our friends in each area of the state are welcome to join us. Video will be uploaded to the website over the holiday.


Are you ready to step outside?

are you

Drowning in October. Love this weather. Exceedingly beautiful today. Most days, even with cloud cover, I manage to find the sounds. I make it work. Radio brings all the light in. Don't even need it today, it's just a background. Seabirds dipping between buildings, rising on a slow breeze. The islands are calling. Out by the platforms, pleasureships and sharks. Tycho on the headset.

Are you working through it? I imagine you in the traffic of the city. Friday afternoon inside the cement river. The millions you pass who pass through you. Underneath the bridges, selling flowers. Somebody's cousin with a farm in Salinas. Far from the city and off the blacktop. I speak city, I eat the images you can't see. Infrared blips through October sunlight. Are they dancin' in Tokyo tonight? Pete has wrapped in Spain. Pau and Kobe coming back from Barcelona. My car has no name but it's Barcelona Red. Too long to title. I used to hate red. Baseball is over but the days of hoops and roses are coming. Are you passing over rivers? Basins of flood control. Departments of Water and Power. Controlled flows. Beside me is a bottle of Little Black Dress, Pinot from Hopland. Mendo status with the ocean shooting back the blue. It goes on forever here. I realized that looking out, if you headed straight from my patio, across the sand and out over the water that you wouldn't hit land until the ice shelves of Antarctica. Too many thousands of miles, but not a single freeway. Sounds enticing. Are you thinking about it? The other thing. When was the last time you danced out of a deep and binding joy? Tied into the socket. Pick up the headset. Pass through.

I'm working through the daydream.

smoke or sand

I am watching a Russian film called "Mermaid", because I'm tired of listening to Captain Beefheart. I lost him in the desert, where he went to high school with Frank Zappa, not far from where we dumped countless bottles of tragically cheap tequila into the underbrush.
The weather has been humid, the skies alternately filled with the usual seabirds crap crap crapping, caw-caw-cawing and the pounding of tandem rotor Navy copters on training missions. All the while I'm on the last pack and reading the Wall Street Journal for nuggets of information I don't even know I'm looking for.
In "Mermaids" the heroine is a 16yr old girl who constantly saves the pathetic life of a venture capitalist who sells property on the Moon. Fucking Muscovites. I usually hear nothing from that city but the sound of muffled women under the weight of a hundred years of smoke-stained tapestries, smoke-stained men and smoke-filled skies. I look at modern Moscow and I automatically choke. It's a bullshit response, of course, because I live in Los Angeles, and many images of this city would provoke a gasp. Namely our programming.
The "mermaid" is dreaming about her Moon salesman. She's put his goldfish in the bathtub, on account of it being "depressed". "You could've at least put some sand in there," he says.
That is one thing I have entirely too much of in my condominium. Sand. It's blowing constantly up the walls. The DVD player by the patio door is jammed with it. My toes are the only objects here that enjoy it. And it makes a pretty good holder for whatever drink I bring down to the beach. But otherwise it's everywhere. In the pockets, between the sheets... on the screen inside a Muscovite's bathtub...

I'm getting tired, which is better than confused. And somewhere in the woods, Don Van Vliet is crippled, walking in the desert of his head.