Category: Life As I Know It

Or to paraphrase Jay speaking about Silent Bob, “Meet my hetero lifemate, Larry.”
I thought I had written about this before but I couldn’t find anything in my archives. A while back I got out of bed to find some guys on my balcony fixing up our balcony railing. We live in a condo complex and pay an exorbitant homeowner’s fee so we don’t have to do any outside maintenance. As I noticed this older, buzzcut gentleman on our balcony, Larry emerged from his bedroom, also just having woke up. We opened the sliding door and asked if it would be helpful to move our patio furniture inside while he replaced the railing.
As we reflected on this later, we realized what it must have looked like, both of us in pajamas and rumpled hair, obviously just rolling out of bed at noon. This led to great amusement and a comedy skit with an ignorant bigot yelling “Fags go home! Go back to where you came from! Go back to…uhh…Fagtopia or whatever!”
Then yesterday we were both in the grocery store (where we are frequently seen together) in our pajamas buying hair dye and ice cream. When the cashier looked at the receipt and correctly pronounced Larry’s last name, I remarked how the last time a cashier there had tried to thank us, she had mangled Larry’s last name. It was at this point that it hit me that this was yet another moment when we must have seemed like the gayest hetero non-couple in existence. It probably didn’t help that I also had one thumbnail painted with a sparkly prism nail polish that looks green and purple depending on how the light hits it.

Twas a nice Xmas in our household with much good loot to be had. Among all my goods were this T-qualizer shirt that actually lights up in reaction to sound, my stealth Converse, and a Utilikilt. I think I should wear them all at once. I did wear my T-qualizer shirt to my band’s new years eve gig. It was quite the spectacle.
We also went to Lake Charles to visit Larry’s family and to pick ujp his new used car. We watched Rocky I-IV, then saw Rocky Balboa which was actually pretty good. A nice bookend to Rocky I. We didn’t get a chance to watch Rocky v yet, which most people think is one of the worst, but a few people I know think it was actually pretty good, and I certainly don’t see how it could be worse than Rocky IV which was just a commercial cliché ’80s stereotype all around.
We also watched a lot of Larry’s Twilight Zone DVDs. I’d forgotten how much I liked the original show. I’m seriously thinking of getting the complete collection from Amazon.
For my birthday, I really wanted some Bluebell Birthday Cake ice cream. We’d had it once before and it was one of the best ice creams ever. Sadly it is a “rotational” flavor so it comes and goes. We hadn’t seen any in quite some time. In Lake Charles, we did find some “King Cake” ice cream based on the Mardi Gras King Cake. We got some of that, and Larry’s mom made me a chocolate cake. The combination of cake and this ice cream was definitely a worthy substitute. I ate way too much of it. Larry’s mom kept us well fed all around. She made us some of the best Spinach Artichoke dip ever, and even the chili dogs she made were awesome. never thought chili dogs could be that special, but hers made me a fan!
We’re planning on still having some kind of get belated together for my birthday and it may involve Lazer Tag, which was a blast when Larry and I went with his visiting friend. All in all, a nice holiday season.

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We (like most of the world, probably) suffer the lovely double whammy of spending money we don’t really have because we love getting cool things for the people in our lives and yet at the same time we end up feeling inadequate and guilty because there are so many wonderful people in our lives and therefore we do even a handful of them justice, much less, all or even most of them.

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This weekend when I was holed up in the medical research facility being poked and prodded in return for money, I got bored and decided to Google some people from my past. One such person was Dave Westerman. I first met Dave when he and Liz (his wife at the time) were in a theatre production with me. I believe it was “Law West of the Pecos”. I played Johnny Loco, the villain. I hit it off with the two of them very quickly and being that we were all musicians, we started jamming together. I Previously met Gary Tatum also through theatre and had been getting together with him for weekend jam sessions. The four of us soon had our own little band going playing covers of The Cars, The Go-Gos, Pat Benatar, Dire Straits, Boston, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Huey Lewis and the News, Bryan Adams, and more. Dave played bass, keyboards and sang, Liz played keyboards and sang, I played guitar, keyboards, sax and sang, and Gary played guitar and sang. It was my first band, and let me tell you, we kicked ass. A few years ago I contacted an old friend from high school, Jeremy Hyman, and he said that one of his most vivid memories of me was coming to band practice with me one time, and being astounded at the incredible sound being created in that room.
We practiced for a while honing our set, and ended up only playing a gig or two before Dave and Liz decided to start playing with an old friend of theirs again so our band kind of fell apart. At the time, I was pretty gutted about it as it was my first band, and we were so damn good. That and the fact that I genuinely loved everyone in the band. Really awesome people. We’d never even settled on a name. We’d bandies about many silly names like “Gary Tatum and the Tots”, and “Poodle Grooming”, but I think we eventually used “Making Waves” for our few gigs.
Dave and Liz eventually moved away somewhere, I can’t remember where. Over the years I ended up getting together with them and some other musicians a couple of times to play an annual golf tournament in the Baytown area. We would all convene from our various locales for one quick rehearsal the night before, then play the gig the next day. I think I played this even two different years. After that, I think I pretty much completely lost touch with them. The last thing I remember was that he and Liz had separated, and I think I learned that at the last golf tournament we played together.
When I Googled Dave, I eventually found that he had moved back to Houston and was playing in at least two bands. I also learned that on September 23, 2006, he died after a battle with some kind of cancer. Further investigation revealed that he apparently left a wife named Lisa and a couple of children, I believe. I wish I’d looked him up sooner so I could have shared at least a few more moments with him and learned about his life in the intervening years. I wish I could have said goodbye. It may have been a long time since we were really acquainted, but that doesn’t make his absence have any less of an impact on me. There’s a little bit of low end missing from the sound of the world today.
Goodbye, Dave. Sorry I just missed you.

I am writing this from a comfy hospital-type bed in a medical research facility where I am spending the second of 5 weekends as a human guinea pig. The first weekend wasn’t all that bad really. Lots of sleeping (insane amounts in fact), playing on the laptop (with wi-fi internet), etc. interspersed with getting poked by needles, which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought. While I don’t know that I would call this “easy” money, it’s certainly easier than I was expecting, especially since Larry (friend and roommate to Jess and I) is in the adjacent bed to me so it’s kind of like two good buddies hanging out in a cushy medical facility for the weekend. Most importantly it’s pretty big bucks. This week we bought Nintendo DS Lite portable hand held video game systems for me, Larry and Jess. You can actually play games together using wireless connectivity between units. That should make this weekend even more interesting.

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So I had always intended get rid of the mohawk and buzz my head for a Keanu Reeves matrix skit I’m filming, and then shaving bald the next week to get the Lex Luthor look for the “Superman Returns” premiere, but in light of my lay off today, I decided it was a good time to go ahead and buzz my head now in a symbolic new beginning.
Coming next week…total baldness!

Because there tend to be lots of layoffs. Like me. Today. Well, maybe this is my chance to once again try and use my new found contacts to get film work and such.
*sings*
Always look on the bright side of life
*whistles*

For a long time I’ve felt in a creative rut. Basically, since I started this job over a year ago, I’ve done just slightly above nothing in my creative pursuits. Stopped going on auditions, hell, don’t even have any headshots, haven’t done anything musically, not much updating here, etc. One of the reasons I quit playing World of Warcraft was that I felt I could use that time more productively (even though we never had time to play that much anyway).
Lately I feel like I’ve made at least some progress in this field. I wrote another short film for this year’s Kinetoscopic Wonderment Festival, but unfortunately found out that they had moved the deadline up by several months from the past two years, and thus found it was impossible to enter this year. My reign of winning has come to an end there. I still plan to make my short film for posterity and possible entry next year though. I’ve also been making at least some progress in paying more guitar at home and honing my craft. Not as much as I’d like, but some. The new tranquil green cave in our condo is a warm and creative place.
I also acquired a few new pieces of software for my home studio which I’ve been loving and learning to use. It has inspired me to do something I’ve thought about for a long time. I’m doing my own version of “Tomorrow Never Knows” off of the Beatles’ album “Revolver”. The interesting thing about it is that I’m recreating all the parts (except Drums, vocals, and tambourine) with my super bitchin Variax Digital modeling guitar, and Pod XT Digital modeling amp/effects unit. I find this song not only a brilliant composition, but a brilliant feat of production. The entire song drones on one chord, with various strange little tape loops being faded in and out throughout the song. I’ve read stories about how when the album was recorded, due to technology limitations at the time (they only had 4 track machines), Gearge Martin had various interns standing all over Abbey Road studios, some in closets, holding tape loops on spinning on pencils as he faded them in and out, practically “playing” these loops as instruments. I’ve had a blast recreating these strange sounds on guitar. It’s coming along greatly.
On another front, inspired by Annika, I have become a Metroblogger for Austin. At first I was scared to sign up as they want people who can post more than 3 times a week. That seemed like a lot of pressure, but what what better way to get me writing creatively more often than an actual obligation? Supposedly I’m in the process of being added to the system over there and then the panic can begin.
Of course lately I’ve really been wanting to play WoW again…

We now broadcast to you our official first entry from our new condo. We aren’t supposed to have internet yet, but for some reason we do. Mmmmmm, free contraband internet. The move went as well as a move could go, being that moving is inherently evil. We paid some movers a hefty some to do all the hard work, and it was some of the best money we’ve ever spent. The main brunt of the move was done in something like an hour or so, however due to the fact that we knew we could be a bit lazy on our part, we were, and thus required several trips back and forth to get all our straggling possessions shuttled to the new locale. We weren’t very good about actually boxing everything we own up, but it worked out because we ended up reusing a lot of boxes. We would unpack some of them at the new place then take them back to the old place to re-pack them with more stuff. We pretty much spent the entire rest of the day split between moving the rest of our stuff, and unpacking organizing etc. By the end of the day we had actually accomplished a hell of a lot of progress and are all at home in our new home. Now you must all come and visit.

Remember back when I had just moved to Austin, didn’t have a normal job and was trying to get Production Assistant work and such? Well now that I have a normal, good, full time job, I’ve had more calls for P.A. jobs in the past month than I’ve probably had since I started doing P.A. work. Of course, now I have to turn them down as I can’t really take off work for a week and ditch band gigs to go do a week of last minute P.A. work. *sigh* I am taunted.