I had the wonderful pleasure of seeing the Flaming Lips perform live a few Saturday's ago. It was an outdoor show. It was a beautiful day/evening. It was free. Holy cow was that the best five bucks for parking I've ever paid.
But that said. I got the news about Ol' Green. Alternator shot. Drive something something computer fried due to alternator shorting out. Total repair price, too much to justify fixing just to raise the price for sale.
My best option is to ask for enough to get a new set of tires for the new truck (which has yet to be named.)
So after burning out the transmission on the old Hyundai and selling that for $400, I didn't learn my lesson to get rid of the vehicle before it becomes worthless. I think it's going to sink in this time. Had the repairs not cost much, I could have tried to sell Ol' Green for enough to knock a year off my new auto loan. As is stands now, I'm just going to have to be content to continue to be the slave of my unhealty participation in american consumer culture. (Squeeze some more of my soul out while I still got some.)
Bugger.
In other news, the band, or what's left of the band, is still around. Doing stuff. What stuff? I don't know. It's been a busy month and a half. Fuck. It's been a busy as hell year so far. We have to keep postponing tracking the rest of the drums for one reason or another. I'm still waiting to get rough mixes of all the tracks to give a through listen to them and decide which ones need to be done just one more time. It really doesn't matter. At this rate, we'll be retracking these same damn songs again in a few months. Right? If history has anything to say about it. I've already laid down demos of these songs. We recorded them last spring. We're doing it again right now. It never ends. The worst part is that it gets in the way of working on new material. Better material. Songs that will blow your brain out the back of your head. (Subject to personal taste, of course.)
I've had some good ideas lately. Better turns on the same theme. Variations in song construction. Different approaches to this thing called music.
Travis said it best on Sunday when we were talking about the Donald Driver Show* on our way over to Dan and Amanda's to watch the Packer game. "Television is so boring because it's always trying to mimic reality. They can do anything they want, absolutely anything, and yet you end up watching fucking King of Queens or Two and a Half Men. That's five men." (That's not a direct quote but he said something similar to that.)
But he's right. We have these prescribed forumlae sitting within arms reach. The creative stuff, the truly creative stuff is sitting in boxes on shelves. Sure you can get at them, but you'd have to get off your ass to do it. And no one wants to work that hard, right? So I guess I'm going to end up writing some more Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Solo, Verse, Chorus x 2, Outro songs and call it a day.
* the Donald Driver Show is a real show. It's a boring talk show where people sit in some studio and talk with Donald Driver and his guests about the Green Bay Packers, the NFL, and not much else. Last season, Travis and I decided that the Donald Driver Show (which I've never watched, unfortunatly) would be better if it was a sit-com staring Donald Driver. His next door neighbor would be played Brett Farve. They wouldn't be foorball players. The highlight of the show each week would be some spectacular diving catch that Donald Driver makes. The Thanksgiving episode would feature him diving for the turkey as it for some wacky reason gets knocked off the table. There would be one where he catches a baby, an expensive vase, etc. And then there would be the Brett Farve joke where anything he tossed (be it keys, a basketball, a kid) would end up in Minnesota. What we were discussing on Sunday would be the off episode where for some reason Donald Driver would travel through time and end up as a football player (a la Quantum Leap) having to win a game. It's still in the developmental stages. Obviously.
Totality
3 days ago