My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

I wish I could play dress up more. Its the only reason I joined a band. A lot of guys think the stage is for showcasing musical talent. Its not. You’ll spend your life standing beside a bookshelf in a coffee shop Open Mic nite if you don’t figure that out.

When you get on a stage you’ve entered the realm of fantasy. An elaborate display is expected. Not just of clothes and music either. You’ll need some rock moves, as Pink brought to our attention. An online presence is crucial if you’re gonna tour. There’s a lot of details I could go into. But let’s get back to dress up.

The important thing to remember is, it’s a “show” People are “looking”. That’s what “show” means. Watching someone play music in a club is boring because what’s to see? You’re strumming and picking is not so fascinating it brought these people out to the tune of $8 to $15 bucks each. They came to look at you. “Look”. Not “listen”. At your hair, your face, the hair on your face, your shoes, your shirt, your socks when you lean down to adjust the knobs on your amp. You’re being devoured by the audience, but not with their ears. It’s about eyes. Dress up.

When you’re unloading your gear from the Aerostar onto the sidewalk in front of the venue, people better not drive by and think you are a roadie. They better drive by and think, “that dude’s a musician”. You better have a hat and some scarves around the hat and some leather on somewhere, even if it is your socks, in which case suede is okay.

People become revolutionary for what they wear. That’s amazing to me. Because most of us, by what we wear, put ourselves in a box. We join the machine. We say, “I’m a truck driver” when we wear a plaid shirt and a vest and jeans and trucker hat. We say, “I’m a business man” when we tie our tie in a four in hand and pull out a Blackberry. We join the army of the everyday. That’s the machine.

It’s the person who goes onto the stage and has something on that belongs to no regiment who is the revolutionary. “What outfit is he from,” the captain of the vice squad asks as they roll past the seedy bar with numerous noise complaints against it as you carry your bass drum inside, a devil’s tail sewn into the backside of your Dickens era top coat. When he says outfit, he reveals how the synonymous our clothing becomes with our politics. “He’s a rocker,” the Captain’s partner says dismissively. But no one knows until that rocker goes on stage how powerful he may be. Only those who make it to a stage have the chance to overthrow something. Don’t take it lightly. Dress up.

Over here in my band the Flagpoles, I’m the worst musician of the bunch. So I’m having a hard time having my fashion concerns heard. It is true, we should at least be able to get through the songs without stopping before we have the debate about matching outfits or not. I want loose cuffs because I’m also pushing for synchronized kicks. Maybe we’ll wear dresses. For the revolution.

Sean came by Friday night and helped me change the brake pads on the big white truck. We had Doug, Jenny and Nick out there lifting on the front end while Sean and I got the wheels off. That worked fine so we went inside and drew some pictures. Sean drew the lock. Nick drew the rainbow below.

photo posted from my iPhone
Poops got me inspired again. Guess I won’t quit. Was just talking to a guy who said it wasn’t a binge until someone was dead, so I guess I didn’t really binge these last few days, but I sure wasn’t getting any blogging done. I did make another plastic cowboy scene. Hope you’re all doing well.

I quit blogging you suckers. I’m all about private life from now on.

Maybe I can make some money hand writing those visual verification words on websites.

photo posted from my iPhone
A little something I made last night.

photo posted from my iPhone
hard to tell with the iphone camera, but I sliced up my registration sticker. The 2010 one is a hot item, and I’ve had them stolen before. Sliced in twenty pieces makes it hard to put back together again.

Fresh from the 1986 Sears catalog, the one with Cheryl Tiegs on the cover. They’re already having ’90′s parties, so I had to hurry up and get this out in the world before no one does an ’80′s party again.

Hi Mom. I know you know I know you read my blog. And that’s been kinda weird. Sometimes I don’t say everything I want to, or feel bad when I do say something else. So I don’t know why I’m about to tell you this. Mom, I’m on twitter.

You wouldn’t have know for years possibly. Maybe never found out. Here it is and here is what it means. When someone says something interesting, I send a text message of their quote to my twitter account. Take for example the first three I did, up there in quote bubbles.

Normally that would be enough, just a quick note. But I’ve decided to go back and draw my tweets, as they are known, and add a sentence or two giving the background to the quote. I’m telling you this because I know you love me unconditionally. Thank you. I love you too.

Twitter.com/greenlandsteam

photo posted from my iPhone
Nick plays drums in the Flagpoles, a band I’m in. He is also staying at our place this month. I kinda roped him into helping with the yard sale and by gum I’m glad I did. Check that sign out!

I don’t want to disrespect Dante’s work, seen below. Nick simply belongs to the West Coast school of yard sale signs. I wasn’t even aware of this school, so imagine my surprise when I found it sleeping right on my couch in the living room.

the backstory on this sign is here.

“Garage sale me brutha,” he wrote and put a little arrow. The photo does not reveal that he taped the sign to my truck, parked right next to my garage. Can I call it Zen because it seems obvious on one level, and full of so much meaning once the unpacking begins? Nick believes in letting the shopper find the sale by putting out a love vibe. He isn’t knocking on doors or hanging signs on distant street corners. Very respectful of the common grounds. Not pushing anything.

I had three rules for garage sale sign work.
1. Date is prominent.

2. address is set apart.

3. No bubble letters.

Nick broke the two major ones, but in his case, I think even bubble letters would have been fine. This is like another dimension. It’s like being on an antigravity planet. No date? No address? And people still come? With just a warm welcome? Amazing.

In honor of band practice tonite, I’m posting Collin’s latest and my favorite song.

“Tennessee Reverie”

Kelly was a brahmin down in Tennessee.

Her triple grandfather fought Sherman for his A.D. Galilee.

After her deb ball, she took some LSD. And she heard the canons roaring.

They shot her across the sea.

Now she lives in London. She moved there in ’83.

When it starts raining, she thinks of Tennessee.

If you know London, you know it rains like wild.

When it starts raining, she wants to be a child.

photo posted from my iPhone

Jayson, who we introduced here, met me this afternoon in the Mission and we did a little hunting, as they say. Treasure hunting. Metal detecting. In about forty minutes I found 53 cents, of which a nickel and penny were just sitting on top of the grass and I bent over and picked them up. I constantly throw pennies away when I fish in my pockets at the parking meters, so I don’t know why I’m spending money on equipment to dig them up. Well, I keep hoping the “dong” song the detector makes when it passes over metal is signaling bars of gold, so I keep digging. Plain and simple.

Jayson showed me how to pinpoint where the target is beneath the coil of the detector and then he wandered off on his own. A woman let her little dog off leash and “Zoe” ran right over to me.
“Zoe, stay away from the weed whacker!” She yelled. So I think I’ll call it that from now on.

Jayson strolled back my way and wasn’t saying anything.

“You get something?” I asked.

He put his hand to his mouth and pulled out a shiny dime and handed it to me. He’d been sucking the dirt off and the thing glowed like a freshly minted piece. Kind of gross, considering how many dogs have pissed in this dirt over the years, but Jayson is a strong man. I held the coin up to the sun.

“A Mercury dime! 1917,” I said. Pretty cool.

A quick google search of Mercury dime images turned up this fine example.

Not exactly what Jayson found.
Go to the website where I got this image and check out the animated GIF file of some balding bearded fellah jigsawing his way through old coins. It’s good for a laugh. But here’s a good view of the two sides of the coin.

I doubt the Religious Right would allow a pagan God on a coin today*

If you’d like to read up on the coin, check this blurb where I got the image. It explains they began their mint run in 1916 and ended in 1945 when Roosevelt was put on the front. That’s the dime we use today. As you know FDR had polio and started the “March of Dimes” to raise funds to eradicate the disease.

But anyway, I didn’t find any guns dumped from a crime scene, I didn’t find any Spanish gold, no pick axe from a ’49er, nothing but common coins dating back to 1979. Jayson got a fifty dollar parking ticket. An expensive hobby. So we went and ate burritos.

*So I got to wondering why there was a Greek/Roman god on our Christian coin, and learned this from wikipedia: “In 1916, the head of a winged-capped Liberty was put on the dime and is commonly known by the misnomer of ‘Mercury dime’”.
As I looked at the back of the coin, I asked myself, “What the fuck is that weird axe thing?” Turns out it is a symbol from the Roman Republic, called a Fasces. From which the term fascist is derived. As is faggot, for that is a bundle of sticks there. This story keeps getting weirder.

**one last note from wikipedia. “When a faggot is wrapped in only one band, instead of the traditional two, it is also referred to as a bender.”

photo posted from my iPhone
I love this. But don’t actually know what they’re advertising, so maybe not so successful.

photo posted from my iPhone
Rus had some work done on his ears. Strictly cosmetic. His sister and brother-in-law are visiting from Minnesota, Bob’ll be trailering the Plymouth back there and putting a new reverse gear in and replacing the fuel lines, among other projects. Generally getting it up to my specs, so it’ll make a decent getaway vehicle when I start my crime spree. (I wish)
Send a picture of you and Ramona to me Bob, when you have that beauty on the trailer! Then if you feel inclined send us a line as you rebuild her. Keep us up to date. It was a real pleasure meeting you for real.

photo posted from my iPhone
Another cleanout from the T-Off, my local bar. Picked the floor tom up at the dump. Kept the bench and the small Corinthian column. I’m hooked on junk, bro.