Little Moments of Bravery

Little deep moments of bravery will, one day, get me killed. 

Its happened before. Anytime someone said, "Its not that deep!" or "Whats the worst the can happen?!" and then they get swallowed whole by some tiger, that was little deep moments getting someone killed. Evolutions itty bitty rolls of the dice.

Holy shit! It worked! 

Thats very different than...

HOLY SHIT!

Here are little moments of bravery and their internal risk assessments and fantasy day dreams. Stay frosty.

Lonely at 3am and scrolling endlessly on my phone. Doom scrolling. Anxiety farming. Then a picture of a coworker with their family for the holiday and damn they are stunning. Like not just horny on main but holy smokes a She's All That moment. And with all sincerity I want to say  "You look really nice" but we are separated by physical miles and digital barriers. MY family will see it. Other coworkers will see it. Say it when you next see her, right. Be brave and kind and sincere then! It will surely not be creepy.

Hot takes on Twitter. Turkey is great, actually! Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie! Eat a dick, Ted Cruz! Someone please @ me. I'm screaming into a void.

Fuck it, I WILL eat some more pie! I will buy the gem pack on Arena! I will have another drink. These will likely kill me in real life.

Hustling about laptops at work. This one is too big. I need all the cords before I take the new one. This is such a hassle to come in

Can someone say thank you?! Please? Before any goodwill becomes antipathy and a brewing glee to see your comeuppance?

Enjoy Your Own Thanksgiving

 Folks, I am excited for the cancelled holidays. We have such short memories but every year its the same recycled takes. 

"Who wants to travel for Thanksgiving?"

"I do not want to see my racist uncle. I don't want to have to explain why I am not yet married. Why I don't have kids. While I still rent. Etc, etc" 

"I do not have the time to clean and host 15 something people in my place!"

"I DO NOT want to talk politics with my family. Someone will turn on the news and then, shit, well there is my racist uncle"

 Lovely glossy magazines and well photographed listicles will tempt us every year with new dishes to try when we are supremely sit in the same plates each and every year. We will bemoan early sales that take away from the "spirit" of the holiday and justify why its OK those folks at WalMart are there at 5pm. "Hey, they give them dinner there! They got TWO Thanksgivings"

There will be stern twitter warning from folks more woke than us saying to consider not everyone has a loving family and to be sensitive of those people who cannot (or should not) see their families. "My family told me to never come back when I said I was trans. So, fuck them. I never did" 

However, in the inverted year of 2020 now everyone believes it is not just their right but THEIR DUTY to see everyone they can. Those cousins three times removed who live in Billing, MT? Oh, we NEED to be able to lick their damn eyeballs. It is my right!

No better way to entice someone then tell them they can't have it. Every parent knows this. Every school teacher. I once knew a teacher who would cover up a bookshelf in a blanket at the beginning of the year. And the kids would freak the fuck out. 

"Ms, Iorio! Ms. Iorio, WHAT IS UNDER THE BLANKET!?"

"You will have to wait and see!"

And those kids poked and scooted closer to it until it was revealed it was just books! Ready for one we mastered the earlier texts.

But when leadership doesn't back these appeals to common decency and the social contract with consequences then we get the eye ball licking. Folks sneering as they pour over a Norman Rockwell spread tinted by pandemic undertones. Let us the Instagram filter of Biohazard. Smile, everyone!

Blame capitalism. Blame the perversion of American conservatism from a sort of rugged individualism to a perpetual state of sorrow. Blame China. Blame the Karens and Chads. This is nuanced for sure and our hyper polarized world does not allow for that. So, pick your poison and hopefully stay home.

I will and relish a Thanksgiving spent with my nuclear family and no people I need to pretend to enjoy.

The True Self

I'm a neurotic sort. In my lifetime its become quite popular  to self diagnose as "My OCD!" or "all the anxiety" and I was not immune to this trend. Albeit, I dont feel I played it for anything of significant gain. Just how I have always been. 

My mother always had us three hours early to the airport. Just in case. This was before the security theater of post 9/11 when you could walk to the gates. Eat miniature hash browns at the cafe by the American Airlines terminal at SJU with all the time. That treat felt so decadent and foreign to my palate. Why only at the airport? I was only an adult when I realized it was to please tourists used to fast food style hash browns. Which are still quite delicious so I understand.

I once took a business trip to Atlanta. Didn't see much but I traveled with a colleague who also wanted to get to the airport early and I felt so relieved. Here is someone who understood me and to whom it could be myself even in the awkward personal/professional event horizon of a business trip.

Still on airports never did my stomach sink so low when my girlfriend said "I forgot my ID" while we were three people away from the check in at JFK. This after a 6 hour bus ride from upstate and a brief lunch with her aunt in Manhattan and then a subway ride to the train. This WAS post 9/11 and here was the entire trip about to be rendered asunder. I was my true self and freaked out. Snapped at her and kicked off one of those gritted teeth arguments in public where concerned strangers  get a "No, everything is ok. We swear! Oh, lovely shirt you got there by the way..."

She dug through her backpack fumbling for a driver's license she never planned on using while I raced through the dread of telling everyone we weren't coming. And finding a place while we planned on returning upstate.

She found it. Deep and buried below triple folder clothes and a box of dog treats. "What are those for?" I asked. 

"For your dog back home. To introduce myself" she said with deep gun metal blue dagger eyes.  We made the trip and about four months later broke up. We had dated for nine months but it felt like nine years when all was finalized. We both found people more tolerant of our true selves.

S in the ABC

 

Boy does this song have it all. Starts with the brassy hit like a high school marching band is about to come down field and play Stars and Stripes Forever. Then that funky snap like a cello bounding over Mt. Everest before segueing into the main song. There it has all this bumping and dueling staccato with the organize frenzy that partially peaks at "SMACK BY BITCH UP!" before then wilding out again. The only break is the female one note solo that then goes right back into madness.

I enjoyed this song a bit too much for someone who the hardest thing they ever took was quinine and black coffee while abroad in Nicaragua. Other The Prodigy songs I admire are Diesel Power and Climbatize and Spitfire. I am quite the "on paper" hard character you see. Or at least 20 something me did while wearing this out on the old Discman. 

 These are songs to do heroin to. I think the song is ABOUT heroin. Have you seen the video? It has a twist that is still a bit surprising albeit more in a "I need to check my preconceived notions" then blow my mind style. 

Meandering Check In

At some point life slows down to where the excitement of getting new tires matches the same deep welled glee of a birthday present. This is where I find myself, at a point when writing stories becomes alluringly navel gazing. Let me write about how no one understands me. About stumbling on an exe's or co worker's social media and having something new to fantasize to. This is where the "manic pixie girl" trope emerged. You have seen those movies.

Garden State. 500 Days of Summer. Elizabethtown

I often found value in work but that has become an iterative cycle of hurry up and wait. Race to the finish and then stop a your very tip toes so you bend at the waist and wobble over the line while you wait. For a final word. Chase the ghost of approval from a standstill. This works both professionally and personally. Where are you and where is it? Whatever the it is.

Have not put digital pen to this blog in a while. I remember in the heyday of blogging (the haughty aughts) and apologizing for those long delays. I don't know enough about streaming but do content creators do that?

"Hey, everyone, its your boi XGonnaGiveittoya here. Sorry for the delay. I was just feeling blue and also busy for two months straight"

Ill see what I can do. Get out the writing prompts and scribble. Just hope to avoid someone swinging from the air with blue hair. 

Rainy Day

 Its crum-dug-diggly-fugly weather today.

80 billion gallons fell over our 12 county area in 8 hours said the weekend weather man. The man who is not as handsome as the prime time man. Still somewhat stilted and fishing for a catch phrase that will take him to big weather cities. Miami. New York. Anywhere but here. 

Clapboard weather that pitter patters on the un-used exhaust vent in my apartment. Soaked drenched phone book weather. The amount of water that turns these relics into suburban super weapons to be tossed over highway pedestrian bridges. A tiny bit of free mayhem just needing a nudge. 

Tomorrow the already dense spindles of tomatoes will surge from their August peak into an Indian summer of green ticking against a clock and root bound to stop them from rending more fruit. The plants my neighbor left on her porch will soon need to be brought in. I anthropomorphize the plants and here is her scheflerra commenting on he difference in mineral from rain water to tap."This really tastes better, Janet. The rain water I mean. On my rhizomes"

Here are torrents that pour through the broken glass of old warehouses. Places you can ge for a deal. Call Lou Sala for a deal on this place where vines cover the area code. Moss grows over the drenched upholstery from the abandoned break room sofas.

Clammy basement weather. Trapped in a bar called the Barking Spider where they only have hot fries to eat and the TV got soaked through a hole in the siding. 

Z in The ABC

We got there!

Z for Zombie by The Cranberries

What millennial doesn't like this song? Its perfect for the car. It has some gravity (especially if you watch the video and even cursorily glance at the history it references) but is also just a great jam. My favorite part is the in the percussive wrap up at the end where the drums just flip back and forth. A great part to zen out to watching the concentric circles of the Windows Media Player animations. To imagine someone dancing and flipping their hair back to each beat. 

Thanks for reading! If you made it this long then I hope you collected copious data for your masters in Vladivostok. 

X in the ABC

 Sometimes I look at my children and see how they inherent all my flaws and little of whatever strength or knowledge I have. That said maybe my strengths are just neuroses that render some productivity. A deep desire of valuing work over everything else. Fussing over cleaning and paperwork and sorting until everything is just a damn fuck it. At least my son doesn't need to wear glasses. 

They have picked up on tics particularly around the insane things I say to preclude any event. Any attempt to work out (any physical exertion tbh) at all and you are going to get

Time to do some push ups....X GON' GIVE TO YA!

Want me to bring all the groceries in on trip? UP A FLIGHT OF STAIRS?! HIT ME WITH THAT JAM!

How I made his connection is lost to history. Victim of way to many songs where this is some intro for a big fight or car chase. Because I am horribly out of shape it usuall is something like X GON' GIVE TO YA. I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR NINETEEN YEARS AND.....wheeze....blerg....fuck that is enough of that. 

This will be jammed before taking the training wheels off the bike. Or jumping into the deep end of the pool. 

U in the ABC

Here is a secret, dear readers. I am not writing these in alphabetical order. Some of these come much sooner or much easier so they get drafted before say Q. I mention this in case I already mentioned Kate Bush but fuck it because she is amazing and deserves to be mentioned constantly.

Hounds of Love is a witchcraft collection of an album. Something that shouldn't exist because of its ability to summon the ethereal. I recently read the Harry Potter books and whenever veelas show up I imagine Kate Bush playing in the background.

But, the song for this is kind of a cheat. Brief and spooky, spartan with words but loaded with sonic asides. In Under Ice she sneaks in a sonar ping along with submarine chatter, screechy violin, and an overbearing sense of presence. A fog all around you or hoar frost locking up under the skin.  This song always make me imagine myself standing out on the ice and staring down into something brewing below it.

W in the ABC

After graduating college I I was fortunate enough to secure a job, albeit a part time one. Still this was a rarefied position in the mid 00s. The job was Community Development Coordinator for a small town in upstate New York. It was not a city planning position or anything so lofty but instead a part time liaison between a citizen group and the village government. On paper I was taking over from a single citizen who spent 15 years advocating and fundraising to redo the village's mainstreet to slow down traffic, increase pedestrian accessibility and beautify the area. This is where I first discovered Blogger since I launched a daily update project for the construction.

I was 22 at the time and had many "first job" foibles albeit looking back at it, I am proud of the overall work. Ever read Dr. Seuss's The Lorax? Made me feel like The Once-ler and everyone else was the Lorax. We killed a video store but I sincerely doubt the sustainability of a town of 1500 with TWO video stores in the year 2006. So...I made a few enemies but last time I visited the town still had the personalized bricks and rippled lamp posts and new trees. In the end it was worth it but I did give up on any pretense of living in said town. Maybe citizens feel differently?

However, at the time I got hired I committed to the gig and place. I asked my supervisor, the Village Clerk (What this person does I am not sure. She cut a lot of receipts), for a list of local landlords. Could I rent a place in town and avoid the 30 minute commute by rural bus?

One person who called back? He was a local slumlord who owned a Christmas tree farm and drove around in a vintage sports car the color of Kinko's canary copy paper. Not a mean guy but the place was a dump. An A Frame duplex house, already a Frankenstein beast, split into 5 apartments. Apartment 5 used to be his son's and the junior had left bric a brac and furniture that then became mine. The place had this videogame RPG vibe to it where you open a cupboard and there was an electric hand mixer. Then a plate. A shaving kit bag. Can I turn this junk into something useful?

Place had an emerald green settee style couch with the ornate wooden legs and loops that had to be a RMS Titanic relic. And heat came from a giant (Thing had to be 4 feet wide by 3 feet tall) gas heater in the middle of the living room. A cast iron pot belly heater/oven with none of the charm.

Place was five minutes from village hall so with no commute and the job plateauing to be an ersatz complaint department (Most days were spent waiting for the phone to ring or someone to email the help line) I sat around a fair amount listening to music on my Rhapsody account. And this is how I found Thursday, a screamo suburban band that seemed to acknowledge that with this jam.

Raw lyrics with the "ashes of American flags" and talking about the joined collective moment of 9/11. Another key Thursday song for me is Understanding in a Car Crash which has the ending of a low rumble repetition of "keep crashing this car, over and over. Keep crashing this car, over and over." I think about that a lot. At work. When voting. When responding to an ask from my wife.

T in the ABC

I thoroughly enjoyed Hot Hot Heat's Make Up the Breakdown a 2002 album lead by Bandages that I listened to way too often. Every song is a banger! Then the band sort of vanished. For me and also for the zeitgeist albeit they had more albums

Now Talk to Me, Dance to Me is a song about two people coming together. That sounds really wholesome but for me this song, with the cowbell kickoff, is my go to jam for everything

I find two sticks on the ground and want to act silly in front of my daughter. Well, slap those together and then go "You are my only girl, but you're not my owner girl" and repeat.

Are you banging on your steering wheel while waiting for a light? Well..."You are my only girl, but you're not my owner girl"

What is that weird staccato beat in the background? The shrill shriek of a cicada in the tree? Well..."You are my only girl, but you're not my owner girl"

Listen to it and try it! Perfect any song which maybe isn't a great thing? Since it could be filler. 

P in the ABC

 Considering her discography and influence you think I would pick something else but my Madonna album is Ray of Light. Which, considering my penchant for electronic music it makes sense. It also came out at the right time in the summer of 98 when I watched a ton of MTV so any song that came out between 97-99 is just carbon seared into my mind.

Note, I don't enjoy or remember much of Ray of Light except this song and hence the aforementioned and this post.

Power Of Goodbye has it all for me. The moodiness and ethereal sound that permeate your mood and give me these click clack steam punk vibes. This is a song that always felt to me quite wise and a sort of deep cut to love and emotion but instead its just a leftover song at the end of the album. 

A Play To Save

At work brainstorming ways to generate more revenue for our non-profit

Me: ***jokingly*** Well if all else fails we can start a company only fans account!

Coworker: Oh...I volunteer!

Me: ***flabbergasted and awkward and feeling dumb for that gag*** Oh...hahaha...I'm going to get fired now!

Coworker: We want to say we tried everything 

Me: ***insert take my money gif***

N in the ABC

 I lent a guy name Jnani (pronounced Yanni) my sole copy of The Postal Service's Give Up, an album I adore. An album only made better that they never made a follow up even though fans clamor for it. Songs alternate from moody indie jams to then electronic jams you can run on a treadmill. Then the song here the duet Nothing Better

Such poetry in the words as the two former lovers fight. I never went through such a hard breakup so I can't pine for any empathy but I can appreciate the lyrics and situation. Like forget about cellar doors and never more...give more more of "Don't you feed me lies about some idealistic future/Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures"

M in the ABC

What a uniquely American tragicomedy as Kanye West. Maybe by the time you are reading this he is President! Or we are all dead. In any case, you cannot deny he is quite talented and imagine if his rambling and "politics" actually had any substance to it. If he stood for anything besides himself then imagine what could happen.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a desert island album for sure. All those tracks are bangers and all the people he brought together is this lovely and lurid tapestry. From that I regularly draw to Monster as my go-to jam. Here Kanye is more of a producer and you let yourself enjoys rhymes by Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver and Nicki Minaj. Amazing how cohesive the thing feels considering each individual piece. All virulent and loud power fantasies.

Consensus is the Nicki Minja verse is best but my personal fav is Jay-Z's what with the horror tropes and the clever use of a sharp inhale right at the end.

L in the ABC

Bit of a cheat here. Well not so much but doing this from my phone.

Not much cred in being an Offspring fan. Even during the heyday of Americana and Pretty Fly for a White Guy they felt shallow. But everyone loved them and songs were everywhere. Tony Hawk games. The soundtracks of 90s teen movies. Cmon, guys! Its ok to like Offspring albeit its aged like puma shell necklaces. 

But let me introduce you to LAPD from the 1992 Ignition album which sounds very un Offspring. Less performance but equally narrative it was song as timely then and now

https://youtu.be/4XZw-sW6G-Y

I can't name any other songs on Ignition, an album I owned after finding it in an FYE while visiting my sister in Virginia (such rarities never came to PR) but this song is Offspring. Very punk and repeatable with a sincere albeit very blunt message. 

K in the ABC

Its so easy to shit on Linkin Park even during their heyday. Way too many an awful early Youtube animated music video was set to their music. Anime weeb fiends and girls with blue hair that rang around in cloaks liked Linkin Park. This was the glee club without the shows and recitals. These are people who grew up into 40 somethings who hopefully GOT the point of Fight Club, but probably didn't. 

Their first few albums always focused songs on some mysterious and overbearing "you" that was impossible to ID but also became a sort of everyman trouble. Recently the Trump re-election campaign set an ad to "In the End" and the band and most fans were aghast. Like, did those dicks ever listen to a Linkin Park song? I doubt they would back anything GOP. But, its an LP song. It is MADE to be layered over something.

But, that said I un-ironically ADORE Linkin Park and when I heard Chester Bennington died I broke a long standing "don't post on FB" rule to pour out just how I felt. 

When Meteora, their second album came out, I skipped Intro to Art History 1 class * to walk the three miles to the local Barnes and Nobles to buy it. And listen all the way back needing to swap out for the fresh AA batteries I brought. 

That is a Linkin Park memory...walking. My first ever Linkin Park album was (appropriately so) a remix album I bought at this oddball record store (La Casa de los Tapes or House of Tapes) which was tucked away into the back corner of a Sears appliance store. And I had to have what was playing over the store's stereo which was the Reanimation album. It even has this goofy mech on the cover! They made this in a lab for me!

This song has it all. A remix. A cinematic bombast. Those strings and kick off crooning. And I must have listened to it a dozen times walking back home from that record store. Only album I ever bought twice because I had to have this when I got my car (some nine years after its release) and it has a CD player. 

*Where I sat behind a very cute girl named Sivam who I almost went on a date with but I at the same time just started dating the person who would become my wife. This was the one and only time that I had such aplomb with the ladies

J in the ABC

Listening to 311 makes me realize I am old. If the crappy back and morning cocktail of pills didn't already do it consider that the album Jack-O-Latern's Weather comes from  is pushing 30 years but i began listening with the early 00's Evolver and NOW 311 is a kind of lifestyle Jimmy Buffet style band. I mean there are 311 cruises, beers, and vape mixes. So now it is this oddball party band that seems attractive to the North Florida people Jack Donagahy could never figure out on 30 Rock. And during my listening heyday it was a sort of mainstream stoner band which was odd considering my straight edge tendencies. All that said I never felt like I was allowed to be fan even when this band was in its heyday. 

But that sound especially from the earlier albums like the "blue" one. Rap and rock and this very quirky Nebraska reference with a surfer vibe. 

Jack-O-Lantern's Weather? Well, that is a walking sound. It is a younger me stomping down some grey chilly street in New York state. Go stomping around in Jack-O-Lanterns' weather. I didn't have a car until the age of 25 so my friends called me the "ultimate pedestrian" And, this was the walking song with your backpack on and Discman jamming

I the ABC

Hey, I try to sound smart in these posts. But, really can't say anything that hasn't been said about Beastie Boys in 40 something years of their music. Except that i am brave enough to say that while yes Paul's Boutique is their best album I ADORED Hello Nasty and the premiere single from it, Intergalactic. The humor and elaborate rhymes which all seemed just for the sake of being. They did this because they could and unlike the Youtube scene to come years later it somehow wasn't grating, cloying, or destructive.

 Still an amazing video that checked a lot of my person buttons. I remember making bootleg tape recordings of this album for my friends from the single CD in our group that I oh so happened to own. 

The band  made a remix of Body Movin, also from the same album, and it was 1) by Fatboy Slim and parodied Diabolik, a 60s Italian crime movie which WAS the final movie parodied on the original MST3K! Like this album was made for me. 

H in the ABC

Goodness do I love myself some throw away girly pop. Because I am man of honor I stopped listening to Ke$ha once I learned the conditions under which she was forced to record "Your Love is My Drug"* but Demi Lovato is my girl.

And, double goodness is this song super cringey even if I wasn't an overweight guy on the Internet. Like, guys, I'm getting a bit flustered and its not because of this song's pure power. Make me wanna wash my hair and bounce them like a basketball. I think you can hear the teeth grinding over the modem.

This song evokes a certain memory of playing Batman: Arkham City. Stick with me, ok? I mean you are reading this blog so you have to be patient. All those Arkham games have this rhythm style combat where you need to mash buttons at certain times and in combinations to dodge attacks and counter enemies. The more you do this the faster the combat goes but the harder you hit. Its tricky to describe without experiencing it but it is immensely satisfying to chain a series of successful inputs into breaking 40 guys in half. And Demi's Heart Attack was in the background the first (and only time) I ever got a 50 combo, a frustrating achievement to secure (at least for me. I am sure i will get bombed by "Get good" comments**) but memorable. And considering this song has a build up into a drop I can imagine it being Batman's boot dropping right into someone's jaw at that moment.

*Would be Y in the ABC. If that dissapoints you (and it does me, to be honest) then remember she was literally tortured during that time of her life And the guy got away with it!

**Or not considering the sole Ukrainian national who reads this may be a real nice guy who says "Great job" But, you know, in Ukrainian.