Tonight was our second time catching Lyric Born’s live show, but our first venture into Moe’s Alley in Santa Cruz.
Opening act was Mak Nova, a female rapper from Santa Cruz whom we’d never heard of. I listened to a few of her songs beforehand and wasn’t terribly excited for the set, but luckily she had an outstanding band that gave up an excellent performance. Mak’s performance was ok…nothing really grabbed me. To be honest, she seemed too well ‘rehearsed’, as in every move seemed calculated and not exactly genuine. But like I said, her band killed it – I especially liked her bassist – so overall I’d say it was a decent set, but I wouldn’t go out-of my way to see her again.
Anticipation was high for LB, his last show was spectacular and we were hoping for a repeat of the awesomeness. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
His band was scaled way back from the last time we saw him – just drums, bass and guitar – and while his band is stellar, it just wasn’t nearly as fantastic as the last time around.
Don’t get me wrong, he was still good. Just not great.
Nonetheless, it was a fun night and a chance to see some musicians at the top of their game, which is always a good time! Beats a night of Netflix, hands down!
Alllrighty then, it’s been a while since the last update, but we managed to get out Thursday night for some great laughs in San Jose.
Anthony Jeselnik has been doing comedy for 20 years now, but he’s not exactly a household name. I myself just heard about him in the last couple years, in fact. But he SHOULD be wildly famous for his act. The man is hysterically funny! That is, if you like “dark” humor. And we (my family) absolutely do!
His opening acts were forgetful, so much in fact I can’t recall their names. The show opener did have one funny bit about her day job as a teacher for inmates in a correctional facility, but other than that it was m’eh. The featured comic up next was another lady whose name I forget, and her act just kinda fell flat. One punchline elicited a smile from me, but honestly I don’t think I laughed once during her set. It was a heavy dose of ‘cringe’ as the kids say…
After the dull second act, I was really anxious for some laughs, and boy did Jeselnik deliver! I was laughing so hard at times it was hard to catch my breath!
His writing is really clever and his punchlines are so unexpected, it’s really something to behold. Like I said, his comedy is dark, ‘gallows humor’, and is most definitely NOT for everyone. Avoid him if you’re easily offended, or you think comedians should censor themselves and maintain political correctness. If you think political correctness and comedy is a match made in the deepest pits of hell, then Anthony Jeselnik may be the comedian for you!
In all, it was a super fun night, great to get out with the Mrs. and our daughter and her bf. Lots of laughs all around!
Jeselnik is on tour right now, if you have the opportunity I HIGHLY RECOMMEND his show!
Roughly 15 years ago I became involved with my local C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team) and while I considered myself to be living the Boy Scout’s motto “Be Prepared”, after going through the training for C.E.R.T. and working with our local LEOs and EMS/FD, I recognized that while I was better prepared than most, I was not even close to where I needed to be.
This lead me down a very long, twisted, sometimes horrifying rabbit hole in the world of preparedness, survivalism, resource depletion, world events and politics.
In the course of study, I ran across a website by the name of “BisonPrepper” and was immediately intrigued. This guy was unlike EVERYBODY in the “preparedness space” on the web. He was living proof that “conventional wisdom” could be thrown right out the window, and survival could still be possible on next to nothing financially. All you had to do was unlearn everything we’ve been taught was ‘necessary’ and learn to embrace frugality. How was he living proof? He was doing it, living off grid on ‘junk land’ in the wilds of NE Nevada, living without an automobile, without plumbing, without ‘utilities’, basically living without most modern conveniences that the majority of people in “first world” countries deem essential to life. Like refrigeration, for example.
I followed his blog for years and would comment frequently, and James and I would exchange emails occasionally on things that were too big to discuss in a comments section. I bought (almost) all of his books, and while I didn’t agree with him 100%, I enjoyed his point of view and his out of the box thinking enough that I kept coming back for more, year after year. And besides, he was funny as all get out (unless you’re easily offended, that is).
Fast forward to June 2020 and Lord Bison (as he was affectionately called by his loyal minions) announced he was going really off grid, discontinuing his blog and moving to a monthly subscription newsletter via snail mail, so naturally I signed up.
It was at this point Lord Bison and I became friends. We used to correspond frequently via the Post Office, and I’d send small gifts and holiday greetings and what not, anxiously awaiting every new monthly installment. Then suddenly it stopped.
I’ve sent a few letters, sent a few emails and all have gone unanswered. I tried the phone number I had for him and got the old “this number has been disconnected” recording. His last newsletter was in May of this year, or maybe it was April, with a May electronic update (he started doing one post a month after a year or so of Mail only, but I digress) and not a peep since then. Not even a comment on my blog here, which were frequent before his disappearance.
Have you seen this man?
It’s a weird feeling, not knowing what in the world happened to someone that you “talked” to almost daily for a dozen years or so. It’s unsettling to say the least. It’s difficult to wrap my head around how someone important to you can suddenly be gone without a trace…
Jim, you magnificent bastard, if you’re still out there, know that your presence (and your majestic hair!) is missed. Sido mentioned your disappearance a while back, and a few of us chimed in (including Wilder) in concurrence that none of us had heard from you, which is worrisome.
My hope is that you’ve ‘gone to ground’ out in the BiPOD you told us all about, but it gets harder every day to convince myself of that. My pessimism, so finely honed under your tutelage, keeps telling me otherwise. Six months is a long time for someone with as much to say as you do, to keep quiet.
If you’re reading this, let me say ThankYou once again for everything you did for me and the greater collection of Minions. Living through these crazy times we find ourselves in is going to be a bit less frightful thanks to you and your life’s work. I agree with the notion that nobody is ever “fully prepared”, but I can say with 100% certainty that I’m miles beyond where I was when I found you, and my fear of the unknown has DEcreased by 90%, at least. And that is because of you.
Whether we meet again in this life or the next, your next jelly-filled donut is on me Buddy!
As I have mentioned in previous posts, my musical inclination runs more toward ‘alternative’ music, but long before that label was tacked on, we were just called ‘punks’, and if you were part of that clique, listening to the music of the “Top 40” was heresy, much less heavy metal.
That being the case, 80’s metal was sort of my ‘dirty little secret’… I certainly was not a metal head or ‘headbanger’, but I can’t deny a good song, regardless of the genre.
In all honesty, in the case of most metal bands, I like A song of theirs. There are a couple bands that had a few songs that grabbed me. If I had to name one metal band from the era that I actually liked, without question I’d say RATT, was the one. For me, Warren DiMartini was the best lead guitarist in the genre and drummer Bobbi Blotzer was top of the pack too.
Likewise, there were a TON of bands from that era that were simply horrible. Just gawd-awful, cheap imitators, trying to make the record labels some money. And don’t even get me started on “Power Ballads”!!!
Anyhow, here are a few from back in the day that I still get a kick out of. Let your hair down, crank up the speakers to ’11’ and let ‘er rip!
Johnette Napolitano was born this day in 1957, but it wasn’t until 1986 I found out about her, through her band Concrete Blonde. Since then, she’s left an indelible mark on my musical soul.
Concrete Blonde, circa ’86. Nothing like these guys, truly original!
I was lucky enough to see Concrete Blonde live on 3 different occasions, and Johnette was simply amazing. There is an honesty, a vulnerability that comes from her songwriting that is just mesmerizing. (NOT to slight the rest of the band, they are AWESOME!)
A couple interesting notes regarding Johnette and her influence on me…
First, she is the first (and only, until recently) musician that made me cry with a song. Yeah, I always thought people that said “that song made me cry” were full of crap, but I’ll be damned, Johnette did it to me with “Little Sister” from their debut album.
Second, Johnette is the ONLY artist, EVER, that compelled me to write a ‘fan’ letter. This was before email, and Facebook and all that nonsense… I was going through a real tough time; my wife was pregnant with our daughter, my band had broken up, I was actively suing a production company that had ripped me off, (not paying me for “services rendered” at a bunch of gigs I played for their acts) and I was pretty sure at that point that I was DONE with music. So I wrote a letter to Johnette telling her how much she inspired my song writing, and that maybe that inspiration would bring me back to music someday. And while I can’t say she’s ‘responsible’ exactly, I’m still here, making music, almost 30 years after that letter!
It’s one of the crazy things in life, that Johnette isn’t a ‘household name’. She certainly should be. She’s got more talent in a single finger than most pop stars express their entire careers. She’s an artist’s artist, a one-of-a-kind talent, and an absolute gem.
I’m so incredibly grateful for having Johnette being a huge part of my life’s soundtrack, I can’t imagine life without her voice in it!
Happy Birthday Johnette! I wish you nothing but happiness and continued artistic expression. My life is better because of you, even though we’ve never met. Thank you for everything!!
Sunday night we were back in San Francisco for what turned out to be one of the funniest nights we’ve had in ages.
It also marked the long awaited return to the Warfield Theater, which I’ve been anxious for as it’s been decades since my last show there. Considering the last time I was in the place, the year started with “19..”, it hasn’t changed much. Updated bars, a better lighting and sound system…that’s pretty much it.
The grandeur remains!
Julian McCullough opened the show, and he did a fantastic set, really funny. We’d never heard of him before the show, but we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for him in the future. His bits on Philly alone were worth making the trip for!
Julian, one funny guy!
Next up was Graham Kay, another comedian unknown to us. Another very funny man! He was real low key, but he kept us laughing all through his set.
Canadians can be funny? Who knew?
And finally the headliner Nate Bargatze, our man from Tennessee, took the stage. Man, what a set! If you’ve never seen his show, you are missing out. This comedian is a national treasure! One of the things I love about his comedy is that he keeps it ‘clean’, he doesn’t swear and he doesn’t rely on crass, vulgar stuff for laughs, like roughly 89% of comedians out there these days. And he doesn’t need to! He was just spectacular, I walked out of the place with my face hurting from laughing and smiling so much! I really can’t say enough good things about this guy, it was top notch comedy and a great experience.
Nate Bargatze, too funny to properly describe!
Thanks for a great night gentlemen! Last week was ROUGH, and a night of laughter was just what the doctor ordered!
I found this in a comments section beneath some news story – I don’t recall which one as it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the bad news nowadays and frankly isn’t really relevant one way or another to what this lady had to say…and I took the liberty of editing for brevity.
“I keep saying the same thing, if you do not want to live in this country, leave, I am so tired of being told I have to adjust to their ways, I will not. I grew up in a society that had dress codes, codes for grooming, codes to live up to to get a decent job, codes to conduct myself like a lady and expect others to treat me like a lady, I will not stop using the codes I grew up with, life was better then, life had meaning then, we as a society treated each other better then, so I will refuse to accept the life that people are pushing on me now. I will not stop expectinga man to open a door, I will not stop teaching my grandchildren and great grandchildren to say yes ma’am and no sir, and if this society expects me to change then they have another thing to think about. This is not the way we are supposed to live withchildren killing old people, this country is better than that, and we as a people need to demand that this does not go away…<snip> I grew up in the country not in the city, so that might have been the difference, but I don’t believe that, it is up to theparent to teach the child no matter where they live. If you teach a child to disrespect by disrespecting that is what they will learn no matter if you live in the country or thecity.”
She’s not wrong. Although I’m not a grand or great-grand parent and thus quite likely a couple generations behind this commenter, I too remember the “good old days” of manners, decorum and general decency.
I miss those days.
Sure, we’ve got all kinds of whiz-bang, newfangled ideas and services these days, but I would happily lose “streaming”, endless options of home delivery, social media and cell phones (just for a start!) to go back to when the vast majority of people were decent and the minority with their peculiar proclivities weren’t trying to shove their lifestyle down the throats of everyone else.
And while I am all for, and encourage “free expression” in one’s appearance, I think people need to understand, and ACCEPT that there are consequences for letting their freak flag fly.
If you are one of those folks inclined to get, say a face tattoo, more power to you. But if you come into my place of business looking for a job with a face tattoo? You won’t make it past the reception desk. We have a very particular clientele, that we deal with face-to-face, day in and day out, and they pay a boatload of money for the privilege. These people don’t care for face tattoos, (or long, unkempt beards, torn clothes, huge fake fingernails, ear gauges, etc.) and if we want to keep their business, we hire people our clients are comfortable with and confident in. End of story.
Some people will hear that and exclaim “that’s not fair!”, but I’d submit that it would be equally unfair to put employees in place that make our clients uncomfortable, especially when they are paying for a service.
For my 5+ decades on Earth, the saying ‘life isn’t fair’ has been widely acknowledged and accepted as truth, but over the last few years the very idea of what is or isn’t fair has been turned upside down.
Look, I get it. I am about as ‘anti-authority’ as they come, and I firmly believe in one’s right to choose THEIR own path, whatever that looks like (short of harming others, of course) however, just like with anything in life, choices have consequences. Just because I support your freedom to dress/talk/behave in the manner of your choosing, it doesn’t mean I have to like it, much less support poor behavior. At best, you’ll receive tolerance. At worst, I may openly laugh at your ridiculousness. That’s the cost you pay for freedom of expression. Some people will think you express the absurd.
I was a punk rock kid back in the early 1980’s, long before Hot Topic stores in every mall, and just walking around looking like my friends and I did back then was enough to get us harassed by the cops, ridiculed and mocked by the adults, refused service and/or entry to establishments and beaten up by the jocks. But did we go crying about it, looking for sympathy? Did we demand acceptance and special treatment because we were under represented? Hell no, it was the fire that forged us into the adults we became. It taught us to pick our battles, it taught us to make the difficult choices that had to be made, it taught us how to stand up for ourselves and for each other. It taught us that not everything and every place is for everyone, and that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
What I see today is one adult after another, throwing tantrums and making demands. That’s not the way it works in real life, and anyone over the age of two should already know that.
If the 1970’s already has claim to the “Me Decade”, I’d have to say to 2020’s are shaping up to be the “Only Me, Scew You Decade”.
You see it everywhere, every day. Rudeness, inconsiderate behavior, a complete lack of awareness of the others around you. I’ve seen so many people lately being rude to wait staff and check-out clerks, it’s unreal. It’s a contagion.
We can, and should, be better than that. Holding open a door for someone is a simple kindness, it has nothing to do with “the patriarchy”. A smile or a friendly hello can go a long way. That is just common courtesy. If you see someone struggling for the top shelf in the market and you have the reach, offer to lend a hand! After all, if you were on the receiving end of any of those things, wouldn’t it give you a little glimmer of hope that our humanity for one another is still there?
Negativity begets negativity, perhaps courtesy and kindness can be contagious too. We ‘commoners’ have the cards stacked against us as it is, I think it’s in our best interest to make things a little less hostile, a little less vulgar.
You can be an outsider, an underrepresented-whatever-who-cares-what-your-kink-is and I say do your thing, but you have no place to demand I or others don’t think you’re a weirdo. And throwing fits because people don’t celebrate your “specialness” is no way to get them on your side. And it certainly doesn’t give you a pass to be a prick.
Accept others as you would be accepted. If they don’t like you because of your lifestyle/creed/tribe/insert. infintylist.here, give them something TO like you for. Kill ’em with kindness, as the Mrs. likes to tell me. As the old saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Manners, good hygiene and courtesy will get you a lot further in life than a hissy fit will. Nothing will turn a person off more than badgering them with your unsolicited dogma. Like it or not, we’re all in this together, might as well make the best of it. Just something to think about.
This week I was called upon to report to the Superior Court in San Jose to “perform my civic duty”. What a clown show!
I got lucky in that my week happened to be the Labor Day holiday – and you KNOW city/county/state employees DON’T work on holidays, so the week on-call was shortened to 4 days. Usually, in my county at least, they make you call in twice a day for the entire week to see IF you have to report, and this time I did.
Wednesday, I reported in and it was hours of standing in line, waiting, moving to different locations, waiting some more, then an “overview” by the judge, then he addressed the ‘hardship’ cases trying to get excused. End of day one.
Day two, actual jury selection. Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. Lunch break. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Another break. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally about 4:15pm they had the jury installed and sworn in, and the rest of us were let go.
The entire thing left a bad taste in my mouth. But, it also encouraged me to keep staying “out of the system”… no way I want that place as part of my life!
I could go on and on about the dummies, the blowhards, the idiotic public defender, the scum and villains over running the place…
Not my pic, but a pretty good representation of the “people” coming to appear in court…
…the lack of manners, the lack of maturity, the lack of concern for how the citizen’s time and resources are being utilized. But, I’m trying to reduce negativity in my heart and soul, so I’ll just say again, what a clown show. A gross, monotonous clown show. Hope it’s a good long time before I have to do that again!
Have a great weekend everyone. Thanks for stopping by!
I realized yesterday that time has flown by since my last post and once again I’d dropped the ball.
Nothing all that noteworthy has happened in the last couple weeks, just life rushing at us at 100 mph.
We got back from our trip to Pismo, and I was feeling on top of the world. Rested, recharged and ready to get back to the real world, with many “to-do’s” to do, plans to make and goals to achieve.
It was all well and good ’til that Thursday night when a call came in from the fire alarm monitoring company- a water flow alarm went off just before 9pm…which means *something caused water to move in the fire sprinkler system. Never, and I mean NEVER a good call to get.
So basically, from Thursday August 25th, through last Thursday, September 1st things were a bit over the top tense. And I’ll leave it at that.
Cast iron + direct contact with the earth = trouble.
While this was going on, the Mrs. and our girl were both getting started for “back to school”, with their classrooms being occupied by the varmints as of last Monday, August 29th.
So, I’ve been a little preoccupied lately, and the blog took a back seat…
Despite the drag of life, I did manage to do a few fun things.
I finished another book – “A Great Reckoning” by Louise Penny. This was a random recommendation from Amazon actually. I’d never heard of the writer, who turns out is quite prolific, but the book was good. It was your typical ‘whodunnit’ detective novel, with a lot of unexpected twists and turns, and some very memorable characters. Not earth shattering or life changing in any way, though certainly a fun read nonetheless that didn’t take any real commitment to finish. She kept it compelling enough that I found myself WANTING to read it, to discover how it all went down. Perfect lite fare for a vacation/beach/lazy Sunday escape.
I also went on a treasure hunt and dug out a bunch of old cassettes containing a bunch of my earliest music we recorded back in the day. My old music partner moved back to the area some time ago, and we thought it would be fun to “digitize” these so we could listen to our oldies but goodies from days of yore. Hopefully more to come on this in the not too distant future.
Lost gems from the 1980’s and 90’s!
And last but not least, my daughter and I hit the Caravan Lounge in downtown San Jose last Saturday night.
The Caravan has been a dive bar since at least the mid 80’s, and I hadn’t step foot in the place since maybe ’92 at the latest but they didn’t have bands playing there back then. Some time later it became a somewhat legendary spot in the South Bay for punk bands and the more underground scene, which I’d kind of outgrown by then, so I never had gone there strictly for music until the last weekend.
Things didn’t pan out as planned unfortunately… the band we went (and I really WANTED) to see – the Wet Bandits, we didn’t see. The flyer for the show listed the Wet Bandits and nobody else, with a start time of 9pm. We got there at 9pm and found there was in fact an opening band, whose name I forget. Anyhow, the opening act didn’t START their set until 10:15, which was a drag. Then on top of that they were just boring, frankly. We figured they’d do a 30 minute set since they started so late, but at the 32 minute mark,the guitarist sat out and we were “treated” to a drum and bass duo jamming God knows what… At that point I called it a night. Don’t get me wrong, I love trios, and I can absolutely get down with some drum and bass jams, but these guys needed more time in the garage before they put themselves in front of a crowd. Bush League stuff, at best.
The bright side was getting to hang with my kid, just the two of us. It doesn’t happen all that often, so I really appreciate it when it does!
Yesterday was just a boring day of laundry and chores and super fun stuff like that. The Mrs. is a bit under the weather (back to school = cooties galore) so she’s lying low trying to recuperate before going back to classes this week. Me? No rest for the wicked…Working on the “holiday” per usual, massive deadline looming in a week. And I’m on-call for Jury Duty this week. Yay.
Oh, and did I mention we’re in the midst of a heat wave? It’s been in the high 90’s for the last 3 days. Supposed to be 103 today. Hotter tomorrow. Good times.
Born Declan Patrick MacManus on this day, back in 1954, but rose to prominence as “Elvis Costello” in the late 1970’s.
I can still vividly recall the first time I heard Elvis Costello and the Attractions. As a kid, we didn’t have “cable TV”, so MTV wasn’t part of my life, but there was a show on broadcast TV called “MV3”, that was what you might call a mashup of American Bandstand and MTV… Anyhow, I used to hear a lot of new music on that show as it primarily played what was known then as New Wave music – the Romantics, Bow Wow Wow, the Three O’clock, stuff like that… This would have been late ’82/early ’83.
Anyhow, it was on this show that I first heard “Pump it Up” by EC&tA and I was an instant fan. I have remained a fan for the last 40 years. It wasn’t until later I learned that song was already 5 years old, but I snatched up his ‘This Year’s Model’ album and it went into heavy rotation for a long while. And when I could find them, I picked up all his earliest records.
The song that made me a fan!
He and his band somehow managed to take Motown-like music and fuse it with the energy and brashness of punk rock and it was magic. That he looked like a goofy nerd while blasting out this awesome music made him even more endearing.
But unlike the vast majority of punk and new wave bands, he was clever, and his band could really play. The music was raw, but deliberate unlike a lot of the music at the time.
Right around the time I first discovered him, he hit paydirt with the hit single ‘Veronica’, which frankly at the time I didn’t really care for. It was such a departure from his earlier albums, it didn’t even seem like the same artist.
Keep in mind though, I was very young and VERY arrogant about music back then… I was far too immature to understand musical growth in an artist, it felt like a betrayal, or in the popular parlance of the time that he “sold out” for commercial success. What can I say, I was a dumb kid…
Anyhow, luckily for me I grew out of that short-sighted stupidity and learned to embrace musical change.
After years of missing out on his live show, we finally got to see him a few years back out at the Concord Pavillion. He put on a great show (especially considering he was about 60 years old at the time!) and it was frankly shocking how many great songs he pulled out. When an artist is as prolific as he is (something like 25 albums released to date!), it’s easy to forget just how many great songs he’s put out over numerous decades. It’s remarkable that his music has changed drastically over the years, but it all remains relevant decades later.
The Legend
Well done Sir! Best wishes to you on this day, and thank you for all the great tunes!
The Boring Old Man 