So last night Paul and I got together to watch the game, and what a horror it was. Not only did we get beat and I drank too much Cabernet and now my head hurts, but Paul's beef stew (what a coin-ki-denk – we both made beef stew) totally kicked my beef stew's ass.

I shouldn't feel too horrifical about it, since Paul is a regular Martha Stewart – extremely handy around the house, and a great cook. He's also a producer/engineer and has recorded me many a time as I execute new pop songs as I write them. But still, I couldn't help but feel like a bit of a doofus, as Paul slurped down my broth politely, and then I had a helping of his stew. Let's just say it was exquisite, thick, with all the pieces bits and bobs totally disintegrated from so much stewing, and a spicy finish.


It was one of those meals where you want to shout out because you feel so good eating it. But then, I have skillz that Paul doesn't have – namely songwriting and painting (I'd add writing to this short list, but today I am feeling mentally challenged and so will leave it off). By the way Paul gave me a recipe for his Kale soup (I'd never even heard of Kale) and a couple of links of Portuguese chorizo for good measure.


So anyway, Paul's home recording studio is all patched up – whatever software he needed to reinstall to get his ProTools to work is reinstalled – and he's good to go. I've been bugging him to record me for a while. See, what I do is, I book recording sessions when I feel I need to light a fire under my bum to write some new pop songs. And then I have no choice, innit. There's a recording session, and so I have to step up and write some new stuff. I do the same with booking gigs when I feel I need to brush up my playing/singing/remembering-own-lyrics. And I'll arrange art gallery exhibitions if I feel I need to amp it up with the oil painting.


Paul said sure we can record, and proposed the weekend after Super Bowl, whatever that is, haha. Seriously, I am only recently a football fan convert, but not sure I'll watch the Super Duper Bowl, because I just don't care to be honest. So last night after a number of glasses of Cab., I remembered Paulie once asking me to paint a portrait of Stevie Wonder for him – he had worked with Stevie in the studio once and meeting him was a spiritual experience, he said. So I was in Paul's bedroom looking out onto the hall wall. It's painted this really nice clay colour, and there are prints and lovely framed photos everywhere, but there's nothing in front of you on the hall wall as you walk out the bedroom.


So I said Paul, I said, record me doing 3-4 new songs, which I have not written yet, and I'll paint you Stevie for that spot on your hall wall right there! He was into the idea, we shook on it, so now I HAVE TO WRITE FOUR NEW POP SONGS!!!!!!!! (not to mention painting an oil portrait of Stevie Wonder, but that'll be fun)….


Oh, and the assignment to paint fiber-glass sheep for that famed sleep medication marketing promotion is still pending. Reason it's hanging is funny – since the famed sleep medication is a controlled substance, they want to make sure my painting job is not too psychedelic, lest they be linked with recreational drugs, which in fact this famed sleep medication is oft mis-used as (so I hear)!! Which is damned straight, because I was envisioning a Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds kind of Yellow Submarine motif.


Finally, went to see a production of Macbeth on Sat. night with Debby and Chris, because our friend Leeanne was in it. It was awesome and everything, but I just didn't get it. I couldn't follow their damned Olde English too well (and I was an English Major in college, and graduated Cum Loudly and everything), and even though Chris was lovely enough to explain everything that went totally over my head in the first half (which was a couple hours of sitting there, half trying to concentrate on what was happening, half just zoning out and daydreaming, which I have a hard time enough not doing even when something interesting is on – if it's something confusing or uninteresting, forget about it – I am blasting off to Planet Ari never to return), but then the second half rendered me befuddled again. And I tell you what gentle reader, it's not fun being a dim-bulb!! I was really trying to work out what was happening, and other than just the very basics, I truly had no clue. I was kind of stung by my own lack of brains all the rest of the weekend.


It reminded me of the time a few weeks ago when, while at band practice with Adam and Justin at Justin's place in Brooklyn, I started playing this Guided By Voices song we might cover, Window of my World. Well, I figured out the middle part wrong, and I knew I didn't have it exactly right but it was the best I could do. Well Justin, who is our DRUMMER for Pete's sake, gets up and takes the guitar and, after listening to the bit once or twice, nails it perfectly!! And I'm standing there slack jawed going, I'd have never figured that out, why am I so stupid????? But then again, we proceeded to practice some songs I wrote and they were good songs, and I'd written them… so my brain is strong in certain areas, and really not very strong at all in some other areas.


The brain is a complicated piece of meat.


The End

PATS WIN!!!!!!! I WIN 20 BUCKS!!!!!!! OK, I've always hated football, been indifferent to all sports in general, just never paid attention, but I really hated football - and have always been absolutely obsessed with baseball, I might be the most rabid baseball fan I know. Anyway, today I am a football fan. I'll probably watch both games next weekend, again Indianapolist and THE PATS!!!! And then two other teams that I have no idea who they are. And then I'll watch the Superbowl. Prince is performing. That can't be too bad - good old purpleness himself. I cannot believe I am a football fan, I never thought I would ever EVER say that.

Not much of a reason to post, but since I have $20 riding on the Pats and my asshole friend Anthony didn't tell me that the spread was not in my favor for a straight up $20 if Pats win bet, even though he KNOWS i know nothing about football - anyway, since that's all happening, but I still don't give a shit about football, I figure I'll write something. I was gonna go for a swim but my friend's goggles kinda touch my eyeballs and thus are trying to use, I instead cooked some salmon and shrimp and had some red wine. The whole thing was delicious.

Anyway, since getting back there have been some heavy handed type changes at work. At least the boss told all the piss takers that show up at our US office but do no work, that their jobs were in serious trouble - and he let go of this guy Henry, who was this tall, stooped, elderly, sleazy, utterly clueless sales type person, all after consulting with me and a few mates over much drinking and some great Italian food the night before. That was all quite hard core but really quite cathartic and good, because that place is an awesome place, and it needs a shake up badly. Now Same Suit Sam truly does have to remain anonymous. I intend to as well, I have two readers in Sunnyside only, they are a couple - and only one in western Mass. - that's 3 friends who read this and who know who I am. I have no other readers and I intend to keep it that way.

A friend who makes movies recently told me that I need to write down all my travelogue stories, from all my crazy trips all over this great land of ours. A sort of a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets Leaving Las Vegas meetings On the Road by Kerouak meets sort of Lost in Translation and even a bit of Roger Dodger, only my protagonist you definitely like - if there's any reason to dislike him, it's that he leads a lifestyle that's quite toxic and not because he's a womanizer with little heart/soulfulness/kindness, etc...... actually dodger had a dash of those things, well maybe not too much kindness though but even still a little, towards his nephew anyway. So....

Then I went to a party in Park Slope that my old close friend from California and his girlfriend wanted to set me up with the hostess of, it was her b-day party and a housewarming affair as well. I met my other film maker friend first and saw his MASSIVE new apartment and delightful beautiful 2 and a half year old girl, and also his wife and nephew. We went and had pretty exquisite sushi and then he drove his SWEEET Lexus SUV and us to the bash. As soon as I walked in and met the hostess I knew that I did not fancy her, and so proceeded like a rude bastard to drink and exclusively talk to my friend all night, with not so much as an attempt to converse with another soul there. I find it difficult to talk to strangers in setting where you're sort of supposed to, anyway, but you know if I had liked this girl I'd have at least tried loads to talk to her. That's the awful thing about being set up with somebody, and why I'm sure it's always a disaster area (at least for me) is that what somebody finds pretty is so unique and individual and impossible for someone else to accurately gauge, that being set up with somebody is just silliness, and I wish people would never ever do it (unless they were asked to help, of course, then all bets are off) - I dunno, life's too short, but I'd rather be alone that try a relationship with a woman I'm not attracted to, period. And OF COURSE she has to be cool and smart and funny and positive and great, of course all those things, and I KNOW nobody's perfect least of all me, but still I want to be in love, and part of that is finding someone attractive. So anyway, I totally don't regret spending the entire time speaking with my friend - but I guess in hindsight it was pretty obnoxious, hehehe, I'm such a total dick. Anyway....

He and I also talked about writing - and specifically my writing my travelogues into a zany Fear and Loathing journeyman of a business traveler who's really an artist and not a corporate guy at all, just wearing the uniform. My first friend loved the idea and even gave me the idea after thinking of it himself. He said you know I am a filmmaker and I would read it, so you may as well write it, because there's some great stories there. My other friend that I was at this party with, he thought it wasn't such a hot idea. Not that it was a bad idea, but that I had more of a spice rack, with no meat to cook. A great analogy, even though we carved out sort of a story (Main Guy in England, with a 7 year old long distance relationship coming to an end, and seeing London maybe for the last time for a really really long time, where clearly the Main Guy knows London well - getting back to NYC, totally alienated, isolated, self destructive mess - the 7 year old long distance relationship was terribly lonely, and yet this is even more lonely.... to make something solid and stable happen for himself, Main Guy buys an apartment and walks around it's large cavernous emptyness naked and disoriented smoking pot from a coke can and playing play station - basically a nearly married guy right after a breakup. Realizing the apartment is no consolation, and is in fact a constant reminder that his relationship is fucked, finished. Luckily the guy's a smart guy who makes art and music and both are good - and who also has a good, quite powerful day job - selling an annual cruise ship based even that is very high end and in the HR industry. I mean I'd change a lot of it to make it not so obviously me, but I love the event on the ship angle, that sort of a thing is hard to make up, just so random...... anyway, so the Main Guy cuts to an interview where he's taking a job, and the interviewers are warning him, "you know Jack, this job is pretty much all travel, you're on the road all the time, we have to make certain that you understand that - you'll be home very little ok?" and the main guy's like "Yeah, bring it on", and .....

and so the Main Guy is always taking limos to laguardia with all his suits and materials for his meeting, but also his hipster clothes because he wants to find the nightlife in every city he visits, which he always does, on foot, half stoned and happily listening to his iPod - but never ends up speaking with anybody - that's the truth but is quite sad and lame, of me, and definitely not a part of my screenplay that ends up being very my life like - that's in fact the one detail that fucking well has to GO - if this thing is to be any good. If my spice rack actually has any meat or not. And that's what both my friends maintained - my first friend that I have to embellish all my stories to have not just great imagery but also have stuff happen, that maybe definitely did not really happen to me. I mean real situations.

And my other friend just sad that I have a lot of homework to do before I try and do a thing like that, the first lesson to read a book called Save The Cat, about how to need certain things to happen in certain parts of your script, in fact very specific pages even, in order for a thing to be credible as a movie and have any hope of making any money. He said what I was describing sounded a lot like Lost In Translation, which I had also very much linked my idea to - only he HATED that movie, where as I enjoyed it, and so did my first film friend. The first film friend is an indie film maker and the second friend, that I went to the party with, is more of a commercial film writer. Anyway, it was GREAT AS HELL to have these two guys, total professionals, give me advise about writing and actually take me seriously as someone who could potentially, theoretically, make something that was good. First friend also said his girlfriend who I consider a friend even though I've only met her like 4 times, is also a pretty flippin successful writer in her own right and would also read something like that if I wrote something like that. So I think I will. Or it would be pretty daft if I didn't, way I figure it.

And so anyway, my Main Guy - he goes all over like all over FLORIDA by car, a place he all his life vowed to never go to, because movies like Bully just seemed so accurately to paint that as a REALLY BAD place. Sorry to any of my Floridian readers. Lucky that none of my three readers are from that dreadful place. Granted I did not go to Miami which I have a feeling I would really love, but the places I did see, Orlando - possibly the shittiest town in America, Tampa (eh!), Gainsville (this actually had a shaggy, lush, mysterious Tom Petty hippy type charm, college town usually do) and Jacksonville - which I actually quite liked, but only because I ended up having zero meetings there and stayed in incredibly posh digs with an amazing view from my window, and copious amounts of solitary sushi eaten and sake drank, and I was reading The Corrections, and everything was just lovely - but if I had to live there I am certain I would go bonkers relatively quickly) and then all over NC (Asheville, a truly hippy college town, only so high in the mountains that people are literally walking in and out of clouds, hence the monicker Smoky Mountains - then Winston Salem, Raleigh, and then Durham. In Raleigh there was an almost encounter with this lovely blonde older lady that I nicely chatted at the bar with, she lived near by or something - anyway, in my story I get a couple final Coors Lights to take up to my room with me, she gives me a strange smile like why are you going up alone with two beers, and having a little kiss goodnight that was ambiguously not quite on the cheek not quite on the lips, and then me having a shower and getting ready for my next mornings meetings (I had 3! no one else at my company even bothers traveling on business at all, so my trips are pretty mental!) and drinking my final two Coors Lights drunkenly, and vaguely wondering why the hell I didn't invite her to come up and drink them with me. That if life's a journey, I am living mine strictly as an observer, almost never as a participant), and then back to my apartment where I can hear the neighbors and I have no time to readjust to the whole NYC vibe, before flying out to San Diego for a big conference, meeting a couple of total dumb ass co workers there, then driving up to LA, then flying to SF and seeing best friend and sister - then flying to Minneapolis, already delirious from loneliness and missing ex fiancee - but being met there by a very close friend who stays in hotel with Main Guy and the two of them go to a Twins game together, buy sweet tickets, and end up sitting in a section full of the players WIFES and GIRLFRIENDS! Then another trip to Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, back to LA. A trip to Seattle and many trips to Chicago, where good friends are seen and many drinks are had. See, this guy's not like Nick Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, he does not want to die - but between the typically hard drinking of a traveling sales man, plus the artist's typical propensity to dig the cannabis, plus this particular protagonist's penchant to pop an ambien and drink a ton of wine, and enjoy his memory disappearing and happily surfing the internet and the cable t.v. in this totally messy state, he's more like Hunter S Thomson, or a more charming Bukowski. Anyway....

Eventually Main Guy - sort of towards the end of the film really - doesn't find it as jarring and alienating to return to NY where he's from, and to spend him in his apartment, and eventually the trips (one interesting one to Toronto and Pittsburgh, two very cool places - after a huge extended family vacation in SF, LA and Palm Desert, and the INCREDIBLE Joshua Tree National Park, and then back to SF) start to feel like there aren't gonna be too many more. Because suddenly and yet gradually Main Guy is no longer unhappy, like he's over his breakup, and he actually meets somebody in New York, a girl he really likes (this was the suggestion of my friend who makes more commercial movies that non artsy non indie minded people have heard of), and the movie ends with him maybe quitting that job, or telling them that he wants a desk job in NYC and they give it to him just to keep him, or whatever. I dunno. It has to have an ending, the main character has to change throughout the movie, and I'll have to have a B story and even a C story that unravels parallel with my main story - all these things that movies all have (the only one that had no structure, no story at all really, was Slacker, which I despised), so it's true, I do have a lot of work and a lot of research to do. But I ordered Save The Cat from Amazon, and I know that I can write, and I know that my oil painting career isn't exactly setting the world on fire, and nor is my rock n roll career (though there is the brand new band Bags that I have a feeling will be pretty good and rock), and my day job, while it's absolutely wonderful and the most brilliant place to work because the President LIVES by the credo that he would never create a horrible work place where people are micro managed, or even really managed at all, he gives us almost total autonomy, and just asks that we show up every day and work - my day job still does not change the fact that I am an artist who needs to create, so now I have this new idea, and I'm pretty excited to sink my proverbial teeth into it.

Hello readership. Just a quick note to say that the St. Louis girl wrote right around New Year's to say she loved the song and she had it posted on her site. I wrote her back how pleased I was that she liked it that much, and another note to see if she cared to meet for a nightcap as I passed through SF on January 3, before flying out to Toronto. She didn't write back and she also replaced the song on her profile with some other song. That made me feel sad sad sad - really quite hideous to be honest. Perhaps I am never going to have another relationship with any body again. And that's ok. It's just if I knew for sure that this is the case, I'd sorta stop having crushes. Anyway, as one of my three readers called E pointed out, it's great to have a great song, even if nothing else ever comes of it. The strange thing is that E knows the St Louis girl, from back in 7th grade, and knew her quite well. Evidently the St Louis girl was quite the actress in her youth (And now Law School) and is exactly as much of a sweetheart in real life as she appears to be via myspace. To be continued.........

Also, I am going to swim tonight and then just chill, I am absolutely fried with tiredness. Burning the candle at both ends lately even more than I typically do. I'm sure my liver will shut down completely in a matter of months. I know I need to write about my trip - my impressions of San Francisco, LA, Palm Desert, Toronto and Pittsburgh are still very fresh and vivid. But not tonight. Tomorrow night I have a party to go to in Park Slope - Adam will go with me he says. The person throwing the party is someone I'm being set up with apparently. Normally this would make me VERY much not attend, because I'm a very private person, and damn retiscent around strangers, but I'm trying to be opposite Same Suit Sam lately, see if that works for me.

Saturday I'll probably start writing about my freaky trip - it was really great. I'll also need to do some damn shopping on Sat., as the cupboard's bare, and then there's another party on Saturday night, this time in Long Island City, and I'm good friends with the girl who's hosting that.

I've got my iPod on shuffle as usual, and the TV is blaring all kinds of wank (Canadian telly it turns out is just as crappy as our Yankee stuff) so I'm going to hit "next" on my iPod some 20 times, and every song that comes up, I'll mention it and something about it. I've got about 12,000 songs in my iPod and nothing on there I detest so everything is at least somewhat pre-screened, which makes keeping it on shuffle 90% of the time quite fun and exciting:

1. Stereophonics - Don't Let Me Down (from the I Am Sam Soundtrack)..... this is ok, I don't actually know what I think of this band, but covering something like this Lennon classic is pretty pointless, even if commissioned for a soundtrack for a big Hollywood picture - it'll always pale in comparison to the groovy oridge.

2. Are You Desirable? - Mike Figgis (from the Leaving Las Vegas Soundtrack)..... this is weird, to have two soundtrack songs come up in a row. I barely have any soundtrack music on my iPod. This is Figgis the film maker playing some walking bluesy bass and piano, with Nick Cage saying one line from the film. I was obsessed with this movie when it was out, and own it, and the soundtrack. Drinking oneself to death seems romantic when you're as goddamn nice and charming and all, as Nick Cage's character was in that flick

3. Skit - Rakim (The 18th Letter) .... just a clip of Rakim talking about rap making a come back in '97, not really a song. It's all good though, Rakim has an awesome voice... and a perfect shuffle segue now into...

4. Innocent When You Dream - Tom Waits (Frank's Wild Years) .... great great Tom Waits classic. Dreamy and sentimental as hell. This and Rain Dogs (along with Swordfishtrombones) were the best 3 Waits records, and came back to back to back. This is a must-include on any mix if someone wants to stick on any Tom Waits

5. That Great Love Sound - The Raveonettes (a mix my sister's friend Evan made for her).... my first time hearing this track, but I do like it. It's noisy and crashing, but pretty and melodic. Nice girl singer with a boy occasional backup singer in the background, production favors drums echoey and up front and vocals up quite high too, with guitars a steady distorted growl in the background. I dig Raveonettes, but this is my first time checkin em out proper. An ex of mine whose music tastes I really trusts dug them when they first came about.

6. Kickstand - Soundgarden (Superunknown).... I guess I have this record on my iPod because it's a famous record from the grunge rock era that I love. But I only love it because I love Nirvana, I didn't much like the other "grunge" bands, because none of them wrote good songs like Kurdt. They wrote ok songs, but basically they were all throw aways, where as Nirvana songs were pretty much all awesome or partially awesome. This I could take or leave

7. Dog Paddle - Modest Mouse (This Is a Long Drive For Someone With...)...... I got all of this band's stuff from my co-worker Steve Seck because my interest in them increased quite a bit once Jonny Marr joined the band fulltime recently. But the singer's yelpy, atonal yelp still turns me off a bit, as does the usual lack of strong melody. This song especially has no melody at all, but rather just a hystrionic drone. Luckily, this one, just like the previous selection, ended quickly enough

8. Heartbreak - KRS-One (I Got Next)..... I don't know why this came up - oh yeah, I just lifted it from my sister in SF. KRS-One is good, always was, but I never gave him much of a listen. Great rap without any of that macho homophobic misogynistic bullshit

9. Swap Meet - Nirvana (Bleach).... Before Kurt sold his soul to the devil to write killer Beatlesque hooks, still this is primo vintage "grunge" - great scream and repetitive sludge riff. What did Kris Noverselic describe his voice as? Boiling nails?

10. Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke (The Eraser).... I went off Radiohead a while before Thom Yorke's solo effort so I never gave it too much of a listen. But again, I think they stopped writing songs a while ago. There's tremendous atmosphere here and we love his voice - the electronic ghost in the machine music is cool and hip and credible, and he write some lovely phrases, but naked alone with an acoustic this song is only ok - though to be fair the more I listen to The Eraser the more it grows it on me. "We think the same things at the same time" melody line in this song is quite lovely

11. Lover's Rock - The Clash (London Calling) ..... this record is a classic as is every song on it. It wasn't until Joe Strummer died suddenly and unexpectedly, all too young, of a heart attack, did I realize his genius - or rather that he was a living legend. Or something. Like with Frank Sinatra or James Brown, I did realize it, but not with Strummer. Probably same with Lennon, because they both died way too young, you don't really sum up their legend until it's over. That said, this song is as clever and catchy and life-affirming as is everything on this fantastic album. Everybody should own London Calling

12. Benton Harbor Blues..... I don't know who this is but I like it. It comes from a mix a girl made for me recently. It sounds vaguely Hawaiian, with a girl singing vocals sporadically and in a detatched manner. I like the effect on her voice (sort of a slapback effect) and the soulful keyboard as the primary instrument.

13. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1 - The Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots)..... this is one of my favorite bands of all time, and this is as good a Flaming Lips a song as it gets. Deceptively simple, Wayne's voice flails over the top of his register as always, and something about the theme (otherworldly celebration of life) always moved the heck out of me. "Those evil natured robots, they're programmed to destroy us - she's gotta be strong to fight them, so she's taking lots of vitamins" has never sounded more meaningful and truthful

14. Death And Destruction - Weezer (Maladroit).... another one of my favorite bands of all time, this is from an era when they didn't make such great albums anymore, and now they've thankfully hung up their hats again, but this is still a fabulous little song - slowly groovy, with Rivers singing high in his register but not so high that he sounds spazzy, and the song has great builts and crescendos and resolutions. At their best, they did everything good that Built To Spill did, but with much more deft pop songcraft.

15. Us - Regina Spektor (Mary Ann Meets The Gravediggers)... I am a Russian immigrant. Regina is a Russian immigrant too, and I can hear her accent and it's funny to me, as is the fact that she looks like so many girls I've known growing up throughout my life that also came from Russia. But she's also wickedly talented, a really important large talent in the mold of Rickie Lee Jones and Bjork. She is a superb singer and songwriter and her songs are packed with atmosphere and punch, not least of all this song - a great place to start if you don't know Regina. She was a backup singer for the Strokes (huh?) and has that hipster element, but also a huge cabaret quality, a sort of female Rufus Wainwright. She's an original actually, what can I say? I'm a big fan of Regina's. Marie and then my sister turned me on to this artist

16. Wear You Out - TV On The Radio (Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes) - good old TV/Radio from my old neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Good stuff, but I'm not a massive fan. I got my sister into these guys and she loves them... however this is from their newest record, which I don't like as much as their debut. Bowie is a huge fan of these guys. They're good and cool and ok, but again this isn't much of a good song. Strip it down to just an acoustic and a singer, and really there's nothing. That's my quality control test for most songs, and put to that test, most songs aren't songs at all, just filler.

17. Autumn Leaves - Stan Getz (Sound of Jazz Vol. 11).... now here's a great great song. Timeless melody, like so many of those jazz standards. I love when time serves as a barometer for quality. Stan here plays through the head with his band and then starts blowing away almost immediately with some improv on that lovely sax of his. I got into Autumn Leave in college at UMass in African American Vocal Technique, my minor, and was soon covering it with my trash-rock band Nag Nag Nag, like I thought the Replacements would have done if they'd tackled this chestnut.

18. Chemo Limo - Regina Spektor (Mary Ann Meets The Gravediggers) ..... hello Regina. Shuffle is funny, 12,000 songs, and two from the same album come up only a few songs apart. There's her little Russian accent again - to me the epitome of nerdiness - but again the fantastic vocal delivery, almost like a jazz horn, but not grating or affected at all. She really reminds of Rickie Lee Jones, who I loved as a kid (that album Skeletons killed me) - I wonder if Regina likes her. This song has suddenly had a time signiature change that was really startling. She's a real showtunes diva, a profound songwriting talent, even if her material is not your bag. This song is just her voice and a piano, but it is an epic. And I haven't even paid attention to what she's singing about yet. But it's a tale and it's sad and densely packed.

19. Know - Nick Drake (Pink Moon)..... what can I say? Every time Nick Drake comes up on shuffle I feel blessed and sigh deeply. This is a prime example of a Nick Drake song being more a chant than a song (Chris Collingwood first pointed this out to me), and even though it's without a melodic hook, one of my key ingredients (scratch that, my one and only key ingredient) to a good song, this is just Nick Drake and his woody old acoustic guitar, and it passes the test with flying colors. His music is so spiritual it's hard to believe he took his own life. But then again he didn't mean to die - his overdose of anti-depressants was probably an accident. He wasn't trying to get higher, just less sad.

20. Teach The Children - Eric B and Rakim (Don't Sweat The Technique).... again two of the same artist in only 20 songs in a shuffle experiment with 12,000 songs. But this record is a classic, Rakim has a brilliant voice, and these rhymes are deep. This has a really dark mysterious groove and interesting lyrics about being fed propoganda as a young kid. One of the thinks I've always liked best about Rakim, and I like almost everything about him, is how nicely the vocal sits on the music and backbeat - whoever mixes his records is very talented.

(the next 5 songs would have been by MC Solaar, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Ween, and Ben Harper, and I'd have loved to babble about them all, but I've got three business meetings tomorrow, and still many beers to drink, and showers to take, and shaves to shave - and at some point I suppose I'll have to sleep. We'll try this again another time.)

Well, just a quick update before I head to the airport with my sister to fly down to LA for New Year's. The girl in question logged onto myspace and saw my note about her song St Louis being completed, and has put the song up on her myspage, as the song that plays when you go to her page. It's pretty nice.

I have a MySpace tracker, it's flawed but it more or less shows you who's visited your page and when. It crashes computers sometimes, so I know that it's the real deal. I'm never telling what it is, because I don't want too many people to find out about it and have it stop working. Anyway, you cannot ask me about it because you do not know who I am - this blog is anonymous and I have a readership of exactly 1. In any case using this profile tracker I ascertained that today the person that St Louis, my brand new song on myspace that I think is exceptionally catchy and sexy (almost evoking the spirit of Before I Come by the inimitable Lord Russ), is written for / about, logged onto myspace and at the very least got my message that her very own song is now uploaded. I saw that she viewed my profile, and there was a download today of this song, which I have to assume was made by her. I haven't heard back from her yet though. So I am very nervous that she didn't like it, or found it generally too randy, or some crap. Hopefully she's just taking some time with it, listening to it a few times, and then writing me some kind of note. After all, she does not know that I saw that she viewed my page today, and all this crazy surveillance stuff. My friend at work - we'll call her Monica for these purposes - this incredible baby in the mold of Linsay Lohan, that type but very sweet too - turned me on to this tracker thingie, and normally has a fairly quiet and almost aloof air that sometimes complete babes that are also famous big city party girls will have, but whenever she and I email each other about this tracker (she sits practically across from me, but private conversations at the office are the way forward, especially with total babes) she gets visibly animated and excited - it's hilarious - she almost gets like flushed and very secretive and just really funny. One time our servers went down for a second and I told her it was because I was tapping that myspace tracker site so hard - she looked appropriately impressed and scared and excited. It was very funny. Anyway, back to the individual from St Louis, who is in St Louis at the moment, and who I did not see at my concert here in SF the other night (she lives and goes to law school here) and so never met- today I guess she'd have heard her new song, that I wrote for her, on my myspace page. Maybe she can't listen where she is. In any case I'll be sure to tap into this keyboard the results of this nervousness-inducing operation, when there are some to report, for my one readership faculty in the unforgiving mountains of Mt. Pioneer up north there.... oops, sister's laptop power went down just as she was watching the final scenes of Devil Wears Prada. She cant be very happy about that, finding crap on a DVD is a right hassle! more later.........

Sitting right now at this little Chinese tea house with internet access and waiting for Jonah "OneLineDrawing" Matrange to arrive - he's been stuck in traffic all morning, coming back from the house of his girlfriend, a lady that lives I believe in Marin. The kitty, Mia, today woke me up by batting at my hand and then I never went back to sleep. So very tired right now. It won't affect the recording, I won't let it, but man am I sleepy. Got a contract in today back in New York for my ship event, and was given an unexpected raise yesterday, so all that is very good - otherwise it's a dark drizzly December day in San Francisco, the Sunset district to be exact. Lots of Russians here evidently. My sister and I went to the Y in the Stonestown section of town last night and I think that's around here, around Sunset, and there were lots of Russians there. I swam some laps. Then we went out and met my friend Pam at some posh wine bar in Marina - I told her about this secret blog and even threw the name out at her a couple times, but I don't think she heard me, she was talking. So for now my one reader remains a man named Henry in the vast mountains of Western Aardvark. Hello Henry!! Something else I was going to say but then forgot. Oh yeah, she saw the Zapruder fella recently and said his new book of poems is really superb, as is his brother's music. Fair enough. Then my sister and I returned to her apartment and watched Entourage and drank Syrah - the end.