Schizophrenic · Ramblings.

Last night was the first night that XL427 was a band name and not just a solo moniker. It was a bit rough but very fun. I really need to finalize my lyrics though. Writing them the day of the show can be stressful. So this morning I have been reflecting on how much I enjoy playing in a band with some really good friends. And also how much power I truly have. Because they are still my songs, I could fire all three of my band mates on even the slightest whim. They have really put themselves in a vulnerable position. I say, authoritarianism really is great for the confidence. So much so that I am surprised that it is not more of a building block of our psychological education. Feel ignored by your friends? Take over a country. Bitter at your father? Start a war. Those solutions sound so much better than boring therapy.

Before this whole Wolfowitz scandal, I had no idea the World Bank even existed, much less with the purpose to serve the poor. So my question is, what in the world are they doing? With all the wealth represented between the Europeans and the Americans that make up the organization, it shouldn't take much to make some huge efforts to take care of the many poor countries and families of the world. There are stats floating around that indicate it wouldn't take but a number in the low millions to provide clean water and sanitation to every person in the world. Yet I don't hear about the World Bank doing anything like that. So what are they really doing? Maybe they work in secrecy. To me that is admirable. Doing charity in front of a television crew seems dishonest and hypocritical. But I doubt that is the case. And so it is a shame to me that this seemingly large and powerful organization has wasted many opportunities in it's 60-year existance. Which I guess brings me back to an unfortunate but prevailing thought in my life, that everything happens on a personal level, especially charity. Organizations just have too much to worry about to be trust worthy or effective.

Today is my last day here in the Queen's Town. I don't know if they actually use that label but I think they should. I'll write more tomorrow as I don't have time today. I am enjoying my stay here though. I had a few people comment that it seemed like I didn't like it. I do. It's not exactly what I expected but places never are. I guess my writing style just drips with more cynicism than I intend.

The sun really does shine on London. Finally the weather has turned good with a high in the 50's or 60's and with no rain to be seen. It was beautiful today. And it is none too soon cause today was the day I decided to avoid the Underground and buses and just walk everywhere. My hope was that I would get a better picture of the town if I walked. Plus I didn't have much on my agenda besides my first English football match at Fulham's Craven Cottage. That started at 3 PM. Problem was I didn't know how to get there. So I just walked straight . . . a lot. And it worked. I knew it was somewhat close to Shepherd's Bush so how lost could I get, right? So two hours later I made it to Fulham with plenty of time to spare. Fulham is this borough on the Thames River, right next to Chelsea. Seems a bit working class. So before the game and with so much time I perched myself on a bench along the river walk and read and prayed. Nice.

Then came game time. The ticket I bought was the least expensive I could get but it was really close to the field, only seven rows up from the corner mark. Once I started talking to the people around me we all realized that there were six Americans all in the same row. I think it had something to do with people from another country wanting to inexpensively check out a sport that they knew nothing about. The game was uneventful. Portsmouth scored early and even though I watched the whole game, I didn't notice. The goal must have came when I was letting someone past me to their seat. I don't even remember hearing any reaction from the considerable contingent of Portsmouth fans that occupied the visitor's section. Fulham did score a goal to tie the match in stoppage time. Then a couple of minutes went by, the score keeper never added the goal, and then we all discovered that Fulham was ruled offsides and the goal was nullified. So 1-0 Portsmouth was the final. Fulham's star striker is Brian McBride who played to Team USA and the Columbus Crew. I kept my sites on him hoping he would do good. He had a tough game and was pulled early in the second half. The outcome wasn't what I hoped but the game was still pleasant to see upclose. The crowd wasn't nearly as crazy as I expected though.

Before I started my walk back to the hostel I wanted to watch some more footbal with some locals. I found this pub down the street that had a notice that read "Due to Police notice, only Fulham members, season ticket holders, and oversea supporters are allowed admittance on gameday". So of course I had to try to get in the middle of that. I did. It was packed. But again not nearly as crazy as I expected. Really the only ones paying attention to the Chelsea game on tv were the old-timers. Everyone else was chatting loudly. I guess the people in Fulham do not like their neighbors in Chelsea even though they share the same major street. One old-timer let me sit at his table to watch the game. At one point he said he was a Cockney which explains why I couldn't understand half of what he was saying. I don't exactly know what a Cockney is but as per usual, I played everything off like I knew exactly what is going on. Also per usual, I was the only one in the pub who was drinking Coke among a sea of alcohol. Even the kids here drink alcohol. England has to have a huge AA member list. Scary. Blah blah blah. I walk back to the hostel and that was my saturday in London.

So I here I am in London. I busted through my jet lag and lack of sleep to make it awake to whatever time it is now, 8 PM Standard Greenwich. This place feels very much like Paris in how old it is. And the city is pretty much laid out the same way. I am glad I didn't decide to rent  a car and drive cause I am having a hard enough time using the correct side of the escalators. Everything is backwards here. I started to go up the wrong side of those revolving stairs three times today. Also as much as I like all the British accents I am hearing, it is kind of wierd to know that even though we are speaking the same language it is me who looks out of place when I open my mouth. My verbal awkwardness aside, I'm not used to being the minority. I kind of like it. Today I just stayed close to my hostel in Shepherd's Bush and walked or tubed around the south east side of London. So I saw a bit of Hyde Park, the infamous Notting Hill, Fulham, Chelsea and the latter's football field, Stamford Bridge. Right next to the football stadium is this amazingly old cemetary with the most crosses I have ever seen. I walked through it praying that maybe some of England's spiritual heritage would be reborn. Speaking again of the hostel, this one looks to be a good, relatively quiet one. Though I will have to wait and see if I am awaken by any rude, loud tourists tonight.

It's been very rainy here both days. Just ugly weather. Hopefully tomorrow will be clear for a big day of football/soccer. I spent most of the day walking around to the different historic landmarks that England is known for. Big Ben is still here. Buckingham Palace is still being controlled by the guards in big hats. I strolled through some museums too. The Portrait Gallery was interesting. The National Gallery had all of the classic art. Like The Louvre in Paris, I find it terribly boring. I know classical artists are good with detail and considered classics for a good reason but they must not have cared about alignment and the use of space. And until they go back and correct all those old paintings that is something I just cannot stand for. The highlight for me was the Tate Modern. Tate Modern contains numerous works by Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and the painting that The Apples in Stereo used for their second album cover. They also had massive 1,2,3,4, and 5-story slides as some sort of performance art. Overall though, London didn't really feel like London until I made it down to the River Thames. That is the point that the city looked like I had envisioned it. And that is a semi-frustrating re-realization for me. In the previous day of walking around West London, it really could have been any city in America. Besides Paris, it seems to me globalization has made the big cities I have been to all look the same. They have the same stores. The streets and buildings look the same. They broadcast the same tv shows. People even wear the exact same clothes and have the exact same styles. I kind of wish I had counted the number of Vans slippers, white Chuck Taylors, and black jackets I have seen. I have a renewed value for individual cultures cause I think they are slipping away. I do say all this realizing a big part of my life was becoming enfatuated with and ripping off British musical culture which couldn't have happened without some sort of globalization. But I guess I just romanticize traveling and want to experience something new when I visit another country. People are people, wherever you go. That is what I now think.

Alright, on a different note did you know that the London Bridge is not the two-story brick and blue bridge that many of us probably picture it to be. That's the Tower Bridge. The London Bridge is rather ugly. It looks more like an I-75 overpass than something historical. But I guess it fell down or something and that's why it had a song written about it. I hear Fergie made a song and video about London Bridge and featured the wrong bridge. Funny.

Life is so so amazing. Why? Well as I was walking from my room to the shower I caught a glimpse of a bird sitting right outside of my stairwell window. Two inches away, resting on a sagging telephone wire. I have know idea what kind of bird it was was but it was gorgeous. I stared it for probably twenty minutes as it stared right back. I suppose it couldn't see me through the window cause it sure acted like nothing else was around. I think that was what made it such an awe-inducing experience, being able to watch another life form that closely for so long is simply amazing. Yes, you can tell from that last sentence that I'm not married.

Whenever I am transfixed on some sort of natural beauty, whether it be Mt. Rainier, the Puget Sound, the Mediterranean, even the smelly and toxic Little Miami River, my thoughts always end up leading back to this question, "How can something so beautiful and complex exist?" Today I was thinking about this as I noticed how the bird used it's tail to balance itself on the wire. I am a follower of Jesus of Nazareth and I believe that Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian God is the creator of everything. So in the debate on origins I align more with the creationists, though I bristle at some of the company I keep. But if evidence does support evolution, I have no problem with that. God almost always takes the creative, scenic route in everything else, so why would he be any different in how he created the world. But I came to my conclusion about God through experience and questioning, not by following a pre-subscribed tradition. And in getting back to the bird and pre-subscribed traditions, I see some major holes in evolutionary theory that I have yet to see answered. Like how many birds fell to their death before they figured out they needed a tail for balance? And wouldn't the evolutionary process in birds be wiped out by every bird that fell to their death? What happened if they figured out the tail before they figured out they needed a certain kind of feet to be able to land and live in trees? Wouldn't in-between mutations kill off whatever progress was made? These questions are only about this one bird but basically I just don't see a lot of the evidence that is supposedly there for evolution. A lot of seems like a stretch. Now I know I am not a scientist and I am not trying to be one. And I know that every theory and faith, no matter what it is, has major questions that have to be overcome or overlooked. But every idea starts from a practical question and these are mine. And because of a bird outside of my window, that is what has dominated my thoughts this morning.

I'm writing a sitcom. Yep. The future of television is me.

Well, my friend Spence is part of this too but that wouldn't have been as poetic including him in the preceeding statement of awesomeness.

I'm procrastinating right now taking a break from my list of things to design today. After visiting Fox Sports I browsed right on over to the News Corp web site for the first time. Interesting. Studying journalism in college, it was the advertisers who were a threat to influence a writer or editor away from true objectivity. Does true objectivity even exist? Anyway, after seeing how many media outlets Rupert Murdoch's News Corp really owns, maybe it's the deregulation and not the advertisers that journalists should fear. Clear Channel has nothing on ole' Rupey. Check out the list. Most people know about all the Fox channels and movie studio, but what about TV Guide or the New York Post or DirectTV or even Zondervan? Driscoll, you're a sell-out!

So I played with pre-teenybop sensation ShiSho yesterday for the first time. Our set time was moved up an hour, I arrived with no time to practice, two of the songs I had never heard before, and I was playing drums for a nine-year-old and a six-year-old who I barely knew. I love chaos. Really, I didn't know what to expect but it turned out to be fun night at the Gratis Fest. As much as I like bathing more often than the crowd of Norwood Vineyard hippies who populated the little farm, our desire for simplicty is very similar. Plus it was good to have another meeting with the Seattle Task Force. One day soon we will get there. And we'll build our little escapist community just the way we like it.

My poor Mariners were so close to being good, until they had to play their division rivals. They can beat everyone else except when they need to. Then came LA of Anaheim, Texas, and those frat-boy Athletics and our 3.5 game lag behind first-place became a 10 game deficit in just over a week. Now they can't beat anyone. Oh how I hate you Joe Blanton!

Tonight I revisited the American version of "The Office" and really enjoyed it. To me it just feels fresh and unique and, of course, awkward now that they don't have to follow the scripts from the British version so closely. I can now see Steve Carrell as Steve Carrell and not as an inferior Ricky Gervais. Maybe there is hope for television after all.

I found this interesting tidbit today while perusing the boradcast television networks' fall schedules:

"Additionally, the network announced the pick-up of four shows for mid-season . . . and RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, a comedy starring Patrick Warburton ("Seinfeld") from Adam Sandler's production company that follows two couples and a single guy as they navigate the jungles of dating, engagement and marriage."

So it is on CBS, which is a major strike against it. The plot and the mention of Adam Sandler make it sound horrible. But the words "Patrick Warburton" have captured my interest.

I haven't been amazed by a movie in a while, but now that I have seen "Being There" count me even more in awe of Peter Sellers' comic genius. Now I love The Pink Panther movies, and "Dr. Strangelove" is my second favorite movie, so "Being There" just solidifies my opinion of Sellers' brilliance. But this movie is all about subtleties and Sellers' awkward and introverted character. I think that is what impresses me about this. That while he is known for his over-the-top comedy, he could also play something very straight and still be hilarious.

For you Arrested Development fans, if you didn't know, in the last episode that featured Charlize Theron, her walk across the pool was an ode to "Being There" and Peter Sellers. The year before, Theron played Brit Eklund in bio-pic "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. I love comic geeks and their inside jokes, at least when I understand them.

I am trying to book some shows for Ruetschle in Seattle and Portland in conjunction with our new record as well as our various histories with the NW. What I can't understand is how much easier it is to book a show in Seattle than it is in Dayton, Cincinnati or anywhere else around here. In all my attempts with Seattle clubs, whether trying to set-up this tour or in my previous bookings for Graham Travis, the Seattle clubs have mostly been courteous and accomodating. Chop Suey is one of the coolest places to play in Seattle. And The Crocodile Cafe is Peter Buck's occassional hangout. And both of them and even more places have been willing to work something out for us. Midwest venues just never return my emails.

Granted having Graham and his reputation committed to the shows is an instant connection with these agents, but I am still contacting these people as an unknown person, band and label. They have every rock/n/roll reason to ignore my requests. So that is why I am amazed when they don't.