western homes

7:58am: Troy + Me
Normally, every year the first week of April is a week I walk around giggling and hugging people and jumping up in the air and clicking my heels and generally behaving like someone filled to the brimful with pure innocent glee. When I was a little kid, there was no chance I was sleeping on Christmas Eve. Since I've been... I dunno, 19 or so that behavior has transitioned over to baseball's Opening Day. Every year I go through a cycle where I'm content all summer, then I get giddy again in September for the pennant run and the World Series, and then I crash bad in November (the worst month mankind ever invented, except maybe for Thermidor) and grumble my way through the winter months. February things pick up because of spring training and my birthday and President's Day and then March has the NCAA basketball tournament which is neat but April... April is what it's all about.

Since I've moved to Colorado I've gotten to like April even more, because unlike Chicago and the Bay Area April in Colorado is warm and sunny and pleasant. Also, every year the day after the first really warm summery day of the year (it was Tuesday this year), we have a huge snowfall (Wednesday). It never fails. This is the least dull climate I've ever experienced.

This April has broken from form and mostly sucked. First my job, which was supposed to have laid me off back in February only I managed to get extended by working so hard that I made myself indispensible, finally dispensed of me. Then I got as sick (physically sick, not mentally sick) as I've been in some years, spending almost a week laid up with a migraine headache that simply wouldn't quit. For about 48 hours, I was so weak that when my cat started drinking from my water glass, I had not the energy to shoo him away nor the strength to go to the fridge to get water that hadn't been contaminated by cat tongue. I got better, at long last, but I still wasn't my normal spring self. The idea of going out into the world to apply for new jobs terrified me. I know no one likes trying to find a new job but I have a dehabilitating hangup about asking people to help me out -- it's dogged me since my youth. So for a few days I sat around feeling sorry for myself.

Meanwhile... the baseball season started. In fact it started a week early this year, because MLB sent the A's and the Red Sox over to play two regular-season games in the Tokyo Dome. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning, climbed out of my girlfriend's bed, and drove home in the darkness so that I could drink coffee and watch this contest, but I didn't get a huge lift out of it. I was watching it out of loyalty more than anything else. A few days later the Rockies got their season started, but they might have been better off taking a few more weeks in Tucson. After winning their first game they lost five in a row while their division rivals in Phoenix got off to a lightning-fast start mostly at the Rockies' expense -- the Diamondbacks beat them five of the first six times they played. Except for Todd Helton, Matt Holliday, and Garrett Atkins, the whole team has been in a slump all month long. No one has suffered worse than last season's breakout star, Troy Tulowitzki, who as a rookie became the unquestioned clubhouse leader of a pennant-winning ballclub. For a while Tulo wasn't just below the Mendoza line (.200), he was threatening the ultra-rare Double Mendoza (< .100). Game after game went by without Troy knocking in a single run. I had a pretty good time at Coors Field for Opening Day, even though the Rockies got raked, and I enjoyed myself watching them win a well-pitched contest over Atlanta the next week. But my usual baseball mania seemed absent, dishearteningly muted by the unavoidable stresses of my life off the field.

But then things turned around -- I woke up one day, that fateful Tuesday as it so happens, and I realized that asking for job applications is no big freaking deal. I worked at a mall record store for three years and people would come in and ask for them all day every day. I never kicked them in the groin or anything, I always just gave them an application and a pen and found them a place where they could fill it out. I was at the doctor's office and when I came out I could see Ultimate Electronics in the mall across the way from the parking lot, so I left my car and went in. And then I went into Circuit City, and then Marshall's, and Radio Shack. No evil came to me when I asked for job applications. The whole thing didn't do me a heck of a lot of good because every store I visited that day save one told me that their applications are online now, but at least I conquered my fear.

But this magical Tuesday was just beginning! At Circuit City I got Juno on DVD, and it came with a free t-shirt. The only reason I went into Circuit City was to try and get a job -- normally I always go to Target, because there I can get movies and contact lens solution and kitty litter. But because of the job thing, I got a t-shirt just like the one Michael Cera wears in the film. Being more like Michael Cera is one of my chief life goals. So that was pretty lucky.

But that's only a minor footnote. After my mostly futile pavement-pounding expedition I went to Anna's, and that's where the day started to get really good. We went downtown to see a concert. But not just any concert. This was one of the chief inspirations of all my ambitions as a songwriter, and a guy I've somehow managed to avoid ever seeing before now -- the great Nick Lowe. Seriously, if Western Homes music is Christianity, then Nick Lowe is the father, Elvis Costello is the son, and Alex Chilton is the Holy Spirit. Not only was Lowe a total fulfillment of all my expectations -- his stage persona, mannered to the level of borderline condescension, is something to which I can't help but relate -- but Ron Sexsmith, a seminal songwriter whose music I had never heard, opened and totally made a fan out of me. Interesting footnote: Lowe forms barre chords with his thumb fingering the bottom note. And barre chords are almost all he plays. I tried doing this on my own guitar later and after two bars of "Peace, Love and Understanding" I had a twinge in my fretting arm up to my elbow.

As Anna and I left the Boulder Theatre she saw a meteor, which struck her as an omen -- I'm not sure myself. Sometimes space debris superheating while entering Earth's atmosphere is just space debris superheating while entering Earth's atmosphere. I'm not a superstitious person in the least, but it was that kind of day that tests your resolve.

Last night the Rockies were locked in another low-scoring game on the road against a division opponent, the San Diego Padres. San Diego's home ballpark is the complete opposite of Coors Field; while the Rockies' home park hugely overinflates offensive production, Petco Park is almost as extremely biased in the other direction. The slugging Rockies always have trouble scoring runs and winning games at Petco. They were shut out on Tuesday night -- the one fly in the ointment about that day. The one imperfection to throw everything else into relief, if you like. But last night Colorado went nuts in the top of the ninth and scored seven runs to turn a 3-2 nailbiter into a 10-2 laugher. And Troy Tulowitzki, in that big inning off the Padres' pen, got his first RBI of the 2008 season.

Also his second.

3:05am: Why don't I use this thing?
I don't know why. I think I have been spending too much time on OKCupid and writing stuff on the journal there because I am hoping maybe cute people will see what I have written and befriend me. But that overlooks all of you my LiveJournal friends who have befriended me already; why should you miss out on my random thoughts? You shouldn't. Nor will you.

Life has been hectic but enjoyable since the year began. I turned 28, which was exciting. I decided that being a career freelance writer was rather less money and security than I wanted in my 30's so I'm starting night classes to get my Colorado teaching certificate. Everyone whom I have told about my plans to become a history teacher seems to think that that is the most natural idea in the world, so I'm pretty optimistic and confident about it. My mother is a teacher and she's ecstatic... the master's adviser at the local University of Phoenix branch is excited to have one history major signing up that actually wants to be a history teacher as opposed to a history teacher slash football coach. I'll have to actually try it before I'm sure that it's the thing for me (that's the whole reason they have you student teach), but I'm glad that I have a plan in place to have insurance and job security and all that good stuff... by 2011.

The Daily Afflictions continue to write songs at a furious pace, although we haven't played a lot of shows so far this year. It's pretty hard to get people to come out when it's freezing out and the roads are covered in ice and snow. I still think there's a disturbing amount of resistance among the small clique of Denver club bookers to "Boulder" bands. We get treated badly way too often -- the Larimer Lounge had us booked and ready to go for one of their Sunday afternoon barbeque shows and they dropped us off the bill without even telling us because some far less-established band from the city presented themselves. That's obnoxious but I am firmly against either moving or deemphasizing our Boulder origins on our Web site and at shows. Everybody in my band is from somewhere else and ended up sticking in Boulder -- Boulder, not Colorado -- and there's something to that. If Denver is resistant still, we will find other places to play. This Tuesday we're leaving the metroplex (such as it is) for Beaver Creek way out in the west of the state and playing our first ski-town gig; if Subcity Six's experiences with in-state road trips are any guide, it should be a radical show.

I'm also hoping that another musical project with which I have been working with some of the Afflictions and some other friends will help advance the causes of my main band and Boulder music in general. I wrote a rock opera, The Unusual Classical Synthesizer, last month basically on a lark. I mostly just put the thing together to prove that I could do it. After attending a Roger, Roll show I found out at that band's Web site that February is "National Write an Album Month," or words to that effect, and I thought having written dozens of albums worth of songs it would be fun to try and write a long-form piece of music with characters and a running storyline. After testing the thing out on Khurrum and Alex from the Afflictions, and then again for Ben from Alex's other band (the Orphaned Gears), I've been persuaded that a recording must be made. Next weekend I'm going to record a guide demo at Khurrum's studio and hopefully through the rest of March Alex, Tim, Khurrum, Ben, and others will help me complete it. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to play more guitar than I get to in the D.A. and also to singing in a much more affected, theatrical manner than is my normal style. I got an electric 12-string last year that I had customized to string as a baritone (bB-eE-aA-dD-f#F#-BB) and there will probably be a lot of that on the finished album. Also, the tone of Khurrum's E.S.P. Les Paul copy reminds me of John McLaughlin every time I pick it up and play it so there will be a certain amount (not too much) of fusion guitar solos.

Last but not least I met a really pretty girl who likes beards and Sleater-Kinney and vinyl and my baritone 12-string.

12:31pm: I got a cat
His name is Ozymandius.

10:53pm: I live here now
I have to go back to Chicago for Thanksgiving, for a whole week because that's how the tickets worked out (going for just the long weekend would have been, no exaggerating for effect, about $1000 more expensive), and to tell you the truth, I'm kind of cranky about it. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I have way more friends in Denver and Boulder now than I have left in Illinois and besides the most significant of my Illinois friends is going to be in California for the holiday anyway. So I guess I'll see some other friends, and some relatives, and maybe go to a Bulls game or whatever, but as it is I'm missing a Broncos game to which I was given free tickets on Monday, a show my friends' webzine is putting on that I could have played at on Wednesday, a Trans Am concert on Thursday, and band practice and my cool local friends in general. Stupid holidays. I'm plenty thankful already!

12:50am: There That Went
Today I sold my entire CD collection, which had been sitting in my parents' basement for two and a half years collecting dust, for somewhat more than a thousand dollars. It is hard to believe that something I worked such a long time on and sweated over so many lost hours went from a central part of my identity to utterly dispensible so rapidly, but such is the march of technology. I didn't feel in the least bad walking out of the store, but I did feel a little nostalgic while I was noticing how disorganized and battered the many plastic racks were -- the top of a gigantic 300-CD spinner snapped right off in my hands when I tried to move the thing. At one time there were few higher priorities in my life than organizing and displaying those CD's in the most flattering way possible.

I'm not saying I'm over that impulse. One of the major reasons I went through with the liquidation, in addition to the fact that my parents really deserve to have their basement back, is that I can use a chunk of the proceeds to ship my vinyl record collection out to Colorado and start thinking of ways to display and pefect that. I admit it. But also I'm shipping the rest of my baseball library, my Legos, my Super Nintendo (who needs the Wii Virtual Console when you can have the ACTUAL console?), and all the rest of the instruments of mine that I hadn't already retrieved. Which ones are those? Why, my drumkit, my trombone, and my banjo. Is it my intention, upon these items' arrival in Boulder, to make a record using only drums, trombone, and banjo, and nothing else? Yes. Yes, it is.