Mike Brainard Made A Movie

and he wants you to see it:

go to www.independentfilmforum.com

sign up to see movies

click on "Lookin' For Some Posse"

nuff said, pard'ner

Sex Bomb Baby

http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=flipper

Yeah.

What he said.

And Yet Still More Flipper!

Living For The Depression Lyrics
We're living for life to be the way we feel Not living for life, but the Death appeal Who wants a cancerous boring end when you can die from misery and following the trend? I say "Who cares anyway? Who listens to what I say?" This song rhymes and we play it in time And if you wanna live in Super Market Isles And take your vacation by flying for miles Take a day off and live in the lies While others work and capitalize I say "Who cares anyway? Who listens to what I say?" This song rhymes and we play it in time We're living like cockroaches in this place Sprayed with insecticide that leaves no trace And if we could crawl on you at night You could be sure we'd love to bite I say "Who cares anyway? Who listens to what I say?" This song rhymes and we play it in time I'm not living life to be A really cheap fucker like you Copout

Someone Say Flipper?

The Way Of The World Lyrics
There are eyes that cannot see And fingers that cannot touch That's the way of the world There are dreams left empty and blank And legs that have ceased to walk That's the way of the world There are kisses undelivered Sighs and moans unuttered That's the way of the world There are hearts no longer beating And there are entrails spilled on the floor That's the way of the world

Moonshadow, Moonshadow

We had the moonshadow tonight.

I am an Aquarius, I get the fever sometimes at full moons.

Like real insane, howlin' shit.
Werewolves of London and shit.
Fucking moonshadow.

A shadow cast by the moon?

Do you know I almost went blind tonight from that shit?

[CAN YOU SAY SHIT ONE MORE TIME. GREG?-Ed]

Got the [CHEESEY] telescope out, the one Gramps gave the kids years ago and tried to peeps me some astrology. I'm into horoscopes to some extent (www.freewillastrology.com), so, so, so, so.... so I almost lost mytrain of thought but lookin' into a telescope aiming for moonshadows is almost like bringing a magnifying glass to an eclipse.

[WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS KID SAYIN?]

[HE'S NOT TALKING VAN MORRISON IS HE?]
[NO, MAYBE THE PROMISE RING?]

Who is Ed? And why is he in my head? Get him out. I don't want him there anymore.

[GREG, IT'S ME Ed. I'M JUST WONDERING, WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID?] 

In Through The Out Door

The door to Spencer's room. Replete with the prerequisite punk rock show posters. He's a flyer artist in the making. Most of the white ones are for his band Sharks & Lions. The stickers under his name represent trips to the doctors' office over the years (7 stickers, 5 and a half years; unless he pinched two at one time which wouldn't surprise me).

He's probably behind that door listening to Thin Lizzy's Live And Dangerous, a drum set made out of old powdered Gatorade tins and a couple of shoe boxes for floor toms.

This is the kind of shit that spooks the moms on play dates.

That and the number of empty beer cans on top of my fridge. I store my empties there. When the top fills up they then are placed outside in the recycling bin... speaking of which, it is time to curb those empties.

This Is Cole's Room

My wife felt it ideal to repaint the room from the set-up we had for Spencer which was, uh, I forget but different.

So crazy Martha Stewart girl that she is, she made the curtains, did the "trains, planes, and automobiles" border (she wanted to do the whole room Thomas The Train - I objected), and got the big boy mattress.

Not that the kid ever sleeps in his bed. He's one of those that falls asleep on the floor trying to stay up with his older brother and then gets moved to mom and dad's bed after he passes out.

I object but there's no arguing with a mom. Especially a working mom who finds comfort in sharing a bed with her toddler. If he would just piss in the bed one more time maybe she'll see the light.

And that lamp? Hell yeah, that's some shit I cribbed from my parents and is total real deal '70s shit. Used to be olive green until Mrs. Martha Stewart Barbera got her hands on it and transformed it into some Trading Spaces room essential.

Hello

My name is Cole.

Please to meet you. 

I Mean C'mon!

Look at this kid in action! 

Go Gnomes!

So Spencer had his last soccer game of the season this past weekend. I missed it of course because I was working some bar mitzvah in Durham but my wife snapped a bunch of awesome pictures of our boy in action. Here he is jukin' some opponent enroute to a scoring the third goal of the day and sealing his umphteenth hat trick of his soccer career. As much as I bitch about my boys and rigors of being a parent, things like magic marker tattoos and little league soccer make it all worth it. 

Dean Smith Has A Posse

I worked a catering gig at the chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill's house last Friday.

Carolina's legendary basketball coach Dean Smith was in attendance. Smith is like a deity around these parts.

So I was walking past him with a tray full of spent wine glasses and empty dinner plates and he said, "Excuse me."

I stopped. His voice is very nasally. Like the antithesis of Bobby Knight's.

"Can I get some coffee. Black," he asked.

I looked at my tray full of empties and then gazed over at the two girls who were making the rounds in the room with coffee and dessert, then returned to the Dean'er not saying a word.

"That's your job isn't it?" he said.

I wished I had some witty b-ball retort.

I didn't.

I went and got a cup of coffee from one of the girls and placed it in front of him.

Tattoo You

So my boys have decided that in order to fulfill their rock star fantasies, they have to be tattooed. So in recent days they have taken to drawing on themselves with these Crayola (washable I might add) magic markers.

Spencer has had a cough for the last few days and had a coughing jag so bad last night that he puked twice. So today I took him to the doctor's office. You should have seen the look on the nurse when she pulled up Spencer's shirt.

"What have we got here?" she said.
The turned to me and said, "Kids get to have all the fun. Don't you wish you could sit around all day and draw on yourself?" Little does she know.

Then Spencer's doctor comes in. Same thing happens all over again. He asks about his cough. "Do you have any chest pains?" he asks.

Spencer turns and looks at me with a smirk then mouths the words "chest pains!"

Kids.

The Studio

Here's a picture of the studio we recorded in. The studio - Track and Field Recording - is nestled upstairs in the GO rehearsal space. Essentially, one of the room is wired for recording. Upstairs houses the boards and computer with Pro Tools and Rockets & Mortor's Nick Pedersen at the helm. It's amazing how long it can take to record something. We did most of our songs in one or two takes with the exception of "Action!" which took about five takes before we got a version we could live with.

Now we're going to take a week or two to sit on the rough mixes we got and see if there are any parts that need to be redone or if we want to add anything. The we'll mix it down and master it.

Fuggin' A.

It's a dream come true.

Now if we could just find somebody who wants to put it out on 7 inch vinyl... 

Punk Rock

So my band went into the studio last sunday.
We recorded 10 songs.
Set up at noon and went clear through to about 9pm.
Got some good shit if I don't say so myself.
One day I'll figure out how to post audio tracks... 

Halloween

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday when I was a kid.

I remember being scared shitless as a kindergardener going into a neighborhood haunted house with vienna sauges and ketchup representing the home owner's cut off fingers. Or the time the one neighbor was on the roof and would throw down this rubber jack o' lantern in front of your face and then have it spring back up on its little bungie cord.

By elementary school, Halloween was a total blast: me and my school friends following the cute girls from the neighborhood around. In sixth grade I went as Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live which I thought was cool as hell because that meant I had stayed up late enough to watch SNL and therefore knew who Mr. Bill was. In all fairness, I'd probably only made it a handful of times but who the fuck was counting? Plus, as a sixth grader on the parish's A league basketball team coached by Whitey Barry, you were deemed doubly cool. Coach Barry was also the guy who ran the catered events at St. Judes, so by default this meant you qualified to work for him. My first shift ever was doing the coat check at the New Year's Eve dance at the church.

We used to fill pillow cases up full of candy. One year, probably fourth grade, some local thug "traded" me a bar of soap for my bag of candy. I was totally bummed. I saw my older brother Mike, then an eighth grade stud and neighborhood hoodlum himself. He asked me to described the guy, told me to go home and not worry about it. He came home about an hour later with a bag full of candy for me.

Freshman year in high school was a total bust. That year a rapist had been terrorizing Aspen Hill, the neighborhood I lived in, and not a soul went out. By tenth grade I was doubling as a jock and punker. I had a football game that night and then caught shit from my friend Jeff's girlfriend for being more "jock" then "punk."

The next two years of high school saw me spending many a night partying in the cemetary by Rockville High School with my friends drinking beer and listening to the Misfits. So when Halloween came, it wasn't about walking around the neighborhood trick or treating, it was about going down to mix it up with the hordes of ghouls walking around the Georgetown area of Washington, DC. One year, my friend Mr. T and I missed the Metro and spent the better part of the night walking up Wisconsin Avenue drinking a found bottle of schnapps trying to stay warm and stave off the cold until his sister woke up around 5am and came and picked us up.

Comments

- This just heard while dropping my two-and-a-half year old off at his playschool:

"Where did you get that Hong Kong Phooey lunchbox?" says a mom to my son.

"It was mine when I was a kid," I reply.

"Figures."

-Yesterday at soccer practice this New Zealand woman was asking about what kind of things I get my boys involved in during the winter months. She just relocated to Carolina this summer because her husband is going to divinity school at Duke. "Many men I know," she says in her thick Kiwi accent, "always wish they learned to play guitar.

"So I'm thinking of starting the boys on violin lessons because it seems similar, ya know?" she says.

"That's not a bad idea. But why not just start on the guitar?" I say.

"I have musical instruments in the house - a bass, a guitar and drums - all available for them to use whenever they want," I say.

Another mother askes if I am in a band. "Yes," I say.
"Do you play out?" she asks.
"Yes, we just did the night before. And we play again Friday."

Kiwi mom joins in again, "I guess that's what you do to blow off steam?"

"Yep," I reply. "That and read books."

Mom Number Three joins in now. "I have a book club. We meet today."

Mom Number Two. "I was in a book club once but all we ever did was sit around and drink wine," she says with a giggle.

I tell them about the local library book sales. But add the comment that my wife thinks I already have too many books.

"You can never have too many books," says Kiwi Mom.
"And I'm told I have too many CDs," I say.
"Oh, you can never have too much music or too many books," she says.

She then turns to me and asks: "So you stay at home with your boys, do you?"

"Yeah," I say. "Have been doing it for over four years."

"You're like a hero," she says patting me on the back.

This Just In...

From my friend trey on the west coast:

We live in an information society. Virtually anything you want to know about anybody is readily available with a few keystrokes and a simple web search. And because I'm a generally observant (AKA nosy) person... I am often entertained by seeing just how much information I can gather about people I don't know. It's pathetic, obtrusive, and probably unlawful, I realize... but still fun.

Yet sometimes... I'm entertained... even inspired... far more than I could possibly imagine.Case in point.This morning, while waiting at the post office to pick up a package... I saw a guy in his mid thirties enter and join the line. He looked like a rock and roller about twenty years past his prime. Long permed eighties hair. Leather duster. Ostrich skin boots. But what really caught my attention was the way he spontaneously kissed his hand and reached up to a postal service banner which had the American flag printed in the background behind various stamp prices.

At first I thought he might have just stuck his unwanted gum up there, or something. Then I started concocting elaborate stories in my head about how his late father may have once been a mail carrier who bravely fought rain, snow, sleet, and hail for half his life - only to one day suddenly go postal over the permanent replacement of lickable stamps with self-adhesive varieties.But ignorance is anything but blissful.

For little did I know-- I was actually standing in the presence of greatness. And not just greatness... but All American, Flag-Waving, Red White and Blue, Patriotic greatness.He set down a package on the counter beside me. And naturally, I couldn't help stealing a glance at the return address - quickly memorizing the name.Dennis Madalone.Curious to know more about this oddly reverent rocker... I immediately returned to my office and typed his name into Google.And all I can really say is... GOD BLESS THE INTERNET and GOD BLESS AMERICA.

I highly recommend you visit the following links at your earliest opportunity.

Do it for yourself.

Do it for your country.

And above all else, do it for Dennis Madalone.

http://www.americawestandasone.com/video.html
http://www.americawestandasone.com/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/ 2005/04/29/notes042905.DTL

The Goddamn Itch

Got the damn zrytec withdrawal itch again.

I'm too broke to cough up the $30 for my monthly supply (and my wife gives me shit that I just keep taking it to avoid the itch).

So here I sit and itch.

And scratch.

Day three.

Mind over matter.

Ride The Lightning

That's the title of the Metallica album that "For Whom The Bell Tolls" is on.

Had that song in my head all weekend.

Yet I couldn't find the CD at our house. I was a bit surprised at first because my wife is a huge Metallica fan (although) she stopped buying their CDs at And Justice For All. I'm not sure why. Probably because the influx of promos at the time in our house was enough to discourage from adding to the mess of CDs.

Anyway, I looked everywhere for it, finally finding it in the car. And why not? It makes an excellent soundtrack to long rode trips.

So last night I slipped on the headphone after the boys went to sleep and blasted the song til my ears bled. What a great fucking song... what a great fucking album.

I remember the first time I heard it. It was shortly after it came out in 1984. I was on the way to see G.B.H. at Sanctuary Theater in DC, when we stopped by one of his friends' houses. It was Tommy Carr the drummer for Black Market Baby. I'm nut sure if BMB was still a band or whether or not he was still in it at the time but that's how I'm placing him in my world.

So we arrive and meet him and his girlfriend. A full-on metal slut with teased hair. lots of jewerly, and very little clothes. She had just finished getting high and was still trying to doll herself up. She picked up an album and I'll I could see was a dark blue cover with lightening on it. She put on side one. "Fight Fire With Fire" came on. I instantly recognized it as a song from a mix tape my friend Tim had made me. Tim was the bass player in my thrash punk band Youth Terrorists but was the biggest metalhead I knew. I turned him on to Agnostic Front, Black Flag, Fear, Government Issue and the Bad Brains. And in turn he exposed me to Iron Maiden, Accept, Metallica, Dio and Megadeth.

So I was familiar with the band but only had three cuts of the album on my tape. I sat and listened to the album, looking at the cover was alternately peaking over it at Tommy's hot girlfriend. A few years later, in college, I would meet my wife and shortly there after Metallica became a permenant fixture in my life.

One last thing: bassist Cliff Burton is the fucking man. Rest in peace you maniac motherfucker.

UNC vs. Duke

Okay, so this past weekend I worked two catered gigs: one at UNC and one at Duke.

The UNC gig was a pregame party held under some tents that were set up by the Bell Tower on campus located right in front of Kenan Stadium.

I got there at 9am for set-up. My co-worker Tim showed up shortly there after and we got to talking about music and art and literature as we normally do. Tim said he worked the opening of the Kerouac exhibit.

The we heard the Bell Tower go off. Or at least that's what we thought. And soon after Tim's launched into the air guitar intro for AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" verbalizing the classic rock guitar riffs. Soon after I joined in with my best Brian Johnson impersonation: "Rollin' thunder across the sky..."

We started laughing.

And then, loud as all get out, we hear Johnson's vocals come screeching out of the stadium PA system.

"Oh shit," said Tim.

I short time later, the stadium PA played "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Metallica. I made a mental note to myself that I needed to go home and play that track as loud as possible.

The crowd slowly showed up, the wine & cheese type, alumni dressed in Carolina blue eager to chow down on duck gumbo and blood marys. Shortly before game time a crowd gathered by the sidewalk.

The the football team walked a path from the Old Well on campus, down past the Bell Tower and into the stadium as fans lined either side of them cheering and hooting and hollering. They were followed by the cheerleaders and the marching band. I got to say it was pretty cool.

We broke down and I headed home for a brief rest.

The next gig was for Duke's homecoming, a prom-like fest of food, beer, wine and live band.
For 2,000 people.

They consume 20 cases of wine in an hour.

The crowd swells and moves like a paramecium: devouring everything in its way; everything in its path.
I'm bartending and all I can do is try to maintain sanity as drunken co-eds stumble around me, expecting everything ("We're Duke students! We're rich!"). By 1am the event staff bouncers are corralling the drunken horde out the door. Breakdown is a mess. There is shit everywhere. At the buffet tables, the students didn't even bother to use the plastic plates, rather they stood over the chaffing dishes like they were bowls of salsa, just picking meatballs out with their fingers and gulping them down right over it. The floor was covered in stale beer and stained with wine. Fortunately, the party planners had the foresight to lay a tarp down - now it was primed for one giant round of alcohol-infused slip n' slide.

I went to pee. The men's room was trash. A inch layer of boozey grim covering the floor and causing a major health risk. I watched one drunk guy tag his head on the brick wall on the way in, then stumble into the handicap stall to puke.

Like army ants they were. Fucking spoon fed richies who want it all and give nothing in return.

Entitlement. That about sums it up.

One of the decor guys looked over at me as we were folding chair.

"They're a whole different beast," he said shaking his head. "A whole different beast."