The Futility of Trying to Escape Las Vegas....Ray's Mutation Worsens

Some of my favorite crew folk drug me forcibly back to Sodom and Gomorra for a shoot that in reality was about 12 minutes long.  The staggering faux opulence, the frantic, desperate yearning for entertainment and carnal release on the part of the great sea of sweaty masses is frightening to the rotting stew of my moral compass.   And apparently Ray's ear mutated in front of the Belaggio.

The carrots from our Garden

The carrots from our garden are small and stunted and look like something from Dr. Suess. That is all.  No apocalyptic ramblings, not nihilistic commentary about the Trump administration. Just our carrots looked kind of weird but we ate them anyway.


Also, my job takes me to strange places and I do odd things. Here I walked around the new billion dollar Expedia campus with a small crew, then interviewed nice humans about how cool it was going to be.  Enjoyably, I was not the sound guy on this shoot, just a lowly grip. It is great to watch another audio person work and see where I am lacking. Eric, the other audio guy is very funny and a swell guy to talk to. All his methods are known to me but of course, slightly different.  His gear is shiny and newer than mine, but substantially the same.


It is also great to just be responsible for c-stands and the moving of heavy objects. I seriously doubt many people want to be a grip in their declining years. It is sometimes physical work that takes mental concentration for short bursts followed by what seems like endless "standing by". I gripped in my youth, and while I list myself as an " Audio/Grip " for small crew application, my heart is not in it.






Oh, yeah, I also started the burning elf head. When doing paper mache from flour and water I am always disgusted by how goopy, sticky and strong flour and water are. It is like fix-all that you can technically eat. People who are Gluten adverse are really just smart: what must this glop do to our insides? I never want pancakes after I work on one of these heads. It is a stupid process but one that I enjoy.

Beacon Hill Girl.

She is sick. Brain tumors have robbed her of her future, and a stroke has taken her ability to move and speak. She now resides in a skilled nursing facility. She is only a few years older than me.

IT IS UNFAIR. IT IS UNREAL. IT IS WRONG

The spark in her eyes remains and I can tell she is still in there. Her husband is holding it together and never leaves her side for very long. I want to help but can't find the right words or right thing to do, so I did this.

Day of the Locust

Another brief but poignant material object purchase is a 1953 Bantam Paperback first issue of the 1939 Nathanael West novel "Day of the Locust"- one of my favorite American novels.  I like the paperback because of it's lurid and strange cover, and still being a well written book. This story really transports me to another place and time while speaking to universal glitches in the matrix.

Broken World

Its falling apart faster than I could have ever imagined. Watching the gears and wheels fly off the mechanism is no longer fascinating or terrifying, it is merely kind of sad.

Summer is almost over.

How many summers do I have left? (Tom Waits asks that in the Francis For Coppola movie"The Outsiders") As I become increasingly obsessed with the passage of time, why is it that I can't see anything positive?  What the fuck is happening in this country? The burden of Summer is that it is the time when you are supposed to have fun and enjoy yourself, but there is an obvious time limit, so you better make the most of it, because the looming dread of Winter quickly approaches.  Hurry up and  fucking make something of the beautiful damn weather you fucking putz!  Run outside and FUCKING BE HAPPY! What do you do if you can't see anything ahead that is even remotely enjoyable? What do you do then?

Friends are dying. I can't go see them or I will self destruct. My mother is old and seeing her makes me sad. I fear my bad mood has infected my loved ones.

Doug Henning says it's all an illusion.

Vampire Capitalism Unleashed and Unbent.

The vampire is an over used metaphor, but when the bloodsucking shoe fits, it must be worn. The evil is so large and proud of itself it doesn't need to hide anymore. The people of the United States are a heard of cattle, kept in a veal pen for the rich to drink our blood and slowly shrivel us into poverty. The people I am concerned about are the vampire gangster capitalists who are recreating the European aristocracy, to whom the goal is not just to amass an unbelievable fortune but it is imperative that some one lose in the process: the misery of others is just as important as the wealth you have. How else can you explain the Trump junta's policy of creating demonic mischief that succeeds only when people are made more uncomfortable and threatened? Betsy DeVos is ruining education in favor of for profit loan and schooling institutions, her BROTHER Erik Prince runs Blackwater who wants to privatize the war in Afghanistan for profit, together they make money on the caged children of legal asylum seekers. Stephen Miller, when not killing and eating co-eds in the basement of his Georgetown bachelor pad, invents new misery for legal immigrants. Worst of all is the wanton disregard for the destruction of the very planet we all share. As I write this, our air is worse than Bejing's, California is suffering from fucking FIRE TORNADOES. The administration told us today we  no longer have to conserve gasoline". It is not enough that they have the money- they need you to be destroyed  in the process. This can be applied again and again; to healthcare, to big pharma, to the drug crisis and the homelessness epidemic. The Flint water crisis? Really we couldn't fix that one? And that was Obama...I can see a future in which a company will buy your suffrage rights and vote for you in return for relief from the horror that they can inflict on you or your family. Of course there are good rich people- who care and want to do good. Bill Gates for one, but they are out numbered by those that have become something else.  Bill Gates sees it as his job to give it away. It remains to be seen if he can make a dent in the growing evil that infects the land. We might not need a blue wave in 2018, we may need an exorcist.