Sylence is Golden

Oh, my... I've been lax adding any news of the day lately, largely because I've been distracted by some guys I was playing guitar with most of last year. The super-madcap moniker chosen by democratic vote- no, it wasn't really that, more of a default kinda thing in favor of the guitarist who thought of it in the first place, was Waysted Sylence. A little high school for my taste, like, "We're gonna be sooo wasted and, and we're gonna call our band 'waysted', see? Heheheh... cool, dude." Here were my suggestions(not the least of which was Monkey Grip, a nom de plume I first optioned to my garage band of my twenties as previously mentioned in this log). Yes, many are somewhat absurd, as is my wont, some reflect that overblown heavy metal sense of pretentious menace we all know and love. But I had fun with a good twenty minutes of free associative thinking, just typing whatever came to mind:

AAAardvark - Abandon Ship - Abberation - Abomination - Absurdity - Allegory - Ain’t Brain Surgery - Amen, Brother - Arcade - Artful Noise - Artless Noise - Asterisk - Asylum - Authority  - Aw, Heck! - Barking Dogs - Basketcase - Batwing - BellTheCat - Bellweather - Bigfoot - Bigfoot LIVE! - Brainfreeze - Breath - Cats-eye - Creepshow - Corrosive - Disaster’s Wake - Driven - Drive-Thru Asylum - Dunce Cap - Faceless - Fate Worse Than Def - Fear of Success - Focus - Foolslave - Foot In The Door - Freakish - Funhouse - Giants Among Mice - Grownups Disguise - Harbinger - Havoc - It Came From... - Hopeless Dimwits - Lobotomy - Louder - Maelstrom - Mansion of Fright - Martians Are Landing! - Masher - Monkey Grip - Monster - Metallus - Meteor - Meteor Crushes Earth - Meteor Crushes Man - Mutant Fish - No Paste For You - Nothin Rhymes - NullenVoid - Opening Band - Paste Eaters - Planetarium - Play With Sticks - Pound Head Here - Race  - Rats Race - Reptile House - Robots Attack! - Rocket Car - Ruination - Rust - Says Who? - Says You - Say Wha...? - See-Thru U - Smarter Than Youse - So? - Stare - Steel Toad Shoes- -Storm Warning - Stranger - Stranger Than Fiction - Theatre Noir - The Dog Says... - Thingmaker - Throwaway Society - Thunderation - Titans Among Us - Tornado - Trainwreck - Thrash-o-matic - Trash for Thrash - Twister - Underfoot - Vacant Stare - Valkyrie - Viral Load - Virus Warning - Wait Until Dark - Washboard Abs - Wasteland - Way To Go, Einstein - When Aardvarks Attack - Why Me? - Why Not? - Why Work? - Will Work for Peanuts - Worldshaker - Wringneck - XLG - YOY -  Zinger

Hah, it's funny to read those again. 'Washboard Abs' is especially funny given the tendency to 'dunlap' of most of the band, myself included. The drummer being the notable exception, he works too hard at drumming to add any excess weight, I suppose. My favorites? 'Meteor Crushes Man', 'Theatre Noir' is kinda cool, 'Maelstrom'... Who wouldn't go see bands with those names?!?

We got to where we could manage a dozen or so songs in a fairly competent manner, not exactly what you'd call 'tight' but better than rank amateurs. Anyhoo, I finally gave up on it because they were serious about playing clubs and so forth and I really just wanted to goof around and play loud every so often. Too, it was a loooooong drive to where we rehearsed and costing waaaaay more in gas and strings and batteries and rent and food and time and effort than it returned, especially for my spouse and kids who missed my face three nights a week while I indulged my adolescent rock star leanings. So I bolted, followed days thereafter by the drummer.

That left the remaining three guys to reform the band, which they did a few times until settling on a pair of guys. Said pair recently being booted, the band asked the first mentioned drummer and myself to step in again with the promise that it would be A) cool for the 'original' lineup to play together again, B) we'd make a demo CD as a souvenir so we'd have a memento of our glorious midlife crisis/rock'n'roll fun days and C)... well, there really were no other good reasons.

So, with a week to learn two new songs the band had added to the mix in the intervening months, not to mention re-learning the previous set of tunes, we'll be inviting disaster this weekend, committing our set to tape. Oh, the allure of the power chord.. it is a siren song difficult if not impossible to resist....!

Sleepy Saturday morning

For some, anyway. I woke early- for a weekend anyway, around seven -and took a stroll around the neighborhood, very quiet and starting to warm up already. Barked at by one old, gray dog of mixed parentage. Eyed by one yellow-eyed black cat from his perch in an open window. Stopped in at a house on Main Street setting up a yard sale where I met a lady named Shirley who has lived here for 51 years, says she's settling in nicely. She was minding the store for the family selling out their goods. I bought a miniature grandfather clock from her, should be a good scale to display with my Bonanza men if Doug at work ever gets the Ponderosa facade put together for me. I have one little clock like this already but some of the plastic ornamentation is broken away and it runs on batteries where this new plugs into house current. Cool.

Since exercising my breakfast skills on vacation, stocked up on corn meal and makins for johnnycakes, so I fired up a big batch of 'em and necessary chicken gravy. My wife gets a kick out of my gravy making, I have to add yellow food coloring to give it a nice, golden color just like Momma did. It's just not the same without it. But everybody else was still snoozing so they'll have to nuke 'em or toast 'em, one of the two.

Spent some time playing with last year's band mates last night. We practiced a handful of songs for about eight months, fun for me- a chance to turn it up to eleven and let loose for a while -more serious for the rest. When I jumped ship a few months ago, the drummer, Glenn, decided to pack it in too. Shortly thereafter, the singer, BC(not the cartoon character), made himself dispensable by not showing up for practices. So the two remaining, my longtime buddy, bassist Jim, and guitar player Rick(styles himself Rick 'Wylde', yow!) recruited a new singer and a package deal of a drummer and lead guitarist. Now the guitar player got himself DUI impaired, license yanked, possible jail time, fines, etc. And since the drummer, who is legally blind, doesn't drive, someone in the band had to drive and drive to bring them to and fro from rehearsals. Talk about suffering for your art.

At any rate, the former gang wants to record a coupla songs for posterity. I don't know that posterity will be especially interested but, hey, I'll throw in for the fun of it. I've got nothing from the garage band days of my youth so it should be fun to have a souvenir of this outing; mangled chords, muffs andflubs, fake lead parts and all. Now, where's that black fright wig...?!?

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig-jig

Well, if anybody's wondering I made it home from the OC shore week in one piece despite having ventured into the bay waters of Maryland not once but twice, tempting fate and every man-eating shark in the vicinity who could smell my fear. Actually, the 2nd venture wasn't in the water but it was pretty far out into the bay where there were almost certainly sharks swimming under the boat. But they never showed themselves, the sneaky devils, preferring to wait, camouflaged by the murky depths, for the unwary boater to drag a meaty hand or lazy foot in the deadly waters!!! Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum... diddle-la-DAH!!!

In the first instance, my 2nd cousin, Lynn, his friend, Jim, and I dug up about three dozen clams from the muddy bottom by hand, cool. Not a big clam fancier myself but it was loads of fun floating around in the waist-deep water, rooting them outta the mud. We steamed the poor little buggers and ate them with cocktail sauce, chopped up the leftovers into a clammy chowder, mmm. In the second adventure, we three took Jim's boat into the Chesapeake Bay from a place called Crisfield. Somewhat choppy ride out, nothing too rough, and I thinks to myself, 'Hey, this isn't so bad. I'm feelin' fine!' Different story once the boat stopped and that floaty, lost horizon feeling seeped into my brain and then my guts. Let's just say I didn't exactly earn me sea legs that day, matey! Aaarrgghhh!...

Nevertheless, I managed to contribute two good-sized croakers- they actually croak like frogs when you pull them outta the water! -to a catch numbering around two dozen. Okay, I admit it, I'm no Gorton's fisherman! I couldn't tell a drag from a bite from a current from a nibble. I think it was mostly because I was too busy keeping my eyes on the horizon trying not to get sick over the side again!

All in all it was a pretty restful week although it had it's frightful moments. Some with the kids, some with the adults. But whatta ya expect when you put a dozen people it a house and say 'Now, live together, eat together, keep everybody happy and interested in doing everything everybody else wants to do at the same time for the same amount of time...' and so on. Asking for trouble if you ask me. My idea was to go it alone as a family foursome and just sleep late every day, do pretty much nothing except veg at the beach, stay up late watching the tube or cash in early as the mood strikes and so forth. Which we pretty much did being poor and all... and, suffice to say, that caused a little friction. Go figure. Hey, nobody was chained together at the wrist!

But, man, the weather was swell. Quite warm the first half of the week but the last three, four days, you couldn't ask for better. 80s, breezy and beautiful. The last night we went down to the beach close to sunset and I scavenged a nice handful of shells from the surf. You can always count on a little collection to wash up, free for the taking. As I was walking along, trying to snatch the good looking shells from the receding waves, I thought somebody who was poetical by nature could easily write a verse or three about the way things come and go in the waves. The way things are there one moment and gone the next. Fragments and pieces, coming in and going out like, like memories that come to the fore and recede, only to wash back up again. And maybe you can hold on to a few- you hold them in your hand, then both hands and then in the rolled-up hem of your shirt. Then you drop them all together into a net bag to bring home. Some all you can do is watch them go quickly away from your feet. And think maybe they'll show up again up next time you're in this place...

  I don't know one shell from another but I like the little ridged ones best and there are a coupla nice looking ones in this batch. I should do something with them, make a wind chime or something. On most days I sport no jewelry whatsoever, not even a watch. But the beach requires one concession to adornment and that's a cheap- and I do mean cheap, I think it was, like, a buck and a half -bracelet I picked up at one of the local souvenir emporiums a few years ago. It's got little hammered wire things wrapped around a flat band, laid onto another band; somewhat ornate but not much. I figured if it was okay fro John Wayne to wear a bracelet, I could too. So now it's just like my beach thing. That and a big denim shirt. Anyway, the point is, it's starting to wear in spots. I guess it's just tin plating or something. Maybe the shells could be strung together and make a new beach bracelet. Maybe.

Nothin' much...

Okay, okay. So I've been a little lax over here. On the plus side I have managed to add some photos to both the family album and the Classic Plastick archive. Back to work from my week off for nasal reconstruction, recovering nicely, thank you very much. It has made a vast improvement in the simple ability to draw breath and for that I am very thankful.(I'm thinking of cartooning the doctor and bringing it to him at my followup in a coupla weeks. He'll be a good subject, I suspect. Plus there are lots of cartoonish options with his profession; nose jobs, giant ears, three-eyed patients.) And I expect it'll improve further as the, y'know, physical trauma of the slight reconfiguration of all that stuff under the skin wears off.

Sold off a few pairs of my toy rubber gloves which have been warming the bottom of a drawer for some time so I'm looking at another inexpensive eBay guitar, just what I need! Hey, I figure one day I'll have a wall with an example of a handful of guitar types on display, I'll want an Explorer, a Les Paul, one of those whacky 80s star body guitars, let's see, what else? Nah, I'm no connoisseur,a cheap copy will do for me. I love my Epiphone Strat, for example. Great little action, speedy neck, lotsa different sounds. The only real trouble I have with it is hitting the pickup switch every so often when I don't mean to! >BOING< One of these days I need to check in with my guitar tech guy and see how the rebuild of my Charvel is coming along. I am deathly afraid of the bill, he's had it for months now. I'll probably have to sell one of the children into slavery for a few years to pay it off... Hey, maybe he'll take one of them as an indentured servant...

Next week it's off to OC oceanside. I know, I just was off work for a week but that was no picnic, lemme tell ya. Not complainin', mind you, time away from work is always welcome but this'll be a week of real, honest-to-goodness kickin' back, watching the waves roll by, getting too much sun, have a few beers now and again. Aaahhhhh... The only problem will be coming back to work and being out of vacation time for the next six months. That will be no mean feat, I'm sure. But, hey, I'm not sweatin' it. It may be time for a change, I'm thinking. A little time off to work up some art samples, business cards, do some legwork, drum up some contacts, make all those clay heads I've been promising to do for so long now, anything to get out of the rut my work life has been for, oh, say the last seventeen years.... Sheesh, when you say it like that, it seems like a lifetime!

A moment...of...solemn reflection... to remember... Frank Gorshin, TV Batman's Riddler par excellence. A little late, I know, he's been dead a coupla weeks now, I guess. That last line just made me recall Gorshin's recollections when asked in the early 90s about his days on the set of Batman in the 60s. He said something to that effect, "It seems like that was another lifetime, y'know?" I didn't quite get that then... but I do now. 'Another lifetime', indeed...

Hopefully I'll check in again before heading out this weekend. A  lot to do before then though, mow grass at home and do Mom's mowing job, notarize a document for the insurance settlement on the car, bring a reimbursement form to the dentist for some work the wife had done, this, that and the other thing I'll remember halfway down the highway. What don't get done will keep, I sez! What don't keep... may rot then!

Which reminds me, I forgot to call toy buddy Pattoo tonight. We're supposed to confab regarding plans for July when Adam West and Burt Ward will both be at a convention of toy/comic geeks in Jersey. Good excuse for a pilgrimage out there to hand Mr. West an example of my homemade Batman doll. "M-m-m-m-Mr. W-w-w-west! I made this... j-j-j-ust for you!" Like he doesn't have enough of those already! I'll ask if he remembers giving me a hard time about wearing a 'new Batman' T-shirt when last we met, 1989. I'm sure he will.

Yard sailing

Once, long ago, I was a real yard sale aficianado. It fed my affliction for Batman memorabilia and eventually became a little sideshow to real life, buying, trading and selling all manner of pop culture goods.
But with the advent of eBay, everybody's granny became a pop culture purveyor all on their own without the need for a middleman such as myself. So it more or less fell by the wayside, as goods became fewer and farther between I concentrated on supporting my habit by making my little craft items.
Lately a coworker has been gabbing about his own flea marketing venture and it's sorta given me the 'bug' again. So I swung into a coupla yard sales this week while tripping around off work with my schnozz recuperation. Found a coupla neat little Pillsbury Doughboy vinyl figures, they are squeezably soft too... Oh, wait, that's Charmin... so I thought 'I'll put 'em up on eBay for a buck or two and while I'm at it, I'll add my Planet Doughboy T-shirt- a takeoff on Planet Hollywood substitutes Poppin' Fresh on there -a doughboy two-fer! Turns out my spouse has cleaned out my T-shirt drawer and dispensed with that particular article, disappointing for me but especially to that advertising collector who's still looking for his Doughboy shirt to advertise his own peculiar addiction.

   I'm nobody's clothes horse, by any means, but there are always a few articles that I get attached to and wear out wearing them. High school I sported a Mork outfit for a time, baggy pants, the jersey shirt and, yes, what Orkian outfit would be complete without the rainbow suspenders, nanu,nanu. As far as I went with the Six Million Dollar Man, besides practicing my slow-motion running at every opportunity, was the epaulet shirt and red Adidas. Which I soon found out didn't really go with anything bud a red sweatsuit. In my garage band days, especially, there were the parachute pants and the aptly named 'miracle' jeans. Because it was a miracle they held together after all the rips and tears and patches. I guess at the time every wannabe rocker had a pair of jeans like that though, it was the thing to do. These days I have a Hoss outfit, it's true! Brown cords with my short, zippered cowboy boots, white shirt and brown vest. I've got the hat... all I need is to borrow a horse and I'm set!