Lord I’m Discouraged.
Lord[1] I’m discouraged. I’m depressed. I’m down in the dumps, gloomy, under the weather and over it already. I’m all of these things. The problem is that things are going great for me.
Don’t get me wrong- life is pretty darn swell, which makes me being depressed all the more strange. I have a beautiful wife, a pretty sweet job, and great friends. But I still can’t shake this almost existential dread that I’m feeling. There’s nothing tangible to it. I have no bank loan breathing down my next, no friends who are suffering and I don’t have to watch a close relative suffer the indignity of slowly dying in a nursing home. Instead I’m feeling this rock in my stomach and lump in my throat over something else- over the way things are.
That’s pretty heady stuff, huh? The way things are.
I’m almost thirty-three and that means that I’m chronically in danger of what idealism I have being torn away from me like it’s a baby being ripped from my teen-mother hands by the Tennessee Children’s Home Society (look it up, I’m to lazy to provide a link for my obscure and overly obtuse reference). I see the world and this country that I live in and share with other people and I feel like nothing good can come from me being locked on this mortal plane with such disgusting people. I see the most horrible and vile racism, greed and ignorance being passed off as the norm and it just makes me sick. I see people and institutions that I placed so much faith in giving up and selling out their principles and ideals for the sake of maintaining a status quo that seeks to destroy everyone but the ruling class. It used to make me sick, but instead now it just makes me sad.
Not sad enough to do anything about it, mind you. Not yet- and that’s when I get even more depressed.
I realize for a moment that there is a chance that I could come across as a raving lunatic, writing his manifesto before committing some woefully sad and anticlimactic act of revenge against the outside world that is such poison, but I doubt that I would ever do that. I’m too much of a pacifist to actually hurt someone. So if this long rambling starts to feel like the words of a borderline psychopath readying himself to climb a clock tower and starting to pick off pregnant women, fear not. I find that I wield a keyboard and Microsoft Word far better than I could a high-powered sniper rifle, and my home office is far more comfortable than a clock tower.
But just because I’m not filled with homicidal rage doesn’t mean that I can’t write a long-winded screed about how these unknown forces are troubling me, so here goes.
Liz the G.O.A.T.*
Dear readers of The Bugg Blog, what you are about to witness in the coming weeks is a torrent of sophomoric humor, witty insights, daily bullshit, odes to obscure music and even a few paragraphs about my wife every now and then all because of the pretty girl in the picture (the one on the right). Her name is Liz, and she’s started something very big. What has she started? I hear you asking through the tubes that make up the internet, and the answer can be found in this entry, just after the mucky muck about the last few days of my life. So read on!
Dillard’s Sucks.
I’ve never been a good dresser. My jeans have always fit me poorly due to my big waist and short legs, shirts hung weird over my slouched shoulders and proto-beer belly, so when I went into Dillard’s in the Asheville Mall when I was 18, I undoubtedly looked as if I didn’t belong in the department store’s standard look of faux elegance and upper middle class America’s delusion of being better than they actually were. Dillard’s isn’t a nice store so much as it is a collision of name brands and slightly above Sears quality clothing. But for me, and a lot of other people in Asheville, it was where you went when you wanted something nice- especially for someone older (or where someone older bought you a gift card when they were subtly trying to tell you that you looked like shit).
The Facebook thing
It seems like everyone on the planet has a Facebook page, from idiots like Sarah Palin to awesome blogs like this one, and there seems to be no end in sight. For a lot of very practical reasons, the site is pretty darn useful. Bands don’t have to hang fliers anymore; I don’t have to remember birthdays or email addresses, and sometimes a cute girl that I knew in high school posts pictures of her in a bathing suit without her children in the picture. These are all completely awesome things, but there is a downside to Facebook. Sometimes Facebook makes me miss not being in touch with everyone.
Thirty-Two
Saturday was the birthday celebration for a great friend of mine who works a rather important job and thus doesn’t want his name being spread around on the internet (I refer to him as Batman when I’m online, unless of course I’m talking about the comic character, which I refer to as my friend’s name) and I got nice and drunk with my good buddy Bort for the first time in a while.
For the last few months, Bort’s been dealing with his life, the good stuff and the bad, and I’ve been dealing with mine, but it was really nice to hang out, have a few drinks and a lot of laughs. He’s still my best good friend. I could gush more about him, but it would do no good and only make me seem obsessive and coupled with the picture I’ve chosen for the main image of this entry could make me seem like I was a raving homosexual madman for Bort, which is not entirely true. I’m more casually gay for the guy.
Either way, my buddy Bort is a fucking legend. I wish that we could hang out more, but it is what it is. When we do hang out, we laugh, we talk and we get along so I’m not complaining. He was a friend that stayed around, and for that I appreciate him.
(Also, Saturday is his birthday!)
Have a good night/day tomorrow. I’ll be around in the evening to share an awesome musical discovery.
Be good.
Brent Brown: My own personal Barbara Eden
It started out with just a random attempt at being an asshole.
I am a follower of WLOS’ Facebook page. I usually go on there and tell stupid jokes and try to get the idiots riled up. Yesterday, I made a huge mistake.
I logged on at around 1 or 2 pm yesterday and saw a post about a missing kid in Brevard. Instead of posting the typical “OMG MY PRAYERS ARE WITH TEH FAMILY WRAP YOUR STRONG LOU FERIGNO LIKE ARMS AROUND HIM JESUS” post, I decided to post something pointed and innocent on the page. I posted this:
I hope he’s just hiding out somewhere nailing his girlfriend.
Not the best sentiment, but still something better than “I hope he isn’t dead”.
About five minutes later, someone posted in the thread that the guy was dead. I immediately go back and post “ouch, sorry”.
Cue the shitstorm.
People are sending me messages threatening me, calling for my head. People are telling me to find the kid’s parents and apologize to them in person.
I keep explaining that my little joke (which was made at the time that nobody knew that the kid was dead) is probably the least of the concerns of the family and friends of the dead kid right now. But these caps lock using retards are still bloodthirsty.
Normally, this is where the story ends: me being an asshole and idiots overreacting. But not this time. This time Brent Brown (who is a famous artist) stepped in and reminded us all why he’s the Henderson County Heartbreaker (well, he would be called that if he were in his 20s. And a wrestler. And looked less like Bill Murray. You get my point).
I posted the link to the Facebook page on a local message board that I post on, and titled the thread “Bugg and the ill-timed joke”. Brent replied that the thread title sounded like the latest in a long line of children’s books starring me. I laughed. Other people laughed. Then Brent DESTROYED us by posting this image:
The internet and the real world.
Years ago we bounced through life. We rubbed up against each other and sometimes we stuck and sometimes our momentum carried us far away. Sometimes we would call each other, sometimes we’d write. Sometimes we’d never see each other again and whatever experiences we shared in life turned into a hazy, sunny and warm memory. Sometimes it was ‘really nice to see you again’ and other times it was a confession of ‘hat[ing] that fucking guy’. Either way, that was how I (and most other people) related to these people who disappeared from our lives and popped up again like factoids on a VH-1 show (back when they showed videos!)
I remember people who moved away: Chris Martin and Ryan Rushing from elementary school, Robin Livingston and Suzie Lack from middle school, just about everyone from high school and a few choice people from my twenties- all gone. All blips that came upon my social radar or happened upon my own self- centered existence and then left.
As a kid, and even today it was bittersweet. These people left and I was heartbroken. These were friends- people I’d chosen to share things with in my life, people who came to birthday parties, or Christmas parties, or even it’s Friday night and we don’t need a fucking theme parties. I learned at a very young age because of this that people leave me for reasons beyond their control and that it sucks. I learned that you have to deal with it. I learned that change is inevitable.
Sometimes they actually moved far away (Suzie Lack moved all the way to Egypt) and sometimes they moved 10 miles away- which in 8 year old terms is like a million miles away (like Chris Martin). But they always were just gone after that like they were dead or something.
And then the internet arrived.
At first, the internet was like a friend making machine in reverse: you never found the old ones, but you made tons of new ones. But these weren’t “real” friends; the terms of an online friendship were such that you never got to admit that you made friends online. Online friends were people who lived as far away as Chris or Suzie, but you never met. Online friends were fat divorcees that you fucked at 3 AM after talking on AOL Instant Messenger. Online friends were diseased- socially at least. You didn’t mention, bring around, or even pretend that you had online friends to your real-life friends.
Over the last five or six years, the social networking thing has taken off, and now the internet is bringing together long lost friends almost every day. It seems like I’m constantly finding or being found by old high school friends or guys from my punk rock past. They come out of the woodwork looking heavier, happier and better dressed. They often have kids and take pictures of their wives holding them. They take pictures of houses and boats, of sunsets and Mickey Mouse. You find out who married who, or that Suzie died when she was in 10th grade. You find old flames and end up marrying them (hi Jess!). You agree to have a beer or coffee with people that you would have never done something like that with all those years ago, and nobody bats an eyelash. These are real friends.
Today, within fifteen minutes of each other, I ran into the internet’s past and present at my part-time job. I saw General Lee (the name has been changed to protect the dude’s anonymity) , an old acquaintance from the punk rock days. He introduced me to his kids and his wife. We talked about houses, dogs and bass guitars. We told old jokes about people we know and asked each other the usual “what ever happened to…?” type of questions. It was pleasant, bland, heart warming perfectly acceptable conversation. A few minutes later I ran into Mr. Roarke. Mr. Roarke is someone I know from a message board that I post on, and we exchanged a similar form of small talk, but it was somehow nicer. We discussed his trip to Haiti and the vaccinations that he has to get to travel abroad. We talked about what was happening around us and what a neat little tool Twitter is for connecting us to opportunities. We told a few jokes and went about our day. It was one of the more pleasant interactions that I have had with someone I barely know recently.
So why was I so reluctant to tell a coworker where I knew Mr. Roarke from, while I was perfectly at ease referring to General Lee and I’s common past? Is that stigma of online versus in real life friends still happening, or am I woefully behind the times? Was it just the 14 year old in me trying to eternally look cool that took greater pride in talking about playing in bands versus discussing retarded nuns on an internet message board?
These are questions I need answered people, so help me out.
Also, be good.
Rock of Ages
This was to my immediate left on Friday night. Not scary at all to you, dear reader? Well read on.
Sixteen Twice
Legally, I just turned thirty two years old. I think it’s almost another full day until I actually turn thirty two, but who is counting? I’m not. I don’t know how to feel about this age. On one level, it’s just another year, just another number, but it’s still an age that I considered “old” just a few years ago.
Here’s a wacky thought: I’ve never been this old before! This is a milestone. I know plenty of people who have been this old before and they don’t seem to remember it with a particular sense of fondness or sense of tragedy. In fact, some of them look back on this age and wish to be thirty two again. “Man, I’d love to be thirty two again”, or “what I wouldn’t give to be that young again”. But why thirty two- it’s an insignificant age. Now twenty five would be great, or even twenty one, maybe thirty in a pinch, but thirty two? It seems like a rather mundane age.
I don’t even want a birthday party this year. I just want a normal drunken Saturday night surrounded by my friends and loved ones. I want to feel alive like I do on the weekends. I want to talk about politics and music and possibly tell a frat boy to go fuck himself. I want to have sloppy sex and wake up with a headache. I want to laugh loudly at nothing important or even particularly funny. I want something so mind-numbingly typical in celebration of my thirty second year that next year I can barely remember it.
Maybe this blog is too big of a gesture to commemorate my thirty second year on this earth. Maybe it should have slipped by quietly and just kind of not been noticed. That seems appropriate to being thirty two.
I’m not depressed about it. I see people all of the time bemoaning getting older and wringing their hands about their youth getting stolen from them, but I’m not going to do that. I like getting older. I feel calmer and more relaxed now than I did just five years ago. I feel like I have a bit more perspective; I feel like a perfect fifth root of two(that’s for all of you math nerds out there). I’ve never been that before. I’ve been a perfect square, cube and fourth, but never a fifth.[1]
So internet, this is me at thirty two. I’m as ambivalent about it as you, the collective digital masses seem to be. I just celebrated by walking outside, barefoot in the muddy and mossy grass and dirt that is my front lawn, stepping on sticks and rocks along the way and taking a pee under a pear tree. I’m not sure what type of pear tree it is, Bosch or Bartlett, but they are pee pears now. I will continue the celebration by petting my cat Frank while watching Sportscenter, taking breaks to listen to the newest Yo La Tengo album.
Thirty two. And ya don’t stop.
Until later, be good.
[1] Upon further review, I was one at the age of five, but I wasn’t old enough to remember it or even understand the concept that I am placing forth, so I’m taking a mulligan for the first time that I was a perfect fifth root a number.
The Decline Reunion
I survived it all. I survived playing my first show since a few one-off shows with Glaze back in 2003, I survived seeing the BFO and Tripod on one night and then witnessing On the Take and the Mathmatics the following night. I survived seeing old friends and some other associates and having tons of those “it’s good seeing you, what are you up to now?” conversations and I did it all with a smile on my face, just like I said I was going to.
But I’m still smiling now.
For those out of the loop, this weekend at Broadway’s was a reunion of sorts- Decline Weekend, as Bob Rest (one of the organizers) dubbed it. It was a chance for the people involved with, fans of, or connected to Asheville’s punk rock and out there scene from the early-to-mid nineties to get together and remind each other about why we mattered to each other. My band played, and from what I understand we played rather well.
But this weekend wasn’t about my band playing for me. Instead it was about appreciating something that I didn’t really appreciate when it was happening around me. It was about looking back at a time in my life that pretty much ended when I was 20 years old and it was about bands-not just my band- finally getting a bit of the spotlight shined upon them.
I guess there’s no real way to describe it. There were literally 3 clubs to play in Asheville back when Glaze was really going. There wasn’t an eager audience full of schmucks like me to help promote you for doing your thing. Instead it was cliques of hangers-on, girlfriends and people looking for the next party who were at shows. We played our asses off back then for little-to-no money and we had a ball doing it. We never “made it”, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to make a loud racket and to have fun doing it.
That’s what made this past weekend so great. I don’t know if I can put into words how great it felt to play Broadway’s at Bele Chere, or that people were still willing to pay to come see us and stand close to the stage while we played sloppy renditions of ten-to-fifteen year-old songs. I don’t know if I can tell you how great it was to see people and to tell old jokes and laugh, or to reconnect with other people who had just been faces all of those years ago.
Instead, I’ll tell you that it was powerful just hearing the cymbals sizzle, or the feedback from the guitars, or to stand on a stage with a shoddy P.A. and think this is just like Vincent’s Ear, or to hear BFO rev up an old song or to and look around the room for Tampa Dave’s ghost to be sitting at the bar having a few Sierra Nevada Pale Ales or even to hear Mathmatics songs and not think about all of the great shows I saw them play, but instead to think about driving around in John Biggs’ car listening to their tapes and talking about when we were going to start our party rock band (we never did-maybe soon).
I’m sorry if this blog is all over the place, but the weekend was that for me. It was never-talking-to-someone-for-more-than-five-minutes-because-there-were-four-or-five-more-people-that-you-needed-to-talk-to-type of frantic. But it was worth it. It was worth it to see Chris, my band’s lead singer/guitar player, forget the words to all of our songs, for Richard, our drummer, to break a stick and spend the last song pounding a single snare drum in time of the song, and it was worth all of my flubs and blistered fingers just to stand in that room. To be amongst old friends and new friends that had never seen me on stage before.
Glaze might get back together for a show here and there, and it will be awesome if it happens. But for right now, I’m basking in the glow of what we did. Not what we did Friday by playing shoddy (but fun) versions of those songs. But what we, my band and the entire community did all of those years ago.
I’ve always thought that the true test of creativity is if it stands up over time. This weekend taught me that the Decline scene mattered to people for whatever reason. Whether it was the parties afterward or the songs on the stage during, we did, and still do matter.
And I’ll take that any day of the week.
