Ideas

         
            I hit a lull in my writing. I haven't written a song in months and my blog ideas have dried up some. I have ideas, but they're not very good, so I'm letting them slide. I don't like to force things onto paper. It makes me feel funny inside as if something's wrong.
            Lately, I'll have a good idea but it will turn into a bad idea real quick. I'll try to fix it the best I can, but it doesn't always work out. Ideas have a point of reckoning where you have to decide whether to put the work in or abandon ship. I usually abort the mission if I have to try too hard. It sounds counter-intuitive, but that's the way it works.
           I never set timelines or completion dates. Nor do I set quotas for myself. It's not a numbers game to me. I'm amused when I hear someone say I want to write a song a day, or ten songs a month. I never understood that. It seems silly to me. I rather write a good song, however long it takes, then write a bad song in a day.
          Bad ideas tend to eliminate themselves eventually, at least in theory. I've written some horrible things, but at the time they had meaning and seemed to be good ideas. So you never really know. Your mind can play tricks on you. It's best to have someone you can trust to give you their honest opinion about your work. And even then I may or may not listen to them. That's the kind of guy I am, a regular stubborn know-it-all.

John Waters

         
           I saw John Waters last night at the Luckman Theatre. Funny dude. You can't say anything bad about him, unless you're uptight. I laughed for an hour straight. I appreciate the John Waters of the world. He said it plain. He was intellectually gritty without having to say fuck every other word. He talked about assholes and fist-fucking, and glory holes, but he was so eloquent in speech it wasn't offensive at all. It was the complete opposite. He was interesting. I learned about flakka and meow-meow, drugs I've never even heard of before. I feel so much wiser now. Street savvy.
           I know about upper-decks, or how to leave one if someone should mess with you on an extreme level. He talked about his movies and Divine. And at the end of the show he had a question and answer session. 
           It was a great night. Thanks Dana.

I Don't Know Man

         
           I've been saying, "I don't know man," out loud, to myself, in recent days. I'm not sure why. I'm no more confused than usual. I think it has something to do with realizing how cruel our society is.
           I drove through downtown yesterday morning, and I don't usually do that. It was plain to me that people were suffering. I stopped at the corner of Fifth and Los Angeles. There was a man picking through a trashcan. I was almost numb to it. I turned the corner, and there was another man picking through a trashcan. And it occurred to me that most people are numb to it. We're taught to be numb to it. Had he just followed the rules and gotten a good education, some people say. But these guys were bat-shit crazy and it didn't seem right.
           As I drove away I couldn't help but think that the men are victims of a heartless society. I thought about the government. What is government? I boiled it down to one word. Assistance. Now who the government should assist is a matter of debate. All I know is we have a problem and it doesn't go away by ignoring it. In fact, it cheapens life for everybody. It cheapens life for the man picking through the trash. It cheapens it for the man driving by who sees the man picking trash. And it cheapens it for those politicians who are making the decisions about where we spend taxpayer money. It's all connected and I guess that's why I've been saying, "I don't know man, I just don't know."
           Because deep down I do know and that's what makes it hard to understand. 

Rock and Roll

            
            I talked to the proprietor of my favorite burrito joint the other day. He told me stories about the concerts he saw in the seventies, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper. He had a connection who worked at the Los Angeles Forum. He got free tickets through him. Actually, it was his father's connection. In typical Mexican-American fashion, his connection ran the cleaning crew at the facility. 
            He said he met Alice Cooper backstage, that he was a nice guy. And that the stadium had a fog hovering over it from all the pot that was being smoked. You could get high just breathing.
            We talked long after I had finished my burrito. I'm always amazed by the proprietor's consistency. How do people do it? They find a way to be nice and decent against all odds. 
            I nearly broke out in tears on the walk to my car. The goodness of people. Sometimes it makes me want to cry. 
            

To The Man I Just Flipped Off

            
            To the man I just flipped off. I saw you before you saw me. You were walking with your head down and not paying attention. So I waited to see if you'd step into the crosswalk without looking. You nearly did. But you stopped yourself short. That's when you noticed me waiting for you to make up your mind. The sight of me waiting for you agitated you in some way. You angrily waved me forward as if I was putting you out. You swung your arm hard as if to say hurry up and go dumb ass. 
            I decided, without much thought, to show you how I felt about that. So I drove by real slow to make sure you saw me holding up my middle finger. I held it high and strong and even shook it some for good measure. And you saw it alright. I saw your face drop with the sight of it. You had the look of, yeah, you got me. I deserved that. 

My Ladies

       
            I was in Chinatown. I had just left Pho 87. I was feeling pretty good about myself. It was dark out, no moon, and sometimes when it gets dark early in autumn, my inner-compass gets confused and lonely. But, I wasn't confused or lonely on this particular evening. I ordered Pho to go and I was walking to my car thinking I had made a wise decision.
            I noticed an older Asian woman in the distance picking through a trash can. I saw her turn toward the sidewalk and trip on the curb and fall face first. She must have been eighty or so. Old. I rushed over to make sure she was okay. She was sitting on the sidewalk with a concerned look on her face. She couldn't get up. It happens when you get old, you can't get up. She just looked at me when I asked if she was okay. I realized she didn't speak a lick of English. I let her sit there for a moment before I grabbed a hold of her forearms and helped her to her feet. She thanked me by shaking her head in the affirmative.
            A few weeks later I was walking in the neighborhood when I noticed an elderly Asian couple in their backyard. The man was standing over his wife who was sitting on the ground. It was evident that the woman had fallen and the man was trying to help her up. The man saw me and flagged me down. He didn't speak English either, but I knew what he was saying. I walked into his backyard where I grabbed the woman from underneath her armpits and swung her into a patio chair. She was vulnerable and could barely stand. It happens. You get old and you can barely stand. It's got to be a strange feeling, 

Star Wars

         
            I stopped in for a bite to eat. The proprietor sat at my table. He looked pretty tired. He said he was sleepy. I told him to go to sleep, that it didn't matter to me. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. Then, a costumer came along and wanted to pay for their food, so he got up to take their money.

            I was reading the newspaper while eating my burrito when the boss came back and sat down. He reached for the calender section of the newspaper. 

            No show times yet, he said. I new exactly what he was talking about. The new Star Wars movie. They want to keep it a secret to keep the riff-raff out, I said. The boss is about sixty-some, so I was surprised when he turned into Star Wars geek right before my eyes.  Not quite a geek, but a more of a Star Wars sage, or philosopher. He was talking about the force and the Jedi all but being gone, and Darth Vader being dead. Where is it going? he asked. I was pretending to be knowledgeable. I saw episodes one, two, three, or four, five, six, how ever they call it, but that was a long time ago. I was thinking hmmm, Darth Vader's dead? I kind of remember that. Ahh, they'll probably create new characters, I said. Or, bring back old ones he said. He rattled off a few names that I'd never heard of before. I was in over my head with the conversation. Then, luckily he turned his attention to a picture in the newspaper. It was a Star Wars character holding the new light cyber. That looks like a fire cross I said. Yeah, it's medieval, the boss said. It's not supposed to be medieval, it's suppose to be futuristic. They're going turn the damn thing into Excalibur!