tcb & mister gia & cultural effervescence

we are kicking butt around this place, which a kind city friend took to be a homestead when she saw a video i made, but no, we do not have a homestead, we have 0.4 acre of property with house "only dynamite would fix" (angie, 2010), & now that james is sober, we are digging out from under 11 yrs of his clutter, & i could not be happier!!! am able to move forward on projects such as finishing the tiny house (antoine pearl, jr) (see photo of quilt, which dad, mom, & angie restored, & which perfectly fit the bedroom wall!!!),

completing the back porch patio project, & finally... finishing assembly of my sauna!!! these are good times in pageville, & i'm so grateful.

dad just sent this pic of him @ age 21. what a great pic, young handsome dad @ the seattle space needle! wow! i was his son, you know, growing up, or that's what i thought. i wanted to be just like him. "I'M his son!!" james exclaimed when i said the "son" thing. yes, james certainly is his beloved son now, & it's terrific to see what great buddies they are, too. growing up, i was merely a confused girl. nowadays they would've said i was gender dysphoric or something, but no... dad just was so kind & so handsome & he always was fixing things, working on projects, studying, learning, always self-improving, yet being weird & funny, so i just wanted to be him instead of me... once i entered young adulthood, any delusion i was a boy was smushed, but dad still is my hero, along with mama, james, & others. it's important to have heroes to motivate one's life to do & be better all the time!... speaking of which, the no kings rally in bakersfield was so massive, so positive, so wonderful, such a clear-eyed, brave showing of strength, i couldn't stop crying. my mind was blown by the THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of bakersfield people that had shown up to stand up for what is important!! it was the opposite of a mob -- it was societal facilitation, what durkheim called "cultural effervescence." that day being part of the liberty bell protest/rally immediately sealed in my craw as one of my top 10 life-memories ever... between 6 & 10 million people were estimated to attend no kings rallies country-wide. a movement has begun!!! the next peaceful mass mobilizations will take place july 4, which happens to be my 30th sobriety bd.. had intended us to go that weekend to the international aa convention in vancouver, bc, but since i didn't get my real id in time, we are a no-go! i've been blaming fdt for it, but must be honest: if i'd gotten on getting that damned real id quicker, i could've gone. so i guess i don't get to blame everything on fdt!! as distant as that person is from the Good of the Universe, The Great Spirit, & the Life Force, he is made of the same star matter as the rest of us. the bad that happens is not due to any god, but to humans, & he currently is the most massive example... well, that's it for now except once the house butt-kicking is over, it will be time for... MUSIC BUTT-KICKING!!!!

i'm an a**hole

(thinking of that denis leary song from decades back)... since james started turning the basement into a podcast studio, i've been down there a few times more than usual. the usual used to be to go down only when doing laundry, & then never to the basement back-40 w/its serial killer shadows, certainly venomously-infested wood piles, creepy shelves. recently, i peered back that way & noticed vermin nests in the shelves where i had stuffed my Lifetime Boxes. rats; this meant action was in the future, messy, emotional, time-consuming action... today i finally donned a mask & hauled the disgusting boxes up to the long porch, our nawlins porch of wrought iron & wrap-aroundedness. five hours later, the boxes i brought up were all separated: 1) keep; 2) give to others; & 3) sell at the antique shop. yep, i'm so vintage now, the stuff from my teenage yrs, 20s, & 30s are collectible. to continue with the numerating, those five hours brought these discoveries: 1) i used to have about 40 more IQ points than i currently do; 2) was super-arrogant about always being the smartest person in the room; 3) had absolutely no common sense; 4) completely objectified the men in my life as if they were figures i was drawing or were players in a movie i was watching; and 5) tho now dumber, i prefer who i am now, not who i was, the young female who somehow didn't overdose or get murdered... those boxes full of rodent poop & vermin nest piles contained many emotionally-sobering items, but so many wonderful ones, too. 1) our dad is a droll, absurdist deadpan artist & always has been. 2) friends' & boyfriends' correspondences -- considerable in those pre-cyber decades -- were bright, witty, troubled, but so brilliant! at the time, i had no idea of all the brainpower by which i was surrounded! 3) there were cards from family & friends no longer in this realm, 4) drawings from students & family members now adult, 5) obsessively photographic artwork by me, young, talented me, her head so far up her a** i'm surprised she could see to draw. by the former inhabitant of this somehow-same (at least similar) human suit, 6) obsessively worded articles, hundreds and hundreds of them, no exaggeration!! i wrote a lot!! she wrote a lot!!! she loved to write, draw, observe & analyze... all in futile attempt to control other people, places, & things. nice try, young one, but i am glad you are gone -- though i wish i still could write such elaborate sentences & draw with such acumen! -- in the end, it's a plenty-good trade to now have mental health & (mostly) times of peace & gratitude. "alcoholics tend to confuse chaos with adventure," i've heard. this calmer life is the way a person gets to make it to old age, & i'm glad for it.. related to the boxes but decades ago, my then-best friend marc & i used to ditch high school & drive from bakersfield to hollywood. we always went to hollywood book & poster. in those days, it was a big dusty mess of boxes over-spilling with lobby cards, movie posters, film memorabilia, a real junk heaven of movie paradise. on one of those trips, i got (among other stuff) a signed gary leonard photo of phil alvin with the gun club's jeffrey lee pierce. it had to have been in the dollar bin; that's the only place i really shopped, being a kid with no job... well, i thought i had lost that photo forever, but there it was, in one of the disgusting boxes!!... and now here it is for you to see, too...

the next pic, also gary leonard but not an original, shows a kid in the audience who looks suspiciously familiar, but james sez it ain't him. this would've been right around the time he met phil. what do you think?

bluhbluhbluhbluhbluh

"we're going to have fun," james reassured me. the day before the gig, my go-to keyboard had taken a crap, so i was fretting. after much swearing, i realized i'm just gonna have to start prying the broken keyboards open & seeing what's inside. but for this gig, i had to take a casio james got me over in lake hughes, a great deal, but set up for classical playing. not much bottom end. my amp had been all set up finally, perfectly, for the yamaha that had taken a crap. it finally sounded real cool with the vocals and kick drum set-up. oh well. james sed it was gonna be fun, & i needed to believe him, so i went to work yesterday, then came home & we loaded up & drove to la habra for the gig & my part went fine except the keyboard just didn't sound full enough. james's band had two subs yesterday, & when jerry lee luithle came in on the first song, big butted woman (not a subtle number), the full bombastity of his thumb-pounding bass on that particular number made me laugh & thrill aloud. it was the perfect fat, humorous, rich, wonderful tone for that silly-cool anthem to dumbness that james wrote! james's friend jll's tone was the most thunderous bass sound i'd heard since manuel (r.i.p.) playing bass 15 yrs ago at a southland vfw... jerry lee was named by his father after the killer & taught robert lucas how to play, james said. jerry lee spoke wistfully of his father, a music lover & honky-tonk pianist, & took videos of me playing. i guess my playing made him think of his pop. and how nice was that. :) it was a long but fun night. the band sounded really loose but tough & full. james, 7 months-plus without mind-altering substances, brimmed with charisma, good cheer, silliness, naughtiness, toughness, benevolence, virility. wobbling with fatigue, trying to get coffee, i watched him from the bar, & there he was: balding, middle-aged, yet there he was, all eyes on him because he just has that: all eyes are drawn to james, bursting with light & life, one of this world's good-will ambassadors... other than this, what i'm thinking about is how tony lopez has the best gear, & his vintage drum kit had some super-cool tones. "tony, play that," me & anthony pointed, & he pounded his super-cool tom-tom, & anthony laughed as i yelled like tarzan swinging from the vines. yes, good-natured anthony was spot-on, & it was great fun yapping with buoyant him, the sweet, shy, boyish man who plays like a lunging predator... so as you can see, all was going well enough, but then on the way home james's tank, the purple parade float, broke down & we ended up having a brain-deadingly-long evening. as we waited & waited to get home, i kept flashing on how many ppl i've read about who, something like that happens & it's all over for them. the car breaks down, they can't get to work, they lose their job, they can't pick up their kid, cps swoops in, they lose their place to live, the dominos fall disastrously, maybe even fatally. for us, he has triple-a & i have a middle-class union job: it all worked out in the end. so there was a lot to be grateful about... we met a kind tow truck driver who took us to a nearby denny's so we didn't have to stand outside, then after some waiting (no one wanted to drive from the city to the rural mountains), a gig-driver with spotless hybrid decked out with twinkling lazer lights, european chocolates, & bottled water scooped us home. in armenian tones, he burred that he couldn't sleep & got the call & realized he wanted to "help these people" (us), so he took the job. his main career, he said, was at a school for autistic children in north hollywood. i conclude that we met some roadside angels because, though salaried to do these tasks, they did them kindly & they did them well... a few hundred bucks down, we arrived home around 5 am to happy dogs, cat slinking around our ankles, tv, comfy bed, home. & that's about it, i think, for now.

happy mamas' day

to all mamas, all you mothers, all you aunties, all you seesters & grandmas, all you menfolk, too, all you humans who care for others, who nurture, who abide, who forgive, who endure, who are patient, who love.

more ghosts

am trying to set up a new website for james. godaddy was all messed up & they said his domain would be safe, but it wasn't. godaddy has been such a pain in the ars for so many yrs, we might be grateful for this "loss." while trying to setup the new site, i came across all these pix in james's photo cache. so many memories. so many ghosts. the only person you might not recognize is the one of me & aunty rita. she was quite a character, one of my heroes, even if james only met her at the end, when she couldn't tell her funny stories about oj simpson or mean joe green.

ghosts and second-guessers

decades ago my friends ruben and manuel made a blazers (r.i.p awesome east-LA band) christmas cassette tape. it was a load-of-fun-listen. since i've always loved singing close harmonies so darn much, i took the tape and another blank tape (you used to be able to do this), plugged in my cheap mike, pushed play on the blazers xmas tape & record on the blank, and made a new recording that added my vocal harmonies to their recording. undoubtedly there's still so much obsessively rewarding experimentation that goes w audio recording, all digital now, much ai-assisted. but in those days it was so basic, so immediately, tangibly rewarding: stand farther back from the mike & sing so the harmonies don't overpower the main vocals. bounce your voice off the wall for reverb. sing into the wall heater to get fuzz. record the instruments in an old bathroom to get a cool echo. yes, it always was engrossing fun to experiment, for me, in that dark wood-paneled parlor room in that large craftsman home in which i once lived in that long-ago life that i don't much recall... manuel always had such a beautiful voice; the christmas tape, all rollicking rock-n-roll good-cheer, seemed to be begging for a backup, plus, you know: the fun aspect.... my then-bro-in-law, at that time in his life a major ass, listened and sneered something like, "yeah, i bet you wish you could play with them"... i was only a bit crushed bc i knew it sounded good, & in the next decades, i got to play with manuel many times as a member of the big manny band, one of the biggest thrills of my life, & with ruben, too, most often at the yearly chango jams in memory of manuel/big manny... anyways, at that time with bro-in-law i did have a fraud-twinge, like mebbe i was an impostore of sorts. & i feel slightly like that now, adjusting this flyer, but the difference now is that i feel so much more solid about my one-man band. i'm doing it now, fully doing it, more than i ever did, & it feels so powerful, singing, playing keys, kicking the drum. truly, i feel like a badass when i do it. like i'm sposed to do it. and i am good at it. so here is the flyer, & der you go.

erstaunlich

today i missed seeing bernie sanders & "aoc" in backwardsville bc of feeling unwell. mama, angie, cousin thomas, mary fafa, & sister dawn all went & had a 'magical experience" with the packed house, so sh*t. i'm happy for them but wish i'd been there, too... i've been eating vegan since august with i'm sure some slips since animal stuff is in most every american processed food item. don't care at all about the condescending attitudes some pipo have had. i read that bc food is not just vital but cultural, emotional, addictive, any food choice that removes one from the master tribe will cause a person to be eyed with scorn, suspicion, etc., even envy! finally talked to sister & mama so that when we go out to eat, they don't loudly tell me what i can & cannot eat, & still need to talk to bro-in-law. what I eat does not hurt them, plus, bc of the privilege inherent in americanness, i won't starve. at least not right now, w the country insane but still maintaining steady food supply... if in the house of someone serving animal flesh, i try to be a good guest, not a psalm-singing ass. (it's the "when at grandma's" idea. you don't refuse food grandma serves you.) and you know what? most humans don't monitor others' food choices... unless the others make a big gd deal about it!!... i've really liked not having stomach problems & have dropped a bit of poundage, been taking supplements here & there, but lately, increasingly, have been feeling weak, so weak. so after all these months, just now was a big moment bc i had a tin of my favorite canned fish from aldi, just to see if it'd help, but shared it w james since it's been a good long while since i've eaten animal stuff & no need to be a fool... i cannot remember what the book the world peace diet had to say about fish suffering, so that helped to eat it w/o feeling guilty. the result? almost immediately, i started feeling more energetic. james said it's likely the placebo effect, but if so, so be it. i just know i now feel better. like, within minutes of eating the deliciously tender savory fish steaks in yummy sauce. so between tinned fish & the occasional local egg (from a chicken not in deplorable factory-farm suffering), i think i'll be more up to snuff now. i'm no longer vegan, but cows, pigs, lambs, goats, chickens, octopus, my beloved creatures, you all still are safe around me. i wouldn't eat a cat, a dog, or a two yr old baby, so why would i eat you?