A Few Other Things

-Happy Halloween everybody! I hope you have fun tonight and that you don't get stalked by homicidal masked killers. I hate it when that happens. Unfortunately I won't be doing a damn thing tonight because Adrienne has to work until late. No giant baby costume this year. Maybe I'll be stalking babysitters and teenagers to make them pay for being dirty, sinful fornicators and underage drinkers. It could be a new career path for me.

-Speaking of careers, my Guitar Center one is over. Yes, it was over before it even began actually. You see, after training for one week on things like "Five Personality Characteristics of Good Salespersons", "Five Ingredients of Customer Service" and "Five Core Values of G.C." amongst many other tidbits of useless corporate propaganda, I took on the "floor" with my fellow salesmen. In my first day on said "floor" I sold a vintage Gibson SG for the hefty price of $2,000. Since my salary is largely based on commission, I was very happy to start off selling such an expensive item. However, since I was new I still needed help with operating their archaic computer system at the checkout counter. So, one of the more experienced salesmen (who admitted to me that he used to be a used car salesman and who had spent the entire morning talking shit to me about the other employees) happily helped me and managed to keep 100% of the commission for himself in the process, all the while informing me to my face that this was a common, albeit non-official, practice for the first couple of weeks. You can imagine how I reacted to this. I informed this gentleman that I was not in the habit of letting people screw me over right to my face and I also let him know what I thought of his little unofficial policy. I then took it up with management and upon seeing their apathetic response I decided that these were not the kind of people I wanted around me on a regular basis (plus many other crappy things that I won't get into right now happened while I was there). So I quit. No regrets. Fuck 'em. I told them to send me my check in the mail and that I would not be back in the building. I really have grown to have no patience for despicable behavior and I really don't feel like I have to be part of it. So that''s that. By the way, the five personality characteristics of good salespersons are "Outgoing, Enthusiastic, Tenacious, Sincere and Humble". They should add "Douchebag" to the list.

-I saw "Running With Scissors" on Saturday and I enjoyed it very much. All the actors involved put in great performances and the story, based on Augusten Burroughs' book, is wonderful. Very much like Wes Anderson's work, the movie evokes the same kind of moods of "The Royal Tenenbaums" (and not just because of Gwyneth Paltrow being in both movies). Funny, sad, witty and whimsical = Good movie in Luca's book. Go see it.

-I'll be in Nashville this weekend for the Carroll/Hargis wedding. I can't wait, it should be a lot of fun. Let me take some time now to apologize to the people who will be attending for the vile, embarrassing things I'm most certainly going to do while intoxicated at the reception. I haven't been drunk in months, I hope you understand.

A Few Things

Hey there, here's a few things:

-As some of you know, it was my birthday a week ago. I turned 28, which is nowhere near thirty. Beside the annual internal freakout ("I'm old and past my prime! What the hell am I doing with my life?! Is this really where I imagined I'd be at 28?!"), I had a good time. Adrienne arranged a romantic dinner on our balcony and made me a cake. It was yummy. She also got me a melodica, which is a cross between a harmonica and an accordion. Very cool. If you don't know what it sounds like listen to the left channel of your stereo during the chorus of "Clint Eastwood" by the Gorillaz or "Tomorrow Comes Today" on the same album and you'll get the idea.

-I'm starting a new job on Thursday at the Guitar Center. I need money. They offered to pay me money in return for selling guitars. I agreed to do so. We'll see what happens. Does this mean I've given up my search for a "serious" job? No, it just means that I've grown tired of having to watch my spending habits. I'm pretty sick of having to say no to things that I want, even if it's just a magazine or another beer with dinner. Hell, me and Adrienne's idea of a nice dinner out lately is a trip to the Chick-Fil-A across the street. I'm about done with that lifestyle.

-I did however put down $6.50 on a matinee movie ticket to "Jackass 2" recently and it was money well spent. I laughed hard. And I guarantee that you can show me that movie at any point in my life and I will find it funny. And that my friends is called "Timelessness" -- or "continously being immature" if you want to be a dick about it.

-Have you downloaded the new version of iTunes yet? How cool is the new album cover side-scrolling view?! I had to go and download all the covers of my albums right away. It took a while considering I have 33GB of music on there. I'm such a fucking slave to my own obsessive compulsive behavior, I know. I even had to go copy and paste a bunch of covers from Allmusic and Amazon since iTunes couldn't locate them. But clearly it was all worth it.

-We're about to hit the third anniversary of Elliott Smith's death here in ten or so days. I have never been affected by a musician's death as much as I have by his. It was truly like I had lost a friend. The circumstances in which I found out about his death are quite memorable too. I had just returned from Italy where I had attended my sister's wedding and I was staying with my parents in Michigan. I was in a record store in Ann Harbor buying two Pavement singles that I found in their clearance section when I approached the counter. There sat Elliott's XO album on a cardboard stand with the words "Elliott Smith R.I.P." written on top. Shocked by this sight I immediately asked the clerk what had happened and he said "Dude killed himself". I hurried home to my parent's place where I turned on the tv, even though I really didn't expect to hear any details. Like MTV was gonna interrupt their Real World marathon to even mention that he had died. CNN said nothing. My parents still hadn't given in to getting the internet so I didn't find out the gruesome details of his death until I reached home a few days later. I was truly sad. It was even more emotional hearing his songs on From A Basement On A Hill when it came out posthumously. What a shame. I hear Kill Rock Stars will soon release a collection of b-sides that were recorded around the time of his first three albums. I'll be glad to actually have an official release of those songs even though many of them have popped up on various bootlegs and on the internet over the years.

-I'm trying to limit the amount of ellipses I use (you know "..."). I've been known to use a lot in my writing and I got to thinking that perhaps it wasn't a good representation of how I speak. It makes it seem like all my statements are open ended and unfinished. And it comes with the assumption that the sentence isn't finished and that you should fill in the rest yourself which isn't something I necessarily want to subject people to do. You have so many other things to think about already...(Aaahh shit, I knew I couldn't do it!!!)


All right, I gotta go to bed now. Don't be shy and leave a comment once in a while. I miss all of you terribly.