One time in Chico

This was originally for Last Call, but I had to rewrite it to make it more "local." I guess that column is pretty good and all, but I still like my original, moreso for the memories than the text.

I went to the Office on Belknap Street the other day. I couldn’t get out of bed to in time for first call, 7am being a lot closer to when I’d gone to bed than to when I could feasibly be functional, but I made it there in time to catch Katie Couric commenting on something that had to do with a plane. I ordered a Bud draft, the only thing on tap. The news report ended, and the Price is Right came on. I hadn’t been to a bar this early in almost a decade.

I think it was the fall of 2000. I was walking into a bar with my friend Doug in Chico, California called the Town Lounge. The environs are vague in my memory—I’m pretty sure it was a ‘70’s wood-paneled dive along the lines of Maxine’s or VIP’s—but I know I had a gin and tonic (yeah, I had a phase) for like $2. I also know it was seven thirty in the morning.

Doug and I and these two girls had hit a string of bars that night—La Salle’s, The Bear, Duffy’s—and maybe even a house party. I think this was back when Red Bulls were new. Prior to that, Doug and I and his buddy Noah had been taking turns pulling off a bottle of Carlo Rossi on someone’s front porch, and we kept at it while ambling to the bars around sundown.

We’d all been reading Steinbeck around that time, see. In particular, Tortilla Flat. This is probably why I remember stashing the jug of wine in a pile of leaves when he hit downtown--it seemed like something Danny would have done.

I remember playing Galaga at the Bear and getting the third-highest score. Doug pointed at a long-haired dude who had some crazy name. “That dude has the high score.” He said. This being NorCal and all, the guy sort of looked like a surfer who worked winters at Boreal or Bear Valley, which really means he looked like a pot dealer. In that context, I thought then that the third-high score was near respectable company. I polished off a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale, and we went to Duffy’s, where these two girls in Doug’s English classes met up with us.

Later, we ran into Doug’s and his roommate Jeremy’s Euro-tripping compadre Burt. He and I got into a cheerful argument about Pearl Jam vs. Sublime. I stress cheerful, because it ended up with us taking turns punching each other in the face. Before that, though, I spotted a few bottles of Lone Star in the cooler. They were priced as a “premium," and this cracked me up.

What happened next is murky, because Burt drank whiskey, and Sierra Nevada Brown Ale was the big beer for me; like the punches, we were trading round for round. Doug told me later that he had to teach me the phrase “forohforoagstree,” drunkslang for his apartment’s address, because he’d called me a cab and given me his keys, and I needed to tell the driver where to go.

The cabbie deposited me on the corner of Oak Street and something else, and I later found myself on Doug’s couch. Doug later found himself elsewhere because I’d locked him out of the pad.

The next morning, most of the people with whom I’d been drinking showed up in the kitchen. I know this because I think someone used the microwave. They coaxed me off the couch and into a walk back downtown. “We’re going to the Town Lounge,” said Doug.

The Town Lounge, more affectionately known as the Town Scrounge, was the first bar I’d ever heard of that opened at 7 am. Technically, Doug and I had both been in one that never closed, seeing as how we’d lost our minds in the casinos of South Lake Tahoe on the Fourth of July in ’99. Two years later, though, we were losing our minds in a different pitch, early in the morning of the fall of Y2K. Noah met up with us, and we drank drafts and wells. Nobody had a Bloody Mary and the girls flirted and made ironic lesbian jokes centered around Odwalla drinks. I blathered embarrassingly about a recent ex-girlfriend. The girls went their way and we went ours, and on the way back, Noah reached into the pile of leaves, triumphantly producing the bottle of crappy wine.

That’s how Sunday started.

Hope for change

Here's what i like: if you read that title, what do you expect? Disgruntled political commentary? A post about the weather? Perhaps a story about a homeless guy?

I don't know, but I'm pretty excited about Saturday. Here in Fort Wizard, it's Spring Gallery Night, which means lots of free beer and snacks and art that I'll never buy, with a handful of exceptions, all of which are featured at Studio 5.

I won't buy any of that stuff either, but that's only because I'm broke.

Anyway, there's also a big benefit concert for Haiti, called Fort Worth Sings for Haiti. It's free, so I'll definitely be showing up there. I hope the weather is nice.

I guess this post was about the weather after all.

I heard Aliens vs. Predator sucks

This disappoints me so much. The original, PC-only version was probably one of the most intense gaming experiences I've ever had, surpassing even the tension and terror of the crows' crashing through the window in the first Resident Evil. In the first AvP, if you played as a Colonial Marine, creeping through ducts under the flicker of wonky lights was scary enough, but when you added the noise of the pulse rifle, the scream of the Xenopmorphs and the hiss of acid as it sprayed on your body... man, that shit was gnarly. Played in a dark room with good speakers, the original AvP could probably figure into some very vivid, terrifying dreams.

Now, I am so out of the loop that I had no idea an Xbox 360 version of the game was coming out, but then I saw it at Gamestop and got really excited, especially since the game was apparently developed by the same team as the original. Unfortunately, a gamer friend of mine whose joystick-related opinions I take earnestly to heart told me it is way too hard to be enjoyable.

This totally bums me out, and that previous sentence kinda sucks. I don't have internet at my house, so I'm sort of stuck with single-player titles right now. Stuck isn't the right word; I'd still play Oblivion if not for the fact that my disc is irreparably scuffed, but you know what I mean.

While I haven't been playing Xbox lately, I have been going to bars and writing these things for the FW Weekly. I really enjoy it--the challenge lies in trying to write jokes about a place without having to rip individuals to pieces. If you read any of my Last Call columns, laugh a little and know someone who will exchange money for written content, please pass that link along. And if you happen to know someone who works at Betheseda, please pass this one along, too. My idea is pretty much the only way I'd play The Elder Scrolls V with other people.

The sun's out. Totally wizarded afternoon...

Anyway, it's nice outside. Mid-50s, clear sky. No barking from the dog, no smog, mama fixed a breakfast with turkey bacon instead of regular bacon, etc.

I'm currently at El Heladero's house, letting his dogs out and helping myself to his pantry. It's a ten-minute drive down the freeway to his neighborhood, and on the way, I put on a album I'd downloaded last month but not had a good moment to absorb. It's the Tangerine Dream-composed soundtrack to Sorcerer a 1977 action movie about a truck crossing a rope bridge, directed by the guy who directed The Exorcist. As you may have guessed, I've never seen this movie, so raving about the soundtrack might get me labeled a phony. I'm sorry. I haven't seen every cool movie you have--instead of choosing Renting John Woo Movies and Talking About Them at Bars as a field of study, I foolishly picked Political Science. In any case, I'll bet most of the RTVF majors I went to school with have never heard of this movie either.

Anyhow, I stumbled upon this album while browsing iTunes for Giorgio Moroder. It's a bunch of ominous, analog synth textures, and if you turn it up loud enough, you can effectively mute the world outside. I drove through an uninteresting part of Fort Wizard on my way to the freeway, but even then, it was still pretty cinematic*.

When I have a soundtrack and a drive like that, it gives me a lot of room to think. I normally have my best ideas in such moments, and today was no different. As the thoughts took off and branched out, I came up with a great idea for a story: what does it take to become a judge at the annual Cannabis Cup?

Now, prior to looking into this, I knew exactly two things about the Cannabis Cup, and both of them led me to believe that I was really onto something. My first certainty about the Cannabis Cup was that it involved weed, and the second was that it involved a trophy. With those in mind, I made some assumptions. Given how marijuana is now fastidiously cultivated and crossbred to produce a multitude of strains that in turn a produce a variety of preferred psychological and physiological effects,** I figured a judge of the best marijuana in the world (or whatever the field is) would have to be experienced, level-headed and probably wise. Or at least old.

In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me to find that a couple judges*** were noted, wizened biochemists from Germany or wherever, amid the jovial, ponytailed Deadhead and a couple of High Times editors who had long-since been grandfathered onto the panel. And I thought, man, this would be really funny! I'm sure High Times probably interviews these guys, but no one else does. Surely they wouldn't mind talking to someone like me. So I thought up questions about their criteria and evaluation process. Do you test each type of weed according to a particular album or DVD? Do you test in sub-genres--are their categories such as "Best Weed for Waiting Tables" or "Best Weed for Driving to Plano?" How do you go about clearing your "mental palate"--is there some kind of culinary or chemical equivalent to eating a cracker at a wine-tasting event? In other words, I got a little excited. It seemed like such a great idea.

And after I'd let the dogs out and watched them run around, I started looking shit up. To my disappointment, I discovered that a Cannabis Cup Judiciary panel is not necessarily composed of diligently selected, pot-friendly scientists who looks like Gandalf. Instead, it's open to any old dickweed who buys a fucking pass.

How in the hell can you award a prize when you allow a potentially maximum number of Highway 80 shitheads participate in evaluating the competition? The champ needs to be decided by people who can at least read and write and think, not a bunch of dudes in huge shirts who wander around Six Flags dribbling shitty basketballs and hitting on 8th graders. I don't care if I'm being elitist. If the official worldwide plan is to make it so no one can ever get in trouble for pot, you need to elevate the dialogue. Patton Oswalt does a mostly funny bit about the need for a Sideways-type movie for marijuana. I couldn't agree more. I don't necessarily want to buy hard-packs of Marleyboro Lights**** at 7-11, but it would be nice to know that the joint in my jacket pocket is not going to get me arrested when I'm hitting it in the parking lot. To get to that point, you have to convince every person who's afraid of marijuana that it's no longer strictly the realm of stinkhippies, dangerous rappers and kids who jump off buildings. I hate quoting reggae songs, but Peter Tosh was right on when he talked about lawyers and doctors getting high. Last year, I ran across a story about so-called stiletto stoners, professional women who unwind with a bowl after a hard day of turning the tables on office politics. While I probably wouldn't want to hang out with any of these ladies, I'd like for the people who vote for the people who keep weed criminalized to see that while a lot of potheads are losers, there are just as many who aren't. This is why the Cannabis Cup needs an official council. Then I can write that cool interview.

*An aside: when Darth Vato went on its last tour in July of '08, we drove along I-8 to San Diego. It was right as dusk turned to dark, and the sun was orange and bleeding into the horizon. We were listening to Mezzanine by Massive Attack. Out the driver's side windows, we could see Mexico. From that vantage point, Mexico was a series of dunes and low, dark hills held in check by wire. No one said a word until we neared the California border. "Real creepy," Jordan said. I suspect that if used in a similar circumstance, the Sorcerer soundtrack would produce a similar effect.

**And like, different tastes and shit.

***who, in my imagination, sat at a table of a kind of wizard council in a secret club hidden high in the mountains of Amsterdam. Never mind that the Netherlands don't have mountains and are always one kid who chooses instead not to give a shit away from being flooded.

****And if pot is ever legalized, you can expect to see it sold under names as bad and probably way worse than that one.

EPIC RUINS UPDATE! (plus some Ashera news, too.)

Okay, so it's been awhile. But I've been busy doing shit--a documentary on fuzz pedals came in the mail and it wasn't going to watch itself.

Anyway, the EPIC RUINS album is recorded, mixed and awaiting mastering and pressing. It's called Void Mariner and the Mystic Boogie of the Sacred Line, recorded by Mike Garcia at Fort Worth Sound and Zaq Bell at Fusion Project Studios and mixed by Danny Kalb at Cowl Studios. I mention them because if you're recording something, you should go look them up. They're all total wizards. But wait, there's more!

Void Mariner and the Mystic Boogie of the Sacred Line will likely make its debut at the end of May or the beginning of June. We're probably going to start spreading it around before then, so if you happen upon the word WIZARDVIZION written anywhere, look for clues. You can also check out more at wizardvizion.com, epicruins.com, multivoid.com, the wizarded blog, and our Facebook page. They might not be up quite yet, but keep checking, because that's where we're putting up all the secret shit and what not. We may or may not be playing at SxSW,* but there will likely be something worth your while to check out during that time. All I can say is that if you have a secret spot where you go to get wizarded when you're out at bars in Fort Wizard, Austin and Los Angeles, keep your eyes open for anything suspicious. And cops. Keep your eyes out for those, too.

Now of course, the preceding paragraphs assumes you've been reading this blog forever and ever and know what I'm talking about, but if not, here's the thing:

EPIC RUINS originated as a project between myself and Jordan Richardson way back in like 2007, when he was recording Darth Vato's last album with us. Over the course of last year, we kicked riffs and song ideas back and forth across time and space. In August, we both had some time available to get together,** so we and a bunch of other dudes got together and had these super-haggard late night wizard jams in the Me-Thinks World headquarters in Haltom City. Videos exist, as do four-track tapes. Someday you might see/hear them. But anyway, we did that for four days, and then we holed up with the aforementioned Michael Garcia*** for another four and fleshed out/recorded what we'd made up. It was all really fast and special and you're probably rolling your eyes, but what we made up was some really spacey shit that sounded like it came right out of the '70s. We figured out after those sessions what our record and band was really about, and at the point, the core became myself on bass, Jordan Richardson on drums, guitars and keys, Sam Anderson on vocals and guitar and Jeff Dazey on baritone sax.

About two months later, we recorded another song with Zaq, which you can read about in previous entries. That song is called "Child and Cobra,"and it was recorded when all of us were in various stages of fighting or acquiring the flu. It was also recorded during the Balloon Boy Hoax, which made the whole week even weirder. We made nervous jokes and it was all very surreal, and I credit Zaq with calling bullshit on Falcon flying the fucking thing. Anyway, time went by, Danny mixed what we had finished and then during the last week of the year we finished the last three songs except for some vocals. I flew out to L.A. to finish mixing with Danny and Jordan, and now we're all anxiously awaiting the moment we can unleash it.

If you want to know what it sounds like, I'm hesitant to drop influences and that sort of thing. I don't want to color your judgment, so you'll probably just have to listen to it. Like I said before, we're going to leak it (I know, really pretentious, right?) before it's pressed, but I hear tell there will be a song streamed on Veronica Belmont's Sword and Laser blog.

Failing a listen, though, you'll probably want to know that it's a concept album about an immortal dude searching for truth. And at some point, he runs into Ashera, and they fight a being called the Kreg, at least during one song. It's only a part of the broader story. If I ever find an artist to draw what I've written, that particular song will fit into the end of the first major story arc of a multi-volume story. Anyway, since that doesn't really explain what will come out of your speakers, I'd say it's a rock album that came from the mid-70s of a parallel universe, one in which Jimi Hendrix lives into the early '90s (when he dies of prostate cancer), Reagan precipitated a nuclear war scare by sending troops to Afghanistan in 1986 and Willow was critically and commercially well-received.

And also, it's a universe where there is no Conan the Destroyer. In other words, it's totally awesome. Except for the whole nuclear scare thing.

Please keep coming back here, and check out the Facebook link at the top for more updates. Now that the record is all done, I'm going to be back on here a lot more often, with more tales to astonish and amuse. Or rather, more tales about this one time where we were all super baked and listening to Electric Wizard and so and so did that really weird thing.****

Steve

*(and isn't that a familiar refrain from anyone you've ever known who's been in a band?)

**Like I'm so busy or something.

***That's Asian Mike, to us.

****And by so-and-so, I probably mean me.

EPIC RUINS UPDATE

Since there are only five songs thus far, and we can only do them when our drummer is on a break from his day job (which is playing drums), we're mixing the songs as we finish them. Today it's "The Illnorm."

I am super amped.

As for last week, we got one song done. I would've liked to have gotten two, but given that everyone was sick (half of us with swine flu), I'm glad we finished what we finished. And really, the song sort of sounds like we were sick. Not as in lackluster performances or whatever, but in the tones and riffs. It's called "Child and Cobra," so when you hear it, that's the one that sounds like the flu.

Swine flu is bad

but at least you don't turn into a pig like in Willow. I don't know why critics hate on this movie. This scene terrified me when I was a kid.

Man, pigs make the worst noises.

Anyway, I found out last night that I do, in fact, have el gripe puerco, but I think I passed the worst of it on Saturday, and the Azithromycin and Tamiflu are finishing it off. I'm fairly sure I picked it up in the sewermud at ACL, but I feel about 90% capacity, and we're headed to the studio as we speak. If you can get the mist or the shot for this shit, I recommend it.

Captain Trips is recruiting

And I'm trying to dodge his draft. Keep your fingers crossed. I've made it this far without getting sick. This fever is not cooperating.

In other news, I hate missing out on shit. Stoogeaphilia was really heating up and the crowd was good. The second band was a punk band fronted by a guy who looked like James Carville. And One Finger Fist was tight and hilarious. Shoulda been there. Wish I could've stayed.

Incidentally, per the first paragraph, Lodi is mentioned in the unabridged version of The Stand.

STUDIO!

The next EPIC RUINS sessions start tomorrow! Aaaaaaaaand... Wizard Fight bass is out of hock!

Zombieland gets an A. From me.

Go see it. Super funny. It's basically a road trip movie with zombies instead of bikers or Aunt Edna or whatever else gets in the protagonists' way in a road trip movie. I laughed the whole time, and it has the best cameo in a movie I've ever seen.

I also watched Last House on the Left (the original) last night. Not sure the score works as well as the composer thinks it did.