On Substance and Design: A tribute to Collin Jennings.

At first I was worried that perhaps I'd entered the wrong house. There was this one time where I had two eyes full of LSD and I walked into some random house in the South East. Ever since then I've been wary of 'respectable' looking homes. Hardwood floors (swept), Couch (no rips or tears), Christmas tree (still up), textile art (retro vogue), 'Zoobomber' in bicycle shorts and leather jacket (drunk), and so: much in the style of Toucan Sam to some fruit loops, I lifted a few feet off the ground and, crazy-eyed, floated gracefully on the wave of sound down down into the flavor-packed basement below. El Come Home (Koh-meh Ho-meh: from 'the Spanish'; He eats dude?) I only caught the last little wave of surf-y riff tide to wash over a still small though gently expanding crowd, I made my way toward Captured By Porches and tried out the new beer. Yummmm.
AAAAAAUUUUUUUGH...!!!...Rave rave rave. Blah! World's Greatest Ghost. From the people who brought you: this party. Comes the debut of ungodly basement pop perfection. This being their first show I understood the wavering nerve of the first song vocals and let slide the little skip and stumble off-beat oops in the first chorus. They held it together and finished neatly leaving the grainy tart of synth lingering dainty on my tongue after that fat mouthful of heavy drums and solid catchy riffs served up with gourmet precision. At most, the best one can hope for with basement vocals is that the melodic distortion sounds like it's supposed to be there thrown in and bounced around on the sonic butts-up of the electric tonal wall, but these guys nailed it. After that first song they grabbed their respective rhetorical balls and really whammed it out there. Awesome. It made me think about the point of music, being to convey some sort of emotion or sentiment too complicated for friendly blabber. This was the lust of pure pop-abandon/ the youth we thought we'd have hasn't existed in a good 40 years and so here we are: disillusioned, staring off into a plastic decadence we might like to call life some where down the road and we're saying: shit. Well if ya'll don't need me here...I'm gonna call it a night. The Ghost's last song was one of love and respect. An homage to local favorites Here Comes A Big Black Cloud at one point they broke into a piece of The Cloud's Gamma Ray and everybody went wild, including the Cloud themselves as they rolled up some cigarettes and got ready to follow up on the next set.
Can I continue to review these guys? There's gonna come a time when I'll just have to note that they played and leave it at that. Honestly I spent their entire set talking to a lady but I kept one ear and at least an eye directed at them so here's what it was: Dope as always the cloud shocked, rocked, and slammed the crowd like a tall stack of pogs lost to the kid with the best wrist-snap in class. A friend of theirs was celebrating the first of a planned 15 25th birthdays and they doused him in an up-turned stomach's load of ketchup and mayonnaise leaving slick puddles of the stuff stinking up this once tidy basement and securing for the band a championship title of Portland's Smelliest Act. Tiger Boots Calhoun, dancer for The Cloud, has returned from her voyage safe and sound...but this leaves us with three dancers? Is this how it's gonna stay guys? Is that really necessary? Well as far as I could tell it looked alright and they meshed well together so I suppose the future is for the masses after all.
Here's where I leave. I had heard of another party: Mikah Sykes? I think that's the name. At the Cartoon Bungalow. When I got there the music was over and the dance party was small and sad if not a tad pathetic. Coco 'Jailhouse' Delight and I yapped out the pharmaceuticals from our systems and proceeded to...Blackout? I don't know. Well regardless I woke up at home. Thanks.

A Psychedelic Christmas

Pony keg in the kitchen, the turkey has been in the oven for a few hours now and a quaint ladel serves up a warm brew for any and all takers. It was a picturesque calm in the living room where just a good group of friends decided to take this normally depressing and defunct holiday, turn it family, and throw some drugs in the mix to boot. I'd like to call for a little Christmas reform in the world. People. Next time you take off from school or 'life' or whatever you do and go home to see mom and dad and granny and your angry little siblings, please: Just bring a little acid and offer to serve up the nog. I guarantee that even if you regret it you will never forget it. Zap!
Regardless. Mostly it was just a happy little buzz going around nothing to insane. Though I think that one dude with the old vial he was 'washing' had a bit more residue than he'd expected after such a long time. Well hey that's life. And speaking of life I'd just like to dedicate this next sentence to a man that should've taken his place in that big PCP induced nightmare that surely must be his afterlife long long ago. Here's to you James. Your death was almost as played out as your music...But just know that I will always cherish that one time...You know the time...come on. You remember...you were 'the demon', right? And I was all: maybe I should just eat the rest of these. And you were all "get up offa that thing!". And so yes: I got.

As the massive jam stomping up from the basement grew louder I grew quieter. More introspective. I started looking at all these kids around me and thinking to myself: What are we doing? What the fuck are we doing? Sure we all have jobs and some of us go to school, maybe you paint or write or play music or sleaze down at the local bars every night. This is what I came up with in my tripped out little lobe, so I says to myself: Vying for the future. That's right. You and your posse are just copping the future at a front from that corner slanger called God. Maybe you'll come up and pay up and re-up and eventually you'll own that future and be able to push it on the kiddies. But maybe not buddy. Maybe not. You should be careful of how much future you do now, and I know your chick likes that future too. You should watch you back if you can't cash out, cause that front is gonna turn into the back-alley baseball bat of history and you'll just be another sucker trash fad like Eddie Murphy's album or 'Earth Day'. Just beware. And take a moment to ask yourself: What is it you do?
Food count: 36 oz of eggs? Crab cakes? Huge turkey? Some sort of loaf? Brie and crackers? Oranges? Yes. Pie? Of course! Yes. Bacon?! Steak?! YES! The night was delicious.

12/06 down south? ATX- after rallying for a while everyone had essentially decided that this was the only party happening tonight. it had gotten cold and everyone was bitching about it, but being a cold weather denizen i knew how to deal with it- liquor store. I found a reasonably priced bottle of blackout juice and started downing the mother along with a copiuos amount of beer, thus the foggy location of this party.when we showed up they had just barely tapped the second keg, and that got a little wild and crazy feeding frenzy style. we sat around inside until we couldn't take it anymore and burst forth into the freezing temperatures. I blacked out and tried to walk home.

2nd Star to the right and straight on till morning.

As I've mentioned before this entire blog is a work of fiction and therefore no information contained in any article I have written may be used as evidence in a court of law. That being said I'd like to tell you all about this fucking awesome house in SE fairyland that I visited during some sort of post pub hallucination this last Sunday. I waltzed in sort of holding my chin up so that the liqour wouldn't spill back out and I could at the same time retain an air of dignity among the natives. A barrel fire burned near the decrepit basketball hoop and the entire locale smelled of the sweetest of sensamilla's. Dreadlocks abound and me in my best leather shoes; so I'm searching for somebody to let me into the scene. Party Steve is there and so's The Peter, but my main connection is Lady Fox from Austin. She lives in this part of town so she takes me and introduces me to all the in kids sitting around a large bon-fire constructed in the classic pyramid form with defunct shipping palettes.
As I'm warming up and getting into some good conversation I ask this one girl what she does here in Portland. She says that besides work she analyzes poeple's handwriting. Awesome I think. That's great. It's always nice to have a party trick especially one so 'tarot' as this. Do me! Do me! C'mon.... So she's dead on. Saying how fantastic and most likely biblical I am and the such. How ladies love me not just for my sightly Patrician chin but also because I have the wit of Wilde and the vision of Rimbaud. All true and I wish I'd had my billfold on me cause I would've tipped her graciously. Instead I said that I'd mention her and her talents in an internet blog. There you go! Carly the Calligraphy Clairvoyant. Beautiful.
My few whiskey gingers were wearing off and that irish car bomb had given my some wild gas. I excused myself from the huddle and let one rip on my way toward the basement where some easy jam band sounds were emanating excitedly like the soundtrack from a romantic comedy circa '92. I can dig this as background music but to stand there in the front of these kids like the rest of this crowd was doing and be like 'Alright guys! Man you guys are really dishing out the mellow! Yes!' turn to the next guy 'Hey man, are you checking these guys out? I don't think I've heard an 25 minute percussion act like that in years! And that repetitious guitar riff is like 2 bricks of gold just showed up on the floor of the efficiency apartment in my brain!' Well anyway. Like I said: background music. The ground that needed backing being across the room from the band and surrounded by people holding...Money! That's right! Cash in hand! Moving ever closer to...Wait for it...Moving through the crowd...A bar! There's a bar! There's a goddamned bar right here in this fucking basement! Alright! So these kids had a full set up; mixers and all; a keg dropped to the side. Two bucks a cup. Three for a cocktail. Amazing!
Like some sissy new jack I just walk on up and I'm like...Dude...Is that a bar? Is this some sort of speak easy? Everyone just stopped and looked at me like the allegorical bus I'd just gotten off of had a marquee that read #5-0 Express Ride to Coolsville/Jump Street Line. One tall guy with a Vodka Cranberry entrenched in his large mitt lowered his stare dead onto my eyes and said: 'I don't know what you're talking about, dude.' and after that everything seemed cool again. Sheesh. My mistake guys. Hey readers that know me...Do I look like the fuzz? You can tell me...I won't be offended. Thanks.
After a basketball shoot-off I sat down at the dwindling fire with the dwindling crowd and proceeded to invoke the solemn and noble art of mere conversation. You know what I mean: how many subjects can you talk about without actually saying anything solid, relevant, and in some cases even factual? It's an old aristocratic art guys. And it can breath life into even the lamest of parties even LAN parties can be decently fun for bystanders if you just jabber about nothing to one another.
At one point I looked to my right to see a pair of red velvet shoes slither up beside me followed by a plop of rear and then the face of a modern PYT fills my scope. This is Tori. I don't know her. She looks about 18 at most but claims to be 20...and a half by her own admission. She's laying it down hard. Which is nice. I think everybody deserves to have somebody just walk up and start flirting with them every once in a while. It's probably due to my goatee(which I just shaved today) but this sort of thing happens rarely. So even though I know that nothing's gonna go down with this chick I humor her and hone my skills. Cause hey. The game's an exponentially expanding sort of thing. Don't get rusty cause best bet you'll get dropped. Alright...so I'm mainly including this just so that I can ask a question and illustrate a point. To my homies...Does it ever feel to you like a girl just started hitting on you just to get you beat up? I mean I could feel it in my jaw like 5 hours of blow and no more schnapps. Then these two guys come and sit down and just fucking mad dog on yours truly here and I'm like what's up with those dudes and she's all oh...Those are just my bro's. Alright. Bro's. She says: Bro's! Not brothers...and especially not my older brothers....you see the one on the left with the crook eye? Hunh? The big one? Yeah, he's wanted for aggravated assault. Well, comrades, obviously I'm exagerating and for that matter nothing happened I just want you all to be careful cause remember good citizens....These ladies be schemin and you know! You know! I ain't never lyin. Gotta watch yo back son else getcha shit jacked. That is all. The party ended and so did my conciousness...once again left to roam around a strange part of SE the next morning. Just so you'll take note: I'll soon be doing some interviews once Picnic sets up on the new website...That's right kiddo's. Our very own website. That's that. Uptown! Fuhgedabahdeh. Nothin doin.

a cool California winter in Portland Oregon...

Last night was such a tilt-o-whirl blur of drunken decisions and DJ driven dance precision that even the strongest of double mary brunches still leaves me reaching for a solid string of events to latch on to. So allow me a moment or two to finish this drink and take in the foreign surroundings in which I find myself this morning and then join me friends: An odyssey of soul.
MMMMMMM. For only fifty extra cents why take anything but Peppar? For those who know. Alright I remember now. Which only proves my theory that there's no sleeping demon or blackout dwelling "oops" that a good two Bloody Marys can't knock loose. Which is why I'm getting a third, cause now that I know I can't wait to forget. Based on my notes and the strange taste in my mouth I've started to deduce just exactly what Past Uptown was up to. We'll start from the bottle of cheap wine and work our way slowly to a crisp morning in SE Portland with a pocket full of garlic. The rest of my crew was headed to a Sexy Pants B-Day sit down soiree. I on the other hand was feeling the need to groove so gullet tucked with wine I headed off to the first party: 9th AND prescott.
Ahhhh crustiez. On entering this party I thought of my cohort and comrade Chips Down(presently on sabbatical) as he speaks fluent crust and I, at most, am only a promising beginner in the dialect. Luckily they had an interpreter on hand so I enlisted it's international skills of providing familiarity to the unfamiliar; fluency to the affluent. After the beer bong I went forth into the mingle. A strange breed these Portland crustiez. Much less intimidating than those with which I have dealt in the past. I suppose in all honesty that they are actually anarchopunx or rather post-apocalyptic bike heathens.
Vanilla Ice was playing and I didn't see a single mad dog stare in the place. There was the one dude, large and bulky; his beard and bald combo startled me from afar-but I quickly realized that he had merely passed out while standing and was in the process of falling onto the couch. The entire time I was there these three girls were chanting what at first I took to be belligerent nonsense but later realized was a belligerent rendition of a song, as follows: "I'm fucked up in my brain; I'm gonna fucking kill you." I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure that's what they were screaming. Every room they'd enter soon cleared with awkward "Who the fuck are these girls" glances. Which brings me to my next observation. There was an alarming amount of questionably clean college girls hanging on the crust punks. This proves my long standing it's cool to be poor theory in which I'm akin to Miles Davis walking a harem of white girls into the green room full of high grade primo while Sinatra's puking in the gutter outside.
I was outside standing around with a few friends checking out a gay BDSM catalogue when the cops rolled up. Immediately the guests were up in arms yapping about such nonsense as "private residence" and "it's only ten thirty" and "do they really need two cop cars?" The answer to all of these is no. Shut up.

Cop Etiquette in the party-sphere: Minors! Go inside and don't be stupider! Now that that's taken care of...Hello officer. Oh? Too loud? Yeah. I'll tell the guys to turn it down. Hunh? Oh it's a birthday/going away/who cares just lie party. Yeah? Well we like to throw a lot of [party type] here since most of our friends go to college and live in dorms. I don't know...I guess they just like being able to focus on school. Yeah. Well we'll keep it down. Thanks for relaying our neighbor's passive aggression in a calm and utterly professional manner. Yes sir. Thank you very much, you have a good night too.

Alright! That's it. Simple enough. Now nothing actually went down but I thought I might throw that in for anybody who lives in a land of illusion where cops can't just come into a house and arrest everybody in there. Because they can, will, and ultimately: yes. They want to. So don't give them any more reason to do so by lipping off to them. Thanks. So the free beer ended and the Franzia was hitting my gut wrong. I called up Party Steve(yeah that guy) and checked on the status. For those of you who don't know, Party Steve is like the friendly Quaker that helps run away slaves, or rather drunken misfits in this instance, get to the free north/a more hopping party. So here we go. Alone...Here I go.
The bus is the sort of switch between realities where Nike shoes and Columbia Sports Wear jackets mean 'broke' and 'dead-up' instead of 'cool' and 'employed'. I prefer the MAX on all accounts but when inconvenient the bus will just have to do, as it did. A man wearing some old Jordans and a Nike fleece hoodie tied tight around the waist with a fanny pack tried to strike up a nervous and awkward conversation with the lady sitting next to me by informing her that she had dropped something: a gooey snot rag to be specific. Gross. They seemed to hit it off.
12 AND madison. At this point I've had to shit for quite some time and decide that I'd just do it at the party and when the ladies that've been knocking on the door are all "What took you so long?" I'll just use the golden oldie of "Sorry. I was doing coke." and of course I'll throw in a "That...Wasn't me" just for good measure. This party was what we in the industry like to call: Bumping. At first it was all Lewis and Clark kids but the masses were soon to follow and then the free for all broke loose. The pantry was raided, old dudes were saucing young ladies, the DJ was playing Spankrock(!!!!), and some girl actually grabbed my crotch while we were dancing! Can you believe the nerve? Now we've all had our fair share of ass taps and maybe the occasional nipple tugs, but this was just plain uncalled for. However flattering she may have thought it would be.
This DJ was good; playing everything from Of Montreal to Prince. Though while standing in the bathroom line staring out onto the dance floor I started thinking about these frumpy and strange moves everybody was doing. Now I'm no Timberlake or anything but when 2 live crew comes on I feel confident that I can shake it down with the decent amongst them. What is an acceptable dance these days? Somebody? Any body? To the best of my reasoning I can only guess that this jumping arm swinging hip jamming is at best contrived and at worst...post modern. I just can't help but romantically fantasize sometimes about somebody making a real dance again. Like the mash potato or the twist even. That seems in good taste.
At around four the inevitable trance started in and my spirits waned. I started remembering key bits of my life like the fact that I live in the NE and I don't have a car. I could always wait and catch the first bus but I drank all of my currency much earlier in the evening and thus had no bus fare and no more barter worthy goods for the cab goers. One dude offered me some trunk space which I heartily accepted but his posse ended up going to another party. I just couldn't. I was done. I checked in and met the tenant of the house before scoring prime real estate on the couch and holding fast throughout the drunken goodbyes and heavy blaring Van Halen till finally I felt it was safe to remove my shoes and get comfy with the down blanket that had been generously left to one side of the couch.
Ahhh yes. This crunchy morning reminds me of my old summer home in hobodum. Waking up. Man versus wild hangover. Snag somebody else's apple from the snackery/fruit bowl in their kitchen and head off into the bright in search of bloody marys and a side of eggs. How did I get the money you ask? Karma. I decided against stabbing kittens so the cash fairy looked kindly down upon me and dumped some funds into my account. Rejoice. Uptown!

When the third world hits it'll be innocuous enough, i mean, you probably won't even notice it, you'll be doing the shit you normally do and then boom, you all of the sudden find yourself in a fucked up situation; like your friend quietly saying he's not going back to jail as he speeds up while y'all get pulled over, or a dude walking up at three AM and asking casually what size shoes you wear or -in this case- being locked in a house with police politely informing you that they are about to break the door down if someone doesn't open it RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW. Of course, in order for this to be a normal situation gone awry you have to be a pretty cutty motherfucker, which I am, i must be in order to write this week after week. I bring you, the reader the taste and feel of the cut without you having to risk a hair on your head. Meanwhile my ID is getting passed around more cops hands than an a racist joke down at the station. No, no, I'm not being charged with anything, they're just looking, just making sure. I recall how this situation started, it seems so long ago....
47th and caswell 11/26 ATX- it's some one's birthday, or in fact it's a lot of people's birthday, but it's someone in specific's house. Rebecca... it's fairly modest, there's two kegs and a bunch of would-be gangsters talking shit along with the platinum blond teens and overgrown boys wearing faded rock t-shirts. pretty faces, for pretty bodies, with perfect hair and thee latest clothes, everyone's outside and acting like it's cold, which it isn't really, not yet. so we're all just having a good time when the cops roll up. This has become something of a mystery to me lately, although I understand why they do it. The police come up and say there has been a noise complaint even though it is obvious that no noise complaint has been filed. It's part of the general policy that a bunch of people can't get together outside a bar and just drink for no other reason that to drink. I call it "anti-buzz" enforcement. So we are all moved to the back yard and told to be quiet. Like lambs to the slaughter.
Literally, like 10 minutes later the cops are back in force. they start ID-ing people and handing out tickets left and right, people are trying to sneak away but they can't people are running, jumping fences but the cops have the entire thing locked down. No way out but in... for some reason it seems like a really good idea for us to all go inside and lock the door, so we do, and there are so many minors you'd think the keg was full of gold. Now the pretty girls are looking nervous and the thugs and jocks are making humorous, tepid little comments about going back to jail and how they don't care, their bravado riding like a tattered flag in the air. Those above age (myself included) don't give a fuck, we're not doing anything wrong, so we begin to down the frothy mixture which got us into this mess in the first place. Tension is thick. A few escape attempts are made vis-a-vis a sympathetic neighbor and the dog run. The knocking gets louder and a girl begins to bawl. Negotiations are made. The TABC arrives. Heads will roll. Finally, someone opens the door against the postulate made by a high school drop-out that they have no right to enter, which many agree with. The keg is unceremoniously dumped, and it breaks my heart to see it, but i know that if i claim my love i will be charged with contributing. The minors are put in a long line and ID-ed one at a time. The whole thing borders on tedium. I am quite literally almost too drunk to keep my eyes open.
Soon enough i get turned loose and walk out to see the wreckage of the evening. There are MIPs flashing yellow and blue against the search lights. They brought out the police helicopter. Someone is calling my name because they're calling her parents,and all i can say is "stiff upper lip". They're trying to show us there's a new boss in town, and for the kids it might have worked, but me, i know this city couldn't change even if it wanted to. We couldn't make a fresh start even if we tried.

56th and G 11/25 ATX the cops were already here when i showed up, so this sucked. me an some friends played last man standing until someone told us to get the fuck out, and so we did.

11/25 49th and caswell ATX It's my firends new house, hooray! It's in a good neighborhood! Her kids aren't home! She's giving away "tears for fears" tapes! I went and tapped this keg, i was literally the first beer and then i took that beer on a voyage to north west austin. We came back and there was a beer to stranger ratio of 0-100. Of course i had my own modest supply of alcohol, not something to share but a little something, for the ride home, as we say. So what is my natural reaction when this douche slaps a man can (24oz-Lonestar) out of my hand to the ground spilling all of it warm, gooey contents to the parched soil. There is but one response to such; I bucked up. then i saw his like 30 friends, and none of mine. we were face to face. i was face to face with a righteous ass-stomping. luckily, a friend of mine dragged me inside before i made a complete fool of myself, and was left a pussy in the eyes of a large crowd. But a fresh faced, unbruised, unsullied pussy, who lived to ride another day.

spicewood springs and far west 11/25 ATX- This was a small party/ get together (in an apartment) but there was still a keg and a bottle of jagermeister, for the uninitiated: this is how austin do. Not much happened, everyone just shot the shit and there were no unexpected guests or any fights, very little dancing even though the music was bumping. We were chillin on the balcony just getting tore up when some crazy boxer clad asian dude in his 40's comes out of his place, like 5 apartments down and starts screaming at us to keep it down. I was like, "dude it's friday, and you're five apartments away, WTF?" i mean, i could see if everyone else, like thew neighbors had come out but this dude is like down the block, apartment-wise. The music was turned down regardless, out of respect. But then due comes out and starts yelling again. About what this time, i don't know. Oh, did i mention none of this was in english? So i guess i didn't know before either, we just assumed it was noise, but now it appears dude is actually just pissed about us having a good time on a friday night, which i can't fathom. we left shortly afterward.