More LA Stories: 2005 (Part IX)

A change of plans...
I’ve decided to do this a little differently than first intentioned. I had mentioned previously that I would post-date these conclusions to older series I’m trying to finish off, in order to keep them in chronological proximity (as well as physical order) and then provide backlinks to the newer entries in a current post.

Well, I’ve decided to do it both ways. For the time being, since it looks as though I’m going to fail miserably in achieving my volume goal of four series completions and at least that many additional single stories being posted before June was out, I really just want to get out what I have been able to do during this period of well-intentioned-if-not-stellar literary activity.

I’ll post the parts as I finish them, and then, after a time, re-date them to fall back in order with the rest of their respective series components.

I will at that time post the aforementioned ‘Unfinished Business’ update entries that will provide links back to the parts for those who wish to find them more easily later.

At any rate, although I’ve not gotten as much done as I wanted, I can say that I’ve had a helluva lot of fun writing what I have. And once again, thank gawd I took good notes.

So I hope now that you’ll enjoy the concluding parts of my account of what was a very enjoyable and unforgettable trip to the homeland — now almost three full years ago — in August of 2005.

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Days Three and Four — Monday/Tuesday:
Where’s The Champ when you need ‘im?
In another of the seemingly never-ending series of efforts to date myself, this next chapter in my story brings a particular TV commercial from the 1970s to mind. Back in the days before Don King and Mike Tyson transformed it from The Sweet Science into The Gong Show, the man who was the face of professional boxing was also its greatest ambassador. Muhammad Ali was everything a great sports figure could and should be. But one of the things I loved about him the most was the fact that in addition to being the Greatest of Them All, he was also the easiest to like.

Ali was a crackup. He was the Clown who wore the Crown. From the Ring to the small screen, The Champ was all about entertainment. And in a particular enterprise that some felt was well beneath his dignity, it was his self-deprecation that I found to be the most refreshing.

I remember him doing a TV commercial for Black FlagRoach Motel roach traps years ago (apparently he had a real passion for roach-extermination products — more on that later). “Roaches check in, but they don’t check out! he would say, with that same trademark, faux-menacing, raspy whisper he used for years to antagonize his opponents during many a pre-fight press conference.

With Ali’s Black Flag commercial, the term Roach Motel was added to the pop-culture lexicon; a reference that became much more attuned to describe the genre of typically low-cost motor hotels in which one might likely find the multi-legged creatures scurrying about when the lights come on, than to the actual product itself.

I don’t know if he was busy at the time, but I think I could have used The Champ to “knock out” some nasty-lookin’ cucarachas that were waiting for me in my motel room Monday afternoon when I arrived in Hemet to visit my Dad. I had run out of time and asked him if he could find me a cheap place to stay.

Poor Pop, God love ‘im. He was just trying to save me a few bucks, and he’d obviously never stayed there himself, so how would he have known? I really have no one to blame but myself anyway. In my haste to get ready to make this trip, the one travel arrangement I failed to complete was to book a motel for the two nights I would be in Hemet.

Strangers in the Night II
One might be wondering why I needed to get a room in the first place. After all, I was going to see my Dad, and I had stayed at their place the last time I visited, in August of 2004. The difference was that they had moved since my last visit — and recently I might add.

Dad and his wife Helen had just moved back to the assisted living center each had called home at a time when they were merely acquaintances, while my stepmom Maxine was still alive. They had just moved in to their new one-bedroom apartment just a few days before I arrived. Aside from the fact that they were still unpacking, and maintenance men were still installing light fixtures and such, there was simply no room to put me up there comfortably.

As I’ve mentioned before, Helen had been a mutual friend of both Maxine and my Dad, one of the first to reach out to them when they initially moved in, back in early 2000. Helen was already a widow, having lost her husband several years earlier. In the months following Maxine’s passing in late May of that year, Helen and Dad, became closer friends through her emotional support to him at an obviously difficult time following Maxine’s unexpected death — the result of complications from a viral infection — and the relationship just seemed to blossom from there.

After Maxine’s passing, Dad found the two of them spending more and more time together. And now suddenly becoming one of the more eligible bachelors at the Center, Pop had to literally fight off the ladies who began coming on to him. All the while Helen was simply there for him, never imposing the obvious affection that was growing in her own heart.

And the feeling was becoming mutual.


This is one of my favorite pictures. My Dad and me in the back yard during his visit to Tennessee in June 2001. And no, I wasn’t dyeing my goatee back then…

By the time Pop came to Tennessee for a visit in June of 2001, he was already smitten, yet not quite forthcoming in announcing the news to his family. He was concerned about what we might think, given that it had been just over a year since Mom had passed away. It took a couple of days before he mustered the courage to broach the subject with Michelle and me, fearing we might not approve. However nothing could have been further from the truth. Dad seemed a little taken aback when we assured him with no reservation that we were delighted he had found a lady friend to spend his time with. He insisted at the time that it wasn’t serious, but we knew better.

Six months later, my elder brother, Kenny, took his own endorsement of the relationship to another level, greasing the wheels of an all-out effort to get Dad and Helen to Las Vegas to get hitched. And so they did, in December.

As it turned out, it may have very well likely been a decision that saved my Dad’s life.

Far away from the maddening crowd
It was probably a more uncomfortable scene for Helen than for her new husband, but after losing out to her in the race for Pop’s affections, some of those old hens at the Center turned on Helen. She felt a little spurned by women she had long considered to be her friends. Combining that with the fact that he’d never felt really comfortable there anyway — and the real kicker — a recent sharp increase in rent and service fees added by the management company, Dad and Helen decided to get the heck outta Dodge.

They moved back to the old neighborhood where Dad and Maxine had lived for years prior to moving to the assisted living residence. They were both in good health (or so we all thought) and figured they didn’t necessarily need the round-the-clock nursing care (nor the price tag thereof) that the Center provided. They wanted to fend for themselves. Dad wanted to get back to the vegetable garden he had been forced to abandon when they’d moved the first time. They weren’t old like the rest ‘a those fogies. They could take care of themselves, thankyouverymuch.

Almost immediately, the repercussions of that move would come to roost.

A few months after they moved out of the Center, in May 2002, my Dad suffered a mild, but potentially fatal heart attack at home, and now without the on-call medical facilities that had been available to him previously, had Helen not been there to call 911, my Pop would most certainly have died. He ended up having quadruple-bypass surgery in the wake of his ordeal, having never shown any signs of heart disease prior to the event.

The good news is, he has worked hard to change his lifestyle and is completely recovered and in great shape for a man of nearly eighty-three years of age. But the better news is that he had Helen there, or chances are great that he wouldn’t be around to celebrate that ‘good’ news in the first place.

And though Dad’s health has been great for the past four years, Helen hasn’t been so fortunate. She began experiencing difficulties with her legs; sores that took forever to heal; and more recently, had to undergo surgery to remove a blockage in her colon.

So when out of the blue, a neighbor made an offer to buy their house which, in Dad’s words, was “just too good to pass up,” they reconsidered their previous decision and decided to give their old assisted living community another try (and have been very happy there ever since).


Dad and Helen in their new apartment, and still goin’ strong.

‘Cuz I’m a cheap ‘ol bugger...that’s why.
So now you know why I needed to get a room, but here’s how I ended up at The Roach Motel.

Going in, I figured on someplace inexpensive; just a place for me to lay my head at the end of each of the two days I would be spending entirely with the folks. However, as per my usual penchant for leaving things to the last minute, I ran out of time and never made a hotel reservation.

Having no easy access to a computer, I turned to my Pop for a little travel agency assistance, which he was quite happy to do. I had phoned him on Saturday to let him know I’d arrived and to ask if he would go ahead and make the arrangements at the local Motel 6, reserving a room for me on Monday and Tuesday nights. When he said he’d take care of it, I figured, ‘No Problem,’ and considered it a done deal.

When I arrived at Dad’s place on Monday, he proudly announced, “AJ, I think I got you a pretty good deal on that room.”

“Oh yeah?” I said.

“Why yesss,” he gushed. “I went to the Motel 6 just like you said, and they wanted $49.99 a night, plus tax! But I found a little motel over here on the main drag that only charges $45 a night out the door!

“Well okay then, thanks for doing that for me, Dad!” I said appreciatively.

Now I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t at least a little concerned at that point. Motel 6, say what you want about the stereotypical connotations associated with it, is at least a known commodity. You know, going in that you’re not staying at some kind of resort. But at least there is a reasonable expectation that the room, the sheets, and the linens will all be clean and fresh. One can expect there to be decent cable TV, and you can certainly expect that the only multi-legged creature in your bed is gonna be YOU.

There is a level of trust with Motel 6 that I’ve always felt good about. And while the notion of moving away from that was disconcerting at first, I can honestly say I really didn’t give it that much thought when it came up.

My Dad, don’t forget, was a Depression Kid, and anytime we were on vacation, it was Motel 6 all the way. So if he said he’d found an even better bargain, who was I to argue?

After a short visit with Dad and Helen, I left to go check in and drop my stuff before returning to Dad’s to go out to dinner.

I pulled in and went into the office. On the outside, it looked like a typical cheap motel: smartly landscaped; recently painted exterior; clean and innocuous office/lobby area. The lady handed me my key and I drove my car down a few hundred feet to where my room was, at the end of the row.

The manager had been sure to mention that the entire motel was a non-smoking environment, which was nice, but really didn’t mean all that much to me. While I do appreciate non-smoking to smoking, I’ve never been one to make a big deal over not getting the former.

When I opened the door I immediately realized that the motel’s smoke-free policy was not something they necessarily put into place voluntarily. I’m pretty sure they had to do it because the rooms were already so heavily saturated with the smell of smoke that one more wisp would have probably sent the whole place down into the damned center of the earth!

Oh. My. Freaking. GAWD! My eyes hadn’t watered like that since that time Michelle and I got caught downwind of the south end of a momma hippo, cuttin’ it loose at the San Diego Zoo several years ago.

I immediately began to re-think my stance of not being bothered by smoking-allowed environments. This was easily the worse one I’d ever encountered. Just when did they implement that “smoke-free” policy — AN HOUR AGO? Perhaps by “smoke-free” they meant that they no longer CHARGE people for the privilege!

And that was just the tip ‘o the iceberg. True to its Ali-inspired nickname, as I flipped on the lights I saw no less than three cockroaches scurrying off to points unknown. I just rolled my eyes. I had a notion, but I didn’t wish to insult or embarrass my Pop, who actually had tried to do me a favor. Looking at the place from the outside, there really was no way to know how the ghastly secrets that lurked just beyond the doorknob.

Oh wait. I forgot about the three-pound Yuban coffee can ashtrays that were mounted onto the building just outside the door of every room.

Yeah…that might have been a clue.

The best thing I can say is, apart from its aforementioned extremophylic permanent residents…and the broken toilet paper roll dispenser…and the cracked tile in the shower…and the TV on which it appeared they were showing the ice palace scene from Dr. Zhivago on every channel, the place was pretty clean. The bed was comfortable, and when I awoke the next morning I hadn’t yet turned into any kind of Slither-like monster, so hey, I was okay with it.


Next: Days Three and Four — Monday/Tuesday (continued):
He Got Walkin’ Fingers…

Oh and by the way, which one’s ‘Pink?’ — A Miniseries (2 of 2)

Us…and Them
As with many — if not most of the members of my generation, my chief musical influence growing up was The Beatles — having been completely immersed in their music from my early childhood on.

However by the time I reached high school, the Fab Four had already disbanded, although the individual band members’ solo careers were in full swing. And while the music was still important, ‘The Beatles Movement’ was beginning to lose steam as a vehicle of generational discourse as the decade of the 70s pushed onward.

While still retaining quite a bit of its ‘edge,’ socially, by the early mid-70s, Beatles’ music no longer pushed the envelope as it had done a few years earlier. it was by that time, pretty much engrained into the culture and universally embraced by all. Hell, even Sinatra was making the pop charts covering Beatles songs.

Those days of ‘Beatle Bonfires’ — the public burning of Beatles albums — had long since passed. The band that John Lennon touted to be “more popular than Jesus” were no longer a threat to proper society.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, The Fab Four’s music was now part of the furniture. It was a substantial component of popular society, and rock ‘n roll was here to stay.

But while the Beatles music was no longer the short, sharp shock to the system of John Q. Public it once had been, there was, however, a growing rock ‘n roll sub-genre that still struck a chord of fear in the hearts of god-fearing America; the now-burgeoning brand of raw, hard-edged Rock that conjured up visions of anti-war protests, free love, and all-things-hippyfied.

Acid Rock, baby.

As for me, generationally speaking, I happened to fall just beyond the outskirts of the hardcore Hippy movement. I never quite got into the ‘tune in, turn on, and drop out’ vibe that many of those just a few years older than I had. There were several reasons for that — beyond merely my age. In large part I believe a lot had to do with the family and religious environment in which I was reared.

‘Hard’ Rock sort of scared me when I was a kid. I was more-or-less taught that The Beatles were as ‘hard’ as any music I had business listening to. And I gladly bought into that concept. So there was no real draw to embrace anything that was too-seriously ‘counter-culture’ (a widely-used descriptor back in the day).

Likewise, as I became older, I didn’t seem to have any real reason to go there, but like any other normal teenager I still yearned for something a bit more dangerous; something a little beyond the boundaries of my conservative upbringing.

Nonetheless I stood fast in my reticence to embrace anything beyond the homogenized realm of the Top 40, though deep down I really wanted to check out the Dark Side.

It took the simultaneous challenge of two guys whose lifestyles were pretty much the opposite of my own for me to see what a hypocrite I was for holding to such a position, and I’ll always be grateful to them both for it.

One was a person I knew only in passing. The other was someone I’d known all my life.

Come inside dear boy; have a cigar…
My Hard rock indoctrinators were a couple of guys at opposite ends of my interpersonal spectrum.

The first was my brother, Kenny (a.k.a. ‘TK’ in previous stories). We were only two grades apart in school but light-years divergent in personality and our respective personal belief systems.

Growing up, we fought like cats and dogs, with the elder Kenny always coming out on top. But following the physical skirmishes of our early youth, there would be battles of a different kind later on.

In 1969 Kenny had accompanied our Dad, Alex and I in the move to California, following our Mom’s death. But the abuse that I was willing to endure from Step-Mom Maxine, Kenny refused to submit to.

Those first nine months in our new home were like World War III. After just one school year (his sophomore year in high school), my elder brother convinced the folks that it would be best for him to spend the summer back in Indiana, staying with son #2, our brother David. Maxine wasn’t wild about the idea at first, but didn’t put up much resistance. She was as much in need of a little vacay from ‘TK’ was my brother from her.

Although he insisted it was just for the summer, I knew he wasn’t coming back. Kenny returned to Indiana to live with our elder brother David and finish out his last two years of high school. It was then that his life changed forever. My brother found religion — but not the religion you might be thinking of.

Kenny returned to SoCal to find a career and soon thereafter became a Buddhist — and an evangelical one at that. He subsequently attempted to convert the entire family, a devout Christian group, but didn’t find any takers; especially not in me.

Anytime Kenny came around, we knew that cat & dog act so well, we didn’t even have to rehearse.

The topic or occasion, it didn’t matter — we argued so often back then, it could have been over anything. It wasn’t just religion; Kenny and I were so such diametrically opposed personality-wise, I’m pretty sure that we must have argued about the time of day at least once or twice.

My brother really tormented me growing up, and for years I kept that grudge around with me like a pet. So anytime we got together, it didn’t take much for sparks to fly.

Another thing about my brother, he’s a ‘Type A’ personality, and could talk circles around anyone. He was a born salesman. Dood could sell sand to an Arab. He would later fashion that go-getter persona into a tremendously successful entrepreneurial career; but back then, in my eyes, he was just my blowhard bro who managed to get my goat in every argument, every single fucking time, and oh, how that burned me up.

Kenny’s the type who is such a great arguer that you simply cannot win — or at least I couldn’t. The best I could ever do was to get him to ‘agree to disagree,’ and try my best to walk away with at least a sliver of my dignity intact, although those times seemed few and far between.

No, what I remember happening instead on most occasions was me storming off, purple-faced, from yet another shout-fest that didn’t accomplish anything except perhaps granting him the satisfaction that he’d done it to me again — at least that’s how it felt, anyway.

But lest you think that my brother is some kind of malevolent being, please, put the rope away. While our personalities are as far apart as east is from west, our bond as brothers has always been indestructible. Kenny and I have long since mended the fences we spent our first couple decades of life together tearing down. We agree — respectively so — to disagree about our differences on all issues. I love my brother unconditionally and I know that love goes both ways.

And while I know that I could never be ‘like’ him, I do very much appreciate the fact that despite of my resistance, it was he who was the most instrumental in shaping a lot of my opinions later in adulthood, including a decision to broaden my musical horizons that would prove to be a truly life-changing paradigm shift for your truly.

Brain Damage
On the occasion of yet another patented rock music debate in which I insisted that I could live without experiencing the head-banging joys of Led Zeppelin, Mountain or Black Sabbath, he told me simply, “You can listen to what you want to, but I think you’re doing yourself a huge disservice to not even give it a try.”

Funny what just a little bit of conciliation will do when you’re conditioned for nothing but all-out assault…

The context of the discussion was hard rock, or Acid Rock as it was popularly colloquialized in those days. As far as I was concerned, ‘that music’ was strictly t was the product of the drug-influenced late 60s/early 70s. And even though my Beatles were one of the bands chiefly responsible for the genre’s early beginnings, I still bristled at the notion that music celebrating anything ‘radical’ could possibly be worth listening to.

And that was the problem: I was confusing the music with the culture. Not all hard rock lyrics openly celebrated drug use, or promoted counter-culture themes; I just assume that they did.

What I didn’t realize was that despite the outer appearance or even the actual life-practices of the musicians themselves, music stands or falls based on its own merits. Listening to it wouldn’t give me Brain Damage; but it might just expand my way of thinking.

At the same time that Kenny was challenging me to think outside my self-imposed music box, a second influential figure in my journey to the Dark Side would weigh in — my desk-neighbor in my high school Advertising Art class: a soft-spoken, avowed surfer/hippie counter-culturist-type named Van.

Van was a guy I had known only casually throughout high school, and I don’t believe we had ever been paired up in a class before. But on a seemingly daily basis we talked about music. And again there I’d be, holding the party line against all things Acid, while Van would defend the viability of his hard rock faves.

However sometime, during our Senior year, between late ’73 and early ‘74, Van set out on a mission to complete the work that my brother had started. He began going out of his way — very diplomatically, mind you — extolling to me the virtues of the British band Pink Floyd, whose then-recent landmark album, Dark Side of the Moon was making a huge splash just about everywhere — even on the Pop charts.

I remember his passion for the album. Van insisted there was no possible way I wouldn’t love it.

The record was about a year old at the time, and I was of course already familiar with its two ubiquitous singles, Money and Time, both of which were receiving constant airplay on just about every rock or pop format station in the country.

And sure, I liked those songs well enough, but something else restrained me from taking the plunge and exploring the more of that ‘taboo’ genre of ‘hard rock’ — a category under which Pink Floyd certainly fell in those days. It was a label having much more to do with my religious mores at the time than with anything else.

No Sympathy for the Devil
You see, being raised a straight-laced Baptist, I just wasn’t into that stuff. And it wasn’t as though I considered the music as all that bad necessarily, the fact was, it was simply out of my scope at that time in my life.

Hey, I was into pop; I was a Top 40 guy, like the vast majority of kids I hung out with back then. I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on records. I was mostly a radio-head. The only albums I owned were the Beatles LPs and 45s I’d had since grade school.

Of course I can remember a time when those in my family and church frowned upon even Beatles music. I clearly remember my Uncle Bill on one occasion trying his best to dissuade me from listening to it, calling it “ugly,” “the devil’s music,” and so on. I also clearly remember thinking the guy was nuts, but fortunately didn’t offer that opinion out loud.

Elton John’s Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting was about as hard as I rolled back then, and in fact, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was one album I did own at that time, but only because a buddy of mine had given it to me for Christmas that year. But by way of comparison, that was pretty much my speed in music.

AM Top 40 still ruled the airwaves in the early-to-mid-70s, and I was just all about it. Motown, Elton John, Chicago; these were the sounds that streamed from my car radio and 8-track player. That was soon to change, however.

Van was relentless; he peppered me daily with incessant praises of Dark Side, insisting that I give it a listen. But while I liked what I’d heard on the radio just fine, I was pretty lukewarm to the possibility that the rest of the album could be all that special. However having been primed by Kenny’s challenge, Van eventually wore me down. I decided it was finally time for me to broaden my horizons.

So I went out and purchased the 8-Track, and was instantaneously changed forever. Not since the Beatles had I received such a musical revelation. The aural qualities of lead guitarist David Gilmour’s instrumental and vocal craftings along with Roger Water’s unbelievably intelligent, biting lyrics came together in a sound so far beyond anything I’d ever heard before that I simply could not believe my ears.

The album truly rocked my world.

Okay, I know you may be rolling your eyes just a bit, particularly if you’ve grown up hearing the now familiar tunes from DSOTM and perhaps haven’t quite received the same rapturous experience that I did. And if that’s the case, I simply say ‘to each his (or her) own.’ All I can tell you is how it affected me. You simply have to understand just how different, how forward thinking that work was at the time.

I suppose that now, decades later, as Rock ‘n Roll has evolved and many artists have ridden the musical coattails of Pink Floyd’s, and subsequently, The Beatles’ innovative sound, you simply have to be as old as I am to appreciate just how unique and different things really were back in 1974.

However in my opinion, despite the passing years and musicians who have come and gone, attempting to borrow from the genius that is Pink Floyd’s legacy, no one will ever render that sound ‘common.’ It’s still every bit as fresh and ‘out there’ today as it was back then.

Comfortably Numb
So there as I sat last Saturday, enraptured in the envelope of sound booming from my speakers. I reconnected to that special sense of being I felt as a young man with my whole life ahead of me. Many changes, many victories, and a few defeats as well would follow in the ensuing years.

However I’m doubtful that in my life, my ability to feel — to inject my emotions into the soundtrack of that music; the impact it had on me emotionally — could ever have been duplicated by anything else.

I dunno. it’s a very personal feeling I have, and one that’s pretty tough to describe. But it’s one of the things I treasure the most about my life. It’s the one thing that no one can take away from me; the one thing that no one needs to validate.

Only me.

Only me and my music.

Thanks, Kenny. I love you.


finis

Oh and by the way, which one’s ‘Pink?’ — A Miniseries (1 of 2)

(Originally written on September 20, 2007)

This is the first in a number of former, nearly-completed-but-never-posted stories that have been piling up in my dead-blog box for as much as two-and-a-half years running. This particular one was originally intended to be posted in September of 2007, soon after we moved into an apartment following the sale of our home.

Hitting ‘The Wall’…
I’ve experienced more than my share of creeping malaise these past few weeks since moving into this one-bedroom apartment. Seems the more I unpack the less moved-in I feel. For Michelle and me the disconcertion of suddenly becoming vagabonds after nearly a decade-and-a-half of blissful geographic stability has been tough to take, and even tougher to shake. Despite the payoff that no doubt lies at the end of our journey — in January 2008 — it’s been pretty hard for us to focus on anything beyond than this ‘moving experience’ in the interim.

However last weekend, while in the process of getting settled, a wonderful memory came streaming back to me, reintroducing me to some feelings I hadn’t felt in quite awhile; it was just the recharge I needed.

Run, rabbit, run…
2007 has likely been Michelle’s and my busiest year ever since beginning this long, strange trip together. What with the kids graduating from college, then directly on the heels of that, our deciding to buy a new house and everything that has entailed; selling our existing abode quickly and then facing the reality of calling an apartment our home-in-between-homes for six long months.

It’s all been more than exhausting, physically, and dealing with the melancholy sentimentalities of leaving our ‘first love,’ every bit as taxing, emotionally.

But now, with the advent of having to cool our heels here in our temporary digs while awaiting our new home’s completion, I was determined to take advantage of the situation in at least one regard.

For all the obvious hassle of having to moving back into an apartment again, it did supply a sort of perverse nostalgia that Michelle and I both felt right away; it kind of made us feel like we were back in college again. And with that in mind, to go along with the experience it only seemed right to me to have a jammin’ stereo system in place to announce our arrival.

Nah…just kidding; I’d never be so inconsiderate as to indiscriminately play my stereo loud enough to annoy the paint, let alone the neighbors. Nonetheless, it is the law that an apartment just isn’t an apartment without tunes — well at least in my book, anyway.

So last Saturday I went to Wal-Mart, bought a cheap-o audio cart and celebrated the reinstallation of my stereo system here in our new temporary home. I even set up my old turntable, anxiously anticipating hours of listening to my old LPs — something I’ve done precious little of the past several years. However, it wouldn’t exactly be records I’d listen to initially, but rather CD bootlegs of LPs.

Turns out that my son, Shawn, had gone through an ‘old-school Rock’ phase a few years prior and had acquired CD copies of some of my favorite oId favorite Rock ‘n Roll classics. Fortunately for me he’d made ol’ Dad a copy of them although I had all but forgotten I even had them since they weren’t in commercial jewel cases like most of my ‘legit’ CD collection.

I pulled out a few I hadn’t listened to in what seemed like a lifetime; moldy-oldie albums that I once owned (and subsequently wore out) as 8-track tapes and/or LPs back in the 70s.

In addition to the obligatory Led Zeppelin Four and Houses of the Holy, which I had always enjoyed a great deal, but never counted among my favorite favorites, a select few of those little silver platters really sent my head spinning that afternoon, immediately returning me to that time in my life when anything was possible; a time when David Gilmour’s wailing guitar was my muse, and Roger Waters’ lyrics were my personal Devil’s Advocate.

I returned to my Animal(s) past and visited The Dark Side (of the Moon), once again.

For a single Saturday afternoon, Pink Floyd was back together and playing in my living room.

It’s not as though I’d forgotten how much I loved Pink Floyd. But for some reason, listening to those classic offerings that afternoon carried me back to the particular remembrance of why.

It was a memory I knew right then and there I had to explore; to write about, and pay tribute to someone I rarely speak of in this space, but whom I deeply respect; a person as different from me as night is from day, but to whom I will always be grateful, for challenging me to be whom I have in many ways become.


Next: Us…and Them

June Boon

Holding Myself to It
One thing that makes it tough to hold ones own feet to the fire is the decision of just which way you’re gonna position yourself. Do you simply light the match yourself and try not to shrink away, or do you ask someone else to do the dirty-work for you, realizing that the latter option also makes it more difficult to change your mind and avoid the pain?

What the hell am I talking about, you rightfully ask? I’m talking about motivation; I’m talking about commitment; I’m talking about doing something I want to do, yet consistently find a way to avoid, day in and day out.

Same song, forty-second verse.

I’m talking about writing, specifically, writing here in my blog. As much as I wish it weren’t so complicated, I’ve decided that there’s only one way to successfully address the need I have to get back in the saddle, only one way to provide for myself the proper motivation to complete what I’ve started.

Waiting for the self-starting AJ to emerge just ain’t happnin.’ For some reason I just can’t seem to shake the creeping malaise of, “I’ll write tonight after dinner,” which quickly becomes, “I’ll write right after I watch this re-run of Law & Order,” which quickly becomes, “Okay…right after SportsCenter,” which almost always becomes, “Omigawd, it’s 3AM! I musta dozed off…”

It’s the only way I know I’ll be able to move on and finally silence the nagging of that fishwife–of-a-conscience I have. I realize now that I simply cannot do it without having someone else hold that match beneath my soles.

And I’m putting it all out here so that, hopefully, y’all can help me stay on task.

And while I’m certainly applying much more drama to the scenario than it will ever deserve, it’s unfortunately the only way I know to really gain my own attention. I really hate to be embarrassed, and I hate embarrassing myself even worse. So this is the best way I know to keep that from happening. No more excuses, I’m gonna get busy — or end up looking like a fool for making such a fuss about it (as if I don’t already).

I’ve had so many well-intentioned starts that soon thereafter turned into stops. It has gotten so bad that as of a few weeks ago I truly was ready to quit. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’ve felt paralyzed by the pressure — I have no trouble diving into a new story any time I sit down in front of my keyboard. It’s that I’ve simply had a devil of a time making myself finish what I start. That’s where the paralysis sets in. Every time I think about writing something new, I’m reminded of all the loose ends I have yet to tie up.

Why does it happen? Do I bore too easily with my own ideas? I honestly don’t know. I do know that I’m easily distracted. And it’s a really good thing I take lots of notes in the process of formulating any of my long-winded yarns, else there would be absolutely no hope of completing something as ridiculously overdue as LA Stories: 2005, which by the way I still do intend to complete, and do so, this month.

And that leads me to the subject of this sixth month of the calendar year; a month that once again has opened with the indication that it’s going to be another season of fire and brimstone here in Middle Tennessee. The first week of June established area records for consecutive ninety-degree-plus temperatures so early in the year.

The one benefit of the early heat is that today I actually have an excuse to be indoors, to escape being broiled to death while working out in the yard — a subject that will receive plenty of ink in the concluding parts of another series I’ll be completing this month: A Moving Experience...(an ongoing series).

Yep, I’ve been plenty busy — both at work and here at home — but that’s not enough of an excuse to really make me feel that my blog-silence has been justified. Nonetheless, I’m not going to just sit by and allow myself to make any more excuses. I’m gonna do something about it, and in the process, hopefully re-energize my writing to the point that it once again becomes a joy instead of a hangnail.

Post-Dated Posts
It’s too late to re-create the past — at least from a performance standpoint. Back in 2004, soon after the launch of my blog, I posted at least one entry every single day during the month of June. Obviously I can’t do that now, but my plan and pledge to myself is at least, from this point (June 8th) forward, to write every single day from now to the end of the month. Regardless whether or not I feel inspired from the outset, I’m gonna make myself get on that horse and hope that it’ll be a boon to my productivity.

Given all that I have left to do, merely from the standpoint of unfinished series,’ I’ll certainly have no shortage of material to deal with.

So here’s the schedule that I fully expect that everyone reading this will hold me to (including myself):

• Unfinished Business
  This is your signal that something old has become new: Before the month is out, I plan on concluding four — maybe five — ancient-to-recent blog series that never quite made it to the finish line.
  
  In order to keep the story parts together, listed chronologically, I’ll be back-dating them to a time roughly concurrent with the entire story. Whenever I do that, I’ll post a direct link to the new/continuing parts with an entry entitled: Unfinished Business.
  
  I still haven’t decided in which order I’ll attack them, but the series you can expect to see being sewn up over the next three weeks will be, LA Stories: 2005, Two Tales of One City...or Somethin’ Like That, Good Things Come…, A Moving Experience...(an ongoing series), and maybe, if time permits, The Lion Sleeps Tonight.


• Afterthoughts
  Well…only in a manner of speaking. Again, these are posts that came and went without seeing the light of day in Blogland; short-subject blogs that just weren’t short enough, apparently. I have several of ‘em; stories that seemed like easy slam-dunks when I began writing them, yet somehow became caught up in that annoying vortex that is my inability at times to close out an argument with myself. The stories range on a wide variety of subjects, from Classic Rock to Sports to Politics and Social Injustice. I’ve got at least a dozen of these old half-to-three-quarters-completed posts that I’ve debated now literally for years whether or not to push on thru the pipeline. I don’t know how many of them will make the cut, but I guarantee you I’ll be adding at least one or two of them into the mix within these next three weeks. I’ve decided not to back-date these stories, but to let them stand as they were as originally written and post them in the here-and-now. I may change a few time-related details, but will for obvious reasons I want to try and avoid completely re-writing them just for the sake of making them current.
  
  I’ll have to take them on, case-by-case, to see how that part plays out, but my main intention is to simply finish ‘em up, get ‘em out, and get along with it.
  
  Look for the first one to post probably tomorrow night, or sooner.

From Boon to Bust?
So after this, where to go next? Actually that’s a good question — one that I don’t have an answer to.

I suppose one of the reasons I’ve been stockpiling all these old stories is that I somehow felt the need to have something to post when I ran out of ideas. And right now I’m not totally convinced that hasn’t happened. I have to admit, I’m out of it, folks. I’ve really been struggling with the direction I want to go. I just don’t have the time that I used to, and the pressure I feel all around me as a result has sapped both my energy and my creativity.

Anymore I feel like an automaton at work, and even though I’m learning and improving my skill-set by leaps and bounds, I just want to run away and retreat to how things were 3-4 years ago. Life was so much simpler for me. I was having so much fun on so many different fronts. Things are just different now.

It’s not that I don’t think those feelings can return, it’s more that I think I’m in a state of mourning for my loss of temporary identity. Everything changed for me when my job was challenged. And while I weathered the storm well enough, I just can’t seem to shake the feeling that I’ve failed.

Listen, I’m not saying all this to elicit anyone’s sympathy, I’m just being real, and that’s what this space is about. The upshot of all this is that I honestly don’t know what will happen once I summon up all my resources to pour out what’s left of my blog story-surplus.

I’m sure I’ll think of something. Problem is, right now I have no idea what.

But enough with the negatory thoughts; I gotta think positive. The idea of this posting-blitz is that it will hopefully get me jump-started once again, and posting on a more consistent basis; so that’s the mind-set I’m gonna officially take from this point on.

Out with the swoon; in with the boon.


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Happy Birthday to You, AYBABTU

I had no idea.
Honest. Until 30 seconds ago, I hadn't given it a second thought. Then it suddenly dawned on me. I looked at my watch — not to check the time, but rather the date.

Yesterday was my anniversary. Yikes!

No...not that one, silly. Fat chance I’d forget that!

Actually, it was my Blog-a-versary.

While thinking about how to commemorate it, I decided it’s time I went a little deeper into the details of how it all came about — a subject I’ve rather shied away from in the past here.

Hope ya packed a lunch.

Goof or Dare
Four years ago, on May 24, 2004, I made my initial foray into this wondrous medium with In a Blog of My Own. It was originally just goof; a lark; a dare with myself, really.

My original idea was to experiment with writing, something that I never truly considered I could do particularly well, yet for a long time had wanted to try. After all, it was an activity I devoted a lot of my daily energy to, via e-mails and message boards, so why not? However the primary inspiration for this literary whim was one board in particular: a web-gathering of folks loosely devoted to the fandom of Washington Post Sports/Lifestyle columnist, Tony Kornheiser.

You see, for over five years now, this group of Mr. Tony enthusiasts have gathered online daily to comment, cavort and sometimes deride the often outrageously funny and always quirky observations of the man currently best known for his shoot-from-the-lip sports commentary show on ESPN television with co-host Michael Wilbon: Pardon The Interruption, and more recently, as the third-wheel color commentator for ESPN’s Monday Night Football telecasts.

But before there was PTI and MNF on the TeeVee, there was the TKS on the radio.

The Tony Kornheiser Show had been around a long time prior to my becoming aware of its host's brilliance. It began in 1992 as a locally-produced morning radio talkshow out of Washington D.C., where Tony continues to live today. But in 1998, the show was picked up nationally by ESPN Radio, and quickly became one of the 4-letter’s most popular offerings, broadcasting from 9AM to Noon (Central), to an apparent cult-like audience all over the world.

In early 2002, The Company where I work finally removed its previous restrictions on streaming Web content, allowing employees access to streaming audio/video from our desktops for the first time; I was finally able to listen to ESPN Radio during work as opposed to only those rare occasion whenever I went out to lunch and managed to catch a few moments (typically of The Dan Patrick Show) on my car radio while traveling to-and-from.

Prior to hearing it on the Web, what little I knew of Kornheiser, whose show preceded Patrick’s, was from those random snippets I heard while driving around. I had never read anything he’d written for The Post, nor the three humorous books he’d penned since 1995. I caught only bits and pieces of his show over the years, but never enough to really ‘get it’ prior to that opportunity to begin listening regularly in early 2002.

You see, the TK Kool-Aide is often an acquired taste. But by June I was guzzlin’ it by the gallon.

The Mister Tony Experience
I had never experienced anything so engaging, so hilarious, and so much fun — and that's no exaggeration. Kornheiser’s wit, humor and commentary on both sports and non-sports/pop-culture subjects was unlike anything I’d ever heard or even heard of. However I’ll spare you of the long-winded description of what the show was all about. I mean, heck, that's what Wikipedia is for, right?

The reason I'm bringing this up after all this time, however, is because the recognition of Tony Kornheiser as my literary inspiration is long overdue. Without him this space would not exist; this anniversary would be meaningless, and so many of the friends I’ve made here these past four years would still be strangers to me and I to them.

It’s that simple. No TK ≅ No blog.

My ‘Other’ Fellow-Bloggers
As much as I count many of my readers as true friends, I have perhaps even a greater affinity for that group of message board geeks I mentioned earlier. I’ve spent the better part of the past six years with that group on a nearly day-to-day basis. Our original reason for gathering together was indeed Tony Kornheiser, but the time has long since passed that we would hang out together regardless of whether Mr. Tony was around or not.

We all know each other pretty well. We know how to poke fun at each other too. we're well-acquainted with each person’s foibles and hot-buttons. Nonetheless, among that group, none (save perhaps one) of these guys even knows about my blog, or the huge part that All Your Blogs Are Belong to Us has played in my life.

And the irony is, when I created this blog back in 2004, it was primarily to catch their attention.

But much to my surprise — despite the fact that these are an extremely Google-savvy bunch of guys (many of whom are computer professionals) — no one apparently has ever found me here, save for the one fellow I actually told about the place (and he’s kept his mouth shut so far).

As I alluded to here way back when, the title of this site was a ‘running inside joke’ within the group, which I fully expected at least someone to notice, but no one never did.

Then after the joke got cold and I decided to actually dive in and make use of this forum, I suppose I was too concerned about being teased about the content — the kind of stories I tell and the personal nature of my writing — to openly announce my blog’s existence to ‘The Blog’ (the unofficial moniker of this message board group). I decided to just leave well enough alone and if someone found it, I’d take my lumps and move on.

But even after a couple of years, reasonably secure in my anonymity, I continued to shy away from the subject for concern that Google would leave a trail of cyber-crumbs too easy for one of them to miss.

Later on it was that same avoidance of being outed that kept me from elaborating on the August 2005 trip to Reston, Virginia in the first (and thus far, only) face-to-face meeting of our group. It was the much-publicized event in which we met together to play golf with Tony Kornheiser and some of his radio show staff at Reston National Golf Club.

It was a fabulous weekend! Everything from the greensfees to the hotel to the food was comped. But that’s another big story in of itself.

I posted a short teaser on the subject soon after I returned home, including a photo of the foursome I played with, featuring Kornheiser and his son, Michael. I thought for sure that would be the post that would blow my cover with The Blog, but alas, as of yet, still no one has said a word, although I’m quite certain that at least some of the radio show’s other listeners have surfed my site, but they too, to my knowledge, have remained silent.

But now, I really don’t care. If they find it, they find it. If they tease me, whatevs. I yam what I yam.

Bloger Beginnings
Perhaps I should ‘splain one thing that I’m sure must have at least somebody scratchin’ their heads. Why call a message board a ‘blog?’

The nickname of our TK message board, ‘The Blog,’ came about because it actually was one — right here on Blogger.com, back in the pre-Google days. However the format of the site, as well as their way blogs were posted, was much different at that point in time (circa 2002).

For reasons of brevity and going waaay off-topic if I took the time to properly explain it, allow me simply to say that it was weird and pretty unconventional, but the way things were set up on Blogger back then, one could take a group-authored blog and make a quasi-message board out of it. The reason we did is because it was free of both cost and censorship, and it was non-public, which is just how we wanted it. Still do.

However when Google saw a good thing and bought it, Blogger.com became something altogether different. The upgraded templates and new publishing processes were completely incompatible with our comfortably bastardized purposes, so we were forced to abandon our Blogger digs and find a new home. Fortunately via the efforts of one of our members (an IT professional) who went out and actually purchased a real message board program, we have since been ensconced in a more conventional Internet forum.

However the original moniker remains and we still refer to our group as the ‘TK Blog,’ and to each other as ‘bloggers,’ despite the fact that in all likelihood, only myself and one other member (who also has a Blogger site dedicated to Tony Kornheiser, but whom, again, still does not appear to know about mine) are the only ones who actually still are bloggers.

(E)mailing it in
And now, back to my underlying purpose of this post. I have a lot to be grateful for regarding my involvement as a fan of Tony Kornheiser and the ancillary trappings that have come along with it. It’s been a lot of fun. But besides being involved with a group that owed its existence to him, giving me both motive and opportunity for that involvement, I’m grateful to Kornheiser for also giving me the confidence to write and believe that I could be successful in expressing myself through the written word — all of which happened largely as a result of participating in his radio show as an oft-read e-mailer.

Now please understand, I have no delusions about being the next Dave Barry. There have always been and will always be funnier, more intelligent, — and certainly — more acclaimed contributors to TK’s show from a worldwide audience of millions than I have ever been. But from the summer of 2002 through the next 2-3 years, I was seemingly always on Tony’s radar. He read my e-mails so often that other listeners would jokingly try signing their e-mails with my name in order to increase their chances of making the cut.

And while I’ve never really believed I was all that, I was pretty damn proud of the fact that I could make the Orange Man laugh on a fairly consistent basis.

Naturally, the time constraints of anything being read on-air during a radio show are a large factor in whether or not the host can take time to include them. Given my disdain for brevity, that one factor probably worked against me as much as anything else. However it did force me to organize my thoughts and try to be as concise as possible — whether I was successful most of the time is debatable — but I know it did indeed give me a sense for composition and storytelling that I may well have never seen on my own.

Prior to my years of e-mailing the TK show, I’d never have dreamed of considering myself a writer — amateur or otherwise. And whether or not even now I have the right to think of myself in those terms, my life and my self-image, based on the feedback I’ve received from my readers here these past four years, has literally (pun intended) changed my life.

And so what about now, you ask — are you still listening to and e-mailing Kornheiser’s show? That answer would be — a little, and not much at all.

Critical Mass
Things began to change dramatically for TK after the launch of Pardon the Interruption in September of 2001. For years a local celebrity and writer of note for The Washington Post, Tony now began receiving a lot more attention, nationally. As a result, ESPN played up the radio show more to try and capture the coattail effect of its success. PTI received among the highest ratings of all ESPN’s regularly scheduled programming.

Even after moving the radio show from ESPN Radio, back to the local Washington D.C. market in late 2004 (but retaining most of his Internet listeners like your truly), Kornheiser’s star continued to rise.

He began receiving more and more requests of his time for various projects. He would constantly lament the fact that he now had “a dozen jobs,” and that something was going to have to give. Eventually, ostensibly, that ‘something’ would be his involvement with The Post, which had heretofore been his primary employer. He began writing less and less, finally condensing his weekly offerings into brief “columnettes,” as he dubbed them.

But as the print work diminished, the television work increased. The man who proclaimed in self-derision that he was born with “a face made for radio,” was seeing more face-time on camera than ever before.

Then three years ago, potentially his biggest break yet came down the pike — the opportunity to join Mike Tirico and former NFL quarterback Ron Jaworski (preceded the first year by another former QB in Joe Theissmann) in the broadcast booth for Monday Night Football. It was perhaps the biggest exposure that anyone in his shoes could have received, based upon the popularity of MNF. He actually didn’t want to do it at first, but would admit later, he simply had to go with the opportunity before him.

But the reason I’m going so deep into the Kornheiser resume here is because of the way that this move affected me and my involvement with the radio show. Due to the amount of preparation involved with the NFL season, the MNF announcing teams begins in earnest mid-summer with meetings and interviews of players, coaches and team officials, to get ready for the upcoming season’s broadcasts.

Kornheiser felt he needed the time to do right by his MNF commitment, so in 2006 he decided to leave the radio at the end of April, to begin fulfilling the new responsibilities that a daily radio show would render realistically impossible.

He left the air at the end of June, with the intent to rejoin the show the following January after the conclusion of the NFL season (a policy he has since followed for the last two years and will again in 2008). The break was actually a good thing for me, because basically, I was starting a new job too.

Buried Like Cheese...or Just Desserts?
At almost exactly that same time I was informed by my new boss at The Company that my job status was on rather iffy ground. They had made the decision to hire someone over me, a Webmaster position to oversee the implementation of the new, more modern corporate web site that The Company was paying an outsourced developer thousands and thousands of dollars to write.

It was a job I had hoped to be offered, but realized I was completely unqualified to perform at that point. I felt the wind of a door slamming on my career.

Suddenly, hearing my funny e-mails being read on the air wasn’t quite so important anymore. The whole scenario has been fairly well-documented in other posts, but the good news is that I didn’t lose my job, but am now in the process of learning and improving my skill-set to include those emerging modern web technologies that were never even mentioned, let alone expected of me prior to the new boss’s arrival.

And if that sounds like an excuse, well, it is. I made my bed by coasting and not pushing the envelope from within The Company’s existing IT regime years ago to give me a reason to learn what I needed to know, and now I guess I’m lying in it.

Quite frankly, as much as I’d like to, I don’t have time to listen to Tony Kornheiser anymore — save for the 30 minutes per day I can listen as it’s simulcast (albeit on a brief 15-minute delay) on XM Radio while I’m driving in to work — and I certainly don’t have the time and concentration required to come up with anything topical to say in an e-mail under my current circumstances.

To a lesser degree, the same goes for writing. I used to do a bit of that at work too; can’t anymore. Don’t have the time.

Sheesh; this post was supposed to be a celebration, but instead all of a sudden I feel totally bummed.

Manning Up
I guess I’m rightfully constrained to the obvious guilt I now feel over the time I spent concentrating a little too much on the TK show as opposed to what I was actually being paid to do. Nonetheless, the reality is that it may not have mattered; I was in a pretty impotent place back then, professionally. I had no power to change anything with regard to The Company’s IT department, who usually treated me with no more respect than a fly buzzing around the room. I was pretty much on my own; development resources were constantly in backlog. The only way things could have changed would have been for me to take the bull by the horns and do it by myself. Admittedly, I failed miserably on that count, always waiting for somebody else to make the first move.

Now of course we have Trey, my direct boss (as opposed to my big boss, Katie, the Marketing VP who hired him). He has been exactly what I’ve needed: a patient teacher who respects the skills I have, while gently pressing me to expand my knowledge in those areas in which I’m lacking.

It’s a lot more daunting than anything I’ve had to do in my nine years at The Company, but it will pay huge dividends down the road. And oh, yeah, it’ll also make it possible for me keep my job; that’s a nice bonus too.

Seasons
It really is interesting, the way seasons of life come and go; each one bringing with it sometimes life-defining circumstances and events. One day you think of yourself one way and the next, everything has changed; then just when you think things will always be that way, BAM — they change again.

I’ve often wondered what will be the ultimate purpose or effect that blogging will have had on my life. Tony Kornheiser once thanked me for my “enthusiasm” for his radio show. Who knows...maybe I was a bit too enthusiastic.

Whatever. What’s done is done, and really, the benefits I’ve gained from the end product of all this — my blog, my friends, my discovery of a means of self-expression I never knew I had before...

Oh yeah, whatever dues I have to pay, post hoc — hell, they’re chump-change.

This season of my life in which I’ve discovered writing is and always will be one of the most liberating, important moments of self-discovery I have or ever will know — of that I am certain. It does appear however to be on its way out with regard to my daily devotion to blogging, and that does indeed make me sad.

But was it worth it? I could go on and on about the way it has completely transformed my relationship with my father; all the great friends I’ve met, whom I hope will always be a part of my life; all the things I’ve come to appreciate about just thinking, and then dealing with the challenge of putting it all down in written form.

That’s a lot to learn at age 48, which is the age I was when I started this thing.

I guess something I’ve learned is that there really is no end to life, not at least until it actually ends.

Here’s to a few more rounds.

Happy Blog-a-versary to me.


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What a Difference a Lifetime Makes

Welcome to the IRS’s version of ‘Thanksgiving’
In case you didn’t know, today is April 15th — not that it makes that much difference to me. I filed my return in February and my refund is already in the bank. Not trying to gloat, just sayin.’ However to be fair, it really does matter to a lot of other folks, and not too long ago I was one myself, so I’m honestly not without my due empathy.

But anyway, this morning I was on my way out the front door, my backpack and gym bag draped over my right shoulder and my left hand on the doorknob. It was then that my left leg began to throb.

“Who the hell is calling me this early?” I thought. Y’see, my cell phone generally sleeps in most mornings and issues neither a peep nor a shudder until at least noon.

The notable exception to that rule is when Michelle calls. She leaves for work a half-hour before I do, so if there’s an accident or a cop staked out with a radar gun somewhere along the path she and I share in our morning commute, she’ll give me a hollar to let me know. She’s really good about that.

So I immediately thought that might be the case, but when I fished the cellphone out of my pocket and checked the display, I was surprised to see that the caller was someone else who hangs out on my branch of the family tree: our son Shawn.

He was calling to ask about which part of the form he received back from his tax preparer to send in along with his check, this of course being the most sacred of national holidays, Tax Deadline Day.

Last summer we told both of the kids after their respective college graduations that we would still be there to help them in certain areas, but only in a pinch. They gladly accepted being nudged out of the nest, but to be sure, this would be a new experience for them.

One of the things that they both have been taking care of on their own now for the past two years running is seeing to the filing of their own federal income tax returns. Amy has filed the 1040-EZ form online, and Shawn, due to the fact that he too has followed in his Pop’s footsteps as a self-employed individual, has been forced to go out and find someone else to do the work, what with the potential difficulties of doing a business tax return on one’s own.

So as I answered his questions I’ll have to admit to simultaneously feeling a sense of pride that my boy was getting his feet wet in the goings-on of the ‘real world,’ right alongside a slight pang of guilt for suddenly realizing that I had brought into the world yet another man who just like me is completely incapable of doing his own taxes.

But after we ended the call and I continued out the front door, the chilly April morning air collided with bright warm morning sunshine and I reflected on how much different my life is now, especially in relation to the way I myself used to face April 15th each and every year.

I smiled and thought to myself, “Wow. What a difference a few years makes.”

Still the same…but different
I suppose it wasn’t really that long ago, but it feels like a lifetime ago; and perhaps it was. Perhaps I really was a different person back in the days when I used to avoid April 15th like the plague.

I knew I couldn’t really give it the slip, but I sure gave it the ol’ college try.

Being a freelance graphic designer for fifteen years, I knew that nearly every year we would have to ante up to Uncle Sam, so every year I waited until the last minute to prepare my taxes and never sent in my return (and that all-important check) early.

In fact, I was usually one of the guys who had to scramble just to get to the post office before it closed — despite the fact that they always stay open late on Tax Deadline Day

Many times we either got our money in late or not at all, and were forced to throw ourselves at the mercy of The Service, to accept installments. What was even worse, on three occasions we had to work through the millstone-around-the-neck experience of an IRS tax lien — the last one of which we were forced to pay off to become eligible to buy our first home here in Tennessee.

And as one might guess, it was a fairly hot-button issue between Michelle and me. Enough instances had passed in which my slothfulness had indeed bitten me in ‘da tush, forcing us to pay even more in interest and penalties to the IRS.

The subject of tax season always brought with it a predictable tension. “Have you gotten started on the taxes yet?” she’d ask repeatedly. “Nope, not yet. Soon, though,” I'd respond matter-of-factly, knowing full well that I had no intention of doing anything until no sooner than April 5th — which may seem like a plenty sufficient timeframe in which to get our return in, but it’s really not.

Anyone who has ever caught the famous comedy act of the ‘long form’ (Form 1040 and its lovable sidekick, Schedule ‘C’) knows that when you own a business or even itemize personal deductions, backup is everything. The IRS has certain things that are automatic ‘red flags,’ and one of those is a deduction I took annually that opened me up for scrutiny each and every time: the ‘Home Office’ deduction.

Home office deductions have to be carefully documented. The reason they’ve fallen under so much scrutiny in recent years is because so many people have abused the privilege. Too many have counted too much of their home as ‘used’ in their home office allocation — and in turn, too high a percentage of rent/mortgage cost, utilities, etc. And going overboard with the dollar amount is a big no-no — intentional or otherwise.

Consequently now, according to my former tax professional, bad home office deductions are one of the chief reasons someone may be audited. It’s vital that if entitled, a person does it right, with proper documentation and a realistic percentage of how much of their home and its expended resources actually went into the day-to-day cost of running the business.

Do it wrong, or worse, do so with the intention of pulling a little som’som’ over on the IRS, and you can be reasonably sure you’ll become a much more popular person. However when an auditor shows up at your door, they usually aren’t wearing party hats.

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve been audited once before (not by the IRS, but by the State of California for state sales tax discrepancies) and I can assure you it is NOT something I want to experience ever again. So I made the decision a long time ago to do whatever it takes to keep my nose as clean as possible. I’ve since always erred on the side of caution, and if I didn't have a receipt for something, well too bad, Chuck, that's a deduction that simply got away.

I’ve always used CPAs to do my taxes — probably to my own detriment, financially — but it’s money well-spent, in my opinion. I’ve never been a numbers guy, and given my history, I’m scared to death of screwing it up. Therefore I’ve never done my own federal return — ever. Even now, as it’s been two years since my last freelance side job, we still use a tax preparer. Until recently I always had at least a grand or two of annual income from freelance graphics or web work. I kept doing it for as long as those usually longstanding clients continued to feed it to me.

However as the work dwindled, so did my desire to pay our CPA nearly $200 per year for working my ‘other business’ income into his tax prep for what seemed to be so little ultimate benefit derived from it.

Then Michelle discovered through the grapevine at work that there was a retired IRS agent who did taxes as a side job. The guy is GREAT! Does the whole deal for $75.00, which is about half what we used to pay the CPA. And even though I no longer deal with saving receipts and breaking down utility costs into a room-by-room usage cost, Michelle still does for her Longberger basket business. And as I’m concerned, that’s what makes his service such a bargain.

My wife’s own freelance business income doesn’t do much more than support her ‘basket habit,’ so the deduction figuring doesn't amount to much work on her part, but now it’s she who must spend time recording and figuring out all the various nuances of business expense deduction.

It’s just nice for me to be able to ask her for a change, “Hey…have you gotten started on the taxes yet?”

Gone Corporate
I really never thought I’d say it — or further, honestly even think it — but I really don’t miss freelancing. Sure, I miss having the option of occasionally playing hooky and going to the beach on a nice summer’s morning instead of working; or working all day in the same get-up I rolled out of bed in. But I don’t miss the all-nighters, and the artificial deadlines imposed by clients who thought that all you had to do was ‘press a button’ to realize fully concepted and laid-out artwork. That was especially true in the early days of web design. People had no idea what went into creating a web site and sometimes had some pretty unrealistic expectations.

However I do miss having the radio on all day long, especially back in the mid-90s, when we’d just gotten into our first house and I was really beginning to discover the richness of my favorite radio station, Lightning 100.

I also miss the feeling of satisfaction and the heady sense of power that comes with being your own boss, and relishing the fact each and every day. Those are feelings that were made even more poignant in the mid-1990s, when our finances were in shambles and my world seemed to be collapsing about my shoulders, yet somehow, with a lot of hard work we came through it all.

Yep, I miss all those things, but there are a few others I don’t miss.

I don’t really miss the isolation. Yeah I know I’ve said on more than one occasion, that I’ve honestly never ‘felt’ lonely. And while it’s true that despite being very much by nature a social person, and have always been content to be by myself if necessary, I now believe that my dearth of daily human interaction that was at least partially responsible for my perceived need to seek out someone who would fill a space that my friends couldn’t fill (because, hello, I didn’t have any), or that my wife seemingly didn’t want to fill.

I like the people I work with here at The Company. I like being with and feeling like a part of a team.

Yeah, as much as I always said I’d never ‘go corporate,’ right now, I really can’t imagine doing anything else.

Slow pay? No way!
But the one thing I by far miss the least is slaving away on a project for three weeks and then waiting another 30, 60, 90, or 120 days to get paid for it. Slow-to-deadbeat remittance is the bane of all freelancers; it’s what puts the ‘starve’ in the ‘starving artist.’

It’s the one thing that, try as you can to accept it, never ceases to get under your skin. It’s emotionally draining, and unless you are extremely disciplined as a budgeter, it can be financially devastating.

And that, finally, brings me back on point: why today is different from so many Tax Deadline Days past; why I feel so different now versus ten years ago.

I can now finally afford to pay my taxes. That was always my problem. My cash flow was just never such that I could afford to make the quarterly payments to the IRS like you’re supposed to. And if you don’t, not only are you looking at a penalty for said lack of prepayment, but much worse, you’re usually looking at a mountainous single-check payment — one I was never prepared for.

Just like any other endeavor in life, there is both cost as well as reward to the reality of being self-employed; tradeoffs. Things can truly be great, but there is no free lunch. And while I do miss the freedom I once had, I much more appreciate the security in knowing that I’m actually gonna get paid every two weeks.

Funny how a crazy little fact such as that can affect one’s outlook. It’s totally changed mine with respect to financial responsibility.

And by osmosis, hopefully, with regard to my son, Shawn, it’s now affecting his.

I’m especially proud of the way he hasn’t followed in his old man’s footsteps, although getting him to see the wisdom of doing right by Uncle Sam was something we had to work hard to illustrate.

From the time that we moved to Tennessee to start a new life, Michelle and I have been firm in our attempts to educate Shawn and Amy to not make the same mistakes that we had previously made with money. I was determined not to allow the sins of the father to be re-visited on the son and daughter.

As I’ve mentioned before, in recent years, Shawn has plied his trade as an arborist. Someday he wants to have his own company. He makes great money in his position, not only because it’s a dangerous job, being the designated treetop man in the outfit he works for, but also because he’s good at it, and is rapidly becoming an artist in his own right.

However one reason the money he makes is so outstanding is because he gets paid straight off the top (cue rimshot). Despite the fact that he’s been with the same company for over three years, he as well as everyone outside the owner is an independent contractor — or in my terms, a freelancer. The good news is, he’s not a middleman like I was in my line of work. He gets his money or the work doesn’t get done. So in that regard, he’s already on the plus side. Nevertheless there is one malady that befalls all freelancers, and it can really become a problem when tax season rolls around.

Freelancers get their full wage with no taxes withheld, because they’re contractors, not full-employees, and their employers aren’t held responsible to supply that service. From day one I explained to Shawn what that meant to him as a wage-earner. He was going to have to assume the responsibility for his own tax withholdings — and that’s a pretty tall order when you’re an early twentysomething college kid. I made him go right down to the bank and open a passbook savings account with no ATM access, just so he could bank the 20% of every paycheck he’d need to pay the government when April 15th rolled around and not be tempted to spend it by having easy access to the money.

And at first he did really well. Then a couple years ago he wrecked his car and had to buy a new one. Guess where the money had to use came from?

Oh…I dunno…maybe…the tax account?

And because he didn’t have the dough to pay his taxes when the time came, he had to file for an extension and had a ringside seat to watch just how much interest and penalty can accrue on a couple grand in six months’ time.

So he saved up and paid his taxes in August. That cured him.

Since then he still may not have quite the sense of urgency in getting his taxes ready that I’d like to see (but then, who am I to cast stones?), but he has always had the money when he needed it, and that makes me very proud indeed.

We’re trying our best to acknowledge the mistakes we made to our kids, so that they can spare themselves of the heartache and out-and-out dire consequences that poor planning and/or judgement can cause.

It’s taken a lifetime, but I think, maybe, I’m beginning to believe it myself.


finis

Oh, I’m Feeling Much Richer, Thank You…

As real as a daydream gets…
What a perfect evening. What a perfect show. On so many levels, this was a Nashville Sunday Night at its very best — with the main emphasis on ‘Nash.’

There’s a lot of great music in this town, and as I’ve mentioned many times before, my favorite outlet for tapping into that marvelous natural resource is a wonderful music venue called 3rd and Lindsey Bar & Grill and their weekly concert series, Nashville Sunday Night.

The series itself is made possible by Nashville’s equally incredible jewel of the airwaves, shining in the midst of an otherwise mediocre radio market: a truly GREAT radio station, WRLT, Lightning 100. The venerable progressive rock station has sponsored the Sunday evening concert series since 1996, broadcasting each week live on the air as well as via the web from Lightning100.com.

I've attended more NSN shows than I could possibly count over the years and have seen some incredible national, regional and local talent.

And last Sunday night was one of the absolute best.

The opening act was the wonderfully talented Trent Dabbs, doing forty-five minutes of his exquisite amalgam of power pop and folk rock. In 2005, Dabbs spearheaded the formation of the popular and critically-acclaimed Ten out of Tenn consortium of Nashville-based singer/songwriters. A pair of compilation albums and national tours later, Dabbs’ brainchild has gone a long way toward finally dispelling the hackneyed notion that Country is the only kind of music happening in Music City. As usual, Dabbs onstage Sunday night sported his trademark black blazer, decorated on the back with the hand-painted names of each TOT artist.

However, the evening’s true highlight (and rightfully so) was the return of Leigh Nash and Sixpence None the Richer.

Sixpence Reunited
This photo, fresh from the band's new MySpace page may not have been taken last Sunday (although I’d bet it was), but Leigh wore ‘The Dress’ onstage that night. She was quite proud of it don’tcha know...

Image courtesy Matt Slocum/Sixpence None The Richer

If the name sounds familiar, it should. Sixpence’s first hit it big in 1999, with the signature hit, Kiss Me — a belatedly-released single from their 1997 self-titled album. The song made it to #1 on U.S. charts and the album went platinum, thanks also in large part to their cover of The La’s 1990 alternative pop hit, There She Goes. Not only did the latter tune receive plenty of radio airtime back in ‘99, but it also that year found its way onto in the soundtrack of the film, She's All That and later in two episodes of the TeeVee series, Dawson’s Creek. Their back-to-back hits vaulted Sixpence to the Pop stratosphere as the new millennium dawned.

And even if those two songs don’t jog your memory, chances are you’ve heard Sixpence other times on the radio, in movies or on TeeVee and perhaps didn’t even know it. Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, SNTR became the quintessential commercial cover band, spinning soundtrack and compilation send-ups and putting their own touches on popular hits; everything from You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch (from the movie, How the Grinch Stole Christmas) to Crowded House’s Don’t Dream it’s Over, to ABBA’s Dancing Queen.

Little did I know...
Aside from being aware of them as a local band that made it big, my experiential history with Sixpence was rather shallow until just a few years ago — well after the band had faded from the top-of-mind position they occupied so consistently on the pop music scene for five or six years around the late 90s. Prior to now, unfortunately, my most direct involvement with their music had been relegated to a singular circumstance that occurred sometime between late 1993 and early ’94.

On the occasion of my picking my daughter Amy up from an after-church party one Sunday afternoon, I was waiting for her to tear herself away from the giggling little girl mayhem that still ensued throughout the house when I arrived. So I happily struck up a conversation with the Father of her friend hosting the event.

The guy turned out to be a record company executive (and may have actually been the label’s owner for all I can remember) for an indie Christian label called REX Records. We talked a little record biz shop, as I was still at the time involved — though sparingly — with record packaging design. I remember the man being personable and particularly excited about one of his new artists’ upcoming first release. He handed me a pre-release cassette with the image on the cover of these two very young, fresh-faced teenagers. They were the band’s principals: songwriter and lead guitarist, Matt Slocum and lead singer, Leigh Nash.

They didn’t exactly strike me as rock stars — and more accurately, with their somber, serious-looking pose for that first album cover, they looked more like they’d just been called into the Pastor’s office for passing notes in church.

To be honest, I remember being fairly unimpressed. And what was up with that name, anyway — Sixpence None the Richer?

Well, after nearly 15 years of wondering, I finally took the time to find out just what the significance of that unusual moniker actually was.

From the official Sixpence None the Richer website:

Time and again, from Regis to Leno, the members of Sixpence have found opportunity to speak their faith by simply answering questions about the literary reference that birthed their name. With each encounter, they patiently tell once more the story that Nash recounted in her appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in August 1999.

Although Nash has never completely overcome her youthful nervousness on stage, she bravely walked over to a chair on the “Late Show” stage following her band's performance.

After asking where the band's name came from, Letterman teasingly interrupted Nash to ask if he could stop by her hotel room after the show. Nash's blank silence stopped him cold, chastening him into an apology. With that, she proceeded to finish her story.

“It comes from a book by C. S. Lewis...called Mere Christianity,” she resumed. “A little boy asks his father if he can get a sixpence — a very small amount of English currency — to go and get a gift for his father. The father gladly accepts the gift and he's really happy with it, but he also realizes that he's not any richer for the transaction...”

“He bought his own gift,” Letterman responded. “That's right,” Nash continued. “C. S. Lewis was comparing that to his belief that God has given him, and us, the gifts that we possess, and to serve Him the way we should; we should do it humbly...realizing how we got the gifts in the first place.”

“Well, that’s beautiful,” Letterman stammered, with uncharacteristic earnestness. “If we could just keep that little sliver of enlightenment with us, things would be so much better...”

World-renowned theologian C. S. Lewis provided a fitting foundation for the impressive platform Sixpence None the Richer built to change the world. Following in Lewis' footsteps, Sixpence understood that to reach people, one must communicate in their language, and do so with honest imagination. And each, in word or song, gained the ear of their generation, conveying orthodox truths to a waiting, watching audience without ever compromising art or thought.

And here, thanks to the magic of YouTube, is the actual Late Show conversation from that ’99 appearance (sans the bio writer homogenization, yo):



At any rate, you’d have to agree, that’s a pretty heady mission — even for a Christian band — but ultimately I’d say they’ve been extremely successful in crossing over into the secular music world, yet never compromising their values.

Trouble in Paradise
But even with their considerable success, fairly soon after the turn of the millennium, the band hit a wall. On February 26, 2004, Matt Slocum announced that the group had officially disbanded.

In the wake of SNTR’s initial breakup, lead singer, Leigh Nash, left Nashville with her husband for the promise of a new solo career in Los Angeles. Apparently the changes in her life were just beginning.

Nash, whose signature ethereal voice made SNTR’s unique sound what it was, became pregnant with her first child, a son, shortly following the breakup of the band. Little Henry would serve as the inspiration for many of the songs she would subsequently pen for her first solo effort, Blue on Blue, as well as that of Nash’s own record label, dubbed, One Son Records, through which the CD was released in August of 2006.

And as much as I enjoyed Sixpence’s music, it had always been in passing. It was only at the point that Nash began releasing music on her own that my causal curiosity became somewhat of a wistful obsession.

I LOVE this woman's voice! Hers is the type of sound that literally places me in another dimension. But as is my inexplicable custom, even in her earlier days with Sixpence, I loved what I heard on the radio, but never got my ass out of the chair to go down to the record store to buy any of their CDs.

That won’t be any problem for me now. This guy’s on a mission.

It all began late in the summer of 2006, after hearing on Lightning 100 the first single from Blue on Blue, Ocean Size Love, I discovered Leigh’s MySpace page. I read a bit, listened to a few more of the samplings featured from the new album and instantly fell in love with it. And of course I subscribed to her blog!

I have since followed her career for the past two years almost exclusively in that vein.

But as with so many other friends that I’ve met and followed here in Blogland, connecting with Leigh through her blog has given me a tremendous and much rarer appreciation for the person as well as the artist.

Apparently life hasn’t exactly been all fun and games for her these past five years or so.

From within her MySpace sanctuary, Leigh has revealed the circumstances for some of the changes in her tour schedule and/or lack of activity: family difficulties, the untimely death of her Father last November, and the grand adjustment that being a Mother continues to make on her life.

Her blog posts come across as genuine and eloquent as her music, and I feel extremely privileged to catch the glimpses that she grants to us of her innermost thoughts. It truly adds a dimension of truth and clarity to the emotion she expresses in song.

Nash-Bridges
In addition to her solo pop effort, Leigh had also begun to spread her wings in other musical directions. At around the same time she was working on her solo album, she was also involving herself in another more eclectic project, providing the lyrics and vocal tracks for another album of recent vintage released last year. It was a long-distance collaboration with fellow production company colleagues: Nettwerk Productions musicians, Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber of the Ambient group, Dellirium.

The album is called Fauxliage, and it’s outstanding; a project to which Leigh’s hauntingly lilting vocals are a perfect compliment to the electronic beat-melodies of Delirium’s dreamscape sound.

Having my musical tastes influenced significantly by the late 80s/early 90s New Age Music movement and my time at Mesa/Bluemoon, this was a real treat. As if Leigh’s regular solo work wasn’t awesome enough already, this one just put me over the edge.

Having somehow missed all of Nash’s local appearances (I believe there were at least two or three of them) from her solo tour during the latter part of 2006, I was now extremely anxious to hear her live, hoping desperately that another opportunity to see her locally would avail itself soon. The next time, I vowed, I would NOT miss.

Then on January 17, 2008 came Leigh’s best blog yet. She announced that she had pink eye.

Oh, oh yeah, and one other thing: they were getting the band back together!

Leigh revealed that she and SNTR collaborator, Matt Slocum, had met for coffee last November and acknowledged that they had both experienced somewhat of a void in their lives since the breakup of the band. She said they realized that “the two of us were more powerful than one of us alone...” So they decided to revisit their musical relationship and begin writing and touring on a limited basis...indefinitely!

That decision spawned their recent engagement to critical acclaim at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas in March, which gave them the juice they needed to pursue a full-fledged reunion tour.

And much to the delight of the hometown Nashville fans, they decided to kick it off with an appearance here, and at my fave venue, 3rd and Lindsley to boot!

I’ve gotta tellya, I haven't had a musical experience so totally satisfying in a very long time.

Leigh's voice has a quality that defies description. It cuts through your soul like a hot knife though butter. The travail of her recent life's travels are now apparent in her once flawless complexion, but as she sang, you could just see the healing release the music injected into her countenance.

Ohhh, and the crowd was feelin’ it too, folks. It was a packed house and the crowd was hanging on every word out of Leigh’s mouth, and taking in every tasty lick wafting from Matt’s guitar.

She seemed so content; so alive. It was awesome to experience it en masse with her and the 400 or so other SNTR fans in the room.

They played most every famous Sixpence tune (well, DUH), along with a few from Leigh’s solo album, including the incredible Ocean Size Love, which made me a very happy camper.

I was at my traditional corner-of-the-bar seat, about 12-15 feet from the stage, taking it all in. Wow. What a great show. Wait...did I say that already? Well, sorry.

Partyin’ like it was 1999
Another kind of interesting sidebar on the evening’s experience was the age demographic of the crowd. As I looked around, I didn’t see a whole lot of gray hair. The bulk of the patrons appeared to be in their mid-to-late twenties. As the bright, twentysomething gal sitting to my left confided, “This is a trip back to my high school days for me,” and I’m sure she wasn’t the only one there looking forward to the same thing, as the heyday of the band was indeed around 8-9 years ago.

Now of course I wasn't in high school in the late 90s, but I remember the music as fondly as if I was. And it's interesting to think back on it now, but the music of the 90s was so good, I really thought it would continue on that way forever. I thought the incredibly variant and eclectic variety of alternative jam and power pop would continue to evolve and dominate the music scene. And I suppose that even more I believed that access to that wonderful cornucopia of music here in Nashville would continue on as well. Unfortunately it didn't last; but that’s a story for another time.

Sunday night, however, everybody at 3rd was partyin’ like it was 1999.


finis

Upgrade Hell

Just a quick note to cry ‘wolf’ for a second. Well, hopefully not that, but just in case something else comes up I guess my bases will be covered.

I’m pretty frustrated right now over something that, given past history, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about in the least.

Every time I go to make any kind of significant system upgrade to my computer there are always hiccups. It’s been this way for the past several years, and is one reason I hesitate to make such changes very often. It’s not that I’m not competent to do the work, I suppose it’s more that I’m just too damn cheap.

I’ve never purchased a ready-made computer; I’ve built every one of them I’ve owned since 1989. Only my first machine, which in turn was built by my friend and former business partner, Randy, came to me ready to use. I have since, with much guidance from Randy those first few attempts, been switching out motherboards, processors and components as PC technology has increased from the days of the 486 to now.

And why do I put myself through all this instead of just going out and buying a computer from BestBuy?

As of this moment, who-the-hell-knows?

Back in the 90s, it was a no-brainer as to the logic in being a computer Build-It-Yourself’er: cash-o-lah. Computers were comparatively much more expensive back then, with the average Macintosh setting you back well over $2,000.

Quality PC Clones, powerfully equipped enough for my purposes as a graphic designer ran at least $1,200-$1,500 out of the box as well. So why wouldn’t you want to put one together yourself for half-to-three-quarters of that cost? Personally I really had no choice; that’s the primary reason I never bought a Mac; couldn't afford one and I bristled at the idea that they had to be so expensive in the first place; after all, I know what goes into the darned things.

So I built, and I continue to build almost twenty years later — but unfortunately, almost never without some sort of hang-up. Usually it’s user error, but I always seem to figure things out (usually after a call or two to my comp-guru, Randy).

But in the end, I guess it’s the satisfaction of putting it all together — something I’m not all that accustomed to doing in other areas — that has driven my ‘puter BIY’er tendencies.

Some guys are really well-disposed to do-it-yourself stuff; be it cars or home improvement. I just kinda get by on that sort of thing. Again, it’s not that I can’t do it; it’s more that the perfectionist in me won’t leave ‘good enough’ alone. It has to be done right. I don’t do half-assed, and I’m just anal enough to refuse to even try if I have any doubt that I can finish the job to my own high standards.

But building computers has always sort of been ‘my thing.’ It’s one of the few things I do well that the majority of guys I know wouldn’t even attempt. I suppose it’s my compensation for not being an (auff-auff-auff) ‘Tool-Time’ kind-o guy.

But geeze-louise, I’m a little out of practice with today’s computers! The speed of these new dual-core processors requires heat dispensation like nothing I’ve ever dealt with before. The cooler fan and heatsinks attached to them are ginormous, and more than just a little daunting when you’re installing one for the first time — knowing full well that you could easily cook your entire system in a flash if you don’t do it right.

So now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, suffice it to say that things haven’t been going smoothly in my latest venture, which began a little less than two weeks ago.

I decided to make the quantum leap from a 1.7 MHz processor to a new-ish 2.6 MHz AMD X2 Dual-Core processor. The differences between the two are like night and day, system requirement-wise. Of course I didn’t know just to what extent those differences would figure into the hassle factor related to all of this.

My goal in building systems — and another reason I’ve never been keen on buying ready-made machines — is upgradability. I always like to leave my options open to adding functionality and speed to my system incrementally if possible. That's the best way to keep costs down as well as providing the most bang for the bucks you do spend. This is why I hadn’t upgraded my motherboard since 2002 — I didn't really have to. I was able to, however, upgrade my processor three times along the way, and my RAM memory twice.

But I had pushed that mobo as far as I could. It was time to move up to the new generation of dual-core-ready interfaces for the trusty AJ-built machine. So I sunk the ungodly sum of $300 into a new, state-of-the-art Gigabyte mobo, a not-the-latest-but-still-recent AMD 64 X2 processor, and 2 Gigs of very fast DDR2 RAM. Not a bad haul for so little dough when it comes right down to it.

However, the cost I didn’t anticipate was that of my time — and sanity, not to mention the realization that this wouldn’t be just a hardware-only upgrade.

What it all boiled down to was this: I successfully negotiated that stinking massive heatsink and fan, got the mobo installed without a hitch, and then hit a brick wall when I tried to boot up WinXP on my old (but still very compatible) hard drive.

I thought it was something to do with the configuration, maybe a wrong BIOS setting, maybe the faster-than-necessary RAM I obtained strictly for its built-in upgradability when I eventually upgrade my processor to an X2+...

I went through every possible permutation, but still no love.

Then Trey, my Web-mate at work, and also the person who guided me through the minefield of choosing the components for this system upgrade (he had recently done the same upgrade on his own system at home, and ironically had been using the same processor that I had previously), told me pretty much the last thing I wanted to hear.

“Man,” he sighed, “I think it’s your Windows installation.”

Fabulous.

He said he believed the configuration of the hardware, the drivers, settings, etc., from within Windows XP was just too different for the new hardware to accept. I know, I don’t really understand it either, but given that Trey did an almost identical upgrade on his own system, I’m inclined to go with his suggestions. Unlike me, he did a clean install of Windows when he did his upgrade, whereas I just plugged the old hard drive containing the operating system back in, expecting it to work like it always had.

So all that to say, guess what I’ve been doing every night at home this week?

Yeah. Joy. Five years-worth of programs and personal files that have to be moved from the hard drive I can’t use to a temporary place so that I can re-format the drive, then reinstall Windows, then spend the hours and hours it will take to reinstall the programs.

And to make matters worse, I’ve been covered up like mad with work here at The Company, having to bring some of it home with me as well (to be done on Michelle’s computer).

So all that to say, the reason you haven’t seen me in this space lately is because I’ve been in hell — Upgrade Hell.

I actually have a post that I’ve GOT to post tonight before the subject matter gets any colder than it already is (I wanted to post it on Monday).

Look for it this evening. And pray for my deliverance.

From Hell.


finis