Hey folks. Just wanted to take a second to bring to your attention that today is World Autism Awareness Day. Since my brother is autistic, and I also used to work with disabled individuals I’m a very strong supporter of those with special needs, so if you wouldn’t mind taking a minute out of your day to maybe learn something new, you’d probably feel good about it.
Imagine this…Your a struggling artist walking the streets head hung low. You repeat the same mantra in your mind over and over: What to do? What to do??!? While walking near the river so see a pile of rocks and you ejaculate “THAT’S IT!!”
I’m very excited today. After a night of in-apartment recording at my good friend Chris Barron’s place, we managed to get down most of an entire song. Everything sounded great but when we got to the vocals we realized that for this song we just don’t have a good enough mic. So I crashed there and this morning went with Chris to the School of Communication Arts (conveniently located four fucking seconds away from his apartment) and we talked to his audio production teacher, who told us to have me come in at 2PM this afternoon to do the vocals in a very expensive, professional-grade studio. I’ve never gotten to even set foot in a vocal booth before, let alone record in one, so this is a very exciting day for me. Moreover, the rest of the mix sounds great already and with some well-recorded it’s gonna turn out to sound pretty fucking fantastic.
And bonus – after this song is done (which it should be by this evening; there’s not a lot of mixing left to do) there will only be two songs left to record on my upcoming EP (one of which uh…still needs to be written…but you know, whatever.)
This is something that’s been on my mind grapes quite a bit these days. I feel like shit about 90% of the time. Part of this is probably because I eat whatever I want to (which I can afford to do, and still stay skinny, because I have the most unbelievable metabolism known to man.) Part of it is probably my wacky sleep schedule. I stay up til absurd hours and sleep in til equally absurd hours. Those things should probably change, particularly the sleep one, but I think the number one thing here is the fact that I get no exercise. I am woefully out of shape.
I remember back toward the end of senior year in high school, for one reason or another, I buckled down on everything. Maybe it was because I was taking Adderall or some variation thereof, who knows, but I stuck with the most basic of exercising (wall pushups every morning when I woke up, every night before I went to bed, and some weight lifting here and there.) I ate breakfast every morning. I think maybe it might have just been those two things that did it, but I felt great, and everything else was great too. I could miraculously stay awake in class. I came home and had absolutely all of my school shit knocked out by 6PM. I wrote a lot more music then than I do now, and a lot of it was pretty good considering. I taught myself a little piano. I got a girlfriend. But most important of all, I didn’t constantly feel like shit, like I was about to pass out every five seconds if I didn’t have an IV of Monster or Red Bull pumping into me. Quite the opposite – I felt fucking great.
I really want to feel that way again, because physically and, more or less mentally and spiritually, it was the best I’ve ever felt and I need to get back to that. As I’m typing this I am groggy as shit and it is damn near 1:00 in the afternoon and I have not been awake for very long at all. I’m really kind of ashamed of that.
I started yesterday. I bought a new iPod arm-band apparatus and took it on a jog yesterday, which I’m gonna try to do once a day in addition to a few other physical things. Once I can afford it I’ll join a gym, too.
Bottom line, is from now on Ol’ Patty Boy is gonna gris exercise hardcore. Here’s hoping I actually stick to it!
I just got home from a lengthy 7 hour video game and burrito marathon with my best mates. It seems we are all a lot older then we used to be. Dave has a family and is in grad school, and while Kenneth does not have a family, he too is in grad school. So, it is a rare treat to convene at one of our houses and take in a handful of months worth of current video game titles. This is really important to Dave. KP and I are connected to the video game industry in one fashion or another. Kenneth writes reviews for the news paper, and I work as a video artist at a game studio. Dave used to work at the same place, in fact he helped get me this job, but he decided that making more money was fun. This is why these sessions are planned weeks in advance therein maximizing the amount of HD polygonal interactive entertainment that can be crammed in on one single night. These digital game nights normally commence with some version of tasty burrito and put into intermission for a trip to Starbucks. Old standards, inside jokes, and burning witticism are flung about making it feel like we still hang out every weekend in a moldy basement or campus housing. There is something extremely comforting knowing that after all these years I’m lucky enough to have such close friends. Even if they both love man pole. (One of those old standards)
I drove home from this particular cavalcade of gay jokes, video games, and heartburn festering Chipotles, I had a since of pride knowing how much the three of us genuinely support one another and care for each other (pause). Though we sparingly come together these days because of our grown up lives, there still is little more satisfying as a staunch hand clap with Dave or the ebullient laugh with Kenneth. With as much uncertainty in the world right now its good to have some rather extraordinary constants in ones life. For me, I know unequivocally that, I will love movies and video games, gay jokes will never stop being funny, and Dave and Kenneth will always be my friends.