Longmont, Boston, & the Dark Side

Longmont Colorado in the xerox light of the suburbs. Bandmates are in Denver, the urbs. I'm here for sleep, baseball, and laundry with old family friends. The mountains are in the field. Boston wins World Series in game 5. Home runs. Are sunflower seeds just a chewing tobacco substitute or is there some bird-nutrition-electrolyte-quotient they are trying to fulfill in the dugout.

Phil tells me about going to school with the cousin of Boston mobster Raymond Patriarca. Junkies in the 70's needed $400 per day to sustain the habit equals a life of crime. Today that would be around $2600 per day. Whitey Bulger dies tomorrow. Tony was incarcerated at Walpole during the riots when the inmates took over the prison. He said that out of all the guards there was only five out of the whole staff who treated the inmates like people rather than tortured animals. Two of those guards were on duty during the riots. Those same two guards were found locked in closets after all the dead bodies were cleared out by the army the next day. 

Prison code. 

Tony actually saw one of the honorable guards being dragged and locked into the closet by a rampaging inmate, right after stabbing one of the despicable guards in the neck. 

Prison code.

Eating Pizza Hut and gelato, Phil reminded me of the saying by Ramana Maharishi. The saint, when asked how should we treat others replied, “there are no others.” Yesterday we had coffee in Boulder and talked about our fathers and being fathers. I had a bagel with only enough cream cheese for ¾ of a bagel. Two cups of coffee. Second cup from Ethiopia.

Went to eat Mexican on the roof but the roof was closed for the season. I was excited about combining danger and leisure. Niche market. Stopped by the Boulder Drum Shop while Gail meditated in the parking lot. Fell in the love with the AA Meinl Sand Sizzle Cymbal. Put in my future harvest heart locket. 

Back "home." Phil's nephew Joey is also living there. For two days and nights, I did not see him once. We joked about him being imaginary. Today Gail was Darth Vader. Happy All Hallows' Eve Eve. Lion's Lair tonight. 

Omaha is Dead

Omaha is dead. There is a zombie walk for charity. The wall of Halloween Christmas lights and green plastic flowers at the back of the stage share a wall with the cocaine-dusted bathroom. Later on tonight we stay in an AirBNB with a lonely host who forces us to partake in the breakfast part of BNB. She is desperately making cookies tomorrow with the same urgency as putting flowers on her husband's grave. 

Not many people are here for the show and it's Friday night. The sound feels like it's happening in a different room. We have our ears up against the wall trying to separate the language and the noise. Spies of our own music. At what point does reverb become eternity? The monitors are constantly on the verge of feeding back creating a baseline of rage and hopelessness to funnel into the ballads. At least in Columbia there was a full drunk on the verge of heckling, waltzing with himself in a recurring naked-in-public dream.

World Series game 4 is happening in LA and I am watching from the bar in Nebraska. Dodgers are up 4-0 and then lose while I am playing. I can see the crowd assembled on the field from behind the drums so I know the game is over. The night before was the longest World Series game in all of history. Almost a complete workday of 8 hours.

I watched baseball when I was doing insurance work in Florida. It's the perfect mixture of adrenaline and boredom to get through the unyielding tedium of labeling thousands of pictures “damaged by wind” Now the windshield is taking care of the wind. As we zoom over and/or the highway zooms under us on our way to Denver so much faster than the pioneers it hurts.