Susanville

June 30, 2009 – 10:50 pm

I killed my cell phone alarm on the second chirp. I’d already been awake for an hour, watching the light change behind the window shade. I layed there twenty minutes more. 

There’d been some drama regarding whether or not I’d be allowed to see Jeff. He recently earned the priveledge of a job assignment; a clerk position working for the prison guards. I didn’t want to jeaporadize anything for him, but I’d driven all the way from Portland, Oregon and it’d been six years since I’d last seen my childhood friend. I poured some coffee and steered my truck towards the state prison in Susanville.

My grip on the wheel was tight. They had to let me see the lad? I was mumbling to myself, something about rational human beings and empathy. And that’s when the bird caught the corner of my eye. I slammed on the brakes right there in the middle of Highway 36, a thin stretch of lonely blacktop winding through giant Sequoias. I threw the transmission into reverse then slowed my truck so I was parallel with the enormous raptor.

Staring at me from a fence post was a bald eagle. His yellow beak curved into a downward scowl as he ascessed me. It was 7:15 a.m. and the rearview was devoid of oncoming vehicles so I just stared back as my truck idled in the middle of the highway. 

The guard at the visiting center took my ID and instructed me to place my dollar bills and locker key into a clear plastic bag. I traveled with a van full of visitors on Father’s Day. Then it was a series of electrified cyclone fence gates and rifled guards staring me down from the tower.

The bear hug I received from Jeff brought a quick flash of the eagle. I knew he’d somehow played a hand (talon) in this reunion’s success. Jeff and I drank cream sodas and talked non-stop until our four and a half hours expired. I got the details of that pivotal night and we caught up on music and he told me about his 4.0 G.P.A. and the approach of his Associate of Arts degree. He told me that his wife of nine years had driven up from Sacramento the previous weekend to ask him for a divorce. He gave violent details of prison life and spoke of God’s hand at work and his guitar and heroin and his new passion for drawing Celtic knotwork.

But our visit was over and the harsh reality of a sixteen-to-life sentence was suddenly undeniable. I wanted to walk out of there with him, grab our fishing rods and run the length of Deer Creek until sundown. But he was he seperated from me as other prisoners were seperated from other visitors. I exited the pennitentary and savored the taste of my freedom for the first time.

The sublime beauty of Plumas National Forest embraced my Nissan 4×4 and the lump in my throat dissolved as I drove back to the family cabin in Chester, California. And six years of sadness flew away with that eagle.

 

Black Haze

June 16, 2009 – 10:30 am

Thousands of people head to Hollywood or New York City with dreams of becoming a rock star. My buddy Glitch made himself a rock star by way of the internet out of Portland, OR. His band BLACK HAZE has a following in the thousands.

Glitch looks like Nikki Sixx. He has all the rock star moves down and the confidence to feel comfortable in front of the crowd. He uses state-of-the-art equipment, writes catchy songs somewhere between White Zombie and Depeche Mode, and sells merchandise (t-shirts, professional-looking CDs, even guitar picks) at the end of each show. He’s not waiting tables on the side, Black Haze is paying his bills. 

I am 16 years older than Glitch so I am new to marketing myself on the internet. I am filming several Black Haze shows in order to construct a video for Glitch who has completely elevated the sound of my short film VENICE via ProTools. We have similar personalities, outlooks and values and are becoming fast friends. My buddy DJ pounds the drums alongside Glitch on guitar and capturing these guys with my 24p video camera is pure joy. 

The Secret

June 2, 2009 – 12:57 pm

I’ve got a secret river now. I know it must remain secret because my bro-in-law told me that when he first fished its bank, a kayaker passed him with his index finger pressed to his lips. And yesterday, during our five hour enjoyment of the opening day of trout season, we didn’t see another human being.

I pumped down McDonalds coffee then pumped up the “Water Skeeter” as Josh rode his bike back from parking his truck down river. We pulled the craft down a small trail through blackberry bushes off a frontage road paralleling the river’s bank. It was a stretch of private property near a waterfall under a bridge. I know it was private property because a guy drove by and told me so. And then he said it was okay if we put in there.

Josh and I were two men in a one man, Zodiac-type raft. He worked the oars (facing forward) and I sat with my back pressed against his (facing backwards). I shot the rapids blind, keeping my boots out of the water so I didn’t cause drag or accidentally rudder the raft. We launched through the haystacks whooping and hollering like teenagers. Josh caught two rainbow trout and I lost flies all day in the overhanging tree branches.

I’m returning to the secret river as soon as I can. It was the most fun I’ve had all year. 

 

 

Oh, Tootsie!

May 25, 2009 – 12:27 pm

You gotta love Dustin Hoffman…

Alpha Blondy

May 22, 2009 – 1:56 pm

When you’re fiending some reggae music this summer, crank up the Alpha Blondy.

This man is our greatest living reggae artist. Bold statement, but just purchase some of his discs or concert tickets when he comes around and you’ll completely agree. I’m catching him in Solana Beach in August 2009 at “The Belly Up”.

He rhymes between his native language of Dioula, French, English, Arabic and Hebrew. He’s got one of the best horn sections ever assembled. I once saw him open for Jimmy Cliff on his birthday. Alpha hit the stage holding a Bible in one hand and the Koran in the other. Huge spliff on his lips, Alpha Blondy sang ”Jah Music“ music while wearing an ‘Iron Maiden’ t-shirt.

Mirren

May 7, 2009 – 8:15 am

I can’t stop watching the Stephan Frears film “The Queen“. I didn’t expect to like it, my sister offhandedly slipped the film into my backpack saying I might enjoy it.  Frears is undoubtedly the most underrated director working today. ‘High Fidelity‘ ’Dangerous Liaisons‘ ‘The Grifters‘ and ‘Dirty Pretty Things‘ should all find their way into your Netflix queue. 

But ‘The Queen’ is cemented by Dame Helen Mirren. I remember sneaking out as a child to go to the late show at UA6 and being mesmerized by her in the film ‘Excalibur’. What makes Helen Mirren exceptional is her fierce intelligence and curiosity equating a sexiness which seeps from her performances (except for ‘The Queen’ where she morphs completely into a character far from sexy). Rent a few episodes of her British television hit from the early nineties ‘Prime Suspect‘.

 She has always been forthright and outspoken. She admits to ‘adoring’ cocaine in the 80’s (though insists she was a casual party user, not one for locking herself in the hotel room for a week). Mirren unapologetically states that she ‘completely lacks any maternal instinct’ therefor has no children. Nudity has never been a problem for her. She is currently in production on a film (directed by her husband Taylor Hackford) about a couple who opened Nevada’s first brothel.

In recognition of her career as a staple of the theater, film and television, in 2003 the ‘Dame’ rank was bestowed upon her; England’s female version of knighthood. Mirren is also an atheist.  An example that Nicole Kidman, Meg Ryan, and Faye Dunaway should have followed, Helen Mirren proudly let’s it be known that she has never had plastic surgery, and never will (how many sixty-two year olds look this great in a bikini? Enjoy these random facts about Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov (birth name).

There is a scene in ‘The Queen’ where she is alone, we don’t even see her facial expression (filmed from behind) and yet, with just a nod of her head, we are completely immersed in her experience bonding with a wild stag amidst a vast wilderness. Rarely does an actor so authentically convey their gift.

 

Ailurus fulgens

May 4, 2009 – 10:17 am

Resembling a raccoon, each individual possesses unique facial hair patterns as opposed to the raccoon’s standard black eye goggles. ‘The Cat Bear’ (as they were originally named) gives itself a tongue bath each morning, similar to a feline. Chinese newlyweds wear their hides as Davy Crockett-style caps for ‘good luck’ when concluding their wedding ceremony.

Throughout Southern China, their habitat is clear-cut, eliminating vital bamboo forests which comprise the bulk of their diet. Supposedly, the web browser Mozilla Firefox was inspired by the Red Panda. And though unconfirmed, rumor has it these cousins of the Giant Panda gave birth to George Lucas’ ‘Ewoks’ in the film “Return Of The Jedi”.

What is it about the edge of extinction that makes a species so damned adorable?

Being There

April 29, 2009 – 3:51 pm

People resent celebrities with political opinions. They are easily dismissed as spoiled, wackos or ‘Hollywood liberals’. And then the people elect Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger? And through some perverted twist of politics, FOX News, Dick Cheney and Bill O’Reiley should be our patriotic, ‘trusted sources’.

But here is a guy who took an unnecessary risk. He could’ve just drank his cocktails in Malibu that month, booked another movie or surfed the waves in Bali. He could’ve done nothing and just bitched or waived his flag like the rest of us. But he went to Iraq to see for himself.

And whether this man were an actor or a garbage man, I believe it’s important to listen to the impressions of an American so compelled.

Mailer’s Law

April 28, 2009 – 2:06 pm

Why not just pull a trifecta and write about another artist? 

I read Norman Mailer’s book about his experiences in WWII “The Naked And The Dead” many years ago and don’t remember much of the story, but I gained interest in him during the nineties watching the Ali documentary “When We Were Kings”. He seemed like an angry Hobbit.

I’ve watched the doc “Mailer On Mailer” and purchased his novel ‘The Deer Park’. Mailer received the Pulitzer twice and the National Book Award once. He started the Village Voice newspaper. He stabbed his second wife with a pen knife and still, four more women married him. Norman Mailer helped a convicted killer get out of jail. And six weeks later the guy killed again. 

An incredibly flawed and yet successful man, his prose and intelligence regarding subject choice were staggering. Even though his political activism was basically leftist, he said he hated liberals and feminists hated him for the pen knife thing and quotes like ”I don’t hate women, but I think they should be kept in cages.” 

But when most people write about weed, it’s all Dorito’s jokes. Norman Mailer actually makes you feel stoned on his words. For a guy who struggled with drugs and alcohol throughout his life, upon the subject of war, his is the most sober rationale. And who has ever explained bravery so well? Read the following quotes and then, if you’ve ever experienced the desire to write, listen to his law.

“One’s condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one’s being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness — the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.”

In 2003, in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, just before the invasion of Iraq, Mailer said: “Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.”

“There are two kinds of brave men: those who are brave by the grace of nature, and those who are brave by an act of will.”

 

David Howell Evans

April 27, 2009 – 6:35 pm

It is rather common that the quiet voice, that artist not so concerned with ego but more in tune with their art rarely makes headlines. These artists are everywhere but we don’t know much about them especially if they perform under a pseudonym. And David Evans would’ve been underrated even if he’d hit the stage with his given name. His humility and permanent skull cap give him a little monk vibe, like a paler Thich Nhat Han. Rolling Stone magazine rates Mr. Evans as the 24th greatest guitarist of all time. And I’m thinking he should be bumped into the teens at least.

His technique is sublime. During the eighties he was a stark contrast to the gunslinger archetype of the muscular, in-your-face-shredder. David Howell Evans used delay and reverb in a way that stretches a single note into a resonating chord. He feels notes are “expensive” therefor precious; to be used sparingly.

He has written songs at the top of the charts for decades. ‘The Cyan’ is the name of his 12 million dollar yaht. His charitable fund that provides instruments to artists who lost theirs in Hurricane Katrina is ‘Music Rising’. He is currently co-writing the Spiderman musical (good idea?) and has written with Johnny Cash, B.B. King and Tina Turner. A Welshman born in Britain, he has played the same Explorer guitar for over thity years…