for legal reasons

had to take the car crash post down. nobody's missing it anyway, lol.

here's radical face's 'glory' instead. i'm a little stuck on it.



words:

I was born when they took my name
When the world turned wicked, when I joined their game
But I turned and fought them
Like you always knew I'd do

I sat and dreamed at the foot of your bed
You split my skull and reached inside my head
And pulled out the pictures I'd been wishing I'd forget
And you stitched me up then
And wiped the blood from off my chin

Now I sit on the rooftop's edge
The muddy street beneath my swollen head
Trying to forget you
To believe we've never met

And the sky is wrecked, full of rotting clouds
From chimney mouths spewing smoke around
And I can't stop coughing
My lungs just won't calm down
But still I keep grinning
As the blood from my face stains the ground

A bird, caught in the wires
Bleating for help I can't provide
(I'm not that big)
I hope for the best but nothing changes
(I'm sorry)

But I was blessed with bad eyes
There's a lot that I miss but I don't mind, I'm not that old
I'll find out what broke me soon enough

I Got Hit By A Car

this is the somewhat less than ideal version of my face after i got vehicularly made over by some girl born in the fucking nineties over graduation weekend here in tucson. while i concur that the look is striking, it made my crazy hair and piercings somewhat pale in comparison (possibly due to a loss of whole blood). anyway, that is what i've been dealing with for the better part of the last thirty days. preceding that, i got in a bike wreck that partially tore my left rotator cuff, so give or take ten days at most, i have been out on short term disability for the best of the last two months. when my friend told me to go out and do something interesting, this was not something that had crossed my mind. i was thinking more along the lines of subversive macrame. you know, really STICK IT TO THE MAN.

i don't remember being hit. i just remember being in the ambulance for a minute, and from there, my version of chronology leapfrogs to the trauma unit where they try their even best to de-picasso-ize me into a real life three dimensional entity. thanks, vaguely foreign training doctor! they cut off my favorite outfit, except for my blood drenched shoes and my helmet (praise allah that i had been having "you should wear your helmet" juju floating (uncharacteristically)in my brain for the preceding ten or so days. i'm in the trauma and CDU for a couple more days, ever more the perfect spitting image of a post-modern elephant man, before they discharge me with a souvenir size bucket of percocets and muscle relaxers. i won't lie, they were the breath of god. i hurt every time i woke up.

my job struggled to say the right thing, to be grudgingly supportive. i just started working again the other day (last night was my fourth night back). i have to say, my back hurts like a bitch by the end of my shift, and this shit probably won't fly in ten or so years. still, i'm working poor... very poor. so what do us poor losers with limited skill do? we suck it up and keep on fucking keeping on. praise allah for my high pain threshold. or praise my blue collar alcoholic upbringing. potato/po-taw-toe.

anyway, i'm doing better-ish, but let's be marsha fucking brady real here, yeah? now i'll NEVER BE A TEEN MODEL.



They had to sew the left nostril back on, i have the broken teen in the upper front and center, i look like my nose was sluiced open by a jaguar, and the left side of my throat looks like i was the sole survivor of a nightmare on elm street sequel.

i all thought this was sort of a testament to my inherent bad-ass-ness, as i essentially walked away without so much as a broken bone (though i did suffer a mild brain bleed) and i walked around the first several weeks saying shit like "you should see the CAR!!!" you know, reassuring myself, reassuring others. i wore a helmet, thank god, and since the damage was so largely to my face and throat, i assumed that my bike- made of METAL and RUBBER must be in excellent shape. last week when i was able to make my appointment to collect my baby, i was greeted with the following sight:

so after seeing my brand new bike twisted into a four hundred dollar pretzel, and after an incident in which i rode my OTHER bike to seven eleven and laid down my helmet while i paid only to realize that my helmet- the one that saved my life when i got it- was nothing less that caked with blood. the straps, the interior helmet, the whole thing was like IT should have been in an evidence locker.

whatever, this happened three weeks ago. i'm freaked out, but that's what's going on with me.

and the super duper fun times keep on coming, right?

it's just before i saw the bike and the helmet, i was kind of laughing it off in a way. facial trauma when you get hit by a car, but not a single broken bone? kind of a slap on the wrist. when i got my bike back i was ripped from my delusion that it was minor all along. i could have gone under the car instead of hurtling away into relative safety and well being. the helmet full of dried globs of blood... i should get it bronzed with a plaque that says THANK YOU underneath it.

i almost died, and it has (of course) fried my waffle a little bit, but i tell you what, i don't fucking want to die. and apparently, it's not easy to make that happen. just saying.

thoughts, just thoughts. just trying, TRYING to process this wacky shit.

got the bill. 25 grand. gonna lawyer up here pretty quick. wish my fuckup ass all the luck you can muster.

love,
seth

suck it, admirer... and you spelled emotionally wrong

seth, i like you too much to continue. im an emotianally damaged, neurotic mess. i dont know how much of last night you remember but i meant it when i said i like you. i need to focus on other things right now. know that ill think of you often.

now doctor horrible is here. to make you quake with fear. to make your whole world neal. and i wont feel...

Tom Petty is Kind of the Shit

it has been said before that solely based upon the genius of the video for don't come around here no more TP&theHB deserve mad, MAD props, and i am certainly NOT going to disagree, but i would like to go off on the awesomeness of both some of his wildly successful mainstream hits and videos as well as some lesser known works that for WHATEVER REASON never made it into heavy rotation. I don't know how familiar you guys are with patrick bateman... i'll try not to be too creepy clinical.

this is sort of my first non-misery oriented post in quite a while, so please- be kind. i don't feel quite "back" yet, but i am TRYING, and i feel like i'm getting closer. Tom Petty has been a big part of that, in the musical component of catharsis sense, for whatever reason.

[ALSO- sidebar- i hope you guys enjoy the new header pic. i look like holy hell, i just woke up and clearly didn't even try to look pretty, but THAT FUCKING SCARY ASS MONKEYSHINES MONKEY is apparently something that Robert bought for me a few months before he died. If that doesn't indicate how mind-melded and close we were, NOTHING WILL. it is an example of a profound understanding of who i am, NOT AN EASY FEAT, LET ME TELL YOU (you know, because i'm so deep and complicated, lol) and the only other time in my life i've seen such a perfect gift was (this is arrogant, but TRUE) when i got rob the carol channing ventriloquist doll. OH, HOW I WISH HE COULD HAVE GOTTEN TO SEE MY REACTION TO RECEIVING IT! his partner michael did, though, and that was a joy and a blessing (oh, sick, i just used the word 'blessing'- please kill me). i love you, Robert! I miss you!]

In no particular order, apart from ballads vs. non-ballads/'rockers' (with videos when possible, which should be all of them in this day and age, and given the wealth of Petty concert footage, which is, you know, supposed to be one of the great musical experiences one can have. i've seen bob dylan live, and i realize he's like four thousand years old and everything, and that his voice was never a vocalist voice, and i realize that at one point seeing him perform was like seeing god and by the time my ass got around to it, it would be kind to say that he is a BIT past his prime by any reasonable standard, but WOW being a transcendentally great writer and a sonic pioneer does NOT make you a valid stage presence, and this is turning into an off-topic rant so moving right along):

Rebels:

ok, before i even get into the song, please make note of the backup wenches at :48 - :52, because they are of A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES, MOTHERFUCKERS!

sadly, i must begin with a concession: calling yourself a rebel is lame, at least at this point in time. possibly it's always been lame. if anything, Fonzie from Happy Days butt-raped the cool out of being a self-proclaimed rebel. Real rebels just go about being ahead of their time or outside of society (alá Patti Smith) like the rock and roll niggers that they are. and yet, YET, this song holds the hell up. This unforgivable "i'm a rebel" sin is bypassed, the proverbial two-hundred dollars are collected.

Excusing THAT: Tom Petty, especially in his youth was, to quote my once-clever and brutally articulate mother, "uglier than a bucket of assholes," although, as with many ugly people, they make ever more dashing, distinguished elderly people. Paradox. anyway, off topic again. So he was an ugly, weird, bug-looking motherfucker. AND YET, there is no DENYING the presence. Check the quick little facial expressions at the beginning, the movement (he looks like he's fucking the back of his guitar, but it doesn't seem to be an intentional, Jagger-esque effort as self-sexualizing), the swagger, the ROCKSTARNESS, but without the APATHY or the MOCK-INDIFFERENCE- he is being COOL AS FUCK while being OPENLY HAPPY AND EXCITED TO BE THERE (i wish gay guys at bars could master this trick- you CAN be awesome and sexy and still be really happy and nice and friendly at the same time, it CAN be done).

Next, lyrical validity. The simplicity is deceptive: on the page, not hearing the song, the words are pretty good, but not apparently brilliant. what many people don't realize or take the time to think about (although, dear reader, i am sure that you are not that way, because if you're reading this you are of better stock, am i right? of course i am) is that writing a song, enunciation and delivery must be considered. simple pentameter is not enough- that's why there aren't musicals in Shakespearean verse, at least none that i know of, and if there were one, a good one, i'm sure it would be somewhat well known. Petty is an absolute master of this: his inflection elevates his lyrics ALWAYS, which is not to say he is not lyrically brilliant. He stylistically tends toward non-abstract narrative, character stuff, storytelling. sort of a seventies southern styled corridos kind of thing... i mean, he isn't the only person who does it, but he uses broader strokes than, say, Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp, who are more geared towards 'and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened to these same people' kind of narration.

check out the lyrics in their entirety here and just click the x on the popup offering to send the ringtone to your phone and you're good.

My personal lyrical highlight from the song:

She picked me up in the morning/and she paid all my tickets
Then she screamed in the car/Left me out in the thicket

Well, i never would of dreamed/that her heart
was so wicked
Yeah, but i keep/coming back
'Cause it's so hard
to kick it

HEY! HEY! HEY!

and then the exTREMELY sing-along-able chorus kicks back in.

oh, it fucking kills me, it's like bukowski is the character in the song- there's the jail reference, the fucked up woman who rages out, the addictive allusions... and let us not overlook the simplicity on the page versus the way that they turn into perfectly fitted Tetris pieces when he SINGS THE WORDS. Rapture.

Final point: this is a southern pride song. How the FUCK do you do that without being yucky or "i'm on the mountain with mama and paw drinking moonshine and i love trucks and yay trailer park realness" alá modern country, (ugh) kid rock, or even other southern-ish rock music like (UGH) Lynard Skynnard? he even makes mention of those "blue bellied devils," and not that i feel that i have to break this down for you, that's an allusion to hating the north during the civil war. BUT HE DOES IT, and- at least to me- it's not offensive. you never get the "he hates black people" vibe, you never even get a "he hates everybody above the mason-dixon line" vibe, even though he basically SAYS IT in the song. He's in character to a certain extent, though the performance doesn't read that way.

Tom Petty is exempt from many well-established guidelines for being awesome. he can call himself a rebel (even call the FUCKING SONG "REBELS"), he can do legitimate southern pride and talk shit about the north without seeming racist or even offensive while being simultaneously sincere and himself AND in character. He's a fucking wizard... not a grand imperial wizard of the ku klux klan, though, just to be clear :)

ok, this is a long post... i'm sure i'm writing this primarily for myself- i doubt many of you have any interest in tom petty, so this might be a series.

it's been cool, though! to write again, to put something on here that wasn't about grief or loss or whatever.

i think next up will be either yer so bad or swingin' or possibly room at the top, if you guys are familiar with any of those. oh! maybe i'll do insider, one of the songs that he wrote for stevie nicks but ended up keeping for himself, lol- this happened several times!

stevie nicks has said that she wanted to quit fleetwood mac after rumours and JOIN TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS. WOW, that would have been a very different musical universe, huh?

anybody who's still reading my shit, thanks for sticking it out, i know i've been difficult.