chapter 9

Hello boys and girls,

It has been a while, hasn't it?  I think I should getta beer before starting in on this.  brb.

yes, so I got to thinking today.  I left Florida for a reason.. that reason being an overwhelming feeling of destiny that had embraced me and moved me in this life-changing direction.  I felt as if I was being pushed here from every direction from a multitude of positive and logical sources.

So here I am.  I was on such a positive upswing, everything was falling into place, my tide was flowing.  But shortly after arriving, I fell into the ebb and a sort of nasty downward spiral of emotional crapola.  Maria told me it would happen, that I'd become depressed, and at the time, I knew she was right but I didn't care.  The past few months have been low, and lower.  I write now because I feel that the tide is changing once again, and it starts with the remembrance of that original feeling of purpose.  I moved out here for a reason.

While I was visiting Orlando over the holidays, my apartment was "burglarized".  I always say "robbed", as it sounds much more accurate to my ears, but for technical purposes, I use the B word.  I lost many, many, many, things.  Most of them I don't really miss, but few of them I miss very much.  I think most of all would be my Army of Darkness "Ash VS. Evil Ash" 2-pack that I had personally signed by the chin himself, Mr. Bruce Campbell.  When I was a boy, I had a birthday at the failed Florida theme park flavor of the year, Boardwalk & Baseball.  They had some bitchin' rollercoasters, but the coolest was that you could have your very own personal baseball card made.  You could pick your stats, your team, fucking everything.  That's gone, along with the rest of the baseball and various other trading cards I collected as a kid.  Both of my fucking guitars, POD2.0, and amp.. gone.  Now I just look around and say, "why the fuck didn't they take this?" or "thank God they didn't take this".

It puts things in perspective, somewhat.  Kind of like after "Jack" has his apartment blown up in Fight Club.. most of the shit I honestly won't miss.. some of it I probably won't even realize is missing for a few years.  The worst part is knowing that someone was in my fucking place, going through my shit, and all of that.  I want to catch the person who did it really fucking bad.  It kind of makes you paranoid, too.  You start wondering who did it, everyone becomes suspect.  It's pretty lame.

But back to the general "how's it going?" thing.  The answer is a mediocre okay.  It's not fucking spectacularly awesome out here, the people aren't measurably cooler, the women definitely don't stack up against what Orlando had to offer, although.. I'm very biased in that category thanks to a certain girl whom I wish on a daily basis that I was still with.  It's basically the exact same to me, except I'm about 100x more lonely, work with old Russian guys instead of crazy Orlando teenagers, and pay about twice as much for rent.  Oh, but one enormous perk/difference is the amount of great bands that tour through here.  Since I've moved here, I've seen:  Massive Attack, TV on the Radio, Beck, Blackalicious, Blonde Redhead, Basement Jaxx, Peeping Tom, The Prodigy, MSI, Shiny Toy Guns, Tenacious D, Primus, Reverend Horton Heat, and Rob Zombie.  This week I'm seeing Garbage and Joey Santiago & David Lovering (of the Pixies) play with The Martinis at the same show.  Next month, it's Sebadoh and in April it's RATM, AIR, Bjork, and RHCP among many others at Coachella.

I miss you, guys.. and as odd as it is to admit it, I miss the town.  Two nights ago, I had a dream that I moved back to Orlando.. and for some reason my Mom was so upset.. she was crying.  I was moving back to take over my old store because I recently found out that my old Store Manager quit and my old District Manager is leaving, too.  I think subconciously, my inner manager wants to take control of my old store, (which they'd never let me do in reality).  But that was the first dream that I had that specifically entailed me moving back.. most of the time I just dream about specific people or places from my past.  I -always- dream about the house I grew up in.

anyway, to make a long post short, (too late!), I'm alive and well, but not too terribly happy.. not for the moment, anyway.  I hope to change all that in the not-to-distant future.  and again, I do miss you all.  I know I never call and never write, but that's classic jake, for you.  If you do ever wanna talk, I'm here.

goodnight.

I saw Massive Attack last night at the Hollywood Bowl.  It was pretty fucking amazing.  The bowl is a seated outdoor venue, kind of like the clamshell at Lake Eola, except about the size of the TD Waterhouse Centre.  I had a seat in the lower part of the nosebleeds, on the benches.  It was all good because you could still see everything and they had 3 huge video screens, kind of like they had on the main stage at Coachella a couple of years ago.

Now, I didn't know what to expect.  I'd never been to a 'seated' concert before.  The concept, honestly, doesn't make much sense to me.  How do you dance?  Well, I invented a little something I like to call "bench rockin".  This is when you drink a lot of beer and sit in your seat and just close your eyes and groove to the music.  You tune out any annoying people that may be around you talking about inane bullshit and focus on the beat and the lights that you can still see even though you've got your eyes closed.  It's kinda Stevie Wonder-esque, but it works.

For the most part, they played Mezzanine.  They played a couple of tracks from 100th Window and Protection, and not much from anything else.  TV on the Radio was pretty good, but they didn't play Mr. Grieves, which was the only song I really cared about hearing from them.  The LA Weekly said that the majority of the people that would attend would go to see TV on the Radio, and I think they were right to a certain degree.  Certainly, they're currently making waves, where as Massive is more of an old school establishment.  I can appreciate the talent and sound of TVOTR, but I don't see how they're getting any kind of mass appeal for a sound that seems so eclectic.  I'd seen them once before when they opened for The Faint back in Orlando, and they just seem like a good jam band.  I don't know what my point here is.  Maybe it's that I find it hard to believe that some people might hold a band like TVOTR in higher regard than Massive Attack.  It just seems unethical.

But whatever.  The show was fucking amazing and the bowl is an incredible venue.  The fucking Beatles played there, for Christ's sake.  And did I mention it was free?  Yeah, the company paid for my ticket.  Nice benefit, eh?

Along this path to California, there have been little milestones that have struck me as comical and/or cosmic, but regardless, have made me feel like this move was somehow in my cards, as if it were destiny.

One such example, and probably one of the strongest, is the fact that I live across the street from the Puente Hills Mall.  That doesn't sound all to cosmic, and it didn't to me either, until I learned of the history of this mall.  I was outside smoking at the Outback Steakhouse in the parking lot of this mall with a few of the employees who were on break when I started a conversation with them about how old the mall was.  It has an ancient looking neon sign that features this bitchin rainbow.  It looks like something straight outta the 60's.  They started telling me how there used to be a very conservative owner who wouldn't let Hot Topic or Spencer's have stores, (all this without knowing where I work), but had since been bought and remodeled.

Then the waitress girl starts talking about how Back To The Future was filmed there.

I freaked out.  I couldn't fucking believe it.

The parking lot where the DeLorean first goes back in time with Einstein in the front seat was located at this very mall.  THIS WAS THE TWIN PINES MALL.

I still can't fucking believe it.  Needless to say, whether you understand it or not, this was a sign to me that I was supposed to be living in this exact spot.  I won't try to explain it any further, but this struck me as mystical.

And now, for the pictures.

 

and then

 

Keep in mind that it has been remodeled since the movie was made, but it's still clearly recognizable.

not to be confused with SkyCraft.

They're my new cable company.  They're coming to install my cable and broadband tomorrow.  Despite the name, they're a cable company, not a satellite service.

My point is that after tomorrow, you can expect to see more posts from me as I'll be online all the fuggin time.

woo-ha!

Don't go all day without eating anything except for one hot dog then decide to drink 10 PBR's in a period of 3 hours.  You will feel like trash the next day and the LA sun will melt your brain.

One thing that really rules about working here is that I am surrounded by televisions playing FUSE all day.  But one thing that really pisses me off about FUSE is that they've been running this Cooper Tires commercial atleast 6-8 times in my work day.  The problem is that the commercial uses the first track from Jane's Addiction's latest album, "True Nature" off of Strays.

I love this song, but it distracts me every time it comes on and then I wanna hear the rest of the album.

There's some other commercial that uses The Postal Services "Such Great Heights" and it does the same thing, but it's not as distracting since it's only instrumental.

If you're a Jane's fan and have ignored their new stuff, you have made a foolish decision.  This album is seriously just as good as any of their material, which says a lot since the rest of their material is the fucking bomb.

My right contact has the tiniest little rip in it.  Either these contacts are crap, or I'm not taking proper care of them.  Anyway, now my right eye has decided to generate massive eye boogers whenever I wear them.  Lame.  They're my last set, too.  I've gotta order more, and get a sweet new pair of glasses.  Any suggestions on frames?

Hello VOX.  Hello everyone.

Goodbye LJ.

This is a nice, neat, professional looking, real-deal blog type atmostphere.  I dig it.  I think I'm going to blog here exclusively, but we'll see how that goes.  Let me know if you need an invite.. I've gotta few.  Like everything else, I'll be limiting my friends, or "neighbors" as they're known here on VOX, to those I know personally who are committed to reading and commenting on my blog.  No more lame LJesque friends who never post and never comment.

Stay tuned for more adventures from nueve in LA!