Things have been slow. And once again, hot. It’s almost October, but I think I’m going to have to run the AC tonight.

I’ve been spending many of my free cycles trying to write a trip report for last July, when I went to Vegas and Colorado. I’m about 5/8ths of the way through it, and it’s about 8,000 words. So I might have to do some sort of design to split up the days or whatever, maybe put some photos into the body of the text to break it up a bit more. I really don’t like writing stuff like this after the fact, but even with the laptop, I’ve become so apathetic about keeping track of things during the trip. I think part of it is that I’ve been to Vegas enough times now that the novelty is not there, and I can’t do a story like the one I wrote for my 30th birthday, where everything is new and wonderful to the reader. It’s become repetitive, although I do find new things to do each time. But there’s a different between introducing the concept of the Vegas buffet and finding a buffet that is a dollar less or has a make-your-own taco station. I don’t dislike going to Vegas at all, it’s just the writing part, at least without a mission, has become tedious. But I feel that if I don’t write about it, ten years from now I will be working on some project and be furious that I didn’t. At least that’s the way I feel now about a lot of things that happened ten years ago.

I did absolutely nothing this weekend except spend money that I didn’t want to spend, and mess up my nutritional situation. I’ve been getting incredibly picky about what I eat, and the thought of pretty much any genre of food disgusts me. And without the Star Trek replicator in the kitchen, I’m limited as to what I can order. And of course I could buy a ton of crap and try to cook the food myself, but that takes planning, and this whole downward spiral of bad food planning is because I don’t think about this shit ahead of time, and it’s 9:30 at night and the only thing to eat in the house is a Lean Cuisine dinner that has been in the freezer since 1963. So things have been off, which puts me in a bad mood and prevents me from doing stuff like writing books or going out or whatever.

I did manage today to go to Best Buy to replace the battery on my piece of shit cordless phone, and I picked up the boxed set for The Young Ones, the old BBC comedy that was on MTV late Sunday nights back when MTV was almost cool. I used to love that show, and then it was impossible to find, and then some crappy VHS tapes came out. Now they are on DVD, and they are great. I watched the first six of them in one go this afternoon, and they are funnier than what I remember. I did not watch the one with Mot

I can’t believe it – Ozzy is going to be in Las Vegas the day I get there. Unfortunately, tickets are going for $100 to $250, at the Palms casino. Either that is a really small place, or Sharon is really screwing people over, or both. For that price, he damn well better bite the head off of something. Paul McCartney is at the MGM Grand the next night, but it’s $150-$300. I guess I like the Beatles sort of, but not that much. I think you can get the entire Beatles discography on CD for that much.

Today seems to be one of those days. I tripped over everything in the house on the way out, and then found out my headphones are shorted out or something. So I need to go buy another pair after work. I also brought a bunch of coins so I could buy some Cokes today and it turns out that one of them is actually a French Franc. I don’t even think they use those anymore, so I guess it just becomes another coin-related keepsake to throw on the shelf with my obsolete Vegas tokens, Susan B’s, and gold dollars. (And I just got a shitload of gold dollars, because the LIRR ticket machine gave me back $10.50 in change, all in coins.)

I’ve been trying to write each night, but it’s hard, with no concrete direction for this book. I had a lot of thoughts about it this morning as I was half-asleep, so I need to think about it more, develop a plan. I spent most of last night dicking around with my Korg M1 and the MIDI hookup to my computer. I found a DOS program that shows a staff of music and reads in a MIDI file and displays it. Then it plays the song and shows you what keys to play on your keyboard; a tutor of sorts. But it wouldn’t recognize my workstation, so I gave up on it and tried to get Cakewalk reinstalled correctly. It worked, but the patches were all messed up by default, and I didn’t have a spare ten weeks to sit around and rename all of the shit to work right. So you would pick Xylophone on the program, and the workstation would change to the drum patch. Or whatever. I also downloaded the free version of PowerTools and completely crashed my machine three times before I gave up on it and put everything away. I didn’t really practice or anything either. I am thinking of getting one of those $60 piano tutor packages, but I’d probably only use it twice.

My Sick Speed CD finally showed up in the mail. I should be listening to some Zappa before I go to this Project/Object tribute show tomorrow, but I’m too lazy. I think I’m going to go review some more concerts.

It’s pouring rain, but it’s nice. I didn’t really want to leave the house today, but I felt an overwhelming guilt to go do something. But I didn’t want to spend any money, and I didn’t really know what to do, so I fell asleep and woke up to a heavy rain, which kept the nap going and fairly enjoyable.

Last night, I went to Jones Beach to see Dream Theater and Joe Satriani. It took me about two hours to get there via trains and bus, and then while I was there, it rained. (Did I mention it’s an outdoor venue?) It was good to see what it was like down there, but the whole thing sort of left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m also recovering, since it threw off my sleep/food/nutrition/hydration/etc situation so bad, I feel like I just flew around the world twice in a biplane.

I also went to see Quiet Riot on Thursday. I’m not going to write more about either of these because I’m currently making a page just for reviews of shows, as I’m going to a lot more of them. I’m also attempting to review old shows, at least as much as I can remember. I’ll put a URL out there when I have the site in a presentable state.

A bunch of other news – I am going to Vegas again at the end of October, staying at the Stardust again (but not in the rock-star suite like last January.) I am also going in January for my birthday, but hopefully with a few other people. I got tickets to see Rush the day before I go to Vegas, at MSG. $90! And I got tickets in November to see Dee Snider and a segment of his Twisted Sister band, at Lamour. So a lot of crap coming up. And I’m also extremely broke until 2003.

Very depressed otherwise, it’s just one of those days where you sit in front of the TV watching really bad movies on TBS with seven minutes of commercials every six minutes and wondering what the fuck you’re doing with your life. I think the Dream Theater concert threw me because half of the guys there were geeks that spend 20 hours a day practicing a musical instrument, and half of them were geeks who somehow managed to have a girlfriend, and then there was me. I don’t really know the importance of having a girlfriend or knowing how to play an instrument, but it really bugged the hell out of me for some reason.

OK, I should be trying to write a book now, but the air is as hot and humid as some kind of Cambodian shithole, so I think I will just play Playstation until I piss away the time until dinner.

It’s been a slow weekend, and I didn’t get out much. But today I got the bike out for a ride, and had a decent time with it. I have an e-bike – it is a retrofitted Heinzmann kit that I installed on a Mongoose mountain bike. There’s a motor built into the hub of the rear wheel, and then a self-contained battery/electronics kit rides in a modular pack that fits on a rear rack. Using a thumb-controlled throttle on the handlebars, I can get going from a dead stop up to 15 MPH or so. It also enables me to pedal normally, either alone or with the motor. The motor cuts out at 18 MPH, because that’s the limit for motor-assisted bikes as opposed to mopeds or scooters, which require a license. The battery, which weighs about 20 pounds, takes an hour or so to recharge, a bit more to get a good charge, and it lasts for about 10 miles of unassisted power on a flat surface.

So I got all charged up and headed east, trying to hit a bike lane on 34th Ave that cuts across Queens. The city has started painting these bike lanes on a few streets, and you can get maps of where to bike in local shops or online. But no drivers know what the hell a bike lane is, so you have to keep your eyes out. It’s always strange for me to ride away from my own neighborhood, into the areas that aren’t near subways or main roads. Queens rapidly becomes a car-centric area as you go east, so the landscape changes to more stores with parking lots, strip malls, and bigger areas that only cars would go.

I live on 36th Street and I watched the numbers go up slowly. The bike lane helped, but I could only hit a few lights and then I’d have to stop. Finally, I got into the hundreds, and reached the area by Shea Stadium and Flushing Meadows. I cut down 114th and ended up in the roughest neighborhood you could possibly imagine outside of a RoboCop film. The only cars I saw on the street were 100% stripped out and burned down, just the frames left. Luckily, I cut over a block and then down, and got to the park entrance.

Flushing Meadows is a strange little place. It’s a park where the old World’s Fair lived back in the 1960s. Now, all of the exhibits are gone, and there are neatly cut lanes that spoke outward, with trees and park benches. Some stuff is still there – I managed to get there on a big day for the US Open, and there were cops and limos and busses all over the place. I could hear the roar of the crowd in the tennis pavillion, probably watching the men’s singles matches. There’s also the hall of science, and those two big towers that were in that Men in Black movie.

So I rode around a bit, and went to the big fountain with the globe, which was empty. What was weird though is there were two blimps overhead, and there were these planes skywriting. But it wasn’t one plane, it looked like five planes in a line, so it worked like a dot-matrix printer. I think they may have been models of some sort, maybe flown from the blimp. But it was weird because they were skywriting these perfectly linear dot-matrix letters in a perfect circle around the fountain. I wish I would’ve brought my camera because it was a truly strange sight.

I also watched some kids with remote-control cars, in an area where they had an oval set up. These aren’t the cheap cars you get at Toys-R-Us and fill up with AA batteries. They had the variety that cost several hundred dollars, and had model airplane-type radios and chargable battery packs, with gearing that made them drive at scale speeds. It was cool watching it, because the tires must have been a “real” ply – every time they braked to go into a corner and then took off again, they would leave tread and smoke a bit. I saw a pretty incredible collision between two cars where one car lost traction and went sideways in a curve, then another t-boned him at full speed. It looked like a lot of fun, and I bet you could make tons of money sitting out there and renting out some cars and fresh batteries.

I rode around a bit, and headed back without too much incident. I hoped to save enough batteries to just coast back with the motor doing all of the work, but I lost a lot of juice and ended up only using the assist on start-up. I could get it up to about 18 with a bit of effort and then cruise through three or four lights before a red. The gearing really sucks on that bike, and there’s no high-end to really let me get going on flat spots. It’s also hard to get going from a dead stop because the battery and motor probably add 30 pounds to the 20 pound bike. It rides like a fully-loaded touring bike when I’m only hauling me, a bottle, and a small kit with a couple of tools.

So that was decent, except getting the bike in and out of the house. Other than that, I am fuming and fretting about this embryonic book, and in a strangely nostalgic mode. I could go on about this forever, but instead I want to get out of here and think about it for a while. So there.

I’m trying to remember what year Coke introduced Cherry Coke. I could do a web search but that would be too easy. Coke was always available as Cherry Coke back in the day of soda fountains, but they didn’t start putting it in a can until about 1985 or so. There used to be a pretzel shop in the mall where I grew up, and they would make a Cherry Coke for you – they had a pump full of the cherry syrup, and they’d add it to the fountain Coke. I think that approximates the taste of the original soda fountain drink, and it’s very cherry-flavored. The stuff in a can is barely any different than regular Coke, and I remember first trying it at the Elkhart county fair, when I was there with Tom G. and his folks. I think his dad was the kind of guy that had a stockpile of 200,000 cases of “old” Coke when they switched to “new” Coke, and he didnt’ like the Cherry Coke. I didn’t really like it either, but it was one of those things where I was glad I tried it, just so I had a conversation item for future use.

I almost forgot why I started talking about Cherry Coke, and that’s because they changed the can, I guess to be more inline with the new Vanilla Coke, which I still haven’t tried, and probably won’t, because I hate the taste of vanilla. I liked the previous cans better, and it’s weird that I can’t even describe what they’re like. It’s always weird how Coke and Pepsi cans morph over time and you barely notice it. I have pictures from ten years ago and Coke cans look completely fucked up. And they were even more strange in older movies, like when they had the old-school pull-off poptops. Does anyone even remember those anymore? I was collecting them, because I wanted to make a suit of chain-mail armor out of them. I think I got like one line about a foot long. Oh well.

Five new copies of Rumored are on my desk. I’m not sure where they will go, but I need to send out more review copies or something.

Slow afternoon. I need to get back to it…

Very little is going on here, just picking at these journal entries that will become a book, and trying to figure out at what point I should consider them done. They actually don’t have a lot of issues, it’s just a matter of space and size and whatnot. I also need to write some kind of introduction and figure all of that stuff out.

I’m vaguely planning what I will do in November for the next Nanowrimo contest. I am going to write a book, but I want to make sure it’s something that I will be able to iUniverse after some rudimentary cleanup. I have some thoughts on it, but it’s basically going to be like rumored but with a bit more structure and it will be much more violent, demented, obscene, and humorous in general.

Starting to plan the next Vegas trip in January – Bill wrote today to ask about it. Duffin and his chick just had a kid, so he’s probably out. If you’re interested in heading out to Vegas around January 17-22 next year, drop me a line – I’d like to get a few more people onboard.

Back to writing…

It’s been an odd little three-day weekend, although absolutely nothing noteworthy has happened. It rained, poured all weekend and I barely left the house. I was in a weird, low-level, melancholy depression that is almost enjoyable if you have no obligations or other social requirements. But the fact that holiday weekends are rare and I felt like I was on the spot to do something wonderful and exciting, I spent most of the time feeling weird.

Sometimes I think if I had absolutely nothing to do, if I had all the time in the world and no work or other obligations, this kind of depression would gradually mold itself into a creative passion. I think about the times when I’m away from work and people for long enough that I get into my own natural cycle, and don’t worry about the value of time. At the end of 2000, I took about three weeks off of work, and did absolutely, positively nothing. I was also sick during that period, and didn’t want to do anything except sleep and play Nintendo. But after a certain period of time, it all fell in place and I managed to stop thinking about what I should be doing and instead thought about what I was doing.

I guess in 2001, my time like that was in Florida, although when I was there, I felt a strong urge to be doing something touristy or whatever, and every day I would wake up and think about driving to Cape Canaveral, and every day I would chicken out. I didn’t get a lot of writing done down there, and I didn’t write a story about my trip, although sometimes I wish I would. The problem about writing travel journals, at least for me, is that after writing three or four of them, you realize that the travel changes but you don’t, and the journals are all the same. Despite where you go or what you do, you look for the same things, or look at things through the same lenses. Maybe I’m nuts in thinking this, but it’s why I’m not a travel writer.

Not much else here. Spent the day watching a so-so TV movie about the Unabomber starring Dean Stockwell as the postal inspector. I’ve been putting in a lot of time on editing the journals for the next book. And I went to the street fair on 30th Ave today for a minute, in the drizzling rain. No luck on the bamboo plants, and everything else looked pretty sub-par.

Back to editing…

I’ve been editing down this bunch of journals from 1997-1999 to make it into a book, and it’s harder than you’d think. The first thing is that it’s difficult to throw away pieces of it to get the size of the book down. I’m currently at about 140,000 words, and I want it below 100K. The other thing is that it’s so difficult to look back into time and relive that era. Nostalgia is a curse for me, and I always look back instead of forward, so doing a project that explicitly requires me to look back can be a bit pained.

The strangest part is reading about how, back then, I wasn’t interested in my life and I wanted to go back five years and live in Bloomington. Now, five years later, I wish I was in Seattle. And I bitched constantly about never writing, but I produced an incredible amount of stuff in that era. And I wished I archived more stuff, took more pictures in Indiana, so I’d have them for Summer Rain research. Now, I’m digging through photos from Seattle, and I realize I don’t have much useful stuff at all.

I do want to look forward. The more I think about it, the more I look outside of my life for validation on Rumored, the more I realize the next book should be twice as experimental, twice as dense, twice as violent, twice as detailed. I think Rumored was in 100% the right direction. And I don’t think it’s an inferior work. I think it’s a good first step. And I think there should be more.

A lot of stuff fell into place today. The landlord’s son came over and fixed my kitchen light. I have a new fixture and a new switch, and the new switch has a much “softer” feel to it, so it’s easier to flip on when you have both hands full and you jab at it with an elbow. For some reason, my cable TV mysteriously started working again, so I will be able to watch ER again. I got tickets for Quiet Riot, and I got the Pollock soundtrack. That CD is truly incredible, a very motivating 18 tracks of sound. It’s going to be up there with the Naked Lunch soundtrack as far as CDs to listen to while writing. I also got a Motorhead DVD-Audio. It’s interesting, but not entirely worth the $25 (except I will be able to lord it over Ray that I have a Motorhead thing that he doesn’t, and he’ll bitch endlessly.)

The shitty cafe around the corner from me closed. When they were getting ready to open that place, I gave it a year. If you could bet on this like this, I’d be so rich, I’d pay someone to write these entries for me.