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heard |
Tin Machine |
Tin Machine |
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Frank Zappa |
Lumpy Gravy |
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Vir Unis |
Aeonian Glow |
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Neil Schon/Jan Hammer |
No More Lies |
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Arcadia |
So Red The Rose |
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Cheerios
on the Floor Y
ou know what would make for some really great television? A
half-hour featuring Rip Torn, Stacey Keach, and Robert
Loggia waiting for an elevator. Just imagine the
possibilities for hilarity when these three former substance
abusers and world-renowned curmudgeons started to hit the
little button over and over and then began to wonder out
loud in their own profane ways what the heck was going on? I
don’t know about you, but I think that would be nothing
short of pure entertainment. But until
that show gets made, I guess you’ll just have to settle
for watching The
Queen Latifah Show
featuring ‘lifestyle makeovers’ for me and my
wife. Apparently a
few weeks ago while feeding the baby and watching
television, my wife saw one of those teasers at the end of
the Queen Latifah show followed by a 1-800 number saying
“Are you or somebody you know in need of a lifestyle
makeover?” Well, being
the spontaneous, fun-loving woman that she is my wife
decided to dial up the number and turn in one of her
relatives. Sort of a practical joke that would end when the
relative in question received a surprise phone call from
Queen Latifah saying “Hey,
we heard you have a messy house.” However,
somewhere between dialing the number and waiting for someone
to answer my wife caught herself looking around our little
apartment and thinking about how we always seem to never be
able to get enough free time and space to live our lives the
way that we would really like to live them… So in a fit
of frustration over these habits that we can never seem to
fully change, Kim called
me up at work and told me that I might be getting a call
from Queen Latifah sometime soon. All in all it was sorta
funny to think about, getting put on television just for
living our life in a state of clutter and confusion. But in
the end, we really didn’t take it all that
seriously. Then last
night, a full week after we had forgotten about the funny
little joke, the
phone rang. The guy on
the line seemed friendly enough, and it turns out that the
show is offering to pick up the tab for everything that goes
along with the thing, including airfare and accommodations
in New York. It’s a little weird, and will probably end
up being a bit embarrassing in the end --- but a free trip
to NYC, and a chance to be Dan and Kim on national
television? What else could I say but, “What the hell,
how bad could it be?” If we are
actually selected for the show they will send someone down
to Florida to assess our lifestyle, and hopefully help
instill some sense of efficiency and simplicity into the
garbled pile of stuff we like to call our apartment. Then
the next day we would be jetted up to the big apple where
they would then do makeovers on us, helping us to get our
own personal act together, as it were. After we
hung up the phone there was this feeling of exhilaration,
this sorta of cool embarrassed feeling that you only get
when you are about to do something sorta silly, sorta
self-depreciating, kinda like that time I got talked into
entering a Mel Gibson look-a-like contest (I lost), or that
time Kim got on the ice during intermission of a minor
league hockey game in Tallahassee to compete in a
goal-shooting contest (she lost, but looked damn sexy doing
it). But then after a couple of minutes, it started to sink
in, and we sort of realized what we had actually done.
We had
agreed to let a nationally syndicated television show come
to our house and document the fact that we live more or less
like slobs and don’t take much time worrying about our
wardrobe. Somewhere
between taking pictures of our crowded little apartment and
thinking about what they might do to us… we got a
little scared. It’s not entirely pleasant to realize
that you’re messy enough for a TV show to notice. But
the place is a wreck, and it always seems to end up looking
like hell no matter how often we try to straighten it out.
Something needs to be done. One the main
things we told the producers about was our apparent
inability to throw away anything with any sort of
sentimental or quasi-historical value. To illustrate this,
Kim took pictures of me holding several of my favorite
t-shirts, most of which were riddled with holes and tears of
various shape and size, several of which I haven’t even
worn in years. There was the ‘I saw Elvis’ shirt
that Susan traded me for a black T-shirt I used to wear (I
took my shirt of and gave it to her, then she took her shirt
off and gave it to me, no way in hell I’m throwing
that
away), the Rock 105 shirt I got when I spent the day there
on senior shadowing day back in 1990 (which even I admit
could probably go), one of the few remaining hand-made
Groove Puppy shirts from our gig at Einstein a Go-Go (throw
away a piece of rock and roll history? Sacrilege!), and this
faded black shirt I picked up somewhere in college (it was
probably Gristina’s - lord knows half my t-shirts were
his anyways) that has holes in it so big you can stick your
whole hand through it (but it’s
sooo
comfortable). And
that’s really only the tip of the iceberg. I have a
pile of twisted guitar cables that I have been lugging
around with me for years, even though I am positive that
half of them don’t work. Kim has enough wigs to make a
full-sized rug out of. We have a collection of silly straws.
We have three year-old magazines that we keep around just in
case… just in case… (wait, why do we still keep
those things?), old notebooks from college classes, disks
for software that we have long since replaced, lids to pots
and pans that we no longer have… There’s
a room in our apartment we don’t even
go
into
because it’s so messy. It used to
be the room we kept the computers in, but it got to the
point where it was so cluttered that we eventually took the
computers out of it, and closed the door. Do you understand
what I am saying? The room got so messy that we cut our
losses got the important equipment and personnel out, and
never went back. It’s a mirror image of the American
retreat from Saigon! I mean some
things we keep because they are meant to be kept (our comic
book collection, our toys, our various collectable
lunchboxes and hats).. but perhaps there is a problem in the
method we live our lives with when you can’t reach into
our spare change jar to get out a couple of quarters without
pulling out at least one guitar pick. I swear to
god we must have sixty coffee mugs. I used to make a habit
out of taking a trophy coffee mug from any place I worked
at, but I haven’t done that in years.. where the hell
are all these other mugs coming from? We
pack
rat. I
don’t know why we do it, We just always
have. I remember
once about a year ago I had a tire blowout on the road, and
when I opened up my trunk to change it I found surf wax, my
LA Kings hat, a well-worn copy of J.D. Salinger’s
Catcher in the Rye, and what looked like the remnants
of a Wendy’s combo meal that was mutating into
something that was not of this earth… as a matter of
fact, the only thing I wasn’t able to find was my tire
iron. I wish I
could say that everyone I know has a drawer in their kitchen
that’s filled with leftover packages of soy sauce and
long expired coupons from pizza places, but the more I think
about it, the more it seems like it’s only
us. But
what’s worse is that at some point, our penchant to
clutter our lives with needless stuff spilled over into out
and out messiness. First off,
we have four indoor cats - keeping the litterbox clean is a
constant losing battle. Then you add
to that the baby. Curren is getting old enough to eat
Cheerios -- he loves them. But he also loves to throw them
on the floor. And believe me, we try very hard to clean them
up, but no matter what we do, there’s always at least
one or two of those toasty O’s that we invariably miss.
You know,
when you think about it from a distance, it is embarrassing
to say that the floor of my place is covered in food, but
after you chase the kid around all day, the energy to pick
up every last cheerio isn’t always there. Eventually
you have to look in the mirror and see that we’ve grown
to accept our slovenly ways. We have found ways to convince
ourselves that as long as we are able to have the basic
happiness we want, a little dust and dirt isn’t really
that much of a bad thing. I mean, we don’t like to have
a dirty house, not at all. But when you can only write, make
music, do art, and relax when the baby is sleeping, you
don’t always take the extra time to put away every last
dish. I’ll
admit it. I’m a little lazy when it comes to cleaning.
My grunge tolerance is pretty high. I can kinda look the
other way when it comes to a messy house. And
it’s not like it’s a family trait. My parents were
incessant neat-niks.
But even as a kid I didn’t put a while lot of effort
into making sure that everything was spotless. I was one of
those kids who didn’t see the point in making the bed
every morning (you’re only going to mess it up again
anyway) and I was a firm believe that the quickest route to
getting a room cleaned was to shove everything into a closet
or under the bed. It drove my parents nuts that I
didn’t go in for hospital corners (are you kidding me?
my dad is ex-navy and my mother is a nurse) but I never
really saw the sense in it. I have other things to do, and
if nobody else sees it, what’s the harm? But recently
I think I have started to see the light. Partly because I am
sick of living in apartments. Every time we sign another
lease I am reminded of how temporary everything is. I
can’t help thinking that somewhere down the road
we’ll have to pack everything back up, clean the floors
as best we can to get our deposit back, and then we’ll
start all over again. It’s getting old. I want a
place where I don’t have to find room to set up my
equipment. I want a place where I don’t have to worry
about placing my television somewhere where it won’t
bother the neighbors. I don’t want to hear arguments
above me, doors slamming below me. And because I am tiring
of the rented life, I think I am starting to treat these
rented places we’re in with less and less reverence.
I’m starting to see these places as just road stops on
the way to some residence off in the future. But what
else is happening is that because we have pushed keeping the
place extra clean farther and farther down the priority
list, we are starting to run out of room to do the things
that we want to do. For example - with all the bookcases and
baby chairs and exercise bikes and overloaded coffee tables
there is simply no room at all to set up all the wires and
pedals and whatnot that go into my electric guitar rig. The
same problem applies if Kim ever wants to work on her
painting. There’s just no room for a canvas. And even
if we were to try and make room for these things in our
current place, that takes time away from the inspiration
that made us want to do that in the first place. I know that
sounds whiny, but it is what it is. I would rather just kick
on the amplifier and go rather than having to get everything
out, hook everything up, and then try to remember what it
was I wanted to work on. Plus, the
baby’s need for attention and care cuts heavily into
our free time. All day when Kim is with the boy she can only
do her own things when he’s sleeping. And a lot of the
time she is so worn out by then that all she can do is sleep
right along with him. It cuts into the time for her art as
well as the time for any sort of house cleaning. And then
when I get home from work I do my best to take him off of
her hands so that she can do whatever she needs to, which
ends up taking time away from my writing, music, and
housecleaning because the kid’s still at an age where
he has to be watched every moment. Somebody’s
got to watch him, and whoever it is really can’t
be doing anything else. Not reading, not writing, not
art, not music, not cleaning, not anything. So what
happens is that when the rare free moment does present
itself, we try as hard as we can to accomplish as much as we
can, as fast as we can. And If I am inspired to write a
story or work on a song, you had better believe I will work
on that before I worry about the last time the floor was
vacuumed. I know it
sounds selfish, but I want a life. I will do the dishes
later. So even
though it might be a little embarrassing to admit it, in the
end it might be worth a little egg on our face to bring in
an objective outsider to help Kim and I understand a
different way to approach things to where we could have the
best of both worlds. The part I
am the most scared of is the personal makeover. The first
thing I see happening when they say that is that they cut
off all my hair. I mean, I know it’s only hair - but I
like my hair long. I personally believe that I look like an
absolute dork with short hair. But I can already see that if
this is truly going to be a “lifestyle makeover,”
then anything that reeks of old traditions will be the first
to go.
even
better than the kid who eats
worms.
(12-11)…
oh, if only I were joking.
she
narced us
out instead.
You
only live once, right?
Yikes.
You
put it off for another time.
What
I really want is a house.
The
closer Curren gets to crawling and walking, the more
dangerous everything in the house becomes. Even with
extensive baby proofing of corners, electrical
outlets, and whatever, there is still the risk that he
could bump into a wall, take a hard fall onto the
floor, or eat something we never in a million years
would foresee him cramming into his mouth.
To
be honest, we could probably use the help.
I
just can’t decide if this is going to be a good
thing or not.
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