At long last the Rhi-Post returns for Edition # 3.
Thank you to all the contributors, readers and supporters.
We endeavor to return to a more frequent publication, please enjoy this
edition!

In this Issue:

A Rebel Without A Pause
by Butch Rosser, DJBrotherDarkness
s1s5: Girl Talk, About The Passion

“The best ideas are common property.”
–Seneca

“I can’t tell you what it really is
I can only tell you what it feels like.”
–Marshall Mathers

I’m halfway to slumped over in a chair, and I literally have no idea what’s possessing me after what I’ve seen and done tonight to keep me upright and conscious to spit this out in the dark of the night other than the fact I’m a vampire. All I know is what it feels like:

like some celestial bully took my ribcage and shook it upside down for lunch money, a process that started some 7 hours ago and shows no signs of abating
like John Cena slammed a chair full-speed between my shoulderblades when my back was turned in front of 15,000 strong at a Monday Night Raw
like my eyes don’t have an X and Y axis but’re rather marbles being fiddled by a nervous suspect in a precinct
like my jaw will never hinge again
like every single part of my legs from the Calvin Kleins down is hanging on by mere strings and no longer full tendons
like a goat headbutted me in my right ankle

There’s so much to remember. So much.

Read More

Photo: by Uncast
Rockstar

Meet Sunshineblonde

by Sunshineblonde

I was asked months ago to be part of the Rhi-Post and I was so excited about it. I had planned on whipping out a quick piece to contribute to the first edition. However, for the first time in my life, I had writers block! For anyone who knows me knows that I always
have something to say and have a hard time staying quiet! It was so strange to feel like I had nothing to say. I think about it now and wonder if it was stress induced writers block caused by my job? I will never know for sure. I first thought about writing a column
dealing with things in the medical field, since that is what I do. I have extensive medical knowledge and thought about doing some sort of Q & A. I decided to scrap that idea.
BORING!

One thing I would like to do is give you a brief run down on my life.

Read More

Photo: by Uncast
The Bay, uncast’s work view

Heartagrams
 by Andrea Costanzo AKA The Junkenstien

The Break-Up and The Lovers Re-United

My love relationship with music, my lover and partner, during the best and worst years of my life,
was, recently, put to the test.

So many bands creating mediocrity where they once weaved simple patterns of pure emotion that
(like only music can do) spoke to my soul, without the need of any language, that wasn’t notes and vibes.

Read More

Photo: by Uncast

French Fry Man

Dance Like EVERYONE is Watching
By Rhian
My mother always says I was dancing before I was walking. Hell, she says I was dancing in womb. All I wanted to do was dance, music was all over the house, it was such a gift to appreciate all kinds of music, very young.

I started my first dance classes, tap, jazz, and baton. The tap recital piece was to ‘Short People’, our costumes were little white pants, suit jacket and top hat. One of the girls never closed her top buttons. I thought she was a slut. I was 5. My mom asked me if I wanted to take other things for a session as she was a dancer too and not wanting to push me into her direction. I was horrible at skating and my father fashioned a crash pad for my wee butt. I took gymnastics, which I liked, but still I just wanted to dance.

Read More

I was asked months ago to be part of the Rhi-Post and I was so excited about it. I had planned on whipping out a quick piece to contribute to the first edition. However, for the first time in my life, I had writers block! For anyone who knows me knows that I always
have something to say and have a hard time staying quiet! It was so strange to feel like I had nothing to say. I think about it now and wonder if it was stress induced writers block caused by my job? I will never know for sure. I first thought about writing a column
dealing with things in the medical field, since that is what I do. I have extensive medical knowledge and thought about doing some sort of Q & A. I decided to scrap that idea.
BORING!

One thing I would like to do is give you a brief run down on my life. My story starts as a child raised in a Pentecostal home with loving parents, who I thought were way too strict. For crying aloud….I could not even own a radio! Friends tell me that I really did
live like the kids in the movie Footloose! My dad’s mother was a preacher. I married young unfortunately. I lived a rough life as a married woman. I was emotionally and physically abused. I think that was the worst part of my life. It was worse than living
with an alcoholic right after I divorced. Yeah, I made bad man choices. I own up to it. Hell, I had two major tragedies happen to me at age 17, so I guess I can understand what happened. Let’s see…I was raped at age 17 by my boyfriend/future husbands best friend.
The worst thing though at age 17 was finding out I was born without a uterus and would never have children naturally. What the hell! A real self-esteem buster.

Enough of the drama! One thing that is very important to me in life is music. No matter what I have gone through in life, it has been my lifesaver. Nothing beats the feeling you
get when you hear a loved song. You close your eyes…..tilt your head back and just soak in the feelings the words and the music fill your head with. I feel lucky in the fact that I like so many genres of music. Some people do not give everything a chance and I feel
sorry for them. Open up your mind and hearts people! Get to know new music and new people. I do not know what my next entry will be for the Rhi-Post. I think I will take it as it comes. Maybe I will talk about how I recently decided that I am a Pansexual. I was
tired of everyone else trying to label me, so I found my own label instead. For those of you who do not know, a pansexual is considered “gender blind” and loves a person for the person they are and not their gender. I guess that is it until next time!

Here are a few songs I like. Enjoy!
Austra – “Lose It”:  http://youtu.be/k1b3fCr8Co0
Matt & Kim Album Sidewalks- Silver Tiles: http://youtu.be/sMgO235XsEw
Sick of Sarah “Overexposure”: http://youtu.be/Z1RZOMu2nhk
Hunter Valentine – Revenge **UNCUT, Explicit Version: http://youtu.be/QA_sqJwza9U

Sunshineblonde

Twitter: @Sunshineblonde8
Gmail: Sunshineblonde8173@gmail.com

I started my first dance classes, tap, jazz, and baton. The tap recital piece was to ‘Short People’, our costumes were little white pants, suit jacket and top hat. One of the girls never closed her top buttons. I thought she was a slut. I was 5. My mom asked me if I wanted to take other things for a session as she was a dancer too and not wanting to push me into her direction. I was horrible at skating and my father fashioned a crash pad for my wee butt. I took gymnastics, which I liked, but still I just wanted to dance.

I was invited to a pre-professional program at 12, Jazz, Tap, Ballet, Lyrical, Modern. We were also competitive which I thrived on, and the technical exams
were hard, but I consistently ranked at the top of each style in Highly Commended. Feeling your body work, move, be alive – so freeing. To do the pre pointe and pointe, I was in heaven. Luckily I was a rock and roll ballerina and never had to wear the pancake tutus. I leave that for the gents of the Ballet Trocodero.

We performed for the Governor General – Canada’s Head of State representing the Queen. Every stage was mine, indoors or out. I danced with my heart, my eyes, my soul. Tyra didn’t invent smizing. I embraced every role to the nines. At one competition we were doing a hip-hopish tap number which was groundbreaking at the time. Getting up from a floor series my left foot popped. I suddenly thought that I lost it for the team but got up, kept smiling, and finished the dance. Come awards time, I was in teary apologies to the team. We won first place. I was called out by the judges even with compliments. Noone knew I had a hairline fracture in my left ankle until after.

Bring on the triple threats, I was 15 in my first professional musical theatre company. School, dance, rehearsals, I was in it to win it. I loved it so much.
I started teaching at 17. My mom retired her pro career at 17.

That next summer was the sign of something bad. I was ill with Hepatitis A and Mono. My doctor wanted me to be off for at least 6 months, but I only took off two as I wanted to do college, TV Broadcasting. I was finally strong enough to teach again, it was wonderful. This group of little girls I had were very special to me. They started when they were mostly 5, and with me until graduation. They came with me when I opened my studio, funny seeing my kids drive themselves to classes.

I took them to competitions and wanted them to have the experiences I did.
They came to dance at my wedding even. It’s beautiful to see them as successful young women today and we are often in touch. To see them embrace the power, the beauty, winning accolades – every time I was so proud.

Something went wrong. I was having migraines for months, I had a hard time understanding why I was on the floor crying because the studio was on a second floor, and often I had to slide down the stairs. I was 30. I was supposed to be happy, not anxious. I moved the studio to the community centre I also taught at the next year. Teaching a ballet class a changement – I landed wrong.
My feet were swelling, and it hurt so much. I had to stop teaching right then.

My doctor took 3 months to do blood work. These tests changed my life. He diagnosed me with lupus. He was a sweet grandfather type and cried with me because he knew what losing my dance career on a dime was going to do.

I was 33. It’s not very nice to take the feet away from a rock and roll ballerina.

“The best ideas are common property.”
–Seneca

“I can’t tell you what it really is
I can only tell you what it feels like.”
–Marshall Mathers

I’m halfway to slumped over in a chair, and I literally have no idea what’s possessing me after what I’ve seen and done tonight to keep me upright and conscious to spit this out in the dark of the night other than the fact I’m a vampire. All I know is what it feels like:

like some celestial bully took my ribcage and shook it upside down for lunch money, a process that started some 7 hours ago and shows no signs of abating
like John Cena slammed a chair full-speed between my shoulderblades when my back was turned in front of 15,000 strong at a Monday Night Raw
like my eyes don’t have an X and Y axis but’re rather marbles being fiddled by a nervous suspect in a precinct
like my jaw will never hinge again
like every single part of my legs from the Calvin Kleins down is hanging on by mere strings and no longer full tendons
like a goat headbutted me in my right ankle

There’s so much to remember. So much.

I remember staggering out of that little sweatbox having completely sweated through my Word Life tee, using the rail as a support and then when that was gone, just staggering through the little oddly boxed lobby. I can only assume I looked like a non-functional alcoholic. Confetti (from either the 2nd or 3rd drop, like I can even remember) was falling off of my head, and I was reaching up to my forehead to knock off the couple pieces that’d adhered there because of the sweat. I saw a friend of mine and we both smiled gratefully at each other before dodging hugging, and even the shaking of hands to grasp each other’s wrists with the circumferences of our wrists. She’s an awesome human being and I think under other circumstances we could’ve caught up with a fine conversation. She walked away into the night. My mouth felt like I’d been chasing cotton balls with spiderwebs. I let her keep going.

She was merely the third female friend I’d lost in the chaos up to that point over the course of a couple of hours, and that was nothing compared to outside.

Outside.

I think I might remember this above everything else. Maybe forever.

People looked flat-out stunned. Desperate searches for friends were on. A couple of enterprising bakers were just a skoch downstream selling wares, profitting off chaos, the American Dream’s cousin the Captialist Nightmare. People had lost their clothes, their shoes, some their shirts. A young man in a ripped shirt was pissing between parked cars. Someone was on the pavement face-up, a disoriented smile on their face. Those who could coalesced into vehicles and fled the scene.

As for me? I ran into two other friends. I think I said something in English to them. I’m not sure. I staggered into the night for Powerade, the hookup I can’t quite shake of beverages; something I deride and insult openly in public when opportunity presents itself but a time or two (or three or four or…) a year I find myself sucking it down like Keith Richards finding a barbituate in St. Tropez in 1971. Tonight was one of those times. I felt it. I saw it in the barely more than waking dead that were clogging the roads, parking spaces, and greedily devouring bear claws. I needed that Powerade something fierce. Despite having a healthy dinner that covered all of the major four food groups (meat, cheese, fries, milkshake) I felt like I’d fired the biggest round of my sexual life all over Scarlett Johansson’s chest four times in succession. And it suddenly occured to me as I staggered out of 7/11 for my first walk of the evening (the one where I wouldn’t be stunned into silence over the thrill of it all for 45 minutes straight with the only soundtrack being cars passing and my own footfall) that what remaining brain cells that were still firing had all only one thought:

Yeah.

That Girl Talk show was rigoddamnmotherfuckingdonkuawesome.

I talked a bit about personal musical heroes in my last missive. I will be doing so again here, but with a bigger one in this instance.

I am to Girl Talk what Bell Biv Devoe is to New Edition. I am the Kourtney and Khloe to his Kim, the suicide attempts to his Rebecca Black video. Without him, my life as I know it would be exactly not that.

Let me elucidate.

A little over four years ago I was drifting aimlessly through life just having been divested of my corporate employment in which for some reason it was important that I looked like an extra from Shining Time Station while I gave out information and fetched the door. Not the Playboy Mansion of jobs, I admit, but it put money in my wallet and for the first time in a while gave me a reason to have a wallet. I don’t remember who hipped me to it, exactly: I think my friend Michael had seen something on Pitchfork about it. He asked me if I’d heard Girl Talk. I said I had no idea who they were. He told me they was a he. For a second, I briefly thought he was running the Who/the Band/Yes game at me. He then confessed what for him was a rarity: he’d been listening to this Girl Talk in succession for days in a row at the expense of the rest of his catalogue. Michael (or whomever) never did this. I asked him “Well, what sort of style is this Girl Talk?”

There was silence. I thought my modem had died out on me. This was also in the dark days pre-Wikipedia.

Michael said to me after this pause “It sounds like everything ever.”

Since I am a vampire, and the farthest thing from tied down at this writing, that may’ve been the most important thing anybody’s ever said to me. Not the most beautiful, not the funniest, but the most important. Those five words set off a Chinese fire drill in my head. Questions sprung to mind so fast you would’ve thought I was the Riddler’s dry-cleaner in the late sixties. The $64,000 apex of which was: how the fuck could music sound like everything ever? Music belonged to PLACES, categories, boxes one could check off if they were so quiz—

–that’s when it hit me. I had what were the vague stirrings of what music that sounded like everything ever sounded like. ONCE.

I’d walked out of work with my Walkman (I told this happened a long time ago) set to my favorite local rock station. I was picking out a CD when it happened. I still remember the exact block downtown it happened on, especially since it’s under three minutes away from my current place of employment. I was listening to Eric B. & Rakim.

How the hell was this local rock station playing Eric B. & Rakim? How the hell was anybody playing Eric B. & Rakim on a Saturday night? Had I died in my sleep and I was walking in heave–that’s when it happened. I heard Jack White singing.

Eric B. & Rakim were still going on in the background.

Pieces of my brain were being picked up by homeless people in a four-block radius for the rest of the month. It was My Doorbell. It was Paid In Full,

Simply put, it was Party Ben’s Pump Up The Doorbell.

It was the first mashup I’d ever heard. It was crack-level addictive, and the fact he’d mixed two of my favorite songs (currently, at that time, and ever (forever ever, forever ever)) sure upped the dosage. I staggered into my favorite bar at the time with my flabber in a state of gasted to the nth. I tried tuning in again. I never heard that program again, and wouldn’t hear that mashup again for almost two years. But it laid dormant, like a splinter in my mind, driving me mad. It was that splinter Michael had accidentally grazed when he’d said what he said.

Journalism majors don’t get to be journalism majors by letting sleeping dogs lie, at least the good ones don’t.

I asked him to send it to me.

I knew it was called Night Ripper. It should’ve been renamed what it was: a 16-song long red pill. It was the familiar wrapped and undercut with the unfamiliar. What the White Stripes & Rakim (as I had thought of it as the time) had merely flirted with me for four minutes, this album would grab me, throw me into the bushes, and ride me like a dime story pony for the better part of an hour, leaving me a gasping, disoriented, but ultimately happy mess.

If only Powerade had been around.

Once the shock went away, I listened to it, and relistened to it. It was like being a Simpsons addict, something I knew all too well: you had the main level jokes, but if you paid attention in the background and had a history of things that happened in the show, it was like finding easter eggs. Hell, this happened so long ago I’m not sure those DVD treats were even called that at that point. But that was it. That was what took hold. It turned it from a splinter to Jack Torrance feng shuing a door at the Overlook, so far as my hard drive and future were concerned. I ran online and started looking up Eric B & Rakim and the White Stripes. And when I found that, there was a whole list of other links that were approved by the maker of this particular mashup of other DJs and a whole San Francisco scene.

I was suddenly occupied. Of course I was.

I knew kung fu.

That winter I held a holiday party at my apartment, which mostly consisted of two things: me chugging Grey Goose from the bottle and me burning copies of Night Ripper for my friends as secondary Christmas presents. I got hooked on their reactions quickly. For many of them, they were being birthed into it the same way that I was. They didn’t have the extreme reaction to the music that I did — of course not, they were a bunch of civilians and civilians in training — but that tilted head up look of disorientation and confusion was like watching a dog think it’s people. The volume went up as the drinks flowed and the night went longer. People thought they might’ve heard something they didn’t before. Rememebered songs their brain had buried four tons of crap on top of. And I did hear well into January people were bumping this in their own Walkmans and cars. They didn’t have the extent of the reaction that I did, but they got the splinter of it.

And what’s happened since? Girl Talk put out two more albums although to his credit, all it took was Night Ripper putting the fair use argument in the music industry to this extreme and his own craftsmanship to blow up like the World Trade. And me? Those people in San Francisco gave me way too much of their time and their faith, and now I’m going to be starting the first official all-mashup night in San Diego after two shows I performed at in the Bay Area mothership got over a combined 3,000 in attendance. I’m a mashup addict.

It began with Night Ripper, and the latest iteration is all the Adele “Rolling In The Deep” ones I downloaded when I first got up this morning, four or five of them.

But that was this morning.

This evening?

After a 103 fever and a couple of my own gigs kept me from seeing him, I saw Girl Talk live for the first time. I can only think about how appropriate it was seeing the familiar wrapped in the unfamiliar all over again: he got progressively more nude as the night went on, but managed to stay in a pair of gym shorts at show’s end. The show ended, but not after one encore, but a second one fueled by a ONE MORE SET! chant that rocked my ears as well as anything else he’d done all night. Balloons of myriad sizes and confetti fell from the sky like a Flaming Lips show, but they were also girls on shoulders (no guns in holsters, thankfully), and guys on shoulders, and both genders taking the opportunity to crowdsurf at various intervals. No longer allowed to pull front row folks on stage a gaggle of young locals came out with him, right away, and proceeded to dance their ass off and fire lengthy toilet paper rolls into the crowd.

And the LED screen embossed with the massive G and T flickered on and off throughout the night, transfixing eyeballs as they seared them with a rainbow of effects from the notorious two-word logo to a taco to simply dazzling color schemes. The moments of temporary darkness, where the crowd seemed to be exhaling as one, the rare intervals where one could get a moment of surcease from DANCE FUCKER DANCE that personified what ended up being a set longer than any of his CDs at something resembling the 90-minute mark, were like small miracles. And then, blinded and enthralled by the light, it was back to pogoing, grinding, bumping, two-stepping, and all of that. All types of people were on top of each other sweating and going blind and it didn’t matter an iota.

It was so appropriate he started with his opening gambit from his latest All Day, Ludacris/Black Sabbath. Because out in the lobby, they were selling a shirt that said All Night with his logo splashed across the front. And that’s how far the crowd from youngsters to old men in khakis & plaid-covered Keds (no, seriously) seemed fueled up to go for, as he not only dipped into the familiar stuff from that and Ripper but Feed The Animals (the middle child release) so far as well, in addition to making some new additions and twists on familiar things with newer songs since their album release–quelle surprise that the Pittsburgh native would be bumping Black & Yellow hard almost full-length in his set, even if the Cars were behind it.

That was my favorite thing about Girl Talk, when I first found out about him: he was being Clark Kent. He was an engineer who’d ditch out early Friday, go fly somewhere, do a show or two, fly back in Sunday night and pray he’d survive Monday without falling over. Of course, those days are long gone. But it was comforting to see him work as if he had a day job to go back to when the lights went up and the staff would have to go about the business about getting down all the balloons that’d somehow floated straight up to the ceiling upon release. As usual, when I watch a DJ now I can’t completely take myself out of it: I take mental notes on what I like, what I would like once I modify it to my own tastes, and certain parts where I just step back and respect game and let them do it on their own.

I didn’t do that so much yesterday/earlier. I was too busy dancing, singing along, sweating, and paying homage to my own Yoda with about 500 single-serving friends and a handful of more than that to really get into it. I remember looking over at the bleachers that ran up to the speaker bank during the second encore, some 90 minutes in, almost 4 hours into the whole show at this point, and a girl was pouring water on her head while singing along to every word. At every other point at my life I probably would’ve found this horribly erotic: at that point I just wanted the water. I was sweating rivers. And so much more. But that’s the funny thing about adrenaline and fun live shows: they carry through so much that can hurt, that will be amiss later. They bring together different decades and people who normally wouldn’t talk to each other if they were looking each other in the face are the first to help with singing arm-in-arm or a quick pull off a soda.

I think I’m going to think about the scene outside after the show forever. I wonder what it felt like to be that girl in that moment, and how long I’m going to think about it, too. I tend to be kinda obsessive about music, ever since I heard everything ever. It’s why there’s no playlist for the evening, why I’ve been listening to Gregg Gillis’ live shows for the past–ha, I’ve been writing as long as I was dancing and partying my ass off.

You see, ever since this splinter was birthed, I always feel no matter how much I talk about it there’s always something I’ll miss, something my own limited worldview is going to obstruct accidentally that’d help you understand what goes on in my head especially when it comes the tunes that form the backbone of my life.

I’ll tell you what the problem is:

I can’t tell you what it really is.

All I can tell you is what it feels like.

And right now?

It hurts like a bastard.

And I wouldn’t trade it — or everything that it’s given me — for anything.

The Break-Up and The Lovers Re-United

My love relationship with music, my lover and partner, during the best and worst years of my life,
was, recently, put to the test.

So many bands creating mediocrity where they once weaved simple patterns of pure emotion that
(like only music can do) spoke to my soul, without the need of any language, that wasn’t notes and vibes.

Now many times, the wizards turned into plastic sellers of tunes that give no emotions, and only fill my ears to be forgotten in an instant.

I remember the days where i waited for an album to come out, recording on a VHS tape the video
of a new single, sometimes even just a short bit of it. And how then i replayed the video until the
tape was on the verge of snappin’. But those moments filled me with joy.

I remember saving money to buy said long waited cd, and the sometimes being disappointed but
forcing myself into appreciating what i heard, cause it cost hard earned money.

Then with the digital era, things became more chaotic. You could get the great albums even before the release but still that made you jaded. And the music started getting mediocre., it was a fault in both directions. I got music too easily, but even buying it on itunes in a faster way, just made me notice how soulless it had got.

Radiohead, Dredg, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Megadeth, Soundgarden. They were playing music made to be sold at high price and instantly forgotten. No memorable anthems that i would sing at night while driving, me, the roads and a loud stereo.

My lover had become cold and boring.

So i discovered the side of her a few know. Bands that have no contract, that play music that is
underground, uncovered,m ignored. Bands that go to the roots of music, playing blues, soul, rock
and everything else because they have it inside their heart. Hard to find, a constant discovery.
Exploring sites devoted to those bands, downloading their stuff for a small donation, cause all they want is to be heard and not famous. Going to shows in tiny clubs where the ticket is affordable and you can even meet the musicians.

The love story thrives on this and its reborn. Music is still my lady and she’s always with me.
Doesn’t disappoint me anymore. You just gotta know where to find her hot spots.

Sit back, enjoy, have a drink or two, and follow the links from our writers.

Cheers!

- Rhian

In this issue:

Heartagrams: “ I did a bad, bad thing….”
by Andrea Costanzo aka @TheJunkenstein

Well, ignoring my recently saddened financial situation, lately i decided top act like an irresponsible 18 year old and bnuy a tiocket for a big, costly concert. In this case, it’s the italian “One date only” (as it seems, a lot of recent shows are, in Italy) stop of The Big Four, namely Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. So not only its a show, its a Metal Show.

Read More….

Learning How to Let Go
by Lushrain

It took me a long time to learn to let things go and even longer to actually let them go. Even now I still hold on to things.  For me being able to let small things slide and not hold on to hurt feelings has made me a much happier person.

Read More…

Sexual Health and Chronic Pain
by Jules from whatthejules.com

Rebel Without A Pause– s1e5: This Isn’t Happening?
by BrotherDarkness AKA Butch Rosser

You can imagine I was pleasantly stunned when I found out my last column had earned me a fan who asked the justifiable question “What in the world possibly goes on in (my) brain?” (italics and parenthesis mine)  Somebody who cared asked and as usual I feel compelled to answer honestly.

I’m awake.  It’s almost 9:30 am.

It’s too early for me.

And I am goddamned hungover.

Read More…

LUBE “RHI” CATION
by Blondeinred

With Blondeinred the naughty Aussie with her finger on…. The pulse of the adult novelty industry.

I’m the Blondeinred – KATG devotee (more about devoteeism in a later addition) and adult store worker here in Brisbane Australia. Each edition I will bring you a toy review and some cheeky ways that you can spice up your “self love” or raise the temperature of your partner play. My ethos behind toys is that every toy you invest your hard earned cash in should have at least three ways of using it, so as to get more bang for your buck, yank for your yen or pounding for your pound. So lets rock this out lets Lube-RHI-cated.

Read more…

Inspiration
by Rhian, Editor

Everyone has someone that has impacted them in some way. I used to run in fairly high-profile circles, and people of celebrity or such status never phased me. We are all just people. As long as you aren’t a jackass for the sake of being a jackass or hiding the true you to harm others, we’ll probably get along. At least I will go in with the intent to like you. Cross me though, no matter who you are, we are done.

Read More…

The Method
by Dean from Australia

Every now and then, there are certain books, films and/or music, which I have always enjoyed, that I return to whenever I am feeling in an emotional trough. I often hit these troughs…perhaps more so lately because, as I approach my middle 30′s I find myself feeling less sure of myself than ever. I can’t explain what it is…well…perhaps I can. There have been a number of critical incidences in my life that I can relate that have surely shaped me into the person I am now. It is the books, the movies and the music that I have grown up with that serve me well as a therapy. They lift me up or, alternatively, they allow me to wallow for a time in my sadness or otherwise. Even sadness can be therapeutic…to a point.

Read More….

Well, ignoring my recently saddened financial situation, lately I decided to act like an irresponsible 18 year old and buy a ticket for a big, costly concert. In this case, it’s the italian “One date only” (as it seems, a lot of recent shows are, in Italy) stop of The Big Four, namely Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. So not only its a show, its a Metal Show.

I’ve treated myself to a bunch of musical happenings in the past, maybe more than what i can afford. Seen The Rolling Stones jam in an auditorium with botched sounds, Keith Richards stammering with maybe the last legal public cigarette of that age. Watched Bruce Springsteen replay his classic tunes for the millionth time while still acting like a jacked up teen in front of an audience that mixed youngsters with old crotchety dudes that still wanted to Rock before the night fell down, and their dayjob ate their soul.

Still, Metalheads know that a Metal Show, especially one where you’re seeing a band that helped you grow up sane and balanced, has the force of a shamanic ritual. Metallica fit the description pretty well. Still everyone has its own guardian set of guitar slingers. Contrary to the public clichée, most of metal audiences are lovely, nice hearted and safe individuals. Yes Moshpit can be harsh, if you’re dealing with elbowing amateurs, but in general they’ll be like a family of caring teddy bears to you, whether you’re a newbie or a timid girl, or a seasoned professional.

They are friendly and chatty. Sometimes you just need to have a shirt they like to start a conversation. They’ll offer you beers, hug you and treat you as a brother, no matter where you’re from. Their family is even warmer than a real one. I never felt alone at a Metal Show. It was more than music, it was a gathering of equals.

Lately, things have gotten harsher. The new generation is more aggressive, drunker and meaner. They don’t know how to react, they start fights, they get obnoxious. Although I’m pretty sure that the seasoned forty year old metal pro, with an old leather jacked with crusty hand made logos, a balding head of hair and a toddler with tiny Slayer pyjamas will put those whippersnappers in their place.

I’ll meet you there dad. Devil Horns.

It took me a long time to learn to let things go and even longer to actually let them go. Even now I still hold on to things.  For me being able to let small things slide and not hold on to hurt feelings has made me a much happier person.

I have found that most of us hold on to these feelings for the following 4 reasons:

—The inability to forgive
Letting go isn’t the same as forgiveness. You can let something go without forgiving the person who has hurt you. Holding on to things people can’t change and still hoping that time will turn back and things will be different does no good for you or them. If they have apologized sincerely and you think they won’t do it again, let it go and forgive them. If you think they will do it again let it go and either try to help them not repeat those actions or let it go. You will remember it when you need to.

—–Want to punish those who have done you wrong
The harsh truth is the world has many selfish people who do bad things that go unpunished. Allowing yourself to hold all of this negative energy when it won’t change the situation isn’t going to help you at all. You are giving them the power by allowing their actions to affect your life in a ripple past their misdeeds.

—–Not wanting the same thing to happen again
You think holding on to these emotions will allow you to protect yourself from being hurt again. Where it  that might be true, it is also stopping you from being open again to good feelings and emotions.

—-Easier to hold on to it than to let it go
Holding on to anger/frustration/hurt at someone and not letting it out in any constructive way isn’t helping yourself. These feelings are just making you more angry/frustrated/sad and taking up your valuable time. When we let go of useless anger/frustrations it frees up our mind/spirit for awesome great things to come our way. We are opening ourselves to love and meaningful relationships.

If you notice each of those reasons really feed off of each other. We won’t forgive someone until we feel they have been sufficiently punished. However, holding on to grudges, hurt, anger is unproductive and destructive to your own self. It will cause you stress, sickness, and sadness.

Productive ways to purge these feelings:

—-Talking to the person who has wronged you in a calm matter:
It is easy to approach the person who has wronged you with mean words and elevated voice but in the end it just puts you as the aggressor and them as the victim. You won’t get the response you want with yelling or insulting. Direct and calm approach is usually the most effective way.

—-Venting with caution:
I try to vent to be able to  get these feelings out as quickly as possible and if I can rectify the situation quickly I will.  You also need to realize things need to  calm down to decide an appropriate response. It helps to have someone who is impartial to help decipher what an appropriate response is and if one is even necessary. Venting may help you expunge all of these emotions.  You will also need to be cognisant of yourself when you are using the venting as a way to get yourself more riled and when it truly helps.

—-Choosing your battles
It will take lots of time to figure out the battles to fight. In my personal experience I realize that the battles I want to fight are so inconsequential. When I engage a battle that is just down right silly , I try to apologize to the person who I have gotten angry, and as quickly as possible after I have engaged them. It is helpful to think if  a) coming to them will fix the situation  b)what do you want fixed  c) is there a compromise that can be reached

I am not saying doing this stuff is easy. It is easy to want to crawl back into the negative space.  It is still hard for me to let go of things that bother me or people who do me wrong.

Things I do every day to think positively about my life:

–Daily happy list of things that make me feel good that day. Bad things will happen to me and it may suck and I may cry and feel hopeless. Trying to find the good in a hopeless occasion is usually that one ray that will help me pull through to the happy again.

–Disassociate and not engage with people who cultivate negativity. If I can avoid people who are constantly negative I will. I also will not engage their negative emotions if I have to deal with them. I will try to be as positive and happy as I can around them.

–Focus some of my energy making sure the people around me feel loved and are taken care of. I think most of us do this but I really try hard to let people in my life who may not know (or heard from me in a while) that I am sincerely thinking about them and love them.

I understand that these tasks may be hard for some and it may be easier on me since my head is a bit more logical but I can testify that my life has been filled with so much joy since I have let go of negativity.

You can imagine I was pleasantly stunned when I found out my last column had earned me a fan who asked the justifiable question “What in the world possibly goes on in (my) brain?” (italics and parenthesis mine)  Somebody who cared asked and as usual I feel compelled to answer honestly.

I’m awake.  It’s almost 9:30 am.

It’s too early for me.

And I am goddamned hungover.

If I hadn’t remembered I was hungover, I would know it now, because there’s a facsimile Lincoln hat on my nightstand which is shining a little bit in the early morning sunlight and holding two bags of chips I got at a party last night.  You see, last night somebody I barely knew who didn’t remember the time we met last year was having her birthday party at a hot new club in town.  I spent yesterday doing not much, while things got done: business e-mails for the future, hot tracks I want to play in the club &/or in my personal life, recovering from heartbreak, wondering if I knew the next girl, backtabbing where I’m going to move to later, et al.

But none of those things were my focus yesterday.  They were merely planets orbiting the sun of my main thought: do I go to this birthday party at a hot new club in town where somebody I barely know probably isn’t going to remember the time we met last year?  A Costanzian dystopia spit out innumerable reactions and mudslides of personal humiliation, professional embarrassment, social awkwardness, and acute discomfort in anything from the possibly of badly made drinks made by bartenders new to me to running into an ex-girlfriend or some sort of single-serving friend I’d bumped uglies with a time or six.

In addition to THAT, I knew for a fact that I would be having happy hour two blocks away far before the party and that I would have actual friends at a little dive bar where my friend was singing some jazz standards a block away from this party and would be highly likely to show up at that event at some point in the evening as well.

The thought still centered about do I go to this particular party or not, and you know what choice I ended up making.  But let’s follow that answer with Occam’s Question: why?

The answer to Occam’s Question centers around part of the reason why I’ve been up for mere moments, groaning lowly the whole time, rueing the effect of all the free drinks I downed almost as much as the fact I’m in this bed alone and it occurs to me that while I’m not the only person going through some form of this mindset right now that the only person who really understands me at this moment is James Murphy.

The name isn’t familiar except to music cognoscenti like me, so let me see if I can get more eyeballs into this tent–James Murphy is the founder and lead singer and multi-armed instrumentalist behind LCD Soundsystem.  For the past five years his lyrics have become less things that pass through my ears and more things that’ve wrapped themselves around my heart and brain.  And now, of course, he’s leaving to go on to the next thing in his life.  Maybe a new band, despite all his clucking to the contrary, or maybe just settling back into position in his leadership role guiding DFA Records and the likes of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Hot Chip, maybe dropping a dope remix banger here or there.  This isn’t going to be a hipster diatribe about James moving on with his life and leaving me in the lurch to sip champagne out of the asses of supermodels on 56-foot yachts; this is going to be a weird, small piece about how he exposed me to a new life before I even got into it, is the soundtrack for it, taught me all sorts of major and minor truths, and now that he’s gone…who’s going to do it?

You see, at first I was just a guy who was borderline obsessive about music (to the absolute surprise of everyone reading this, I’m sure) who admired DJs and went to clubs.  But while I knew top 40 stuff, that wasn’t my world.  Old school hip hop was my world.  Maybe classic rock.  Maybe stuff I didn’t know & knew I couldn’t do, some ineffable sound of the future yet to be realized.

And then somebody dropped Losing My Edge on me, a hilarious seven-and-a-half minute Bizarro World version of Sympathy For The Devil in which the protagonist, voiced by Murphy over beats I could’ve made on a Casio when I was 5 can’t focus on the fact he’s virtually introduced Nico to Lou Reed or Fab Five Freddy to Deborah Harry or started kicking Daft Punk tracks at gigs in the deserted, uncool part of town known as Brooklyn.  I’m losing my edge, he complains.  The cool kids are coming up from behind.  I’m losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent.

This would’ve been a moment to bail on this oddball paranoia until he added the cruelest of poison-tipped knives in the heart with the next line: And they’re actually…really, really nice.

It took me a few listens of Losing My Edge to figure that he wasn’t making fun of the scene he was in or loved it to realize he was doing both, and throwing in some jabs at a mirror, too.  The sloppy Kraftwerkian funk that was propelling the track was intentional, the namedrop binge was as well, the lyrics that inverted and flipped on themselves was all part of the plan, and after I listened to Losing My Edge a few times I realized that the author, whoever they were and whatever fears they had in their head, was far from realizing the title.  I loved the style and lack thereof, was amused by the lyrics, and figured I would never hear from them again.

You know, something along the lines of the same train of thought I had after I heard Yellow for the first time.  Whatever happened to that sleepy-eyed Thom Yorke wannabe, anyhow?

And while LCD Soundsystem proceeded to blow up off of the also-funny but way more funky Daft Punk Is Playing At My House, it was the more inward Tribulations that won the honors on the self-titled debut for me, and explains why I am cursing the light and wishing for the darkness: downtempo as shit and full of wry frustration directed at SOMEBODY (muse?  lover?  ex?  producer?  friend? some mix-and-match combo of the aforelisted?) about mistakes that seem to keep on sticking, the way mistakes can haunt the soul as a ghost, and the seminal line for me off the song and album:

But it feels alright as long as something’s happening.

This hit me between jobs and off a breakup caused in part by being between jobs.  As I was starting to leave the conventional world and starting to build playlists.  As DJing friends would make me their bathroom break at the club and let me get on, a song here, two songs there, a small 15 minutes there while they lit up in the back alley or had their cupcake on the moment spit-polish their theme park in the bathroom.  But I kept the crowd going.  I swallowed down a continent’s worth of nerves and got competent.  I started going out more and watching more DJs.  I played some more here and there and stretched my hard drive to the breaking point with mp3s through all these trials and tribulations and started getting one-off payments from the nation.  I floated through day jobs as a hint of a cypher, but like Wheelchair Jimmy would do with less panache down the road I came alive in the nighttime to see the best DJs in the world, to drop a track here or there, to make other people lose themselves in the sound–well, not exactly the way I got lost in the sound because that way lays madness of psychotics, geniuses, and psychotic geniuses–but that they too would hear something, or something unexpected, and they could leave behind the ex and the bullshit day job and the mounting pressures of bills and the weird mixture of joy and envy that follows engagements, all of that.

I could turn up the soundsystem a little more and let them drop their infernal internal Rube Goldberg Mobius strips like bags on the stoop after a long vacation.

James was right: it always feels alright as long as something’s happening.  This is why I creep the streets at night more often than not, because I know what happens in the darkness of my mind and heart in my own residence–at some point, I have to face the fact I’m alone and 38 in white people years and I may have just blown it again.  No matter what awesome projects beckon in the future, no matter what interesting mashups I work on, no matter what friends reach out to me at the end of it you look into a monitor long enough and all you can see is your face sometimes.  So gimme some mirth!  Let me go out into the streets I’ve been in a thousand times that’ve changed 900 times, let me hobnob people barely a step up from virtual strangers, let me sip horribly overpriced cocktails at a rooftop in a place I hate but I’ll go when I can get in for free because my friend is on the decks, let me make a serious of possibly funny bon mots that lead to me crowning myself “the KING of 19th century assassination jokes” and look at my bedstand in momentary confusion the next day because Something’s Happening.

When I first started listening to LCD?  It feels like 13 lives ago.  That iteration of me bears a resemblance, but that’s all external.  Inside, I feel much different, like I’ve played Face/Off with myself in both roles using the past and the present and the future as the character archtypes. When Sound Of Silver came out as the second release from Murphy & Co. it was feted with the usual rave reviews from all the tastemakers, who pointed to the buyoant fun of the “Daft Punk”-esque North American Scum that was also touched upon in the title track and the epic that closed the album, New York, I Love You, But I’m Bringing You Down.  Those are some of my favorite tracks for all the reasons most people give, but it’s not my favorite track on the album, my favorite LCD song of all the times.

And I’m sure you’ll be unbelievably shocked to find that my favorite LCD song is the one song in the past five years that has made me cry.  In fact, almost nothing has made me cry in the past five years through some really shitstormy times and I can’t think of a counterargument to that.  But this song did it.  Every once in a great while, it still does.

All My Friends is Losing My Edge with every trace of the humor removed to the point where it, too, comes in at about seven and a half minutes, and it described what when I first heard it was Murphy’s average night in New York City, a night that begins around 11, maybe 10:30 since the city never sleeps.  (Oh, those lucky bastards who don’t have to close down at 1:30!  To quote a Hollywood friend of mine, San Diego will never be New Orleans.  Mostly because we see the ocean instead of get choked to death by it.)  But the thing about All My Friends that makes me cry is I feel that in it’s totality it best describes what my life is and has become, for better and for worse.  THIS life.  Not the one I was living when I first heard Edge, but life as I live it this moment down to the annoyingly loud clack that comes from my hitting keystroke to keyboard.  In fact, it’s playing in the background because I haven’t heard it in days, and despite the fact most of my life is looking up and it’s a brilliant day outside now I’m still fighting off tears a bit.

I cannot understate this: everyone would understand me better if they listened to this song.

It begins with going somewhere that isn’t your home to see how people — some of whom are probably your friends or have at least acted that way to your face in the recent past — have ranked you in a list, and then spinning a reaction to their reactions.  It ends with the plaintive hope that probably isn’t coming true of If I could see all my friends tonight. In the middle, it talks about the awkwardness of aging, the 21st century attempt to control fate known as the five-year plan, and the possibility all the fun you’re cramming in now becomes “this is tired” two hours from now, or less–in fact, it’s the underhanging fulcrum the entirety of the song/my life swings upon.

It should be noted: some times I go out and it is excellent.  It’s not a P. Diddy video, but it’s a tremendously good time.  It’s like the dinner scene in Goodfellas where Pesci tells the waiter to fuck his mother.  If I were to replay my memories in stillshot or video form the next day, it would be full of weird and interesting conversations, pretty women, drinks flowing (most of which I didn’t pay full price for), good music, broad smiles, no hassles at the door, a possible tumble in a bed (though this has gotten somewhat increasingly unnecessary as time goes on to me), a 24-hour Mexican food place to refuel, the sunrise being the last thing I see as I close my eyes.  You’re probably my friend on Facebook.  You’ve seen that photostream.

When it’s going badly, however, it’s going badly.  I don’t even mean the one time I got a drink thrown in my face (deserved, by the way), I mean the death by a thousand paper cuts where the hype emperor has no clothes.  Things’re just off, egos bruised, EDM, and being so fed up with the scene and your place in it you ditch the scene in media res only to get home and find out, oh, by the way, you’re not happy here either and there you sit in the dark being a vampire.

Being a vampire.

I have new slang to reflect my new life now.

The term “being a vampire” in my eyes when LCD first dropped was really just a synonym for what’s known as goth.  Now, that’s not the term I mean.  When I say being a vampire, it means leading a lifestyle based on being in some way part of the scene.  Photogs, DJs, writers, bartenders, go-go dancers, security guys, ad infinitum.  The people who keep the pulse going at the cost of being connected to a large part of most of the civilized world, all the freaks who come out at night.  All of my friends at nights.   If you’re more reachable at 10 pm than 10 am, if your alarm’s set for the crack of noon, if you look at people in general admission lines and chortle inwardly or outwardly, if you’ve ever had the Serato v. Vinyl discussion for consecutive seconds, VAMPYR!  But again, that’s a vampire in my eyes.  Most people?  Most people are civilians.  And now I’m beginning to refer to them as such, which raises an interesting question: since most people are civilians, most of my friends would have to be civilians, too, wouldn’t they?

And they are.

It’s taking a bit of a psychic toll, honestly.  I want to hang out with my long-time friends.  I want the messy interior of their lives and how they keep marriages going and children alive.  (I want to look at that from the outside, mind you.  Unless you’re ScarJo you probably shouldn’t expect me to be ready for all of that anytime soon.)  I want to remember all the stuff we talked about 13, 21, 45 lives ago and make old, familiar jokes about those times.

The problem is I love being a vampire too much at the end of the day, bad times and self-flagellation aside.  In the choice between the future and the past I am opting for door #1 — not without regret, but firmly nonetheless.  And more times than not, I don’t see all of my friends, or for that matter many of them, at least not with the frequency that I used to.  And it does get frustrating to be awesome in a vacuum and not have a familiar face of a “normie” you call friend lighting up back at you.

It can be punishingly lonely.  But when it’s not — when things, and in my case sometimes myself — when things are on it’s tiger blood wrapped in Adonis DNA dipped in cocaine served off of Scarlett Johansson it’s so good.  Like every other junkie in the history of mankind you chase the hit for the times where all the mental self-laceration and world worry just falls to the wayside and you feel like King Awesome Of Awesomestan decreeing that the Royal Card was BUILT for times like these, serf, and put some more grog on there for me and all the knights and princesses of my realm.

The best LCD Soundsystem lyrics reflect both of these sides of the coin, sometimes in the same song, sometimes in the same line.  Because James Murphy lived it, when he writes about it it’s not surprising it seems to reflect the darkest (or lightest) reaches of my head.

When Drunk Girls came out last year, it got torn apart so fast you would’ve thought it was attached to James Franco’s shoulder in 127 Hours.  I was, and remain highly amused by this.  Of course people focused on the part where DRUNK GIRLS! or DRUNK BOYS! was repeated, the same way everybody ignored the drug use and oral sex in the verses of Semi-Charmed Life so they could doot-doot-doot along to the chorus and the same way people looked at the Genie In A Bottle video and thought “What a cute young woman!” instead of listening to the words and thinking “I could probably anally fistfuck this chick by the fourth date” the way history has proven the larger truths.  Of course they did.  They’re people.  Civilians.  But for a dork like me?  A creature of the night?  A pulse-setter who takes the one of his own emotions every waking moment and most sleeping ones?  I got the undertones, the fulcrum.  As much as I liked the analogy of love being akin an astronaut who comes back but they’re never the same, about 100 seconds in Murphy wrote what’re IMSNHO his best lyrics in his entire discography, lyrics that may’ve made me cry if I’d encountered them earlier in life but now just seem to be an autobiography written by him about someone he’s never met distilled to 8 lines quoted here in entirety:

Just ’cause I’m shallow doesn’t mean that I’m heartless
Just ’cause I’m heartless doesn’t mean that I’m mean
Sometimes love gives us too many options
Just ’cause you’re hungry doesn’t mean that you’re lean
I’ve heard lies that could curdle your heartstrings
A couple of truths maybe burn out your eyes
But drunk boys, drunk boys leave their irons in the fireplace
‘Cause drunk girls give them too many tries

If I wasn’t such a pussy and was built like the Rock I would get this tattooed on my person as a constant reminder of who I am, where I’ve been, and where I’m trying to go to and what to avoid in the new realm.  Especially that last one.  James Murphy’s last album starts with the song Dance Yrself Clean, and leads into this.  The songs Somebody’s Calling Me & Home are also consecutive tracks, and if you think that’s a coincidence the cubicle is cutting off circulation to your brain.  A man singing I can change if it helps you fall in love just gets it, and pretty soon his band is going to knock out four sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and apparently, that will be the end of them.  I really wish it wasn’t.  His insights have been the bridge I’ve been walking over for a better part of a decade, and now that my own career is starting to go up the stratosphere he’s willingly coming back down to Earth?  I suppose that’s just the way these things go, I guess.

But I owe Murphy more than I can state, or maybe will ever fully realize.

So I sit, and listen to the piano, continue to comb the lyrics and the sound like Temperance Brennan, and wonder who will step in and be my bridge into the next life or four.

And that, in part, should be a horribly detailed answer to the question “What in the world possibly goes on in my brain?”