the world has turned and left me here

my pimp sensae

I owe it all to the Nickman. He's my bro out here in AZ and I'm gonna miss him, but he is also my pimp sensae. At the beginning of the summer I was in a pathetic couldn't-talk-to-girls kind of state and he made me vow to ask out 5 random girls by the end of the summer. It worked for him. And so now the 30-day Nick cure has worked for me, I am cured of my silly irrational fears and am one easy step away from #5, in fact at this point the problem is not going up and talking to girls but stopping myself from going up and talking to any/every girl.

Have had varying degrees of success & failure but that's not the important part so much. The take-home lessons are that (1) girls are attracted to confidence so by god be confident man and (2) it's not gonna work out with every girl, but you don't know til you try.

hookahs, belly dancers, coffee ground fortune tellers

A crazy night in Tempe. Was going to meet this chick J down at one of the clubs for dancing, but the first place we tried was playing crappy eighties music so we fled. I didn't finish my Heineken--she didn't finish her Fat Tire--if that gives you any indication of how bad it was. We met her Egyptian friend M and M's Egyptian boyfriend visiting from L.A. and headed up to Martini Ranch. Along the way we pick up this big Indian guy at a strip club, where Jenna Jameson was giving out autographs. Chief Broom only with lots of tattoos and much weirder.

Martini Ranch was fun but packed beyond belief, a suffocating affair. We dance for a while & it is fun. Then she gets call from the guy she's seeing (Alan receives a revelation at this point in the evening) and he shows up a tattooed sleazeball. Meanwhile Chief Broom without hardly a word hops in a black limo cab and drives off. He was weird anyway and strictly impossible to make conversation with. I tried. We all 5 of us drive down to the Oasis Cafe (sleazeball getting sleazier and sleazier in backseat with J).

When we walk in it is wild, like walking through a portal into a foreign country. Lots of Arabic types but lots of Americans too, all types in fact. People smoking hookahs everywhere. Outside we sit and smoke a hookah too, wow not bad at all, way smoother than pipe tobacco. We watch a belly dancer inside for a while--there is clapping and happiness on all sides, occasionally an Arab guy jumping out of his seat with loose arms to dance beside her, but she always puts her partner in his place with her fantastic feats of hip isolation.

I drink a Turkish coffee and M--who is very nice, I like her--looks at the grounds and tells me my fortune. I will travel to a foreign country and spend as much time there as I do here. I will lead three totally separate lives, I will marry but I will have no children. My quest for knowledge and experience will be unending.

A very good vibe this Oasis Cafe gives off. At one point I just started up a conversation with another table, met a dude named CJ and another named Samson. Samson was thrown off by my rainbow shirt and asked if I was gay. I explain that no I am just a happy friendly guy and that's what the rainbow stands for. We laugh about his name--I encourage him to tear the temple down--and this sets him off on a Hulk impersonation.

mount sinai part two

The sun was setting and I climbed to the top of a big rock out in the middle of nowhere Tempe, just north of Salt River. The wind roared over me flapping the collar of my shirt and I stood there on my rock singing opera into it. Planes, always the planes coming and going in Phoenix, flew overhead. To the east a strip club emitted its neon blue purple glow amidst orange rooftops. As I stood the sky in the east slowly turned electric blue purple to match, and off to the north thunderbolts from god tortured a distant hill.

kafka in the corner

So I'm outside at Casey Moore's and I catch sight of this guy in the corner reading a book. I go over because I've never seen someone do this at a bar. Turns out he is reading "The Trial" in German, and we start talking in German, he tells me he's sick of it here and is going back to Bavaria permanently. Weird thing is he looks just like Kafka...

alan's style guide for dudes

Alright it's time we had a little talk. Guys, no more striped or plaid shirts, stripes may be okay if they come to an end but the last thing you want is some endless pattern on your torso. Your torso is not endless and you should not want it to appear endless. So stripe only in moderation.

Solid colors though are the best. But definitely stay away from warm colors, ie red orange & yellow are right out. Unless you are my German friend Normen you probably do not have a personality that can pull off a yellow shirt. Orange is pretty tough too. Red can sometimes work but don't make a habit of it. Stick to cool colors and earth tones.

If you are a skinny guy like me for god's sake do not wear baggy shirts. I know your pain, everything is a mumu and usually you're just glad to find something that doesn't swallow you whole, but do yourself a favor, make the extra effort to find tight shirts. Flaunt your skinniness. America is not a skinny place--you should be damn proud that you are a skinny American.

Don't get tapered jeans. Let them flare or bag out a little at the bottom. Tapered jeans will make you look like a pear. If you're skinny even worse you'll look like a pear on stilts.

Guys stop spitting on the sidewalk. I freaking hate this, there is no reason why you can't ingest your own saliva or mucous, there is even less reason why other people should step in it. If you are trying to be tough realize you are sending a mixed message: "I'm tough but I am grossed out by my own spit and won't swallow it."

When you're working out don't check yourself out in the mirror every 5 seconds. Probably you are not any bigger than you were 5 seconds ago. And don't play dress up. Your hair does not need to be perfectly gelled, you do not need designer clothes, to bring the pump. If you combine these things people will assume you want to have sex with yourself. That is not really what you intend I think.

Don't be afraid to dance to music you like. If you're too white & uptight then take liquid measures to fix this. But don't be mister cool I'm just gonna fold my arms and nod my head seriously at the concert. That's not very stylin', that just says you're afraid to let go because of what other people might think. Beating people up in the mosh pit won't bring your dead dog back either. Remember, it should be about the music...if not then maybe you are tone deaf?

Above all be an individual--don't look like clipboard copies your friends. Especially for a guy you're expected to have the courage to look the way you want. If you don't you probably have issues and could possibly be a massive tool (cf. "Carson Daly"), which is the worst thing anyone can be.

san diego

Did the S.D. thing this weekend with other interns. Unfortunately we decided to leave (a 6 hr drive) at 1 am on Saturday morning, so we were all out of it during the day Saturday, everyone taking power naps whenever and wherever, restaurants, cars, the beach, etc. I woke up once on the beach so completely disoriented that I didn't know who the other interns were; I thought they must be my college friends or something.

But wow the beach was nice, started us all thinking about becoming beach bums. My back is now cooked lobster meat. Lotso unusual people on the boardwalk--strange people who just didn't care. Jen laughed on and on about this guy dressed up as Batman who had rollerskates, a g string, and a batman symbol painted on either cheek. ("Beach bum" taking on a whole new meaning...) Apparently he was known around there as "The Flash" and had a regular schedule. Then there was this guy on rollerskates who thought he was a ballet star and skated around doing arabesques and lip-synching to opera. We saw many retarded bikes. Rode a herky jerky little roller coaster that was actually fun. I stopped and played pickup ultimate with some dudes for a while.

Hmm no pictures unless I can beg some off the other people.

the great non-exchange

Oh to discover all the varied forms of ugliness inside girls! Perhaps they equal the ugliness inside of guys in severity, which I never in my wildest dreams thought possible. Mine was a Portrait of an Artist adolescence wherein I realized the shameful ugly desire that is being male but believed in the angelic other sex. Well I was wrong, my own fault of course for not believing in the essential symmetry of things (if nothing else). Just as ugly is the desire to be desired, and without reciprocation.

I once ranted about the economics of relationships. Now I am ranting about the lack of economics in relationships. Go figure. I am saying that it is even uglier when there is value exchanged for nothing--a guy who gets with a girl and then leaves when he should be repaying it with security & affection, or a girl who keeps guys hanging on her just for the affection & security. If there must be an ugly exchange of one for the other then so be it, that's better than getting something for free, the ultimate sin and impossibility.

Here I sit, ranting, hoping for the someday equal and hopefully not also ugly exchange, which I do not as yet know exists.

dueling bongos

Small drum circle tonight on Mill Ave with friend Kent and his friend Ben. Both good drummers, Ben getting into crazy dueling bongos affair with totally wasted existing drum dude. This guy was so drunk that he shrugged off his drum and passed out on the sidewalk at one point. But then he was back up at it again with glazed face and blazing hands. All good drummers in fact, except for a questionable cowboy who made no sense, spoken or rhythmic. I called him the Marlboro man 'cause of his big ol' mustachio and cowboy hat. Less bad vibes directed towards us than with Hans and Mabe, as rhythm is the most primitive and hard to disagree with form of music, pretty much all the passersby seemed to enjoy it. Some guy sat on Kent's clay drum and broke it in half though, ah life, ah life!

el cielo

It's been a while since I've reviewed an album but I feel I must in the case of Dredg's El Cielo. There are other albums that I would review but they get enough coverage already. Not with Dredg, relatively few people know about these guys, but "El Cielo" is amazing in the alt world for at least one thing: there is no filler. Unlike this weblog dear reader, everything in this album contributes, and there are even instrumental breaks that let you rest once in a while so you're ready for the next tune. None of these tunes is *quiiitte* radio-ready, though close, but all are of the same high quality.

The sound is an interesting one. You've got unusual cooperative rhythms between drums and the guitars. They rock out but never very grungily, it's all in moderation and driven by melody. There's lots of unique sound effects. It doesn't really sound like anything you've heard before 'specially not on the radio, maybe a bit like Tool in terms of the gradual way they develop songs, but not at all in terms of thematic material or mood. The songs are happy. The only downside to "El Cielo" for me is the lead singer's voice. Still he's a lot less strident than on their previous album, Leitmotif, and threw better lyrics together too.

This is one of those albums/bands that in 2 or 3 years everyone will be talking about, it just boggles the mind that it hasn't happened yet. All the other reviews I read say the same thing. So if nothing else get peer pressured into buying it.

the vortex will suck you in

If I got a second chance at life I want to be water. It's like God just got bored and threw in all kinds of cool special effects into water that we will never explain, just to show off. (Or that are very hard to explain at least.) I have to say God gosh I'm real impressed down here and wouldn't mind being water if you could arrange it somehow.

Like check this out. Get in a calm swimming pool. Let your hand stick straight up out of the water, and then smoothly and quickly submerge it without splashing. If you do it right you'll see perfect little vortices spin off. Eventually they will die out but this sometimes takes a while. Beautiful to watch. Now, the question in my mind is whether or not the shape and size (ie the boundary conditions) of the swimming pool affect their lifetime. Perhaps with still enough waters and no boundaries in at least some directions you would get a vortex that just kept spinning. Like the red spot on Jupiter huh? There's something in Chaos about a simulation that discovered the red spot effect.

favorites

Strange guy talking to me when hanging with bongo drum Mabe and guitar Hans. He had a bunch of empty manilla envelopes under his arm. "What are those for?" He explains but I don't get it. This dude spoke some sort of dialect of his own--not at the word level but at the context level. He talked English alright but it no make sense. "You know," he says to me, expecting me to know exactly what is going on in his weird mind, "everyone tries to be better than their favorites. They try to compete with their favorites." I'm going favorites? what favorites? "You know like your favorite artist or writer or guitar player, you try to be better than 'em." Oh. Okay well why didn't you just say that in the first place? But it's just no good his thought patterns are just too different. Here's one the combine musta missed, Chief.

old faithful

Coming home from work Thursday I saw this strange sight. One of the sprinklers along the golf course blew a valve I guess. Between this and the terrible calibration of some of those sprinklers, which sometimes spray right over concrete and get me soaked on my bike, they're not making very good use of water around here. Esp. for a desert region that is going to have serious water problems within the next ten years.

casey moore's

For the first time ever I actually enjoyed a bar last night. The first dude I started talking to was a guitar player, had his own band, an old ex-80s-metal guy who told me a hilarious story about getting his golf clubs stuck up in a tree. Then met a girl from a small Missouri town that even I had never heard of. She turned out to be a defense lawyer for people on death row but she was really nice all the same, you'd never have guessed. Then I met a hebrew hippie girl from Pennsylvania, just coming through on a road trip of the U.S. with some of her buddies, and we got to talking about all kinds of crazy subculture topics. At 21 she was already a career bartender--didn't plan on going to college and was totally cool with that. She kept asking around for KB esp. of guys so I decided she was a weeddigger, a chick who goes after guys for their weed. Finally ended up having one of those drawn-out tongue-in-check discussions with a funny girl who told me her name was Bertha and that she had super powers.

But wow, what a cool place this Casey Moore's is! There wasn't a trace of fratmosphere--I with my new frat-looking hair probably had the most frat appeal--and I actually had a good time there, which I never thought I'd say of a bar.

frat hair

Ahhhhh help! I have frat hair!