Little Lambs

What I'm about to say is split with pride and embarrassment.

I played live music to the largest crowd I have ever had tonight. That's the good news.

The bad news is: it was for the Miniapple Christmas Program at St. Lawrence Church. The church was packed. We played Beatles songs: "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Hey, Jude". The crowd loved it.

My biggest crowd has been a goddamn preschool program. Sigh . . .

Still, the little tykes were cute. And I had fun fraternizing with parents, staff, and a post-program wine convo hit the spot. It was a good night.

Belles of Skin City -- "Like Lambs to the Riot"

Hi, My Name is Robert

When a new season comes upon me, it's like it was always there. It's like, "Oh, hey, old friend, didn't I just see you yesterday?" Winter tends to be the most hand-in-hand with this sort of thinking. The USA weather patterns dumped a shit load of snow on us yesterday and today, and it's like I never said goodbye to snow to begin with.

This probably has to do with the fact that I'm constantly thinking of winter and snow . . . and how much I hate it. When it gets here, it's like a recurring wart on the bottom of my foot. Like constipation. Oh, I'm familiar with these ailments, and when they reappear it's like they were never gone.

Cold is like stubbing your toe.

Cold is like the mornings your contact lenses don't sit properly in your eyeball.

Cold is like the sliver you, by accident, pushed farther into your finger with tweezers and can only come out when the body itself pushes it out.

Cold is like a bad hair day.

Cold is the caffeine withdrawal headache you get when you can't procure a cup of joe before work.

We all act shocked and surprised when cold comes around. It's not novel shock and surprise. We all know the pain of winter in Minnesota. But we all know the pain of stubbing your toe on the coffee table as you get up to go the bathroom . . . and it shocks us when we do it.

Fuck you, Winter. Welcome back, take your seat. You're like a heckler on the bus that recognizes me and thinks my name is Robert and I helped you fix a boat in Lake Tahoe and you ask me for money and I don't have it and I feel guilty that I'm not being more charitable but shit man you've been doing this since I've known you on this bus and seriously if you ask me again I'm going to tell the driver to let you off because you're in my bubble but I probably won't since I'm kind of a chicken shit when it comes to confrontation so I don't move away to someplace warmer since I'm content to live in complete and utter discomfort come November through April.

. . . I guess I could always buy a new coat, though . . . "Bah, here's a couple quarters. Get something to eat with them, man."

The Kills -- "M.E.X.I.C.O."

St. David

My PC has been through a lot. It's akin to a soldier, a decorated one, who has been called into the line of fire time and time again. He did his service in WWII, Korea, Vietnam. He then gets called in to do Top Secret Navy Seals work, spy work, hush hush huge diplomatic ordeals. He's scarred, beaten, hard.

That's my computer. Betty, I call it. I name all of the broken machines in my life Betty . . . one could argue that I could call America Betty from now on . . . but I wouldn't hit a woman . . . what?

Anyway, it seems as if Betty needs a brain transplant. The hard drive is dying, apparently. On its last legs. This weekend I saved and transferred all of the necessary files onto my portable hard drive. Now I wait for the lord and savior David Nehring to raise my vessel from the dead . . . again.

St. David, I wait with baited breath . . . what?

Stabbing Westward -- "Ungod"

Fake Plastic Trees

Christmas, or rather, this time of year, is a subjective era. It is what you make it out to be.

I find that if you bad mouth Christmas, people will get offended. Not because they're Christian, you're going against their beliefs, none of that. It's something else.

People take Christmas very personally. I for one like Christmas. It makes me want to be close to people. But again, at the same time, it's like going to the prom. This is it. Your only chance. You've thought about this night your whole high school career thus far and nothing should go wrong.

Guess what, it does. And both my proms turned out to be horrible because of that way of thinking. The first one because of extenuating circumstances, the second one was my fault.

I hype Christmas up to be a failure . . . and it turns out okay, better than I had thought. I pay homage to the old anti-consumerist ideals of my teenage years, but I don't beat a dead horse, or reindeer, in this case. I try to be as low key and "with the flow" as I can be because I (shhh) secretly want December 25th to be magical.

That's the truth. That's what everyone wants.

That's why it's such a weird time. There's heightened stress, heightened want of love, pheromones reign high, disappointment, happiness, etc. The collective unconscious of the West is creating a gingerbread deck of cards that can fall at the flick of a wrist for some people . . . people like me.

I want the big family get-together. I want the girlfriend who I'm sure will be my wife to stand next to me in the photo. I want my brother to accept me for who I am and to stand on the other side of me. I want my parents to be together, to have not divorced, and to have the tree in the background, with both the ornaments I gathered at my dad's house and my mom's house over the years adorned on the most glorious tree you could imagine. I want my extended family to be in the picture as well, and I want all of the family politics (each side hates the other) to not exist. I want my dad to also accept me and to have that fatherly hand on my shoulder, so that when I looked at that Christmas family dinner photo I'd know that was the year my dad came to understand the boy he raised into a man. I want all of that.

All of those don't exist, though. My house is broken.

And because of that . . . I don't want anything.

That way I'll be happy with this fucking holiday.

Nine Inch Nails -- "The Four of Us Are Dying"

P A T C H LIVE

PATCH had its first OFFICIAL live rehearsal today. Official because of all the members being in the same place at the same time for the first time. Plus, this should be the final, determined lineup, as far as I know.

PETER

MATT

GREG

ADRI

SCOTTY


Go HERE for the rest of the photos from the first rehearsal. The link is from the official Patch Facebook profile.

Radiohead -- "15 Step"

Ethereal Awakenings

Have I finally put this band together?

Have I finally turned this dream into something I can touch?

Something I can hear?

Something I can see?

Something I hope you'll love . . .

The Flaming Lips -- "Watching the Planets"

The Home Stretch

We are coming to a close on the Karmath blog. Getting down to the wire.

What haven't I talked about that I've always wanted to talk about, but has never quite happened on a daily happening in 2009? Or didn't seem important enough to talk about as of yet?

What about some meta writing? Some "behind the scenes" info on the behind the scenes blog.

FACTOID 1: I've grown to groan at this blog on certain days. I love the blog, I'm proud of it, but there are just some days where I don't feel up to writing anything. Nothing important happened, nothing of note. I have days where I sit around and do nothing, or I do the same thing for a number of days. A project, perhaps. Tonight, in fact, I'm sick with a fever, and all I'm doing is catching up on blogs . . .

FACTOID 2: This entry is actually being written on December 7 instead of December 4, so that little bit about being sick with a fever today . . . I had a fever three days ago, but I wrote it as if . . . you know. If I've been busy, I have to play catchup (I think on the actual Friday, I only got up to the TSA security rant). I've come to realize that I don't have time to do this anymore. I'm sticking with it until the end of the month, of course (why stop when I'm so close to the finish?), but with the coming year and with Patch . . . expect fewer blogs. Well, it won't be daily. This was an experiment, to do it every day of the year. When creativity gets the better of me, "Welcome to Circadia" will fall victim to my prose/poetry/audio/video/photography. So . . . not all of the entries here are "true" entries, but the things that they talk about are all true things that happened on the true date. They just . . . were written a couple days later.

FACTOID 3: For you Facebook note readers, you do realize that this was all meant to be seen at karmath2009.blogspot.com, right? It's an MP3 blog. You're supposed to listen to the MP3's and watch videos. You don't get that on Facebook.

FACTOID 4:
The main purposes of Karmath: The Blog

--See the birth of Patch. From recording to practicing. No end product here, though. That will all be happening in 2010.
--MP3's. These remind me that I've lived a day. A song comes on, I lived that day. 365 songs will have been posted, each coinciding with a day. I'll always think of that certain day, whether it was the day I crashed my car, started Patch rehearsals, finished Schematics recording, had sex with a beautiful woman, got dumped by that same beautiful woman (most likely for writing about it here), or sat around in my PJ's watching X-Files all day, I'll think of those days by the particular song coinciding with those events.

FACTOID 5: Initially, I was thinking I'd have fake stories to tell, much along the lines of the Polish Sausage sauna storyline stemmed from my old roommate Marta's parents' sauna in Eden Prairie. I'm kind of disappointed more haven't come to fruition. I'll try to have at least one by the end of the year. I would have liked to have had a good combination of fake and true, a quasi-Dylan-esque blog. You wouldn't be able to tell the real from the false. But this has been more about honesty. "Circadia" will delve into this realm more, since it will be a public blog. This will go private shortly into 2010.

FACTOID 6: I'm also surprised I haven't dealt with more risque topics. There have been a couple entries where I've gotten a response from a more than normal number of people. The "What Do Women Want?" rant rings a bell. Also (uh, I'll be dealing with this one on Monday, I mean today, I mean Monday!!), the recent "Empty Presents" entry sparked a little discussion with my coworker about Christmas and how my viewpoint made her angry. I've had some "suicidal" depressed notes as well, most likely following a breakup or bad news. But there are only a few that have caused a scuffle. I was scared initially that I would eventually start pissing people off left and right on some of my rants. But I haven't ranted too too much. I haven't done much political ranting, either. Of politics, much should be said, but I never felt it necessary to talk about, unless it dealt with Obama's election back in January.

I've also balanced the candid/anonymous beam: how much should be said about these people? They were involved with this interesting anecdote, is it going to piss them off that I said these things? I've found that people OUTSIDE of the situation got more concerned with me talking about certain people than the people involved. When I was first seeing a girl back in June, I felt very strongly about her. Couldn't stop thinking about her, really. I wrote a poetic entry about our first date at Nye's ("Glittered Booths") and another old roommate Taylor commented "You shouldn't be talking about that. What if she sees it? You'll kill the moment." Maybe he was right. But now I'll always remember that awesome moment with her. Maybe she will, too, because of the entry.

I'll have a little more metawriting for the last entry. For now . . . enjoy this while it lasts . . .

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour -- "Around the Bend"

This Voyeur's Limits

One of the interesting elements of Napoleon Dynamite was its blending of decades and their respective styles. The clothes the characters wore were of the entire 80's palette. The music was an 8-Bit quality keyboard soundtrack. The walls were of 70's wood stylings. The gangster cousins of Pedro were of modern times, hobknobbing around in a hydraulic convertible. Napoleon jammed out to 90's pop (Jamiroquai) during his routine in front of the school. It's an interesting movie because you can't place the setting, time or city.

I think this is the same sort of scenario when it comes to strip clubs.

I visited Deja Vu for the first time tonight. We were there for research. Not that kind of research.

I went on a date there. My date happens to be doing an ethnography study on strip culture. She asked if on the day that we were going to be hanging out if I wouldn't mind accompanying her to a strip club. I said "Well . . . alright."

I did feel a little bit like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate during the scene where he takes the younger Ms. Robinson out on a date. To try to get rid of her, having already had relations with her mother, he takes her to a strip club. A date to a strip club. That's a first.

But it was interesting. It was extremely uncomfortable. Not the date, but Deja Vu. I hate this place.

This place is stuck in a time warp much like Napoleon Dynamite. You enter into a hallway resembling a convention ward in a hotel. The carpet is dark, the walls are dark, the lights are dimmed (very 70's feeling). A bouncer dressed in a tuxedo tells you to step behind red velvet ropes. He asks, "Have you ever been here before?" He tells you the rules. Nine dollar cover, nine dollar pop drinks (no alcohol). The nine dollars will get you free refills all night long. "Go in and enjoy yerselves," he says as he steps out of the way.

You enter into the main stage area (passing a heavily made-up woman leaning seductively against the wall, pursing her lips. I thought of another scene in The Graduate: "One word, son, are you ready? Plastics."), somewhat reluctantly falling into another velvet rope trap as you go up to the bar. After you get your nine dollar pop, you are spit out into the seating area. Tons of tables with two seats and a candle on top, couches along the back wall, and a long table at the front surrounding the stage look on three brass poles coming from the heavens (the second floor). Lone dancers strut their moves (the only bearable part of the Vu proceedings, I felt) with full on arials and flashes (they go full out nude sans their two foot stilletto heeled shoes). After three songs, the entire crew of ladies come onstage, awkwardly looking sexy in the most god awful "sexy" costumes on the planet.

Nothing's changed. Nowhere do heels that large exist other than strip clubs and sex shops. I have a clothing fetish, but those heels just look plain stupid. The costumes are all cliched: school girl, sports girl, cut T-shirt showing bottom boob (which is somewhat alluring, I guess), swim suits, lingerie from 1995. It's boring.

Although, a woman came up to us in a sheer gown she made herself. That was nice. We commented to her that we liked the gown, and she told us all about what she does for a living besides working the Vu. She is a seamstress.

When these women come up to the stage it's a signal that they're about to work the crowd for sales. They step off into the crowd (of which there were four other men, sad, older, alone, somewhat overweight. Creepy.) and pick their victims. The ones that bite go off to private sectors (the aforementioned loungey couches along the outer wall) to have lap dances. Apparently, you also go upstairs for a private dance, but if you're really willing to spluge (uh, figuratively), you can get a private BED for $90 on the third floor.

We kept having women come up behind us. "Are you guys interested in a private dance at all?" We kept looking at eachother smiling. "No, I think we're okay." "Okay, sure thing, honey."

It was uncomfortable to have all of the women onstage, making eye contact with me from time to time, and have them come over to ask to have fake sexual encounters. If I was drunk, really drunk, maybe. But I can't do that. I need more. I need to have something else underlying my sexual encounters.

I need the possibility of a relationship. Otherwise I feel fake. I feel like I'm disowning myself. I always want to be the best guy sexually. I'll be your best. How can I be the best when I can't do anything and I'm coughing up $20? It's boring and pointless to me. If someone else is paying, sure, I'll play along. But then I'll want to be the best customer, the guy that very politely says, "You were wonderful. I really liked it when you did this and this." Basically, I'd like to give the girls a different scenario than what they do normally. Be the best customer.

I'd want to talk to them. If it costs $20, so be it. At least it will be a customer they'll remember. I wouldn't need a lapdance. I'm good with sitting and talking.

Because there you open up the gates to a friendly relationship outside of the complex if both so desired.

I would not by any means act like Clive Owen in "Closer":


We sat for maybe a half hour before feeling uncomfortable enough to leave. I'll go there again, but only with a large group. And only if I'm properly schnockered so as not to brood on the uncomfortable nature of all the girls awkwardly thrusting onstage with vicarious men/women staring at them.

Whew, that place gives me the creeps . . .

NERD -- "Lapdance (Trent Reznor Remix)"

Empty Presents

Work work work.

Because of this, let's reflect on the current situation beriddling our society. Let's talk about Christmas.

The media surrounding Christmas tends to confuse me. It's hard for me to grasp the concept of a song written for the sole purpose of celebrating a holiday. You're only supposed to listen to it in November and December. After that, it seems empty and meaningless, if not downright creepy, to listen to the song in the "off" months.

Frankly, Christmas music sucks. You wouldn't listen to the music other than in those two months, that tells you something. It's interesting to listen to "empty" music. If Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" came on at the supermarket in July, you'd think "Why are they playing this? It doesn't mean anything right now!"

Music that is empty except for two months. We find it acceptable to play that music because all of a sudden, the music is flooded with meaning. Memories, family, lights, sleigh rides, horses, Santa, cookies, malls . . .

Because the music is empty most of the time, I can't help but think that it's all weak music. I hear this music and I cringe a little. Yeah, it brings me back, but there's something wrong about it, right? Something off.

Christmas movies tend to be the same way, but I find them to be more acceptable. A Christmas Carol is good, but it's probably the most Christmassy movie I can think of. That, and The Grinch.

A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation are both strictly Christmas movies, but I can bear them. It's a Wonderful Life . . . it doesn't have to be a Christmas movie. It only takes place on Christmas at the end of the movie.

The one movie that makes me utterly confused, but not angry, is The Nightmare Before Christmas. Is it a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie? Halloween movies are anytime movies, but Christmas movies are like Christmas music, you can only play them two months out of the year or something is off. This particular movie is a Christmas movie with Halloween flair.

It is the only Christmas movie that is acceptable to watch year round.

It's like the message of the movie transcends into the emptiness of Christmas pop culture, turning what should be meaningless in July into something of pure delight filled with wholesome empathetical viewing.

What's also strange about this movie is the counterculture it has started. The typical "goth" high schoolers listen to Tool, Type O Negative, Marilyn Manson, and flaunt Nightmare Before Christmas flair.

What I find interesting is that Manson and Nightmare seem to be the most prevalent in this sub-culture's clothing. Manson has recorded a remake of "This is Halloween", the first song of Nightmare. What's interesting is that the Antichrist Superstar has gone hand in hand with one of the biggest corporate entities of the planet, Disney. While I love Disney parks and Pixar, I don't particularly subscribe to the doctrine of Disney Inc. I'm disappointed that Manson, the most eloquent anti-establishment lyrical writer that I know of, has opted to stoop to this level of creativity, going against what he wrote about for some 15 years. It seems like he's given up.

This "goth" sub-culture is also empty. Year round. They have no statement. They are read as anti-establishment but they represent Disney. It's like having Mickey Mouse on their clothes. They have no clue. All I can think is that they don't know what their point in life is at the moment of wearing those clothes. Jnco's and dog leashes and Airwalks and long stringy hair. This gets to me, moreso than Christmas pop.

Empty messages. You find hope in a great work of art only to find it lost on the people who flaunt the advertisments for that great art the most. It seems that this happens everywhere in pop culture . . . coughCHRISTIANITYcough . . .

And what's the holiday that Christians flaunt the most?

It's all subjective. The humble man reaps the most happiness, and I have fun with my family and friends with Christmas, but still . . . this time of year makes me uncomfortable.

Fake. Empty. Lost.

Vic Chesnutt -- "We Hovered with Short Wings"

Operation Within the Spokes

We found another hopeful, the missing fifth.

Fingers crossed.

Ruby Throat -- "Barebaiting"