bacon bacon bacon

Today is International Bacon Day! I shouldn't put an exclamation point there because I'm not really as excited as I should be. I mean, I love bacon, or actually, I'm obsessed with bacon, but I just can't muster the energy to be excited about much of anything today. Yes, including bacon.

So yeah, I'm still in a bad mood. It doesn't help things that I'm stuck at work right now and I'll be at work for the next two days (including Monday) because I need the money. I know there are worse things in the world than having to work this job where they pay me way too much to blog about how I'd rather be somewhere else not getting paid way too much to do the same thing, but I'm in a bad mood. Sue me.

While I was "working" this morning, I watched this concert video. I know I mentioned Bobby Bare Jr. before, but I must insist that you watch this if you enjoy music at all. I suppose it would help to already know and like the songs featured (like I do) but maybe you'll like it anyway. In any case, I think it's pretty incredible.

Robotanists vinyl is finally in! And to go along with that, our video for "Exiled State of Mind" is finished and will debut at the time of the vinyl release. So that's cool. I should be more excited (yes, that was another disingenuous exclamation point there) but I'm in a bad mood. Sue me. Wait, no, don't do that. That's just gonna cost me more money, then I'll be back here working too much, and then I'll be in a bad mood again (or continuing this one.) So let's just forget that idea, yeah? Yeah. Thanks.

I need some drugs and a double bacon cheeseburger. That would make things better. Or maybe some drugs, some whiskey, a double bacon cheeseburger and some extra bacon on the side. That would make things better. Or kill me. Whatever works.

Whiskey! Bacon! (Genuine exclamation points.)

Bacon Bacon Bacon! Whiskey Whiskey Whiskey!

There. That's better. My mood is improving. Oh, wait! I forgot one.

Drugs Drugs Drugs!

Perfect.

update

So, yes. I went to Las Vegas this past weekend. I had an entertaining, if not mind-blowing, time. A couple of friends from Texas were there to celebrate a 30th birthday and they asked me to join, so I did. I don't much care for Vegas since I don't gamble and it's far too easy to stay up all night drinking, but it's not so bad in small doses. The first night I was there I did stay up all night drinking, pushed some random girl around in a shopping cart, talked to another girl from Hollywood who works the same sort of day job I do, got asked out on a date with yet another girl who had just gotten kicked out of rehab, and screamed about how goddamn boring The Twilight Saga is that I 1) almost got forcibly removed from a casino and 2) got free drinks from the bartender for making him laugh. To recap: Saturday morning wake at 6am, work, drive to Vegas, drink, meet people until 12 noon on Sunday. I was mistaken for "that French rock star" and was asked to take a picture with a really drunk 21-year-old girl who thought I was French (because I lied to her.) Talked to a guy on the bus who may have been hitting on me, talked to a bunch of blackjack dealers that were dressed up like whores, and saw a Rolling Stones tribute band on Fremont Street that actually wasn't all that bad. Also: I saw some stupid show featuring topless lesbian vampires dancing around to a soundtrack of 80's rock music.

Tuesday night I went to see one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Bobby Bare Jr. I had two tickets because I wanted to take a specific girl but she was in the Bay Area and wouldn't return to L.A. in time, so I invited someone else. Actually, since my sister is friends with Bobby, he put me on the list +1 and I already had those tickets, so invited three people. Keith, our bassist; C, a girl I slept with once in 2007; and M, a girl I met recently who probably likes me more than I like her. Brilliant decision on my part, let me tell you. C dominated my time (since we've known each other for a few years and we don't hang out that often) and even though M wanted to speak to me, she ended up talking to Keith for most of the night. That's not such a bad thing, mind you, since she and Keith had met and spoken before, and C didn't know anyone but me, but I still felt awkward, and the whole time I'm sitting there wishing I had been able to bring G from LBC. (Note: please forgive the letters-as-names thing. I got in trouble once for using real names on a blog and I'd rather not go through that again.) Anyway, the show was amazing, everyone liked it and we all had a good time. I should have talked to BBJ just to say thanks for the tickets, but I didn't because I'm a moron. And now I feel shitty for missing the opportunity to speak to one of my favorite artists. Goddamn moron, I tell ya.

Speaking of G from LBC, I wish she were still G from DTLA, I wish I could see her more often, and I wish I didn't miss her as much as I do. I know absence makes the heart grow fonder blahblahblah, but fuck. I have seriously developed some feelings for her and I'm kind of wishing I hadn't right about now. Not that I regret how I feel, it's just that I can't do anything about it at the moment and I'm not even sure she would reciprocate if I could. I like being her friend and I really have enjoyed getting to know her as of late, but hell. I'm all worked up and crazy about her and that's a situation that will probably end with me drinking a bottle of whiskey (for better or worse) in one sitting.

That's a lot of complaining considering I'm pretty happy with everything. Oh, well. Guess I'm in a bad mood due to lack of sleep and the fact that I'm sick of my day job.

-The new Robotanists song is really good. Seriously fucking good. We'll be rehearsing it tonight. I'm excited.

-I can't wait to go on tour. I've been waiting to return to Austin and Houston with a band that I love and now I'm gonna do it. Kinda surreal. Oh, and of course the tour means I get to eat some real Tex-Mex and fried shrimp po'boys. Fuck yes.

-Check out Bobby Bare Jr.

got to get it together

It's been a while since I posted anything so I thought I'd check in and and say a few things.

1. I'm broke. My car, my doctor, and my stupidity have led to this.
2. I really crave attention though I pretend not to.
3. Things are actually pretty good though I like pretending they're not.
4. I'm alone. My illness(es), my car, and my stupidity have led to this.
5. I still wouldn't change much of what I've done in the past four months.

it's like déjà vu all over again

I received a text today from a girl I've been seeing. It read, in part:

fyi... I might move to frisco in august...

Last year the girl I was seeing left for Paris in August. Let's just break down the similarities, shall we?

Pretty
25 years old
Downtown L.A. living
Fashion/Film work (or no work at all)
Vegetarian at the time we met and not so much anymore
Met at a house party through mutual friends where I got so drunk I forgot her name

Those are, to be honest, superficial similarities and there are numerous differences between the two both in who they are as people and how I feel about them. And of course I don't really mean to compare the two, it just strikes me as odd that for two years in a row I go to some party, meet a beautiful 25 year old girl that I get along with only to have them leave L.A. in August of the same year. Of course, I'm not sure if the girl I'm with now will actually go, while at this point last year I knew that the relationship had an expiration date. That said...

What the fuck is going on around here?

so this broad said I was sexist and I was like, "thanks! you said sexy, right?"

March ended and I made it to April without breaking anything or pissing anyone off- or at least more than they're already pissed at me (that I know of.) A few thoughts:

It took two weeks, but on Thursday night I managed to call the girl I took home from a party on Sunday, March 28th. I left a message and she texted me back. We had a nice and casual back and forth until I passed out from the cold medicine I was taking. I haven't decided if I'll try to contact her again. I'm just glad I finally called her. I was feeling like a real asshole for some reason. Probably just a matter of guilt since I practically went from her straight to another girl I met at that same party.

I've been hanging out with this other girl for the past couple of weeks. It started off simply enough. A lunch date at Pete's downtown. How that turned into me staying at her apartment for two days, I don't quite remember. How that turned into me having a spare key to her place I have no idea. How that turned into her starting things off with "I don't really believe in love" only to confess "I think I'm falling in love with you" two weeks later, I really can't fucking tell you. I hold open doors. Is that such a big deal? Are other men really that big of douchebags? I would say that she's a bit, different, so to speak (and that may be true to a certain extent,) but this isn't the first time this has happened to me. And I have a really hard time believing this has everything to do with me. Part of it, maybe. Not to this extent, though. There's no fucking way I'm this charming.

I'm almost 34 years old. Since I moved to Los Angeles, the girls I've dated have been of the following ages: 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 25. I use the term "dated" loosely, but it basically means I've been out with them more than three times and I've slept with them. I'm sure I've strictly slept with (not dated) a least a couple of girls who were over the age of 26, but so far no one has (thankfully) been under 20 and (curiously) no one has been over 30. No comment here, just an observation.

Speaking of women, there's been a sudden and inexplicable rise in contact from women I haven't spoken to in years. None of them are saying anything out of the ordinary, they all just seem to want to say hello all of a sudden. No comment here either.

I'm continuing with my decision to be completely cut off from my ex-girlfriend, and I fucking hate it. Even though I know it's for the best and frankly I need to be cut off, I'm finding the experience to be less than satisfactory. I imagined that I would feel a lot better once I was able to let things go, but I actually feel worse. Maybe I still haven't let everything go? It's hard to tell. We left things on good terms and were determined to remain friends, and now we're not anything because I couldn't handle it. I suppose we are still friends for all intents and purposes, but how much longer can we go without any contact at all before we both stop caring? Has that time already passed? I can't bring myself to find out since I still think about her far too often and that's what brought me to this state in the first place. I'm starting to wonder if I never cared for anyone before because I just never cared, or because I knew, somehow, that it would eventually come to this?

I need a drink.

don't give a fuck

I have seriously been in a "don't give a fuck" mode as of late and it's especially bad today. Maybe it has something to do with being so hungover. It's hard to tell.

A longtime friend of mine recently became engaged to be married and I really don't care. I think I should be happy for her or at least have some feelings on the matter, but I don't. I'm not sure why. We haven't talked in a long time but we're still friends and we were pretty close for a while so I should probably feel something, but alas, no. Don't give a fuck.

My sister called the other day and said she had told a friend of mine that she didn't want a romantic relationship with him. That's pretty lousy for him (since she's awesome) but I really don't care. I think I should since he's a lot like me- thirty something and lonely and losing his hair- but I just can't. Don't give a fuck.

I wrote an email to a girl I used to like, told her that I wouldn't be going to Austin for SXSW and said I wished I could have met her in Houston when we were both there over the holidays, but that's not really true. I suppose it would have been okay to see her but it really makes no difference. If I cared more then I would have made more of an effort to stay in touch. The only reason I wrote to her at all was so I could promote the band's new record. In fact, that's the only reason I wrote to a bunch of people, including my engaged friend.

"Hey, how's it goin', how ya doin', what's happenin', hope everything is awesome!"

No, not really. Don't give a fuck. Buy my album.

Of course, this is all a defense mechanism due to my problem with being an overly emotional freak. If I acknowledged how I actually felt about all of those people I'd probably go into a fit, and then I'd get all whiny and petulant because I don't think they care enough about me, and then I'd break something. Such a fucking child. I really should try to grow up one of these days.

I finally got around to telling my ex-girlfriend (note: I hate that term. Fucking terrible.) that I didn't think we were very good friends. That, I believe. We're not very good friends. I'm not very good friends with a lot of people, and that's just how things are sometimes, especially when dealing with people in different cities (she's in Paris), but I'm pretty upset over this one. I was fooling myself into thinking we could maintain some kind of shared intimacy. Not a romantic intimacy, mind you, since that's been over for a long time, but a kind of, I don't know... shit. I really don't know. I can not come up with anything. I must have been delusional or something. The pop-culture addled brain strikes again. Yeah, like I could write to her and tell her she's wonderful and pretty and how much I miss her and she would ignore the fact that I never wrote the real, snail mail letter I promised to and I haven't even attempted to visit once in six months. Then, when I eventually made it over she would leap into my arms and tell me how much she missed me and won't I just stay there, holding her forever!

Whatever. I'm a fucking retard.

At least I won't be treating her like my therapist anymore. I said that I wouldn't be writing about personal issues and she misunderstood that to mean our relationship issues, or how I feel about her or something like that, and she said she thought it was established that we were and will only be friends now. That's true, but you know what, that really fucking sucks to hear. The delusion blew up in my face. And I keep thinking about it, too. We-are-now-and-will-forever-be-ONLY-friends. I don't know why that's such a big deal. She's not here and won't be back and I'm surrounded by women. So I can't have a painfully difficult long distance relationship! With someone who doesn't even like baseball! Yeah, poor me.

Whatever. I'm a pathetic fucking retard.

Man, I am tired of writing about myself. Especially since I'm complaining. A lot. Do I have anything else to write about, though? No. Fuck it. I'm done.

musings on "musings..."

Dakota and I continued to talk for months after my second visit to Austin, but eventually our conversations became strained and just plain weird. She accused me of liking her much more than she ever liked me. It really was an accusation, too, as if my feelings were necessarily a bad thing. I didn't ever deny it but I know she was overstating things. I wasn't ever in love with her.

A few things I learned during our months of friendship: Dakota not only started dating Jeremiah again, but she ended up marrying him and moving to Scotland.

I actually met Jack "the human sex machine." He was friends with my roommate in Hollywood. He came to visit before I went to Austin and met Dakota, so the whole time she was telling me stories of a guy I already knew. He introduced me to the Mars Volta via their first EP and we went to a movie out here. In fact, he's friends with a bunch of people I know in Texas, so a girl that I'm close to in Houston knew all about Dakota. When I went to visit my friend one year she said something along the lines of "What's with guys and their attraction to little baby birds with broken wings?" That still makes me laugh.

Some thoughts on the title. I took it from a Bobby Bare Jr song called "Flat Chested Girl From Maynardville." The song is actually about a lonely wallflower, which she wasn't, but the kind of pain and frustration expressed by the character in the song summed up Dakota for me pretty well. And I think I just had to make a mention of her breasts since she was so rightfully proud of them. She told me she had lost some weight prior to us meeting and they weren't quite as spectacular as they once were. I still have a difficult time believing that.

Anyway, on the end. The real one.

One afternoon we were chatting on MSN messenger and got into a fight. I really can't remember how or why. I think she said something that offended me and I lashed out, but the details escape me. I just know that she told me to fuck off and I said the same. I tried to repair things at some later time but she was over it. Over me. Completely. I would write her emails and attempt to apologize and her one and only reply consisted of the lyrics to Elliott Smith's "Somebody That I Used To Know." That really pissed me off because I played Figure 8 for her and she said she didn't like it, that all the songs sounded the same. I thought, how dare she use that against me?

I can see now that she was really hurt by what I said but I really didn't think she would continue to stay mad at me. The lyrics say as much, but I just couldn't accept them as a accurate representation of her feelings. I thought maybe she was just giving me a hard time with "my" music and I thought that since I wouldn't (and don't) hold a grudge, she wouldn't either. I was obviously wrong.

I suppose there was a chance that her feelings would have softened over time if I hadn't started writing musings. There's no way to know that, of course. Even if that were true, I don't regret writing it. It's an interesting story and more importantly, it's my story. At some point, probably around the time I published part four, she sent me an email expressing her disapproval with "her life being spread out for whomever through another persons perspective" and how her husband was uncomfortable with another man "musing over a love affair, in detail, concerning his wife." I replied that it wasn't about her life or her husband's wife. It was about me and a friend I had once. I still maintain that I have the right to tell my story. She wasn't married at the time and I didn't say anything that I hadn't already told my friends. A personal blog isn't exactly the New York Times, after all. She was right that I did make one mistake in writing it, however, in that I initially used everyone's real names. First names only, but she was correct that it was disrespectful to her and those involved to do so. In my defense, I started the whole thing out of boredom and thought it was an interesting story to tell. That's all. All of us tell stories like these to our friends and we don't bother to change the names because a first name like "Bob" has no meaning if you have never- and will never- meet that person. As I delved into more detail and garnered more readers it would have been wise to realize that "Bob" would like to maintain some level of privacy, but I just never thought about it until she brought it to my attention. At any rate, I apologized and changed the names of everyone. To this day, no one outside of the people who were there at the time know who the real people are. I keep my pictures of her to myself and I have no desire to show them off and say, "Hey, look, this is the real 'Dakota!'" The point of writing it wasn't to embarrass anyone, just to write about an interesting chapter in my life in the best way I could. I'm proud of that time and despite how it ended, I still look back on it fondly. I surely won't have another moment like that again, especially one that I'll be able to write about years after it all ended. That said, I don't want another moment like that. As much fun as I had, it was a particularly dark period (which may be why the story is so good) but it's best that it remains right where it is, in the past. I know that when my life is all said and done, the time with Dakota will be one of the highlights, but it won't be the highlight. Hell, this past summer far surpassed anything that happened in Austin all those years ago. That is a story worth telling, but I know I never will. Who the hell wants to read about me being happy for 100 straight days?

P.S. When Dakota was still reading my blog, I had written a story about meeting a sweet Mexican girl. I made the whole thing up, but Dakota didn't realize that and sent me an email.

"At least you're sharing this girls life as it happens. Funny how it all seems so much nicer then. Good luck and don't fuck it up. My best advice to you, make sure you both think that you're in a relationship."

That's the last time I ever heard from her.