I wish I was a punk rocker

There's this new song (I wish I was a punk rocker). It's a catching song, but I think it's funny that younger kids look back at the last few decades and sort of combind the last few "pop" decades. The lyrics go...


Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair,
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air,
I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.

When the head of state didn't play guitar,
Not everybody drove a car,
When music really mattered and when radio was king,
When accountants didn't have control,
And the media couldn't buy your soul,
And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything.

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair,
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air,
I was born too late to a world that doesn't care
,Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.

When popstars still remained a myth,
And ignorance could still be bliss,
And when God Save the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale,
When my mom and dad were in their teens,
And anarchy was still a dream,
And the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail.

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair,
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air,
I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.

When record shops were on top,
and vinyl was all that they stocked,
and the super info-highway was still drifting out in space,
kids were wearing hand-me-downs,
And playing games meant kick arounds,
And footballers who had long hair and dirt across their face.

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair,
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air,
I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.
I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.

I bring this up because yesterday someone was showing me a Teen People (What in God's name is a Teen People doing in Humboldt County is beyond me!!!!!!!!) And they showed me what "Mom and Dad's music collection has that you (remember, it's Teen People) might like.

The Top Ten is...
1. Beatles
2. Queen
3. AC/DC
4. Beach Boys
5. Jackson 5
6. Blondie
7. Rolling Stones
8. Abba
9. Led Zepplin
10. The Ramones

Maybe I should get XM radio, because it's only a matter of time before I have to turn to the oldies station to hear "Back in Black!"

"It's gotta be Rock and Roll music, if you want to dance with me." ~C. Berry

Ok, once again, I painted myself in a corner

My day starts at 8am Monday thru Wednesday, and doesn't end till 6pm. Now normally, I am use to the schedule, no sweat, but what I didn't account for was no breaks. Not good. I might have to change a few things here. I have no idea what, but I need to do a regular, good old fashion, check up, and I have no time to have one. Once again, not thinking with the big ass noggin.

One more time, I love art class. I decided to scream it from my desk this morning and the entire class agreed with me. If I could do that class from 8am till 6pm for the rest of the year I would be happy! What did we do in that class today? Cut colored construction paper and glue them together! I am having more flashbacks to my school years in that class then I am in all my other classes (including the ones where I observe in classrooms) put together!

On a different topic (and bringing up an earlier blog) there is one HUGE advantage to my snoring. My neighbor recently got himself a girlfriend (which is great, because he really needed one!), and they are..........noisy (to put it nicely). Luckily, my snoring is quite bad, and considering how tired I am, as soon as my head hits the pillow the snoring begins. As soon as I got home tonight, I noticed they grabbed their belongings and left for her pad. Good! I don't want to hear that crap on a school night!


"Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright"~Joseph Mohr ]=^P

How do you avoid paperwork?

Just pass it down to someone else. So I am writing a grant proposal for my program. I couldn't find last years paperwork, but I found the year's before that. Then it occured to me that the people who ran the program last year didn't write a grant proposal, they just copied and changed the one before their own. *sigh*, and the money in the account is down. So my already swelling workload has just hit a growth spurt.

But the bigger problem is my English class. Now I understand that this is college, but still you do not have to give tedious workloads (a constant theme in my major, and a blog I will do on May 10th of 2007!). I learned this with the Biology professor, just because the topic they teach to us students is their "love" doesn't mean we love it as much. I could teach a class in filmmaking and have a super fun time, but I might start to go over students heads with some things I talk about because they are just learning about film, and I have been watching adn doing for many, many years now. Anyway, I need to take the class, so there.

Art class rules!

I think this is the first class I actually wake up early to attend. From 8-11am we just talk about Art and make stuff. Today we were marbleing paper (Sort of Tie-Dye). Finally, all my years of doodling in notebooks will pay off. If I wasn't so close to the end I might want to get a second B.A. in Art. It's just too fun a subject!

My big "Note to self" today is "Just because I will be a teacher, doesn't mean I have to act like one in class." My science teacher, who is a nice person, keeps treating us like we are kids (she was a grade school teacher herself). I don't think my other have caught on to this, but me and the person sitting next to me noticed her talking as if we are 8 years old. It's not bad, but it makes me cringe.

My college peers have their priorities down. They have all told me they have planned their 3-day weekend trips (Bay Area, Redding, Oregon, etc). I get a kick out of how everyone treats this weekend like it's the last time they'll be free for a while (which is true since Thanksgiving is 11 weeks away, and we have no days off.) One friend already called missed class today saying they were sick (they aren't). Ahhh, responsibility.

The first week of school...

is crazy! 85% of the people I have met here are graduating this years (including your truly!), and because of it there seems to be a new feeling in the air. This was brought up yesterday at "Hops on Humboldt" by some of my peers. It started when a classmate of ours apparently had a breakdown a few weeks ago and ended up a paded room, which is more startling considering I saw this person a few days before I left for Lake Tahoe, and they seemed perfectly normal.

Speaking for myself, this is the smallest semester I have had since I went back to school. Four classes, an Art class (which I have been looking forward to for a year! I get to make my own pop-up book!), another science class (enviromental science), and two English classes. With both English classes I have the same professor. I have heard horror stories from students about this professor, and I am lucky enough to have two classes with her. The first English class is more about learning English and how we say words (for example, Oprah would be O-pr-ah, because we are sounding out different parts of the words and placing our mouths in different postitions. The second is English as a second language, which is a class I have been looking foward to for a while. And this is an extremly diverse class, we have 12 teachers from around South America, among various other countries. Before I forget, I know the Professor is hard because in both classes she passed out an 18 page syllabus, both of which I had to read before the next class because she gave a quiz on them....lame!

So with only four classes I have taken two jobs. One is directing the college's volunteer tutor department, that has much more paperwork then I imagined. The second job is a pre-school teacher. Really! I am in a room with twenty little kids basically getting paid to play with them. The kids are great! I'm pretty much the only guy working there, so I have a bit more pressure on me, but compared to past jobs it's a cake walk!

Hops on Humboldt

I was going to write about my first week in school (and the major choas around here), however I just came back from "Hops on Humboldt", which is the rednecks answer to wine tasting. From noon till six pm, 60 local brewers bring 3 or4 of their best beer and ales. For $20 bucks you can drink all the beer you want. It was a good turn out, but out of the many college students there most were from my major. Yes, elementary teachers drink beer better then the local teamesters and lumberjacks. This was also a rare first that this event had no hippies. When it comes to beer festivals the red neck rules. As I write this, at 12:30am, I have been partying like with the college kids. They passed out, ahh those young kids, so I walked "far"(but it's better then driving). OK, I'm getting sleepy now.

10 days/10000 miles pt 3...camping

When it comes to embarrassed I have done it all. Seriously, I've done it on a national level, in front of my friends, strangers, people I admire, and I'm not about to go into what I did. So I have a pretty think skin when it comes to making an ass of myself. But there are three things that will still make me feel stupid. One, of course, is trying to talk to girls, two is my family, and three is the fact that I snore. And I mean loud! My neighbors have made comments on it. My family reminds me of it. It is, without a doubt, my single worst problem. So imagine my stupidity when I agreed to go on a camping trip and completely forget to warn people of this impending problem.

Before I go into greater detail I wish to talk about the good parts of the trip. It's weird to think that 30 hours before I was in the middle of Time Square, one of the most populated areas on Earth, to the middle of nowhere where you can lay on a tree trunk and look straight up into the night sky and see the entire galaxy. No noise, no cars honking, no music, no nothing. It was awesome.

My "friends" and I arrived around noon to our site. We set up camp, and did some exploring. I was tired from traveling a lot. So around 10pm we called it a night. Less then an hour later I was awoken. They asked me to turn over because of my snoring. I couldn't fall back asleep for a few hours, and when I did they woke me again...so there goes my sleep. I felt pretty bad. Then I felt like an ass when they moved farther away from me. Assholes!

Without a doubt, the best part of all these trips was when I woke up at 6am to go for a walk. The forest ranger had warned us before about bears and mountain lions, but I didn't care, I was grumpy. As I went deep into the forest I heard some running and branches breaking, and then I cared!. A elk, about 800 Ibs, ran right passed me and stopped. It was awesome! It was the clostest I had been to wild nature. And this Elk knew he was bigger then me and could kick my ass if he had too. But he walked on his merry way eating grass. I really missed camping. I keep wanting to go to Yosemite National park, but much like Hawaii, I can't find anyone who wants to go with me.

That's been the one downer on these trips (yep, here comes the whining) I realize that I really have done everything a single guy can do. I really loved going on these trips, but wish I could've shared them with someone (besides family). ]

Quote is from Bill Murray in "Meatballs" best film about camping of all time!

"And even if we win, if we win, HAH! Even if we play so far above our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days; even if God in Heaven above points his hand at our side of the field; even if every man woman and child joined hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn't matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they've got all the money! It just doesn't matter if we win or if we lose."

10 days/10000 miles pt 2...New York

I could seriously see myself living in New York. The city just makes you feel alive, but before I get to that let me explain to you the real New York with this little story...

As I was getting on the elevator early one morning a family (who suspiciously sounded like they were from my home town in Missouri) were complaing how New York wasn't all that, and that the town was over-rated. Well, they aren't wrong, since they just did the normal tourist stuff like the Empire State Building, Time Square, and Ms. Liberty. But to see the real New York, you have to look passed that and get to the heart of it, which is not in mid-town. Where you will meet the nicest people, eat the best food, and drink till 4am!!!

I arrived on Tuesday night to my very cool hotel room with a complete veiw of the Empire State Building. And even though I was tired from flying (and doing the drive from Tahoe to Arcata the day before) I threw my bags on the bed and hit the town. I was just a few blocks from Grand Central Station so the whole city was open to me. However, the tourist in me knew I had to get some things off my chest. So I bought a subway pass, and saw the two touristy things I had wanted to see since I reached adulthood. I went up to 72nd street and saw Stawberry Fields, and tood a picture with "Imagine" in the background. Then I traveled all the way down to SoHo to go to CBGB's (which is, sadly, closing in October...and later will be a Las Vegas crap bar that you will find the sort of people who would never walk in the CBGB's in New York because they are chicken shits). For more about CBGB's history, well, you're online now, go see for yourself.

The next day I went to Greenwich Village/Washington Square. I had signed up to do a cultural tour with some members of my family. And with the tour I had the best Pizza, Greek, and Cheese ever! It was sort of a food tasting/culture tour. Including the coolest, and earilest "speakeasy" in the nation, cool houseing...and yes, the place where "Friends" (as in the TV show) lived and where their coffee house was.

The big family reunion in Brooklyn was refreshing. I am the blacksheep of the family since I was the first not to be born in NY. And I hardly, as in hardly ever, see my family, so it was nice to finally see them. It was fun hearing old Italian stories. Eating black olives, Mozzarella cheese, and cheap red wine all night. I sometimes forget I have a real family.

I saw a few plays. Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was great. It was fun to see the audience applaude with characters from the movie, like the french solider and the killer rabbit, would appear. They also threw in some regular pythons jokes in there.."Spam!" I also saw the single best play in my life!!! The Lieutenant of Inishmore!

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Show.aspx?si=522512

It is hyped as a "Irish comedy", and it is funny, very funny, but it is bloodier then a Tarantino movie, and more entertaining! It was that good! It made me realize what good acting and writing can be....do I even have to compare it to LA theater? I didn't think so.

Of course, I did a few tourist stuff. Time square, which has completely changed from when I was in New York 15 years ago. I did go to the World Trade Center site. I don't know why. I guess I just had to see it. The "Hole" is slightly bigger then the town of Arcata, where I live now. Nuff said.

My cousin, Lucy, recruits teachers for the New York school system. But I'm on the fence to live there. New York is great, but there is one downside (which is off topic from me being "on the fence"). The town is literally "Sex in the City". You see women, and I do mean many, many women, dressed as if they were on the TV show Sex in the City. I know real New Yorkers are better then that. But I would hope people who migrate to New York are better then to impersonate an idea from a TV show. I just came from a city that does that.

Even though I was there from a week, I did not get a chance to get caught up with people who I really would like to at least say hi to (Sorry Julie!), but I will go back there is a lot more to do there.

A quick final note. As soon as my plane landed, the whole Britain/terror thing happened. Which made me wonder if I was going to get stuck in New York or not. BUT what I didn't think about is New York after 9/11. I would still live in New York because it is the greatest city on Earth. Now how I pay my rent....that's something I would have to worry about.

"I don't have any reasons
I've left them all behind
I'm in a New York state of mind" ~B. Joel

Next..pt 3 (The middle of nowhere)

10 days/10000 miles pt 1 (Tahoe)

Lake Tahoe is pretty. As I look out from the top of Harrah's top floor I can see the mountains 15 miles in the distance. Sadly, it's a 8 hour drive for me from Arcata. I'm surprised my old car could take it.

I went to attend the wedding of Mike and Tina. Mike was a friend I worked with back at "the agency." They picked Tahoe because Tina's family (who are loaded) have a vacation home there. Now I have been a lot of weddings the last 10 years, I guess-a-mate 20 (OY!), but this one surely had the most money put into it. Not that that is a bad thing, but you see Mike is a bit of a geek in the Star Wars/Star Trek sense. The ceremony itself was 18 min (A new record), and the party lasted hours. I bring up the geekness because they, and I must say this was a good idea, labeled the tables with their favorite movies to know where everyone was to sit (and there was a lot of comic book movies, believe me). The couple came out and the theme to Star Wars was played. Surely the groom had made his mark at the wedding, but you could tell it was the bride's wedding as well. The ceremony was outside, on an amazing 75 degree day, with the mountains in the background. Tina looked fantastic in her dress, as all brides do....ummm, with one expection, but that's a story for another day. Tina had flew out most of her family from Denmark (!). It was pure fun. I'm going to say between the out of town family, the number of people, and the open bar (! pt2) the wedding cost $60,000.

But let's get to the good part. When it came to chaos it all had to start with the other people from "the agency" I worked with. Corey, who, in my book, worked for the worst person in Hollywood when he was at "the agency, is a 32 year old who was smart/dumb enough to pick up the groom 18 year old cousin. I believe the elderly gentlemen, Tina's uncle, said it best "All a 30 year old has to do is look at an 18 year old to get there attention." I am still waiting for updates, the 18 year old lives in Canada but wants to go to LA to visit Corey (WHO, I might add, hasn't had a job in two years!). Corey was hoping for a one night stand that never happened. She thinks it's a relationship, and he's thinking with his....well, you get the idea.

I was attempting to talk to one girl who also wishes to be a teacher, but I was cock blocked, and rudely(! pt 3) by another old employee who was just telling me an hour earlier how he was in love with his girlfriend and was thinking about popping the question. Eh, whatever, not the first time and it won't be the last.

I got completely shitfaced and did what I do best and led the party. Putting the tie on my head I danced to every song they played (which inclued "Bad Bad Leroy Brown"??????). Once I figure out how to put pics up here I will, but it was great. Then off to the casino where I didn't sleep till 6am!

Before I forget, the next time I move to an apartment complex, which I will, I must have a pool! The place that I stayed was great (AND CHEAP! Just $100 bucks a night!) it had three bedrooms, a loft, a full kitchen, and a heated pool and hot tub! No matter how shitfaced I got, I had to swim in that pool for an hour every day. Even at 8am that pool was heated. Oddly enough, it was the best part of the trip for me.

next Pt 2...New York

First day of school

After a two week break, which I will cover in a three part blog tomorrow, school has started and I am in the thick of it. Monday's are my longest day. From 8am till 6pm I am on campus. Normally, this might be a bit much but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is pumping me up to push through.
My college friends are already giving me the updates on their lives with relationships lost and found, places traveled, new places they live (which I am still in "the cave"). It is a world of difference from being "A stranger in a strange world". And tonight one of my college peeps (I love that word, "peep", heh heh) and I are seeing James Brown in concert. Now why the Godfather of Soul is in the middle of the redwood forest is beyond me, but I'll take what I can get. I just got my Jane Goodall tickets so I am excited to see a few good talkers too!
Not going to write too much now, but tomorrow I expect to get started on the "10 day/10,000 miles" posts.

"Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back, to that same old place that you laughed about"
~J. Sebastian

Fear and Loathing in Arcata

This summer has been my summer to get caught up with casual reading. Clearly I've been reading Hunter Thompson stuff, which I've been wanting to do for a decade now, and I'm glad I have, in a way I wish I would've written him a fan letter (which he would've burned, but who cares). This will be my last blog for a while, I'm off to do a few trips which is good because I think I'm burnt out on Humboldt County right now.

My backyard up here is a hugh National Park (Redwood Park) with many miles of trails which I go up and down on. Recently, on one of the trails, I can upon a wooden building. It's the Redwood Natural Science building, but the structure reminds me of another building from back home. I can't think of it, but every time I do I get this over-whelming sense of Deja Vu. Which I enjoy, as you get older it's fun to think of the old times, at least the good old times. Considering this should be my last year as a "under-classman" it's good to look back at the life before this one.

Ok, I think I have 6 blogs where I talk about the same thing, getting older/looking back. I really can't wait for school to start.

But I will say this, I think I'm at the big crossroad. Everyone I know is married or getting married. It's not that I'm loseing friendships, but my friends are now moving on with their lives. In college I'm 99% sure I won't meet girls since I'm over 10 years older then then average student. If I was to go back to LA, I'd still have friends, but they too have other priorities. My last trip to LA I almost had to bend over backwards to see some of those people. I'm a bit use to it though. Like San Jose before LA and St. Louis before that. Heck, when I was in Santa Cruz, none of my "friends" made time for me. Eh, but I'm use to being alone. God bless TV!

This is probably the only downer about going back to college. These people have their own lives they are just discovering. They want to have fun in their 20's with people in their 20's. It goes for friends I have in their 40's. They want to hang out and have fun, but by 10pm they want to be at home.

With that said. This should be the end of the "Why Me" crap. When I come back, it'll be me and a bunch of 20 year olds telling me with wrong with the world.....yeah!

Take care.

"Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to." ~B. Dylan