Quote

"Two Excedrins is not going to make this day suck any less."

~ Clair Devers

Hicks and Gervais

Quick Bill Hicks reference at the start of a sketch Ricky Gervais and Stephen F. Merchant (I don't know what his real middle initial is, but I like "F") filmed for the Guardian.

Muse

I got a good look at my muse today.

He’s shorter than me and much thinner. He has wings, but they are molting and in some spots they’re singed. He wears a hat that looks like a cross between a fedora and that weird little cap that Robin Hood wears. He smokes hand-rolled cigarettes. There’s a small leather pouch he keeps fastened to his belt, and when I caught a glimpse of him he shot me an evil grin and patted it softly. Scares the hell out of me.

 

 

I believe that people who want to write, but don’t, have a fairy-tale image of the writing process. They believe a writer sits down to begin work and a rainbow appears over their shoulder and they are washed in soft light descending from the heavens as the sentences and paragraphs flow fully formed into their brain and all that is left is their inspired transcription. In the middle of the afternoon other writer friends drop by and they all enjoy high tea while brilliantly discussing each others work. They use words like “transcendent” and “exhilarating”. Just lovely.

The truth for me is that writing is mostly lonely, and, when done correctly, an excruciating process that robs a little bit from you for every good sentence you manage to eek out. You have to give up just a little bit of yourself to make it work. When I explain this to my friends whom would “love to write”, they look at me as if I were someone standing alone in a parking lot clutching a brown paper bag that was leaking something.

“Maybe you’re doing it wrong. Why would you choose to do something that sounds so miserable? I thought you loved to write?“

Exactly.

It’s at this point that they slowly back away from me. As if they were afraid whatever it is that’s leaking from my paper bag might get on their shoes.

 

 

I know what’s in that little leather pouch of his. It looks small, but it holds a lot. Kind of like Mary Poppins bag, if Mary Poppins had been a sick twisted bitch. He has medical tubing, all kinds of vials, some tobacco, some wooden matches, and lots and lots of syringes and needles. All kinds of needles. Long ones, short ones, thick ones. “These is all of my little angels,” he sings to me. “They help me do the best parts of my work for you.”

There are times when I cheat. I toss something off without digging very deep and that’s it. The muse doesn’t come near me. Not so much as a pin prick.

But there are other times. Times when I go below the surface and so does he. I manage to mine something that is difficult to extract and he’s right there with a vein tied off and the needle plunged deep into my skin, sometimes through the bone and right into the marrow. Those are the good times and the sadistic little imp knows it. He revels in it.

I don’t know what he does with those vials after he fills them. Maybe he’s saving them for later on in my life when I’ll need it back, but probably he sneaks off in the middle of the night to the edge of town and dumps the contents into a drainage ditch. It doesn’t matter to me. Whatever is in those vials belongs to him now.

I wonder what it would be like if it were easier. If I could reach below the surface without the struggle, without the sacrifice. I don’t think it’s possible, and even if it were, I couldn’t do it. What would become of my nasty little muse and his finely honed skills? It’s not like a greeting card writer is going to give him a job.

It's shaped like a circle

The problem with self-deprecating irony is when other people get it, but you don't.

Who's Cody?

Cross Canadian Ragweed has a new album arriving on September 1st. I'll be interviewing Cody Canada sometime next week for the next issue of our magazine. It's not supposed to be feature-length, but I'm going to try like hell to get it to 5,000 words anyway.

All of this has been in the planning stages for a few weeks. In our scene, Ragweed is kind of a big deal. They are the LoneStarMusic Artist of the Month for August online and we published the longest review we've ever done on an album in the brand new issue of the mag.

All of this we did on our own. We didn't need some $250/hour publicist to clue us in that the release was significant in our area.

However...

We received a call at the store earlier this week from a publicity firm in New York City. They wanted to let us know that there was a new Cross Canadian Ragweed album coming out (thanks for the breaking news) and wanted to know if we would be able to promote the record at all. Mind you, the band was splashed all over the front page of our website at the time of the call. But wait, it gets better.

Kris, our store manager who answered the call, told the guy, "I know we're doing lots of stuff with the record. They're all friends with Cody so they've got it covered." To which he responded:

"Who's Cody?"

Playing the game, whatever the cost

There's an artist in our scene that I admire in some ways and am completely baffled by in other ways. He's been a big supporter of our company for a long time, basically since day one. But he makes choices that leave me searching for words.

First it was being a judge on the Next GAC Star or some show like that.

Then it was a special version of his record for Nike, where he talked about running either in-between or on top of his songs (I never picked up a copy so I have no idea how it turned out).

And I almost forgot, his slightly controversial but ultimately forgettable (obviously) cover of Hinder's "Lips of an Angel" while the Hinder version was still on the charts. (Why did I think I heard Pat Boone singing bg vocals on the cut?)

The latest, to promote his record release on August 25th I presume, is a guest appearance on the Lifetime original series, Army Wives. You can check out the preview here, and if you're reading this after the episode airs, that same link will allow you to view the whole episode (if you have the stomach for it).

I understand that is he wants to play "in the majors", these are the kinds of things he has to do, but it's all too reminiscent of some satire that I found very funny and, as it turns out, right on the money.

To start my week on the right foot

"When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Twitter, Facebook, & MySpace Unplugged

No, it's not a reality tv pitch.

I have deleted my accounts at all of the above. I have unplugged myself from the mass interconnectivity of modern online life. No more tweets, status updates, or bulletins for me. I quit. Fini. It's all Bubbles in the Wine to me now.

My wife was annoyed. ("I've gone from 'Married to Michael Devers' to just 'married'. Thanks a lot." As if I had filed some kind of legal proceeding.)

My friends who speak to me in the real world were baffled:

"What's wrong with you?"

"Did something happen?"

"Don't forget your aluminum hat, freak!"

For those who need to understand, there was no major event, no great epiphany. It was a gradual build up of small annoyances that led to the question, "What am I really getting out of trying to keep up with all of this and what else could I be doing with the time?" I deleted my accounts about .2 seconds after that.

I will be keeping this mostly anonymous blog as a tiny online island. Though the idea isn't wholly mine, it works for me. Of course, I've now set myself up to have no excuse in keeping this blog updated regularly. Annoying.

Where's the delete button on this thing?

The efficiency of the U.S. Mail

We have a couple of really nice trees behind our store in New Braunfels, TX. Lately, with every day being well over 100 degrees, I have been parking under one of them to keep my vehicle in the shade during the afternoon. I'm not the only one.

Every day, at some point between 1 and 2pm, a mail truck is also parked under the tree, usually directly across from my car. The driver sits in the truck for close to two hours - sometimes napping, sometimes reading a book. Either way, enjoying the shade on a hot summer day in South Texas.

It's most curious to myself and our shipping clerk as we have to pull teeth and get a written permission slip from Obama to get a carrier to pick up our packages on a daily basis. We had a guy for a while who was unbelievably good, "Dan the Man". They moved him from our area when they gave him a bigger route.

We have another guy, Steven, who does really well by us also. He picks up whenever he can, but he only rarely handles our area any more. He has also been given more responsibility. In other words, if Steven doesn't come, no one does. Why? According to the local post office, they are understaffed and "it's a miracle they can even deliver the mail with the resources they are given."

Which brings us to our daily reader out back. We're not exactly shy so we asked him (and a few other carriers) about it. Apparently, it's a postal tradition. If you finish your route early enough and come back to the post office they will give you more work. If you do it enough days in a row, they will give you more work permanently. According to the carriers, this is to be avoided at all cost. Thus the postal carrier has adopted the siesta as a tradition of their own.

I thought about all of this as I read a story today in the Wall Street Journal, Postal Service Delivers More Red Ink. From the story:

"The recession has been brutal," Postal Service Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett said at public meeting of the postal service board of governors.

Not only has the recession been brutal, but so has the heat. Just drop by our store between one and three pm and ask the guy parked under the tree.