I think there’s a point where everything started making sense. There was just a certain comfort in knowing I would never predict the future. Things stopped looking so enormous in the way that your childhood home looks so much smaller when you visit it again after some years have passed over it. There’s this huge part missing from the concept of going full circle. It’s too often assumed that you stop after going full circle.
Only you don’t. You just go full circle again.
I am never quite sure what my spiritual beliefs are, but I can tell you that the single greatest argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of an afterlife is that almost nothing in life just starts and then stops. You are never really out of the woods. You are never really behind the eight ball. Really, you are just in between forests and waiting for something else to knock the eight ball out of the way.
You get to a point where you realize you are barely waiting for seasons anymore. By the time you have gotten used to your scarf and pea coat, your legs are longing for summer air and sea breeze. You are drunk from the rapid passage of time. There is less dread. There is less time to worry. Each year becomes a small and more manageable increment of your lifetime. The concept of the “rest of your life” stops seeming so dire. The “rest of your life” is not such a long time.
It’s the cyclical nature of things that has me alternating my preferences for my car ride home. Some times I want to spend my nightly drive into the city on the phone trying to plug in to the world. Others, I just need some airy music so I can attempt to plug into myself. I get a conversation going with myself.
I’ve always sort of had this thing where I felt like happiness and sadness were connected. I mean literally connected like both ends of a rope and an epic lifetime match of tug o’ war ensues. The more happiness you pull, the closer you bring the bad stuff to the middle. This used to really bother me, but lately I think I’ve started to understand and appreciate that progression. It’s like people with a gambling problem in a way. While they only feel alive when they are taking big risks, I only feel truly happy with the understanding that it might be short lived. Like trees, relationships, happy hour, summer and baseball games, all good things must come to an end.
That’s why when I find myself in the backstage area of The Troubadour looking down on a sea of people, I pause. You just never know how many more times you’ll get to be there. You have to really enjoy it. You have to really appreciate everyone who was there and who got you there.
Enough with the emotional take though. You came here for the whiskey.
Early in the evening found myself waiting for Tom and Garrett to get down from Nor Cal. Went on a run because I got antsy and wondered if I’d used up all my energy for the day. Grab lunch with my parents in the triangle. It’s packed. I park my car by all the valets and it is a mess. I didn’t have a valet ticket. We’d have to hash it out later. The waitress at the Farm looks like a cross between Ellen Pompeo and someone who will not bring you a glass of water no matter how much you ask her to.
A sun shower on the car ride home. Brief memory of the first time I saw one. Remember it clearly. Baseball practice in New Jersey some 18 years ago. I’m getting older, apparently.
Head to the Troubadour to figure things out. Load in, end up waiting way to long. Tom and Garrett show up. They agree that being in a band is cool except for all the waiting around and carrying shit. Now I don’t need to write a book on the subject. They nailed it.
Stop at American Apparel, which has become a strange show day ritual. I don’t buy anything, but have a ton of fun trying on a neon headband and a very feminine infinity scarf. There’s a tie-dye sweatshirt that looks like something I want to wear, but the truth is it will just piss me off that it is not summer. I’ll wear it and be mad that I am not at La Piedra drinking a glass of warm rum and orange juice with a few sandwiches nearby harvested from the Trancas Market. Cool wind in your ankles and the smell of suntan lotion and that glorious separation between day and night, the worst of it being the need to shake off the sand and find it in you to have as much fun after the sun goes down as it did when it was up.
So yeah, fuck that sweatshirt, dude.
At Ralph’s buying Maker’s Mark. Get home, get a text from Morg. He wants to join the freak show. Of course he can. He arrives with Maker’s Mark. That’s awesome. Assorted friends show up and we’re drinking. A quick conversation about Chatsworth and the bands we used to like. No Use For A Name. NOFX. Pivit. Man, taking me back a decade. Tonight is going to be a good night. Black Eyed Peas kind of ruined that saying.
We are backstage and it is the super crew. Life in 24 Frames shows up. Their first big Troubadour show. There is nothing like it, I am stoked for them. I am stoked myself. The backstage is becoming a good mixtape. Old people and new people on this ride we’ve been on for five years.
As L24F is finishing up their set, the butterflies return. There is no amount of whiskey I will be able to drink to lower the adrenaline. Even for a terrible guitarist like myself, playing lead feels like doing surgery on national television when up against blinking stage lights and a packed room. We walk down the stairs and the crowd lets us know they are there. House lights go down and we go on.
Then the show was as it always was. A blur of colors and sounds. The fine line between ego and enjoyment. Swiftly moving faces in the crowd. Failed and successful attempts at meaningful eye contact with the people who came to support you. There’s a tangible feeling of wanting to make sure everyone knows you are glad they came. Not just glad, but on a personal level… I don’t know. I blow a lot of smoke, but if you were in the room, you have no idea how much it means to me.
Another night, another fix. The city and her citizens came out in full force and made it all worth it. The traffic, the bullshit, all of it was an after thought. Saturday night was the jam.
Like a bald eagle lit on fire streaking over the countryside dropping bacon bombs, the Superbowl Halftime Show is American as fuck. It is the reason we won World War II. It’s the American concept of doing things that seem impossible that makes us Americans. The Superbowl is the biggest event in American life. It is bigger than Christmas, the Oscars, Tax Day and the birthdays of every celebrity on earth combined. Then doubled. If the NFL started a religion and only followers could watch the Superbowl, I am pretty sure it’d be the end of all other religions in America.
The game is the biggest event on Earth year in and year out. Advertisers pay incredible amounts of loot to buy air time to advertise their products. We watch the ads and rate them. We compete even when the game is paused. Who did the best? Who did the worst? Holy shit, this commercial has 3-D goggles?
So with it being a day filled with pre-game shows, billions of dollars worth of incredible creative advertising and not to mention the most popular sporting event of the calendar year, what does America insist on sticking in the middle?
The biggest entertainment event of the year. In the twenty or so minutes halftime lasts, America has made it possible to build a stadium within the stadium, light it, fill it with the world’s most popular celebrities, do a Broadway show, blow some shit up, and then take it down in time for the second half. Guys who love football love the Superbowl. Guys who don’t love football love the commercials. EVERYONE loves the halftime show.
It hit me that it is 2010. I have been watching Superbowls probably since I was five or so, making it about 20 or so I probably watched (one time I had a really bad fever and was hallucinating so it is totally possible I watched the game, or hallucinated a game between the Broncos and Packers in my brain). I started looking at old Superbowl half time shows and decided to take a look back. I think there is no single, more obvious indicator of what America was like at a point in time than the half time show. It is our moral, social and spiritual barometer. Or thermometer. Or even meter stick. Or that thing you had in 7th grade science classes that was like a clicking wheel you pushed around to measure distance. All of those things.
The first SBHS was in 1967 and it featured the University of Arizona and Grambling State bands. That was what you got. Some halftime marching band jams. In fact, besides Ella Fitzgerald sitting in one year with a marching band, the SBHS was basically a bunch of marching bands until 1987 when Disney grabbed the reigns and I was finally at an age where wiping myself was possible. What’d they do? They gave us George Burns, Mickey Rooney and a bunch of Disney characters and a Salute to Hollywood’s 100th Anniversary. This isn’t surprising because how on Earth could Americans watch a football game without being reminded how important movies are? In case you are curious, they are SO important.
Proving that California knows how to party, the 1988 SBHS in San Diego featured Chubby Checker, the Rockettes, 88 grand pianos and the mighty CSUN Matador Wall of Sound. I mark that as the first real SBHS. It’s kind of like the first time certain people smoke a cigarette. This was the moment we gateway drugged our way to the SBHS in 2004, which was probably our highest/lowest point. We’ll get to it.
1989 gave us the Diet Coke Be Bop Bamboozled SBHS in 3D. It was a 50s inspired set in 3D that had an Elvis impersonator as the star, but no Elvis songs. Also, it definitely looks like the first true corporate sponsor-named event. It used to be “brought to you by”. Now, it had naming rights.
This pissed people off so much I am guessing that America conservatively recoiled, opting in 1990 for a celebration of New Orleans and the 40th Anniversary of Peanuts. Yeah. Snoopy and shit.
Then, in 1991, the flood gates opened and we got Disney. We got 2,000 children singing “Small World”. We got a the fans flipping cards over and making giant drawings. We got New Kids on the Block. We also got to see it after the game because it was Desert Storm and we needed some news coverage. Here’s the clip. You are welcome, Lost Angeles:
Two years later we got what probably ranks as the best SBHS of all time: Michael Jackson. Watching these clips made me so sad. Yeah, a little because he is dead, but mostly because America was awesome then in my mind. Here’s a guy dancing around with James Earl fucking Jones narrating and he’s like basically telling us “black people and white people need to chill out” which we needed because there was a lot of heat there with the L.A. riots and OJ and all that jazz. If you see people cheering at the end of the clip, it almost reminds you of when Obama got elected. Forget your political allegiance, everyone should agree on trying to be colorblind. In a time where it was gangsta rap and a lot of racial tension, MJ told us to enjoy the Superbowl and each other. He did all that with some wild musician with crazy ass white hair shredding a guitar like they used to in the 90s. Sorry, this clip was just awesome. The Rose Bowl looks amazing. (by the way, I am skipping the clip where MJ is on stage with like 200 kids singing Heal the World. That part was awkward given what we know now).
From that point on, we tried a lot to top Michael, but we didn’t. I still don’t think we did and I am not a crazy huge MJ fan. We tried the country music angle, but network execs realized most people fucking hate country music and those who love it were already watching for the football part. Additionally, let’s be honest. Diverse halftime shows are a good idea because there are parts of the country where this is the only 20 minutes a year where they see diversity. For them, I am pretty sure it feels like it felt for us when we went to the movies, put on the glasses and watched Avatar for the first time. Mind blowing.
E*Trade took over for three years and gave us some of the first cross-genre collaborations including the now very famous 2001 collaboration including Ben Stiller, Britney Spears, Aerosmith and N’Sync. And they even let Mary J. Blige like sing for 12 seconds. Sorry ladies, but this one explained one thing to me: Aerosmith songs are still awesome. N’Sync was kind of a what-the-fuck-were-we-smoking thing. Sorry JT, you ended up being pretty cool. Good call on cutting those other dudes loose. Also check out Britney before the flood. Crazy.
The world was nuts before 9/11, wasn’t it? That’s all I could think about. Even MTV still showed a video or two. We hadn’t totally jumped the shark yet. Before I get into it, just watch Bono and The Edge here:
I am not a huge U2 fan, but that clip took me back. It reminded me of being in the dorms at USC, only a few weeks after moving to the city and how much the world changed overnight. There was something of the American spirit going on. It was some Irish guys telling us to hang in there in a way. We were doing what we did before the towers fell, watching football and celebrating the things we loved. I wish we had held onto that place and skipped all the mistakes we made for the better part of the next decade. Clearly though, we went into denial as a mere 2 years later we get the most famous halftime show of all time: Nipplegate.
All the lying afterward about a “wardrobe malfunction” was ridiculous because it just shows what level we were comfortable with being lied to at that point. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Wardrobe malfunction? Torturing prisoners? Whatever, just tell me what I want to hear. What really was so crazy was how pissed off people got over seeing .5 seconds of a boob with a pasty on it. You see more during on Labor Day when TBS plays European Vacation censored twenty times. Seriously. You do.
Still, it was nice to see five short years after dancing in a boy band, JT finally got the note that it was cooler to tear off a girl’s clothes than to syncronize dance with a bunch of your buds.
So how do you put a “sexy and controversial” SBHS out of your memory? With a Beatle of course. Because you are NOT allowed to talk shit about any of the Beatles, their music or anything else. You don’t get to, okay? Check out Paul’s entrance dance. It seems to say, “See America? No nipples. Just Beatles.”
Then Prince did Purple Rain with a guitar that was very phallic and he solo’d behind a white curtain and I was pretty sure this was more intense than all .5 seconds of Nipplegate, but it was hilarious. I was all for that kind of behavior. And then it STARTED TO RAIN. It wasn’t purple, but it was pretty cool.
We got Tom Petty. We got Bruce. Now we get The Who. It looks like the SBHS mashup thing has gone away for the time being and that is probably a good call. Give me some Pinball Wizard and let me take my mind of Peyton Manning’s happy feet dance in the pocket.
Have a great weekend Lost Angeles. You have enjoyed it. I’ll be tweeting a lot tomorrow before our show at the Troubadour (tix at the door, call ahead) and on Superbowl Sunday. Drop me a line.
Honestly? I get that Doppleganger week is kind of fun. I get that it is cool to give and get compliments. I don’t want to be the new media Grinch or anything, but somebody has to just call this week out for what it is: A carnival of lies.
There’s a weird thing going on when every single person with a Facebook profile looks like one of the same world’s 100 sexiest people. Imagine how happy we’d all be if everyone we knew actually looked like Carrie Underwood. It was really odd. I signed online and it all made sense. Sixty percent of my graduating class from USC actually does look like Nicole Kidman. It’s just crazy I never put it together. It’s even crazier that the other forty percent looked like Ewen McGregor, which is probably why I always felt like I related to Moulin Rouge.
hhhmmmm.....no you don't look like her.
Seriously people? I have an ego like the next guy. Of course I do. I have a blog. You know I love the sound of my own voice. But I’ll tell you one thing, when someone asks me who I look like, I don’t spend the next ten minutes looking for which picture of Jude Law I wish I looked like. Jude Law my ass. I look more like Judi Dench.
Admittedly, there was a time people told me I reminded them of a young Mel Gibson, but I am pretty sure that just had to do with having a curly mullet and constantly quoting Braveheart at Bar Mitzvahs as a chubby 7th grader in the Conejo Valley.
Let’s get it straight. You don’t look like Megan Fox. If you did, you wouldn’t have Facebook. You be too busy getting hit on by dudes in Ed Hardy gear that you’d never have had the time or motivation to learn how to sign into something as complex as Facebook. Password? Shoot, I never know the answer to these questions!
What about the celebrities? You think Brad Pitt is on Facebook wondering if he looks like you? If anything, he’s taking bong rips out of the honey bear True Romance style laughing his ass off that all you guys think you look like him.
So, who do I look like? I am not sure. Pick any one of these guys.
If that isn’t doing it for you, here are some more Zacklegangers for you. Take your pick, but none of them are Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
There has been a lot of to do about who will win the competition for the Dodgers’ fifth starter position. I have taken many approaches to this, but think I have found the solution in this classic photo.
Pretty quickly this 2010 thing has snuck up on us. We’re flying right out of January like it never even happened. Isn’t that the way it goes? It may be cliche to say that every year just seems to get faster, but they only call them cliches because they are true. Chew on that.
I am going to the Grammys on Sunday, which should be interesting. I have never really cared a ton about award shows, but what I do support is being in the midst of a ton of drunken celebrities. It’s like being at a zoo filled with hot people. The Hot People Zoo.
Lots of rehearsals for the Fight From Above show at the Troubadour on February 6th. We’re going to play some new songs off our mysterious second album. We’re still early on in the writing process on the album, but we are sure getting a lot of songs together that we can choose from. If you still haven’t gotten tickets or just are generally curious to meet me (and buy me whiskey), send me a tweet, email, whatever.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, thoughts of baseball are beginning to claw their way forward. What a nice feeling that is. Soon enough I’ll be wearing shorts again and traversing the extreme south side of the city for new quick routes east to Dodger Stadium. Only in California is it normal to start getting excited for summer before Valentine’s Day.
Got a goodbye party for a coworker in about two hours, so that is a good start to the weekend, except for the fact that this coworker will be sorely missed. Future endeavors, I guess. Send him off with a scotch like a perfect handshake gentleman, as my friends like to say.
So, in a rare Lost Angeles shout out, let me send Morgan out with a nostalgic as all hell song from back in the day. This is a guy who has an iPod filled with all the junk mine is. This kid is the top export from Idaho since the blue turf at Boise State. And potatoes. Many more exploits to come, but to make sure you knew you made it count, here’s your jam, buddy.
Something to think about on your way to the next bus station in life. Here’s hoping you accomplished everything you wanted to at this one.
Posted a review of Templeton Rye in my own style. I made a point to say I am not a connoisseur or critic. Still, someone out there was insecure enough to need to flex his nuts. My AP English teachers weren’t this stuck up. Neither were my professors at USC Film School in the writing department. Here’s his post unedited:
No offense, your review style could use a little work.
Some compare and contrast would be good, for example, how does this compare with any of the other Rye whiskeys available on the market? Example: is this something for the Old Overholt or the Rittenhouse drinker would like? Why?
Instead you called it “smooth” and compared it favorably to a Japanese, Barley-based whiskey in the Scottish style! And even then could not qualify important differences.
Review how ever you want, but know: As a whiskey drinker, and bartender, I am left after reading your blog with absolutely no idea what this tastes like, if I would like it at all, and if it is worth hunting down.
And now, as usual, my annotations in red.
No offense, your review style could use a little work. I hate when people say ‘no offense’ then proceed to try and offend you. What would this person think if I said ‘no offense, but I don’t read comments from men with female anatomy?’ Of course, I’d never say something like that. Oh. Shit. No offense.
Some compare and contrast would be good, for example, how does this compare with any of the other Rye whiskeys available on the market? Example: is this something for the Old Overholt or the Rittenhouse drinker would like? Why? Name-dropping is for insecure people. I’ve had Rittenhouse. Never tried Old Overholt. Why is it I am comfortable knowing what I like and not worrying about being an expert? Because I know one thing. If I drank half a bottle of Old Overholt I’d be ready to fight a bear naked in the streets, saw its head off with my laser vision, stuff it, mount it above your fireplace and steal your Thanksgiving leftovers.
Instead you called it “smooth” and compared it favorably to a Japanese, Barley-based whiskey in the Scottish style! The horror! And even then could not qualify important differences. Is there anything more arrogant than when this guy just wrote “smooth” in quotations. Let me thank him for trying to “enlighten” me on how to have an inferiority complex.
Review how ever you want I plan to, but know: As a whiskey drinkersnob, and bartenderelitist, I am left after reading your blog with absolutely no idea what this tastes like but I thought you already knew everything?, if I would like it at all, and if it is worth hunting down.
I don’t think my goal was to enlighten people who claim to be experts in this field. I speak for the everyday urban cowboy just trying to warm their belly and work up the will to bring home an attractive girl who loves baseball.
In fairness, this guy probably just wandered onto the blog hoping to get some epicurean rant on Templeton Rye and instead got me, Los Angeles’ premiere whiskey punk. The poor sap didn’t think about who my audience was and just felt like flexing his nuts for whatever reason. Perhaps I should just let bygones be bygones. I don’t know, I’d still have a drink with the guy (but he’s buying as I am sure whatever I ordered wouldn’t be up to snuff).
In the end, I’ll close by saying listen man, it’s not your fault she left. Maybe it wasn’t one thing. Maybe it was a bunch of little things that added up. Maybe she just wanted something new. Women are fickle and you want someone who loves you for you. Don’t waste time trying to figure out why she packed up. Just move forward. In the end, you will find happiness someday. There’s a girl out there for everyone.
I asked the fine people at Templeton Rye for a bottle of whatever they could send me. I wanted to review it. More so, I wanted to believe that in America people will send you booze just because you are a writer. As we all know, whiskey has fueled the greatness of many writers. I certainly have had my preferences, but I wanted to know what Al Capone’s favorite whiskey was like.
So “the good stuff” as it is called is Iowa’s finest rye whiskey. I got the bottle in the mail at work and walked around like I was made of Teflon. I was basically looking really cool. The bottle is corked, which I always think shows handcrafting. It conveys that this is a whiskey that came from a cask put together by humans, not in some industrial vat system. The back of the bottle was hand numbered. It made me feel pretty good about it.
I waited a week to get into the stuff because I was looking forward to it. We were set to head downtown on Saturday to Seven Grand for a birthday party. This was the right night to dive in as Seven Grand is good for whiskey. It’d be stupid to drink a bunch of what I suspected to be good whiskey before heading out of margaritas (not that I haven’t paid for that mistake in the past).
I am not a whiskey aficionado in any typical sense. I am not a connoisseur by any stretch. I am a guy who loves whiskey and everything it stands for. While I am glad that people talk about smokiness and peat and all that jazz, I am looking for what the drink is like. How it drinks.
The whiskey smelled a little sweet when we opened it. A first sip was very smooth, but packed quite a kick on the back nine. I thought at first that I was going to be too rough and tumble for this Iowan rye, but I was wrong. We put our second glass on ice and continued to enjoy it. This whiskey was strong and smooth at the same time, which are hallmarks of what I look for. I like the whiskey’s strength to be in its punch, not in its peat so to speak. The Templeton Rye was smooth, warming and substantial in every way. It stuck to your ribs. It made me want to fight a bear and pour him a glass after we’d gone a few rounds. You know, just to show him it was only a little good-natured roughhousing.
We went down to catch our cab, but it was late. We decided to head up and catch another drink before heading out. I have to be honest, I absolutely loved it. I am thrilled I have half a bottle left, though I suspect I won’t have it for long. The whiskey, as it would seem, is always running out right when it was getting comfortable.
Templeton reminded me of what is so great about whiskey. In case you are someone who is on the fence, I can elaborate. Wine lovers will spend a life time seeking different vintners and vintages, food pairing and comparing wine cellars. There will never be enough. That pursuit is about as interesting as a having a mansion and never throwing parties in it.
Whiskey is the opposite. While it’s great to try new whiskeys, I will buy my favorite brand 75% of the time. I like the consistency. I like a familiar taste attached to the memories you make (or can’t remember). Whiskey is baseball. It’s apple pie. It’s something other countries do well, but we hang right in the with the best of them. Like Templeton says, it’s “the good stuff”.
When compared to my current house whiskey, the Japanese Suntory offering of The Yamazaki 12 Year, Templeton exceeded my expectations. Yamazaki has been my go-to for over a year now because it is smooth, bright and at $34 at BevMo right now, a good deal. While Templeton is a little more expensive, when it hopefully becomes available outside of Illinois and Iowa, I will be a loyal follower. It reminded me of what American whiskey should feel like. I would certainly order it online where it is currently available (CLICK HERE if you want to try it)
I set forth to the Red Line to head downtown on the subway with a warm belly and a head full of ideas. We avoided the line at Seven Grand with an old smoke and mirrors tactic and even had time for a street taco. We ended the evening hours later at the Pantry doing things the old school way, eating breakfast in the middle of the night that was prepared on a grease-laden griddle that’s clearly been battle tested.
While my bottle of Templeton was on the house, believe me I’d have no problem saying that it was only “OK” or not that good at all. They were bold to stand up to the challenge I offered them. Maybe I wouldn’t like it? They handled it like a great poker play handles pocket aces. They knew it was possible they could be beat, but it was unlikely and they went all in.
Let’s be honest. They took the pot.
So consider me a new loyalist. Put me on the payroll. Tell me who I need to tell. Since I started this blog, I always dreamed of being sponsored in some way by a whiskey maker. It just seemed like a natural fit. When Templeton rolls out to California, this is me offering to be their man on the ground. Just like they were confident their product would hold up to the test, I am confident I’ll get their message out. In fact, when my Whiskey Drinker’s Guide to Lost Angeles comes out, I’ll probably ask you guys to be our preferred beverage sponsor. Just because you make great whiskey and you “get it”. America is the wild west. Whiskey is our jam. It is what fuels us to spit in the eye of death with a big, silly grin on our face.
In the meantime, here is my humble appeal to the good folks at Templeton. Keep the drinks coming and if you make too much, feel free to send some my way. I only have kind words for you, my new favorite export from Iowa. The previous winner was Dodgers’ third baseman Casey Blake, but let’s be honest. He never sent me an amazing bottle of whiskey.
