Rain Dogs

I went for a walk this evening after burning a few CDs for my younger brother, Michael.  He had to drive to Hollywood for his weekly acting class, and he wanted some Pogues albums for the road.  Hollywood is only 30 miles away, but the trip can take two hours if you leave at the wrong time.  (Remind me why Carmageddon got so much publicity?)  I gave him The Pogues’ sophomore album Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, as well as their first album, Red Roses For Me.  He had requested those two — he’s been on a Pogues kick ever since he found my dad’s copy of The Best of The Pogues on the CD shelf behind the bar in the family room.  The third CD I burned him was a copy of a playlist I recently made, which goes like this:

Rain Dogs — Tom Waits

Stagger Lee — Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds

Bowery Blues — Jack Kerouac

Dharma Brains — Foxygen

Hard On For Love — Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds

The Shower — Charles Bukowski

Tom Traubert’s Blues — Tom Waits

It’s A Motherfucker — Eels

The Moon Her Majesty — Jack Kerouac

The Stranger Song  — Leonard Cohen

Map — Jason Webley

Whiskey, Mystics, And Men — The Doors

Scum — Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds

Honey In The Hair — Blackbird Raum

Broken Cup — Jason Webley

Children’s Story — Tom Waits

Desperadoes Under The Eaves — Warren Zevon

Last Song — Jason Webley

Readings From On The Road & Visions of Cody — Jack Kerouac

Anywhere I Lay My Head — Tom Waits

Looking at the list all typed out makes me smile.  Honestly, it looks Just Like a typical hour of “Dancing Barefoot,” my old radio show on KZSC Santa Cruz.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I once did play “Tom Traubert’s Blues” followed by “It’s A Motherfucker.”

What’d I call the playlist?  “Rain Dogs,” of course.  I get a real “Rain Dogs” vibe from all of these songs — vagabonds wandering city streets and all that.

I left for my walk at the same time Mike left for his class.  I decided to go ahead and listen to my playlist to see if it actually worked as well as I thought it did.  I walked up my street and around the corner, which takes you down a long hill that leads to Kanan Road, a street that, by suburban terms, is loud and crowded.  Not crowded with people, of course — Kanan is crowded with SUVs and luxury autos and the occasional Prius.  Once you reach the strip mall with the Starbuck’s and the Ralph’s and the Carl’s Jr/Green Burrito, then yes, you see some people.  Mainly, Kanan is all hustle and bustle because it leads to the freeway.

I’m sure Walt Whitman could make it sound poetic; he’s dead, though.

During “Dharma Brains,” I turned onto a cul-de-sac, and after about one minute I started hearing this weird click-clacking sound that I knew wasn’t part of the song.  (I should know, for it is one of my favorite songs.  For serious.)  At first I thought it was due to my headphones being old and shitty, but after a few minutes, I felt that familiar “I think someone’s behind me” vibe.  I turned, and there were two 14(ish)-year-old boys walking behind me.  They didn’t scare me, but the sight of them definitely startled me.  I smiled at them, and then when I turned back around I saw a white plastic spoon land in front of my feet.  I turned around again, and, low-and-behold, the boys had run away.

The little jerks had thrown a spoon at me.

I laughed to myself and kept walking.

I thought about when I was in middle school and used to wander the same exact streets doing stupid things.   I used to walk around with a friend of mine writing bizarre messages on notecards and taping them to people’s doors.  On one notecard we drew a picture of an alien with a word bubble coming out of its mouth that said, “Hmmm…bagels…interesting.”  It nearly killed me.  I thought that it was the most hilarious thing that ever appeared on paper.

When I came to the end of the cul-de-sac and turned onto the street, I saw The Little Jerks looking right at me, plastic spoons in hand, ready to open fire.  I stopped walking, took off my head phones, and said, “How ya doin?”

“Good,” said the smaller one.

“What’s goin’ on?” I asked.

“Nothin’,” said the smaller one, thus establishing himself as the dominant Little Jerk.

I decided to just be blunt with them in hopes that it would freak them out.  After all, my bluntness has scared away men in the past, even when I didn’t want it to.

“Are you gonna throw that spoon at me?” I asked.

“Maaaaaaaaybe,” said the smaller one, shit-eating grin plastered to his face.  I didn’t let it intimidate me.

“Well, please don’t.”

“Okay.”

I put my headphones back on, disappointed that The Little Jerks had made me miss the first half of “Hard On For Love.”  I started the song over, and after about thirty seconds I felt the “I think someone’s behind me” vibe once again.  I turned, and, sure enough, The Little Jerks were there.

I stopped walking and said, “Are you guys seriously gonna throw those spoons at me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

I spread my arms out, threw back my head, and said, “I’ll give you a free shot.  Go for it.”

Nothing happened.

I looked at them, and the dominant Little Jerk stepped forward, wound up, and threw his spoon.  He missed me by about 10 inches.  When the spoon landed on the sidewalk, I bent down and picked it up.  “Next?” I said.

The quiet Little Jerk missed me by about two feet.  I picked up his spoon, too.

“How old are you guys?”  I asked.

“Seventeen.”

“You’re seventeen?”

“Twenty-one!”

“Thirty-four!”

“Forty-seven!”

“Fourteen.”

Pause.

“You’re fourteen?”

“Maybe.”

They were pretty cute, really.  Still, I was done with their game.

“You guys should go do something else,” I said.

This seemed to confuse them.

“Can we have our spoons back?” asked the dominant Little Jerk.

“No,” I said.

The quiet one laughed.

“You guys go on home, now,” I said, shooing them away with my hands.

They turned away and took a few steps, and then turned around to see if I was still watching them; I was.  They took a few more steps, then turned again.  I was still there, waiting for them to walk away.

I watched them as they made their way back up the hill.  Every few seconds they’d turn around to look at me, or spin around pretending they were spinning around just for fun.  For a good three minutes I stood my ground, staring right back at The Little Jerks.  I never wavered.  I waited and waited and waited until they were far away, and then, when they disappeared and hid behind a tree, I waited some more.

Finally, I put my headphones back on and continued down the road.  I didn’t hit “Play” right away — I wanted to be able to hear The Little Jerks in case they came back with their spoons.

I made my way down Kanan, passed the Starbuck’s and the Ralph’s and the Carl’s Jr/Green Burrito, and as I turned to head up Thousand Oaks Boulevard and back to my neighborhood, I hit “Play.”  “Tom Traubert’s Blues” came on.  I listened to it once the whole way through, and then I thought to myself, “I wonder if I know all the words.”  I started the song over, and sang at the top of my lungs.

The Little Jerks never reappeared.  Maybe I really did scare them away with my confidence, or maybe they really did go home.  Maybe they found a different unsuspecting victim and lost two more precious spoons.  Regardless, I hope to Hell they have fun this summer.  I hope they ring a lot of stranger’s door bells and dial a lot of random numbers.  I hope they make a ton of noise inside of Rite Aid and get thrown out of Blockbuster for knocking movies off the shelves.  I hope they run home laughing their heads off after terrorizing some college kid who works at Baskin Robbins.  I hope they Double Dare each other to steal candy bars from CVS, and end up feeling twice the rush when they almost go through with it.  I hope they never forget this summer, and how badass they felt when that 24-year-old chick in the “Protect Our Oceans” t-shirt and ripped jeans threw her head back and said, “I’ll give you a free shot.”  Most of all, I hope they never forget how dorky and annoying and awkward and brilliant they were when they were fourteen-years-old — for they are Rain Dogs, too.

DON’T Hang The DJ!

Where are we going, Jim Morrison?

The Doors close in an hour.

Which way does your beer point tonight?

Ready?  Okay.

About a month before I moved back to Southern California after living in Santa Cruz for five ridiculous years, I experienced an unexpected life-affirming moment while shopping in a local hippy-dippy grocery store.

At that time, my favorite brand of Kombucha was being re-examined by the FDA (go ahead, laugh), and I was desperate to find a worthy substitute.  As I scoured the tea aisle for possible contenders, I heard “Riders on the Storm” come on over the speakers. I was beyond delighted that someone had the good sense to spin a Jim Jam on a hot summer’s day, so I dropped my shopping basket and danced by myself in the aisle. After a few minutes, the hippy-dippy grocery store suddenly looked a lot different.  Everything seemed special: the Kombucha drought, the rows of Guayaki Yerba Mate promising health and vitality, the sound of a seven-minute-long Doors song about “a killer on the road” oozing through the store while happy families shopped for baby bok-choy and slabs of seasoned tempeh; the realization that this was a good moment, which is all a person can really hope for.

Harmonious coincidences like these make me wonder how difficult it must be to be a [good] music supervisor. The Graduate, for example, is an undeniably great bit of movie-making, but can you imagine it without “The Sound of Silence”? Or Harold and Maude without Cat Stevens’ silky baritone?  And would Uma Thurman’s overdose in Pulp Fiction be as jarring if it weren’t preceded by her dance to Urge Overkill’s cover of “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon”?

When a music supervisor’s work is done, he has helped transform a few measly minutes of film into something deeply moving. When moments like this happen in real life completely by accident, it is important to listen.  Dancing to “Riders on the Storm” in the hippy-dippy grocery store reminded me that my time in Santa Cruz was limited, and that I should get to work enjoying myself.  I also felt reassured that the previous five ridiculous years of my life hadn’t been a waste — there had been plenty of moments of epic triumph, personal growth, and dancing in the aisles. There was no reason to feel that I was returning to Southern California because it was time to start over; it was time to continue.  As Maude would say, it was time to, “Go and love some more.”

I listen to the wind

To the wind of my soul

Where I’ll end up, well, I mean,

Who the Hell really knows?

It has now been about a year since my one-woman dance party, and while I do miss my Santa Cruz beach shack (and the enchiladas at Taqueria Las Palmas and the Hemp Ale at The Poet & The Patriot and the psychic cats on Pacific Avenue…), my suburban situation isn’t so bad.  There have been some great times and some not so-great times, and, in the grand scheme of things, I can’t complain. Sadly, the last few months have been of the not-so-great variety.

Fuck that.  They’ve been shitty.

The shitty time started in March when I had a terrible panic attack while I was getting a haircut.  Now, I had experienced panic prior to this incident.  In the past, I had been able to link panic attacks to specific events in my life — I experienced them pretty frequently right before graduating from college, for example — but I could not, for the life of me, figure out why I freaked out during my haircut.  Sure, I would rather not have had to trim my wild mane, but it was nothing to panic about.

Days later I had another attack while lounging — yes, lounging — with some of my best friends, drinking beer and watching On The Waterfront. It was a Sunday afternoon, we were all wearing bathrobes, and we had just finished feasting on some seriously sexy food. Even in this downright Dionysian situation, my body still found a way to go into adrenal overdrive.

Things became scary when I started panicking in cars pretty regularly. No matter where I was going or whether I was the driver or the passenger, I inevitably felt like jumping out of my skin. Again, I had definitely felt panicked on the road before — most people who have driven on the 405-S in rush hour traffic have probably had nerve-related episodes — but panicking while riding shotgun on the way to the damn mall that’s a whole ten minutes away from my house… that was something new.

When I could no longer get through a whole day of work without having to go hide in the back room and steady myself against the Xerox machine, I figured it was time to get some help.

There’s a Callas on the road,

Her brain is squirmin’ like a toad…

I’ll spare you the details about the drug peddling doctors and the brief, yet powerful feelings of total despair.  In short, I eventually got help from someone who doesn’t deserve to be reported to the Board of Behavioral Sciences, and, after a few months, the panic waned significantly. Despite my noticeable improvement, however, the thought of “When will the next attack hit?” was always present in my mind.

Worse than all of that, I couldn’t write.  No matter how hard I tried to sit down and scribble something halfway intelligent, my writing was mostly limited to what Allen Ginsberg referred to as “unpublishable private literature.” Of course, his “unpublishable” scrawl was about drunken nights in Chinatown and wild sex with Neal Cassady, IE: The Good Life. My Top-Secret “unpublishable” portfolio of recent scribblings is so boring it doesn’t even deserve to be sacrificially burned.

And they brought me their comfort,

And later they brought me this song

O, I hope you run into them

You, who’ve been scribbling so long…

One evening not too long ago, I was feeling exceptionally down.  Utterly defeated.  Morrissey defeated.  I was a twenty-something year old celibate nail-biter who couldn’t even write in her own diary.  Work sucked, panic sucked — I felt trapped and lonely and boring and I just wanted to go to bed.  Before hitting the sack I took a quick look at my facebook (Duh), and I saw that my friend Zach was going to be hosting his last radio show on KZSC Santa Cruz that night. Out of respect for Zach, KZSC, and Santa Cruz as a whole, I decided to tune in to the web stream for at least a little while.  At first, hearing Zach read the corny Underwriting Announcements and play the corny Public Service Announcements just made me miss my KZSC radio show, which didn’t help my mood.  As I contemplated turning out the light, Zach, that beautiful, bloody bastard, put on a tune called “Last Song” by an artist named Jason Webley.

Imagine if, while floating in the pool the day after sleeping with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin Braddock actually heard “The Sound of Silence” playing somewhere in the distance.  It would have blown his mind, right?  Well, I wasn’t in the pool and I hadn’t slept with Mrs. Robinson, but dammit, when I heard “Last Song,” I literally felt something inside me shift.  Or stretch.  Or break.  Regardless, I felt profoundly healed.  Did I think Jason Webley was singing directly to me?  No.  I’m not deranged.  All the same, the song’s message of hope told through images of imminent apocalypse and waking up in alleys was exactly what I needed to hear that night.

And he shows you where to look

Among the urine, alcohol, trash and gasoline

And the flowers…

In search of Jason Webley’s discography, I visited his website. The first thing I discovered was that he’s been around for over a decade, which made me feel like a total dork.  Where the fuck had I been?  I clicked the “Concerts” tab to see if he was going to be touring at all in the near future.  What did I find?  He was on tour, all right; almost smack dab in the middle of his farewell tour. There were no L.A. dates on his website, but there was a show in San Jose on the schedule.  My first thought was, “San Jose?  Right by Santa Cruz?  Road trip time!” Sure enough, my second thought was, “How the fuck am I going to get there if I can’t drive more than a few minutes without panicking?” For a moment I considered flying, but then I wondered how panicking in an airplane would be better than panicking in a car…

I decided that there was no way I was going to miss the show.  I was going to get myself there, panic be damned.  I would spend a few nights in Santa Cruz with some of my favorite people in the world, and then I would see Jason Webley perform in a small art gallery in downtown San Jose.  Who was I to forbid myself from doing all that?

If I go there will be trouble,

And if I stay…

So, what happened?  Well, I spent a few nights in Santa Cruz with some of my favorite people in the world, and then I saw Jason Webley perform in a small art gallery in downtown San Jose.  T’was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I know I should probably say more about the show, but, true to the nature of the writing beast, I am suddenly at a loss for words.  I’m hesitant to dissect the evening as if I’m trying to convince people that he’s worth checking out. I also don’t want to make any grand assumptions about his artistic intentions — who am I to say what his songs are about, or to draw parallels between him and other performers?  All I know is that the show was well worth the trip.  I loved every minute of it.

There was an interesting moment — kind of freaky, really, but in a great way — where he took a break from singing and just talked. He thanked us for our support, he thanked the gallery owners for letting him play, and then he talked about his upcoming hiatus.  He reflected on how blessed his past 10+ years have been, and then — oh, then — he talked about how some people in the audience may have recently had their “lives turned inside out,” and how neat it was that we were all together “bearing witness to that.”

I kind of got chills.  I kind of felt exposed.  It kind of felt great.  Of all things for him to say, right?  And then, Jason Webley, the ever-brilliant music supervisor, played “Last Song.”

(I’m aware that I keep writing his full name.  I wouldn’t say, “Cohen,” I’d say, “Leonard Cohen.”  I wouldn’t say “Reed,” I’d say, “Lou Reed.”  I wouldn’t say “Smith,” I’d say “Patti Smith.”  And so on.  And so on.)

Yes, I got to meet him.  Yes, I got a picture.  Yes, I was terrified I would say something that would make me sound stupid, and yes, I’m sure my terror was obvious.  He asked me if I had ever been to one of his shows before, and when I told him I hadn’t, I somehow managed to mention that I had driven up from L.A.  He paused, and then said, “You drove all the way from L.A. to come to the show?”  I managed to nod and utter a nervous, “Yeah.”  Inside, though, I was beaming with pride.  I drove all the way from L.A. for the show, and I had no guarantee I wouldn’t end up hyperventilating on the side of the highway.  Go Steff.

I’m not the kind of person who chalks everything up to fate or destiny or God’s Great Plan.  I do, however, think that moments of eerie accidental profundity should not be ignored.  No, I don’t think that I was “meant” to find out about Jason Webley in order to take a roadie to Santa Cruz and prove to myself that I had the strength to fight this whole panic thing, but that is what happened.  In my opinion, the idea that it happened completely by accident is truly awesome. If I hadn’t decided to look at my facebook one bummer night before going to bed, I wouldn’t have heard “Last Song,” and I wouldn’t have gone to Jason Webley’s website, and I wouldn’t have read that this was his farewell tour. More importantly, I wouldn’t have found an excuse to get in the car and see what happened. Low and behold, what happened? Nothing. Nothing, except I had an excellent fucking weekend.

(By the way, in case you were wondering, Jason Webley has more than one great song.  For sure.)

Bravo, Jason Webley.  Bravo, Zach.  Bravo, hippy-dippy grocery store employee who wanted to hear “Riders on the Storm.”  Keep doing what you’re doing and continue to accidentally provide killer driving music and poignant road signs to weary travelers everywhere.

And Allen, “unpublishable private literature”?  Maybe not.

Just maybe.

BloggityBloggity

My last day of living in Santa Cruz has arrived. Well, it’s done more than arrived — it’s nearly come and gone…

I always thought that my last day here would be a sort of sentimental scavenger hunt — get kombucha at New Leaf, people-watch at Pergolessi, give a bum a nickel, etc. Instead, I woke up early and got right to cleaning my apartment. My fridge is officially empty except for my liquid calcium and my caffeine-free diet Safeway cola, and my bedroom is completely cleared out except for my mattress, which now sits on my floor. (There’s something so pathetic about my current sleeping situation, I feel. I never thought about it before, but now that my box spring is in the dumpster and my comforter has been dropped off at Goodwill, I can’t help but feel overwhelmingly lonely at night while I do my damndest to bundle up under one thin, dirty sheet and wonder why it’s been such a gloomy, cold July.) My shower tiles have been doused in bleach over and over, and yet there’s still mildew in one unruly corner. Everything must be spic and span for tomorrow morning’s walk-through inspection with my landlord.

No. I did not have quite the sentimental scavenger hunt I had always thought I would.

It’s okay, though, because right now I’m at The Best Place In The World: KZSC Santa Cruz. Yup. Never again will I have access to hundreds of CD’s that I can store on my iTunes for free. It would be stupid of me if I didn’t take advantage of this privilege one more time before my long drive tomorrow.

It’s strange. I was worried that coming here this afternoon would depress me. That I would feel like I didn’t belong. That things would have already moved on without me. That my presence here no longer mattered, and never really did.

Not true.

I feel as comfortable here right now as I ever have. In fact right now, I feel more comfortable here than I do at my own apartment. I mean, my apartment is completely torn apart and in the middle of a hardcore sterilization process. I’ve had enough of that for now. It was time to get out, and I know that I made the right choice by coming here. Everything is on pause. I’m surrounded by excellent music in a tiny cabin in the redwoods. There’s a candy machine and a coffee maker. (Yes, I’ve had a mug of coffee. I had to, for old time’s sake. Hopefully I won’t fall off the wagon and have ten more.) There’s internet access and a couch. And yeah, there are memories. Tremendous ones. Some magnificent, some heinous, but all of them important.

At this point I could label this post “Masturbatory Self-Indulgence,” but let me save myself by saying this: if you have an inkling to try something new and creative, do it. You just might fall in love with it. That’s how it was for me with radio. One day before I went back to school for junior year I decided, “I’m gonna be on the radio.”

I tried it. I got hooked on it. I’ve now had the experience of total unadulterated artistic freedom, and I’ll never be the same again.

(I’ve now had three cups of coffee and my heart is beating a bit fast and I can’t stop biting my nails and I think it’s time to have one more fun-size Milky Way before I head back to my apartment to continue scrubbing the shit outta every room.)