A Life Less Ordinary

From the previously mentioned Delaware/Maryland “Trip”, Ryan and Bully in a canoe, I snapped this photo standing on a dock (where I was fishing for dinner) right after a summer storm. Many questions with very few answers. Where did they get the canoe? Why were they in it? Where were they coming from? Best not to think too much, just wave, just smile, keep fishing, keep things simple. There was a huge hawk who lived in a tree right up the hill from the farmhouse where we were staying. If you went near it the hawk would swoop down and chase you for miles. Best not to go near the tree. Avoid the tree. Keep fishing. Maintain. Don’t lose your mind. KEEP IT TOGETHER.

Heather K., 1996, at the Show Pony. Note the posters of the era: Pj Harvey, Wu-Tang, Swirlies, Bardo Pond. Oh shucks, Heather! Heather was as Philly Scene as Yeungling Lager, any party, any show, any street, there she was, oh hey Heather what’s going on? Then one day you’re looking through your old photos and you’re like, oh shoot Heather, it’s been what, years? I totally forgot…whatever happened to Heather? Man. I hope that doesn’t happen with me some day. I think I’m getting sad now.

Eric Wareheim of outrageous Tim and Eric fame, in his room, doing his thing, 1996. Posters I can recognize: I Am Heaven, The Rentals (aw!), the first Ink And Dagger show (@ the Show Pony, w./Swag — pre-pre-pre Favourite Sons), the Cobras (Wareheim+Yerves+Ziemba), and PJ Harvey again. This is around the time when Wareheim and I were recording our own commercials for forties we happened to be drunk on at the time. The Stallion X one (pronounced Stallion “Ten”, we figured) was shot in a bath tub. One night we got in this big fight, wrestling on the floor and I think Eric was strangling me when we both suddenly got up, brushed ourselves off, and said, “Why are we fighting? Crap, it must be the forties.” That’s when we quit drinking forties. Smart idea, right?

In Baltimore, with Lyin’ Ryan and Beatles, probably early 2001. Pretty sure Moira snapped this one. Not really recalling the story behind this one, except both dudes were living at Bmore at the time — Ryan was in school and Beatles had moved there because he had a dream that told him he had to. Yeah, pretty hazy on the details, but I bet we had a good time! Great dudes!

Simply Put, I Want to Grow Old, Dying Does Not Meet My Expectations

Let one thinks this is like the Erik Bader show or some shit, let’s be reasonable and pass the mic for a quick sec to the better half of the Fort Saint Davids Project, Alex Z aka The Bones, who, let the record show, is the guy who has scanned and uploaded nearly every single piece of nostalgic piece of evidence available during our current speedboat ride down these dark shores of Collective Memory. A round of applause folks, please, and heeeere we go:

So this was sometime around March ‘03 when Fort Saint Davids was super into rolling on awkward parties with totally weird crews. This night we had Kate Houstoun, Emmalee, Chris hiding behind FSD, and Margaret, and we were bouncing around that whole 11th and Fitzwater neighborhood when all those houses were brand new. This may or may not have been the night we bombed Baghdad, it may or may not have been the Mighty KP’s debutante to the scene, but it definitely was the night that Kate told Meis the Piece that she loved the Pour House and Meis just stared at her, not saying anything.

When you see your best friend walkin in with your girl / well you know it’s the end of the world! dark days!
This was mere days before the blizzard of ‘03 stranded us here at East Falls and gave us Space Madness.

The Big E, FSD, and Emmalee. I was crashing on Emmalee’s couch and during this time we’d have Big E and FSD over for a serious slow-cooked dinner of skimpy salad portions and poorly-drained pasta, and Godard films. Ords of this era included but were not limited to: going to parties and absolutely not being able to stand it when the skronkiest, screeshiest, loudest, most freaked-out free jazz was not playing on the sound system; using Godard as required viewing before even being able to go out, so that we’d be hitting the town with a real My Life to Live-kinda feeling; and driving 90 mph from Reading to meet up with the Big E at the International House to see Les Carabinieres; and playing in the Alexander Zahradnik Golden Jubilee Sweetbriar Fraternity Quartet. This photo was taken across the street from Washington Square, and we were probably on the way to some Ritz film.

Princeton, late fall ‘03 with Art, Tasha and FSD. Photo taken by FSD. I don’t really know what the purpose of this trip was, other than to see black squirrels and hunt down Elegance, who was rumored to have been working at a coffeeshop in town. When we were leaving, there was some topiary garden with all this creative landscaping that included a king-size bed made out of soil and sod, and I got a good Dylan misquote in, “Lay lady lay, lay upon my big grass bed.”

Also, now that we’ve thanked Bones it’s best we also thank the good spirit and general total goodness of SWEET LOU who has contributed scans of many of the photos you’ve been enjoying here at the Daily Miltonian. Not everyone has a camera handy when something monumental or at least extraordinarily mundane is happening, but Sweet Lou usually did. And does. And will continue to do. Simply put, he’s the Boswell to our Johnson. Mega Kudos.

Summer Babe (Winter Version)

With Scott the K and Molly Mogwai, early ‘02, frigid pic snapped by Sweet Lou. Looking a little grim thanks to winter winds and a fierce collective hangover c/o a forty year old bottle of 120 Proof Black Seal that no one should have gone near. You could get drunk just looking it. I just got drunk now by typing its name. Woah.

Flash Pad, 1999, still standing in the aftermath of strange party featuring confusing appetizers, an invented game called Froosti (a kind of game of catch featuring two boxing gloves and a plush creature we named Froosti) and Wild Turkey.  Change reality, do it now.

The Corruption, drunkest man I’ve ever known, doing (as always) whatever the hell he feels.

What is a rebel? A man who says NO.

-Albert Camus

Watch It Happen

Another Seaside Classic, with Ten-Twenty-Liz, Bones, and (not pictured) the Big E. First night of mellow weather, early Spring ‘03, the four of us decided the only sensible adult choice in the face of the sweet tickle of impending Springtime Goodness would be to hop into the FSDmobile and high-gear it to the Jersey Shore, in search of dunes, vibes, nightbreeze, and the Mythical New Jersey Beach Fox.

The Legend of the Beach Fox started back in winter 1999 when, after crashing a literary reception for the poet Robert Creeley in Camden, NJ, Josh Carr and I decided to head to Sea Isle City because our friends Hollie and Maggie said they had a hot tub — yo, what would you do?

Carr and I are knocking on the door of Hollie’s haunted beach bungalow, freezing beachwinds lashing against us, and it isn’t until a half hour later that Maggie and Hollie burst screaming over a dark crest of dunes, clearly in a panic. Hollie is soaking wet and we rush her into the house and as she warms up in the shower Maggie explains the story. Apparently Hollie was chased into the ice-cold ocean by a savage Beach Fox, and Maggie merely stood frozen in terror as the vicious creature stalked up and down the shoreline, snarling and foaming at the mouth, pointed fangs glinting in the sinister moonlight. Eventually the Beast stalked off in search of bigger prey — Maggie tried scaring it with a piece of driftwood but the thing just growled — and Hollie escaped certain freezing death and returned to the beach.

Holy Wow, we thought. A motherfuckin’ Beach Fox!

So now it’s four years later and I’m with my new crew and we’re at Whole Foods, stocking up on a Dune Feast to bring to the beach. The scene:

WHOLE FOODS CHEESE LADY: Anything you folks are looking for?

FSD: Ah, yes. We’re in search of a cheese. A particular kind of cheese.

WFCL: Yes…?

BONES: What we want is a Beach cheese.

WFCL: A beach…

LIZ: As in, to be consumed on a beach.

BIG E: A dune, to be specific.

FSD: Right. A Beach Dune Cheese. There will be a crusty baguette, and red wine.

WFCL: I see, well, this is just the one for you I think, here, try this…

FSD: What if sand gets in it?

WFCL: Even better. What we have here is the perfect kind of cheese for beach consumption. Sand will only enchance its flavor.

AS EVERYONE HIGH-FIVES IN UNISON: Perfect!

And so, with a big ass crusty baguette, two bottles of red, and the Perfect Beach Cheese, off we go, zooming down the AC Expressway, future uncertain, present accounted for.

You know Liz, right? No need to find the Weird because she’ll just Bring it. Weird incident at the rest stop: right next to the plastic yellow “Caution Wet Floor” signs Liz immediately falls over, multi-colored pills (we later discover it’s just a collection of vitamins, specifically procured with this prank in mind) spilling all over the floor.

“Oh my God!” she screams. “My medicine! Without my…now I’m really gonna LOSE it!”

Weird Living continues as we enjoy our Beach Repast behind some spooky wind-whipped dunes, eyes strained in search of the ever-elusive Beach Fox, and cautious for possible swooping strikes from the recently invented Flying Beach Fox. I’d recently caught up with the 21st century and purchased a cell phone, and what better to experience the wholly new sensation of being able to call someone from a dune than to crank call Father Gibbs? Liz is on the phone talking a very convincing six-year-old voice, explaining to Gibbs that after narrowly escaping the salivating jaws of a crazed Beach Fox she has been kidnapped by a half-mad gang of Beach Bandits! Help! Please send help! Send the Coast Guard! Send the FBI! Send anyone!

“Whatever you say kid,” Gibbs says, “Now put Bader on the phone.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, w./Screamin’ Joe, summer ‘97. Joe blew most of his money on dice while I got drunk in a park with a German guy who could barely speak English. The German guy was a really nice dude, really into the new Radiohead album and convinced I was the coolest guy he had ever met in America. We drank canned beer under a tree and tried our best to have a decent conversation. Joe was becoming incoherent by this point in the trip — it was somewhere in the desert where he told me his new name was the “Highway Hypnotist” and he was convinced we were being followed by a hooded ghoul named Ghoul — the first time he saw Ghoul was during a rainstorm in Utah. We had slept in an abandoned schoolhouse near a creek, taking shelter during a rainstorm, and Joe woke me up to tell me to tell me that he had seen Ghoul, fishing down by the creek, cackling between bouts of lighting.

“He pulled a skeletal fish right out of the creek,” he told me in completely seriousness, “right out of the fucking creek.”

“I believe you,” I said, and we left it at that.

Once we hit the desert he started seeing him again. “He’s out there,” Joe would say. “Do you see him?”

“Yes,” was all I could say. “I see him.”

Since it was only me and Joe in the above photo, taken in a really depressing motel somewhere on the outskirts of Vegas, I can only assume it was Ghoul who took it.

    "Who is the third who walks always beside you?
    When I count there are only you and I together
    But when I look ahead up the white road
    There is always another one walking beside you
    Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
    I do not know whether a man or a woman
    -But who is that on the other side of you?"

-T.S. Elliot

Desperately Seeking Ghoul, Colorado, 1997. Joe took this picture while precariously balanced on the roof of what he was convinced was Ghoul’s former residence. There’s ways of living and it’s the way I’m living right or wrong.

Put Your Makeup On, Fix Your Hair Up Pretty, And Meet Me Tonight In Atlantic City

Last summer of our innocence, 2001. Jump and the net will catch you: I walked away from my two year nightmare gig at Independence Blue Cross and was working full time in my apartment writing the final chapters of The Pilot And The Panda, full speed ahead. Every morning, same routine — “the usual” at the diner across the street, Daily News, then back across the sweltering street to the tiny apartment, no air conditioning, no shirt, pot of coffee, typing away till I nearly collapsed on the keyboard. Drink with the gang on the cheap in the cool evening. Pass out, wake up, repeat the performance. It felt real good.

Off days were for Mini-Adventures, like the above one, with Joe Vee and Sweet Lou. Took the budget train to AC, bus to OC, obligatory ski-ball, pizza, and saltwater taffee, a little swimming, bottle of wine behind the dunes at dusk, then back to AC and back to Philly. Nothing too exotic, but when you roll with Titanic Dudes like Vee and Lou, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. We were Legion, thus Legend. Always remember, it’s never where you are, but it’s always who you’re with.

Adventure Club, same summer, PATCO Hi-Speedline, Haddonfield, NJ. High Adventure on a Budget! From L-R: The Cowboy, Frost, FSD, Sweet Lou, and the Reason. Make the sandwiches at home, throw ‘em in a bookbag with a few bottles of wine, hop on the Speedline (cheaper than SEPTA), watch the river pass below you as you zip over the Ben Franklin Bridge, and pick a stop, any stop. We chose Haddonfield, for the old buildings and for the parks. Muggy drizzle didn’t stop us from staying dry under a canopy of trees, watching the fireflies light up over the creek as we sipped our wine and talked about whatever the hell we felt like.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.

-Malcolm X

Aw, it’s Sara Jane, August ‘01, at the afformentioned Spring Garden apartment. The Meow Mix was for Molly the Cat, who in the intervening years has switched back to her O.G. favorite, Purina Cat Chow. Sara Jane had one aspiration: to be a librarian. I’m pretty sure that right now, as I type this, she is a librarian, in Baltimore or D.C., can’t remember. Either way, contgrats Sara Jane! Too bad the Internet is making your job obsolete!

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Photos And Nostalgia To Bring You Some Breaking News

Kurt Vile (and his band) are the most important band, sounds, ord (trans: “Divinely Motivated Style”), freedom, and inspiration available in the Philadelphia Metro Region. Take note, don’t forget, and attend any and all performances AKA “happenings.” Remember: Kurt Vile is YOUR ord. Do you ever worry that your generation dropped the ball and that you’re not, like, a part of something? You know, something big? Well here’s your chance. Repeat after me: KURT VILE! YES!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Miltonian. Thank you, and goodnight.

Where Were You When We Were Getting High?

Animal Collective/Ariel Pink show, Haverford College, 2005. Besides easily being the most powerful show any of us saw that year, what happened after the show is now the stuff of Legend. There we were, big old gang of us feeling high from great music and…well…and so we’re on this college campus and so we’re like: okay, where’s the party? So off we go, our numbers somewhere around ten and quickly hitting twenty, scooting around the campus trying to find the mythical Black Room, or at least a decent College Party.

Everything we find just plain sucks, so someone — I guess Agnew — decides that what we need to do is just party in the woods. After all, it’s a damp spring night and we’ve all been cooped up all winter, now’s the time. Imagine the looks of unsuspecting Haverford College Girls when approached by this unruly mob of Philly-Type-Hipsters with varying levels of Creative Facial Hair asking the Big Question:

“So do you girls want to party in the woods with us?”

Most people, unbelievably enough, say yes, and so our numbers are growing. Now all we need to find is the beer. A keg will do, any keg — this is College, after all! Someone thinks they know where one is. We wait in the hall of the dorm while someone negotiates over the din of a Bright Eyes CD.  Seems it’s a No-Go. Back out on the campus again. Looks like there’s a party over there. Shit, but all the dudes there look menacing. That’s fine, we’ll run distraction while you guys head out and just cart the keg out of there. The keg is halfway across the room before someone notices. We just shrug, laugh, say we’re kidding, BUT WE DON’T LEAVE. We just drink keg beer with these scary looking Mofos. That’s when we notice they also have a big ass tub of canned beer. Okay, that’ll do, can we just borrow some garbage bags? Thanks Scary Looking College Menace, no please look the other way while our friends fill the bags with cans of your cold beer.

Unbelievably, no one seems to notice, and we walk out with two garbage bags full of the stuff. Beer procured, our Strange Gang makes its way to the woods, where we decide to do the only thing one in their right mind would want to do when standing in the middle of the woods with a Fierce Collection of Truly Interesting Individuals: start a fire.

I roll with Agnew and some others out to a nearby Wawa to get the Duraflame and Inquirers that we’ll need to start a proper fire. Along the way, Agnew is giving me a strikingly sentimental tour through the back pages of his past — this is where he’s from. It’s touching and totally great — a great night that just keeps getting better. We’re hopping fences to take shortcuts, falling off fences, trespassing, and we’re about to start a fire in the woods with a couple friends and a gaggle of strangers, our ears still ringing with the sounds of Brand New Music. We’re Here, We’re Doing This.

We get the fire started, though its tough because as I said it’s been a damp night. No one cares. It’s nearly dawn, the air is chilly, we’re still drinking beer and I can’t see who anyone is and it doesn’t really matter. This is the 21st Century and it’s all ours. You really shoulda been there, you know. Where were you when we were getting high?

Somewhere in Wyoming, 1997. Me and Vee were delivering cars across the country and we found this spot to camp in. Earlier that night we found the ruins of an old amphitheater deep in the woods, got high, and laid on our backs looking at the impossible far-up canopy of trees above us. Stoner Revelations to follow:

VEE: Maaaan, the way the evening light comes through the intricate tangle of trees, it’s diaf-diaf…

FSD: Diaphanous.

VEE: Like lungs.

FSD: Yeah, and it makes sense: Trees are the lungs of the World.

VEE: And we can see this clearly now because of what we put in our own lungs.

FSD: Woah.

VEE: Woah.

FSD: Cough, you want any more of this?

VEE: Yeah.

FSD: …

VEE: …

Oh man, this trip. Late summer, ‘04, that’s Weird Ryan staring at you with shroomed out eyes, and it’s Sam the Bull’s mess of wet hair in the foreground, the car parked on the side of a forlorn road, deep in a torrential rainstorm somewhere in rural Maryland. Who knows what this so-called vacation was really all about, but for reasons beyond anyone’s control we wound up at a Chicken ranch, a boardwalk, a farm house…we fished for food and stole corn…started a jam band with a bunch of beach bums, someone fell in a frog pond, and eventually we wound up on a haunted island filled with wild ponies. Every photo from the Trip (capital T, for sure) looks like the one above: strange, surreal, weird, inspiring, and completely not of this Reality. It’s like even the camera got dosed.

One Baby To Another Says I’m Lucky To Have Met You

With Maria, Poet’s Corner, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1999. Met Maria at a fake/real reading I gave at Rutgers, earlier in the year. Carr set the thing up. Half hoax, half the read deal, I read to a room full of baffled students under the guise of a prolific and already published author. Carr and I co-wrote his introduction speech, entitled “When I Hear Erik Bader I Reach For My Revolver,” and I read from an over-the-top psuedo-sci-fi mess of a novel I wrote from 96-98 called “Aero”. Everyone seemed confused, and rightfully so, but Maria seemed to like it well enough, and she told me so. Maria was Greek and made great Greek food, and always said chided Carr on being too loud and would remind him to use “indoor voices” when necessary. Meanwhile, we were the ones always getting yelled at, but it was only because she loved us. Aw. Where’s Maria now? Your guess is as good as mine.

Father Gibbs, fresh off of an early Wharf Watch, at a bar near the East River in New York City. Gibbs is one solid dude, and one of the few people who not only understands, but somehow supports, my nonsense. One time I told him about a dream I had about a work of non-fiction entitled “Victories On Or Against Ice.” I called him up to ask him what it meant. After a very serious discussion we concluded that the book was about the history of triumphs either on ice — such as hockey, famous naval battles, or Washington’s Crossing, or against it, like dudes who escape avalanches or climb glaciers.

Sometime later we were talking about John Leonard, who writes the new books column for Harper’s. “How on God’s earth does the guy read that many books?” I practically shouted. “Every other book is like the longest four-thousand page history ever, with titles like ‘From The First Rock To The First Walk: Man’s Evolution From The Inanimate To The Animate’ or something even more obscure like ‘From The First Wolf…’”

Gibbs was laughing because it was clear I didn’t know what I was talking about. What the fuck was “From The First Wolf” even about? Months later I saw on Gibbs’ Myspace page that he had listed only two books as his favorites: “Victories On Or Against Ice,” and “From The First Wolf: A History of Man’s Fear of Beasts.“

God Bless Father Gibbs.

Art School Confidential, with The Reason, Wild Al, Sweet Lou, Feldman, and this guy who was only in Philly for a short bit, was well liked by the ladies, played in a band with someone whose name I forget, and then disappeared, presumably to New York. Who was that guy, anyhow? Either way, Alex’s caption for this one is “Allassholehaircuts,” and what the hey, I guess I gotta agree. What a bunch of jerks, right? Meanwhile, I want to say this party was at this dude Paul’s place, on Broad Street, oh so achingly close to UArts, but what actually happened there, why we were there, or who took the picture is something probably no one will ever be able to tell you. They say that if you can remember going to UArts, you didn’t graduate. Well, I for one was never a student there. Or wait. Was I?

Well well, if it isn’t good ole’ Joe Fuckin’ Terry, in his fresh Preventive Security duds, Autumn ‘97, ready to hop on the R1 and head out to the airport for another grueling day of parking cars for National Car Rental. JT aka Slotha Beats couldn’t have lasted more than a week on the job. I myself toughed it out until early winter, when the raw winds which slammed across the open parking lots made the already unbearable job completely intolerable.

What more can I say that I haven’t already said about that fucking job? The cars got dropped off wherever, and it was your job to get them in a line towards the gas pumps. Get in a car, pull it up behind the first car, get out, get in the next, pull it up, and so forth, pulling the lines slowly but surely forward. Just hope you don’t have a van in Bear’s line. Bear, everyone (including Bear) would tell you, just got out of jail and wasn’t afraid of going back. See, the guy’s at the pump got paid by the car. They cleaned out the car and filled its tank. Anyone with a brain could see that a van took longer than a car. Thus, NO FUCKING VANS, as Bear would bellow across the cold parking lot. I SAID NO FUCKING VANS. Thing was, the lines of cars were packed tight, and if some ASSHOLE dropped a car off in Bear’s line it was a bitch to get the fucker over to the next line. Plus, once the guy in the next line saw you bowing down to Bear, well, he’d be your NEW enemy. It was a thankless and seemingly dangerous life, parking cars for National Car Rental.

My advice to you is: if you ever drop off a rental car and see a 300 pound all-muscle shaved-head black man with a glass eye and a patch on his National Car Rental reflective jacket that says BEAR, please, please, don’t get out of the car until you know that it’s not going to be in his line. Please? I’m serious. Okay: thank you.

I SAID NO FUCKING VANS.

Become What You Are

Ocean City, New Jersey, Year 2000. For reasons completely beyond my control, I had found myself living under the boardwalk with my old pal, the Corruption. I think it started with an innocent train ride to Atlantic City, but once we started drinking, things happened. I recommend this lifestyle to no one. You’d wake up in the morning and a vicious wind would be ripping up over the ocean, blowing sand into your face and scattering garbage everywhere. You’d lay there shivering violently, because you didn’t bring a jacket because it is, after all, August at the beach, until the Corruption would nudge the bottle of Wild Turkey towards your face, urging you to drink. The Turkey warms you, and you return to your troubled sleep.

Corruption kept me dosed on the booze the entire time. We’d be outside the Chatterbox at 6:47 AM, pacing around for the three remaining minutes before its doors opened and breakfast could commence, watching healthy joggers and the meandering elderly heading up and down the dawn streets, and when the door finally opened the proprietor would give us a knowing look, because we were clearly the two most Mutant Individuals alive on the island. Halfway into my first cup of coffee Corrupt would give a wicked grin and say, how’s the coffee? Then he’d flash the bottle and you knew you’d been dosed.

It happened everywhere. We’d be killing time on some boardwalk benches and Corrupt would elect to grab us some lemonades from the Promenade and after he returned and I’d already thirstily sipped mine down to the bottom he’d say, how’s the lemonade? Same grin, same flash of the bottle. Dosed again.

Sodas, Slurpees, Nantucket Nectars — if you left your drink alone with the Corruption for a second if was a sure bet it’d be spiked with Wild Turkey. In a dry town we were the drunkest men alive. We rode the rides, frightened children, lived off of Chatterbox breakfasts and boardwalk fries, and clocked unhealthy hours at Jilly’s playing Asteroids, Centipede, Ms. Pacman, and, of course, air hockey. We eventually went home, got sober, tried to explain where we had been to our friends. It wasn’t so much of a vacation. It was a war. Was it a war against reality? Against sobriety? Against ourselves? Who’s to say, but I do know this: we won.

Moira and Frost, at some wild party, 2001. This was the first time Frost ever got drunk, and the first time I ever took Roofies — at least knowingly. I wasn’t sure if it was really going to be Roofies or not. Moira had been given a drink by a suspicious individual. “Pretty sure this has Roofies,” she said, disdainfully eyeing up her drink.

“Ah what the hell, I’ll drink it,” I said. “I’ve never done Roofies before.”

Next thing I know I’m standing in the middle of the street, somewhere deep in Fairmount. Holy fuck, I think. It worked. I wobble my way home and put on a Swervedriver CD and the guitars sound wilder than ever. I go to sleep, totally confused, but satisfied that survived Roofies.

Kids: try this at home.

With Josh Carr and friends, insane Brooklyn warehouse party, summer ‘01. Bones thinks the caption for this one should be “No, Carr, no.”

Always be drunk.
That’s it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time’s horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
“Time to get drunk!
Don’t be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!

–Charles Baudelaire

When We Leave It Will Be Cold Outside

The Big Storm of ‘03, that’s J-Lou, aka J-Crew, aka J-Clue, aka the Fang, impromptu sledding with what seemed like hundreds of Philly U girls, up on Raven Hill, in scenic East Falls, aka Fort Saint Davids, which (full reveal) was the original name the settlers gave the place and where me and Bones got the name for our Project/Divinely Motivated Style.

Bones might be able to tell the whole story better, as he’s pretty much the Ishmael whose mind survived to tell the tale when the ship of our sanity got smashed to bits by the White Whale of the snowstorm. Both Bones and Wild Al were hanging out at the hundred-year old East Falls house where I lived with Big E when the storm hit, and thanks to typical Regional Rail problems they both got stuck out there with us for days. Madness quickly ensued, broken only by occasional whiskey breaks at the Gun Boat and, of course, sledding. At one point Wild Al tried to walk back to Center City, only to arrive back dejected at midnight, and Big E chased me down the steps and dumped a bin of laundry on my head. J-Lou, who was our neighbor at the time, sledded as much as possible. You do what you got to do.

First and last performance of Kitchen, in a kitchen. Our whole M.O. was to only perform in kitchens. This was the only kitchen that was gracious enough to have us. Everyone else thought it was too weird, having Kitchen perform in their kitchen, so we broke up shortly thereafter. Ce la vie. It could have been a brilliant career.

Big E and Mallory aka MalPal, giving his own Kitchen performance in the kitchen of our aforementioned East Falls house. Right here Big E is demonstrating “Guitar Sex Moves”, which we felt was a problem in the Circa 2002 Philly Rock Scene. Things had gone from Cool to Creepy, and frankly we were all a little disturbed by the trend. You can fuck after the show, you don’t have to start on the guitar. MalPal thought it was funny, but you cannot tell from her expression.

I am a scientist – I seek to understand me
All of my impurities and evils yet unknown
I am a journalist – I write to you to show you
I am an incurable
And nothing else behaves like me

And I know whats right
But I’m losing sight
Of the clues for which I search and choose
To abuse
To just unlock my mind
Yeah, and just unlock my mind

I am a pharmacist
Prescriptions I will fill you
Potions, pills and medicines
To ease your painful lives
I am a lost soul
I shoot myself with rock & roll
The hole I dig is bottomless
But nothing else can set me free

And I know whats right
But I’m losing sight
Of the clues for which I search and choose
To abuse
To just unlock my mind
Yeah, and just unlock my mind

I am a scientist – I seek to understand me
I am an incurable and nothing else behaves like me

Everything is right
Everything works out right
Everything fades from sight
Because thats alright with me