Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Who Does J0E really want for president? Part 'Down Goes The Clown' |
As for *real* life, I've pretty much lost touch with, everybody. Everybody? Everybody.
Stopped talking to The Basement Crew a long time ago, probably sixteen years or so. I did put Shawn Morse back in touch with this chick Laura, and they did wind up marrying, not sure if they're still together but I hope they are. I felt like a regular ol' matchmaker for that one.
Lost touch with most of my musical pals as well, Stevus wound up having kids, his baby mama drove a wedge between us, and he would rather spend time out cavorting on her and using Tinder to cheat, than hang with good time pals, apparently. It wasn't a huge thing but it was like, oh, I see, you can't come over *my* house without her calling and bitching, "Where are you, when are you coming home, how could you have left me here alone with the children", *I* can't go over your place without hearing, "Why aren't we ever alone, when are we going to have time together alone", if we left for even a little bit to go on a walk or go to the store, it was, "You're going to leave me here, with the kids, *alone*... !?". Mind you, I wasn't, going over all the time, being a nuisance, inserting myself into their life or their business, I'd show up, once, every, several months, tops. And less and less frequently due to her always making me feel incredibly unwelcome. It harkened back to when they *didn't* have kids and she'd be like, "You're really going to that show? You're really going to band practice? Blah, blah, blah!", for some reason they both denied this ever happened, but I put up with that shit for over a year, and even when I got with Casey, *she* noticed it too. Forcing her way into the practices only to be bored and angry that *we were practicing*, it was insane. It still is insane, but she's been out of my life for a long time now, so I don't have to deal with it. I blocked him on social media for a while because I was tired of seeing him being performative, it was just getting annoying. He posted some odd thing about how, "I'm just doing it all for muh kids" or something and it just, it bothered me a lot. Not that I don't think he loves his kids, but something about it was just, obnoxious, and off putting. He wound up getting more into wrestling than music, and it's just a scene I want *zero* part of, and something I don't enjoy. He's getting all the, attention or whatever, he hoped to get from music, from that, now. It was never about that for me, the meaningless attention of some, local scene or whatever, that was never going to do it for me. I can't sublimate what I wanted to do with, some other thing, it wasn't *about* some, other thing, it never was. It doesn't make my aim any truer or my, motives any purer, I couldn't care less about that, it's just that, I was never lying, not even that he was, but maybe, especially to himself.
I just remember it was rather telling that he always said he'd rather be popular than rich. Never made sense to me, you could be the most popular homeless failure down at the community cesspool, go ahead, knock yourself out. I don't want to be popular, and I don't want to have to *be* popular just to be, any tiny piece of succesful. But it seems like the time for that sort of thing has long passed, nowadays you have to be popular on some other mediun to even have a chance at a creative endeavor, you have to be an influencer or a TikTokker or whatever, to make music anyone would want to hear. That's just, not me. I wouldn't be popular on any of those mediums, and my heart wouldn't be *in* doing them, either. I feel like whatever it is I wanted to do, whatever it is I wanted to be, that time has passed, and it never happened.
Paul got some wife who *also* doesn't like me, so I stopped seeing him so much, too. That and, when I would make the *colassal* effort to actually go out and see his bands, he would always front me, act like he either didn't know me, or didn't care that I came out to see him. It was really fucked up, and it happened often enough that I still have some hard feelings over it. We tried to make a few musical projects happen, but he is *impossible* to work with. Everything had to be *his* idea, if you came up with something cool, or came in with an idea, he always had some *different* idea to tweak it, and make it *his* idea. It got boring. He was also a rabid attention hog, probably why he needed everything to be his idea, too, but if you were, say, playing keyboard and had a cool line or a cool riff or whatever, he would come over and say, "Let me play something real quick", and then futz about for like a fuckin' *hour*, and anytime you would try to interject or offer an idea or something he'd just keep saying, "Shh, no, *just listen*... " and it's like, dude, we *haaaave* been listening and this has been going on *forever* and all it is, is you *noodling* and faffing about. I showed him a bunch of my solo stuff that I pretty much never showed anybody, and he *shat all over it*. I might be the guy who shits all over everything, but I never did that to *him* or *his* stuff, it was pretty fucked up. I honestly do think a lot of it is, jealousy, I'm not tooting my own horn, but he was mad, that it was good. That's not a friend. That's somebody who doesn't like you. Especially since I was showing him it as ideas for stuff *we all* could work on. It happens to me a lot when I show people my solo stuff, which is why I don't, anymore. Have them tell me it sucks just for them to turn around and be influenced by it or attmept to rip it off, I have enough reasons to be angry, I don't need to add more.
Futzed about with a couple other randos for a while, Kevin Bevis had a project that needed a bassist, I was lured there under false pretenses, told that the goal was to work on covers so we could be out playing shows as quickly as possible. Kevin even told me it was *his* idea to do this. About a week into working on covers, *Kevin* flips out on the other guitarist, Danny, saying crap like, "Oh, this whole playing covers thing to get shows as fast as possible was never even *myyy* idea, I have all these ideas I want to work on, I have all these *solo acoustic songs* I want to play, without any of you!", like, *what*!? I still kept going for a while but just to fuck around, I already knew that thing was dead in the water by then.
I think I mentioned playing "One Headlight" in the last entry, that was a friend of a friend thing that came up, bro from wayyyy back, Chris, posted something on Facebook, yeah, this was long enough ago that I still had a Facebook. I actually responded, thinking, "There's no way in twenty-seven hells that he'll ever get back to me, and if he does, that he'll *ever* consider putting me in touch for the gig!", dead wrong on both counts. But mayne two days before the "show", we find out what was supposed to be a full half-hour set of music, had turned into *one song*, not sure what happened there, never got an answer. They actually picked me up and drove me to the gig, too, it was in, Clinton or Carlisle or somewhere, an outdoor thing, it was pretty cool. I didn't *want* to be picked up because I wanted to play the song and then fucking *dip*, but I think Casey was busy, as well, she was either working or had plans with her gals, or maybe she just didn't want to go. This was about, ten years ago, maybe longer, so I really can't remember. The guys in the band, not even really *a band* because they didn't have a name or anything, were all like, "Hey, cool, thanks a lot! We'll keep in touch, we have a gig in Salem later in the year, blah, blah, blah!", but when I tried to add the singer on Facebook, he never added me. Eventually I blocked his ass, and even later than that I got off Facebook entirely, so it was whatever, but it's like, why even say it? I've tried to look them up since, and they haven't done anything or gone anywhere, I can't remember most of their names at this point, but I knew them then. The singer's name was like, Mike Montaine or some shit like that. They might have thought I was too standoffish or something, and probably I am, but I don't think it's going to get any better, and I do think it will get worse.
I can't even play music alone anymore because it just reminds me that I'm big, fat-fuck failure. There's no reason to be in some shit-ass, weekend warrior dad-rock band, and that's all it would amount to, at this point. I hated that shit, twenty years ago. I have moved to something beyond hate, in the ensuing twenty years. It *has* turned me bitter and spiteful, sick with self-hatred and envy, but it's not like I didn't see it coming. Either you wind up being a success or you wind up being a worthless, useless, completely pathetic failure. I wound up the latter. Never wanted to, but knew I would.
Never made any headway in writing, either. Despite trying. Don't *want* to try anymore, don't want to give people ideas or lines or thoughts that they can reject, just to steal. Again, I'm not trying to big myself up, but I've seen tons of my own neologisms, my bits, my themes and just general sentiments, stuff from scripts I wrote which were rejected, popping up all over the place. When stuff like that was *not* all over the place, before. Even if they haven't stolen piece of my voice, they have literally rejected me and my voice, only to accept me and my voice, *coming from somebody else*, isntead. Again, I have moved *beyond* being pissed off about it, to a place of almost schizophrenic rage, really.
In the immortal words of Corey Feldman, what am I, doing here, do I even matter, what is my, purpose here, should I just keep on getting sadder (and getting *fatter*, as well)? ¶ 7:54 PM
