I Know the Pieces Fit

Every time I read Ian McEwan I feel horribly inadequate, and yet by the end of each book all sorts of new ideas have sprouted, and suddenly I'm ready to go to work again. I guess that's why I keep returning to his stories.

I purchased The Cement Garden six months ago, and it's been sitting on my desk all this time, ready to go, but it wasn't until Tuesday morning that I finally dove in. The past three mornings I've awakened an hour early and read at the cafe around the corner. It's been great. And now that I've finished it I feel like I've experienced something profound. I also feel like a sick bastard for having thoroughly enjoyed it.

That's the genius of Ian McEwan. He takes each narrative to unconscionable levels - I mean most of his stories are just wrong - but he does it in such subtle ways, with such sharp prose, that when you finally realize what is taking place it's too late. You're already hooked, and you devour every word from that point on, even if you walk away feeling dirty.

And just like clockwork I finished The Cement Garden this morning at 9:55, and on the ensuing twelve-minute walk to work, just like with First love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets, I saw my next project - a novel at that - and all these years of trying to put together seemingly unconnected fragments made sense. The pieces suddenly fit, and when I think about reasons to justify why I like an artist so much, I can think of no greater compliment. He makes me want to write, and he makes me want to do it in better ways than the last time.

Top Ranking

Another cool project by Miranda July (who also has a show - Learning to Love You More - at CCA through September 30), this is Blonde Redhead's video, Top Ranking, directed by Mike Mills.

Now The Strangers Have Caught On

The Sweet

I had plans to write these crazy stories about my trek to Santa Barbara last weekend, envisioning it as a way to get my act together and start working again. Certainly I had my share of absurdities on the trip, just the fact that perfect strangers were coming up to me at the reception and asking about the book - wanting to know what I was going to say about them if I wrote about the wedding - was uncomfortable and worth exploring. Then I realized it would be just like all my other pieces, and well, I'm looking to go in a different direction.

But there was a point where something meaningful happened, something significant, and I would hate to miss the opportunity to reflect on it. Sunday morning about 5:20 I woke up on the floor of my friend Pablo's condo, sweating profusely, still in my suit from the wedding, and I realized that no matter what had happened up until that point, and how much my soul would soon hurt, I had to watch the sunrise. I changed quickly, grabbed a triple espresso at the Daily Grind - my favorite coffee joint in the whole world, with the most beautiful assortment of pastries in the front glass (I had a Raspberry Scone and every bite of it was magical) - and drove to Leadbetter's Beach while the new Foo Fighters song "The Pretender" crashed through the speakers. And just as I hiked down to the water the sun started to come up, and it was like a whole new world had opened up for me, and I was convinced, in that moment, that I would never experience true bliss like that again.

Of course we're conditioned to feel this way about walks on the beach - they have to be profound and life-changing (we have a million cheesy Hallmark cards and Herpes commercials to thank for that) - but still, it didn't matter.

Within six hours I would be stopped in a place called King City, in Monterey County, the road getting a little too blurry to continue driving, and for the next eighteen hours I would be holed up in a Day's Inn with nothing but a case of water, some dried cranberries, and a pack of Airbourne. It was there that I nodded in and out of sleep, while HBO played in the background, until the next morning.

Four days later I'm knee deep in shit, stressed out at work and grumpy and ready to tell the world to fuck off, only I know I have to be quiet if I want to keep the few things I have left, so I go on, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, dreaming of all the girls I fell in love with in those small little beach towns, dreaming of steak tacos and ska music and those early mornings when it's so warm you just wear shorts to the water's edge.

Gold Dust

Last Call

A few photos from the St. Anthony's Festival in Pismo Beach.

Broken Box

I'm on hold for a Nextel operator to activate my new phone. I've been waiting twenty minutes. The elevator music during this stretch has been grotesque - I mean really hideous, and I've had to keep it on speaker phone to get any work done. After a ten-hour day just shaking my head with frustration at work (with my dome already ringing from a ridiculous stretch of festivites) all I wanted to do was curl into bed. Now I'm listening to a synthesizer-only butchering of Glady Knight and the fuckin' Pips, and let me tell you, my old Motorola speakers can't take the pain any longer.

Actually, what I really wanted to do tonight was catch the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at The Fillmore, but I knew that would do me in. Even typing their name just now led me to contemplate going again, after I had already made the decision not to go once. But I need some sleep. That's what it's come to tonight.

Before I go, though, I wanted to share an interesting little graph from the webstats program on thingskeptburning. Here are the 40 key phrases users entered to come to the site.

Search Keyphrases (Top 10) Full List

rob simons	10	25 %
i got a handjob last night	10	25 %
rob simons things kept burning	10	25 %
slippy magazine	10	25 %

I can't make this stuff up, people.

I also couldn't be more proud.

Santa Barbara

Just got home, and needless to say, I'm beat. I've got a few stories and some new photos and a million thoughts about the world, and in the ensuing days I'll try to recapture some of the magic here (if that's even possible). In the meantime, here are a few shots that I just picked up at the lab.

Vacation!

My good friend Tiphanie's in town this weekend, and yet I have a wedding in Santa Barbara on Saturday, so tonight is the only time we can hang out. I'm off work in 12 minutes and then I'm meeting her for drinks. I can't wait.

Tomorrow I'm driving to Santa Barbara; hopefully I can connect with my old buddy Don and his wife, who live in San Luis Obispo. I haven't seen them since the summer of 2001. Saturday morning is the official wedding for my friend Eric, and then the reception is down at the water, just off State Street. Looking forward to taking a few pics and catching some rays.

I've followed up with my freelance clients and friends and the few family I'm on speaking terms with, but in case you try to get a hold of me and can't, please note that I'm on vacation. I can't even remember the last time I had one so please forgive me for being a little self-absorbed (at least more so than usual).

Regardless, whatever you need isn't that important anyway...)

Cheers!

If It's In You

I have this invitation due Thursday, and the truth is, I've had a month to do it, but without any hi-res images from the artists (it's a group exhibition) and no list from my boss as to what photos are actually in the show, I've been unable to really do much. Suddenly there's this urgency to get it done, and more importantly, to see my boss' vision executed, and yet, no matter how many times he tries to explain it, and no matter how many times he sketches it out for me, I just can't visualize it.

For me, if I can't get excited about a project it feels empty, and I hate approaching things this way. It's not what I'm about.

The real problem, though, is not the concept, it's that I'm having to learn some new things in Illustrator, and without a mentor to run questions by, the past few days have been me trying to figure this shit out alone and just being stuck. Man, it's driving me crazy.

My design skills have slowly improved over the past year, and I really feel good about it. Unfortunately, I've become complacent with my style and haven't pushed myself to do things outside of my comfort zone, which means there are certain basic functions in this program that I don't know how to do. Not only do I sound naive when talking about it, but I try to describe what I want to do in order to get some help, and I come off sounding like a tit.

To complicate things, for the greater part of the summer I've had four interns running in and out of our office, left and right, and they're young, in the 18-20 range, and all female, and they're all of the Lilith Fair variety, and to be quite honest there's a reason I stopped dating this population a few years back, and there's a reason I had to get out of teaching. I don't have the patience to listen to their nonsense any longer.

As soon as my boss leaves the room they start talking and laughing and asking me non work-related questions, and I can't hear myself think. This week, the one that I really like out of all of them, who was supposed to be gone last Friday, decided to finish a paper she's writing for school - using our office as her study hall - and literally, the minute I sit down for some peace and quiet to figure this software out, she comes in and starts eating and sighing and typing really loud, and then she does this thing with her mouse where she starts rolling the wheel that separates the left from the right click, and man, I tell ya, when her spoon started smacking the side of the yogurt cup a few minutes later I was ready to kill.

Finally I grabbed the laptop and went into one of the viewing rooms, where I found a little privacy, but as soon as I was back the irritations started again.

At one point a buddy comes in for some comic relief, and in telling him what's going on (he's a painter so he gets it) I suddenly feel like The Shining, and by the end of our conversation I wanted nothing more than to turn in my file with the words "All Work and No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy" typed on every line.

Eventually I figured out what I needed to, and it felt good to struggle through something that will be helpful down the road, and I know I'm just being tired and grumpy, but at a certain point, as pretentious as it sounds to start yelling "The Artist Needs Quiet. Please shut the fuck up!" it's really true. How can anyone create in an environment like this?

I think, if the situation doesn't improve tomorrow, a good set of earphones is in order, and if that doesn't work, it's time for a good old-fashioned freak out, which means, of course, plenty of entries here.

Enjoy.

The End of the Line

Friday night I went out to dinner in the Marina with with my old college roommate, his lovely fiancee (they just moved here from Manhattan a month ago) and two buddies from Santa Barbara, both of whom I hadn't seen in nine years (one is married, and his wife was really cool, too). The great thing about the evening was, no matter how long it had been, and no matter how badly I would have preferred to rest for the following day (which I'll get to in a minute), as soon as we saw each other it was like no time had passed. Of course, my memory is impeccable, I mean I remember every last detail of every night we ever went out, so once we had a few drinks and sat down for Tapas, the stories flowed, and each one got funnier. Man, it was nice.

The next morning I was up early for another friend's bachelor party, this one in the Delta, about an hour outside of Sacramento. My boys had rented a compound in the middle of nowhere, on an island no less, and since Thursday had been going full throttle. The scene that I encountered Saturday afternoon was nothing short of surreal, with 30 guys in various states of inebriation, a giant pig spinning on the barbecue (his tongue twirled to one side), a game of intense tackle football going on at one end, others out water-skiing, there were dudes crawling on the bathroom floor and vomiting in the bushes and every once in a while a figure I hadn't seen in 15 years emerged from nowhere and then disappeared again. It was insane.

Just before dinner they started firing shotguns across the levee at clay pigeons, only there were houses on the other side of the river and they had been warned about it the day before. What I'm trying to say is, about 9:00 pm our base got raided by the Solano County SWAT team - one moment I'm munching on some brownies and drinking a Stella and the next a bunch of cops with armor-piercing rifles turn the corner, looking for trouble. The absurd thing is, for a few minutes nobody even noticed, and the cops just blended in with the party. I wanted to say, hey fellas, stop, the cops are here, but for some reason the words never came. Then it was anarchy. The owner of the property was pretty hammered and started arguing with one of the officers. A few were cool, a few wanted things to go down. Luckily, calmer heads prevailed, so after checking gun permits and hunting licenses and making sure we got the message, they left without incident.

Next weekend is another friend's wedding, so I'm taking a few days off to drive down to Santa Barbara. Once that is over I'm shutting it down for the summer. That's it. No more. It's been great but all these activities are too much.

Give me a quiet weekend alone in my studio any day.

Keep Music Evil - BJM

Picked up tickets to see the Brian Jonestown Massacre on September 3rd, and honestly, between that and the White Stripes/Cold War Kids show at the Greek theater on September 21st, I couldn't be more stoked. I've scoured youtube for good concert footage of BJM, but nothing I found could match the electricity of their live shows or the sound quality of one of their albums, which you can download for free here. However, here's a clip from Nevertheless, one of my favorite songs.