Sunday December 6th 2009 11:49 a.m. Called Jakob, he did not answer, I left a message.

the truth

On the Thursday before my 30th birthday celebration, my girlfriend was cheating on me.....

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 It is the reason I canceled meeting people at the Meridian Room that night and drove to FT Worth. Not to help her change a tire, but to rescue her from a situation she had gotten herself into through lies and deceit. The guy she was cheating with had gone crazy and was trying to hurt her and himself, he ended up being arrested and spent 3 days getting a psych evaluation. ....

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The girlfriend and I decided to try and work things out. It was rough, the 2 days following were actually amazing, everything seemed fine when a large group of us went to dinner at Love and War, breakfast the next day was enjoyable, and I was happy when I went bar hopping with my friends the next night. Except I really wasn’t, it was the beginning of the lies, and I took my pent up rage and anger at the situation out on one of my good friends. I insulted his girlfriend, belittled his manhood and publicly embarrassed him.....

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It was important to me that my friends like my girlfriend, in actuality after the way everyone viewed other Ex’s, I wanted them to like her more than they liked me. I decided then to not tell anyone what had happened, and continued to bottle up my pain. This was easier than it would have been, since I had run my roommate off, I was able to sit at home and get belligerently drunk and blame myself for what had happened. At first I told no one. The girlfriend and I continued to try and build a future together, and I continued to hurt. Eventually I broke down at work, a song came on and it made me start crying, I connected this song with her relationship to another man. I obviously had to talk to someone at that moment, I was in the backroom of my store balling like a child, so I told some coworkers and it helped a little. More importantly it let me know what I needed; I needed someone to talk to. However at the same time my friends were slowly becoming friends with my girlfriend, in many ways I think some of them now feel she is more of a friend than I am.  I naturally didn’t want to sabotage her being friends with them, so I continued biting the bullet. I bottled up my emotions and let it drain me. I started drinking more, and worse I started drinking alone. ....

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Summer came and with it an old friend/new roommate, at first I thought, wow, this will be great, one night I can get drunk and tell him what happened, and I will have someone I can talk to. Wrong, I realized if he ends up hating her, then me and him are going to have problems. So I continue to bite the bullet. I talk to acquaintances about what has happened, but never my true friends. Although I may have drunkenly told a certain friend who went with me to see The Melvins, I don’t think he paid any attention to what I was telling him, so I still didn’t talk about it with the people I should have.....

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At the end of the summer she went on vacation, and I became a paranoid wreck, deciding that she had chosen to go to Vegas to cheat on me more, not to just happily celebrate her birthday with her mother. I went a little crazy, went out got drunk alone at a bar, and started lying to the people there about who I was, how important I was, etc. etc, I don’t know why I did this, I just did. I didn’t even remember doing it until a few weeks later when I went to eat alone at the Libertine and one of the strangers I had met that night came up and started talking to me. Evidently the only truth I told him and his friends about myself was that I had been cheated on. It scared me, but I still didn’t talk to anyone. ....

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Winter came, the lady and I were doing better, but there were fights. I usually started them, either because I blamed myself for her cheating, or because I felt she hadn’t done enough to help me heal, or just because I hated her for putting me in the situation. I would go through her phone and ask questions about things in it. In reality though, I just wanted to fight, I thought maybe I could be loud enough that someone hears me and knows what I have been going through.  Maybe it was just because I am selfish and whiney, I don’t know for sure, but we fought a lot. I became scary.  I also drank a lot. I lied a lot.....

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I knew I was acting different when I drank, so I decided to drink at home instead of going out, or if I went out to drink it was usually alone with the girlfriend, for some reason this seemed safer to me. Until we had a huge fight leaving the Libertine, which led to me drunkenly driving all the way to ....Arlington.... before I realized I was being an ass.  After this things were better for a time, but that changed. New Years Eve, and it is weird because some people say I was acting normal that night, but I woke up the next day feeling like I had done something horrible. I still do not know what I did for sure, but I do know that one of my best friends did not talk to me for a couple of weeks because she said I was being fake and mean. Not surprising.....

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This basically sums up how things went until this summer. ....

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A month ago I found out she was cheating again. She was in the back of the house, and her phone kept going off, I tried to ignore it but it went on for close to 30 minutes, finally I opened it up. ....

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Guess what....

She was cheating again.....

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We didn’t, and still haven’t technically broken up, but maybe we should. I don’t know. I do know that I didn’t know who to talk to about this. I didn’t want to have to explain to all my friends the events of the last year, and if me and her did decide to keep trying to work things out I didn’t want them to hate her.....

I tried telling my friends what was going on, but ended up lying more.....

  I would say things when drunk, tell stories that I thought were funny, but were just giant lies. ....

I don’t know what else to say....

Maybe I wasn’t biting the bullet....

Maybe I set on all this because it was the first wave of me pushing everyone away.....

Maybe I succeeded.....

Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Early Mastodon albums gave listeners the sense that this band would do great things. Crack The Skye is the album where Mastodon trade potential for results. Mastodon has always been an ambitious band, but this album shows that they may also be the most important band in modern American Heavy Metal.  Uniquely weird and intelligent there is a cohesiveness and depth found on this album that is lacking in modern metal.  The songs don’t just build on top of each other as the album plays; they also build upon the bands previous albums as well. Don’t believe me, place Crack the Skye on shuffle with other Mastodon albums and hear for yourself. What these guys have done is amazing and ambitious.

This album, like its predecessor Blood Mountain, is more tuneful and less about showing off guitar riffs. The drums are much more subtle than in the past, and the guitarists seem to have developed a better sense of how to wrap there frantic fretwork around Brann Dailors polyrhythmic ode to Genesis style instead of letting it take the lead.   The band has been drifting away from deep growl vocals over the last couple of albums, and that continues to be the case here. While the growl has not disappeared altogether, when it is used it works brilliantly, adding to the album’s emotional depth. The lighter vocals do not appear to be as processed as they were on Blood Mountain, instead Troy or Brent (not sure which) has developed a more classic rock style, similar in sound and range to Chris Cornell or Ozzy Osbourne, but maintaining a uniqueness that fits the albums mesmerizing tones.

This may very well be the best metal album since Vulgar Display of Power. I am very picky when it comes to metal, and the thing I love about Mastodon is that they go against the flow of modern metal, and they take there influences from multiple genres. They aren’t trying to be the most extreme brutal band out there; they just seem focused on making good music. Very few bands keep their day jobs after their first world tour, I think the fact these guys are still installing roofs in there downtime speaks volumes about the handiwork they put in their music. 

an open letter to the us auto industry

Dear GM and Ford,

Remember when you cut back your American workforce, and lowered salaries domestically so that you could make more profits? Remember all those profits you were making as you sent jobs overseas because they had cheaper labor? All the while your executives were making more and more money. Well it looks like it finally bit you in the ass. Sucks to be you, maybe if you gave some Americans jobs they would be able to buy your fucking cars. Maybe if you gave to shits about the enviroment the people left that can afford cars would buy yours and not Kias, Prius and SmartCars.

Just saying dudes You fucked yourselves

R.I.P CD World and Meridian Room

Yesterday was a sad day as both Meridian Room and CD World closed there doors for the last time.

 

The first time I made a purchase from CD World, they didn't even own a shop. My mother and I were at the intersection of Park and Greenville on the way home from a doctor’s appointment and there was a dude standing in the street with a Mariah Carey CD in one hand and I believe a Butthole Surfers album in the other. We purchased both, Mariah for my sister, and the Butthole Surfers/Sepultura/Ministry or whatever it was <> for me.

When I worked in the Ticketmaster call center in the late 90's I would get off work everyday and walk over to CD World and spend hours just looking through the CDs and stuff, most of my paycheck went to that store and I never regretted it. People can talk about CD Source all they want, but the environment has never been the same, and the people working there seem to only have a superficial knowledge of music. I guess from now on when I am shopping for music that we don't carry at my work I will have to make a visit to Good Records.

Meridian also holds a special place in my heart, from  watching Jason make a fool of himself there on numerous occasions, our annual Thanksgiving trips there with Adrienne,  the girls I met there and subsequently dated, delicious food, naked men dancing and singing on bars, it was almost always fun. I am sad it is closing, but I have to take some of the blame, due to the DART construction and inadequate parking I had stopped going there, evidently so had everyone else. Hopefully someone will reopen it and keep the same vibe that Meridian had, or maybe even improve on it. However knowing this city they will put in a Potbellies or a Chili’s and totally ruin Expo Park.

I forgot the time that Me and a certain lady were making out in the kitchen after close, and she heard the busboy coming with the dishes so she shoved me in the employee bathroom and told me she would be right back. 5 minutes later the bathroom door opens up and the busboy almost had a heart attack when he saw me standing in there, in the dark.

fun times indeed

Save the House Where Superman was Born

For years I have heard of people, customers usually sometimes a blogger, talk about how when they went on a trip to Cleveland they decided to stop and look at the house where Jerry Siegel created Superman. It is not a historical site, or a museum, but the couple who live there from all accounts are happy to let strangers stop by and look at the place, and sit in the room where 2 men created something that, whether you want to admit it or not, gave so many of us something to aspire to as children. Some of us never stopped using it as inspiration. I know it is cool to hate Superman, he isn't dark or gritty and he does the right thing, but no matter what comic book characters you looked up to as a child, this is an important historical place worth preserving.

I know if I ever find myself anywhere near Cleveland I would like to stop by and visit this house, and it sure would be nice to say "I helped Save this Place"

I spent entirely to much money on comics and cds today

I bought the new Sigur Ros, not sure why though since I have had no desire to listen to it. Still I am sure there will be a boring day where it will come in handy.
I also dropped a good $60 bucks at the LCS today, and got that nifty 3-D Grant Morrison Superman book.
However the highlight of my day was finally reading Suburban Glamour which was a much better book set of books than I expected. Due to my love of Phonogram, I had rather high hopes, but it met and shattered those hopes. Screw Brian Bendis, this is hopw kids talk today.