Author: Ridley

Texas had a rather unexpected spring this weekend. I mean, we technically have Spring for, oh, about a quarter of the year, but it’s not really spring, you know? We go from chilly and flood-y to blistering over the course of a weekend and it tends to stay that way until it switches back sometime during autumn. We thought we were already into the near-Summer days when we got a front on Friday. It dumped some rain on us and then left us with a cool, glowing kind of Sunday that we don’t see very often. “spring”,” in the spring-iest sense of the word. I could get used to this, but I’d best not as I’ll wager it’s not going to be with us for long. The last time I wrote here, I thought I was enjoying a bit of decent health. The Gods In Charge Of What We Call “Ironic” Punishments But Not In Any Way Genuinely Ironic decided to bop me with another round of vertigo last Monday, which completely took the wind out of my sails for the week. It didn’t help at all that work was unusually intense and, in spots, dramatic. I’m too old for this. Of course, no one is correctly-aged for this kind of thing. You get through it, but it’s not anything I’d recommend to anyone. On the plus side, it’s been a lovely weekend. We had a dance party on Friday night, by which I mean, I lumbered around our living room listening to the mix I made for our road trip but didn’t get to listen to much of because dark desert highways don’t have much in the way of data service. Saturday, I took the nap of all naps. It’s the first time I’ve felt truly rested in weeks. I know it’s not exciting to write about naps, but this was one for the ages. Nicole came in to wake me up when I’d asked her to and, when she told me I could sleep a little longer, I was, for just that moment, perhaps the happiest man alive. Today’s been chill. Just eating leftovers and enjoying the sun out on the patio with a glare of cats. We’ve been like our feline roomies, too. Sit in the sun, get too warm, move to the shade, get too cool, repeat ad infinitum. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon. Today, my second job didn’t exactly end, but it’s going to be more of a non-paying hobby than a non-paying job for a while. I did twelve months at the helm and did it well, so I’m going to step back from it a little and let someone else take the reins next year. I had a lot of fun with it, but I think I’d like to have a little flexibility with my weekends for a while now. This has all become a bit Live-Journal-y, hasn’t it? I apologize for that, but I’m a little out of it. I haven’t been reading on the train for the last couple of months and I just feel kind of hazy and unfocused. I’m struggling to finish things right now; I have a song I’m working on based on a mis-heard progression from an old Chris Isaak song (no, not that one) that is resisting become a finish “thing” so I may have to just set it aside for a bit and work on something else. So it goes. I think I’m going to go and make some soup right now and enjoy it out on the patio and hug my beautiful wife for all she’s worth (a lot, in case you were wondering). Hope you’re all enjoying the day as well. -RK

Huh…it’s been two weeks again, hasn’t it? Bother. I’ll be honest with you: While I’m thrilled that my new medication is working a treat, the fact that I’m no longer receiving regular steroid shots isn’t doing anything for my energy levels. Four years on steroids leaves one accustomed to the feeling, and going cold turkey has left me feeling a little blah. I have a bunch of stuff queued up for this space, but it’s just taking me longer than normal to get to it. In the meantime, we’ve made yet another trip out to beautiful Marfa, Texas. This is pretty much a perfect time to go out to the desert: It’s warm without being oppressively hot and the nights are chilly without being cold. It helped that there happened to be a meteor shower, so I saw a handful of shooting stars and that’s something I’ll never get tired of. We stayed with a few friends (Danielle, Lauren, and Stuart) and rented a house instead of the usual trailer lodging at El Cosmico. This afforded us a proper kitchen, which resulted in some gazpacho and nachos (not at the same time) and gave us somewhat better toilet facilities than we normally have. I also brought my old MG-1 synth out there with a bunch of pedals, which Stuart took too like a fish in something fish like very much. It turns out I don’t know much about using a delay pedal and he made it make some noises I’ve never been able to find. Humbling, but a lot of fun to watch. Anyway, that’s still our default getaway until it winds up being to people-y (and it will, sooner rather than later I think). We have some other destinations in mind, but I think our next one will be Terlingua, an hour or two south of Marfa. As a side note, the drive is pretty brutal (7 1/2 hours-ish), so we broke it up by driving halfway Wednesday night and staying at a Motel 6 in Ozona. I cannot in good conscience recommend staying at the Motel 6 in Ozona. At $50 a night, it was no bargain at all. The less said about it the better. We would take Amtrak out there, as the train stops in Alpine (15 minutes from Marfa), but the only train going out there leaves San Antonio at 3:45 AM and that isn’t quite as convenient as the planners at Amtrak seem to think it would be. One especially nice thing about the trip was getting to see Träd, Gräs och Stenar play at El Cosmico. They give the sense of having been around since the dawn of time (actually 1967m which is pretty much the same thing). I won’t try to describe the music beyond saying that it was ideal listening for sitting in a hammock at a trailer park in the middle of nowhere. For some reason, they remind me of King Crimson in that they seem to be ruled by an aesthetic of how they make their music as opposed to the traditional “we gotta write 10 songs and make a record” routine. I can’t really justify that impression, but that’s what I thought of. Really great sound-if you get the chance, make some time to see them. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see Khruangbin, who I really adore. I’m confident I’ll get a chance to do so again, but very much my loss in this time around. And, then home again. Everything is suddenly hot and muggy which is the opposite of the desert. My skin has felt sticky every day since returning. To make up for it, Nicole (who is now “Coco” thanks to Jules, our waiter in Marfa) has been buying some marvelous ingredients and daring my not to screw them up. Last night, we had a handful of big scallops to grill along with artichokes, ramps (which are amazing, btw), and grilled focaccia, which we topped with goat cheese, roasted garlic, smallish, semi-hot peppers, and fiddlehead ferns. Fancy, right? Tonight was just as good, but I’m too tired to list out the ingredients which I hope I treated as well as they deserved. I’m beat. Off to bed, and tomorrow is Friday which is coming too soon and not nearly soon enough at the same time. I figure most of you know what I’m talking about. Goodnight, -RK

Didn’t I just say that I was going to post here twice a week? Um….yes. Yes I did. I also haven’t finished the song I was working on in March and my weight loss goals are unmet as well. I am not doing well at all at keeping up on this. I haven’t even been reading on the train. What gives? Things have been kinda sucky lately. There’s been some ill health in the family, work has been rough, and…well, I guess that’s about it. I mean, other than the continuing horror show that is Our National Discourse, which I suppose I ought not discount. It’s not been a great month. But…I can’t get back on track by not continuing to avoid this stuff, can I? So, here’s me trying to get going again. Here’s what I’ve been listening to this month: This is what happens when you listen to some stuff Warren Ellis suggested, you have some creative friends, you’re going to a really minor music festival in the middle of the desert, and you just finished re-reading all three volumes Phonogram. Some much for glitchy drones. The ear wants what it wants. On a slightly more technical level, I’ve been really, really into interesting reverbs and how they sound with old synthesizers. I have two machines that have perfectly good-to-great delays built in, but some of the modern reverb pedals are just amazingly evocative. Some people say that effects are what people who can’t play use to sound interesting, and in my case they’re not wrong, but I’d really rather sound interesting than sound like what I sound like without effects, ya know? I’ve broken more bones than I can remember, including one particularly memorable corkscrew break of a two combined with two dislocated joints. I’ve torn skin open to the bone, and I’ve split a tooth in half. But, nothing comes even close to the pain I experienced during one particularly nasty ear infection. I am getting an ear infection. This does not please me. This next week is going to be ugly and I don’t know how much good/interesting stuff I’m going to have time or energy for, but I do have a few posts queued up for this space. In the meantime, you might want to sign up for Max Romero’s The Beef newsletter. Max is someone you want to know and I say this on the authority of actually knowing him. That’s it for tonight as I am whupped. Take care of yourselves. -RK

My favorite two musical periods are the 1989-91 era and the early 2000s. The former gave me Nine Inch Nails and Public Enemy and Pop Will Eat Itself and Bad Religion and They Might Be Giants and a stack of others I can’t recall right now. Some of them had earlier albums, but this time period marked my entry point for a lot of music that was new to me. It changed everything, to. I started dressing like Baphomet in The Wicked + The Divine, a look that I can no longer pull off for a multitude of reasons. I went to concerts, I went to dance clubs, and I did this all the time, and it was amazing The early 2000s, on the other hand, were about re-discovering joy in music. Bands like Metric, The New Pornographers, Ted Leo + Pharmacists, Stellastarr*, The Arcade Fire, The Futureheads, MGMT, The Kaiser Chiefs, and most especially Ambulance, LTD, made concert-going fun again for me. It really was an amazing time, at least for me. It wasn’t particularly great dance music, but man, you could sing along with it at the top of your lungs and be guaranteed a great time (mileage for listeners who had to hear me do this may vary). Part of the joy was not just in the discovery, but in the fact that I could still discover. Nothing makes you sound/feel/be old like saying “Music today sucks, it was so much better back when <insert your preferred touchstone here>.” In the grand scheme of things, that’s not the most self-defeating attitude there is, but it’s probably on the list. But…2003 was a long time ago, wasn’t it? 16 years is forever in musical terms. It’s almost long enough that we’re due for a revival of some sort. How long is 16 years? The length of time between the first Rolling Stones album (The Rolling Stones, 1964) and their last real album (Tattoo You, 1981) was only 17 years. It’s six years longer than the entire career of Led Zeppelin. Beyoncé was still touring with Destiny’s Child in 2003. In 2003, Taylor Swift was in middle school and just learning to play guitar and Ariana Grande was singing karaoke on cruise ships. It’s been a while, huh? Music is how I mark time, so this all gets under my skin a little. Time to refocus a little and see what’s going on. There’s great music being made out there because there’s always great new music being made. You just have to be open to it. Short 1989-91 playist.Short early 2000s playist. (Speaking of “open”, if y’all have any suggestions, I’m all, or at least mostly, ears.)

So, one of Nicole’s friends is really, really into The FP, a film that I haven’t seen yet so I won’t even try to describe it. When the sequel, FP2: Beats of Rage was playing in town, she absolutely insisted that we go and see it with her (even though she’d already seen it several times). I’m glad we went. This was one of the oddest films I’ve ever seen. It’s the Mother of All High-Concept Films. In what is presumably a post-apocalyptic future, conflicts are settled by the bloodsport to end all bloodsports: A dance-based video game. If that sounds strange, well, you’re right, but it doesn’t play out the way you’re probably thinking. Going in to this film, I was sarcastically wondering if I’d be able to follow the plot if I hadn’t seen the first one. As it turned out, I really do wish I’d seen the original and plan to do so soon. There’s a lot more world-building than you would probably expect from a film of this…genre?…and budget. Some of it seems to have come from The FP, but I get the sense that there’s more backstory here than ever makes it to the actual story in a weirdly Tolkien-esque sort of way. FP2:BoR makes an explicit nod to Tolkien, and to The Empire Strikes Back, and Big Trouble in Little China, and Mad Max, and probably a bunch of other references I either didn’t get or missed from laughing so hard. This is a really, really funny movie, and it’s funny because this really sophomoric concept is played absolutely straight by everyone in the film. There’s no winking, there’s no irony, there’s just a bunch of actors playing out an epic as conceived by a teenager as though it was a serious film. I found it hilarious. I can completely understand if some people don’t. I don’t think this film is for everyone. But for people who like this particular type of absurdist humor, writer/director/star Jason Trost really hit it out of the park.

I’m officially older-by-a-commonly-accepted-increment of one year now. After as many of these as I’ve had, they don’t pack the same wallop as they used to. That may be a temporary thing; it could well be that as they start to add up to some really big numbers, I may regard each one a bit more dearly. Mile markers are hard to judge when you don’t know where the destination is, I guess. Nicole treated me to a lovely surprise on the morning of. She’s thoughtful to a fault…scratch that, as I’m not sure someone can be too thoughtful, but you get the idea. It’s nice, though. She never lets me feel anything less than appreciated and that’s the kind of feeling that keeps a body warm in these strange, bitterly cold days. I’ve done my first home self-injection with the Scary New Drugs. It was a weirdly uneventful thing. Take a syringe out of the fridge, swab my side with something antiseptic, and stick the needle in. I understand that there’s risk in being too casual when it comes to needles. My doctor made damned sure that I understood this. So, I’ll make it a point to be careful. It does seem to be having a positive effect. I’m still not going to be wearing short in public any time soon, but I can see the changes. It’s supposed to reach peak effectiveness six weeks after starting, so that puts me on course for mid-April for “as good as it’s going to get”. At this point, I don’t think the effectiveness has quite matched the quarterly steroid injections, but the trajectory seems good. We live in hope. I saw my therapist this last weekend and it was an unusually focused session, and I mean that in a good way. We spent most of the time talking about trying to find personal value in a situation that I was becoming more and more detached from (yes, vague, I know, but for good reasons). Our brainstorming came up with some fine approaches, some things I can genuinely get excited about. That alone was worth the price of admission, but we also talked about…I’m hesitant to call them “resolutions”, but that’s essentially what we’re talking about here. She used a different word because she’s a professional, but I can’t recall what it was. Anyway, the gist is there are three things I’m to work on: Post 3 times a week (probably twice here as job #2 will qualify as one of the three). Write 1 song per month. Drop 4 pounds per month. These are all very achievable things. She big on “achievable”. She’s pointed out, at length, that setting un-achievable targets is just giving yourself an excuse to give up. I can’t imagine why she’s point that out to me. Oh wait, yes I can. That’s totally something I would do, have done, and likely will do again. Now, I’m nothing like a musicians. I can honestly say that, while I can pick up many musical instruments and make recognizable sounds with a great many of ‘em, I am not good at playing any of them. That makes it no less fun for me to do it. I have a lot to say on the subject that’ll have to wait, Yeah, that’s going to be a long-ish post, but I think it’ll be a good one. Here is one of our beautiful snails on the back of a very grumpy sea turtle. Oof…that’s about it for now. Time to make dinner, and by that I mean “heat up the oven and that’s about it.” -RK

Hi. It’s been a strange week. Last Wednesday, I did my first self-injection of a new-ish treatment called Dupixent that’s meant to bring some degree of normalcy to my skin. Every two weeks now I’ll be injecting this into my (fortunately voluminous) sides. In theory, the side effects are extremely minimal. That’s unusual for this kind of a treatment, but hey, I’ll take it. The first thing I noticed, less than 48 hours after the injection, was that my skin had oil in it. I’ve had incredibly dry, crepe-like skin for some time now which is almost certainly contributing to my situation. Quite suddenly, I mean jarringly so, my skin felt…normal. Nicole noticed it as well. That was cool. As far as the healing goes, it’s hard to tell. It’s getting better very slowly, or perhaps getting worse very slowly, or maybe staying exactly the same at a very high rate. I think there’s some healing going on. My “canaries”, the things that flare up first, seem to be doing better. I am cautiously optimistic. The bad news is that this is not a cure. What we’re hoping for is just keeping the condition in check. So there’s no end to the treatment. If it works, though, then it’s well worth it. Hopefully it will remain so to my insurance company. We did wind up having an absolutely lovely Valentine’s weekend. This may sound a little nekulturny, but we decided to stay in the first evening because we got a peach of a parking space and didn’t want to lose it. Fortunately, it’s not difficult to get things delivered these days. We got a feast-full of fruit, cheese, bread, and meats as well as some wine and didn’t miss going out at all. It helped that the hotel room in The Lumen was embarrassingly large. It was bigger than our apartment, with a monstrous “living room” area that had a hanging 55” TV. Both sides of the place had floor-to-ceiling windows and the bathroom was appropriately decadent. I also ordered a Chromecast because I wanted one, but they are of no use in hotels that have decent network security (device isolation is a good thing, mind you) unless you want to put too much effort into it. For our Big Night Out, we had reservations at Fearing’s which was a fairly typical pinkie-up kind of experience. We went full-on costumey with our attire. I went with my banded collar suit because I always do, with a bright red collarless shirt. Nicole…how do I describe this? A platinum wig with a backless red dress featuring a scandalous neckline, a fur wrap and a jeweled broach. Add to that picture the most sparkliest of lip and eye makeup and some seriously sparkly heels and you’re in the neighborhood. The food didn’t quite live up to our get-ups, but we make a spectacular couple. Mind you, she would have been spectacular on her own. One brief work related thing: When my office does big events, there are usually custom t-shirts or hoodies created for everyone who attends. I have never been able to wear any of these because they would likely make my skin fall off. This year, they went out of their way and got me a jacket by a brand I can actually wear. It’s one of the coolest things they’ve ever done. Seriously. I let the Big Bosses know how much I appreciated their doing this. To protect the innocent (and the somewhat less-than-innocent as I’ve known these folks for a long time), I won’t name names, but y’all get the idea. -RK

Austin, TX This has been something of a lost week. Monday night, I was hit with what I refer to as “the dizzies”. We think it’s Meniere’s Disease, but it’s hard to get a solid diagnosis of something that hits once a year and comes on very, very quickly. On Monday, I was sitting at our kitchen island, not doing much of anything, and Nicole, who was across from me, started moving from left to right very quickly. We’ve been through this just enough to know the routine, which is strictly a triage sort of thing. I get into be immediately and Nicole goes and gets me some motion-sickness meds. The pills serve two functions: They help a little with the sense of spinning and they also knock me out cold. That’s a very good thing in this case. What i need to do in these cases is to stay in the dark, stay cool, and no matter what, not open my eyes. I’m nauseated, but I’ve never actually been sick. That’s a good thing because sitting up when I have one of these spells is difficult. Walking is out of the question. I can crawl, but that’s about it. For the most part, after a nap of four hours or so, I’m good. Well, at least I’m not dizzy anymore. I am pretty physically wiped out at that point like I’ve just spent four hours doing cross fit. It can take me several days to really recover, which is a royal pain in the buttocks. We’re not 100% sure what’s going on. It seems to be related to my hearing loss in my right ear. The initial reaction to that loss was “Huh. That’s weird. Let’s do an MRI and do some tests to see if you have cancer.” That was fun. It turned out that I did not have cancer, but the official explanation was “Damned if we know.” The working theory is that there’s fluid or something that’s putting pressure on my inner ear on the right side. Not only does that make your hearing suck, but it causes a problem with the semi-circular canals. One of them is normal; the other is getting some pressure on it and isn’t sure what’s going on. The result is that my brain is getting two wildly different readings as to my orientation and it interprets this as “spinning”. After the nap, the two sets of semi-circular canals have re-calibrated and come to an agreement as to where I am in relation to the rest of the world. That’s a nice feeling. Anyway, as you can imagine, this dominates my thoughts for a few days and thought I’d share what it feels like. There are worse things. There are many, many worse things. It’s just that, for a few hours, it doesn’t seem like it. -RK P.S. This morning (Friday) it hit me again. I’ve never had two back-to-back like this, and I’ve never had it start while I was asleep. This is annoying and worrying. If there’s another incident in the next week or so, it’s off to the doctor for Ridley. Yay!

Austin, TX We had a ridiculous amount of fog this morning, which made the pond look like a Bob Ross painting: It finally (sort of) burned off this afternoon, so we saw a little sun for the first time this weekend. It’s still hazy out there and we can’t really see downtown without squinting, Doesn’t exactly encourage one to get out and about and do things. Plus, I’m “on call” this weekend, which is a buzzkill of the first order. Not receiving pay stubs anymore, either as paper or email, has left me less aware of the amount of vacation time I have accumulated. I hadn’t looked in several months, so when I checked in last month, I discovered that I was effectively maxed out. That means that, going forward, I’m effectively donating my vacation time to the company which isn’t real high on my list of “ways to use vacation time”. So I tried something different this quarter: Instead of blocking off a week, I took 2-3 days each month to give myself a little something to look forward to each month. It seems like a pretty good approach, especially in the winter when travel is a lot less attractive (I don’t ski, in case you were wondering). It’s nice to be able to recharge the batteries once a month but…once spring rolls around, I may have other ideas. Job two is going remarkably well. Not in the “I am making good money” off of it way, but more in the “I’m starting to feel like I’m pretty good at this” sense. In general, I’ve found that optional second jobs can be a lot of fun. I haven’t done the math, but I can think of a couple of reasons for this. The obvious one is that, since you’re choosing to do it, there’s a pretty good chance that the second gig is something that’s interesting to you and/or something you enjoy. Another possibility is that part of the enjoyment comes from the fact that you don’t need that job. You can leave any time you want without a huge impact on your financial situation (please remember I’m only discussing optional second jobs here; when you have to take a second job to pay the rent, that’s another animal entirely). This one’s interesting to me. I wonder how much job stress comes not strictly from the job itself but instead from the sense that you are not free to leave it? If it’s a good amount, and I suspect it is, then a lot of stress could could be alleviated just by having a more fluid system of employment and a better safety net. Even something as simple as universal healthcare (health insurance is one big reason why people feel they can’t leave their jobs) would improve a lot of people’s lives just by allowing them to feel a little less trapped by their jobs. I write most of my what-might-generously-be-described-as music on piano because that’s the instrument I’m most comfortable with, but I do get into ruts with it sometimes. And by “ruts” I mean “whenever I get frustrated I go back to playing stuff I’ve played a gazillion times and then getting up and going for a soda. So, inspired by Behold! We May Rock You! I decided to do a little composing on guitar and see what happened. The first thing that happened was a recollection of why I don’t write much on guitar. I am not very good at playing the guitar. I can awkwardly strum a barre chord with the best of ‘em, but beyond that? Pfffft. Nonetheless, I persisted and actually came up with a little something. It’s a little something that I think sounds better on the piano, but…it’s also something that I probably wouldn’t have ever tried. It was surprisingly rewarding. I haven’t recorded any demo-y bits yet, but I like the way it sounded, so we’ll see. I guess that’s about it. I hope you had a lovely weekend and that you enjoy the football game if that’s you thing. -RK

In the interest of honest disclosure, I know the gentleman who wrote this book and count him as a friend. However, if I am to be completely honest, I have read things by friends and acquaintances that I didn’t care a whit for. Some of it has been downright painful. So please understand that while I may be a friend of the author, I am also a reader and if I don’t care for what he has written, I will say so, or, more likely, I wouldn’t say anything at all. Behold! We May Rock You!  by Jim Kuenzer is a very funny novel. Before we go any further, I ask to take a moment to consider how many genuinely funny novels you’ve read. Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett wrote quite a few, as has Christopher Moore. A Confederacy of Dunces was terrifically funny. But beyond those few, there aren’t many, are there? There are many, many humorous memoirs and collections of stories, but when it comes to novels? It’s a pretty short list, and Behold! We May Rock You! is now on it. Not only is it funny, but it doesn’t read like an attempt to imitate any of giants of the genre. Kuenzer has his own, unique voice that will frequently make you laugh, or at least grin, without being exactly certain why. There’s no “hipper-than-thou” showboating, no attempt to be edgy. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite of edgy while being sublimely absurd at the same time. By the way, trying to describe humor is quite difficult and I’m certain that I’m not getting it exactly right, but I hope I’m somewhere in the ballpark. Behold! We May Rock You! is the story of the least-likely success story in the history of music. You may think you’ve heard that story before, but this is even less likely than that one. The rise and…not so much fall as dilution of the band zips along with its own odd but somehow inevitable logic. It’s a quick read, far more importantly, it’s a fun read. You really ought to check it out. -RK P.S. I’m also inspired to write some softer, less aggressive music. No snide remarks about that not being possible, if you don’t mind.