Hot Damn! Return to the Fast Lane

Yay! Back to cable modem strength! After a few months of miserable dialup bullshit, the cable modem heaven has returned to EFE Headquarters. Digging it all and listening to Waylon Jennings' Honky Tonk Heroes. Goooood shit.

On a lighter note, I never really dug Aerosmith to any real extent. They had some good tunes and all, but I was never really a "fan" as it were. But I always thought Joe Perry was cool looking. Probably one of the last classic rockers around who has that right look and attitude when playing. I especially always dug it in the RUN-DMC video for "Walk This Way" when he poked his head through the wall that Steven Tyler created with the base of his mic stand, looking around like..."What the fuck?" That one look said it all, moreso than Tyler's attempts at looking pissy.

So what'd ya do yesterday, Jason? Tell us all about yer 9/11 rememberances!

Blah. It may as well be covered, since "everyone else is doing it". Look, last year I was living in Tennessee still when the tragedies occurred. I was chatting online with a friend when she said "Hold on, apparently a plane flew into the World Trade Center". I thought "Huh", not really considering just how bad that actually was, even if it hadn't been a malicious attack. So I go to Yahoo! and they have it on the front page, and so we kept chatting. Well, the next plane hit so I turned on the TV. Confusion, lots of it, was brewing...and then the Pentagon got hit and that's when I started losing it.

Why did I lose it? Well really, how scary can it get? Unprecedented, flat out bizarre, and very scary. I called my mom freaking out. She tried to calm me down, my dad wound up driving out to pick me up and drive me back to the old homestead. But there were all those conflicting reports...oh a bomb went off here, another plane crashed out in California, or where ever. At one point there was even a blurb on the screen that said the President's plane had crashed. This was quickly taken down. I'm not any fan of Bushie, but I don't wish the guy death.

Oh...and then there were the camera crews unknowingly (or perhaps knowingly) trained on the WTC buildings, capturing people leaping to their deaths. Very, very sad. The absolute worst thing I had ever seen in my life. I cried watching the TV. I cried the day after that, and the day after that. I had lost no one at all, but it really struck me hard nevertheless. It wasn't about losing someone personally...

So yesterday I made it a point not to watch any TV, to not see everything milked to death, whether laden with good intentions or not. I wrapped up an excellent interview with Wendy Case of Detroit band The Paybacks. The rest of the day I spent cleaning up the master bedroom and doing every last bit of laundry in sight. It took me from around 7-ish in the morning to about mid afternoon. During that time, I went to the supermarket and Taco Hell and also began throwing back hard ciders, well...just because. So I had six...and that's when I was tired and such from the rest of the day and finally turned on the TV at around 7 P.M.

Peter Jennings' special called 9-11 was on. And let me say that when these events occurred, it was only Jennings' broadcast that I watched the entire time. The man understands being cool and compassionate. Not losing it, not striking paranoia and panic into people, and just doing a great job. The other stations at the time were just whipping the whole thing up into rather tasteless hype, yet Jennings just sat there many times in silence like a lot of the rest of us and let the chips fall.

Anyway, last night was no different. It really was an interesting show, with Jennings being his calm self and delivering the goods tastefully. The rememberances of the people who were in the towers and survived coupled with eerie computer animations of the inside of the tower offices as the attacks occured were really rather riveting. They weren't overblown or geared to exploit. This was some well-executed and intellectual stuff.

Still, I wound up getting torn up again, remembering myself how that felt to see it all happen the first time. And even though we all saw those two towers fall again and again and again...seeing it played out in that context...exactly as it happened, minute by minute...everything came rushing back once more. You think that when you live far away and such that you really do walk out of something like that unscathed and all right, and the pain goes away. But it doesn't, really. It surprised me. Anyhow, I created a Living Tribute tile at Yahoo! this morning just to "move on" again and try to bring closure to my feelings and send my thoughts out to others still, a year later.

So that's how my yesterday was.

Veiled Insult of the Day!

What's worse than a flaky attention-starved writer who wants to be a pop princess? Well, perhaps Lundy Lewis. But not much more than that. Aye, yer voice hurts my ears ya gasbag.

Echo From Esoterica Returns

Yes, yes Echo From Esoterica has made its return with a whole lot of good grooves for your reading pleasure. Need I say more? Just go have a read and then play in the street for a while.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am currently smashed on about 5 Dead Guy Ales. Amazing. I love the stuff. I was actually smashed on about 1 1/2, but this is an all new high for short beer intake. Just got finished watching the docu Dog Town and Z-Boys. Fucking fantastic, and I give this flick the honor of having the best soundtrack of all time. Check it out, I shit you not. More Dead Guy, please.