lend me your ear. (an introduction)

i don't know what the hell is wrong with me these days. i thought i had it all figured out. i thought everything would be ok. goddamned better than ok. after 33 years i'm now beginning to realize that nothing is ever truly figured out. i guess i figured that out a little late. go figure.

some smart dude once said that "the only constant is change." i've gone through some changes lately that have landed me in some seriously sketchball territory. i'm no regret stricken post-op tranny or anything; i just feel pretty lost. i made some wrong turns and just sort of forgot who i was and what makes me happy. my brains got broken.

the crap to appear on these pages will be an attempt to acknowledge and chronicle the things in life that have always made me happy. made me who i am. the things in life that flip the middle finger at what that smart dude said about change.

i don't even really remember much before the age 12. that was the year i got my first skateboard. suddenly my four friends and i had something that no one else could even fathom. unbreakable solidarity. unending creativity and x-ray vision. it's like that minutemen song: skateboarding changed our lives. that grey future primitive gave me a reason to live. a way to get through 5th period. a way to endure small town high-school life. a way to get by with one parent instead of two. friends and memories that last a life time. even when lifetimes don't last as long as they should. skateboarding will get you through that too. i'm here today because of the skateboard. plain and simple. i love the way a skateboard feels under my feet. i wear vans. they are turning my feet into flippers but guess what,

i don't care because i want to feel my board.

it's under there: i'm ok.

if you don't like skateboarding, i feel bad for you. please look away.

skateboarding is what first got me searching around in life's cracks and crevices. looking for new, different things. something more. when you're a skateboarder you've got a vision that looks past what's right there in front of you. you wash right over generations of football, SAT scores, proms and the grateful goddamn dead. fuck the sediment, you're in the rapids now son.

soon after i got with the push-push i found the punk rock.

my dad used to take me to a nearby college town to skateboard. when he was in night school i would try to wallride. at least that's how i remember it. regardless of how it happened this string of events: the future primitive (w/boneite), x-ray vision, the dad in night school - it all led to me getting that first cassette tape. the first punk tape i ever owned was bad religion's "how could hell be any worse?"

I still remember handing it to my dad and watching him look over the
cover and scan the song titles.

fucking post apocalypse, inferno red cassette and songs like "we're only gonna die" and "fuck armageddon...this is hell." i had never heard them but this was the tape i somehow got my dad to fork over 9$ for. the underproduced raw attitude and intelligence of that tape forever jacked my mind on music. before that day my ears knew only of john cougar and huey lewis: the musical equivalent of cigarette-smoking-gym teachers and two kids at 20.

i'll always love my dad for buying me punk rock tapes.

that 9$ has bought me 33 years and counting.

music is the best and worst parts of life purified. black-tar-life-concentrate. these pages will make every attempt to get you to listen to the music that makes my head spin. i will force it on you with words, photographs, and context.

you will succumb.