Final blog posting...

....as a non-parent.

How weird, huh? My last post was about the death of one of my oldest friends and this followup posting is (hopefully) my last as a non-parent. The circle of life just smacks you in the face sometimes. Our lil one was due LAST Tuesday (some girls take FOREVER to get ready) so they were talking about inducing my wife next Monday. So after drinking hippy-dippy pregnancy tea for the last week and 1/2, getting pregnancy inducing acupuncture, meditating, thinking positive and walking several miles, my wife went old skool. 2 ounces of castor oil!! Yeahhh baby! How very "Litte Rascals" of you!



I was feeling exhuasted last night so luckily, I fell asleep around 10:30. At around 4:00 a.m., her usual groans of annoyed discomfort became kind of...curious sounds of a "what the hell is going on" variety. Judging by the castor induced bathroom noises, I had a feeling what was going on but apparently more than just the ole bowels moving. There's apparently labor pains and contractions...I dunno. It's been such a long, tenuous ride I just have to take it as it comes.

I do think this is it though. God, I hope so. This is all like a really shitty pleasure delay akin to waiting for morning to come on Christmas Eve. Only we can't really sneak a peek at the presents.

In my final posting as a non-parents, I'd like to say the following...

I hope I'm not a shitty dad like the dad in all those "Everclear" songs. I do have to say the correllation between shitty dads and really creative people seem to go hand in hand, but so do the occurances of girls who turn to drugs and porn due to shitty dads. I'll be proud of my little girl no matter what, but a full page spread in FOX will give me pause.

Everyone says I won't be able to do the things I want to do...and that's fine. It's been a pretty great 35 year long ride (36 years on Sunday!). But what people don't realize about me is, I love seeing movies and hearing music. It's a part of who I am as well as filmmaking, writing and general debauchery and adventure. I do hope I am able to calm down a little, but at this moment, I think it would be unfair to my kid to throw away everything I am in order to fit some Americanized ideal of what "a parent" is supposed to be and act. But then again, maybe I'll want to do that. I dunno. We shall see.

I can't wait till my daughter is here, but I wish she and I and my wife could just go away for five easy days in Hawaii or something. We could just veg out and be left alone. I'm sick of the phone ringing and being asked what the deal is. But what's worse is (and I know, I should be all happy and positive) it's never going to end now. Sure, there will be some lulls when people have met the baby and are over her, but from here until she's like, 18....it's going to be non-stop. One thing I've realized over the past 2-3 years is, I need and love my space. We'll see how that pans out.

But most of all...more than anything...I hope the baby is HEALTHY. I'm sure she won't be HAPPY when she comes out, but I pray she's healthy and my wife pulls through perfectly as well. It's all I've been praying for and wishing on stars for so if you read this this morning/day, I would hope you'll say a little prayer for that too.

BABY TIME!

Aww man...again?

I lost another great friend from the Phoenix family last week, Scott Adrian. At first I wasn't going to post that photo above but dammit, Scott was fucking NUTS and that's him. I don't mean that in a bad way and I think he would be amongst the first to admit it and when I look at that photo, I still get the feeling I always got when I saw "Scotty-Wotty-Doo-Da-Day." Dread, mixed with laughter, mixed with feeling like "old times" mixed with "something is going to happen tonight" mixed with...if it does, I'm glad he's on my side.

Scott had a ton of serious problems all over town. I never, ever had a problem with him though. He and I went as far back as any of my Petaluma friends as he used to live around the corner from this dude Lloyd who I was friends with when I was 11 or 12. Once again, we'd see Scott coming and know trouble was en route. However Lloyd also had a thuggish older brother and between the three of us, we could usually escape his wrath. I can't believe we had a friend named Lloyd. That name is ridiculous. LLoyd. Even spelling it is ridiculous. Anyway...

As time went on, Scott and I were on the football team together (both playing "left out") and also on the track team. Yeah, I was on the track team...what of it? Scott was the ONLY guy in the entire school insane enough to do pole vaulting. I remember that it was on long track team bus rides he and I really became friends. Then we started hanging out at the Phoenix together and were friends for life. He had a penchant for pissing off friends but I think we were alot alike and the early years of our friendship gave us a mutual respect so he never flipped out on me.

The nickname Scotty-Wotty-Doo-Da-Day came from these really great cookies he would make for special occasions. I have no idea when they started getting made and brought to events, but they always made me bust up laughing. Scott, this big, goofy, buffed, tatted out dude would show up with a plate covered in saran wrap and someone would go, "dude, what is that?? And he would say, "Dude, they're Scotty-Wotty-Doo-Da-Day's!" as if you had to be some kind of fucking moron to not know that. When people die, it's those little insights and....insider speak I miss the most. It's the shared joke that you would always get into when you saw each other and never finish saying before you both started laughing as it was old, and familiar and good.

As I said, Scott was frequently in trouble. I heard stories of him beating people up and getting his ass kicked as well. I heard stories of drugs and general weirdness, but I honestly never saw any of it. When I saw Scott, we would hug and grab a beer. We went to a bunch of concerts together and stayed in touch over the years while he was in the Army, living in Germany. I'm really glad I got to hang out with him on Butter and Eggs Day back in the Spring. We hadn't seen each other much and he was in "Cool Scott" mode, even though he was having a shitty time at home and was in serious trouble with the law. We just hung out and talked and drank and had a blast.

I'm still kind of processing it all because sadly, I've been too busy to even think about it and have time to be O.K. with it. I'm sad, but not surprised. Scott was crazy. I think that just like when Nate died, the sadness will kick in when I'm at Gales or the Phoenix and Scott should be there...and he won't be.

I miss ya buddy! Hope you're seriously freaking people out whereever you are!

Hardly Strictly my last weekend...

Since I've been lazily uploading (hillarious) YouTube clips instead of "actually" blogging, I thought I'd throw you a bone and go over my last weekend! Yayyyy! Lets see...

I haven't really posted much about this but my wife is majorly pregnant. Yeah, thanks. She's due the 9th which, yes, is tomorrow. I'm somewhere between excited, terrified and just ready for this kid to be here. I've recently realized I can't really put things that are about to happen or "might" happen into real feelings. I used to worry about every single minute detail of everything before it happened. So much so I'd either end up a nervous wreck or have no feelings whatsoever when the thing DID happen because I kind of lived through it already. So now I just take things as they come. By now you're asking what this has to do with my weekend. Well, I'll tell you.

Since I have no idea how I'll feel when my child arrives, I'm trying to go do cool stuff now. For instance a few weeks ago Will Kimborugh was playing on a Thursday night in Sacramento. I love Will Kimbrough but by Thursdays, I've been driving to school/work and home three times over. Driving two hours to Sac was not appealing. But, I've never seen an entire Will Kimbrough show and when the baby comes, I may want to sit home and make goo-goo eyes until it's time for her to go to bed. So, I went. And I was sooo glad I did. It was an amazing, uplifting and fun show.

So this weekend the baby could be here but Jeff Tweedy was playing the Friday night slot at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. It was a calculated risk to go, but again, I figured it's not that far, the baby isn't here...it's Jeff Tweedy...etc. So I went. I called my friend Brook and picked her up around noon and off we went. We got there way early. So early in fact, we drove right up to one of the stages. It was weird. Like...we were in the wrong spot. But no one said anything so we walked down and grabbed a spot about 100 yards from the stage. Some Australian band was on first then the amazing Buddy Miller. Both were very good and it was a perfect day in SF.

T-Bone Burnett and Friends had been scheduled to play but until midweek last week, no one knew who his "friends" were. I was thinking they could be Robert Plant and Allison Krauss since T-Bone produced their new album (which is amazing, by the way) but it was soon announced his friend were Doyle Bramhall II, Neko Case and...John Mellencamp. That made the yuppie factor jump to 100 for people at that show. Ugh. They hit the stage and it was o.k. at best. It was totally unrehearsed which wasn't bad when the band was doing blues and rock standards. Bramhall and Case were awesome and then out came little Johnny Cougar. I love Mellencamp, don't get me wrong...but he didn't seem to fit here. They played some new song he and T-Bone wrote about the Jena 6 and then something else and then "Pink Houses." The bass player was totally lost on "Pink Houses" and it really made for a weird sounding song. It was all just o.k...not bad, not great. Then came my hero, Jeff Tweedy.

I felt bad for Jeff because a bunch of people split before he went on. I was glad they did because we got closer and really, when there's 20,000 people or more, losing a few thousand doesn't make much of a difference. It was also odd because T-Bone had like, 12 people onstage then Jeff was up there all alone. But he played for TWO HOURS! My friend Cori came too and she likes Wilco but had never seen them or Jeff solo so that was cool to see her see Tweedy solo. And he played a little bit of everything. Uncle Tupelo, Woody Guthrie, old Wilco, new Wilco. It was an awesome show and I'm so glad I went. I may not feel like doing stuff like that any more or I may be too tired. But rather than dwell on what may or may not happen, I'm content knowing that my last concert as a non-parent was my favorite artist on an awesome day.

I also haven't been drinking the last three weeks which is weird. Well, I take that back. Weekend before last my inlaws were here so I got a 6 pack and a 22 oz beer which I drank. The next day...ugh. I have never had a worse hangover. It was really weird. I had a headache that wouldn't quit even after I ate and drank a ton of water. Not cool. Lesson learned.

So Saturday I went to a nice funeral for my friends dad who passed. It was nice to be there and my friend couldn't make it so I'm glad me and my sister and our friend Nate could be there for him. Saturday night I met with our editor who is doing a GREAT job on our new doc. Then I had 2 pints at Russian River and met the nearest living relative of General Custer: Ken Custer. We had a nice talk about Westerns since I've been watching pretty much only Westerns in a class. I don't know why I constantly meet the strangest people whereever I go. Maybe it's because I'm strange and we are all attracted to one another? Maybe it's because I notice interesting people and I'm not afraid to talk to them. I dunno...but I met Ken Custer and he's a cool guy. After my two pints I hightailed it home to watch Seth Rogen and Spoon on Saturday night Live and it was a great episode...for once.

Sunday I saw THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD and it was out-frigging-standing. One of the best of the year. I'll write more on it later but I really want to see it again and it's a long, slowish movie. Now, it's off to work and to await "the phone call" which can come at any moment.

What do you do with a drunken sailor...err...talentless wench?

If you're David Letterman, you do what people should have done a loooong time ago....take her down! If you watch this, I'll buy you a parakeet...