I wanted to make a really great last Journal. But you know, I'm really not into goodbyes.

Instead, why not say hello? You can do so at:

http://www.myspace.com/thebeardedtraveler
http://cheechcaballero.livejournal.com/

I'll try to get around a bit on here later, but it'd be futile to tell everyone how great they are in quite the right words. Anything I'll say will be inadequate, and I've been crazy-busy lately (such as this morning, taking care of bills and the fact that someone smashed a window on my car. Thanks, guy [or gal]. I hope it was $200 worth of a thrill to you).

Some of you are family to me.
Anybody who wants to stay family, you have my contact stuff.

Have a good 2007 and beyond.

Had some good times lately. Holiday movie night at philippe's (Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, Bad Santa), small Les birthday party, a lot of trading of booze and stout for presents... lots and lots of music, as I've still be picking up library CDs even though I have too many, and while I'm still abit overwhelmed by the FAST passage of year-end time, things have been going well, feeling peaceful.

I've been reading your Journals, but with time at a premium I haven't written a lot to folks on here. Also, I am kinda preparing for the separation. Some of you I'll see elsewhere, some I won't see again. That's not something I'd like to see happen, but I have to be realistic. Maybe I'd come back for some reason or other. I don't think so, and I'd kinda hope not unless this site goes back to the ....I dunno if there's even a word.... the spirit, the energy, some respectable word for "vibe".... it would have to get back a lot that it isn't going to. Like I said, have to be realistic. I'm more pressed for cash nowadays; if I had the jack I've had the last few years, perhaps I'd linger and linger on.... maybe it's a blessing not to. Maybe it's progress to move on. Maybe it's temporary. Maybe, maybe, maybe is all I can say. If I can't successfully choose between Corey Dillon and Marion Barber or Marty Booker and Isaac Bruce in fantasy football, I sure as hell can't tell you what I'll do throughout 2007, or how good this site is for the long-haul.

I can tell you that it's good to change things up and see how they go.

Happy Xmas season to all, unless you find the sentiment annoying, in which case I just say- have funn.

6 days since my last post. This is one of the reasons I feel a need to leave SG. Used to be there was no way I'd go 2 days without one.

I had a good time at the party last night, but ended up kinda melancholy afterward, and this morning. I know I'm insecure, but I also know there's some folks who don't like me as much as I like them, and it makes me wonder- am I boring? Is there more I could do to make my personality appealing without making me one of those needy-for-mass-attention folks I can't stand? That's the $64 billion question.

Don't want to seem like I'm heading for a big mope-Journal. I got Xmas presents sent off to people this morning... and maybe I can send some post-Xmas ones too (since there's no chance that I'll get to a post office before Wed afternoon). I was going to not do stuff for people, since I'm not as rich as I once was, but the one thing I can enjoy about this time of year is getting things for people.

And the Tuba Christmas. I caught some of that a week ago. In Portland, some 200 tuba players come out to play Xmas music every year. I think more orchestras should consider going 100% tuba. It's a good sound. Also, all Xmas music should be instrumental and tuba or not at all.

With 3 stacks of library CDs to get to on the floor here, I think I should give myself a ban on getting any more before February, so I can burn these to disc, burn the dozens of files I already have to disc, and figure out just what the hell I want to put/ keep on my iPod. Also, my mom just gifted me a digital camera, my first, so I have to figure out how the hell to use it.

Okay, mundane Journal done. Maybe I can make a DAMNED exciting one some time soon.

This is a poem idea I've had for a long time. I get stupid, crass verse ideas, and then I think about wordplay around them, and then all of the sudden one day I think of 3 or 4 dumb puns or rhyme schemes and then sit down and think of a few more and throw in some odd things, like the name of some utility infielder of the 1982 Orioles (I have a fascination with the name "Wayne Krenchiki," so sue me), and then it's done. So anyway...

"Banging Keira Nightly"

It seems, in my dreams,
there is one enlightening scene
therein nightly
banging in mightily
a vision respitely

and if I had to choose
these views would ooze out and peruse
in my mind spritely,
in the pale moon, lightly,
and a daytime sight-see

for, in my dreams, all I sees
is her boobs, butt, and knees-
Keira Knightley
in her carefree nightie;
I wish I were
banging Keira nightly

I don't wish to dish indiscreet
on biting her bum or licking her feet
or such things unsightly,
seeming laddish or shitely

I simply long to be
in a squid's garden under the sea
banging her nightly
banging Keira Knightley
banging Keira nightly

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
appendix- By "laddish," I mean "like a lad" in the English sense, a bounder or scoundrelous type.
Part of the poem is taken from Berke Breathed. IN an old Bloom County, Steve Dallas wrote a sensitive love poem that included the lines- "in my dreams, you're all I sees/ boobs, butt, and knees/ be my main squeeze."
I'm actually not obsessed with Keira Knightley. I'm more obsessed with Helen Mirren and Jennifer Jason Leigh, but then I couldn't write "banging Helen mirrenly," could I? ...I suppose I could write "banging Jennifer jasonly," but that will have to wait for another day.
If I was to obsess on Keira Knightley, I suppose it would be the hot, androgynous, athletic Keira of Bend it like Beckham. I always did like soccer women, and her boyish haircut and soccer kit

suits her better than the whole bodice thing, imho.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed.
D'ya think it's worthy of submission to Urban Poetry Group?

I'm thinking very hard about not re-upping membership at the end of the month.

If not for "forever," then at least to take a break and see.... what happens. It'll be four years on January 1st. That's a long time, even if I was totally thrilled about the direction of the site.

I am not.

So... I dunno. You can always catch me on MySpazz or LiveJournal if I do go off. I'm cheechcaballero on LJ, and uhh my MySpace link above should work... it did for me just now....

Also- I was completely exhausted and undecided between going to see Joanna Newsom and Jay Farrar on Sunday night when it hit me- oh yeah, tonight is the LAST night of Crispin Glover's appearance in town, to perform spoken word and show his movie, What Is It?, which is not gonna be out on video any year soon. So I'd BETTER go to that, and hope it's not sold out already.
So I went.

It is a very deliberately odd movie.

And deliberately "breaking taboos," or being offensive, depending on your perspective.
He explained after the movie, in a very earnest, drawn-out, low-key-as-possible discussion, how he started out making a short film with actors with Down's Syndrome, then decided to draw out the film to specifically include taboos (as he liked to call it) that normal Hollywood entertainment wouldn't like: racial themes, sex, nudity, trangressive violence towards... snails. Like that.
I'm afraid I disagree with him on that main point; I don't believe dealing in taboos is an end, although it can be a means of entertainment. I think for it to be meaningful, well, maybe you take on some particular social or political aspect of society or media... rather than just throwing a bunch of grotesque stuff out there. I hesitate to say he was being a lazy filmmaker, though; he seemed very sincere. But I wasn't really entertained or moved, for the most part.
One good thing- some of the scenes, particularly in the underground cavern sequences, reminded me of Jodorowsky, David Lynch, and Ken Russell... which is funny, as he said he was influenced by four directors: Buñuel, Herzog, Fassbinder, and Stanley Kubrick. Huh. Well, I noticed the little L'Age d'Or references, but I stand by my original impressions. Besides, I think Jodorowsky blows Buñuel out of the water. ...still, I don't think Glover's film succeeds as real comedy or drama, or surrealist vision that came together really well for me.
Before the movie, he did an hour or so performing prose from his books (Ratcatching; Concrete Inspections; What It Is, and How It Is Done, and more) while a slide projector put the pages up behind him. I liked this segment more than the films, but even there... I liked it, but I can say now that Glover is not one of my absolute fave surrealists. I don't regret going, though. The evening had some good moments, it's always kinda neat to see a "star" live, and someone who seems like they won't be around a lot doing promo in the future. If I hadn't gone I woulda wondered "what if?" about missing What Is It? and now... well, I know what it is-

It's fine

everything is fine.

I ended up being fairly lazy yesterday. It's pretty easy for me to blow off actually going to shows when I can just veg out at philippetheotter's place. After a little wine. Boxed wine.

He helped me figure the iPod thing a bit. I loaded a bunch of music from his PC onto it. So I can play it here, on my compy. That's all great but... ummm... how do I load the shit onto my PC now?? I mean, I've paid them for the iPod, so I figure I'm all "legal" to ignore cpyrights now, so why is "export" greyed-out on my iTunes toolbar? Please advise.

I'm listening to The Basement Tapes.

Lastly, it is World Aids Day. This site here was making $1 donations from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. just by clicking on the candle pic... it seems to be wonky right now, but it worked yesterday, so try it if you have 10 seconds to spare. Could be a real easy way to do something charitable, if it's up n running now.

I dunno. The TRIBUTE thing has become daunting to me. I mean, aside from time restrictions (work, volunteer work, errands, basic chores, socializing, movie-watching, sleep, about 36000 mix CDs and burnt-library-CDs yet to make), I dunno who is actually gonna see all of them. I wanted to tribute everybody, but seriously there's some folks on my list I just -do- -not- -know- much about (like the next person alphabetically to come, dag). I feel weird acting like I am capable of tributing everyone, then only writing a smidgen for someone and a paragraph for someone else... but I'll prob do some more in the future, but not today. I will rarely have that kind of time in the next several days. For instance, aside from the extra 8 hrs of work Thanksgiving, I have to go to an 8-hour instructional thing on Saturday.

I suppose 12 people might read this, so I'll lastly add a topic of the day. The topic is- the level of political discourse in this country. The level is - AWFUL. True, it's better than in Iraq, where the proper way to express conflicting opinion seems to be with explosives, but with Fox Radio on at work, and then when I go out in the truck at work and listen to Randi Rhodes, and then I flip around to other people, I have to say the theme of the times we live in seems to be- UGLINESS, rancor, and LOTS of it.
Maybe it's always seemed that way, though.

I'm not totally bummed, btw. Nah. Politics will never be a funn subject; just thinking aloud... or in electronic print.

There's a party Friday, philippetheotter is graduating in an official capacity, and tomorrow night there's Ravens-Bengals on the TV (or maybe a movie with someone?) and a Replacements cover band. Lookin' good.

TRIBUTE

brokenbeatnik- I guess my second-night-ever in Portland, a year ago, was at beatnik's pad party, and I could tell right away this was a funn, smart, cool guy. This has only been reinforced at his recent visit in town, and his great birthday where we had awesome eats at two bars all afternoon and evening, and Devil's Point Stripperoake. This is one of the solidest folks you're going to find online; he is the OPPOSITE of any online flaky types you might run into!! Great guy.

Brookelynne- She hasn't written much lately, so I dunno if some of you know her well. You can still see some of her writing in her poetry group, of course... she has even sent me physical mail when I was feeling down:


I went up to New England for 3 reasons last June: to see Boston, Portland ME, and her... and all 3 were pretty great. I only hope I can find some neat Xmas thing for her new second son, if I get her address!

Cassiopeia- A SG whose journals have always been funn to read (at this point, I should stop repeating that people "don't write as much anymore"; that should be obvious to anyone on the site this year, nobody's writing as much anymore), and full of observations that are very Jack Handey and Stephen Wright-like, but I think they're her own stuff.

Chaz Strummer- Is the one person who always seems to comment to me on here and MySpace. I appreciate it, I don't want to make this too ass-kissy because I know you are going to read ALL the stuff I put up when I'm not sure anybody else does, so I say THANK YOU, it is good to be heard. Like Bernard, I know you'll put up some good music stuff often.

Cherry- Another great photographer. I dunno how many of you remember when there were, like, 3 SGs in England? Yeah, way back. Cherry's been one of the great personalities and gorgeous SGs back from the beginning-ish days. We have traded mix tapes (she introduced me to "In Every Dreamhome, A Heartache" and "Steve Threw up," for starters), and the little Welsh sheep she sent me is sitting on top of my PC right now. I loved her music, her pics, her writing, her tattoos, her music, her photography... gee, it starts to sound like I love her, doesn't it? Yep.

(bonus 11th person) I see that Christa is grey on here, but I see her on MySpace still. One of the very nice Michigan folks I know, a real sweetie.

Clara- When everyone met for the first SG show in DC, the first people there were Clara and me. Although I can't remember 2 1/2 years later just exactly what we talked about, she was a great conversationalist and very down-to-earth and made me feel completely relaxed the 20-some minutes before folks started showing.

Clover- Again, it's hard for me to think of her without thinking of Gadget, and Club Castration. It's all there, in the pics and blogs and hey, the old Pitt Halloween party pics are among the funniest and most unusual you're going to see on this site. Another astute writer of journals, always little nuggets of pondering type.

clovesbud- One would hope I could get to LA at some point to see at least half of the great SG people there. cb has joked in the past that it was merely folks interested in mtlqueen (the wife) that were going to his Blog... but I dunno, if the interesting music references don't get your attention perhaps the uhhhmmm TV and movie stars will?? Yeah, he lives the champagne/ caviar/ bubblebaths life that Reverend Run used to!

crazydasaint- Hmm. Bob has been anonymous for a long time. I don't know exactly where he is, or what he's doing... but he is the FIRST person from teh site I ever hung out with in person. We saw Bob Mould doing acoustic in Fort Reno, a good Cafe St Ex dinner followed by The Sounds of Kaleidoscope and Low, and caught The Mekons in Arlington.... this is all before I'd met anyone else, which I guess eventually happened at the SG Burlesque dinner I mentioned earlier. Last I saw Bob write on here, he was feeling very crappy; I hope he's doing better, since he is in a very real sense one of my oldest friends on here.

d23- Ahh, a fun dude. Met him at the bowling party and dinner months back, and then bankerboy and I ran into him at the Rose Center Beerfest. He was just getting started when I was uhhh just about out of it and leavin... need to see him around more, cuz he is funny and has plenty of stuff to say despite the tiny Journals!

So I worked Thurs- which was fine, as the football games were real shit. After weeks of telling people the Lions had improved, I find out Kevin Jones didn't play. Was he worth 17 points alone? Probably. No, seriously, probably, at least in terms of keeping the Dolphins off the field.
I didn't do sudoku, but rather chatted with my coworker and listened to some CDs. Charles Mingus yay, Procol Harum nay. There is a reason why the Stones, Beatles, and Who (and Blue Cheer and The Stooges) are more famous than Procol Harum. Robin Trower kicked some ass later, but that's a different story...

I had dinner with the actual residents (the upstairs women and boyfriends and so on) of the philippetheotter house. Even though I got there at 7, I still managed to make fairly killer mashed potatoes... but people were laying off the potatoes, and someone had already made a ton, so my additional ton went mostly uneaten. I have a bunch in the fridge right now. I stuffed the daylights out of myself that night (shepherd's pie, spaghetti squash dish, pumpkin pie, marionberry cake, lots of mashed potatoes), so I barely ate yesterday. I had some beer and devil's weed, and I really don't think I'm a pot person- I felt pretty spaced yesterday. I'm going to get some high-end bourbon today, a drug I can stand behind. Bring on winter.

I watched a lot of Rockford Files on DVD (from the library) yesterday. I like the show a lot. It's kinda a nostalgia thing, the whole 70s look, and I like Hawaii 5-0 too but McGarrett is a übermensch fascist compared to the more witty, semi-criminal Rockford. H5-0 is funny because McGarrett has no sense of humor; he's sort of Frank Drebin, but funny because he is perfect and makes no mistakes, in a goofily-stuffy over-the-top perfection way, rather than bumbling.

I am going to start on the tribute thing now, and over the next few weeks. After that big ridiculous intro ^ which nobody will read I'm sure folks will miss this now. Ah well:

TRIBUTE

9monty- I met him at the Goat/ verify parties in Baltimore. Very personable, chill guy; used to do computer work for the Baltimore Ravens!... and is now out in Cali and a bit quieter of a blogger!

Alisa- Has recently come on strong as one of the premiere photographers of this site. Go check out her recent blogs. I will try not to hold it against her that she likes Ohio State, the Columbus Crew, and killing ladybugs. Come on, hon, you have to drop one of those. How about the busting on our spotted flying friends?

anonymouse- Also doesn't blog much now, sadly. I think she's mostly writing in a celeb group I'm not in... but if you're in there, she writes very funny, nasty things about dumb celebs as a general rule. Paris Hilton once spilled something on her and didn't apologize- hence, Paris Hilton= a real c-word (since you needed more proof, I'm sure). She also has some pretty good ROCK sensibilities and knows Exene is still sexxy.

Antimony- It is hard for me to write of Antimony without bringing up Isadora, and completely impossible for me to say just how much I love the hell out of them and their 273 pets. They had a supercute apartment (the milk bottles building), and now have a supercute house... now, if only the Richmond Police can either leave them alone or stop the evildoers around them, things'll be perfect... and uhh then they move to Seattle. Also, tomahto is supersister of Antimony, btw.

ariel- Once again, not blogging much... but she is a long-time real-life associate of Morgan, so that should tell you something right there. I've met her at the DC SG things, and ariel is top-notch cool people, smart and good to converse with, Adamn+.

Automatic- I would love to spend more time with him. We've only really hung out the one time, and his weekend schedule is that of a restaurant superchef... and right now he's way out east. I dunno, hopefully we go to more movies or rock shows soon. His temperment seems ideally suited to mine; he is not an uptight hyper type.

BabyBlue- Once again (you may see a pattern developing with these), someone I've hung out with at parties and shows who is pleasant, smart, casual, good conversationalist, and not prone to having an attitude or other such pitfalls of parties, but then I don't go to dumb parties like that. BabyBlue is, yes, oen of those people you know is reliable to not suck ever!

bankerboy- One of the great folks of Portland, of the world. Not likely to be on the site much longer, I believe, but sure to show up in future at the places in Portland where you would wish to be. Put me up for 2 nights in my first trip out here, and all-around champ of whatever it is.

BernardShakey- Connoisseur of tunes and film and such. One of my online-only friends, but I know he's always gonna put up some pics, movie-stills, or YouTube that I can really dig the hell out of.

Bristow- One of the things I most miss about East coast living. I miss the family cat, trips to friends in Richmond and Balmrr, the Outer Banks, and going up to mid-state NY to watch the Steelers with the great Bristow. The area is like the Appalachians but even better, and B and her man are a couple of superdamn hosts and there's not much of a better spot for football-watchin that I've ever been.


Okay, that's good for now. Ten takes a while, and I dunno if I'll be able to do ten every time, but at least now I have something to write about for sure. Current events = too much dumb war, terrorism, and celeb crap to make me want to blog about it, and I don't read book reviews nowadays like I did at work before, nor do I get as easy access to art galleries (I gotta go to first Thursday* in town with a camera or somethin).

* Portland art galleries in NW have a art-fest on first Thursdays of each month.