More than you needed/wanted to know.

This is the only real time to write, I suppose.

For many reasons, I can't write successfully yet unless I am supposed to be doing something else besides writing.

I've been out, but not for good. Here is a breakdown of what the hell has been going on, supplemented by some recommended listening, Ogre's brilliant idea.

Let's start with last week.

EDIT: Make sure you read the guest posts below also.

Monday: Training my replacement. The heir to the throne. The kid is far over qualified for the job and knows more about the music business than I do. He made one of the two major jumps you can make once you are in this business. He came from "indie" (read: independent record labels, mercenary marketing companies, weed-blown recording studios) to "industry" (read: benefits, HR department, red tape, better quality control, mo' money). I've seen many make opposing jumps like this day to day, week to week, criss-crossing each other in mid air long enough to hand out business cards and high fives.

You could also break it down from a "grass is always greener" perspective as my friend Katie and I did. Katie is hardcore, a business woman hip hop head ball buster (with a deep sensitive side) who somehow managed to get Smiff n Wessun to reunite under their original name for a friends birthday party. We decided that any move from either sector is made in the name of scoring better drugs. It is probably that simple.

CMJ (College Music Journal) week began that day, meaning the whole city was overrun by bands with stupid names, showcases, parties, industry scrubs, and drunk-ass college radio music directors. That night I went out to a party put on by The Syndicate (who knows what they do, it probably involves some ridiculous cross promotion) drank as much free booze as possible, embarrassed myself in front of the bigwigs from my label, won an ipod speaker system, and hustled Chuck Klosterman books out of gift bags.

The Knife: "Heartbeats" - A guilty pleasure, but as the saying goes, "If it's good, it's good, if it sucks, it sucks".

Tuesday: Hungover. Continued training, our biggest artist (dead celebrity big) came in to do a press day about her recent exploits in a third world country. I didn't see her once, partly because of the inevitability that I would cram my whole foot in my mouth, and partly because of the fear that I would turn to stone. It was like the fucking president showed up to use the shitter. I found myself losing my mind, running around doing retarded tasks like telling the bigwigs from her book company (she wrote a children's book, too) to stand somewhere else.

It was also Halloween, so we had all this little kids in the office who were much more well behaved than any guests we've ever had. Power rangers, pirates, jedis, ninjas. The whole crew was in the house.

My workday ended by drinking Patron (gold) in the office, trying to pretend I wasn't.

At night, got high and overly-appreciated the movie "Feast". That movie fucking rules, especially if you've ever seen "Tremors", "From Dusk Till Dawn", "Aliens", "Demon Knight", or any other brutal survival horror flick. Not that you care what I think about movies, or anything for that matter.

A quick example of how wonderfully fucked this movie is (NSFW):


Also,
Jose Gonzalez: "Heartbeats" (The Knife cover) - almost as good as his cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

Wednesday: More training. I fucking suck at training people, and at the time I found myself going quite crazy, because at night when I wasn't overanalyzing the ins and outs of horror movie formats, waiting for sleep, I would have those moments of intense critical introspection, ending with asinine re-appraisals of the way I deal with people. Not anything of any substance, mind you, but things like the way I answer the phone, my diet, and the appropriate times to do that weird "hug and a kiss" greeting thing they do out here.

Regardless, this is the way I (and many others) do it. Get high and over analyze some shit. Like movie previews. By the way...


Oh yeah, music.

Ratatat: "Lex" - Sounds like someone chopped up some Yngwie Malmsteen shit and turned it into an arena banger. Instant badass.


Thursday: First day of the new job. I was treated like I knew exactly what I was doing. I didn't. Also, my department is all female, so they became incredibly interested in my love life. They know nothing.

At night, I stepped out with MassHole to BB Kings, a nice venue with terrible, terrible ways of doing business (7 dollar fucking Bud Light) to see one of our bands perform at a CMJ party. Oddly enough, this band is a Christian band, but their management did not want to send actual music fans running for the hills with the "Christian Rock" tag, so they ripped them from their Christ-tacular label and put them on a normal label, with no mention of the almighty. Seemed to work for them, because they are a hell of a band.

The first half of my night was spent trying to find someone cool with an expense account to buy my drinks, and ended up getting quite buzzed.

The second half I was absolutely riveted by this band doing their thing onstage, especially their instrumental stuff. I didn't expect much, but they blew me away, enough that after the show I was yelling (read: drunk can't control the volume of his voice) at their manager to force the guys to form two bands, one instrumental and oHe not, so they could open for each other. He thought I was amusing. I think.

Mutemath: "Reset" - Instrumental, fantastic fucking drumming. (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more...)

Friday: Hangover. More new job. More not knowing what the fuck I am doing. Borat movie. Teste satchel.

Non Prophets: "The Cure" - A little "emo rap" or whatever, but the beat is amazing.

Saturday: Um...oh man this day by day thing is getting fucking stupid. Got really drunk on Vodka and Sparks (I'm calling it the the John Starks, my new favorite drink/NBA Jam player) and played Yahtzee all night.

That's all for now, it's good to be back blathering like a fool. Up next, either a guest post by hero Drew, the weird happenings of this week, or all the literature you will need on a religion I am starting.

See you soon, cunts.