Since I’d been swamping you all with promotional stuff lately, I felt kinda bad about not really doing any updating in awhile. You know, with things that weren’t so much related to the “Marc With a C” act, because while it keeps me busy – demos for nine new songs slated for the next album this month alone! – it isn’t my life. So, here’s a few meanderings on what else has been going on.
- I’ve been settling into my new job nicely. I love everyone I work with and it affords me the chance to do nothing but talk about music and art all day long while being surrounded by great people that have the same things on their mind. Of course, there are those less-than-great-days too. Take this last Sunday, for example. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something. Had a bad night of sleep, and immediately took it out on everyone in my path – including Nicole – which I feel really bad about now. I tried really hard not to be a crankypants at work, and I think I mostly succeeded. My moods were all up and down, and then I got into the car and decided to listen to side four of The Who’s Tommy on the rainy drive home. By the time the “listening to you” chorus chimed in during “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, I was literally in tears. I stayed in the car until I thought I was done crying, only to come in and sob uncontrollably for about a half an hour afterwards. I wasn’t sad, but there was this beauty involved that I could only appreciate by expelling water from my face, I suppose. So, scratch my last “top 100 records of all time” list. The Modern Lovers certainly made one of the best rock and roll records of all time without meaning to, but no album can affect me the way that Tommy does, period. Welcome back to my number one slot, Thomas.
- Few things piss me off more than premeditated sensationalism, especially when the folks doing such are actually making life harder for the people they are supposed to be entertaining. I’d say more, but I’m simply not allowed to. Just know that most “sold out” events in your area are only “sold out” to build hype. Fuckers. I can say little else on the matter, so please do not ask. Just needed to vent.
- Nicole and I are doing wonderfully. Can you believe it’ll be three years in February? Time has just flown by, and while I knew she was my other half from day one, now I can’t imagine thinking without considering what her opinion on the matter in my mind would be. We still want to get married this year, but the year is getting closer to an end. Soon though… I’m keeping my fingers crossed for at least *around* our three year anniversary. (By the way, that’s not the anniversary of our first date, really. February 11th is actually three years to the date that Nicole came over for soup one night and literally never went home again. I’m the luckiest man in the world, people).
- Been thinking about taking a short break from writing for www.retrolowfi.com because I’m a bit spread thin at the moment. Only a short one, just long enough to get excited about telling people why I like/dislike records. I’m afraid my writings are getting predictable and formulaic lately. We’ll see. I still have a pile of stuff that needs to be reviewed before the end of the year, so a break may be like… a week or so at the most. I know I won’t be doing much writing during the next few weeks anyways, what with the Halloween shows at Universal Studios with my buddies The Rich Weirdoes, but also the upcoming DVD-filming show and all that. And then there’s Juliana’s eighth birthday to think about. I’m a busier guy than even I realize sometimes, but I bring it on myself. I want to give equal attention to everything I love at all times, but sometimes I don’t leave enough time for the most important stuff… like just hanging out with my friends. I’d like to have another get-together soon where we just play board games and listen to records. I almost always feel refreshed afterwards.
- I like to watch movies when I lie down and attempt to sleep. I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m an unmitigated insomniac, so often I like to put on a movie to pass the time while I wait for my sleep medication to work. Lately I’ve been watching a documntary on “The Z Channel” in bits and pieces, and it’s completely fascinating. If you’re not familiar with it, you can do a bit of research here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel. It’s been absolutely fascinating, and I highly recommend the movie should you ever run across a copy. The real film that I’m totally frothing at the mouth to see is Amazing Journey: The Story Of The Who. It’s gotten a few advance screenings, and pretty much all of the reviews point to it being one of the greatest, most riveting rock documentaries ever made. Plus with all that archival footage, how can a Who junkie like myself say no? It drops on November 6th on DVD. If you hear about an advance screening *anywhere* in the general vicinity of Orlando, please let me know ASAP so that I may drop all plans and go see it early.
Okay, one last thing. A story that will hopefully warm your heart to it’s very cockles:
It’s very hard to find blank Type II cassettes nowadays. You can only get the relatively crappy sounding Type I normal bias ones, and they don’t have the dynamic range to keep me happy with four-track recordings. Since Chris had hooked me up with a new four-track – the most amazing one known to man – I figured it was about time to at least *try* to find a few Type II chrome-bias tapes to record new demos with, right? So, off we go to Best Buy, the last place I could remember having seen a decent quantity of them… no dice.
We roll into a Circuit City, but after Nicole asked an employee if they had any blank tapes in stock, he asked a manager and said manager replied with a curt “no”. I then walked right over to an aisle covered with tapes. They were normal bias and therefore not the ones that I was looking for, but still… they were tapes, and even the store manager had forgotten that they were there. So, I walked up to him, asked him to follow me, pointed to the mass amounts of tapes and told him the following: “Your business isn’t suffering because the industry is dying… it’s failing because your customer service sucks”. We walked out and pretty much gave up from there.
As we got closer to home, I had an idea to stop into the K-Mart near our house to check, just sort of on a whim. We pull into the parking lot, walk inside, see a few employees at the customer service desk and figure that all is well, right? We make our way to the electronics section in the back of the shop, but Nicole gets distracted on the way by neat-o kitchen appliances. I’m distracted by the big clearance aisle full of broken toys, outdated posters and… ramen noodles? How the fuck do you discount ramen noodles? They don’t go bad, and they only cost like ten cents per package. At this point, I was convinced that this store *must* be hurting for business and we made it our job to explore the aisles that seemed fun to us as thoroughly as possible.
We eventually make it to the elctronics section and find a slew of Sony CD-IT Type II tapes, and swiftly decide to buy every fucking tape on the rack. The price was reasonable, and really… who the fuck knows when you’ll ever find them again? I go and see what’s on the aisle behind these blank tapes, keeping my fingers crossed for more unexpected goodies… only to be greeted with the largest selection of pens and pencils I have ever seen. The shelves were slapped full of various pens, and the bins at the bottom of the shelf were overflowing with pen overstock to the point that they were falling onto the floor. This makes sense to me, because seriously… who the fuck goes shopping at K-Mart and says “Oh damn, that’s right. We need pens!”. This aisle obviously hadn’t been cared for in months, and it only fascinated me further.
We make it over to the toy aisle, where there was an entire section devoted to Star Wars toys. Not just any Star Wars toys, though… fucking *nothing* but reprints of action figures from The Empire Strikes Back. The ones that weren’t were characters that *nobody* wants, like Snaggletooth and R5-D4 and shit. It was slowly dawning on me that we’d been in this store for like a half of an hour, and we haven’t seen a single employee, but the fact was inescapable when two kids come bounding into the toy aisle we’re in. One yells something like “I found Naragtu!!!”, and the other says “get it!”. The boys run out of the aisle and off into the ether real quicklike. The kids totally stole some action figure and ran off without even being concerned, making it more and more obvious that practically no one works at this damn K-Mart.
Finally, we make our way up to the registers. I’ve got an armload of blank tapes, and Nicole has bought a box of imitation Barbie dolls, hoping to turn their shoes into earrings. We walk to the only lit-up register and wait for a few minutes. No one comes. The only other customer left in the store stands behind us, and still no help comes. Nicole spots a few employees at the customer service desk, so we make our way over there, hoping to be rung up. However, when we get there, we’re told that we’ll have to wait because the only girl that can ring us up is being “written up”. I say “Well, since we’re being inconvenienced by waiting while she gets written up, can we at least ask what she’s done wrong… you know, for entertainment?”. Turns out that this hapless teenager was in trouble for not attempting to sell a “service plan” to someone that was buying a stereo. I explain to the manager-on-duty that this was utterly ridiculous, because not only was she making people wait that *want* to spend money, but also because… well, the store looked like a fucking ghost town and I didn’t have any faith that the shop would still be open in a few months, therefore I wouldn’t pay more for a stupid service plan either.
Now, here’s where you’d think that a big ol’ argument would ensue, right? Nope. Instead, the manager tells me that I’m totally right. She stops writing up the poor teenager and asks me to write down everything I’ve just said on a ‘customer comments card’. The now-out-of-hot-water teenage gal rings us up, thanks us and we go off on our merry way.
I know that the above story might seem absolutely stupid and mundane to you, dear reader. To me, though… I felt on top of the world. I felt like I’d actually made a slight difference in the life of a girl working a shitty minimum wage job that was getting in trouble for reasons that were beyond asinine. When we left the store, not only had we found a ton of the tapes I need to record the new Marc With a C songs on, but I’d taken a moment to complain politely and gotten some results out of it. I felt on top of the freakin’ world that night.
And with that, I’m off to try and watch the last bits of The Z Channel before bed. I hope you are all well, and that I’ll see you all soon. Maybe at a show, or maybe in a social situation. Regardless… just, soon.
Love on ya,
Marc
