First Post, Side One

Hello. If you stumbled upon this blog, I would like to greet you with a nice “Cheers!” and a high five. 

Welcome!

I suppose the first entry should be a little introduction so you can get an idea about what is really going on around this fine page. As you can see, the background has books. I like books. I am actually working on a degree that will let me claim I have read (and I use that term lightly sometimes, because after all when you take three literature classes in one semester you have to read an average of three books a week and, if you have experience in doing so, you understand that some books get read while others get “read” [aka “listening to other people talk about it in class while you copy down notes and passages about what they say”]) over the course of five years. I have attended two universities, Montana State University and the University of Montana. I have lived in Montana all my life but I'm hoping that if I ever pass my damn Spanish classes, I can take steps to vacate this state.

I play in some bands and I really enjoy doing so. Music is a liberating thing for me and with it I have met people from all over the country and actually have been able to travel a little tiny bit over the United States playing music. Last year I went on my first tour and it was really cool. Surprisingly it went really well minus the other band we were touring with that broke up on about the second day of touring. It was all good though. I got to hang out with some of my best friends and share some great experiences with them. I will probably refer to this point in another blog post because we are coming up on the year anniversary of it and, like everyone who has experienced a two week road trip, I will probably talk about it over and over again.

I have always wanted to start a blog but my life was full of writing with almost every English class I have had to take in my venture through college. Now that my literature component is done, I need to channel my writing skills into a different avenue. I am pretty damn horrible with spelling, my grammar is so-so, and I tend to repeat things a lot. So if any of that annoys you, then you probably don't want to read this any further.

I have a pet beagle name Jet Girl. She's around seven months old and cute as hell. She's pretty rad for a little pooch and it's nice to have her around. I have a girlfriend who is amazing at photography and she is super rad. I love Batman. He's one of the finest literature characters ever and, even with the cheesy, campy 1960's era comics, he has some of the best stories ever told. My favorite one is Hush by Jeph Loeb. Even though the ending is kind of a cop out [that's one thing I really don't like about comics sometimes. They build up to a point and it almost seems the writer just can't think of a really cool ending, so with a looming deadline they short sheet themselves], my favorite writer Paul Dini created another Hush story called Heart of Hush that just kicks ass. Really. You should get the collected edition and just read it...it rules.

Hmm...what else is interesting about my life? Oh maybe I should explain the title of this blog. I played drums in a band called Smokestacks before I moved to Missoula last year. I wasn't very good but I just wanted to do it and so I did. We weren't really that good, either. We were kind of annoyingly bad but I was playing with some stellar dudes so I didn't give that much of a fuck about it. A few days before we had our first show we were out practicing and realized our set just needed one more song. I picked up a guitar and just played something super simple and within about ten minutes the guitar player, Ian, and I created lyrics. He came up with choruses in like two and I just wrote some garbage down. Loren, the bass player, quickly made up a bass part and (boom!) a song was born. It was probably my favorite song to play because I got to sing and it had a sweet bridge that went “Drink by drink/Shot by shot/ I can feel my stomach rot/Sip by sip/Thought by thought/I'm going to get myself back on top” and it was just me hitting the snare drum and trying not to lose my place on the kick. The whole song in general is just about no matter what happens, don't let life get you down. There is a lot of cool shit just waiting to happen and even when you're at your wits end, lost in a sea of shit, feeling like there is nothing to save yourself there is nothing like a phone call from a parent, brother, sister, friend or a cold beverage to calm the nerves and get you back in the game.

I actually had one of those days on Saturday. Yet, again, I tried my hardest and put all my effort into a Spanish class and failed to get the passing grade of a C. Which sucks because if it all went well I could have just done Spanish 201 and 202 this summer and been done with school at the end of July but now I get take 201 in the fall and 202 in the spring...thus making it another whole year of being constricted to school schedules. Great, huh? I basically spent my Saturday morning wanting to slam my head in a car door because of how frustrated I had become that I always get to certain point in my life where everything looks fucking fantastic but then something ALWAYS happens and I get punched in the nuts. I then had some band practice which really helped sooth the frustration and while on my way to work my dad called me. He just told me that there were always worse things that could happen and that really made me feel better. He was right. So as I sit here today kind of pissed off at myself I just keep taking that into consideration and hopefully tomorrow I can get everything figured out.

Blah. I'm done writing for this entry. So as you see, this post is gearing you up for what is about to come: Music, Batman, Shit that pisses me off, and whole slew of shit you don't care about. Cheers!