I Kan't Spell

 
I'm Tan

Figured I would stop in for a second to alert everyone that pasty (sp?) Bret has gone the way of the Dodo. He has been replaced by tan Bret.

Umm... I get back at 11 - Ill be in a bar by 1135 - But since I'm tan no one will even notice me. I went shopping for people but then decided to just say "naaaaah". I took back the Louis bag - - - lol - - - Jokes -

Overall - great vacation - 1 million dollar poker classic in Aruba brought a lot of big names down here. I played craps with Freddie Deebs, Johnny World, and Ted Forrest.

We had a kick ass time - I drank a good bit and my Aunt and Uncle have been as hospitable and generous as any person could imagine.

I'm looking forward to being home. I miss so much. It's amazing how much you get to think about when you are left away from your home for a while. It's both horrifying and electric what can cross your mind by being away. Some things come to light and some things just bet more blurry. But hell - - - that's the way it always is anyway.
Link posted by JVMM : 6:38 PM

 
For My Mother

Song Dedication:
Mother don't worry, I killed the last snake that lived in the creek bed
Mother don't worry, I've got some money I saved for the weekend
Mother remember being so stern with that girl who was with me
Mother remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons are like birds flying upwards over the mountain

Mother I made it up from the bruise on the floor of this prison
Mother I lost it all of the fear of the Lord I was given
Mother forget me now that the creek drank the cradle you sang to
Mother forgive me I sold your car for the shoes that I gave you

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons can be birds taken broken up to the mountain

Mother don't worry I've got a coat and some friends on the corner
Mother don't worry she's got a garden we're it planting together
Mother remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry
Blood on the floor and the fleas in their paws
And you cried 'til the morning

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons are like birds flying always over the mountain

Word Dedication:
You were what I ran to when I was little. You were my safe house and my love. But, let's face it - we had our bad times growing up. I think it was when I got good enough at baseball and started to become a man and work that you had something to cheer for. You were the reason I did those things. You were the cheers I wanted to hear the most because you are the person I want to make proud. Everything I do out of my life I owe to you. Your sacrifices, love, patience, understanding, strength, and humility are all things that I strive to take with me through my life. When someone asks me who the most important person in my life is, there is no response other than my Mother. My Mother means the world to me and I hope to one-day do just as right by you as you have done by me.



Thank you Mom - for being everything I would want to be.
Your loving son,
Bret Matthew
Link posted by JVMM : 12:21 PM

 
Updates and What Not

First: Happy Birthday MOM!

Second: I'll be headed to Aruba for a week and won't be around. This will be my 3 rd return to the home of the Bon Bini tree of whatever it is called. I guess it'll be ok to go and relax and do nothing on the most boring tropical island in the fucking world. Anyway - here's to not dying while Parasailing or SCUBA diving.


Third: The City Paper's Best of Baltimore continues to get worse and worse and worse and bigger and dumber and more flamingly pro-everything crappy every year. Retarded fucking subjects this year include Best Tofu, Best Place Where Black and White People Drink Together (And how does Turners not win this?), Best Place Where Old School Players Still Kick It, Best non-museum, Best Drink Using a Salad Item...

Anyway - they are getting a tad too full of themselves and even though I enjoy my brethren Brett McCabe's stuff on music and art and far and few between enjoy the cover story on some poor slob shot or some tax dollar raped - I still hate the annual Best of Baltimore edition of the City Paper like the plague. Well not the plague - but damnit it lets people know where all the cool shit is and sometimes...man that just ain't cool.

I guess what I really hate is that sometimes they reach with their choices. Reaching can be good - but just because a bar or restaurant is in Federal Hill doesn't mean it is doing well - and if you are going to throw a publication bone to a bar or restaurant to try and give it business please hear the story or all bars and not just the one's where there is a drunk passed out on the corner and you like that they have 2 Patsy Kline albums on the juke box.

Fourth: I'd like to thank Mandy for her very thoughtful birthday present and I will now be seen parading in mid November in my Iowa State sweatshirt.

Fifth: I would like to thank Mr. Crisp at Sound Garden for allowing me to do a review of my top 10 albums: thus far for the newly released magazine that the CD store is releasing. I think I fit under the category of... well... lame fat kid with office job wants to be hipster drunk / Ryan Adams.

Sixth: Go Tim Go!

Seventh: Boo the Ravens. It's bad enough the Oriole's cock teased up through July - now - and I don't know if this town can take a bad football season - we have a football team that looks in disarray. I'm not that huge of a football fan but I know what it means to this city if this team doesn't win. I don't want to see the suicide rate in Dundalk shoot through the roof because those sad bastards have nothing to root for any more. Anyway, Go Ravens - because people without lives could not withstand a losing season.

Eigth - Ummm - what else - I like Queso and am thinking of having my new hobby be cooking. I make a mean spaghetti and sauce and have been known to mix all the wonderful ingrediants of ham with everything... hmm.. yeah that's it.

Fair well to thee all - - - I'll see you in October.
Link posted by JVMM : 10:01 AM

 
The Sun Isn't Yellow It's Chicken

I can't say that I have ever had affinity for Bob Dylan - I mean I love that he is loved and made it while having a raspy voice, choppy guitar style and a face that could turn most Grandmother's away. But, his music - aside from having to like it growing up in the American East Coast Idiom - I never really gave it much thought. That is I never gave it much thought until I purchased Highway 61 and heard Desolation Row for the first time.

I really only like 5 of his albums and totally ignored him during the 80's up until the Love and Theft album - which had the kickass song Thing Have Changed - which was used unsparingly in the movie "Wonder Boys".

In case you are in a downloading mood - these are some really great Dylan songs that I'm sure you have heard but may have skipped over - My favorite songs in order.

1. Masters of War (Loved because in 91' he sang this at the Grammy's when he was supposed to sing something else - they tried to cut him off halfway through the song so he adlibbed a verse and smeared the words together.)
2. Corrina Corrina
3. Desolation Row
4. Tombstone Blues
5. Highway 61

- shit you can't have only 5 Dylan Tunes that you love -
Maggie's Farm, Ballad of a Thin Man, Buckets of Rain, Meet Me in the Morning, Tangled up in Blue, Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, Visions of Johanna, Paint My Masterpiece...lol

This is how I always like to think of him -


If he could have just stayed off the cocaine - he could have been more influential as he grew into his age. Ginsberg hated the Dylan did cocaine. He found it repulsive for one of the supposed leaders of a new thinking loving movement would partake in that drug.

Bonus - Who can name what movie emulates this scene during the start or the "dream" sequence?

Bonus number two - Who knows why Dylan didn't play Woodstock? Seems like a logical choice to play a free love festival. Why would Dylan not play it?
Link posted by JVMM : 11:59 AM

 
The 5th Daughter on the 12th Night

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Link posted by JVMM : 11:15 AM

 
Call My Boat When You Know How

I mean sure you can control your actions but you can't control that snarl you get in your lip or that heated feeling you get in your stomach. All it takes is one thought of someone else's head on someone else's chest.

AND WHY DO WE HURT EACH OTHER - - on purpose - i mean on fucking purpose? If she tossed me aside and failed to show me the way to love I wouldn't mind because jealousy is something I won't stand for. I would never mind after jealousy came to visit. Drive me to drink and pour sand over my head while I punch at the ocean. I can sit around and turn all the tricks known to man but no trick wins a heart flush and no heart flush goes running for a spade draw.

There is so much venom around me and all I have is a little boat to row across a river of lies. A little boat with broken oars and a shameful flag that whimpers when the wind blows through it. Is it time to curdle back up into anger? Is it that time of the year to forget everyone except those don't make me jealous? It's an impotent fucking feeling. It's one that carries with it the worst metallic taste God ever created into the elements. It tastes like rotten bananas eaten off the cement sidewalks of hell. And all that from reading third party bullshit venom put there to make me mad. All that is put there to make me mad, just makes me hate everyone involved. It won't draw me closer to anyone; it will just allow me to be me.

You should understand that my gravity is greater than yours. You can throw your little stones at a planet and either it will envelope them and allow them to live in harmony or it will burn them up or bounce them off. I just want to leave orbit. This orbit is not allowing me enough sun and surely isn't allowing me enough room for my axis to tilt just enough to splash water on any other planet.

I'm sure something was seen and right now there is make-up love and tears and I'll be out of the loop to wonder. I'll be callous and no one will understand. I'll just hate everyone involved. If that's the reaction you want - that's the reaction I will eventually give. I can despise anyone a thousand times more than the light they can even live their life by. In fact my hatred can define you more than you can define yourself. Torment me and watch.

Jealousy: what a waste of time. What a complete waste of human emotion. But as much of a waste as it is, it is perhaps the one uncontrollable feeling that comes when a sentence is read, a phone rings, a song is played, someone is late or an image pops in your head. Rising up out of your face it burns your forehead and you just want to punch something hard enough yet brittle enough to destroy it. You want to be begged for life of whatever makes you jealous. You want to hold the world in your hand long enough to crush it.

Fair enough to it's cause, although jealousy is the most tumutltuous of emotions it is also the quickest lived. I was jealous of things last year that I will never be jealous of again. Jealousy unlike happines or sadness leaves you without reconciliation. Jealousy leaves you when you are filled back up again. I don't care now if my ex-girlfriends are bouncing ping pong balls out of their pussy into old men's mouths. But I will always smile at my Dukes of Hazard lunch box and I will always be sad thinking about my dead loving dog Hunter. It is only those with holes and doubts that carry the green envious bag of hated jealousy with them as they stumble through life hated and pained.

I am not a jealous person. I am however prone to missing and thinking entirely too much. I have no more tolerance for the feelings that have come and gone around my tiny little boat with it's ripped flag and salt warn oars. I have no patience for the dress made out of love that hides your knees. I'd love to hear that I love you only. I'd love to hear anything other than silence. The silence that beats it's tiny waves of venom around me and has no concern for the fact that I am going to leave all of this behind. I won't have a choice.
Link posted by JVMM : 2:45 PM

 
LOL

Well I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it
Cause I know just what I'm gonna do
I'll start to spend my money
Callin' everybody honey
And wind up singin' the blues
I'll spend my whole paycheck on some old wreck
And brother I can name you a few
Well I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it
Cause I know just what I'm gonna do

Well I gotta get drunk I can't stay sober
There's a lot of good people in town who wanna hear me holler,
See me spend my dollars,
And I wouldn't think of lettin' 'em down

There's a lot of doctors that tell me
I should slow it all down
But there's more old drunks than there are old doctors
So I think that I'll have another round!
Link posted by JVMM : 4:13 PM

 
Rule 1: Don't write when you are drunk.

Link posted by JVMM : 10:06 AM

 
If I Were to be Reborn...

I want to come back as Conway Twitty

Link posted by JVMM : 11:20 AM

 
David Sedaris Wants Me To Write on Bathroom Walls

It's funny how life can really jump up and bite you sometimes. It can be love or money. It could be pain or flight. It could be anything but as long as you hit the blue razor beam of light the right way that it blinds you enough to make you see, then you feel life. You feel alive by the touch of someone's hand or the fantasy of someone's love. You have heated hair when thinking about your life and how much it hurts. You trudge between desire and jealousy only to find that being alone is not such a bad place. If you could let everything go and drift out to see, you just might do it. There are welcome signs at every exit waiting for you to start over. There are reasons to walk out on your life and start over. You learn that way. You jump in with both feet and realize that the water is warm and that the tide is gentle and taking you to the island you want to go.

You can laugh at all that is life. You can smile at equality. You want more but sometimes you sense that what you have is good. You feel as though there is no smile or suffer. It doesn't serve you to be master or slave and therefore just being is being enough. You let the sun come in and dress your face with the idea of another day. You rub your eyes. You squeeze the imaginary love in front of you and move through the air as if her perfume is on every corner. You move through the world knowing that content in something is better than inequality in anything else. You can flame til your match pack is all used up. You will find yourself asking to borrow your love from all around you and hence be fallen into milk, cream, and alcohol. You don't understand me now, but soon enough you will. I love everything about what I believe and I love everything about what life is today and for any future that I see with that silhouette dancing in the morning sun.

~~~

The dark end of the street is where I like to play. Why? I have no idea. It's natural for me to be around anything poison. At the dark end of the street that's where we always meet. We are hiding in shadows where we don't belong. I know that time will take it's toll and that sin comes and goes with the ebb of the year. If you take a walk downtown and find some time to look about you. If you see me and I walk on by, don't hang your head at me. We will meet at the dark end of the street. They will find us but that doesn't mean we were wrong. It only means that we get to run to our own shaded corner where it's cool and a little damp. An alley lit by anything other than shame. An alley lit by anything warm. Warmth is what I need to exit playing dark ends against what should be done.

~~~

I can hit fast forward forever. Eventually you get to the end of the song list. Eventually there is no repeat or cycle to take back your transgressions. You end up without music and without a place to keep your heart.

~~~

And I'd like to say I'm sorry, but I've lived to tell about it. And I plan on living on to do a whole bunch more crazy shit. I never saw the Rolling Stones but I sure saw Remy Zero. When I was 17 I drank a 1/5 of vodka and I backed my friends car into another in front of his house. We ran away and I jumped a fence or two. I never snuck up stairs and I never cried until I was 22. You know I never saw The Beatles but I sure saw some Oasis and I have no regrets about when and where I grew up. One time I had a few too many and drove my car right off of 95 and on the same night The Stones were supposed to play at the MCI Center. Lucky for me the cops were gone and hanging outside that there arena tapping their feet. The show should have been rescheduled for the rest of my life. The rest as we all know is history. You know I never say the Rolling Stones but I sure as shit saw a whole bunch of Travis. Where Franny was singing "All I wanna do is rock".

~~

They moved across the plains in a formation that felt strong. They felt as though they were a part of the elite army Special Forces guerilla group of terrorist assassins. They felt young and light. They moved with hunched shoulders and grace. They were laying their curved body form below the grass line and weed line that surrounded them. They moved like a lion through the Serengeti plains. Their guns whipping like the massive tail as it approaches its prey with hunter glee. They broke stride with each other at the ridge of the blood. The blood meridian lay there before them and as they strode through the obsidian covered leaves and roots of soon to be trampled grass, they each fell to their bellies. Over their heads was fired one loan shot. On a small tuft of a hill about 100 yards squatted a man. He was wearing blue jeans and t-shirt. His body was taut with expectation and he cried out for death before he would ever cry out for any of their reasons. He shot again, this time into the sky. He screamed, "Come further and we'll play death bingo. Come one more belly inch and I'll shoot one of you in your face. You can decide which one. I'm smarter than you. I'm going to find out what I want to know simply by the way you move. Crawl back over the blood already before you and explain to your wives that you chose not bastardize your children as opposed to coming to claim the scalp of the man who has wronged your world."
Link posted by JVMM : 10:13 AM