Ghost Tropic: An Unrealized Movie Screenplay

This will probably be my last post in this particular blog, because I'm moving my blog to Wordpress within the next week. Ripping it up and starting again. So I leave you with a tribute to Jason Molina, an incredible musician who never got his due.

Jason Molina, the songwriter behind Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., passed away on March 16 due to organ failure, caused by years of alcohol abuse. It's a real loss, because I always felt that he was one of the most underrated songwriters of the past 15 years and many of his works were among some of the most resonant music I have ever heard in my life. I was introduced to Songs: Ohia in 2002 or 2003 by my high school journalism teacher, who played Impala in class and I was immediately drawn to how somber it was. The harmonium in "An Ace Unable to Change," mixed with a defeated-sounding acoustic guitar, slow drums, and Molina's broken vocals connected with me from the first second. After school that day, I wanted more, so I downloaded a bunch of Songs: Ohia songs, and would just sit there for hours, transfixed on how beautiful a lot of his songs were.

The album that stood out for me the most was 2000's Ghost Tropic, which is one of the saddest albums I've ever heard. Recorded with members of the Scottish folk group Appendix Out, Molina created a damn near masterpiece of heartbreak, isolation and feelings as tense as anything you have ever experienced. I always envisioned this album as kind of an art-house movie taking place after a really bad fight with your partner, and just going for a late night walk around the darkened streets of your town close to midnight, with color being used sparsely - some of the songs have color in the background, and others are simply black and white, just like the album's sparse cover art. The black is darker than hell and the white is as bright as a blinding flash - I suppose juxtaposing the lightness and the darkness of life itself, especially in the realm of love.

I imagine the first track, "Lightning Risked It All," starting when you're at least a few houses away from your lover's, and at first the walk is steady yet tense and sluggish, capturing the rhythm of the song, with the sound of a guitar string being a symbol for your racing thoughts and your heightening and decreasing of emotions after such a quarrel. The scene is in color, as well as that of "The Body Burned Away," but the colors are not very illuminated and kind of like an old, fading photograph  "Body" continues the pace of the first track, but a lot more tense. It's one of those songs that's tense to start but you feel the tension rising in the smallest increments possible.

By the time "No Limits on the Words" starts up, you've wound down a little from your anger, and are alone in a field. The colors fade to black and white. The sad, echoing guitar makes the scene that more stark, and you start thinking about how much you really love someone. Molina's vocals were as shattered as ever, as he repeats the near-mantra of the song, "I will say nothing," and probably the best lyric he ever wrote, "I can tell that my shadow likes you still." From here on out, Ghost Tropic becomes an exercise in trying to contain your emotions as you walk down the quiet roads, seeing houses few and far in between vacant with sleep. The two "Ghost Tropic" instrumentals, and "The Ocean's Nerves" sustain your melancholia, but it doesn't intensify until you get to the 12-minute "Not Just a Ghost's Heart." You're nearing the ocean, contemplating everything, and the scenery is more ominous and empty than Eraserhead, with the opaque entirety of the sky placing a mirror on the ground so you can barely see around you, save for a few streetlights. The same two chords drone on for the song's entire length with a tremolo caked on it like a fast, uneasy heartbeat. "Her curve is the whole coast" - yes, indeed. But here, her curve is your entire world, and the world is what you want back.

This leads to the final track, "Incantation," which is exactly what it is. Well over 11-minutes long, the song finds you now at an abandoned beach, and the tides are shifting. "The sound of our feet against the road/it spreads through the night." Nothing sounds more louder and more isolating as these steps you trudge on the long road from the comfort of your lover to this stark beach - nothing like the beaches in Bermuda. And Molina's constant chant if "work it out with me" shows how much he wants a resolve to a harrowing situation, and as you're alone staring at the increasingly violent waves, you too want to march back to your lover and work it out with her. You both have an eagerness like a little kid in a toy shop and a fear-ridden paralysis that makes you want the waves to swallow you whole. You're not prepared to give in to the undertow, but you're not prepared to fight either. The fading mellotron that closes out the album shows your face with a look of both determination and hopelessness as the screen fades to black.

I've had these images floating in my head since pretty much when I first heard the album some ten years ago. Ghost Tropic is nothing short of a visceral listening experience, and not an easy one either. Depending on what mood you're in, it's either an exercise in catharsis and beauty, or one in trying your patience. It doesn't get the recognition I feel it deserves, like some of his other works do, mainly Didn't It Rain and Axxess and Ace, also both brilliant albums. But, if nothing else, Ghost Tropic not only gave me a cathartic listening experience, but it also gave me an idea for a film too. It might not be a good idea, and I am not well-versed in film-making at all, nor do I have an intense interest in it, but it's something. And for that I have Jason Molina to thank.

Magnolia Electric Co. - "Don't Fade on Me"

I Need to Be Creative Again

See that handsome fellow? Yeah, that was me. Back in January 2010, at my former band's first gig in Hamden, CT.

So as you all know, this past April, my girlfriend and I made a major decision and moved to Seattle, and one of the things we set out to do was resume doing music after the demise of our last band. We also said that we would undertake healthier and more productive lifestyles.

None of those things have really happened yet.

Truth be told, moving cross-country is one of the most volatile emotional rollercoasters ever. People warned me that it was gonna be a hard adjustment, and they were right a thousandfold. Without getting into it, my plans for world domination kind of got erred a little bit, but things are on the up & up for us here, and we're staying here!

We have a small room in our apartment that serves as a laundry room, where my music gear is currently. I would like to turn that into a mini-studio; a place where I can plug in, write and record. The logistics of it are kind of not in my favor at the moment for a few reasons. One of them being money to buy more gear. The other is that the room doesn't have too many outlets in it, making plugging everything in a bit of a pain in the ass. The final hurdle is that earlier in the week, when I went in the room, there were puddles of water on the floor. I'm not sure of the source of the water; Was it a leaky pipe? The washer? Rain that somehow came in the apartment? The floor has been dry since, but if it were to happen again, it probably would not be safe to store my gear in, let alone use it as a studio.

"You're in the Laundry Room..."

That doesn't mean that I'm gonna do nothing in the meantime. Going through my musical equipment, I've made some pretty good investments - I certainly have enough gear to make some beautiful noise. And right now, I'm going to be self-indulgent and showy, and acquaint you with it.

Fender Jazzmaster.

Nicknamed Jacinda, or "Jazz." And why? Long story short, back in 8th grade, this quirky chick transferred to my school from a few towns away, in which me and my friends took a liking to. We met a few of her friends, and one of them was named Jacinda, or "Jazz" for short. My friend developed a crush on her, and I think went out with her for like two weeks a short time after that. And around this time, someone told us that the Spanish word for "fuck" was "cogar," which turned out to be inaccurate. But for a while, my friend kept saying "Yo me cogar Jazz," in reference to this blonde chick from a town 20 minutes away from us. Did I mention we were 14? So... I named my Jazzmaster Jacinda because of it.

Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Amp:

A powerhouse of a tube amp. I don't have a stack, and currently I don't need one! I had this baby up to "3" during a gig at Toad's Place in New Haven, CT (which fits several hundred when packed), and by all accounts I was pretty loud!

Oh, and this goes up to "12!" Talk about one-upping Nigel Tufnel!!!

"Why don't you make 11 louder and have 11 be the loudest?" "These go to 12..."

Pedals:

Yes, I've gathered quite a collection over the years. I'm gonna need a bigger board!

Starting with clockwise from left:

BOSS CH-1 Super Chorus:

I've heard a lot of people criticize this pedal, or compare it to Boss' similar Chorus Ensemble pedal, but this pedal has served me well. It's great when I feel like playing more New Wave influenced stuff.

Fender Channel Select:

I use this primarily for distortion or crunch. For some stuff it works, particularly more straightforward rock stuff. But for my more metal/shoegaze/punk/grunge instincts, it's alright. It came with my amp, so I can't complain.

Digitech Hardwire Super Reverb RV-7:

A really good reverb pedal. It has the standard settings of a normal reverb pedal (Spring, Hall, Gated, etc), but also the much-coveted "reverse reverb," which is almost standard for shoegazing. I was kind of torn on getting this pedal because I have a decent multi-effects unit that has great reverb, but was missing reverse, and this pedal was kind of pricey. But I got $200 to spend at Guitar Center one year for Christmas, so I decided to splurge and get it. And was it worth the $179.99 for that one setting? Yes it was. Of course, a few months after, tI saw the pedal at GC for $75 less than the marked price. SONOFABITCH! Oh well.

BOSS Flanger BF-3 ("The Purple One"):

One of the first pedals I got. Still love it. Still figuring it out LOL.

MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay:

My friend Ian dubs this "The only pedal you'll ever need." True, in many instances. But I'm keeping my other ones.

Digitech RP 150 Multi-Effects Processor:

People give Multi-Effects pedals a lot of crap because many of them are inferior, but this one is actually pretty sweet! I've created a few of my own effects using this thing, and it really introduces an experimental guitar player such as myself to a lot of new opportunities for sound. I created a pretty decent cocktail with reverb, delay, compression and noise gates with this baby! The downside is it's a bitch during live performances - the footswitches sometimes have a mind of their own.

BOSS Tremolo TR-2:

Your standard tremolo pedal. Serves me well. Can't part with it.

Boss Compression Sustainer CS-3:

I have a compression unit courtesy of my multi-effects pedal (see aforementioned), but I bought this one from a friend. It's really fun when you wanna piss off your neighbors; Lots of fun with feedback!!!!

Electro-Harmoniz Big Muff:

Damn good fuzz!!!!! I don't think I need to say too much about this one.

BOSS Digital Delay DD-3:

Bought this from my former bandmate for a price I couldn't beat with a stick. I like to use this one with my analog delay pedal, and let analog & digital fight it out.

...And btw, my collection of effects is in no way complete. But a good start!


Fostex MR-8 Digital 8-Track Recorder:

This was ultimately a lesson in impulse buying. I bought this on sale for $100, and turns out it was $100 for a reason. First off, it's false advertising; It's not really an 8-track. It has 8-tracks for recording, sure, but Tracks 5-8 are for mixdown and that type of stuff, so it's essentially a slightly more sophisticated 4-track recorder. Plus, other than using my multi-effects pedal, you can't get a good distortion sound out of it to save your life - it's way too fuzzy and cheap sounding, which has it's place for sure, but I find it ultimately frustrating. I've only recorded a couple of things on this as of yet, but that's in part because my headphones for this got broken by me accidentally stepping on them. Epic fail. I'm gonna upgrade to a more modern (and less obsolete) recording unit when I get some money. I guess for now it's good as a notepad for some ideas.

Samick Greg Bennett Acoustic Guitar:

Picked this up cheap when I first got to Seattle as I was awaiting my gear to arrive from CT to WA (my Dad held onto it for a few months as I got settled and everything). It's a good acoustic guitar. I currently have this tuned to Open E, because I was learning how to play "Salt of the Earth" by the Rolling Stones, and a few other songs.

So that's it for now, really. Today was the first day I plugged in for the first time since we moved into our new apartment, and it felt good. REALLY good. I actually came up with a few riffs while making myself deaf. No better way to wake up! I'll be sure to keep updating my creative endeavors and equipment upgrades/purchases as my financial situation stabilizes and as I get more settled here in Seattle. I'm gonna update this with a lot more stuff. My dormant period is over.

Oddities, Mishaps, and Curiosities: Rush - Caress of Steel

Good day, all.

So apparently, my post about the Gabrielle Giffords tragedy got taken down. Oh well.

I have been wanting to write about music again, so I fianlly decided to up and do it. And I wanted to create a blog series about albums that may have been a subject for debate. These are albums that tend to be overlooked, overshadowed, controversial, and/or divisive, but they definitely have its share of detractors and defenders.

My debut piece on this subject is that of Rush's 1975 record, Caress of Steel, the band's third album. The Caress period was not a great time for the young Canadian trio. After two albums and countless tours opening up for acts such as Kiss and Uriah Heep, the band's blend of Zeppelin and Yes wasn't entirely resonating with rock fans the way their label, Mercury Records, had hoped for.

Background:

Caress of Steel, their second album released in 1975, didn't make Rush's fortunes any brighter; In fact, they got worse. While Rush (1974) and Fly By Night (1975) had songs that got some radio play, sales weren't exactly stellar. Rush got no higher than #105 on the Pop Charts, and Fly By Night fared a little worse, peaking at #113. Caress of Steel performed even worse than those records, stalling at #148. The tour to support the album had the band playing at smalltown bars and it was jokingly called "The Down the Tubes Tour."

Why did Caress of Steel fail to attract a mass audience? While Fly By Night saw the band incorporating more progressive rock influences on tracks such as "By-Tor and the Snow Dog," Caress of Steel took their flirtations with prog to the next level. Out of the album's five tracks, two of them are over 10 minutes long, including "The Fountain of Lamneth," which takes up the album's second side and barely misses the 20 minute mark. This was 1975, though. Progressive rock had its share of acts that were able to achieve mainstream success; Yes' Tales From Topographic Oceans was a double album, containing four songs at 20+ minutes a pop and went at least gold, Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick hit #1 in 1972 and that album was one 42 minute song, and Genesis got more and more successful with each album. Why were people reticent to get into Rush?

Well, it was probably because that the first two Rush records were good, not great. The band was still very much learning how to write songs and trying to incorporate their influences coherently. Plus, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee were still getting to know Neil Peart, who actually didn't join the band until after they recorded their debut. With two decent albums under their belt, and with no hits to grant them a pop audience other than stoners who loved hard rock, Caress of Steel did little to even sustain that audience. It's a pretty dark record, perhaps the darkest album they ever did, and a very disjointed one. Even to this day, it's an overlooked album. I have never heard any songs from the album get radio play, and none of the songs really appear on Rush's setlists these days. Rush fans are still divided on Caress of Steel, perhaps even more so than any other record they did. Many people recognize that Caress of Steel was the stepping stone to 2112 and beyond, but feel that 2112 and pretty much any album they did up until 1982 were far superior to this record. 2112 may have been Rush's breakout record, but Caress of Steel was the water that broke the dam. Still, Caress gets no love except by maybe the band's most hardcore fans. One of those fans being my childhood best friend's dad, who now plays in a Rush tribute band in New Jersey called Jacob's Ladder that supposedly covers the album in its entirety. I would love to see that; Hey Dave, take Jacob's Ladder out on tour and play Seattle, will ya?

Oh, and Caress was the band's third album after two poor-selling albums, and an album like Thick as a Brick was made after Jethro Tull had already gained success. Same goes for Yes and the monstrosity known as Topographic Oceans (future review maybe?).

"Bastille Day" (Live 1976)

What do I think:

I, however, thoroughly enjoy this album. A lot. In fact, I like this album more than 2112, and as it stands, it may be my third or fourth favorite Rush record. It's a challenging listen for sure, but listening to it several times makes it an easier listen. It opens with "Bastille Day," which is a heavy rocker much like Fly By Night's opener "Anthem," except perhaps not as pronounced as "Anthem." Also, when the biggest singles of the year consisted of "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," pop audiences probably wouldn't have an embraced a song about the French Revolution. The only other rocker on this album is the silly "I Think I'm Going Bald," supposedly a nod to Kiss' "Goin' Blind." While not a bad song, it's not exactly their most memorable either. It does sound like recycled riffs from their first album, and in 1975, the three men in Rush probably would not consider balding a major issue - these days maybe. "Lakeside Park" is the only filler track on here.

This brings us to the two epic length tracks on the album. Side A ends with "The Necromancer," a 12 minute track which is pretty ominous. Inspired by The Hobbit, and with each of the song's three parts opening by deadpan narration (provided by Neil Peart, if I'm not mistaken), it's very scattered. There is no solid riff uniting the piece, and it almost sounds like 3 entirely different songs in one incoherent package. Yet despite its incoherence, the heavy riffs are enticing, and the more melodic pssages are incredible. Obviously, Rush would get better with songs in the 10-12 minute range over time ("Xanadu," "The Camera Eye," etc), but "The Necromancer" gets the ball rolling.

Side Two is entirely comprised of "The Fountain of Lamneth," an epic that just falls short of 20 minutes long (a proto-2112, if you will). Unlike "The Necromancer," this piece is a little more solid, with many riffs being reprised in later sections of the song (the first and last sections, mainly), and overall it goes together better. It also further brigns the album into more brooding and eerie territory with the "No One At The Bridge" section, and the more plaintive and wistful side of the band with "Panacea," which is anchored by a classical guitar. I don't know about you, but I actually prefer "The Fountain of Lamneth" over Rush's other epic length compositions. It's an underrated gem in an album that really is bronzed over time, and I'd be interested and thoroughly pleased if the band ressurected it on tour.

So, to any novice Rush fans, if you want to hear where 2112 came from, listen to Caress of Steel. Yes, it's incoherent and shaky in some areas, and the dry production of the album is a bit of a turn off, but there is still some high quality music on this record. For me, this marks the start of Rush's creative peak (even if the band didn't know it at the time), and I find myself listening to this album a lot these days.

"No One At The Bridge" - the 3rd section of "The Fountain of Lamneth." One of the most moving and dark pieces of music they did

The Fire, Reignited

Yes, this is a picture of me. I have decided to start this blog up again after over a year. I've also decided to make it more personal, more animated, more human. I realized that you kind of need that to draw people in; As a rule, people these days hate just reading. They want something to look at. They want to be engaged in something other than an onslaught of words coming from one person out of 7 billion in this vast world. I will make this stand out.

The last time I posted was on the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Since then, a lot has happened in my life. Congresswoman Giffords is slowly, but surely, gaining her old abilities of walking and talking back after being shot in the head. I have recently moved from my lifetime home in Connecticut out to Seattle with my girlfriend. Long story short, as much as we had tried to make things work in Connecticut, it just wasn't. School hadn't panned out for me, and both of us were working jobs that were making us hella miserable and near suicidal. The winter of 2011 was one of the snowiest in New England's recorded history, and digging through literally feet of snow drove us nuts as well. We both also tried to advance our prospects in the workforce other than the same shitty food service hellholes we were accustomed to in Connecticut, such as working for a bank, office work and so on, but we met with resounding failures: Connecticut's job market isn't exactly great, and we were kind of misfits back home.

So around March of last year, we booked a vacation with our tax return dollars to Seattle, went there last June and completely fell in love with the place even before our first night there was through. We met a few people, fell in love with its landscape of evergreen trees, the Puget Sound and mountain range more or less bookending the city. It was the first time we had felt alive in years. So we decided that we were gonna move there, and that was that. After many months of toiling it out at our shitty jobs, putting every scrap of money away we could, selling most of our worldly possessions except for the essentials, and saying goodbye to our families and friends, we made it out here in our beat up '98 Chevrolet Lumina (nicknamed Gorbachev, or "Gorby," due to the patch of rust on the hood of the otherwise white car), and we're ready to take the Emerald City on.

We have been here for about a week now, though we were without Internet until this Thursday. We've just been setting up shop, buying furniture and other stuff, and reeling from the exhausting road trip across 3000 miles. We're gonna start looking for jobs soon, sending out resumes and all that. I'm also gonna write more because the last year or so was also a creative dead end for me. Ever since A Slanderous Choir broke up, which I mentioned in the summer of 2010, I just hadn't been inspired to pick up the guitar or a pen. I did continue writing for Music Spiel (www.musicspiel.co.uk) for a period last year, but even then I struggled with it. I seem to have gotten inspired again. The only thing that sucks about that is that my music gear is back home, being held for me by my dad until I'm ready for him to send it out. And a message to him: Get the packages ready soon!

More to come in the near future. Seattle is an exciting city, and it feels like home to me already, so there should be no shortage of inspiration in the coming months for me. But for now, it's late and my bottle of Dos Equis is empty. Off to bed I go in order to be energized enough to kick tomorrow in the ass! I've been sleeping a lot lately, probably because I've been exhausted for months preparing for this move, but it was all worth it.

Take care everybody!

Dead iPods, Black Swans, and Assorted Holiday Miscellany

I remember my sister got me my first iPod for Christmas back in 2006. Four years later, tens of thousands of songs later, and 3 computers later, I think it's safe to say that it has finally gone on to digital heaven. It was crashing an awful lot the past month or so, so I guess you could say I saw this coming. iPods do not last forever, and I know people who have had iPods shit out on them after less than 2 years, so I was pretty fortunate to have mine last as long as it did. It still sucks though. Now I'm going to have to deal with the shitty radio (or just endure a silent trip) when I'm in the car, and I'll just have to grit my teeth when I hear that shitty Katy Perry song in the gym, in addition to the other saccharine garbage they play. But hopefully I'll have enough dough for a new one soon enough... one that has more memory. Right now, I have it plugged into my computer and it just says "Please wait, very low battery," but nothing's happening. I think this sort of digital life support is failing. Well, the last song that was played on it was "Gimme Danger" by the Stooges.



Amelia and I saw Black Swan a couple of nights ago. Definitely the most intense film I've seen this year. Natalie Portman gave such a haunting and flawless performance that if she is snubbed for an Oscar this year, then the people at the Oscars are stupid (I mean, they're stupid anyway. When your list of Best Pictures includes Crash and Titanic, there's something wrong). Mila Kunis was also incredible in the film, a departure from any of her previous work: I caught myself saying "Shut up, Meg" during a few of her lines of dialogue, a nod to her role in Family Guy. It was your typical Darron Aronofsky flick; The story was of a tortured soul striving for some form of perfection or euphoria and having that person experience a tremendous pitfall, with grotesque detail of physical or mental trauma. Nonetheless, Black Swan was perhaps the most captivating of all of his movies, and Nina (Portman's character) was certainly one of the most sympathetic characters in any Aronofsky flick (topped by possibly lonely, old Sarah Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream). Black Swan definitely deserved the critical hype it got, and if it weren't for Scott Pilgrim v. the World, it'd be my pick for best picture of 2010!



Captain Beefheart died over the weekend due to complications of multiple sclerosis. It was weird because before he died, I was listening to him a lot. Just last week I found an old copy of Safe As Milk for $6 at a local record store. One of rock's most uncompromising visionaries who was light years ahead of his time.

I have a busy week ahead of me before Christmas. Today I meet with an academic advisor for Southern. I have laundry to do. I have work tonight. I have to put more shit up on eBay, and I have to schedule a physical so Southern can have an updated health record of me, I guess to make sure I don't have tuberculosis or the bubonic plague. Not like I have money for a physical (I'm still uninsured. Thanks Obama for caving in on public option!), and the cheapest doctor I know of is in Bridgeport, and that's $100. $100 I do not have at present.

I'm compiling my list of the best albums of the year. It's gonna be harder now that I don't have an iPod, but I have a list that I've narrowed it down to.

Something I Don't Talk About Often...

The week of Thanksgiving is always a bittersweet week for me. I always enjoyed the shortened school week, and the general feeling that the holidays are upon us. I don't like the bombardment of Black Friday ads on radio, TV and the internet, though, but that shouldn't take away from me eating like a pig on Thanksgiving and otherwise not having to do anything (though I do have to work on Black Friday, but luckily for me, I don't work in retail).

Thanksgiving has also become kind of a sad time for me, as a very tragic event happened to my family 5 years ago. About twenty minutes after midnight on Thanksgiving Morning 2005, my cousin Tyler was killed by a drunk driver. He was just four days shy of his 19th birthday, and his passing has opened up a floodgate of emotions for me that took a long time for me to deal with (and I still have not fully made sense of this tragedy, nor do I accept it).

I would have been devastated by Tyler's death anyway, as he and I were the closest in age out of all my cousins and when we were younger we were close. But at the time of his death, he and I had not spoken in over 5 years. I don't want to get too much into the details about why, but basically when I was 13, in early 1999, my parents divorced. My dad had a pretty bad alcohol problem and my mother had attempted suicide shortly beforehand. I'm not going to sit here and say who did what and what was said and all that, but as a result of this, I pretty much lost contact with my dad's side of the family There was a schism in our family, if you will. My mother was an only child and by the time her and my dad had divorced, both her parents were dead. My dad was one of four children, and they all had kids of their own. My dad's older brother, Robert, was Tyler's father. For the most part, my uncle Robert stayed out of our family mess, and he did have the advantage of living 300 miles away from us (he lives in Northern Virginia, literally a hop a skip and a jump away from Washington D.C.).

After that, the only time I ever saw Tyler again was in October 2000. I had been asked to help my grandparents move to their new house, I guess as a way of them extending an olive branch, and I agreed to it despite my reservations. My uncle Robert, my Aunt Nancy and Tyler had come up from Virginia to help out as well, and before that, it had been at least 2 or 3 years since I had seen any of them. For obvious reasons (distance and jobs and all that), they didn't come up too often, maybe twice a year, and since the rest of my family lives in Connecticut, we didn't make it down to Virginia too often either. But it was like no time had passed when it came to Tyler. The first thing he did when he saw me was throw a football at me, and we played catch for a while. I don't remember the rest of the day too well, but I also had no fucking idea that that would be the last time I would ever see him. I always think of that scene in Forrest Gump where he was talking to his friend Bubba, who had been mortally wounded in Vietnam, and Gump (while narrating) said "If I had known that this would be the last time me and Bubba was gonna talk, I would have thought of something better to say." Well, that's true for me and Tyler.

Fast forward to five years later, on Thanksgiving night 2005, my girlfirned and I went out to dinner and we were at my house watching a movie. The phone rang. It was my Aunt Diane. Out of everyone in my extended family, she had always kept in touch with me and my sister. She was (and still is) probably the only one in my family who could be flat out open about our family's history of alcohol abuse (my dad is an alcoholic, so is my grandfather, and so was his father), so I thought that she was naturally just checking in on us (which I'm sure she was); the rest of my family tends to keep their problems to themselves, which I guess I can't fault them for. So it started off like your nomal "Hi, how are you? Happy Thanksgiving!" type phone call you would expect from a relative or friend. And then she broke the news that Tyler had been killed, which, as probably expected, she burst into tears after trying to keep her composure for the first minute or so into our phone conversation. And I just went cold. I did the whole "WHAT?!?!?!" thing, and I think I started cursing for like a minute straight trying to take in the news that my cousin was dead. It was hard. I did not take the news of it well at all. For the rest of that week, I hardly spoke and I was really depressed about it. I didn't cry about it; I couldn't, for if I did, my tears would never stop.

It had already been a shitty week to begin with. I had lost my job at some restaurant I was working at, and that year in general was just a shitstorm and a half. The part that really bothered me (and still bothers me to this day) was that the night before Thanksgiving, around 11:30 PM or so, I was driving hme from my friend's house, and out of nowhere I had this pang of nervousness and instability. I had some starnge feeling that something was wrong somewhere to someone I knew. Tyler didn't come to mind; In fact, NO ONE IN PARTICULAR came to mind. It could have been my mother, my sister, my girlfriend, or some guy I used to be friends with. This feeling wore off by 1 AM, but upon hearing of Tyler's death (which happened at 12:18 AM that morning, probaby as I was pacing around my house listening to music), I knew that I had felt that for a reason. Good ol' intuition. It never fails.

Three people I knew died in 2005, all of them around the same age as me. The first one was in April, this guy Brian, who was a friend of my girlfriend's brother. He was no angel; basically spent his teenage years rebelling against his overly Christian family by doing drugs and all that, and ended up overdosing. Less than a month later, this guy I went to school with, Jon, was killed by a drunk-and-high-on-pills driver. I wasn't close to any of them, but still. They were the same age as me, and it instilled the truth in me that I could die tomorrow too.

One of the most tragic elements about this story is all my cousin had to persevere against throughout his short life. He was born with some birth defects involving his back, and had to endure 5 operations before his 2nd birthday. These setbacks never stopped him from anything, and judging from what I know about his life up until it ended, he was well on his way to becoming an incredible person. He was studying Criminal Justice at a community college at the time of the crash, had legions of friends from all corners of the nation, and was just your typical American male teenager. And honestly one of the kindest people I've ever known in my life.

In October, I went down to Virginia for the first time since 1997; I couldn't make it to Tyler's funeral in 2005, even if I desperately wanted to. My Uncle Bob and Aunt Nancy seem to be doing OK, meaning that they're able to smile and laugh and leave the house and all that, but they're still mourning (and they probably will for the rest of their lives). They're able to talk about Tyler, filling me in on details that didn't make the newspapers or that I kind of avoided to delve into, but there is that element of insurmountable sadness there. Nancy is more outwardly stronger in talking about it, as I always thought that she was very much a strong-willed person, yet Bob still appears as if he could start crying at any time (and I don't blame him). It was creepy being there though. The last time I was at their house, Tyler was still here obviously. They redid their house, which looked fantastic, but they showed me Tyler's bedroom; his possessions untouched, supposedly in the same place they were when he left his house for the very last time. In the guest room Amelia and I stayed in (which I swear was Tyler's childhood bedroom; he must have switched rooms as he got older), there was this wreath on the wall, surrounded by some of his old toys. I had fun on that trip, but it was also very emotional for me as well. I held back a lot. I guess at the end of the day, I just don't know how to tell my aunt and uncle how sorry I am that it happened and the tremendous amount of guilt I felt towards it, even if I had nothing to do with it. I guess there's a part of me that felt like if I had stayed in touch with him, somehow his life would be spared, like if I had emailed him that day or called or whatever, he would have left his house a few minutes later than he had planned, and the pickup truck that crashed into him would have passed him. I was always encouraged to keep in touch with him from my mother, and she was right that I should have. I also had no clue in the world that he would be dead before he was 20. I always kind of envisioned that we'd meet up for a beer one day as I travelled across the nation and I stopped in Virginia or something like that, but obviously that can never happen. And that's one of the biggest regrets of my entire life.

BTW, the guy who did it (who was actually an illegal immigrant from Mexico, which is my only argument AGAINST illegal immigration) got 10 years in jail for vehicular manslaughter. He also attempted to flee the scene. But once he gets out, he'll be sent back to Mexico. Glad he didn't get off.

Well, have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Be safe and happy, and if you do drink, I urge you to make the right decision when it comes to driving.

R.I.P. Jonathan Tyler Bentley (November 28, 1986 - November 24, 2005)

In Memoriam: Greg Giraldo (1965-2010)

Last Saturday, comedian Greg Giraldo overdosed on prescription medication leaving him in critical condition in a hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. On Wednesday the 29th, he died after five days in a coma. He was 44. Again, we've had to endure the loss of a brilliant comic, especially in a world where many mediocre comics run amok. Greg Giraldo was probably best known for his razor-sharp barbs he used in many Comedy Central Roasts, and every single one of them he gave a killer performance, telling oft-offensive jokes about the person being roasted and fellow dais members, but he did it in a way that sounded good-natured. In many Comedy Central Roasts, he usually was the first guy up to lash into Bob Saget or Larry the Cable Guy, but a couple of months ago, they had a roast of David Hasselhoff, which was brilliant (considering the roast for Joan Rivers was a dud), Giraldo was the last person to perform on the show, which now seems eerily prophetic. And I think that performance was the best one out of all the roasts he had done previously, although it would be very hard to choose just one.

I never know why whenever a comedian dies, it's always a good one. I don't wish death on Dane Cook, or Larry the Cable Guy, or Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias, or Carlos Mencia, but I find it unjust that we've lost Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Richard Jeni, and now Greg Giraldo. Giraldo never achieved the level of popularity he deserved, which is unfortunate because even his regular stand-up bits were very acute and observational, but I'll always remember him fondly. And he seemed like a cool guy too.

True to roasting fashion, Gilbert Gottfried, another fairly frequent presence on the Comedy Central Roasts tweeted, "If Greg Giraldo is cremated, will that be the 'Greg Giraldo Roast'?" which had a lot of people crying "too soon!" However, I think that he would have gotten a hoot out of that joke, since he always took whatever insults were hurled at him at roasts in life, so why not in death?

Roast In Peace.

The Roast of David Hasselhoff
Uncensored - Greg Giraldo - No Talent Success
www.comedycentral.com
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