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This is 47

The only reason I really look forward to my birthday is that I get time off from work and that I usually rent an Airbnb out in the middle of the desert in the Joshua Tree vicinity with a pool, hot tub, and no one around for 5 acres. So here I am in Landers (or a bit away from it really) whose claim to fame was that it was the epicenter of a 7.3 earthquake in 1992 just hours before a separate 6.5 earthquake centered in Big Bear hit on a Sunday morning. Wild stuff.

I arrived here yesterday, and on the way had to stop to get gas. Since this stupid fucking illegal war with Iran has driven gas prices sky high again, I’ve mostly been back on public transit again because, fuck that. There I was at the Arco station jaw agape as the $30 went to $40 and on up until it landed at $72 for 13 gallons of gas. Yes, the “cheap” gas.

I’m going to be spending most of the time in or around the pool trying to finish Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz. I’m at around page 604, so I have about 400 more pages to go. I’ll be honest — I have no fucking clue what’s going on in the book. It’s a slow, slow read and demands your attention but not in a painstaking way. It’s a very enjoyable read, but I honestly don’t know how we get from one part to the next. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I’m just riding the wave, going where it’s taking me and try to make sense of it later.

I’ve started working on a couple of things with myself and hope to get better at as I begin my 48th year on this planet: I have started to journal more. It’s the most mundane scatterbrained thing. I hope it doesn’t cause someone’s head to explode when they go through my journals after I’m dead. (How cute. I think I have any importance that people will actually read what I write rather than just dispose it like they should.)

I need to curb my YouTube addiction. I don’t watch tv shows. I don’t watch sports all that much. I don’t use TikTok. I only doomscroll through Facebook at 3 am after I have woken up to take a piss. I am no longer perpetually online. But I will sit down and waste hours upon hours watching YouTube videos. I really need to get that in check.

That’s all I’ve got. Overall, I’m not happy, but I’m not completely depressed. Let’s just call it nonplussed. For someone who feels like a stranger in his own country, I guess that’s about as good as we can hope for.

Here’s a picture of the desert sunset:

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Disgust For Daily Life

Occasionally, after reading certain books, when his disgust for daily life became particularly marked, he longed for the lenitive hours immersed in a cloister…

There is just a clause in the above sentence in the first chapter for J.-K. Huysman’s The Damned (Là-Bas) that really stuck out to me: “when his disgust for daily life became particularly marked.”

I had to go back to work today after two weeks off. The first week I did a road trip that culminated in being in a cabin for two days in Choteau, Montana that had a hot tub. It was nice to sit in the hot jets while it was 18F (-8C) outside. Then I meandered my way home before just doing nothing for the second week. Just sitting with my cats, sleep, and tell myself I was going to mop my floors before doing none of that.

After these weeks of doing a whole bunch of nothing, to my horror it was time to go back to work. The dread of walking into my office which I liken to a monkey cage at the zoo, plugging in my laptop and opening Outlook. Emails filled with complaints. That was the dread that was inside of me.

So I get it when Huysman’s protagonist Durtal has a “disgust for daily life.” It’s certainly reassuring that not a lot has changed over the last 130 or so years.

Oh. Happy 2026.

aerial view of iconic dodger stadium in los angeles

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Go Dodgers?

Surprisingly I have been watching the Dodgers during the NLCS against the Brewers. I haven’t been watching much baseball over the last few years, and since Dodger co-owner Todd Boehly bought my football team, Chelsea FC, and have since screwed them up beyond all recognition — they went from winning the Champions League in 2021 to being a laughingstock within two years. Since Chelsea has gotten back to top-four form last season, I guess I’ve forgiven the Dodgers a little.

Watching what the Dodgers have done to the Brewers, the team with the best record in all of baseball, pitching them to death has been pretty fucking amazing. It’s wonderful seeing well pitched games again, nice 2-1, 3-1, 5-1 games where the starters go past the sixth. Okay, tonight Tyler Glasnow only went 5 2/3 innings, but Blake Snell went 8 in Game 1 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a complete game in Game 2. I think seeing a ton of those 10-9 games just killed me. I’m sure all the runs were great for a lot of other fans, but I’m just old I guess. I like those 1-0 games.

I remember one opening day game that Clayton Kershaw pitched against the Giants. I forget the year, but Kershaw pitched either a complete game or close to a complete game and hit a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth to give the Dodgers a 1-0 win. I just looked it up, and it was a 4-0 win. It was a scoreless game through 8 innings until Kershaw led off the bottom of the eighth with a homer. The Dodgers added three more in that inning, and Kershaw pitched the ninth for the 4-0 shutout. This was the last Dodger home opener I covered as a sportswriter. So I’m not completely full of shit. And I did just find the story I wrote on the game still on LAist!

Okay. That was a fun romp down memory lane.

I’ve also been watching a little NFL, mostly just the morning games on the Red Zone channel. I still can’t bring myself to watch a single game in one sitting.

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School Night Shows

A show in an upstairs bar on a Wednesday night at my age? I knew I was flirting with disaster when I bought the ticket last month, but I really did want to see Leaether Strip and Rhys Fulber. Also, I had bought Ratio Strain’s album earlier in the summer and made it a part of my listening rotation that’s included Tori Amos, Nine Inch Nails and Unwound. So I told my boss I would be working from home on Thursday to save myself a little bit of pain.

It was nice to be at a show in a small bar with about 50 of my best friends rather than in a theater. There was an intimacy that allowed me to be right up front. It was also nice to see a dude in a wheelchair be able to not only enjoy the show but be allowed to make his way to the front get an unobstructed view. I walked in midway through Brood Faye’s set which was a lot of fun, a lot like EBM punk. I love how this new generation of dark music creators honors the past without being strictly nostalgia acts. Like, we have Claus Larsen and Rhys Fulber here. What does the 2020s anxiety-riddled darkness sound like? Ratio Strain kept that going knocking my socks off armed with her Roland SP-404 MKII sampler. It was all out aggression with so much rhythm you couldn’t help but move your ass.

Rhys Fulber brought his hypnotic soundscapes which he’s been exploring this decade in his solo work. You can hear all of the 80s influences from Cabaret Voltaire to even Skinny Puppy, but with his modern production he brings the introspection in. So there I was standing there swaying like an idiot. But what else could I do?

Then Claus came up, and it was full on Leaether Strip nostalgia. “Hate Me”, “Strap Me Down”, “Black Gold”, “Antius”, “Fit for Flogging”, “Japanese Bodies.” We knew these songs. We were singing along to the choruses. We were dancing. The highlight came when he did his cover of Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf.” Fuck me. That was fun to lure disco dollies to a life of vice.

Claus mentioned how he never toured the US during his prime in the 90s, and in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have caught him even if he did. That’s why I’m glad that people like him and Front Line Assembly and Ministry and KMFDM and Front 242 (well, not anymore) have been doing the nostalgia circuit giving me a chance to see them. And it’s also great that in some cases like this night, there were newer voices also being heard keeping this darkness that we love alive.

Leaving the bar, the half mile walk back home was very quiet which I guess you could expect for 1 am on an early Thursday morning. Who in their right minds would be out late on a Wednesday night, right? Just me and the homeless folks as the ghosts of the songs I just listened kept ringing in my ear as I avoided the urine streaks on the sidewalk that crept from the walls of the building and into the streets. The eau de Los Angeles scents of stale urine, pot and crack that mixes with the occasional street taco and whatever greasy mess the street trucks are concocting for the late-night degenerates.

Once I got home, the need to get out of my boots and pants finally was fulfilled. Back in the safety of my apartment with my cats and the songs still ringing in my ears — that would go on through Friday — I drank a lot of water, watched some YouTube videos to decompress, took a shower and got to bed by 2. I woke up at 8, had a surprisingly productive day at work before passing out for a nap at 5 pm.

I know I moan about age a lot when I write about going to shows, but I can’t help it. I feel every bit of my 46 years when I’m standing amongst the crowd my feet shouting and me and my lower back stiffening up with each hour I’m standing. I actually did think about taking a Lyft home, but my dignity still overcomes the pain. It’s a fucking 11-minute walk for fuck’s sake. Going to shows is usually a young-person’s activity, and I guess I’m one of those Gen X-ers who still live in a state of arrested adolescence.

But I don’t care too much when I remember that nights like this makes the whole mental torture of thinking about leaving the house worth it.

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Weekend of Live Music

It’s been a long time since I went to two different shows on two consecutive nights that was not a part of a festival. Back in 2001 after the All Tomorrow’s Parties fest was postponed because of 9-11, a bunch of bands scheduled alternate venues at the last minute because they were going to be in town anyways.

On Friday there was the… Well I don’t know what to call it. I guess you could call it the Cold Waves LA Fest since it was advertised as that. But it was also called Industrial Nation 2025 Tour. The lineup was Die Sexual, Lead Into Gold (Paul Barker of Ministry fame’s current project), Clock DVA, Mentallo and the Fixer (their first show in LA in over 20 years), Front Line Assembly (playing a classic Wax Trax-era set) and Nitzer Ebb. I really wanted to see Clock DVA, Mentallo and the Fixer and Front Line Assembly, and while I never was a big Nitzer Ebb fan, I’ve been listening to them a little more in recent years.

I didn’t know at the time I bought the tickets that this would be the last weekend the Mayan Theater would be hosting events. It had been over 20 years since I had been at the Mayan, so it was nice to see it out.

We dark music fans are pretty fucking unoriginal in the t-shirts we wear. About 30% of the people were wearing Front 242 shirts. I saw a good smattering of KMFDM, Ministry and Sisters of Mercy shirts. Me, I decided to buck the trend and was wearing an Unwound tee. Oooooh! Swerve!

Since I am 46 with a shitty left foot, I spent most of the time in the balcony sitting for the show. Listening to Clock DVA and Mentallo and the Fixer transported me back to my late high school days trying to scour through the stacks at Tower Records in Torrance or Vinyl Fetish on Melrose, getting as many compilations as I could find in order to see what whetted my whistle, then coming back home and listening to everything on my stereo feeling that I had discovered something brand new, like I was an explorer or someone walking on uncharted lands.

Then Front Line Assembly came on. I’ve seen Bill Leeb and co. three times now, and finally I got to hear my favorite song of their’s: “Provision” from 1990’s Caustic Grip.

It was the first time they dusted the song off live since 1991.

I went down to the floor for Nitzer Ebb’s set. It’s funny seeing how we were all around the same age, fitting considering the lineup. I was surprised that most people didn’t have to hide upstairs to sit. Or maybe they all came late.

I know it’s different since original vocalist Douglas McCarthy died a few months ago and haven’t been touring int he last year due to liver cirrhosis. But it was still nice to chant along with co-founder Bon Harris. MUSCLE AND HATE!

Saturday came and it was time for Unwound performing The Future of What to celebrate its 30th birthday at the Teragram Ballroom. When I found out about this, I discovered I missed them playing New Plastic Ideas in its entirety last year for its 30th birthday. I really fucking love that album.

Opening was lowercase, a band I actually saw earlier this year when they opened for Brainiac. They reformed for that show and have continued playing gigs here and there. They are a lot like Unwound at their moodiest, slow and loud, muttering and screaming. I can’t believe I didn’t know about them back in the day.

I then started wondering if anyone who was at the Cold Waves show the night before was here. Going from dark industrial gothy stuff to noisy indie postpunky stuff. I just wondered who else really does that.

Then of course Unwound came on. This is the fourth time I’ve seen them, and because they were performing The Future of What in its entirety, I knew they would be playing my favorite song of theirs outside of “Summer Freeze” and “All Souls Day”: “Equally Stupid.”

As the show went on, the inhibitions came down. By the time “Petals Like Bricks” and “Here Come the Dogs” came on, a nice pit formed in front of me. And the exhilaration of “Swan” and the finale “Valentine Card”/”Kantina”/”Were Are and Was or Is” was fucking sublime. I don’t know what it was, but I was tearing up during “Kantina” as Justin was screaming “Wait! Wait! Wait! Don’t go!”.

After a little more than hour, it was over. Each time I see them it reinforces why they are among my favorite groups of all time. Dark, loud, anarchic, sad, introspective, angry, wistful. There’s a lot of comfort in listening to their noise.

I guess I’ll see them next year when they dust off Repetition in its entirety?

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Happy? July 4th

I’ve always been ambivalent at best about Independence Day here in the U.S. I’m fortunate to have been born here, and I suppose it’s better than being born in North Korea or Soviet Russia. I’ve been told all my life that the U.S. is the best country in the world, however, I never understood how you could figure that one out; what are you using to judge “the best?” I think Native and Black Americans would have a different opinion on this matter.

Beyond this though, I always had a problem with the performative patriotism bullshit that people displayed especially on this day. Stars and stripes this, ‘Murica that. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve gotten older or if it’s how our culture has evolved, but all of this patriot drag just seems more of a front for white supremacy, a step away from the sig heil salute.

I talked to a friend the other week whom I haven’t spoken to since around Christmas, I think. Admittedly, I’m a horrible communicator. I hole myself up in my apartment with my two cats and completely isolate myself from the world. With all of the socializing I do at work, I just want to be in a cocoon once I get home.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized we haven’t talked in a while, so I sent a text. We ended up talking on the phone, and the stuff coming from her mouth had me shocked speechless. The only thing I could respond with was, “mmmhmmm” and other wordless nonsense because my mind couldn’t comprehend. Here is a nice sampling of what was said:

  • White people are becoming extinct
  • It’s scientifically proven that Africans have the lowest IQs and Europeans and Asians have the highest.
  • All of the Muslims that have migrated to Western Europe are establishing Sharia law.
  • None of the tallest or impressive buildings are in Africa.
  • The bulk of violent crime in the US is committed by black Americans.

See? I mean there have been nothing in all of the years I have known her that any inkling of this nonsense has ever arisen. In fact, we used to make fun of people who believed in this bullshit. So WHAT IN THE FUCKING FUCK?

I thought I was in an alternate universe, that someone was pranking me, that because I’m such a shit communicator and friend that this is what happens. My friends fall into this white supremacist brainwashing bullshit because I was not there to prevent it. I’m still reeling to be honest.

She asked me what I thought, and I tried to be as tactful and delicate as possible. “That is the biggest load of fucking bullshit I have ever fucking heard,” I told her. Then I started spewing. Maybe if I hadn’t been so shocked I could have organized my thoughts a little, but I just started going on. “This white replacement theory bullshit has been disproven, and you know this.” “Before the Eiffel Tower was built, the tallest building was the fucking pyramid in Giza.” “You cannot judge intelligence of a peoples based on a white European standard. That’s the same fucking justification for colonialism.” “Sharia law is not being established in Western Europe. I was there last year. Don’t be fucking stupid.” “Who cares if white people become a minority? Things evolve. Grow the fuck up.” “When you look at the institutional racism inherent in this country, you wonder why black people feel they only have violence to resort to?” “Violent crime is actually at its lowest point. Don’t buy into this fearmongering. They’re just trying to get us to keep buying stuff to keep the rich rich and to divide us all.”

I’m all for being an independent thinker and questioning everything. I hate mob think no matter what side it comes from. BUT DUDE!!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?

I think I ended my rebuttal with something like, “You know this white supremacist bullshit is bullshit. You fucking know better.”

Combine this with ICE still in my fucking region picking up anyone who is not white regardless of citizenship and half of the country overjoyed at cutting services to people who need them in favor of tax breaks to billionaires, you can see why I’m not all that enthused about this country. And while I do love fireworks, my poor cats will spend a good chunk of the night under my bed while the entire Southland will be covered in a smokey haze for a day or two.

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Oh, the French

Well, maybe it’s not fair to generalize. But I finished reading Michel Houellebecq’s collection of articles Interventions 2020, and it proved that there are some things that me and a crusty right-wing contrarian agree with.

“The purpose of the party is to make us forget that we are lonely, miserable and doomed to death.”

“What could possibly justify gathering together?”

“…with age, the obligation to go to parties decreased, the inclination towards solitude increases; real life takes over.”

“As soon as being attractive is a goal in itself, sexuality becomes impossible.”

“The Americans use drones more, which could have it possible to reduce the number of civilian casualties if they knew how to use them (but it’s true that the Americans have always been unable to carry out a proper bombardment, practically since the origins of aviation.)”

There are plenty of things I disagree with him about (especially him saying that Donald Trump was a good president in his first term), but this just proves that there is some common ground here.

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I Might Like You But Leave Me Alone

I want to be left alone.

I travel alone. I live alone (except for my cats.)

As I get older, the more I don’t want to be around people. I live in the middle of Downtown LA, yet I make it my mission never to be in contact with anyone.

I usually don’t give a fuck about this since it serves me well. I don’t have to deal with conforming myself to anyone’s expectations – it’s bad enough doing this eight hours a day at work.

Then I found myself at the Dark Force Fest in Parsippany, NJ the first weekend in May. A couple of issues:

  1. It was a warm, humid weekend, which never bodes well for dressing up. It was also an under-10-minute walk from the secondary parking lot which normally isn’t an issue for me, but once you add humidity and being dressed up: oof.
  2. The venue itself got real stuffy, and there was very little seating. As a fat 46-year-old, standing for eight hours is less than optimal. But to their credit, they did set up water coolers throughout the hotel and kept them topped up.

All of this could be dealt with. But as I sat in my hotel room a couple of miles away, the dread hit me. The dread of being around people. The people there were nice. In fact as a group of people, they are probably the closest to kindred spirits I could be around. But it still didn’t take away from the fact that I did not want to go despite the fact that I really wanted to see bands like Haujobb, Razed in Black, Suicide Commando, Funker Vogt, Klute, the Genitorturers and the Birthday Massacre. I don’t know if it was being around people or if it was just pure laziness.

I did go to enough of the festival/convention. I got to see Razed in Black which really was the reason I wanted to go in the first place. I also got some things from the vendors:

Meanwhile the rest of my East Coast vacation up in New England was great. I spent the next week going to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire via a cog train where the 70 mph wind gusts knocked me on my ass a couple of times at the peak:

I went to a few state capitol buildings in Montpelier, Vermont:

Augusta, Maine:

Providence, Rhode Island:

I saw lakes in the “mountains” of Maine (Mooselookmeguntic Lake):

Walden Pond outside of Boston, MA (a bit overrated but pretty):

FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, NY:

And some covered bridges!

I really loved Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Connecticut is a complete waste of space. And, of course, New Jersey is probably the worst state I’ve ever been to. What a fucking shithole.

But does it say something about me that the places I loved the most had no people? Perhaps in this environment it is just as well.

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East Coast Trip

Thanks to radar and radio issues at Newark Airport recently, my flight home on Friday was cancelled. I did reschedule it for early the next day, but that meant I had to spend an extra day in Newark. This was a trip where I went to the Dark Force Fest in Parsippany, NJ, then went exploring through New England, mainly Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. With an Audi A4 Quattro that I rented, I drove all around to see what New England had in store for me. Those states are gorgeous. But fuck Connecticut. What a fucking waste of space.

I’ll put my thoughts together. But in the meantime, here is a picture of a Mount Washington Cog Railway train that took me up to the summit of Mount Washington where 60mph sustained winds knocked me on my ass twice at the peak.

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Yesteryear

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