2002-07-16 - 10:18 a.m.

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Welcome to Paradise

Belmo:"You got a cigarette?"
Girl:"Isn't painfully obvious that I don't smoke?"
Belmo:"No, but it's painfully obvious you're a bitch." - Drunken Belmo, geting revenge at the bar. The last time me and women went at it at the bar, I lost.

Yesterday was the day of the devil horns. Like when you put your hand in the air and raise only your pinky and your finger. Also known as the "Rock on".

Nothing could touch me yesterday.

I had class at 8 AM, getting out only one hour later. This class is going to be easy, there's really barely any work and the tests look like if I pay even the smallest amount of attention, I'll walk out with a B at the least.

Then I got my grades for the classes I just took. B+ and an A-.

B motherfucking + and an A motherfucking -.

My average grade at Lowell was a C.

So, I was all psyched about that shit and I get home and I found a pack of guitar strings I bought and stupidly packed where I'd never look for them, so I strung up the Belmo axe and fucking played my ass off. I played for like an hour and a half, pretending I was in a concert for everyone I'd ever want to play in front of. Highlights of the Belmo one person concert:

• "Crowd Surfing" on my "crowd" who were apparently standing 4 feet into the ground where my bed would have been if I wasn't in a "concert" and not missing one note of the solo I was playing. In fact, playing it probably one of the best times I have yet.
  
• "Grabbing the Mic" on the parts where there was no guitar but instead yelling of some kind
  
• Jumping up so high that I hit my elbow on my ceiling, falling down on my bed and hitting myself in the head with a guitar on the last note of the last song.

As a matter of fact, if you've ever seen me play a good show, imagine that furiosity in a room roughly 16 by 16 and all I own being in that room.

I almost destroyed everything I own at least 3 times. IT was glorious.

Soaking wet from sweat, I lay on my bed, welt on my head, smiling like I haven't done since I played my last show and god, that's been a while. I think besides the poetry slams (which do require a level of rockitude, but nothing like playing a show) the last full performance I gave was the last show of Dr. Hump.

The last performance period was singing Running Shoes with Harris when I came back to Lowell one time. That was a dream come true.

And all that rock led me to realize just why I've been so restless lately. I want to rock. I need to rock. I was so used to having a band all the time for the past 6 or 7 years of my life. There was Parallax wayyyyyyyyy back in the day (which really only consisted of me and my friend Mehr). Then came Red Label.

Red Label. That was the fucking greatest thing I've ever done in my entire life.

Rock when all I knew was rock, punk when all I wanted was punk, Red Label was more or less my songs, but it took Nick and Pomp to translate the drums and bass parts. I did write the songs, but they brought them to life. And then Brian Mc, argueably a long lost brother, writing the words I couldnt ever come up with. Ever. And they fit fucking perfectly.

My favorite song we ever wrote was actually written by Pomp. "NEver Coming Back" was the song I used to climb the huge heater in the basement of the flower shop we practiced in during the breakdown and jump down when it came back in and Brian started going from soft singing to utter screaming and we fucking kick it into high gear and just fucking rock. That 20 seconds of my life was probably the time when I was untouchable. NO one could bring me down, no one could even come close. I may not be a rockstar, but for that brief part of the song, I fucking was and you better fucking believe it. The only other song I've ever played that had close to that effect on me was the fast part in Porno Girls with Hump. If I had anything left in my body energy wise, it was spent by the end of the fast part of porno girls, where Will is just spitting out random words and @ndy usually played some crazy guitar part underneath. God. I have goosebumps just thinking about that feeling.

Well, as I left Red Label, I came to Lowell and joined Dr. Hump and the Funtubes, surprisingly beating out Chris Towles for the part, who was my roommate. I wonder what it would have sounded like if I never joined or even how long it would have lasted, or if I ever would have met half the people I did at Lowell, because in all seriousness, everyone I met at Lowell outside of the Leitch crew was loosely introduced somehow through the channels of the Hump. Either from a show, from playing a show with them, from seeing them after a practice we had, at parties after the show. In fact, almost every good thing I can think of that happened to me in Lowell can be traced back in the line of things to some relationship with Hump.

Dr. Hump and the funtubes might not have been the greatest band ever, but we made it a fucking goal to make your socks wet with piss, either from laughing or being scared. And I don't want to sound pompous or anything, but we fucking did. We played like shit a lot of the times, but it was the energy that won out. I was upset about that a lot, that there were times where we played like utter shit. Greggg would pick up on it, complain about how that wasn't really that good of a show and I'd think about it and go "yeha, it did suck, but we had a good time". I think that was the most creative outlet I've ever had in my life, both musically and visually. With constantly trying to do new costumes each time, to the powerpoint presentations and video/sound clips we made to just creating the staples we always had (after a while, people were looking for the Olsen Twins to pop up somewhere and the end of the night was always Greggg screaming his ass off, as well as Will and Rob playing the closet jerk skit out different everytime), I'd say that I was hardpressed not to be creative, just like everyone else was. Even Greggg, who didn't really go for the whole outlandish thing to the level we all took it, but in his own way, he did his own thing and it was fucking funny sometimes.

So, that's the lineage of my rockitude. And now that it ends, at least for now, I can't emphasize enough how I want to be in a band again, to have that feeling again, to use up my rockitude. I can't just sit on this like I have been. Again, I was in a band for the past 6 or so years. This past year I've been uneasy and upset a lot and I haven't figured out why until yesterday.

It's like going cold turkey on cigarettes and shit I could tell you all about that too.

Anyway.

After getting my grades on and my rock on, I got my drink on and celebrated the day, despite it being Monday. I drank a few before leaving, showered Lowell-style (Lowell style includes a least one beer in the shower and a radio going full blast that I'm singing along to) and hit the bars.

And everyone sucked.

But being happy for once, I didn't care. I had a few moments where people were fucking dicks, such as above. I swear, people think that I'm making shit like this up, but I wish you could see some of the people here. Like they shit gold or something, they think so highly of themselves. Too uptight for my good.

Aren't you all supposed to be hippies and hicks up here? Aren't they the most laid back out of any generalization? What the shit is going on here?

Well, I left the bar early, came home, played Legend of Zelda ROCKED OFF MY ASS (this needs caps because after 8 beers and 2 liters of gin and tonic, I'd like to see you fucking sober) and I crashed with a smile on my face that no lonliness, no stupid roomates, no unbearable summer heat, no waking up early, no snooty assholes at the bar, no fear of the future could rob me of.

Yesterday, I was completely Belmo for the first time in a while.

BMC

Last Few

What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?