soon.

can one prevent a total nervous breakdown? by listening to a record over and over? by hiding in places no one can find you except bartenders with at least four kids? does any of it work?

it is impossible to escape from yourself.

hungry

a stirring, purposeful wind swept in today, sending The Summer of Summers into those foggy ruins of time. on september 7, the annual back-to-school tuesday, a starchy jeans day, the dixon-ticonderoga national day of well-stocked pencil pouch pride, the wind blew with a force and a direction that shouted MOVE! YOU'VE BEEN LAZY TOO LONG! GET THE SAND OUT OF YOUR SHORTS AND FIND YOUR BRAIN AGAIN! well, it told me to find my brain because i haven't been using it so much lately. i've been using my liver. and my eyeballs. my mouth and lungs have done a lot of laughing and my arms and legs have done a lot of swimming, but my brain has largely been idling since june. the time for that has passed. fall is here to shake us from our slumber. the jews (and the public school system, i guess) really have it right about when to hit the reset for a new year. this is the time. if i had a shofar, i would most certainly be blowing it today.

speaking of jewish wisdom, these winds have also ushered in major bob dylan listening season. i want to live inside this song.

Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

green corn moon: a video roundup!

it's the last week of summer. these are songs you should listen to.

1. wilco - outtasite (outtamind)

2. nina simone - love me or leave me

3. best coast - boyfriend

4. bread - guitar man

5. beach house - take care

now go ride your bike!

unemployment chronicles: part III

august always feels like an anxious month, where i want to grab summer by the balls and say, "JUST STAY! STAY HERE! DON'T GO! WE CAN HAVE SO MUCH FUN TOGETHER!" even target started hawking school supplies in june, the bastards. i am less than one month away from going back to school. that idea is supremely gross. this summer has been, is, and continues to be one of the best i can recall and i won't be parting with it easily.

7/14 everything is terrible, which may be the greatest use of the internet to date, came to the burton theatre to present an evening of sheer genius. most notably, duane.

7/16 - cap'n jerry & the mermaids crossed international waters (the detroit river) to play our second show at the phog lounge in windsor. we played pretty terribly, got pleasantly drunk, hung out with a slew of fine canadian folks, and ended the night with the kinds of burritos fat kids dream about.

7/17 - due to our sweaty, nervous, close to disastrous performance in windsor, we spent all of saturday practicing in our dining room. our band practices typically include at least an hour spent cooking and/or eating a meal, an hour watching youtube videos, and at least one fight/walkout/cry. we will remember these times fondly in our 2023 episode of behind the music.

7/18 - our hard work paid off with a much better show at the beachland ballroom in cleveland. the sunday night crowd was sparse, but we played far better, sweated less, and had a really great response from the audience.

7/21 - my sisters & i took my mom, along with my great aunt to stratford to see the tempest. christopher plummer (le orig captain von trapp!) played prospero and i only fell asleep twice! the last time i was in stratford, i slept through the entire first act of hamlet.

7/23 - cap'n jerry & the mermaids again hit the road, this time for a short jaunt up I-75 to play churchill's in flint. flint made us finally feel like a real band. thanks, flint.

7/24 - when your weekdays and weekends blur together, saturday nights feel like as good a time as ever to get in bed at 10pm, point a fan at your face, and watch oliver!

7/25 - pulled a burton double feature - taqwacore and trash humpers. taqwacore was cool, trash humpers made me want to reorganize my collection of my little ponies until my eyes stopped bleeding.

7/26 - i hit the road early for a day trip to lake michigan. i spent the day at the beach in st. joe with my old MSU buds. i picked becca up in kalamazoo and we met nikki, ryan, and leah at the beach. i'm glad leah came because she makes me feel less self-conscious when my swim diaper sticks out of my bathing suit, too!

7/28 - i incapacitated the entire band on a practice night with a dinner of fried chicken, corn on the cob, baked redskin potatoes, and a batch of brownies that made us feel like this while we listened to the new best thing to name drop when you want to feel cool, ethiopian jazz. (listen here and feel the groove. so good!)

7/29 - took a dusk swim in lake huron with bonnie and josh. it was incredible. we had the beach to ourselves, floating, dolphin jumping, and somersaulting until we got hungry enough to eat dinner at the cracker barrel. that's pretty hungry.

7/31 - kate came to visit just in time for ye olde crofoot BBQ. the third annual BBQ was a perfect summer party. ice cold jams, hot bands, patio hangs, and a ridiculous amount of sangria. dale earnhardt jr. jr. were stupid good. (they even got stereogummed!)

8/1 - had a mighty good brunch at mae's with a band of lovely lads from cleveland who had played the BBQ. their band name had something to do with dinosaurs? after brunch, i learned how to drive a stick in bob's 2011 future corvette that is priced roughly at the total amount of money i will owe the government when i finish my master's degree. later, we tried to have a band practice and kate, amna, and i ended the night at SOUP, which was really, really awesome. i was still thinking about it when i woke up in the morning.

8/2 - today! bonnie roused me from my noontime slumber to go see despicable me in 3-muhfuggin-D. amna met us and we hung out in birmingham (translation: we walked to anthropologie and i tried not to let the beauty of faux-vintage doorknobs and expensive french dish soap make me cry). later, i made dinner and banana bread while listening to beach house on headphones (boner jams of the century, listen below) and took a nice, long bike ride just as it was getting dark.

this very sunday is our first big time show at the loving touch in ferndale. we are so excited to play our songs for our friends and neighbors and all the local yokels we know and love. you should absolutely, without a doubt, be there on sunday. there will be dancing. it'll make you feel like this:

cap'n jerry & the mermaids

sunday, august 8 - 9pm.

the loving touch in ferndale

this is where my head is at.

the whole world's my halo

things feel good today. i got out of bed before noon (ta-da!) for a 9am band practice and it set in motion a nice little thursday. caught a matinee with lindsay and j.bro. had dinner with my parents. drank a beer on the front porch. practiced guitar. got the new frontier ruckus record in the mail. it is on the stereo right now and it is giving my ears a shoulder rub if ears had shoulders. it is a good feeling record, but not in a katrina and the waves way. more of a sad-but-ultimately-good-feeling hayden carruth farmer poem way. listening to frontier ruckus, reading andrew w.k. party tips. god, frontier ruckus just dropped a line about "m-59 salad bar restaurants." this song! this song! it is called "pontiac, the nightbrink" and i haven't fallen this in love with a song upon first listen in so, so long. this whole record just keeps getting better! i missed their record release last saturday because i was busy sulking over a missed trip to palmyra, but they are playing the magic stick on august 13. what luck!

this summer continues to be one of the finest i can recall.

lager house, here i come.