Happy New Year!!

Hi Folks,

Sorry I didn't get to posting this week. It's been a week from hell at work. F#&$ the holidays!! Now I finally understand about they say about holiday stress. Next year, I get everything done before Thanksgiving and plan as few gigs as possible.

That said, Xmas was great time with family. I'm off to freeze my balls off in Times Square to ring in the New Year with my best friend. I told myself I'd never do that, but hey why not!

Hope y'all have all the best for the New Year!

Namaste,
Spider

Merry Rockin' Xmas!!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Good Kwanzaa and a belated Merry Solstice!

Hope everyone is having a great holidays with their families and friends. Thank you for coming along with me on this wild, wacky ride of a year. I'll be doing a recap this week as I prepare for the New Year. You know, try to finish some posts, give a heads up to what's to come.

Here is a photo of me rockin' out last Friday night at our holiday show up in Nyack, NY.

Merry Xmas to all, and to all a Good Night!!!


-Spider

“She’s One Step Away”

Today’s post is dedicated to a new friend. She traveled cross country last week to start a new chapter in her life.


“Mary’s Standing in the doorway
A tattered suitcase in her hand
She is tired of always dodging
The cutting words thrown by her man

For seven long years she’s held the pain inside her
She’s hid it from her family and her friends
But she’s had enough of making up excuses
Today’s the day her new life begins”-From “She’s One Step Away” by Roger Day

I’m not going to go into the details, that I do know, of her painful separation with her husband. (Painful separation, now there’s a redundancy of terms.) I will say that he drank a lot and was quite verbally abusive. And while I don’t know her that well, I do know that she didn’t deserve the treatment she got from him. Hell, no one deserves that. (From what I do know of her, I know that she is beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful and a darn awesome person in general.)

“She tried to keep the pieces together
She did her best to make things work out right
But every time she tried to talk about it
She got blamed for starting a fight

And she can’t tell you where she’s going
And she can’t tell you who she’ll be
But she won’t waste any time
Leaving him far behind
When she walks out the door her heart will be free” - From “She’s One Step Away”

Alcohol and relationships don’t work. I saw the damage done in my own family. I see in that in the relationships of my friends. One friend’s experience inspired a song with the following lyrics.

“And he say’s while he’s drunk
He wishes we were lovers, And that I had let him inside years ago
But the next day when he’s sober
Only my dreams are left over, When he forgets he ever said so

I’m in love with someone so fantastic
They make life a new discovery
But he wanders no path to love
As I wait for his recovery” – no song title yet, written by Jim O’Gara

I guess my new friend was tired of waiting for her husband’s recovery, which in truth may never happen. So she made a decision knowing that only she is in control of her own happiness, and for the safety of her son.

“She’s made up her mind
She won’t stop once she starts
She’s one step away
From a brand new heart” – Chorus of “She’s One Step Away”

So I wish my new friend the best of luck and the continued strength to walk this new path. I know it won’t be an easy road. She may not know who or what she'll be next, but she will be free.

With this, I’ll end with two verses. One is the last Chorus of the song I wrote, and the other is the chorus of the song, “Never Enough” by Dream Theater. If you like the lyrics of these songs, please visit the sites of the artists and buy their music.

“I want to be in love with someone so fantastic
They make life a new discovery
I choose to walk a path to love
As I start my heart’s recovery”

“What would you say
If I walked away
Would you appreciate
But then it’d be too late
Because I can only take so much of your ungrateful ways
Everything is never enough” –from “Never Enough” by Dream Theater

The Transit Strike

Today marked the first day of New York's MTA's transit strike. (MTA stands for Mass Transit Authority. May as well stand for Many will Take it up the Ass!) As of 3:00 AM EST the transit workers went on strike. So that meant no subways or buses for NYC's millions of commuters for the morning rush hour (and from what it seems the evening rush hour). This caused all major westbound roads to be FUBAR. (F*&$ed Up Beyond All Repair)

So let's see how this effected Spider, shall we?

Spider lives 5.5 miles from his office. Normally, he drives because he has to bring a guitar or two for lessons after work. This was no different today. Normally he leaves his house at 8:30 and gets here on time at 9.00. Today, he figured he should budget extra time to get to work. Now 5.5 miles isn't that far, and he doesn't need to get on a major highway so and extra 30 minutes should be enough time, right?

WRONG!!!

It took me 2 hours, 5 minutes to drive 5.5 miles!! I could have walked that in just over an hour!!! And the number of idiots out there on the road was ridonkulus!! Why honk at me people? You can obviously see that I can go anywhere because there is a mile of cars in front o of me not moving!! SO STFU!!

In the words of my friend, Binsk, "FAAAAAAAAAAHHHK!"

Tomorrow, I take my bike. I don't care that it's below freezing.

And to the workers striking, I understand your position. I know you're being screwed by the executives of the MTA, but this is so the wrong time of year to pull this. May Santa bring buttloads of coal for Christmas!!

RENT - Hard Lessons Learned (corrections edited)

Over Thanksgiving break, I went to see the movie RENT with my sister, Katie. RENT was my first Broadway musical. I saw the touring production in Greensboro back in 1998. After which, I went out and bought the soundtrack and I have listened in incessantly through the years. I really love this musical! (And a man can loves musicals and be quite comfortable in his heterosexuality.)

I enjoy the themes of how precious live and love are, even though there are all these issues involved. Half the cast has AIDS, a number of them either have used or use drugs, they’re struggling with money and most of them are creative artist types. I love and try to live the message of the play, “No Day But Today.” It’s not so much a mantra to party like there’s no tomorrow, but a challenge to live each day as fully as possible because tomorrow may never come. It means to create, to love, to laugh, to cry, to carpe diem. It means not to disconnect and numb yourself to the pain because at the same time you numb yourself to the good of life. The afternoon rainbows only come after the morning rain.

Another reason I think I like this play so much is that I really identify with the character Roger, “the pretty boy front man who wasted opportunity.” It goes beyond just the fact that Roger plays guitar and I play guitar. It has to because he plays a Fender guitar and I hate Fenders. Actually, I think I identify with his character because like Roger I put walls up around my heart after enduring some of the pains of life. Is this the proper way to cope with life? Of course not, but it was the defense mechanism I chose.

Funny that I ask it that way, “cope with life”, because the character Angel invites Roger, Tom and Mark to join him/her at a support group, Life Support, that helps people cope with life. In truth it’s an AIDS support group, but the issues of facing death are really about coping with life. I felt that way when I went to Alateen meetings. The meetings were more than just learning how to deal with an alcoholic family member and our own ACOA issues, it was about learning strategies and techniques to healthfully deal with life.

And like Roger there’s been a “Mimi” in my life. Our relationship has been one of coming together and pushing each other away, just like the characters of the movie. No, we have never been lovers for, like Mimi and Roger, we have put up walls to each other. It’s rather funny; we had an argument once where we both said to each other that we felt that the other kept us at a distance. However, this post isn’t going about "Mimi" and "Roger" though because real life rarely ends up like Hollywood or Broadway. Not every Mimi hears Angel’s voice in time and not ever Roger gets over his pride to give Mimi his song. But I digress.

This post is more about how Roger and I are alike and how I had built walls around my heart, or rather locked a good number of doors to rooms in my heart-home. (I like that metaphor better.) I use the locked rooms metaphor because I did let my ex-girlfriend in my heart. However, there were rooms I didn’t let her into and I’m sure she felt that. So from her standpoint there probably wasn't much difference between a door and a wall.

How often did "Mimi", and my ex-girlfriend, “sing” to me "Take Me Out Tonight” and I responded with "Another Day”? (If you are not familiar with the songs, go read the lyrics.) Not saying that Mimi, in the movie, didn’t have her issues, but Roger had his well. And had he not been so caustic to Mimi, and thrown her out of his apartment, they might have been able to work through their respective issues together rather than apart. I think that’s the biggest irony of their relationship. Had either let the other one in they would have discovered a love that would have helped them heal. Not that either’s love would save the other (As a “my love can save you, Mimi” attitude.), but in the act of loving someone who truly loved them as who they are their own love would have been reflected back upon them.








(Photo from PostSecret)



So as I was trying to break down the walls around “Mimi’s” heart, and my ex-girlfriend’s, (and really anyone else in life. That’s part of my mission this lifetime; to help others live more fully, to remind them of Who They Really Are.) they were trying to break down my walls. You should have heard some of the fights that we’ve gotten into. For years I had been saying what that postcard says to “Mimi”. Had I listened properly I would have heard that she was actually saying that to me. I guess that maxim is true, “You teach what you need to learn.”

I feel like that is the biggest lesson I have learned this year. Much of this year was a returning to who I used to be or rather, who I really am but forgot. But this was a lesson finally learned after years of resistance on my part. With the letter I sent to my friend sharing my darkest secret and then telling “Mimi” why I had never let her upstairs in my heart-home and how one does that, I’ve basically taking down all the major walls I had put up to block the pain of life. Took me 29 ¾ years to realize that I was also blocking the good stuff of life as well.

And what was the basis of those walls? Fear. It’s there that the message of RENT rings so true.

“There’s Only Now
There’s Only Here
Give In To Love
Or Live In Fear
No Other Path
No Other Way

No Day But Today!!

The character that best exemplifies this ethos is Angel. Angel has AIDS and even in the face of death he lives life to it's fullest. He loves to his fullest. He gives of himself because he knows that is the only way to truly receive love, to receive life. It is because of how he lived his life that even his death inspires those he touched. In that way he is much like Jesus, the Christ. Jesus called those around him to live their lives to their highest, to love more fully, and therefore be healed and become more human (at the same time remembering their divinity). Such was Jesus's power that even after death his life continued to inspire others. The character Angel was like that. I daresay Jesus would have sang "No Day But Today!" along Angel.

So there has been nothing overly dramatic about coming to this point in my life. There have been no fireworks, no trumpets playing. Just a good warm fuzzy feeling inside. Sort of an enlightenment moment. What do I need to be afraid of that I need to keep those walls up? Nothing really. Sure I will still get burned by love and life, but I will also feel it’s benefits and blessings.

"For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart." –From "The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran.

I was talking with my sister, Katie, over Thanksgiving break about all this. And she said that admired me being so open like this and that she wished she could do that with some of the walls in her heart. (She and I put up some of the same walls because of some similar shared pains.) I told Katie, “You’re only 25. I wasn’t ready to take down the walls when I was that age. It’s taken close to 30 years to get to where I am and it wasn't easy or painless. And the process of growing never stops.”

So where do Roger and I go from here? Who knows? That 's the beauty of existing in real life an not in a movie. The script is never finished and fully written. Having learned to take down my walls doesn't mean that I'll let everyone into every room in my heart-home. (There's still a thing called healthy boundaries.) But it does mean, I won't be afraid when they time comes again for that. "No Day But Today!"

Thank you Jonathan Larson!

A Comedy of Errors. . .Well, Not A Comedy

Kelly calls me last night around 12 from Germany. She had just gotten there and said that she’d be at JFK Airport between 10-12 and that’s she’s flying on Delta but doesn’t know the flight number. I get home from band practice close to one. I go online to JFK Airport’s and Delta’s websites. Neither has a flight from Frankfurt that is coming in in the morning listed.

I call Delta when I get up hoping that maybe a live person would be able to figure things out. After spending what felt like an eternity in automated phone hell, I finally speak with a representative. She says that she doesn’t not have any listing in her system for a flight arriving from Frankfurt. I ask, “Well, what if it is fully of military people? Would it be still be listed?” She replied, “No.” The only flight she has coming from Frankfurt arrives at 3:47PM, which I knew I wouldn’t be able to make.

Furthermore, the representative says that I would not be allowed beyond the security gates and that my sister really may not have much time after she goes through Customs before her connecting flight to Fort Benning. (In my mind I am asking myself, “Why does Kelly need to go through Customs? All she has is an M-16 and a duffle bag!) Now Kelly told me that if I went to Delta’s security desk that they would have given me a pass for military family members. My Mom was able to get one when Kelly came home on leave. She met Kelly at the gate.

So I was faced with a decision at 9:30AM this morning. Do I go to the airport for a flight that my not even be there or do I head into work? I chose the second. I should have taken a leap of faith and chose the first.

Kelly called me at 10:45AM. “Where are you?” I explained what I just wrote to you. She was disappointed and so was I. We talked for awhile and Kelly could hear the upset- ness in my voice. I still am. I mean, I wanted to see her even if for only 2 hours. This morning she was less than 10 miles away but it felt that she was still half a planet away. Part of me does feel happy and satisfied that she back on American soil and not in a war-zone. So I have to be thankful for that and the fact that I’ll see her in 15 days. Darn, I had a New York bagel with cream cheese waiting for her.

Thanks to everyone who has given Kelly, my family and I support this year while she was in Iraq. Thanks to everyone here at my job for helping to cover my work when I was away to visit Kelly while she was on leave. (With special thanks to my boss for letting my take time this morning to go see Kelly without giving me any problems or extra conditions.)

Kelly’s back safe. It’s just the countdown until I get to see her will be a little longer.

On Her Journey Home. . .

So I get a call from my sister Kelly this morning. She was in Kuwait. And she tells me that she'll be in NYC's JFK Airport for a two hour layover tomorrow morning on her way to Georgia and could I get off of work to come spend those hours with her. I told her, "Hell yes!" She also asked that I call my aunt to see if she could be there as well.

What a great way to start a Monday!

Just Hours Left. . .

Hi All,

I know that I have been promising my post on RENT for awhile now. I'm going to have to dissapoint and postpone it again. My hands are hurting today. Actually, it's been a rough week. But I have three big posts in the work so I hope to have those up soon.

HOWEVER, with this post I have some good news to share. My sister Kelly flies out of Iraq on Sun. the 11th!!!! And she'll be back in the states shortly after that. She called me this morning. . .and I can't wait for her to come home.

That's all I have for today.

Two Amazingly Random Things My Drummer Said.

Hi All,

I know I promised a post with some thoughts generated by the Movie RENT, and I promise that it will happen. Tomorrow. Today I just have to post two comments that Jay, Excuse Me's drummer, said that were one, way random, and two, just go to prove further that drummers are a breed of people unto themselves. There are a plethora of drummer jokes out there and the majority of them are justified. (And yes, El Gaupo, I know a "plethora" is!)

This past Friday, we, meaning Excuse Me, go to Lily Flannagan's on Long Island. We're there to check out the venue as we are going to play there in January and, the main reason, to meet our new friends, Monkey Wrench, the only Foo Fighters tribute band in the country. We met them through MySpace.com and the helped us get the gig at Lily's for January. They asked us to come out to their gig as a special guest and play a couple of songs.

It was a fun night. I really enjoy the songs of Foo Fighters. The guys of Monkey Wrench are incredibly nice. I am so looking forward to doing gigs with them in the future and seeing their shows. That's what it's all about. You make friends with other bands, from other areas, and you do shows with them. So we played "Sunday Morning" and "Just a Girl" to quite a good response. Here's a picture.

















(Don't ask me why Nicole is making that face or odd dance move.)

At some point before we go on Jay turns to me and says. . .mind you, he hadn't even finish one beer at this point. . . "Dude, I snorted wasabi today!"

Ladies and Gentlemen, let us pause for a moment to let that one sink in.

Jay, our normally levelheaded drummer who happens to have a penchant for tattoos and mohawks, snorted, in other words inhaled up one nostril in the manner one intakes cocaine, that green paste that you get when you order sushi. Wasabi is a ground horeseradish paste that will make your eyes and nostrils run faster than someone who has washed back three-alarm chili with a six-pack of Olympia beer runs to the bathroom. I purposely eat this stuff when I am congested. Jay snorted it!!!

In the discussion, I come to find out a few enlightening facts. One, he wasn't the only person to snort wasabi today. His ex-girlfriend and her cousin joined him in this act. Two, he was sober. And three, it was the first thing that they did today as in, "Yeah, we just had woken up and decided to snort the wasabi. And man, did it burn!! The whole left side of my face felt like it was on fire! My eye was watering real bad!"

Ya, don't say!! Never in a million years has the thought crossed my mind to snort wasabi as the first thing to do in the morning. Hell, eating sushi that early in the day has never crossed my mind. Usually, the first things I do are get some coffee, go to the bathroom, curse the alarm clock, maybe try to get my ex-girlfriend (when we were dating) in the mood for morning sex and other normal morning activities. Snorting wasabi has never crossed my mind at any given point of the day.

This is just another example that shows how and why Jay is a drummer, and not another type of musician such as a trombone player.

The second random thing was said at a gig on Saturday afternoon. We played this Hurricane Katrina Benefit in Jersey City that really didn't have a great turnout. Besides the 4 poets who participated, the organizer and his wife, the restuarant owner and two waitresses, we had a audicence of. . . . .drumroll please. . .2. Got to love gigs like that.

So Jay and Nicole are playing around before the gig. I am joining them in the playful banter as I stretch my arms. At one point I look away and I hear the following come out of Jay's mouth.

"Don't tickle me or I'll fart!"

Yes, that is a sentence I didn't imagine I would hear that day as I woke up bright and early for guitar lessons. I really don't have much more to add or comment on that one. So I'll just end this post and take my bow.