Tag Archives: story

The Haunting

Posted on by
14

slimer-640x400
I am very much a “take life as it is” kinda guy. I don’t believe in much. God, ghosts, aliens, conspiracy theories. I’m a skeptic by design. With these types of things I look at it as , while anything is possible, most things aren’t probable . Sure, Aliens could exist. In fact, it would be weird if we were the only life forms in this entire universe. But some yokel getting dragged up into a spaceship and tested with different gauged buttplugs? Sounds like an excuse some guy would use to tell his wife to get out of admitting he’s possibly gay. I’m not saying it has NEVER happened, but I doubt it.

So, let’s talk about ghosts. Here’s the thing about those guys. I’ve always felt that, in order for ghosts to be real then there’s a chain of things I don’t believe in that would also be real. Like if ghosts are real, that means, our souls are real. If our souls are real, that means there is a higher power, if there is a higher power, does that mean there is a heaven and hell? Obviously, all these things don’t connect up perfectly but once you start considering one, it opens up the reality of another, all the way to the point where an Athiest , such as myself, might be like “wait a minute….”. So really, my disbelief in ghosts has as much to do with that as it does with me thinking dead people just die and that’s that. I mean, considering how many people die all day, every day, if ghosts existed, we’d be overrun by them. There would be like 200 ghosts in every room of every house. It’s not like death ever stops. But, still…every now and then some weird shit happens and you have that X-files moment. Here’s mine…
x-files-2016
So, around 7 am yesterday, i was awoken by the sounds something clattering in my apartment. I live in a duplex. My bedroom is downstairs and the sounds came from upstairs. I would normally freak out, get a bat , head upstairs and see what the sound way but, honestly, I was so tired that I rolled my eyes , accepted “Hey, I could be murdered right now but , on the off chance it’s nothing, I’d rather be asleep”. Lucky for me, nothing happened. When I finally did wake up and head upstairs, I had already forgotten about the noise that woke me up hours earlier. As I reached the top of the stairs, though, I was quickly reminded. Atop a dresser I have, is a collection of Chachkis (sp?!?). Things people have given me over the years. Weird stuffed animals, small art pieces, funny action figures. Shit like that. These things have all been placed atop the dresser and fashioned in a way to display them. They also haven’t been adjusted or moved in months. Reaching the top of my stairs, i see 3 or 4 of these guys scattered around the floor. All the pieces on the floor were fairly light plastic pieces. The type of things that could have just given away to months of time and shifting. However, I look up and there’s this one piece…it’s an old clay head my dad had made. It’s about the size of a coke can and weighs about 2 pounds. 2 pounds doesn’t sound like much but it’s certainly enough weight to keep something in place in a room with no wind. This piece had not only moved about 5 inches but it was turned half way around. What the fuck. I check my doors. They were both locked. I look to see if anything else had been moved around. Nothing. Clearly, I have a ghost. Now, I was surprised by how quickly I accepted this as fact. It was like “aww man…i gotta a ghost now? Ughhh”. Kinda like how one might react to finding out they have allergies.

I started to think about this ghost.
First off, who the fuck is he/she? How long has he/she been here? Why here? I’m pretty sure ghosts don’t only exist where they die…but I’ve never heard of someone dying in my apartments history. I could be wrong but still..if that’s the case, this ghost BEEN chilling for a minute. He/she has seen some shit. Then I started thinking about how boring the life of a regular ghost must be. Like, if ghosts like this are real…do you realize they spend all day watching people look at their computers, watch tv and masturbating? Like…this ghost has seen me jerk off sooooo much. Sure, occasionally he/she gets lucky and sees a little sex show but still…I wonder if he/she watches or just kinda throws his/her ghost hands in the air and floats out the room in disgust, the second I take out some coconut oil.
Being a ghost sounds boring as fuck. Beyond that…it seems like a person who is forced to watch a tv show they may or may not have interest in. My life isn’t exciting. I work on computers. I chill hard. It’s very low on drama. Perhaps, by knocking over my chachkis, the ghost was telling me “Hey dude, I’m dying over here (lol, get it?), step up the entertainment!”. Who knows? For all I know, this ghost could be from the 1800’s and just be so fucking confused by literally every facet of my life. Like he/she could look at something as simple as my microwave and just be like “I don’t get it!!!!!”, let alone a man pleasuring himself to internet porn.

So, yeah…I might be haunted. The other possibility is that I have a rat loose in my crib but I’m refusing to believe that cause I don’t wanna have to move. I really hope it’s just a ghost. Ain’t nobody got time for rats. Fuck all that noise. Ghosts>rats

WhenGhostsGetBored

My woes about Drakes woes.

Posted on by
20

drake122

This is a pointless little story but I figure I’d share it cause it’s friday and who cares?
Man, being old and out of touch sucks. Especially when you actually do make a tiny effort to stay somewhat in the loop. Even when you do that, there’s always going to be something that flies over your head. Where slang is concerned, I generally don’t follow it but I can figure out what it means. Words like “Fleek” or “Thot” come around and all you need to do is hear them in a certain context and you get it. You’d be a fool to use them in real life but, still, you can at least understand them. Other terms,however, are not as simple.

Case in point, this Drake song “Know yourself“. Admittedly, I’ve been running some tracks off the new Drake mixtape. Judge me with all the rap snobbery you got but, you know what? I’m old, very likely know more about rap than you and I can like what I want to like so blow me. Still, while I do tip my hat to drake a little I also think he’s fairly ridiculous. But that’s neither here nor there. This is about a line in a drake song.

So, in this song, there’s a break in the middle (Go to 1:31 in the above video to hear it) and he goes into exclaiming “I was runnin’ through the 6 with my woes!”. it’s the pinnacle of the song. Every rap listening teen knows that part. There have been gifs, vines and everything. Now, I know “The 6” is toronto. That I know! But, when I heard this line I was kinda fascinated. Like “What a fucking weird thing to say!”. I imagined Drake, walking around Toronto , with his hood up just thinking about his life issues AKA his woes. I thought he might be on some Aceyalone shit. I mean, let’s be real, Drake is nothing if not an emo dude. It would make sense for him to pace around Toronto with a lot on his mind. He’s definitely a cryer. I dunno…the whole thing just seemed like a strange, bold and interesting choice of words for him to use. Add on that it’s followed by him saying “You know how that shit go” and it seemed like the sentiment was real. Yes, drake. i do know how that shit go. I’ve had a lot on my mind and walked around the city , trying to make sense of it all. What a relatable sentiment, Aubrey. I was even in Toronto a few weeks back and that song was in my head like crazy. I was walking around Toronto singing it to myself. It was somewhat embarrassing, now that I look back at it but , hey, music does what it does.

Flash forward to me at the YMCA this past monday. I play ball there a few times a week and it’s filled with a wide variety of people. One major type is teenagers. (Unrelated but, holy shit, teenagers are the fucking worst). So, I’m shooting around with some people before a game and one of the kids starts rapping that verse from “Know yourself” in it’s entirety. Other chime in. a few grown men even get in on the action as well. I say “Man, it’s crazy how drake made an anthem about being sad”. The kid that started the sing along looks at me and says “Huh?” and I say “yeah, like he’s got you all singing about how he runs around his city crying and shit…” this was met with patronizing laughter and the kid explaining to me that his “woes” are his boys. Most likely a shortening of the southern term Whodies. Well, fuck me. I felt 200 years old. What a let down. i won’t lie, it’s made me like the song less. I much prefer the idea of drake and his actual woes over the visual of drake and his corny friends going clubbing. Goddamn it. Oh well, this whole topic got me running through my social network timelines with my actual woes. But you know how that shit go.

My trip to europe!!! Tales from the darkside.

Posted on by
18


So, as you may know, I was in Europe last week doing some shows. It was the first time I had been touring out there in over 7 years so I was pretty excited about getting back out there. However, what I was not excited about was the brutal jet lag and lack of sleep I’d be getting but, hey, those type of things are all part of this job and it’s better dealing with that once every few months than working in an office.

So, this here is going to be my rehash of the entire trip. Instead of mapping out the entire thing like some mind numbing slide show, I’m just gonna randomly talk about thinks I noticed, as well as a few things that happened. This will not be brief so , if you’re not a fan of words, just stop reading right here.

I’m a huge proponent of bullet points so, let’s roll with that…
Just to run it down:
First I went to Berlin. Then to Budapest, Lithuania, Moscow and St, Petersburg. I had two days in berlin and the rest of the places I was in for half a day each.
I like to preface all that I’m about to write by explaining that I’m admittedly a dumb american. I’m a fish out of water when i go down south so you can imagine me in a place where people are talking a different language. That said, I’ve also traveled more than most people. I’ve been to many , many cites all over the world. So, keep both of those things in mind. I know stuff and I’m always respectful of other places when I’m there but I’m also fairly ignorant and enjoy to make fun of peoples differences.

1)European babies/children are mad european

Before I even boarded the the plane, I saw all these little schnitzel eating mother fuckers running around. It’s funny cause the difference is so subtle yet so clear. While an american baby might be wearing some little t-shirt and sneaker combo, the euro baby will be wearing some swiss miss overalls and a tiny soccer jersey. I wanna say they were wearing wooded shoes but I’d be lying. But let’s just say they might has well have been. Ever heard a german baby speak? It’s fucking weird.

2)Food that has no business being in Germany
While in Berlin I was pretty much stranded. I mean, I could walk around but I didn’t know where the fuck I was or how to get around so I pretty much stayed within a close distance to my hotel. When it came time to eat, it was a hard choice. Eating in foreign countries is weird cause you can’t read the menu’s. So, what you end up doing is looking for places that have pictures on the walls so you can at least make sure you’re not gonna accidentally order dog dick soup in a jizz based creme fresh. The thing about european cuisine (low end cuisine) is that they like what they like. Some shit that is totally normal there may be something your mouth is simply not ready for. I mean, shit, have you seen their potato chips? They got flavors like “Tripe and chocolate”. So, Basically, you end up ordering what seems most familiar simply to be safe. This way of thinking bought me to eating a burrito in germany. How the fuck mexican food found it’s way to germany is beyond me. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a large mexican population ANYWHERE in europe, let alone Berlin. But, i said fuck it and ate there. You know what? It wasn’t terrible. It was better than taco bell but worse than Chipotle.
As for the sushi, I just avoided it. Something about german sushi just doesn’t sit right with me.

3)There is mad graffiti in Europe

It’s crazy how much there is. It’s everywhere and it seems like it never gets taken down. I asked a local about it and they told me that it’s simply too much work to take it all down so they just leave it be. This results in many parts of european cites looking like the background on the video game Double Dragon.

4)No one Jaywalks
Maybe it’s a new york thing but this bugged me out. People literally stood and waited for the lights to change to cross the streets, regardless of car activity. To me, that’s some next level shit. I followed suit though cause the last thing I need to do is get arrested for crossing the street in Germany.

5)Non-lesbian shaved head women everywhere

This is just specific to Germany but I saw tons of bald headed hoes. Not brute dykes or even punk rock nazi looking girls. Just normal , feminine ladies with shaved heads. It wasn’t a good look. I’ve said this before about things like shaved heads on ladies but if you look great with a shaved head, you’ll always look better with hair. Even if you can pull it off doesn’t make it better, it just means you can pull it off. But , hey, that’s the style out there so who am I to say anything.

6)The art of the backhanded compliment
i don’t know what it is about europeans but they are masters of the back handed compliment. Perhaps it’s cause of the language differences and they’re working with limited words but on more than one occasion I came across a dude who would tell me how much he liked my albums EXCEPT that one album he thinks was terrible. While I appreciate the honesty, I also didn’t ask for his opinion. On the other hand, in america, when a dude does that, he annoying presents it as him “being real” as opposed to him being ” a dipshit”.

7) I’m a dipshit
When I’m in a foreign country where everyone is speaking broken english to me, I have this thing where I find myself speaking broken english back to them. Like I’ll say “you come to show tonight, yes?”. It makes no fucking sense but I had to stop myself from doing it repeatedly over the course of the trip.
A similar thing that came up was when a stranger would just start talking to me in the native language and I’d just look at them and say “english”. Looking back, this is kinda rude. I found myself greeting everyone with a “Hello” just to put it out there that “hey, we got an ignorant american over here who hasn’t bothered even learning the most basic aspects of your native language”. I gotta say though, the “hello” worked pretty well.

8)The shit show
So, it’s the third day of our tour and we’re playing in Vilnius, Lithuania. A place I’ve never been to (I had also never heard of it prior to seeing the announced show dates). As we get to sound check, I open my computer. A computer, I might add , that is 100% how I do my live shows. I turn it on and the screen goes white…and stays white. Eventually, a little folder pops up in the middle of the screen with a “?” inside of is. I had never seen this before. I asked around the venue and eventually had a dude on his computer looking into ways to fix this. Nothing was working. The computer was dead. It was coming to a point where a solution had to be invented cause there was no way I was performing my live set that night. My tour buddy, DJ Cam, figured my only choice would be to do a dj set. Now, he was correct. Aside from canceling the next three shows and pissing off a lot of people while trapped in a land far, far away from home, a dj set was my only option. He was using Serato so all I had to do was load in all my albums into his computer and pick what songs to play. but here’s the thing, I’m not a DJ. I’ve “DJ’d” before but it didn’t involved mixing. It was just playing songs. So, I had to make do and “blend” songs the best I could. I did the show and it went as well as I could hope. Luckily , the crowd attending was more there just to party and didn’t really give a shit what I played.
The next day, we flew into Russia. I was told they had an apple store there and had faint hopes of maybe fixing this situation. Well, long story short, it didn’t happen and I had to finish the rest of the dates with a half baked DJ set. To the people who came, my apologies but it was that or nothing. To be honest, the show went over insanely well in Moscow. Like people were cheering and clapping whenever I did anything. I wish every show was like that. The St. Petersburg show was not received quite as well cause, apparently, the Andy Milonokis looking promoter was mad that I had promoted this as a “Live set”. he was also a cock sucker so i don’t really feel bad about it. The fans were great though.
I have since gotten home and it turned out what happened was the wire connecting my hard drive to my computer got fucked up. I went to Tek-Serve and got it fixed in five minutes (shout out to my boy paolo, who has saved my life more than once with the computers). Still, I was a panicky mess for a good 48 hours in a country where I could not have felt more isolated from the world as i know it. No fun.

9)All smiles

Not a lot of smiling going on in the streets of Russia. The people were nice but walking around the streets of Moscow will make you think smiling is a capitol offense. When I asked russians about this they just kinda shrugged and said “Yeah, it’s like that out here.”

10)Fear in Russia
I can’t front, i was a little shook in Russia. Not cause it was dangerous but cause I felt completely helpless there. Aside from not having a phone and also not having a working computer , it’s one of those places that i could see myself just vanishing in. Like, had I gotten separated from the group i was traveling with, you wouldn’t ever hear from me again. It reminded me of the time I was in a small upstate NY town where there was no phone service and everything closed at 8 pm. You break your leg at 8:15 in the forrest, you’re pretty much a dead man. In Russia, while it’s has millions of people everywhere, there’s a distinct feeling of “I don’t know if I belong here”. i’m speaking about just walking around. Like i said, the people were all very nice and it wasn’t a scary place at all (at least, not where I was). But between the language barrier and the fact they use a different alphabet, it was intimidating.

11) And the award for hottest girls goes too…

Lithuania?!?!? Yup. holy shit.
You know how people will often say that some of the hottest women in the world come from eastern europe? It’s for a reason. Not just Lithuania. Russia , in general, was no slouch either. I noticed that they tend to be taller and leaner than you’re typical american hot girl. More Model like. I’m not even really a huge fan of that look but their faces were undeniable. Some were blonde , some looked half asian, some looked like James Bond girlfriends. I didn’t even get to Prague but I’ve been told that’s the jewel of eastern europe. So, yeah, don’t sleep on Baltic broads.

12)Getting hit on in broken english
Even with a language barrier, groupies are universal. I had a few funny situations pop over over the week but , being the good boyfriend that I am, I kept it in my pants. Getting hit on by girls at shows in europe is very different then when it happens in the states. In the states, it’s very overt and almost kinda cheesy. It’s rushed flirting with a lot of dependency on “what are you up to after the show?”. But, if nothing else, it’s very succinct. In europe , however, it’s a whole different ball game. The trouble with speaking english leads the girls to say amazing shit like “I have the strong feelings about you” and they often mis-use the perfect word that would make someone think “Um, i think this girl is deeply in love with me” when , in reality, she just doesn’t know the word for “hook up”. It’s similar to the way europeans give backhanded compliments. It’s all due to the language barrier and a limited vocabulary. Either way, getting hit on in any language is fun but I got a kick out of hearing a russian girl trying to figure out a way to say she was down to get down.

13)Sleep no more/old people are the worst

My last show was in St. Petersburg and I had a 6 am flight that morning after the show. We got back to the hotel around 2 am and I had a cab coming to pick me up to take me to the airport at 3:45 am. So, sleeping wasn’t an option. I had been up since 8 that morning but there really was no choice. I had a 15 hour travel day ahead of me due to taking connecting flights from St, Petersburg to Frankfurt, Germany all the was back to NYC. It was one of those situations where I couldn’t even calculate how much time it would take cause of all the different timezones and the lay over. All I knew was I was leaving at 6 am and arriving back in NY at 11:30 am. Sounds like nothing right? WRONG.
The St. Petersburg airport was a mess. There were like 4 check points and it appeared that all the people on my flight to Frankfurt were a tourist group of american senior citizens. Not just any senior citizens, these were a bunch of back woods southern idiots who were wearing american flag hats and all had on name tags. Little known fact about old people: They don’t know how to do ANYTHING. You should have seen them at the automated check in. It might as well have been the fucking Monolith from “2001: A space odyssey). Every part of boarding a plane was like it just got invented right there. “wait, we get in a line? I don’t understand.”
Think “Lord of Flies” but much slower and with far less violence.
Old people do not give a fuck. I was in line, red eyed and in a general haze. These motherfuckers were just cutting in front of me like I didn’t exist. Old people are nothing if not entitled, especially when out of the united states. I realize you’re supposed to respect your elders but these people had crossed the line of being old into simply being burlap sacks of shit that consume food and air and get their powers from pictures of grand children.
The funniest thing to me about it is that these sheltered fossils , who probably happily live in small towns where Papa johns pizza is considered exotic cuisine, decide to take trip to a place so far out of their comfort zone that they can’t possibly enjoy it. Like how long must they have spent walking around Moscow looking for a place to get some chicken friend steak?
I sat behind them , listening to them complain about their grandkids and their plans for when they get home. It was depressing. Just being around them I realized that there’s a definitive cut off age for when I need to be alive till. And it’s before I become one of those pieces of shit.

Anyway, because I’m a moron, I don’t sleep well on planes and I ended up being awake for about 50 straight hours. I dunno if you’ve deprived yourself of that much sleep without involving meth or cocaine but it’s Preeeeeeety awesome. It’s thursday now and I’m finally starting to feel like a human again. What can i say. I love my job!

I would like to add that, despite the complaining here, I did have a good time. The shows all went well , especially considering what happened to my computer, and it’s always cool to see new places. Hopefully I’ll be making it out the Europe more often…and my computer won’t break. A man can dream.