Classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQTBXrMB23w&index=9&list=PLXFafsYvQVhe3yPID4hnDB_7EiUgnCudu


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57kHFXElTVI&list=RD57kHFXElTVI

notes

At the bar w the gang. They r all sitting there— game on, music playing and a waitress comes and they order beers, except for alec but they all get beers and drinks… small talk about work, maybe the weather or one mentions looking for another job, the warehouse is unsatisfying, not pedro and jakey of course as they have no motivation but kyle sort of spills the beans that he’s only going to be there for a few months or maybe a little longer depending on how school goes… he says he could never imagine spending his adult life— 40 hours a week in such a depressing and dusty and uninspiring place, that there would be better places out there, even if pay was slightly less, it wouldn’t matter to him. Money was not his true concern with life. Yes it’s a good thing to have and opens up things. But it is not his sole goal in life— he wanted to live, to be happy to fall in love to see things, beautiful things and he wanted to die a man of great happiness and experience.

Of course alec is silent at first and has nothing to say… the words kind of resonate in his mind and he just turns his thoughts over while the others are drawn to the tv or the dj and alec is deep within himself… suddenly feels a part of himself move, like a giant rock across his gut

goofing around w some files

So I combined an old tape-recording that was made around 1989-90 that featured me and my brother Dave, Mark and Sue Fitzgerald (who were the ones yelling at me and Dave) and Dano snoring. My girlfriend Anne and her daughter Tonya were asleep in our tent. I used to make lots of sound recordings back in the day, 90% of them now lost or recorded over unfortunately. This was just one random recording on one of our many camping trips. I used old photographs of this time period with the people I hung out with then. I dropped a song on the soundtrack, turning it down low so the audio on the tape would still be the main focus. The song is Better Days by Citizen Kane. My brother has since passed, as well as Sue. Of course I was just having a little fun making this and thinking about the past, like I tend to do.

happy birthday Dave. Love you and miss you, you fucking bastard.

 

Made this after Dave's death in February 2016. I don't remember if I saved it to here or not. I know I posted it on Facebook a couple of times because he had a lot of friends there. It was his birthday yesterday and would have been 46.

Red Sox win the American League East...  from worst to first. Just like 2013. Go Sox!

Umm... swept by Cleveland

fat habits

so i started rereading fat habits. haven't looked at it in about 2 maybe 3 years. the writing is good, I think and the story. I just have to change a few parts around for example the beginning. Its a cool beginning but nothing happens. Trent arrives at Hawaii. Big deal. Gotta take a more dramatic moment from story and open with that. Easy enough.

Rolling forward

And life keeps rolling on. Now that I have some free time back I feel ready to start writing again. I’m not sure in what order I shall get involved. First there’s Fat Habits, my finished novel. I have to start shopping it around— maybe even give it one more read through with my editing eye. Then there’s Gone which is sort of half way through a first draft. Journal entries. I like those— quick easy and satisfying. Then there’s my mom’s letters she wrote to her mother (my grandmother, Doris Goodwin Currier) and most of these letters are about myself, Dave and Dawn when we were children; also some chronicle where she was in life— her fight against overweight and the financial burdens of raising three children on modest incomes. I began transcribing her letters on to Word and because I was just dictating them, I purchased the software Dragon that allowed me to type my voice commands. I was using it at the time I stopped transcribing the letters but there was still a lot to learn. I forget why I stopped. I want to get all my old journals (I have a fair amount done already) on to Word and backed up on to a hard drive as well as backed up on my blog page should something ever happen to the drive.

On the road in Quebec, 1995

 I’d like to find a better way to list all my stuff on the blog, index them better. As is, it just lists them in the order they were published. I’d like to format them into something, maybe by genre. The blog itself is not very user friendly. It is online so I can access it or if something ever happened to me, someone else could. Well, these are my options to mull over. On a side note, I don’t know how to block apps from my settings— porn apps and Tinder ads; it only started happening about a month ago. Despite the user non-friendliness of the web page, my writing remains intact. Anyway, stuff to ponder as I move forward— always forward.

Well, I'm really into the newish album by Radiohead and this particular song, Present Tense (as well as Ful Stop) and have been listening to it a lot lately. I've also been spending more and more time on YouTube so I checked out this song there. I posted one version here but it didn't sound as good as the studio version, which isn't listed on YouTube so, the only way I could put it on here (don't ask me why, stubbornness probably) is if I published it with video. This blog doesn't allow to publish just sound or MP3 or whatever. So, I dug up some pics from 1968 to 1990 and threw them down on this track. Nice way to spend a Saturday morning anyway. My life 1968- through 1990 (so far).

Just a few non- Sabbath related observations

Just a few non- Sabbath related observations, starting with the drive to the show and the dusky hue over the highway west and the huge blanket of clouds that caressed the sun— surely a promise of a good night ahead…. Walking into Great Woods with some old friends and we pass by a tall pony-tailed scalper— “Got tickets. Who needs tickets? Got tickets.” Not twenty feet away from him and in plain view is another man, grey bearded and bald, eyes on the people passing him by— “I need tickets. Who has tickets? Need tickets.” Sean informs him and points toward the scalper and the man shrugs, his face recoils, as if Sean had just asked him about Boy George tickets…. I’m standing at the top of the steep ramp that connects the lawn to a lower level that leads to the t-shirt vendors and beer stands. I’m rocking out to War Pigs, staring intermittently at the crowd and down the ramp when a random thought pops into mind: the trek down that ramp is an accident waiting to happen. Right on cue, a guy falls to the ground, crashes into the chain-link fence and rolls over twice before climbing to his feet, laughing and stumbling away into the crowd…. Then there were the two dudes I met on the pavilion by the beer stand. One shared his last giant can of beer with me. Over the course of that giant can of beer he volunteered his opinion that Mushrooms were good for our brain synapse— that the chemicals in the drug filled in lost or broken passageways for our neurotransmitters to travel. And Sabbath was great.

my goal

get my electrical license just to get it over with-- then concentrate on writing some and maybe publishing... getting published through typical ways like finding an agent and nor vanity presses. But it's so hard. Anyway, those are my next goals. license. writing/publishing.

up is down; down is up... so, why am I still on my feet?

I wish that I could be less consumed with the past and more consumed with the future. The present, forget about it-- it all rolls back to the past. It all does. I've been like this since I can remember. Maybe this is what keeps me from becoming who I think I should become. I don't know.

first selfie since 2013... just because. bored. buzzed.

The Neighbor

 

The Neighbor

 

She stood by the window smoking a cigarette, spying on the lazy fat neighbor as he drank a beer by the pool. How could he be that fat? she wondered, pulling a loose thread from her blouse. His backyard was a lazy mess of overgrown grass, crusty old leaves from last fall and throughout the gutters, tall shrubs grew high and sloped when they turned heavy. The shingles on the roof curled and flaked. Though she had never met this man before, she decided that he was a pig. She tossed her cigarette into the toilet, flushed and wondered how on earth she could score a bag. Her unemployment was done and she had already traded her WIC

vouchers for cash. Maybe she would introduce herself and strike a deal.

I wrote this on Facebook one morning (back before it was huge). I used to generate my thoughts out loud there or unleash some measure of creativity as well. These Facebook times were the best-- I had an innocent devil-may-care-approach to it all.

July 7th, 2011 10:38 am.

Matt and me

If I pass my journeyman test this first time, I promise I will start writing again. If I fail, I will retake the test right away until I pass it. I miss writing. Strange dream last night... foggy now but apparently I was a celebrity of some sort, but I didn't know it. A movie was made of my life and in the movie there was a scene depicting me and my brother-- I was 8 and he was 6 and someone brought it to my attention that the scene in the movie was based on a family video, recreated for the movie and yet still I had no idea how I became famous and a celebrity. Weird scenes inside the gold mine....

Two notes of positive reenforcement

A card a got in the mail by one of Mathew's teammates: Dear Mr. Utley, thank you for making a video of the braves. I watch it everyday. From Aidan F.

An email I received from the father of one of our Rangers players after the season ended: "Hi Jim,

Sorry for just getting back to you. Been a little out of touch in California. We'd love a copy of that video! Ryan had a blast this year, so I'm sure he'd love to relive it often. You and the rest of the coaching staff really brought something out in him this year. He's always enjoyed playing, but by the end of the year it was with more confidence than ever before!"

Christopher and his Rangers season highlights

I was assistant coach, my first attempt at any coaching. Christopher was elated when I was asked to help out and even more when I doubtfully agreed. But it was fun-- watching the kids grow and get better. I actually think we over achieved with the talent we had but our coaches made it a fun environment where all the kids got to play and when we could, we let some of the lesser talented players take on bigger roles. We made it to the semi-finals-- one win away from world series. During the last game we fell behind in the last inning by three runs only to tie it up during our last at bat, eventually losing in extra innings. Anyway, this video was conceived from the beginning and ends at last game of season before the playoffs. I didn't think we would have the depth to win the whole thing so I just made a regular season video and formatted it to DVD to give to all the parents for a keepsake.

And while this was going on, my other son's team, The Braves, a level below AAA had a mediocre season that culminated in them getting red hot as the play offs began and they began surgically taking apart the top teams. In the playoffs, they beat the top seeded team, then the second seeded team and then swept the third seeded team to win the whole thing. As far as his video, I only started out just filming him and with no intentions to make a team video but as the team got better, old habits kicked up and found myself filming and photographing them. Anyway, proud of my boys. Love them to death and damn they are pretty good athletes too.

Mathew's Braves 2016 AA Champions

Taking photos, filming and uploading them to the computer... those are the easy parts. Running out of battery power half way thru a game and not having back ups... missing a great play because I'm swept up in the moment... missing a shot because my camera won't adjust to the light within shot and thus won't take the shot until the moment has passed... hitting the record button but its accidentally been on the last 2 minutes... life of the parent photographer.

Making the videos, editing... that's the fun part. Choosing the songs that best represent the videos is generally the tougher task. Ideally, I try and keep the soundtrack current. Sometimes, like Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls, that song just was made for sports clips. I actually used it on Christopher's hockey tournament video in March and again on his Rangers video. I used The Atari's cover of Boys of Summer on Chris and Mathew's baseball video. I'm pretty good at not repeating tunes unless I believe the repeat song has no other choice but to be on my video.

I want to do it, but I just can't. Been dragged too much. Nope. Not worth it anymore.