Dear Mike

Mike. This bunch of white-power Christian zealots is not even pretending anymore. We are actively deporting residents from other countries who have lived and worked here for decades, students who have been protesting the invasion of Gaza, AND....AND frigging British tourists and Uber drivers who take a wrong turn on a bridge and end up in Canada because there is no turnaround, and when they re-enter they are being detained. And then yetsterday the vampire Nazi Stephen Miller announced they are "looking into" suspending hebeas corpus and...and allowing Afrikkaner "refusgees" (you know, rich, white people who exploited Apartheid and now hate the fact that they are required by law to pay taxes and share land ownership) to "seek asylum" here. I fucking cannot take this. They have undone Roe, they are purging the population, and the Supreme Court is about to also make Christianity the only religion (apparently) with any right to freely practicing. I fucking hat...

Hey Mike, so today (or maybe it was yesterday - telling time and keeping track of days is a struggle outside of work these days because it's either keeping track of the Nazi takeover, or keeping track of my slow march to death. anyway, Green Day got a star on the walk of fame in hollywood today. I'd be lying if I didn't say I think it's awesome. I think of how much shit they got from the MRR crowd, the crowd we put all our ethos in, only to watch it implode and utlimately turn on us too. so mayny fucking rules they had for what "was" punk rock. Green Day is awesome. I don't actually know how your were feeling about them in those last years - I always vaguely remember you being pissed at them - not for selling out, but more because they were offered the option of "selling out" - after all, it was honestly, all you ever wanted. I'm still sorry you never got that offer, but also know it was because you always left it up to others to make it happ...

Hey Mike, So, my mom died about 90 minutes ago, I was here holding her hand the whole way. She was fading pretty quick in the last 3 days and when she new she was going she reached out for my hand and I held it and kept telling her how much I and all of us loved her. Soon she'd be out of pain and back riding horses and playing with all the dogs. Give her a hug for me if you happen to end of on the same extistential plane as she's on. Death is fucking lame. It's just done. She just went away, and I have to say after that experience I have a hard time believeing anyone could possibly believe there is a heaven or a hell. There is clearly only sweet release from the struggle of life, right? And you have to be pretty thankful for the things you get to do and the people you get to meet. I am so thankful for all of it, and I guess that's one of the advantages of losing my dad so early (almost 30 years ago exactly, she came really fucking close to matching the date) I not only ...

Hi Mike, What's weird, is that it's all the same, and yet so different. I am gonna die soon, like you. I'm gonna be a blip in the world. As tortured as I am sometimes by the feeling that I should have done more, changed more, worked harder, been a bigger pain in everyone's ass, I am also now finally in that endgame where I am working from home, kind of fine with dying tomorrow. It's weird. Sure, there are plenty of things I'd still like to do, and places to go. However, I'm also pretty fucking comfortable with it all being done tomorrow, and Mike, honestly so much of that has to do with you. Though you and I wouldn't have been you and I if I hadn't fucking tapped your shoulder in in Mass Comm 38 years ago. I need to be clear about that: I hit you up. People (Dawn, mostly I think) will say it was maybe a bad choice. But I don't think so. I think, even though I never took most of the chances that came while I was with you (though I took a lot of t...

Hi Mike, I have been saying ever since Scott's friend (and, to be honest he was kinda my friend too at one point) Chris L went down the MAGA rabbit hole that one of the things that really pissed me off about all of them post-2016, and then after Jan 6 (post-2020 where I got a 3 month master-class in canvassing and actually talking to people about the election and bvoiting) is the lack of experience IN REAL LIFE any of them actually had in protesting anything. They were all people who bitched and moaned, but never voted. They never went to rallies, they never boycotted, they rarely had ever even been part of a strike or other sort of organized action. Meanwhile, our little GenX cadre, especially the DIY punk rock folk, have been doing it in some form since we were kids. I remember being fully awake to vote for Mike Lowery in the early 80's. Knowing I disagreed with my dad (though, it seems, he was a Democrat and mom was the REpublican, but still) and wanted to speak my mind. I w...

Hey Mike! Something kinda cool happened this weekend, completely out of the blue. You're favorite Croat is currently spending his traditional "Every 3 years" vacation in the US biking the East Coast. On Saturday night, one of your favorite drummers (so favorite that you actually fucking PAID him!) who is living in Baltimore now, Jimmy Flame, was playing a gig with his new band Unung Heroes (he's also going back to Loyola for his Master's but that's a different post) at a house party. Sometime around 10:30 pm Saturday night, out of the blue Flame messaged me saying "I'm hanging our with Dario (Adam) in DC at a show I'm playing! He says Hi!" I was totally blown away and delighted, how cool is it that the world we created offers the opportunity for these things to happen. I honestly don't know that Jimmy and Dario met before - but I am pretty sure Adam knows who Jimmy is and that he played with us....but maybe he didn't and they just sta...

Hey Mike. Wallowing a bunch lately - but then I try and spin it, because what if I end up like my mom not being able to remember ANYTHING? Might as well roll around in it while I still can - especially as this fucking flat patch of life is really a slog. Anyway, the Violent Femmes came on my Sp*tify feed and I immediately thought about one of my earliest dates with you (possibly the earliest? Hard to remember, since it's all so rum-soaked and speed-blended). That Violent Femmes show that I only remember from the seats in Van Duzer (I think - it was definitely a theater, so I think that was the only HSU location then for that?) and definitely, as I'm doing a deep dive into VF, explains my affinity for Jonathan Richman. Though I still hate the Blister song that has been played out, they are pretty damn punk rock and arty and all of that weirdo energy I loved about punk initially. I remember ripping down a VF poster off a pole, though literally do not remember if that was before ...

Hey Mike. Look, I know you always wanted a kid - on our first option to become parents you very vividly made the case that "If we have a kid and teach it to play drums, we'll always have a drummer" - or you may have said it on the occasion of our second chance to have a kid. But either or both times, it struck me as not the best way to approach parenthood. Of course, in hindsight, there's never a best time, or way to have kids. That being said, I am currently both super happy to not be responsible for the aboslute monstrosity of a generation that "Z" is - because in my head, I was all set to regret that I won't have anyone to take care of me in my old age (should I manage to live that long) and relived that none of this bullshit is my fault. Lately though, I don't know if any kid I would have had would give two shits about me (or you) at this point anyway. I mean the one kid you did have has changed their gender, and seems fully on board (as one wou...

Man Mike, it has been a rough couple of weeks. Car went belly-up in typical fashion less than a month after a very traumatic brake & axle service. A hole in a hose led to overheating, and me pushing the limits and winding up with what is best-case scenario a blown head gasket, and worst-case a blown engine (still starts, but who knows how much longer that will last, and it definitely cannot be driven). Well, its three weeks later and I missed the FIFTH anniversary of you punching out of this...this...life? Yeah. It is hard not to think you are better off - I guess that is the thing that they say - death is only hard for the people left behind. Or whatever they say. I mean, at least there are probably a few of us who still think about you occasionally. Or, at least - i do think of you most days in some way (even if it's just when I notice it's 11:11 or popping an especially intense zit). Lately I've begun ondering in earnest if anyone will ever remember me. Hell, I won...

 Hey Mike, Not that this will come as a shock to you (or, maybe it will, since you always seemed to think I was as adept as you at remembering all the ephemera of the punk rock life we led) but I seem to keep forgetting who the hell I am. Floundering in normalcy is not something I am amused by. Oddly, it was Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" that launched me into this spiral. Fucking SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE ALL THAT ACID WHILE WORKING AT TOWER RECORDS! Hilariously this is only funny to me, because I don't think anyone I still talk to even knows I worked at Tower Records, and probably I never told them how that fucking earwig of a song has been burned into my brain by multiple blotter doses an hour or so after count out, back in Spring of '91. Also, I have lost another nephew (Mason) to the Trump Turbine. It's killing young minds and making them all stupid, lazy, and racist. Super disappointing because this kid was always the one I pinned my hopes on to be his own man. I...

 New Year's Eve, and not much has changed. I have been sick for well over two weeks now, convinced it's either my heart, my lungs, my brain or any combination of the above. The dog had a seizure yesterday, the first in a while (though of course I haven't ever tracked them, but they do seem to happen a couple times a year now, less often than they did in the mid 2010s) ((the "mid-2010s"?? Good god, how is this even still happening?)) but it made me want to mention, or document something about KC, and I suppose is true with other dogs who live their entire lives in an urban place that is constantly changing - but she is always remembering places we used to frequent. She will still stop at the doorway where the entrance to Charles and David's pet store was. The other day, on the way to the library, she stopped at the door of the last Bartell's we used to frequent. She often tries to pull to McCoy's a place we used to go a lot, but as I get older and less ...

 Hey Mike, Where to even start? With Israel and Hammas going at it yet again - slaughtering and terrorizing innocent people on both sides, again. Fucking religion is the single worst human trait, and no one, not even the most beatific Buddhist is going to change my mind. It's tragic, and now that we have all this immediate flooding of live broadcasts from people's phones on the ground - the carnage and destruction escalates not only my rage but my feelings of despair.  I guess it's fine that the final sweet release from this stupid, stupid world will be due to someone's misplaced desire to control others - rather than the epic continent-shearing earthquake or meteor hit. Fucking dinosaurs. Speaking of actual faultlines - had a nice earthquake on Sunday night - about a 4.5 (which I reflexively guessed correctly, and felt necessary to share with everyone; I even texted Karen). There was this delightful moment where the shaking was at what ended up being its peak and it hi...

Hey Mike, I don't even know what that title even means, but I'm listening to DCFC and am having a hard time keeping my head up right now. Everyone's parents are dying, on top of all of our people dying because...I don't know, we had too much fun? Didn't take good care of ourselves? Didn't follow the rules?  I don't fucking know, and it's killing me. Everything feels like the fallout from not having made the right choices, and yet, I feel like I am only aware of it because I did live the life like it was a wave to surf - but apparently, I'm a shitty surfer? Dunno. I watched the Beatles doc that Ron Howard made and am even more fascinated by how fame manifested more than half a century ago, and how its so much the same, and so very different now. Also, this thing where I keep believing in stuff and it just always never holds up. It never is what I think it is, what I expect it to be. EVER. I mean, I spent my college years secretly hoping Joe Biden woul...

A change is gonna come - I have not spent almost 60 years on this planet to sit in this closet and wait for my other retina to burn off the back of my eye and listen to GenZ humming mindlessly while constantly fucking doing the most un-teamwork-y shit all day long. I deserve to be spell-checking stupid AI-created content for websites that millenials scroll through mindlessly from the porch of my fucking teardrop trailer parked in a WalMart parking lot, or something. This is not how I go out, goddamn it.

Hi. Just wanted to share that as I was listening to a Spotify mix of my favorite songs, "Was It Worth It?" played. Now it's not the version I played on (apparently none of those are online, which I assume I can thank Scott VR and GL for) but probably the version that is closest to the one on the cassette of the same name. I just wanna say Mike, in case I hadn't said it (though I'm pretty sure I have, more than once, and especially in those years with exSMRGE) I think it is your best written song, and I loved playing it so much. I think it still holds up (unfortuantely, given the subject matter - I wish I could say it isn't relevant because we haven't had a shooting like that in so very long, but nope, we had one yesterday in St Louis, and a school one in Nashville last week and...ect) and just a really great punk rock sound and a realy glimpse at what we should have been, had either of us been more focused. Ah well. Anyway, miss ya buddy, thanks for the me...

Let's just get into it: Hola! It's me again - sorry to keep this constant barrage of mail but I'm SO LONELY!! Ack. It's the usual, and today (let's see, uh, Thursday, the 15th of...uhm, ah, yes: OCTOBER yay. On the autostrada from Rome to Foggia I'm bummin because I don't have enough energy to attempt to obtain a cup of coffee, and Adam has already shut down on us and his translating ability. So that's nice. Plus we're payin ghimt to treat us like shit this time, which makes Mike and I partucularily happy. It makes Rob nothing, 'cause he's just floating aimlessly now, sulking a lot more. Ah well. So I'm just watching the amazingly beautiful Italian (Adriatic) coast zip by. It's all so green and hilly, with these either sheer cliffs to the coast, or sort of a rolling hill that ends in a sandy beach with a fabulously blue ocean.But do we get to partake of any of it? Nah, we gotta go to Foggia to play another lame show I'm sure. Oh y...

Honestly man, I don't even know what to say anymore. There's the part where I want to say that I have never, ever felt as physically horrible as I do currently. I dunno if it's the covid, the covid vax, general lack of taking care of myself, the steady march of time on my physical being matched by the psychic degredation that the entire world is experiencing or what, but damn, I am not digging anything right now. Except for the puggle of course, but dogs have always been the only reason to keep going to be honest. So, the grifting blowhard ex-president looks to be getting actually indicted, but honestly, to what end? I have literally given up any hope of Americans ever being capable of critical thinking on any sort of useful level. I suppose all the states have always passed (or not struck down, in the case of the wannabe confederate lunkheads) bullshit civil rights squashing legislation, but after Roe getting the national treatment, and weekly train wrecks that point direc...

As the planet hurtles towards its demise, I grabbed a book from the library for the first time in ages - and it's a good one, though probably from a mental-health standpoint not the best? Anyway, it is Play Like a Man, by Rose from the Poster Children. I had a brief interaction with her in the late 90's ('97 or so?) when I was briefly seeing the former drummer of Steel Pole Bathtub, who they had toured with in Europe and she had written extensive tour diaries during. Because she was a computer-programming student, she was actually posting her diaries online on a listserv, which back then, was not something normal folks really did (god knows had I been able to focus and was aware enough to do that, shit would be different. But enough with imagining how my EEAAO selves are faring in the alternate universes) and she recently used those diaries as a base for a book about being a woman bass player in a punk rock band in not only the era I played & knew her in, but she's ...

Hi Mike. Weird weekend that started with a 3 minute voice message from your favorite Croat asking me for help tracking down Schmidtheads photos or flyers. It's actually the second time he's asked, and the second time I've had to explain that not only do I have a very limited memory of anything that really happened between '85-'88 in Arcata (sadly, given all the shows, ASB stuff and just general hijinks we got into) and didn't take photos like I should have been at shows and stuff. I was busy taking weird personal candids, but in terms of shows - I was all into doing it, and as usual, didn't have the confidence to just get in there and take photos. It is probably my greatest regret that I was so selfish in my photography. Sure, part of it was the cost of film and developing, but overall, I cannot for the life of me figure out why I didn't give it more of a go. That said, why didn't I pursue drama/stage work more? Why didn't I keep doing A/V stuff,...

Hi. \ Remember when we first got to DC and I literally walked into a random record store and got a job there? Nobody Beats The Wiz. That was the spot - an East Coast chain we had no real understanding of, but once I started there and found out it's NYC provenance it was a pretty insane place to be in 1989. I mention it, becausemy absolute favorite band discovery from that time, De La Soul (and, to be honest, I knew I dug them, but they have grown to be a solid touchstone for that specific time in my life) - and that first album, 3 Feet High and Rising, is the damn gold standard of hip hop for me but it hasn't been available to stream for any of the years streaming has been a thing. Sure, I think I may still have the cassette in that rubbermaid tub at my mom's house (or, it may be gone. i haven't seen those casettes in a while) but I have only been able to really hear those songs if John or someone plays them on KEXP, and I have sorely missed it. The good news is that th...