Dear Mike

Hi again. So a little over 30 years ago, I wrote this to Karen, describing the gig in St. Medard with Tormentia: "So, our second show with Eric-the-Dick (he says everyone calls him that) was in a suburb of Bordeaux called Saint Medard. We're on a four band bill, the headliners were bumped so we would headline. It was in this massive community center/multipurpose room on a sort of community living area (some sort of experiemnt in socialsim, or something...). They were very specific about being there at 2pm to soundcheck, so of course Laurant had us out 'til 6am drinking and meeting the locals. The guy is like No Means No unchained!! So we get to the show, mucho grouchy, at about 3pm. Don't soundcheck 'til 6pm. Hang out. Meet the guys in Tormentia, a bunch of 118 and 19 year olds in a thrash metal band (think Metallica)The bass player, whose name I never mastered was a cute one. Great blue eyes, dark hair, very friendly (he was excited that "the American band&qu

Hey Mike. You've been on my mind a bunch the last few days. Our favorite Norwegian guitar player had reached out a few months ago, because he apparently is going to actually get his book published. As opposed to me, who has the one third of it she started 25 years ago safely stored on a floppy disc she has no idea how to ever retrieve the data from, and so I may fail to ever get a tangible telling of those prime Agent 86 hijinks out into the wild. I mean, the middle part was the most interesting part anyway, right? At any rate. Kjellykjellkjell had asked for photos from tour, and of course I put it off until he pestered me again and mentioned that if I got the photos to him we'd be "part of the history forever" and as I have been a shitty steward of Agent86 in those terms (wait...have I? I don't see anyone else trying to keep the dream alive: GL has long since moved on from all that ((and literally moved up here now)). Anyway, as I was rifiling through stuff to f

Hey. Per usual, this didn't take off as I had intended it, even though I potentially have more time to spend rambling than ever before, but am so consumed by malaise that it just sits here. Much like the broken filling in my mouth that needs to be fixed, but doesn't hurt - I just dick around with it from time to time, but never actually...nah, that's a terrible analogy. Who really needs an anology anyway? It is what it is: an underused blog. I can't get excited about day-to-day rambling like I used to. My opinion in general just seems pointless. After years of dreaming of having my own platform, and a couple of years of actually using some of them, now? Now it's just like water running in an open sink. A waste of resources. Of what little constructive thought I still have. My health is declining. I have all the signs of all the diseases. Heart attack, liver failure, brain tumor, cancer, all of them. If I see the other side of 58 it'll be a damn miracle. And wha

"It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colo., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV. Gonzo himself, Hunter S. Thompson on the tragedy and it's implications...the link is at ESPN.com where he is a Page2 columnist: Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake and probably the Battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 were slaughtered in one day. The Battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight Tuesday). The final numbers, including those from the supposedly impregnable Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, likely will be higher. Anythi

Wow, I was really on fire at the start of the 2000s, to wit, look at this play-by-play of a grunge nightmare (and hilariously I was just recently trying to remember which of the big dumb grunge bands I had seen back in the day) which also references a broken friendship that I rarely remember (hahahahhahaha, Todd and Alyssa!): "I've said it before, and have no problem saying it again, people are stupid, and rockstars suck. You put the two together, in a small smokey club, plus have me lose $10 because i'm wearing a dress and have no pockets so I was carrying loose bills wadded up in my jacket pocket like some sort (ok, THE sort) of indie-pop-dork-girl i may be, and you have the makings for one very disgruntled music afficianado. Girl. Woman. Whatever. Here's the thing, right, I'm all good with rockstars like Oasis. I mean, those guys are clowns. Like David Lee Roth and other big ol' egos, at least they don't pretend to be nobodies and then whip out the att

Dude. What even is this anymore? Just dove into my original online extraveganza, as I tend to do when I'm feeling morose (typical at this time of the year) and the last part of a post from late November hit hard: "Right. Post-WTO scene is pretty dismal. I'm not up to the debate any longer. I will go out on a limb though and say that the wonder and anger that people are feeling can only be good. People in this country are very complacent when it comes to their civil rights, they talk about them, but few ever put themselves in a position to have them denied. Which is exactly what happened. Yep, it can happen to YOU. In "your" city. No fun. So for that, I'm glad. For the unending whining about "healing" and that sort of new agey stuff, that I'm not so glad. The chief of police has stepped down, and one can only hope the mayor will follow suit. Having been elected by the downtown business core who he failed to "protect" surely will get hi

Hey. I am trapped in my own head. Have been since before the internet. It's worse now than ever. Feelings of regret rooted in the overwhelming feeling that I have not achieved my potential. That I should be better. Done better. Made more of a difference. That I can be launched into a spiral by the simplest song playing on the radio station. That I literally have given up being out in the world - after seeming to have been in it for a long time, and yet, really, when you look at it, I wasn't out in it much at all. Given that the internet is the place where history will presumably live now, I will have barely existed in about 10 years. Even though I remember so much about weird little bits of cultural ephemera, I can't remember even half of the gigs I played (and probably only played a few hundred overall at most). And now? Now I'm just pissed off that I didn't spend more time thinking about what I really wanted to do, what I really cared about while I was in college