Sticking around...

...maybe it's your morbid voyeuristic side that's a direct result of a swirling concoction of jaded Gen X-er, throw away pop culture, and too much reality TV. Maybe you just want to hang in there to see how I turn out... It can't be normal you know, it can't be just some semi-manicured greenish-yellow lawn with dog and SUV and a 401K... It has to be a 'Crash and burn' or 'Fizzle and burn' or a 'Fuk are we ever gunna fuking light this thing and burn here or what?' kind of outcome, there can be no sunset fade-out ending for Jay...

You stick around because you have VIP seating to an ultra low budget Greek tragedy and you've already read most of the script... you just have to hang in there for the 3rd act so you can answer all the exclusive 'insider questions' outside the theatre after the play...

J in L.A.

My trip to L.A. was amazing! I landed on Wednesday night and jumped a Super Shuttle van for what felt like 37 hours of going around in circles thru LAX fishing for more income for the driver. Made it to hotel around midnight and made instant friends with a young lady from NYC. I called her Parker Pose because she smiled a lot and had strait dark hair. The Standard Hotel is a 21+ only hotel (thank god), but doesn’t allow outside alcohol inside. This is a strange paradox to the hotels in the Midwest that all but encourage their patrons to fill the tub with ice and chill a case of Busch cans for the weekend. I went down to the over price diner and had a drink and then to the adjoining night club that was blaring hip-pop jams and got a drink 12 seconds before last call was announced.

Now, in Chicago “Last Call” means: “Hey everyone, we’re gunna close up soon so try and finish your drink while I tighty up my bar and dip these lipstick stained martini glasses into 3 sequentially less soapy sinks of water”… But in L.A. “Last Call” means large bouncers violate your personal space holding busboy tubs giving you thug looks while saying: “Let’s go, Let’s go, Let’s go now, NOW little man”, until you drop your .75% full drink that you just paid 8 dollars for into the bus-tub and walk away hoping you can make it to the door before getting pistol whipped.

After getting forced out of the club (right in the middle of T-Payne too), I retired for the evening.

The next morning I went shopping on Melrose… Now anyone that knows me knows that I do not swim… in fact outside of the spur of the moment cannon balls I did in St. Louis last summer with Tommy and 2Fresh in our underwear, I haven’t swam with premeditation since 2001 when I was in New Orleans. But when in Rome…

I stopped in a surf shop in what I then figured out was L.A.’s Boystown and found some sweet little Euro-Trunks. (I also found my 2010 Pride outfit but that’s for another blog).

The L.A. G-star is nice, albeit light in the cool jackets department, but the girls in the store were sweet and good re-folders of things I tried on and promptly discarded. One of them liked my pants so she was my favorite. I stopped in a few other stores and nosed around at a lot of bejeweled and distressed garments for the fall, nothing of which sparked much interest. I walked nearly 400 miles that afternoon in 176 degree heat so I needed a nap before rolling out to the show.

Apoptygma Berzerk was playing Knitting Factory and Brandon put me on the list so things were working out smooth. The show was full… full of L.A. Goths! I mean wildly dressed individuals in all manors of menacingly black layers of black on black in black with black accents. Some of them were so clad in black that they left a black trail of ashen liquid behind them – not unlike a squid or octopus would do – as their huge boots and tattered layers washed by me.

Aerodrone was on stage when I entered and I saw Carlton from The Dreaming looking a lot like Johnny Radtke. Tza was flipping her inhumanly pin strait hair around and looking cute as ever.

I talked with the dudes from The Surrender (who are fantastic by the way) and found about the after party plans. I watched Apop from the side of the stage. Logan played a song with them as did a heavily tattooed short guy in a little hat.

The after party was across the street at a club called Perversion. It looked like a lobby of a convention center with pounding goth jams in the main and side rooms. It felt like I was at Vampire High’s Home Coming 2009. No cool lights and no fog, just dark. I was at the bar waiting for a drink when a short guy covered in tattoos bellied up next to me and said hello. The music was pounding loud but we spoke back and for a while and he asked me where I was from. When I told him Chicago he asked if I knew Kill Hannah and I said that I was friends with Matt and he told me to tell Matt hello. I said I would and asked him his name, to which he replied “Vindy”. I remember thinking “Vindy is a strange name” but you know people have made up names all the time and he looked like a rock dude so Vindy it was, fine by me. So I texted Matt:

JR: Vindy says hello… P.S. I’m in L.A.

MD: Who’s Vindy? What, you’re in L.A.? Cool.

JR: Shorter guy like myself w/ little hat, covered in tattoos… how’s SWR tour?

MD: Vindy… No idea who that is, does he have a cane?

JR: No visible cane… little hat though

Hung with Apop and The Surrender at the Surrenders compound in West Hollywood till 4am talking about amps and drums and whatnot… Thanks for the ride Tyler… :D

----- next morning -----

MD: Yeah, no idea who Vindy is… have fun in L.A.

The next night I headed down town to an Art show that Kendra’s Chicago friend was having and ran into my friend Margot, promptly texted Peter in Boston to let him know I was having more fun then him now. I met up with my boy Hans who then brought us to the coolest night club I’ve ever been in. (Besides maybe Ghost Bar in Vegas). It was called the Edison and was in the basement of the historic Edison building down town. It was like a brick and Iron boiler room with LEDs and candle light accents. I guess this is 'Swank L.A.' Hans works for the club air brushing the models so he gets the hook up. After that we head to Das Bunker to catch the ‘secret’ Apop show. I begin to think that I’ve come to L.A. to study West Coast Goths versus Neo Goths for a compare and contrast term paper.

After the show (which sounded amazing), I’m back stage hanging with Brandon and in walks Vindy… I felt compelled to tell him but at the same time a bit nervous… finally I just say: “Matt said he didn’t know any Vindys”. He said “I’m Benji. Benji Madden” (from Good Charlotte). I then feel like a huge dick… Both of us pull out our phones and to text Matt. I can see what he’s typing

BM: You don’t know meeee mutha fuker? I’m with Jay Ramirez right now!

JR: I suck, it was Benji Madden from GC

MD: Tell him he owes me a steak!

We talked about the new GC record, which I guess is going to be huge and he was honestly the nicest guy ever, so down to Earth and cool.

Thanks for the Apop hoodie Stephen… (not pictured)

The next day my friend Margot took us up into the hills and I saw L.A. in the daylight. It was hot as all hell but very pretty. I saw a horse and a few thirsty dogs along the way as well.

That night I was ready for some L.A. glam rock so I went to Viper Room on Sunset Blvd. There was a dirty punk band playing upstairs and right before I was going to leave Vinny Appice got up and played Rock you like a Hurricane with them. Totally sweet! Then to Rainbow, which is like a rock-n-roll Denny’s with dirtier floors and smellier bathrooms. I met some Australians, talked about crocodiles, music and Squid Billies. Talked to Johnny Haro for bit and that was it. (Everything closes at 2am remember).

Sunday was my last full day so I planned on taking it easy. I was at Skin Graft trying on stuff when Sara T called me. When I told her I was in L.A. she screamed “WHAAA… So is Dan”. Turns out Madina Lake was in town shooting a video for Welcome to Oblivion. I met them up at Rainbow that night and we caught up. I guess Dave Navarro was there and I remember for a second being mildly amused by the idea of inspecting his perfectly manicured facial hair but soon lost interest in all that noise…

Cut to around 3:30am

Me to Mathew: “Are you sure you know where the Chamberlin is?”

Mathew: “Yup, dude yup, I know right where it is”

Dan texted me yesterday, him and the twins wondered around lost just after that… HA.

Nathan trying on Kendra's jacket, (the same one I had to wear to get into The Edison, 'L.A. Swank remember... they don't take kindly to t-shirts with Motley Crue on them I guess)...

Last Night...

The blast went off some hundreds of miles in the distance, but I saw the rushing wave coming for me with amazing speed, I fell into the ditch outside of my high school and buried my nose into my hands and my hands into the soft earth as the purple rush of radioactive debris flooded over me, I couldn’t breath and I might have screamed but the sound of a million gallons of water dumping into my ears was all I could hear. It was over just as fast and when I got up the landscape around me was deadly silent. Everything was light grayish-white and huge flakes of soft purple carcinogen snow floated lazily around me.
For the most part, the structures around me were still standing so I must have been farther from the blast then I thought. I contemplated how I could have witnessed the angry mushroom blast into the stratosphere and yet the flash didn’t instantly burn the eyes out of my head, or how the wave of irritated debris didn’t rip the flesh from my bones as it rushed over me at 250 miles an hour…

No matter for that now… I need to get home and load some guns, what if this is a movie and hordes of post apocalyptic zombie mutants will be coming for me… hungry for my brain or something.

I ran to the farthest northeast entrance of my high school and kicked the door in (something I always wanted to do), and looked around. It was pretty empty; it must be a weekend, or maybe summer break. I ran up and down the halls slipping on the freshly fallen purple snow. Aside from a few burned out corpses and charred books I didn’t find anything useful for any sort of zombie army defense. A boy I don’t know came around the corner and looked at me in horror. He didn’t look mutated or melted or anything but maybe I did… I simply grabbed his shirt and told him we better cover our noses because nothing purple should ever really be ingested. We both made makeshift surgical masks and I told him that he could tag along with me if he wanted but that I was headed for my parents house to make sure they were okay and to load some weapons.

We ran down the road to U.S. 31 and saw a small shack with 4 or 5 U-Haul vans outside in the dirt parking lot. There was a decaying dog still tied to it’s leash outside the door… I kicked the door in and found a few people inside huddled around the desk looking at papers. I told them I needed a van as I grabbed for the keys hanging on the wall. The eldest lady, who must have run the business didn’t seem willing to let me have the keys and began to raise a fuss about how she didn’t have the gas in them to just lend them out to whomever. I gave her a hard push and she toppled head-over-feet backwards. The purple snow had begun to subside over here, and as I looked out the tiny window next to the keylock box I saw some fires burning in the distance, toward Holland… toward my parent’s house… toward where I was headed. I looked back at the now decaying people sitting in there chairs, still studying the withered papers but now with empty eye sockets and leathery faces and I said: “I’ll return the van when I can… and you should have covered your mouths when the purple wind came”… I walked out without closing the door and found myself alone again. The kid must have run off, I didn’t need him anyway.

The van didn’t start right away and when it did it didn’t run very well, the air intake was choked by the nuclear fall out and it kept stalling on me. There were no other working cars on the road, just a few flipped over in the deep ditches along the sides of the highway. The sky was getting darker now, a deeper purple then the snow, but the ground was glowing softly like a low watt incandescent light… I thought about Chicago at 3am on a Wednesday night in January, when the ground was brighter then the sky like someone painted the landscape thinly on top of the surface of a huge light blub and you could look in every direction and see no living things. Just steal and concrete humming with a faint glow in soft fresh snow.

I crashed the van into the neighbor’s car next to our house, and then jumped out without turning it off. I ran up to the northern side of my parent’s house, my heart was pounding out of my chest, but something caught my eye in the backyard. Down near the creek where my birthday-tree was planted there was something shimmering golden-white. I had to run over to it to see what it was. On the edge of the creek embankment a fresh well had sprung and was pouring an opaque green liquid into the creek. It looked like Absinthe, frosty white-green and swirling with movement under its smooth surface. Under the shallow wake I saw coins of all different shapes and sizes, gold and silver and bronze coins, from ages ago and from millions of years in the future. I was afraid to reach into the water for fear my hand would melt off or freeze. I tore a branch from my birthday-tree and poked around in the shallow riverbed until I had pushed one of the coins onto the soft muddy bank. I picked it up and rubbed off the years of dirt that had crusted over the deeply cut design. The coin wasn’t in English but I could read the numbers: 08052057.

I know those numbers, August 5, 2057. It’s from my favorite short story from Ray Bradbury. It’s part of the reason I came up with the name of my band…

Without worrying about my hand melting off from the Absinthe colored spring, I shoved my hand deep into the opening and it was freezing cold inside. I shovel-cupped my hand and dredged out a huge bounty of coins and soft mud. I looked up into the sky and smiled at god for a moment. I kept digging for the next few minutes each time digging deeper and deeper into the increasingly larger hole and each time removing all manors of coins from throughout humanities existence. A great record keeper had made his stash right next to my birthday-tree and it took a nuclear accident for me to find it. I was sure that my life’s worries were over now. I wouldn’t have to pay any bills ever again… But was it because I found this strange treasure or because the Earth was destroyed and no one would come looking for me now? The deeper I dug the more I pulled out: Clumps of my curly hair as a child, my favorite childhood teddy bear that my niece accidentally burned when she stood him up against the electric space heater in my sister’s room when she was 6 years old. The dark blue plastic army guys I buried in the front yard when I was a kid… The car keys to my first car, my brown and green button down shirt that the paramedics cut off of my collage roommate Brent in the ambulance on the way to the hospital when he fell off the balcony at Michigan State and landed on his face. The tiny star necklace I bought for Mandy that she lost at work, my neon green drum sticks, my favorite drawing book with the dragon on the cover, the picture of Becky when she was a sophomore in art class, the shoebox with my marching band gloves and the broken snare drum parts I had under my bed… my stainless steal silver box my dad made that I had my 13 lucky buffalo nickels in. The coins were running out by my past wasn’t. It was pouring out faster then I could dig now, like if someone on the other side was pushing it out. Expelling it from the cold Earth onto the scorched and sickly post-nuclear landscape that I may have asked for just before I saw that blast tear open the sky back by my high school. But that’s where the dream began, there was nothing before, and I wouldn’t ask for that, I would never ask for a place for everything I had once been to be reborn, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have been a burnt and dead version of what my world was before that moment... That’s not worth reliving.

The City at Night

Where our broken bodies lie, the darkest clouds form…
Like Pagan sounds from the oncoming storm…
Hooks from the sky selling me sin
To the corner of the room I’ve backed myself in…

When you learn to lose, winning is okay too…

My collage roommate Brent was the greatest loser I’ve ever met. Sure he was as competitive as all American boys are taught to be, and he was good at a lot of things but losing was his specialty. He was great at Dr. Mario, walking on stilts, and making chicken wings in his Fry-Daddy, but what I remember the most was his ability to continuously lose at the sports video game John Madden Football. He and my other seemingly well adjusted roommate Chris use to play John Madden Football every single night for at least 3 years. Brent never won. Now when I say ‘never’ I don’t mean it flippantly or for dramatic effect either. I mean Chris kicked the pants off of Brent every single time they played the game for the duration of our roommatehood. But Brent would take these beatings with an eloquent and almost inhuman grace. See Brent came from a very small town and went to a very small rural high school in northern Michigan. I think he told me that he graduated with 36 other students. Like all good American boys he played a number of organized high school sports, and partly because of his athletic ability, but mostly due to the sobering fact that the athletically capable student population was so minuscule; Brent played offense, defense, and special-teams on his school’s varsity football team.

One night when we were profoundly drunk, and without a single female in a 10 mile radius of our apartment, he told us all matter-of-factly something equally as profound as our collective intoxication level. He explained that on Homecoming night of his senior year, which was October 17th and the day he turned 17, (His Golden Birthday), he caught a diving 4th quarter game winning touchdown pass in the end zone with time running out on the clock. Later that night he smoked a huge joint in the back of his good friend’s car listening to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing while getting drunk on warm cans of Coors Light beer. And even later that night he had sex with a girl after the Homecoming Dance (where he may have been crowned Homecoming King, I can’t remember if that is just my subconscious trying to inflate the story for dramatic effect or not, but just doing the math on that would give him an 18.5% chance of being the actual Homecoming King. And that is if every single senior attended the dance which is highly unlikely. I’m sure the Stoners and Gearheads where out smoking pot behind a dumpster and missed the whole event because they were to busy talking about how they’d still have sex with Tori Spelling even though she looks like a horse). Brent said after that night, losing didn't matter to him anymore. That was it… this guy didn’t mind losing! Well that’s just flipping everything Western Culture holds sacred on its head isn't it...

Being a known Dove like that has its drawbacks though. Once other dudes learned this character trait of Brent’s and realized they could rack up countless W’s onto their personal self-esteem scoreboard in any sort of contest they wished, lines formed around the block with Michigan’s male youth waiting to beat the pants off of Brent in sport or other games of chance and wit. I imagine that this is what a hooker must feel like with countless suburban, often married men, ejaculating into and onto them night after night without ever so much as a tickle of enjoyment gained. (Sorry that was gross).

One of my very last memories of Brent and Chris playing Madden Football came after I had already graduated from collage but was still living in the house in a vain attempted to hold onto my irresponsibility as long as I could. It was a typical Wednesday night (or Saturday night I don’t remember). Every TV in the house was on, fighting for volume supremacy with the horrid jam-band music billowing out of my trust-fund-kid-pothead roommate’s shithole of a room. 4 smoldering cigarettes for every 1 conscious occupant of the house, and a menagerie of clear, brown, green, tall, and chubby beer bottles in various states of emptiness and temperature placed atop all manors of flat surfaces or the floor. Brent and Chris were locked in another epic battle of electronic versions of real athletes running and tackling and blitzing each other all over the place. The TV was humming with the vibrations of charged electrons and sweet-ass 64-bit graphics. I think it was storming outside or it was leap year, something was amiss from what I can remember. But this was the night, this was THE night… Brent was up by some number of touchdowns on Chris and time was running out. Everyone gathered to witness this bit of folklore in the making and it was eating Chris alive. Honestly I rarely spent any time around them when they played that game because watching two people play a videogame is on par with watching a grasshopper scratch his head with his huge back leg… although faintly amusing in some sense, it’s mostly just boring as all hell. But when history is being made the bandwagon seems to run out of window seating rather quickly. As time ticked away, Chris was trying some desperate tactics. From what I can surmise this meant throwing the long bomb on every offensive down and blitzing Brent’s quarterback on every defensive play in hopes of causing a turn over. But Brent was picking up the defensive trickery and covering all of the deep wide-outs with no problems, while also covering the flats for any would be quick slants. (Why the fuk do I know this stuff? What is wrong with me). Toward the end of the 4th quarter Chris attempted what was in the sports world referred to as the ‘nail in the coffin’ play. A quick-slant pass to a wide receiver that Brent’s safety anticipated, picked-off, and ran back for a touchdown. (Complete with high stepping and end zone spike graphics to roaring digital crowd cheers). Chris grit his teeth together with so much force - accompanied by a guttural moan - that a sizeable triangular shaped piece of his front tooth chipped off and flew about 4 feet strait ahead, hitting the TV screen and landing on the beer stained but still quite sky-blue shag carpet in front of us all. Brent didn’t throw any high-fives, he didn’t brag or do any retarded end zone dances. He calmly set the games joystick down, lit a cigarette and walked out of the room to retrieve a colder beer. It seems like everyone else spoke of this moment for weeks but Brent never said a word about it. I guess when you’ve got the whole losing thing down… winning doesn’t really matter all that much either.

Jay's Soup Cube. Episode 1 (The Pilot)

Hi and welcome to Jay's Soup Cube, I'm your host Jay.

Today we're going to try the Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle (with white meat only) from ConAgra Foods Inc.

After placing into a ceramic bowl, this canned delight cooked up in a jiff on high in the microwave. A dash of pepper and a healthy splash of Tobasco Sauce later and you're ready to go. Today's accompaniment is a Turkey and Swiss sandwich on whole wheat bread with Jay's brand hot chips and a pickle on the side. (slurp)

---eat eat eat, sip sip sip --- (Time is elapsing)

Over all I'd give this soup a 4 stars out of five. With it being touted as "Healthy" and all (note the little running man next to the 'C' in 'Choice' denoting that either: A) This soups so good you need to run to the store to buy some, B) People who run for fun tend to enjoy this soup rather then say... the Meatnormus Rib-n-Giblets Triple Cheese Burger at Burgers King or C) If you eat this soup to fast you may need to run to the bathroom), the most obvious thing you taste is the lack of sodium. We Americans love our salt and when embargoes are placed on it by Socialist companies like ConAgra Foods Inc. (the 'Con' stands of Con-munists Universal Health Care Plan Supporters I'd imagine my Super-Republican co-worker would accuse), our taste buds can pick up on it right away. Aside from the salt deficiency (there-by increasing my chances of getting a neck goiter I'm sure), what I did find refreshing was the "Only White Meat" aspect of this soup. See, every can of chicken based foodstuffs almost always claims to be made with 'only' white meat. But anyone who has ever had a can of soup knows that sometimes when that chicken-colored object that is floating at the rim of the bowl as buoyantly as a chubby kid at the community pool, it is anything but "white meat". You're never quite sure what it is exactly but you're sure as shit it isn't white meat. (It's gizzards or chicken ankle fat I always assume). The Tyson Mechanically Separated Chicken Pieces Machine never bats a thousand, we all know this. But every piece of chicken in this soup was in fact white meat chicken from what I could tell so I'm happy with it. I'd say to buy this soup when you are in need of a saltless good time and don't have hours to spend hand separating your chicken carcasses.

Tune in next time for Jay's Soup Cube when I try another brand of canned domesticated fowl in liquid.

Thanks and have a nice day.

Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle (with white meat only) - 0 0 0 0 o

Trying to think of a word I like better then Motto or Mantra because those words both suck

comasoftjay: Mantra… hmmm that is better then Motto I suppose but it is still not that great of a word. I need something stoic and possibly Russian sounding I think. Something iron and rust clad, something that sounds cold-war era and rigid. Something like (this is a completely made up word): Afrendendo… or... Carthogen...
cxxxxxxx2: than use that
comasoftjay: hmm but it doesn't mean anything... i just made those up...
comasoftjay: Cadre'
comasoftjay: I think really like that word despite its negative connotations. Maybe I could say The Imperial Cadre of the Divine Jay Ramirez say: and then place my statement right after that!
cxxxxxxx2: sure you can do whatever you want
comasoftjay: This would give the implication that I'm a tyrannical dictator of some hopelessly poor and backward country, and that my Cadre' of military police recite my doctrines in the street whilst dolling out fair or unfair justice heavy handedly on the oppressed populous, all while I’m resting comfortably in my imperial palace... eating grapes and watching American cartoons on the TV Lookiddy Box.
cxxxxxxx2: you are a very strange boy Jay…