May 18th, 2019.

It’s not what you think, it’s how you act. I think that’s a truism in a LOT of situations, whether it’s facing anger, or fighting down the lessons that are ingrained so hard that you see them rising up in you even as you KNOW they’re wrong. It’s the beginning to the answer of racism, the beginning of the answer to a vast multitude of crimes against humanity – our hatreds and our jealousies and our worst tendencies. Knowing that thinking it is invisible. If we can derail the thought on the way to our face or our fist, there’s hope.

I know, it sounds like a really heavy post. But in this case I’m mostly thinking of a role playing game. A role playing game that’s not going well. I’m seeking something that’s not forthcoming and the other night this was especially true. As we get older, most people don’t have a job like mine, one that keeps them in constant contact with other people… and so I don’t feel the need to get together regularly just for socializing, I want to get together and play the game! In the case of an RPG, I’m seeking out the storytelling and the adventure and a little bit of violence. I’m seeking that escapism – and that was NOT happening. We were caught in minutiae and distraction and staring at phones and I was getting really, really frustrated.

Coming home, writing the setlist. It seems like a good plan. A MIGHTY PLAN!!!

Instead of saying “hey guys, this isn’t doing it for me – I’m out of here” and leaving in a huff, I drew a map to understand what wasn’t being described well-enough, and to illustrate to people too busy talking about donuts to grasp… and knowing that just drawing a map when that’s sort of the GM’s job is kind of a passive-aggressive thing to do, I started cutting out pieces and placing them up and down the river. On the one hand, it got the job done and even got us re-focused – and more importantly it allowed me to draw a knife frustratedly and stab the shit out of my notebook.

Calmly.

Oh, and damn, my stealth rolls were on POINT.

May 17th, 2019 at the New Deal Cafe.

Friday night’s gig at New Deal Café was Friday night’s gig despite the fact that I kept thinking it was Saturday night’s gig. Our next several New Deal gigs are Friday night gigs so I better get it in my head that we CAN have New Deal gigs on Fridays rather than Saturdays. Looking back, I’m not even sure that THAT many of our New Deal [Nude Eel] HAVE been Saturdays rather than Fridays, but for whatever the reason, I did have to keep correcting myself… it definitely WAS a Friday night.

NOT Saturday.

And it was a GREAT night to boot. We showed up really early and got a lot of our sound check and ALL of our setup done before the audience showed up. Looking out into the forest of “reserved” signs made us feel pretty good and as the room piled up, packed in and eventually stood up because it truly was standing room only, we were feeling pretty damned good about ourselves.

Greg Klyma kicking things off at the New Deal Cafe.

Greg Klyma was on point as our opening act and his storytelling inspired OUR storytelling and over the course of the night, many a great story was told.