2DO Before I Die

A Vital, Vinyl Mission - In Search of a Record Player

As I write this week, I’m accompanied by a recently purchased vinyl copy of Devo's Freedom of Choice. How did this happen? I’ve feverishly been looking for a new apartment recently, pretending that if I don’t get one by midnight on October 31st, a tiny device in my brain would explode. (Which, knowing my brain lately, might happen anyway.) And when I was in my old neighborhood between the Castro and Noe Valley in San Francisco, I came across a tremendous used record and comic book store in the strangest location possible.

It was way up on the hill by the apartment where I lived from ’98-’00, before the babies began pouring into the neighborhood like ants on a pile of sugar cubes (No offense, prospective parents). There is absolutely nothing around there but residences for about a 10-block radius. But in a space where there was previously an unmanned laundromat, there was this new store. 

So I popped in and it was like someone had opened a place using my comic book collection, while tapping into my horrible musical taste at the same time. There was a wall dedicated to the Frank Miller Daredevils and a shelf of used records in which, within a total of ten seconds, I found the first three Devo albums, Steely Dan’s Aja, and More Songs about Buildings and Food by the Talking Heads. Needless to say, the place was a morgue. 

If asked how long they’d been around and the counter guy said, “A few months.” If his answer had been more than a year, I’d have been shocked. It doesn’t have a hope of surviving, even though I loved it. Or maybe because I loved it, if you know what I mean. So I couldn’t resist getting the Devo albums, just to help the place out. And because they were all $4.99. 

But that brought out massive regret #4,569 of my life – giving away, throwing out, leaving behind, breaking, or just plain losing the old Technics turntable I used to have. It was one of those things that, while packing up my old house for the most recent move, I expected to find in the basement. Just like my baseball glove, tennis racket, and any other item that I hadn’t used since getting married. But it never turned up. I have no idea what I did with it. At least I know where the wife went. The turntable? No clue. 

I was super pissed at myself because I love the sound of vinyl, especially on the weird ‘70s stuff. So the Devo albums put me on a mission. I needed a turntable and I needed it now. 

I believe in setting your expectations as low as possible

This one falls into the category of future regrets. I have enough pessimism to actually regret things before I do them. It's a gift. Anyway, I've been wandering around these past few months trying to figure out what to do and one idea may have finally won the battle. Although it still has to pass the drug test for the results to be official. I think I'm going to buy a bar and give it a go. The way I see it, the long decline into alcoholism and poverty is inevitable so let's give the process a kick start.

But seriously, I'm hoping this could work out. Owning a small business of some sort has always been the likely path because I've got the means, but nothing I've done has ever really prepared me for it. Media work is all I know and there's no way in hell in starting a magazine or buying a radio station, or even writing a book for that matter. No thank you. So when someone presented this bar idea, I was intrigued. I've done a lot of research on them (ahem) and do feel I'm something of an expert. Of course, I've also seen a lot of movies and that doesn't mean I could knock out a blockbuster. But I'm taking comfort in the fact that I've known a lot of bar owners over the years and I'm fairly confident I could out-think most of them. So hopefully that means I'll be able to pick up the nuances. It ought to be interesting if nothing else. Anything other than a complete disaster I'll consider a success, if that makes sense. (Unlike those who trumpet the power of positive thinking, I believe in setting your expectations as low as possible. Then you're likely not to be disappointed.)

I've passed the 'should I really do this' stage and moved onto the planning phase. I'm trying to find a place that might be up for grabs and has some of the characteristics I'm looking for. I'm not trying to get a massive nightclub or some other big scene place. All I'm after is a neighborhood sports bar. That might not make me a million bucks and that's perfectly cool as long as I can make a living. The trick is going to be finding a place in the right neighborhood. Sports bars can attract a lot of douche bags, especially in San Francisco, so I've got to find a relatively douche bag-free zone. Then it's a matter of putting in place all the things I like about my favorite places -- friendly staff, great happy hour, good TVs with all the games, stellar jukebox, and some good recreation (pool, darts, maybe a Nintendo Wii or two in the back).

Something that's struck me as amusing during the process has been people's reaction to the news. Friends I've told have usually said, "Wow, cool! You should do it." On the other hand, anyone in the bar business whom I've told have universally said, "Are you fucking crazy?" Whose advice should I take?...

**

Beer coasters pic courtesy of cherryblossomfavours.com

Regrets - 'Blades of Steel' Theme Tune

I'm somewhat regretful that the song I listened to more than any other during my teen years (commercial jingles don’t count or there are a few that would likely shoot straight to the top of the charts) was the 14-second theme to the video game 'Blades of Steel'. (Listen here)

I was going to say that I regretted spending all those hours during my formative years at the arcade or in front of the TV playing Nintendo but I can’t bring myself to do it. As I think about it, I have to admit to myself I actually enjoyed those roughly 6,000 hours spent playing videogames between the ages of 15 and 23.

Not only did I enjoy my extensive videogaming but it may have provided me with some of my greatest accomplishments, like having a two-month 'Tecmo Bowl' undefeated streak against the kids in my freshman dorm or shooting a 49 in 'Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf', just to name a couple.

(By the way, I once saw 'Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf' ranked #23 on the All-Time list of worst videogame titles, beating out competition as tough as 'Booby Kids' and 'Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom', if only because not only is there no fighting in the game, there isn’t even so much as an argument.) If it’s sad that those scores are among the proudest achievements in my life so far, or that I even consider them achievements, so be it.

Playing videogames also helped me get the highest-paying job of my life (scriptwriter for games) and also gave me a connection with my young cousins and nephews. Considering I’m not a big fan of youngsters in general (and the feeling is usually mutual), I was happy to find something I could do with them that wasn’t excruciating. And it’s amazing the respect that comes when you kick a kid’s ass in Wii tennis...

Still, to think I probably could’ve listened to the 'White Album' 500 times in the time I spent listening to that 'Blades of Steel' theme song, that is a bummer.

*****
Download 'Blades of Steel' here.

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Escape from Alcatraz - Sailing in the SF Bay

Perhaps, when just before getting on his 12-foot Sunfish sailboat, my friend Jonas handed me a wetsuit and said, '€œYou should probably wear this', I should have realized it would be an interesting trip.

Well actually, I knew it would be interesting, possibly dangerous, but I didn'€™t think it would be potentially hypothermia-inducing. Jonas had just bought the boat at a big yard sale for about 50 bucks and this was to be its maiden voyage. You know the Sunfish. It's the little sailboat that you see on ponds everywhere, typically with some 10-year-old at the controls.

But instead of a pond, this was the San Francisco Bay. And that 10-year-old knows more about sailing than the two of us combined. We had a simple mission -€“ to sail from our launch point (a boat ramp south of the Bay Bridge) out to Alcatraz, do one lap around the island, and return. Fairly modest.

It became quickly obvious that the wetsuits were a good idea. We hadn't gone more than a few hundred meters when a gust of wind caught us, the tiny boat flipped over like a pancake, and into the freezing cold water we went.

The capsizing wasn'€™t a major issue the first three or four times it happened - when we were south of the Bay Bridge and the wind and waves were somewhat tame. But when we got out into the middle of the Bay, near Alcatraz, it was a different story. (continues...)

Taking Pictures - 'Speed Expo '86' And Other Lost Classics

It would be great to be a better photographer. I thought I wanted to be one when I was a kid but every time I got my hands on a camera, I would take awful shots...if I bothered to take any at all. It dawned on me that I liked the idea of taking cool pictures rather than actually making the effort to learn how to do it. But that didn’t stop me from begging my folks to get a video camera so that I could get on my way to becoming the next George Roy Hill.

They finally buckled when I was about 13 and suddenly I was forced into shooting videos. Predictably, I was no better at it than I was at still photography. And the camera was way heavier to boot. (This was the dark ages before digital, so the camera was this giant thing into which that you had to put a VHS tape, making it roughly the size of a VCR you had to carry on your shoulder.)

Money had been spent to get the thing, however, so there was no sticking it in the closet and forgetting about it. I had to use it, for family vacations at the very least. Those vacations provided some typically mind-numbing home movies and early attempts at original short films were Alan Smithee bad. But there were some gems – maybe one out of 15 – that came out of the old Panasonic.

The best of the bunch was Speed Expo ’86. We were visiting our family in the Midwest and I shot about a half hour of my older motorhead cousins showing off their cars. It was no masterpiece but the kitsch value is off the charts – lots of short shorts, bad haircuts, illegal activity and old cars doing big smoky burnouts in a high school parking lot. Those guys love it so much they had it converted to DVD a few years back and have requested that I put it on YouTube one of these days so we can share it with the world. (continues)

The Farmer's Daughter - Living in a Motel

Of all the places I’ve ever lived, the shakiest choice may have been the old Farmer’s Daughter motel in Los Angeles. I had one motivation for bunking in a rundown motel for four months. It was walking distance to my favorite bar. That may seem like a fairly crappy reason but, believe me, that was a tremendous luxury. This is L.A. we’re talking about, and if you can walk to wherever you spend the majority of your time, you’re in a very small minority.

For me, that place happened to be the outdoor beer-and-wine bar in the middle of the Farmer’s Market. Few places I’ve ever been were as pleasing to me as that joint. Never crowded, the best happy hour prices in town, a bartender I was in love with, etc.

The only problem with it was its hours – 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. – but I was able to work around that with plenty of early starts. It wasn’t all just drinking beer, of course. I did the majority of my schoolwork there, read a ton of books, and wrote my fair share of letters. Probably a sad commentary that I’ve always found it easier to get work done in a bar than at home.

But my main regret of those four months, which made up my last semester in college, certainly was not spending six hours daily at a daytime bar. I couldn’t have enjoyed that more. No, it was deciding to live in the motel. (continues)

I Am A Quitter...

Kids, don’t quit football. That’s the lesson here. I quit my Pop Warner team when I was 12 and it was the first step down a very slippery slope. A habit was established. I’ve heard many people say “I’m no quitter” when justifying the completion of an unpleasant or otherwise unnecessary act. Well I am proud to say that I, most definitely, am a quitter. Maybe proud is the wrong word, but you get the point. There’s no job too big or errand too small that can’t be bailed on.

The Pop Warner incident is the first time I can remember quitting on something significant. (I always wondered why they call youth football “Pop Warner” in the States. I guess baseball had already usurped the “Little League” label so they picked a long dead Hall of Fame coach with a cool name and hung his sign on the door.) I was the smallest kid on the team but I made up for it by being the slowest. In other words easily the worst player on our 15-kid roster, which added up to a whole mess of bench time in the games.

Given how much I enjoyed practice (a lot of running followed by a lot of getting yelled at), I’d had enough by week four. When my friend Geoff Randolph told me he wanted to quit, I had a partner in crime. Thankfully my parents had no problem with it, their desire to teach me a lesson about following through on my responsibilities outweighed by their desire not to have to drive me back and forth to practice every day. It was tough to break the news to coach and of course Geoff made me do the talking, but we got through it. Coach hit me in the head with his whistle once more for old time’s sake and then it was over.

It certainly didn’t harm my love for the sport in the long run any. I could watch 37 straight hours of football on any given weekend. Again, maybe could is the wrong word. Do is more appropriate.
(story continues...)

Asleep At The Wheel - Nascar Racing

Man, I would have liked to seen that Save Mart 350 race a dozen years ago. Anyone who’s ever been to a stock car race can attest to the noise that’s created. I mean, you can’t hear shit for four hours other than the roar of those goddamn engines. Which makes it all the more amazing that I was able to spend the entire race sleeping in the bed of a pickup truck about 200 meters from the racetrack. Still, it’s not especially hard to figure out how to make my feat possible. One can sleep through just about anything if you deprive mind and body of rest long enough.

For those who might not be familiar with the finer points of NASCAR racing, as it’s called, it is the most popular from of auto racing in the States. Rather than formula one cars or some other type of super car, the cars being raced are Ford Tauruses, Dodge Chargers, Chevy Monte Carlos, etc. -- hence the 'stock' car designation. Of course, the bodies of the cars are the only things that resemble the real thing. Everything under the hood is 100% race car. There are about 40 cars in a race and the races run anywhere from 300 to 600 miles, depending on the track. You can guess how long the Save Mart 300 is.

That particular event was supposedly one hell of a race. Rusty Wallace over Mark Martin by a half a second... Being the inveterate sports fan and gambler that I am, the point of going up there was to watch the race. But there were other reasons for making the trip too. There was a total of about ten of us in two pickup trucks. None of us had ever been to an auto race above the county fair level. So we wanted to check out the scene, party as much as possible, and spend little to no money.

That was the heist aspect of the weekend. We resolved to spend no money getting into the race ground. We were going to sneak our way in there somehow, with plenty of beer and food to keep us going for the two days we were there. It isn’t like going to a baseball game. This is an all-weekend event, with a practice day, qualifying day, and race day. We went up the day before race day so we would have a night to drink in the scene and get a good feel for the NASCAR experience. (story continues)

Regrets - Eating Habits and the Hot Dog Taco

As I finished my hot dog taco the other day, I got to wondering about how I developed my rather unique culinary habits. I guess it’s not much of a mystery, really. I apologize to the late (more like slightly tardy, actually), great George Carlin for stealing his line, which goes, “When I was a kid, I was what’s known as a fussy eater, which is really a euphemism for ‘big pain in the ass.’” I’m sure my parents would agree with that sentiment...

I wish I hadn’t been that way, I swear. I choose to believe that good eaters are like good athletes. I wanted to play second base for the Red Sox when I grew up, but hitting a 90-mph fastball just ain’t in my genes. Then there are those guys that aren’t necessarily born with all the talent in the world but they work their asses off and eventually scrape out a decent living playing minor league ball. That undoubtedly is one of my greatest regrets - that I didn't work harder to broaden my tastes growing up. Unfortunately, my six-year-old self wasn’t listening when my 'eating coaches' told me, “Look, you really work hard at this and in five or six years you’ll be wolfing down broccoli raab with the best of them.”

My folks tried for a while to broaden my horizons but I was the worst kind of fussy eater. If I didn’t like it, which was almost all of the time, I just wouldn’t eat. Going to bed without dinner was actually kind of a treat in my mind. Something is off kilter in my stomach or brain, or likely both, because hunger was never an issue for me. And, thanks to the fact that I was the youngest kid in my family, my parents were more or less over the whole parenting thing by the time I made it to six or seven. “He wants macaroni and cheese tonight too? Fine, I don’t feel like fighting with the kid again.”

Regrets, I've Had A Few... - First of this week's new columnists

What a tremendous feeling it is to look back on the experiences of life with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Unfortunately, I usually look back at stuff I’ve done or been through and think, “Man, I played that one wrong.” Sure, there are a few things I’ve pulled off. But even so, I’d rather not talk about that stuff. The memories I tend to look back on are the events that didn’t unfold quite the way I’d hoped.

From mild missteps to stupendous fuck-ups, those are the highlights in my scrapbook.Maybe it’s just a nervous tic or something, but it makes my skin crawl to have to discuss something worthwhile I may have done. If I’m hanging out with a bunch of friends and one of them says, “Oh, Lem, tell them about that time you worked with (fill-in-the-blank) and did that really cool (whatever-it-is),” I’ll think to myself, “Oh, Christ, thanks for bringing that up,” mutter a few uninteresting words, and hope nobody asks a follow-up question.

But if he were to say, “Hey, Lem, tell them about the time you fell face-first onto the hood of a cop car in the parking lot of the Lucky Penny diner and knocked out your front tooth but somehow managed not to get arrested,” Well then it’s showtime, baby! Now there’s a story I can get behind.

So now that my mindset has been established, I think there’s a little a something to say about all the things that, sure, one may want to do before they die but which may not have quite worked out according to plan. I certainly have far more recollections of those kinds of experiences than the ones that turned out right. And maybe there’s some value in the 2DoBeforeIDie universe for recollections of those not-so-perfect moments. Anybody with me? Stay tuned…

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TOMORROW: In "Freewheeling" with Joe Kurmaskie - "How to storm a walled, Italian city"...