Folks,

Wine here.  So, hey, it’s been a little bit hasn’t it?  The past few weeks have been crammed full of things as Whiskey so plainly put out there, but I assure you we’ve (or at least I’ve) been up to some sober activities as well!  Yes, Halloween was a hoot as was our night being incredibly close to one of my favorite bands of all time, The Sounds (insert a slight school boy squeal)!  But, the bit I want to focus on for this post would be my trip back to Columbus, my first home to drop off my faithful stead to roam through slower and better paved pastures around those suburban streets.

It’s been a sad time for beloved car lately.  About two weeks ago I bee bop down our stoop on my way to work for a lovely Wednesday morning with the grad students when I notice a pool of shattered glass by the driver’s side door and notice as I get closer that my window had been smashed in!  Naturally I check inside to see if anything is taken but no…everything is in the exact same place as it was.  Well except for my window which was now located on the driver’s seat, the floor, on the street and pretty much everywhere else in a 4 ft radius.  Now I’ve already painted this picture that I have a stressful job that really doesn’t give me too much time to myself outside of those two glorious days off where I get to recharge so I decided along with my mother’s guidance to just wait it out and drive the car home sans window…Fast forward a week and a half later and I embark on quite possibly the most epic road trip I’ve experienced in that car which is actually saying a lot considering the amount of death defying journey’s through mountains I’ve navigated safely through with my go-kart.  Well the trip was filled with odd smells throughout the not-so-great state of Indiana and forced me to resort to using my big headphones as earmuffs because there really is a reason why people don’t drive with their windows down in November.  I made it back safely and was only just barely run off the road by a semi once, so I would consider this a successful ride.

I had only four goals during my short short stay in Columbus: 1) See family 2) Get coffee from Stauf’s 3) Turn car over 4) Not miss my flight home.  Anything else was considered bonus points, so thankfully I was able to see some Columbus friends but not nearly as many as I hoped to see and managed to get a bit of sleep in the process.  Now I’d love to go on some sort of introspective rant as to how it felt to come home after becoming acquainted and essentially starting a new life up here in Chicago but either I’ve gotten over wanting to do that or I just wasn’t there long enough for it all to sink in.  I guess it was kind of surreal to be back but honestly it’s just Columbus, Ohio…it’s not really a city that’s synonymous with profound.  Rather I guess the absence of feeling should reflect well on my, either getting over, or packing up and shipping to Chicago, issues I had yet to work out.  Or, like I said all of that trite dribble doesn’t bear the same weight in my consciousness anymore after listening to people with issues I couldn’t even imagine having to live with.  Whatever the case may be, it was still a good time in the Buckeye state and hopefully I get to go back soon but as it stands now I probably won’t be back until 2010.  I’m going to really miss driving that car though.  We had some fun whipping around those familiar roads one last time, mainly showing off for all of the other mid-size luxury cars what we had learned surviving the commute on Lake Shore Dr. over the past three months, or what it really meant to parallel park.  I don’t know why but that last little bit of reflection almost got me to tear up!  And about a car nonetheless!  I may be moving on past introspective ruminations about seemingly mundane events but I will always be a sentimental guy at heart.

-Wine

Hey there, real quick before i pick up a case of pabst in celebration of college football viewing today (if the Buckeyes win, they are the Big 10 champs and going to the Rose Bowl!!)…

Tonight at the Beat Kitchen…The Pinstripes on tour from Cincinnati. They’re good people. And they’re better than your friends band. Doors at 7, show at 7.30.

www.myspace.com/thepinstripes

kisses,

-whiskey

yo! whiskey here. i’m eating a bagel (plain, of course) listening to all of the doofi (plural for “doofus”) here at school ramble in obnoxious self-importance. i could take them all in a contest of fictional superiority, even though this is one of the fundamental definitions for core pathology in Adlerian theory. ANYWAY…

so i survived the month of october (or oktober, if you’re german or willing to partake in pseudo-germanic drinking “traditions”), which included two 3 day festivals (red scare’s oktoberfest, riot fest), two back-t0-back gaslight anthem shows, a cobra skulls halloween show featuring teenage bottlerocket as the “secret” headliner (the 2nd time in a month we saw them as a “surprise” guest band, a david cross comedy gig, and more..spanning 31 days, dozens of bands, and a shit load of guests in the whiskey/wine/moonshine booze/love den. and i won’t even start on halloween costumes…

after a pretty wild and memorable foxy/sounds show two nights ago (eh…i guess nov 7 is close enough to october), there is a relative quiet period in our lives. maybe that means more blogging? or maybe that means even less due to the lack of material to share. we’ll see. anyway, if you had anything to do with the last month of insanity, i wanted to say “thanks” and “hurry the fuck back here so we can do it again, damnit!”

one of my few goals for graduate school that i failed at during my undergraduate education was to stay on top of my recreational reading. here is what i’ve finished in the last month or two:

wow. i guess i didnt really realize it, but ive only read two authors in some time. i’ve been trying to get through all 40 or so of bukowski’s books and who doesnt love jack kerouac? i’ll look into diversifying my library later.

off to work. in the meantime…suck it

kisses,

-whiskey

Tonight at the House of Blues and tomorrow at the Double Door I am seeing this:

hope they play that hot water music cover!

also, before I leave you all to go engage in this musical experience, get a load of this!

this is dan andriano from the alkaline trio playing solo under the “emergency room” moniker. he played at day 3 of red scare’s oktoberfest at the beat kitchen. in honor of the lawrence arms’ 10th anniversary, he covered a song of theirs! and i was there! you cant see me though. bummer.

annnnnnd…..i’m off!

-kisses

-whiskey

This weekend in Chicago: the 4th annual Red Scare Oktoberfest.

might be going tonight to see off with their heads and the copyrights.

for sure going to the larry arms show saturday. sidekicks sunday! cleveland, represent!

kisses,

-whiskey

You have to be joking me….is this the BEST or WORST idea ever?

http://riskybusiness.blogs.thr.com/2009/10/letterman-writer-and-hold-steady-singer-in-a-dreamweirdpromising-collaboration.html

kisses,

-whiskey

Folks,

If you’ll permit, I need to share a tale from the bottomless well of stories that is my job.  Today, one of my residents stood for 7 seconds.  This feat alone almost got me to break down at work for the first time because this man hadn’t stood on his legs since December 11th, 2000.  There are probably a few dozen reasons why this has been permitted to happen and most include a number of people dropping the ball or thinking he is somehow unworthy of the time and attention he requires in order to really connect and make progress and honestly I had pretty much given up on him too.  It was a few weeks back and I was trying to convince him to make an attempt at getting out of bed so that we could go wash him.  He dismissed me and yelled for me to get out, which at that point I was pretty much used to.  This was also a critical time for me as I was stewing in this perceived lack of motivation in any of the residents to make sustainable change in their lives.  Now this notion was more than likely brought about by some of my co-workers but I really can’t blame them.  Well anyway, I was up in my office catching up on some charting when this man’s roommate comes knocking looking visibly upset and contemplative.  He said that he was sick and tired of watching his roommate and good friend do nothing about his life and waste away.  I let him vent for awhile and came to understand that he had been bottling up these feelings and that watching him dismiss me earlier was the last straw and he needed to do something but was afraid to lose his friend amidst the confrontation that was needed.  Now, this man’s roommate has some significant cognitive deficiencies -which recently have been amplified by a very serious bout of seizures- and for him to approach me in this manner was, and still seems incredibly significant. I automatically switched in RA mode and did the one thing I am pretty confident in: Roommate Mediation.  What ensued was an incredibly open and honest conversation between two grown men that have connected so intensely that it could be scripted and aired on any movie screen.  From that day forward it’s been a slow build-up of progress with some setbacks of course and maybe some innocent manipulation of the roommate dynamic to get some things moving along.  For the past two weeks I’ve been sitting with him while he explored the western border of his condensed world and sat up with his feet on the ground for ever increasing periods of time all the while hearing about his life and secrets to a great meatloaf, which after reciting a few dozen times I can’t seem to recall the portions and types of meat he swears by.  Well today with a bit of help from me under his right arm and a nurse under the other, he lifted himself up for a mind boggling 7 seconds.  I think it took me a couple of minutes to regain my normal gait after my legs fell asleep in our morning meeting, but the idea of standing up after almost 9 years off of them is unfathomable.  Needless to say he earned his can of pop today…

Now I’m sitting here trying to sort through my thoughts on the day and really trying to take something away from this.  There’s a certain cynicism that is gnawing at me trying to wake me up to the cliched nature of this story and to try and make some grand oration about all of the lessons learned and constructing applicable generalizable metaphors is pointless.  It’s a tool used in most medical dramas where the plight and ultimate success or failure of a patient is applied to one of the main characters in some sort of moment of ultimate clarity about their own lives that we as the mindless observers somehow cram this piece of sage wisdom into our own puzzles of existence.  At least for tonight I’ll take a break from being cynical because if this man could stand for 7 seconds today, then, well, I should be able to do anything.

- Wine

WhiskeyWineAndMoonshine want to wish you all a happy Diwali!

…and for anyone out there who might be feeling weird or uncomfortable being biracial in a (theoretically) post-racial society, take solace in this…

kisses,

-whiskey

A woefully incomplete, blurry-eyed, male-perspective recap of the riot fest weekend…

FRIDAY

-pabst (the assumption must be made that the entire weekend could be seen through the lens of, or perhaps, the RESULT of, too much blue ribbon)

-Ali and the Pinstripe boys (www.myspace.com/thepinstripes) late. stuck in traffic.

-show at the subterranean sold out, but ali guestlisted moonshine and me at the last minute.

-lots of stickers and demos we forgot to pass out.

-pinstripes, deals gone bad, aggrolites killed it.

-lots of punx, skunx, and skins there, and everyone got along! what a foreign concept.

-dirty reggae = dancing and grooving.

-after the show, the pinstripes and frankl project (www.myspace.com/thefranklproject) crashed at the apt. the frankls got lost en route to the apt and the pinstripes drunkenly lost their van.

-everyone finally found the apartment. lots of drinking until 5 am. bodies everywhere

SATURDAY

-i had class. everyone else went to the zoo. from what i gather, a stray squirrel wandered into the gorilla cage where it was played with, beaten, killed, torn apart and then kissed and mourned. i can only imagine!

- ohio state!

-half of the group went to the congress theatre to see nofx. the other half went to the subterranean. saw the cobra skulls open for the aggros. Old Style! cobra skulls fucking KILLED it! so stoked for halloween. moonshine finally got to see them. after the show, we both bought bandanas.

-blue line to the congress. wore the bandanas on the train. people stared.

-nofx over. fat mike dressed as cokie the clown for the shown and generally creeped everyone out.

-after specifically telling mike loudmouth (www.myspace.com/theloudestmouth) to fucking wait so as to drive us to the fireside bowl for drunken bowling, he indeed fucked up and left us there. 40 minutes, i would say, in the just-above-freezing temperature. i did get to run into and say hey to Scott, from Alternative Press mag.

-mike finally gets us and takes us to the Fireside.A place I’ve ALWAYS wanted to see….a dream come true.

-free shots of jameson. estimation: i consumed around $50 worth of free whisky. mike had more

-we ended up dancing around the $96 team rate for games of bowling and got to bowl till 2 am for free. with jameson, mind you

-got licked like a dog on the face by the skinhead bowling next to us. i thought it strange and inappropriate at the time, but now, this behavior makes sense for two reasons: 1) he was from hawaii. they probably have all kinds of strange and foreign customs there. and 2) jameson.

- said skin said he liked me and wanted me to kiss his bowling bowl for luck. i did and he bowled a gutterball. he (read: jameson) said “fuck you” and told me i had herpes. i (read: jameson) told him that if that was the case, i obtained it from him and his potentially questionable lifestyle practices. He fired back quickly that he obtained the herpes from his wife, cathartically laughed a guttural belly laugh, and went back to drinking. his sober wife flashed the death glare and stormed off.

- said skin then took a shot of jameson out of his bowling ball finger hole

-the greaser chicks next to us took a liking to my dillinger four shirt. they were minneapolis punx and claimed (CLAIMED) to be drinking buds with the d4, although when questioned separately about this, each named a DIFFERENT member of the band as their drinking pal.

-riot fest 5th anniversary cake. ended up wearing it on my entire face. literally.

-party at our apt.

SUNDAY

-SLEEP!

-got dragged off to chicago bagel authority, the chicago version of oxford’s bagel & deli. this was an EXACT rip off of the already disgusting establishment in oxford. being sober and slightly hung-over,  i opted to refrain from the bagels.

-taken to some generic irish-themed bar that acted as a cincinnati bengals bar. they served skyline chili, otherwise this place looked like a fucking chilis or applebees. while everyone slobbered over a shitty football club (not MY shitty football club), i went to chipotle with jake frankl and talked about health care reform and marxist theory. who-dey!

-back at the apt. loudmouth and pinstripes back to ohio. the frankl boys off to the congress for the sunday show then out. clean up and late football games.

-off to the congress with moonshine.

-saw screeching weasel (a combination of unbelievably surreal and boring) and the alkaline trio.

-trio said they finished their new album that morning. played mostly mid-era vagrant songs, with only a couple old song (bummer) and a couple new ones (eh) peppered in. solid set. thankfully they didnt come out wearing suits and ties or makeup or dressed as priests or anything lame. they dressed like normal people. i took this to be a sign of hope for this new record

-during their set, the above title for this post (and subsequent song) took on a new meaning to me

-took a free bus (a fucking SCHOOL bus!)  to the cobra lounge on the south side. teenage bottlerocket was playing a free secret show!

-bus ride sucked. two “punx” who wore fox racing clothes and used the word “faggot” excessively fought while these two 16 year old girls kept talking (er, rather, screaming) about their 10am drinking and babies they had back home. this is a cross section of america’s future.

-cobra lounge was pretty awesome!

-at the bar, got mistaken by the cobra skulls singer for their guitar player. i ended up buying him a drink. he got flustered, giggled, and bragged to his bandmates about how “cool” he perceived me to be. his bandmates did not have free drinks and got sad….. me: “you were at the right place at the right time.” mr. skull: “you were the WRONG guy at the RIGHT place.” …nice.

-holy shit! bottlerocket SLAYED! GREAT sound system, tight playing, fast songs, NO dumb breaks between songs, SUPER catchy. the cobra skulls made me stoked for halloween saturday night, now teenage bottlerocket made me even MORE jazzed.

-pink line to blue line transfer downtown. home. sleep.

—–

i CANNOT FUCKING WAIT for riot fest next year. i’ll definitely be buying the 3 day pass. too much fun.

-kisses,

-whiskey

p.s. wednesday night we missed the free secret show at the L&L tavern with b. kelly acoustic. here’s my attempt to make it up to moonshine

Hey all. Christmas for Chicago punks has come early.

Seeing:

Fri: Pinstripes, Deals Gone Bad, Aggrolites at the SubT. lounge

Sat: Cobra Skulls, Aggrolites at the Subt. lounge

Sun: The Arrivals, Screeching Weasel, Alkaline Trio at the Congress Theatre

kisses,

-whiskey