On this Blessed Day... part 1

Me
born: April 5, 1977
location: New York, NY
hospital: The New York Hospital

I share a birthday wtih Pharrell Williams (35), Pat Green (36), Paula Cole (40), Mike McCready (42), Agnetha Faltskog (58), Jane Asher (62), and Gale Storm (86)...

My 31st Year of life Outlook:

"For every action, there is a reaction. Your life this year could be a study in this very theory. You could make waves. Claim your power, alloing many more opportunities to head in your direction. Realize when you have had enough of a siutuain, and walk away from it gracefully. If you are single, your magntetism remains high, creating quite a portfolio of admirers. If you are attached, be slightly less me-oriented. A fellow Aries reads you cold."

My horoscope for today:

"You are a power among your immediate friends right now. Act like one, and you might be amazed at what you can bypass. Tonight: As you like."

I got my outlook and horoscope from today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I have to say I'm feeling my "power" growing, but I have some problems with my outlook. For example what the fuck does "a fellow Aries reads you cold" mean? Will a fellow Aries be coming after me? If that's the case I better get ready for whoever you are!

My last day as a 30 year old

So a long time ago, I played the role of evil oldest brother. Mind you I was never one to punch or hit my brothers or sister (they were all taller than me by the time i reached the six year old mark) . In fact we didn't do much punching of any kind, we all had this unwritten rule of no punches to the face. So I would like to drop psychological "punches" on them.

One of these involved going into my brother's room around bed time the day before his birthday and telling him "Well. Say good bye to be 8 years old. That's right you will never be 8 again. Yep that's real sad." When my brother realized that he would be turning 9 and losing that title of 8 years old, it made him cry. I would return to my room with a chuckle, and part of his birthday was ruined because I decided to bring reality to his day of days. Yes I was (and most still consider me to be) an asshole.

Now the tables have turned. I'm 30 heading into the 31, and I am going through these thoughts of holy shit! i'm not going to be 30 anymore. I really want to be that person who ages with grace and confidence, but right now i'm in this mode where i look back and say what the fuck have i done? i know that all of my work over the past seven years has been a building process for long term sustainability. so at this point i have all of this "potential" but nothing concrete. and now i can hear my brothers and sister collectively saying:

"well billy, say goodbye to 30! you will never be 30 again! yep, that's real sad!"

so i'm going to try and make this next year of my life a lot more productive and positive. i have had enough change in my life for the past two years to last me a decade. so now its time to dig in. (isn't that the same thought process that someone just getting out of college goes through? i'm a really late bloomer i guess.)

oh well for my birthday, i have no clue what i'm doing. there is no chairperson of the "billy is getting old" committee, so i'm sort of writing my own script.

ideally i want to go see the cardinals tomorrow at 12:15 pm and then return to columbia for the bald eagle show at mojo's. and then just take it easy. this will also be my first sober b-day in "well over" a decade... (twelve years)

other than that, i had my first post-foundry foundry show. i think it went rather well considering two practices and a different presentation of material. joe schaefer on drums and jenn johanning on cello were the perfect accompaniment for this style of presentation. they are both incredibly talented and above all nice! that is a dynamic that i will miss dearly with becky, daniel, and benjamin. those three are like family to me, and it is so hard to replace the chemistry we had. but i feel that they have also given me the template of requirements for people i work with in the future.

Ralph Macchio Syndrome

i guess i have been gone awhile. things have certainly changed A LOT in my life:
- i am slowly trudging through the murky waters of love and loss. in fact i'm drying off.
- started a whole new supporting cast for the foundry field recordings and began recording the next album.
- started a new job. more money, less stress. yes they do exist.
- and i have been battling anxiety attacks. i have finally learned to slow down a bit and not put too much on my plate. thanks to the drugs... okay i'm kidding, but i am still not drinking

woo hoo! as i approach my 31st year on this planet i am not sure how to approach it. part of me greets it with a smile and says "bring on the mid-life crisis", the other part of me doesn't notice and neither do other people. sans beard i look like i could pass for my early 20s. this is because i suffer from a rare disease called Ralph Macchio Syndrome. This is when you look younger than you actually are.

Upside:
- Blend in at college parties (this is still creepy)
- My deemed "innocent look" allows me to get away with a variety of crimes

Downside:
- Carded at Rated R movies
- Double carded at Adult Novelty stores

the anatomy of shaving off your beard (picture form)

1. Start with a beard. your beard does not have to be as "powerful" as mine, but you need to start with a beard in order to complete this. it also may be a good idea to do this to your own face.




2. Trim your beard down. this is important, because if you are like me you have a "powerful" beard and you will need to be careful when you are using the razor for the first time in say a year or so...



3.Shower and Shave. Wash your face, preferably in shower form, and then shave immediately.


4.If its halloween, be an asshole and use the 'stache! I took full advantage of this and you can see the result. BOSS.




5. After using the 'stache to your advantage, shave it! Especially if you teach children like me. Moustache+minivan+working with children = creepy. So i had to take the remainder of my facial hair off.

the anatomy of shaving off your beard (short written form)

i will soon have photos up of the breakdown of this momentous occasion. right now my face is cold, smooth, but cold... this will take some time to get used to for my friends and especially for me.

the moustache was pretty boss, but with my current day job, i would come off way creepy.

pictures up soon...

for now sleep.

to the sleep deprived... thoughts on the death of my beard... hey, i'm going to need your i.d. for those...

i think everyone has ancient routines that they go through everyday that have followed them since childhood... i notice mine more when i can't sleep. this happens occasionally on days where i'm highly stressed or cannot shake anxiety-ridden thoughts. so i may pace a bit, i may grab my guitar (much to my roommates' dismay), pick up a book, or listen to some music with my head phones. but the one thing i always make sure to do is close my closet door. i admit that is a bit on the OCD side of things, but when i'm at my highest level of "can't sleep" that seems like a necessary thing.

i remember doing that when i was younger because i didn't want my closet monsters peering at me as i slept. i would even make sure the closet door was sealed tight so there was no way any creature could get out and get my brother and i. now that i'm 30 do i still worry about the monster? yes. yes i do. okay that's not true, but its just an old habit that has not left me. maybe its a coping thing to sleep. i don't know.

so as i wrestle with insomnia here, i wonder what other's think as they try to sleep and shrug off their worries. or how they do that to begin with. how do you stop giving a shit about every minute detail? i think my problem is i'm a night person living in a day job world. i'm not sure if that means i need to adjust to the day job world or if i need to embrace my night person world.

either way i should probably rest my head and move on to tomorrow. which includes shaving my beard off. not a popular idea among my friends who can't grow a beard, but one my mom will be happy with. i'm not doing this to spite my friends or make my mom happy. i'm just kinda of tired with it for now. i'll probably start growing it back as the colder winter months approach. i just feel like starting new. but how to take this sucker down is another thought process. do i keep the "stache" for little while? do i shave a cool design in the beard first and sport that around? do i keep the sideburns? so many different paths.

regardless i will lose ten years on my face by doing this and well i will most likely get carded for everything. alcohol, condoms, and rated r movies.

well alcohol i'm still off of, but i have been asked for i.d. for the last two.

quickly and then some zzzzzzz's.

so when i was a freshman in college i was home in st. louis and went out and got condoms. i was very responsible with my lady at the time. the thing was i could never just go in and get condoms, i had to be purchasing other items and do the ol' "yeah just this and some (yawn) condoms." (they kept them behind the counter at the time.)

this one particular time i went to a 7-eleven and noticed this parent with her two kids fresh from a soccer game milling around the slurpee machine. i thought, okay i'll just get my cherry coke, get in line and ask for the condoms and get out. well i get my cherry coke and sprint (sort of) to the counter. right before i get there this very old man cuts in line and asks for "benson and hedges 100s in a box" well the cashier is looking all over and can't find it. the man settles on a soft pack and at this point starts counting out his change. FUCKING A! the cashier has to end up spotting him 5 cents. i was close to just buying them for him. so after he gets his pack, i push my cherry coke on the counter and it rolls off on the side of the cashier. he digs it out from his side and asks "will there be anything else my man?" (now at this point everything feels like slow motion). i said, "oh and a pack of the trojans. the light blue box." (i didn't know the varieties, i just knew what i got last time i was there). at this point the cashier looks at me and says "can i see some I.D.?"

i stared at him as if he had just asked me for an I.D. for condoms. oh wait, he did. so i'm speechless and waiting for him to say just kidding or get out or something, instead he just stares waiting for my action. i look around the store for a comforting face, but all i get is that parent with her two kids who are now directly behind me watching all of this unfold, along with three other people. look folks i was nineteen and being responsible, yet i felt like i was just caught shoplifting. alot of tsking came from the line.

i looked back at the cashier, who now has a big toothy grin and says, "naw man i'm just playin'. i'm just glad yer usin' these." he hands me my package of condoms and continues to compliment my high standards of personal responsiblity. i could feel my face heat up from the apparent red color i was beaming to the rest of the store. fucking ridiculous.

i pay for everything and as i walk out he yells, "goo' luhk, man!" while the mother of the two soccer players scowls and shakes her head at me.

i thought, "whatever lady, i'm going to get laid and i wasn't going to be having any lame soccer offspring."

okay enough tangents for one night...

Holy (Trinity) Shit!

i like sports. i'm not going to apologize for this. i know way too much about current and past players, strategies, offenses, defenses, and mascots of teams from all sports. when i came to columbia, mo for the univ. of missouri's j-school (pardon me "journalism" school) i wanted to be a sports writer. combining two passions of mine into one, an easy choice. after my first round of j-school classes i realized i hated the format of writing in journalism as was taught at the time.

so this morning i'm doing my usual internet check in and i find a video of a last second play in a football game between NCAA division III schools Trinity University and Millsaps that most likely will end up on a number of top ten plays of the year in the media.

for those not familiar with the intricate rules of football, just know that there is only two seconds left in the game and the only option Trinity has here is to score a touch down. in this case in order to keep the ball moving forward they have to either throw one big pass in the endzone or continuously lateral the ball to keep moving towards the endzone. trinity obviously chooses the latter:



as far as lateral circuses go this comes a close second to the Cal and Stanford game, in that game the marching band offers the perfect touch of last second dramatics.