"Meat" your Maker...Market

I live in Owensboro.


That should be enough of an explanation for anything I write or say.


Today it is not enough.


I have written about, Bacchus, a bar in town a couple of times before, so it's only fair that I write about another "B" name bar--the Boiler Room.


I will be renaming it, today.


Meat Market.


I know you're probably saying, "Yeah, yeah, so what? Every bar is a meat market."


Okay, so if it is, disregard this blog and get back to your People magazine, and let me get on with it.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Meat Market Saturday night. And the sales were hot. All the cuts were there in herds. Tenderloins, sirloins, T-bones, chucks, rumps, and all! It was so tough making up my mind.

I wonder what cut I would compare to? There were fresh calves for veal, old hag cows for what I don't know, and there were the prize cows, real blue ribbon beauties.

Either entrance to the Meat Market resembles a death chute at a slaughterhouse. You are herded in and paraded in front of all the other grades. It's actually quite terrifying. There's booze and mediocre music, which I guess is there to pacify us before the slaughter. Occasionally, two bulls will get over stimulated and have to lock horns to show off in front of the females and other bulls.
I guess the only difference is that this is not a "by the pound" going rate. It's the exact opposite. The skinnier the better. The emaciated cow sells here. The emaciated cow with great milk bearing teats, that is.
God, I want a steak right now.

Power Lines. All cliches aside--this dream was whack.

I'm not the type of person that is going to blog about my dreams all the time.

But dammit if this one didn't get me in the thinkin' spot.

It's day time and I'm at my house and my ex wife shows up. She's saying something about lunch. I'm thinking, okay, what's for lunch?

Then she tells me her ex before me might drop by. A truck pulls up outside so we go out, but it's some maintenance guy from my work with a copy of some test he brought me that I had taken. I said, "Thank you."

He said, "It's getting dark."

I looked around and noticed it was dark. Then a car pulled up in the backyard of neighbors house. Sure enough my exes ex was in it. He had a little girl with him. They came into my yard. I said, "I said are we going to have to fight this out until someone dies?"

He said, "No. But she makes you love her, don't she?"

I said, "You bet."

While we were talking the girl with him had managed to throw her belt up in the power lines that weaved through an oak tree. Everyone was looking at me to do something. I proceeded through a chair up at the lines to dislodge the belt. It started to rain. Each time I chucked this chair in the air harder, the power lines connected to my neighbor's house shook violently.

I dislodged the belt with one final heave that knock the lines loose on my neighbor's house. The lines sparked and caught fire. So, in the rain I hopped the fence and filled buckets of rainwater from the ground to put out the fires while everyone watched.

I extinguished the fire and went back to my yard. I said to my ex, "He's drunk, and driving his kid around."

She said, "I know, and that's not his kid."

I woke shortly after and my whole body was sore like I had swam the Ohio.

Yeah, just a dream, but it means so much.

I'm sorry I couldn't spare you of the cliche symbols of fire and rain.

Balance and the Night

This weekend I discovered the true cyclical nature of our existence.

I'm sure that in the fashion world there is a term for when a trend hits, goes out of style, and then comes back in style.

In a similar relationship, I have realized that a simple invention, that was rendered obsolete, is now back, and I was using it last night.

Since gas is grossly overpriced, I now bike just about everywhere. Biking saves money, the planet, and it's exercise!

I rode my bike to the grocery last night and stuffed as many groceries as I could in my backpack. Again, save the planet. Unfortunately, I could not place all of my groceries into my backpack. I had to use a few plastic bags.

So, I'm on my bike, where do I put them?

I hang them on my handle bars, test the weight, and take off for home. As I rode home, I recognized the similarity of my handle bars and bags to the baskets and balance system you might see a villager using in a Central/Southeast Asia.

It is a perfect invention. And, in someway, me riding a bike and using a primitive, but effective invention, was kind of like giving oil companies and conglomerates the middle finger.

I was not spewing noxious fumes. I was not wasting any resources. There was me, the Earth, and two simple, man powered machines. I was perfectly at balance with the night, the day, and my conscious.

I was almost hit by an SUV, which made the experience perfect.

Seconds, Only Milliseconds

A few miles off a South African coast, which is heavily vacationed, is a phenomenon that takes place a few weeks out of the year.

An island that is home to thousands of seals become the site of a brutal exercise of nature's perfect killing machine...the great white shark.

Photo journalists, documentarians, and tourists flock to this area at this given time to witness the awesome power of predator/prey in the raw.

What makes the spectacle all the more astounding is the fashion in which the great whites rocket out of the water as if shot from a canon from the deep. This death plunge is the initial hit that typically stuns the seal. And rightly so. Seeing a 16 foot torpedo with razor sharp, serrated teeth flying through the air almost makes me piss myself.

The difficulty with filming the event is that the attacks last only seconds, and that's a long attack. Most will last milliseconds. So, a super slow speed camera is used. The super slow camera takes only one shot at a time and takes 15 minutes to download. So, if you blow the shot, you have 15 minutes to wait, and probably miss many other shots.

I heard on e cameraman say, "You know, it's seconds, really milliseconds that we have to catch this. And that's only if we are staring in the right direction."

My God! Is that not the most perfect explanation of life...ever!?

So much depends on those seconds, those milliseconds, and only if you're life is headed in the right direction.

Think about how many times you've nearly been involved in a fatal wreck, or ran into the love of your life, or maybe even just missed that movie at the store that someone snatched up right before you.

Yeah, it's tough looking at life in those terms, but I guess it's true. One could get hung up on that sort of thing if they had a tendency to obsess.

For now I'll just thank God that I am not a seal off the coast of South Africa, or any coast for that matter. And, I won't let time's precise manner bother me.

Punching Bob Dylan in the Face

There's no reason to get excited...

This is not a blog about literally punching Bob in the face.

No, this a blog about people covering poor Dylan's songs and just destroying them. I know there are some people out there that can do a cover justice...Scarlett Johanis...burg....but, there was certainly none of the homage covering going on last night.

First of all, don't go to an open mic night and introduce yourself and ask, "does anyone wanna hear some Dylan?"

No, asshole. We don't. We wanna hear Dylan play Dylan. We especially don't want to hear you sing in his voice either. And what the hell kind of song is there of his that last 20 minutes and sounds like one continuous verse? Seriously, does anyone know that one? Would this guy make this up? This is also the same guy that I heard sing a "children's" song like Bob Dylan about a monkey, frog, and a snake, or some shit.

Then, his friend gets up after him and plays a lame cover. His second song, "Hit me baby, one more time" was funny; I'll give him that. But his buddy, the Dylan ripper, sat there watching and listening like the Rodan sculpture. I could just hear his thoughts, Oh, wow. Brittany Spears, it's so smart. It's so inventive. So fresh.

So, the main idea I want you to leave with is; don't cover the shit if you just can't do it. Cover something you know. Cover something you can make your own. Cover something that will actually entertain people. Don't befoul yourself and Dylan, which is the equivalent of a punch in the face of a generation. And don't write blogs when you're hung over and just trying to keep your eyes open.

Last Day, First Day, and Magic Time

The longest day of the year is typically around June 21st, the summer solstice. I distinctly remember this day last year. It was when I noticed the beauty of a phenomenon my mother and her friends call 'magic time.' It's that time of day when dusk is just beginning to say goodbye to you and hello to the night.

Everything, more specifically organic, takes on a temporary bio-luminescent glow. Even your skin, which you think you are familiar with, takes on an eerie glow. I'm pretty sure the event has to do with the spectrum of light and your pupils dilating. And even if it can be explained, that still won't take away from the wonder it arouses in me.

I was in my parents friends' garden that is a stunning ornamental sight on it's own, but with the magic time element, the view is simply irreplaceable. At that moment time stood still. My life was all there in front of me in the reflection of the last few ultraviolet rays radiating from the sun to flower, and through me.

Staring there I realized the cycle of it all. This was the pivotal moment when the day gives way to night. Summer gives way to the fall, and life gives way to death.

Every moment from now on will just be a count down to the time we all dread the most. The time of year when the sun clocks out early and goes dark by 5 P.M.(Central.)

The time when possibilities are not endless anymore, you no longer have extra time to do work in the yard, and you expect that first morning chill. I know it will be ungodly hot until September and probably even until October, but just knowing that the day will already be shortening in a week is just too much today.

I see magic time already, and two days ago I happened to notice it, which reminded me of the solstice. I realize i get hung up on the finite nature of things when I should be seeing them cyclically. So, I guess today I'm trying to see the infinite, rather than the finite.

Sea of Tranquility

"Well I'd like to visit the moon...but I wouldn't like to live there..."

There is a special reason I have been listening to this song so much. I am now learning to play it, as well. It's for a friend. But, I've passed the point of learning it. I'm obsessing over it, listening to it over ten times in one day.

But there is a greater reason. I now know that when I get on track with a song, movie, or television show it's always for a reason.

I had a friend call last night who was down in the dumps. And don't we all from time to time? See, us normal people, who don't self-medicate, actually feel sadness, depression, and anxiety on a regular basis. What do you do when you're really feeling the sting? You call a friend. It's much better than going out and transforming into a drunken, belligerent asshole who runs everyone off and then ends up crying alone at the end of the night. Call a friend!

I was able to use my necessary obsession with the above mentioned song to help my friend out. The song is about staring out of your window at the moon and wanting to visit there. It's a very sweet song about wanting to get away from the moment and do something new. It's that old cliche about the grass always being greener, aside from the fact that there is no grass on the moon(it's just an expression.)

The point is, even if you are a felt, cotton, and polyester puppet, you're still going to want out temporarily--even if it's on the moon. I hear it's quite nice and peaceful, especially the sea of tranquility.