Interesting week, this past one.

 My wife left for about the whole summer.  The school year ended, and with it my stint as villainous "assistant"  in the toxic environment of Ms. Brand's class at Chavez Elementary.  And just today I started training at my new job as a taxi driver.

All this since Thursday.  

It's Monday.

I know I shouldn't but...

I want to like Madison.  I do give it a chance.  There are good people here.

My brain is just over-loaded with how it can process this mother fucker and have a relatively normal assimilatory experience.

I tell it to chill and not analyze, but it just can't help it.  It's just from walking, to driving, to ordering food, to the stares while standing in Trader Joe's make simple existence fucking way more awkward than necessary.

I'm working on it.

 Hearing about how all the "blacks" behave and commenting about how the "orientals" walk across the street doesn't help, though.  It just smashes on the levee that is my personal resolve.  It increases the disciplinary need to not react and just let the shit go.  I tell myself that it's learned behavior and that they just don't know any better.

I miss Tanya.

I miss my friends and family.

That's it.

Numb it is, I guess.

Just kidding.

Do some research on Terence Mckenna.

Listen to Sun Ra.

Not kidding.

Hot Damn in the Tuna Can

People.  People.  PEOPLE.  The last nine months here in Madison, Wisconsin has taught me one thing:

THIS PLACE FUCKING SUCKS!!!

No, I'm not going to defend it.  No, I ain't gonna lie.  It's just that my experiences here have been so uncannily bugged with synchronized resistance that I've even had emotional moments where I had to self check- in on my own sanity.

Fucking believe it.

I have driven across the country probably around ten times.  No shit.  I've done the 90, the 80, the 10, the 40 and all kinds of crissity-crossity ways to encounter the peeps and landscapes  that make up this magical nation of ours.  I had stopped in Madison exactly once.  It was on my first trip driving by myself across the country on my way to be a professional musician in NYC.  I was hungry, figured that Madison qualified as a city and that it would most likely have decent ethnic food offerings.  I stopped at a place called Guadalajara some shit.  I had a carne asada burrito.  This burrito was mediocre at best, but oh well, I'm on my way to New York and this shit is temporary.  All you cats that have driven across the country know there ain't no good food to be had no-how.   Why do I bring this up?  Because in a very real way I already had understood about the food, nay, the culture here: mediocre at fucking best.

When Tanya received her fellowship to school at UW Madison I was stoked.  I do believe in the push and I do believe that experience trumps all other human choice.  Money won't do shit unless you use it for experiences.   You also don't really need much money to have a lot of great experiences.   Maybe another post I'll expound on that.  I started my research on Madison.  Shit seemed pretty promising.  The Berkeley of the Midwest, they say.  Beautiful lakes.  Bucolic acreage with farms, woods and water.  Even people I knew in New York were saying that, damn, you lucky, son.  That place has it all.  It's progressive, liberal and diverse.  There is great art.  Great food.  Great music.  Sign me the fuck up, I thought.  Tanya and I get another stop on our life-adventure together.  And not only are they footing the bill for Tanya's MFA, they're giving her a stipend as well!  Holy fuck!!!  How can we lose?!

Here's where the Madison part comes in.

I have two major strength trajectories in my life:  Music and Children.  I have been playing the drums since before I hit double-digits and I've been working with kids in a lot of different capacities since my sister was born in 1984.   Currently I'm forty-three.  Do the math if ya wanna.  My point is that I was fairly sure, and justifiably so, that I would be quite an asset and resource to the local community that is my new home.  I'm a nice guy.  I'm amiable, serious when I need to be, disciplined, hard working and honest.  Maybe this is a wrong way to look at it, but I really did believe (still do) that for the work I'm accomplished at, I'd be a big fish in a small pond.

We move to Madison in August of 2012 and I hit the shits running.  I was out at music shit pretty much every night.  During the day I applied for hundreds of jobs, most of which I was hyper-overqualified for.  I know the economy is tight.  I know that America is still tanking.  But I also know that there has to be a place for me.  There has got to be a place that recognizes what I've done and what I can do.

Right?

Well, not yet anyway.

At this point I don't know how much detail to go into.  I do not want to sound like a hater or a victim, because I'm neither.  I also do not want to sound negative or bitter because I honestly don't feel that way.  I guess I'll just pipe in that it is excruciatingly difficult to be in a place so seemingly homogenized in value and culture.  I know Madison does not want to hear that, but I gotta tell you, it's fucking true.
A teaching analogy if I may:  I started teaching in the public schools of Los Angeles in 1996.  My second year was my first year of teaching special education.  As the year progressed I noticed a distinct difference in the amount of work produced and the lack of accommodation in the grading system as applied to all student populations.  That simply means that if in my special education class you were an A student, in the general population it was actually about a C.  If you were getting a C in my class, you were failing in the general population.

In my opinion the art, music, food, weather and inter-personal relationships in Madison are getting an A.  But that is considering that the city of Madison is my special education class.  That translates as a C on the scale that  is the general population of American cities.

Mediocre at best.

Fucking believe it.

NEW DIGS

Be back in the mix soon enough.  Living in Madison, Wisconsin equals insanely ripe material.  C U soon.

Some new jams on the horizon.  Currently I'm listening to a session of conga and bata that Diller and I recorded last weekend here.  A new .99 DREAMS slab is under construction.  Other shit too.  Stay tuned.

Today I'd like to touch on the idea of integrity.  To me it just means being real about your shit.  And being real means exactly: serious and disciplined.  I went shopping today.  I make the trip to Trader Joe's in Danbury because, although it is a hundred mile round trip, my bill is still lower and my cart is still fuller than it would be even if I bought all the comprable items on sale here in town.  And that tally includes gas and excludes all the chemical bullshit in most of the food at the "super" market.

I wanted to get the trip out of the way, so I left early.  Or late, depending on how you feel and interpret daylight savings.  In route I figured I could always get an egg and cheese to hold me until I get home with the fresh goods.  While in Newburgh I spotted a bagel spot.  I like bagels.  I make a right turn into the mini mall...
A word on the preparation of egg and cheeses.  I do not own, nor do I condone the use of microwave ovens.  I ask you--How many of you cook and egg or two in a plastic bowl?  How many of you would then think it's a good idea to put said nuked embryos onto a piece of bread, plate or a bagel?  I hope none of you motherfuckers, cause that's where I'm at.  And that's my point.  Spinning the water molecules to cook eggs makes very fucking gross tasting eggs.  Don't believe me?  Try it.  Then lie to me--and yourself--about how the texture seems natural and tasty.  Bullshit.  That method is best avoided and I always do my best to do exactly that.
This business also advertised other fare that needs to be cooked on a grill.  It even said "oldest bagel shop in Orange County" above the door.  There is no way I'm losing.  A freshly prepared egg and cheese on a well made bagel is magical.

"Can I help you, sir"?

"Yeah, can I get an egg and cheese on a toasted everything bagel?"

"Salt, pepper and ketchup?"

"Yeah.  Thanks."

The taste bud snares are set.   Have I found a new spot?  Could the truth be sizzling away back behind the counter?  Is integrity in the house?

A few minutes later:  "Here you go, sir."

I get a good detailed look at the chick handing me the bag.  Trouble.  Shit ain't feeling right.  She's got bleached hair, a fake tan, fake bright blue eyes and blindingly white teeth.  Holy shit, she looks like a nineteen year old that just opted for the Paula Deen makeover.  I'm sure some of the local bowhunters think this chick is hot, especially when she's smoking Newports and shooting Red Bull and vodka but to me all I see are my hopes and dreams of a good egg and cheese shot to shit.

I roll out to the car and reflect.   I'm in upstate New York,  it's almost seventy degrees outside, the sun is licking my skin,  and it's the second week of fucking March.  I start to forget Paula and begin to focus on my little brown bag that's hiding my egg and cheese.   Not all is lost.  I can still win.  I pull that little foil wrapped bastard out of the bag and open the shit up.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME.

The egg is non-existant, the bagel isn't toasted and worst of all:  THE CHEESE ISN'T EVEN FUCKING MELTED!

I want to tell myself how rare it is that I'm disappointed with what one thinks is acceptable.  And I"m not just talking about my sorry ass egg and cheese.  I"m addressing the fact that we're being TAUGHT that not good enough is good enough.  We're TAUGHT that if we don't do it someone else will and we might as well strike first because then we'll be right, or win or be in control or whatever and our gratification needs we have will be stroked.  I seriously doubt that the plastic dummy that handed me my egg and cheese would have made it the way she made it for me if she was going to eat it.  Maybe she would have increased the quality control if she knew me, or if she realized that I am a good Christian.  Maybe not.

No matter.  I ate it anyway and learned that integrity was most definitely not in the house.

So to all of you small minded pukes that put Fuck You in our food.

FUCK YOU!!!

It's about what you don't play.

Thank you Billy Mintz.

The Megaupload debacle is very encouraging.  It's like the federal government is a JOY continuous miner and the people are loose top ready to crush the machine just by the virtue of it's doing something it ain't ought to do.

Keep your heart right, soldiers.  The REAL will be needed.

Peace.

May many maus pass.  Verbal diarrhea and all that shit.  Straddling polarity while laughing and not worrying about the nots.  Knawmeen?  And through it all Love holds justly and reassures fully.  Always.  All transactions of movement just another cameo in time.  Temporary.  So far East it becomes West and the whole time you best pay attention.  Or not.  Choice is not yours.  Try not to and you just did, dig?  Of course.  Pork Chop.  And chop and chop and chop.  Your electricity just a continuum of relations.  Eloquence is the bullshit of mutherfuckers who just need to shut the fuck up.  No one is immune.  Not even me.  Peace.