BlairBush - Ballsy Baltimore Band Blog, Brutha!

Too Many Comic Book Movies? Your Mother...

2011-10-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

"There're too many comic book movies!"

Or worse yet: "There's too many comic book movies!" (Seriously, you think it's ok to say there IS too many comic book movies? Cause that's what THERE'S means.)

Anyway, in all seriousness, if you've ever said either of the above lines, go fuck yourself - hard, and unpleasantly, with no lovingness or care for your own safety or pleasure.

Having lived through Howard the Duck (Marvel comic) and Superman 3 AND 4, I can say that we are in the Golden Age of comic book movies. Does it look too unrealistic when Green Lantern is in space with 100s of other Lanterns from all over the universe? FUCK YOU. Not believable when the X-Men history incorporates the Cuban Missile Crisis? EAT ME.

I know it's hip these days to bash everything to pieces and hate everything else. I did that most of my adolescent career. Now I am just pumped to go see guys in costume thrash other bad guys in costume. I don't love them all, but I like comic book movies, so I'll keep supporting them.

Captain America? Excellent. X-Men: First Class? Shades of brilliance. Green Lantern? Meh, fine - not the abortion everyone proclaimed it was by any means.

So either get on board or admit you don't like comic movies. Either way, shut your trap and strap in for Avengers by Joss Whedon...gonna be spectacular.

"I Remember" Exercise

2011-10-09T18:40:00.000-07:00

This past December, I wasn't doing my best work at life, but was working on it.

Part of that time was spent in group therapy sessions; the exact context isn't essential here. What you need to know is that the group, with no preamble, was told to write for 60 seconds, and to write an "I Remember" tale.

At this point I had been 100% sober without so much as a cough drop for 23 days. I wrote the following in my 60 second allotment:

I remember the most horrible 36 hours of my life, the time my girlfriend, a girl I had been engaged to, nearly died in front of me. I remember we were having a last hurrah, a final drug experience that was supposed to be fun. The ecstasy and cocaine did not mix well for her.

I remember her seizing, and eventually finding out she had fractured both shoulder blades due to the strength of it. I remember calling an ambulance and trying to keep her focus on me.

I also remember dropping her at the hospital and watching her being wheeled away screaming.

I remember cabbing it back home and not knowing if she’d live or die, but knowing I needed to hide my coke, and do some more.

I remember cabbing around New Orleans for hours because I was too fucked up to remember which hospital.

I remember the looks of nurses, how I felt.

I remember doing much more blow in the hospital bathroom.

I remember the calls to her mom and dad, their arrival from Maine.

I remember the lunch we had when we found out she would live, and how I thought I shouldn’t order a beer as drugs were the cause of their daughter’s near-death experience, then doing it anyway.

I remember her recuperating in my apartment, her dad staying a week, the bruises on her arms from being restrained.

I remember her healing, and leaving me.

Next I remember increasing my cocaine use. I remember wondering if my heart would burst, realizing I’d never had a pulse this fast. I remember trying to kill myself with drugs.

And now I remember the salvation of a hurricane driving me from New Orleans and that life.

This exercise was a clutch moment for me, and my pivotal change in lifestyle this last year. I needed to get this out of me, and I was the first to volunteer to read that day, the first to share aloud, and the first to break down in tears.

Though it's impossible and unrealistic (and would be quite a downer) to keep your worst moments at the forefront of your thoughts, it's good to keep things in perspective. Bad day at work? That blows...no one you loved almost died though, right? Okay, then let's dial back the drama-meter (patent-pending), shall we?

2011-10-08T22:07:00.000-07:00

JOURNAL ENTRY FROM 4 MONTHS I LIVED IN PARIS
(unaltered transcription from 5/11/04, 9pm)

It's amazing how light it stays in Paris in the spring. I know this phenomenon happens all over the world, but J and I found out it stays light until about 11pm in the heart of summer. Crazy French fuckers.

I finally started a new journal. I was waiting for something to necessitate committing my thoughts to paper. It's happened. Well, LOTS has happened to our intrepid wanderer, as we shall soon see...

I'm getting married. Can you fucking believe that shit? Gonna be in a little over a year, summer of 2005. Ahhh, my true love of all time, my J. (This goddamn space pen is running out of ink! FUCKER!!!)

THE ENTRY IMMEDIATELY BELOW ON THE SAME JOURNAL PAGE IS AS FOLLOWS
(unaltered transcript from 8/3/05, 4am)

So much has changed since last time, including me. It's the summer of 2005, and I'm emphatically NOT getting married. Christ.

J nearly died. I walk the line between living in a perpetual cycle of substance abuse and killing myself. I'm on the brink of pushing through this wall of introspection and drastically altering everything.

Bottom line - you're adapting to your environment instead of leading the charge.

You're not happy.

Yeah, so there were some dark periods of my life, yeah? I'm going to get some of this raw material posted, maybe get some feedback, and then start adding it into the longer narrative I have been working on. And yes, the second entry is literal...my then-ladylove could have died in the hospital int he time between these two posts and very nearly did, and I spent the next couple years selling and doing enough drugs to kill a mule - a large, HEAVYSET mule - as self-imposed penance.

I'm feeling ever so much better now, though, thanks for asking!

DJ Tiesto's Crashing Wave of Nostalgia

2011-02-23T18:50:00.000-08:00

I downloaded a tune from Imogen Heap because I recognized the lyrics from an SNL skit, of all the unlikely places. Anyway, I wound up getting all nostalgic for the time in my life where trance and techno occupied most of my waking moments, while discovering the next type and imprint of the next batch of Ecstasy took up the rest.

I'd sit at work in New Orleans with - Christ, what program, Napster? - yeah, Napster (before it got in trouble and started charging)open on my monitor, ready to minimize to the bottom of the screen should the head honcho or his nosy, rotund wife could come walking by, not that they'd understand the list of files and progress meters streaming by.

Anyway, it was a grand time to be a young professional in New Orleans - lots of glowsticks, though...

Weezer Coulda Been A Contender...

2010-04-05T19:04:00.001-07:00

So I just listened to the first Weezer album (blue album) as I was making dinner and building our new tenant's basement apartment, and I thought "Goddamn! What a good debut!" Then I got to "Buddy Holly" (easily the worst tune on the album) and realized that - because of pop-centric bullshit American Idol culture - THIS is the direction Weezer has stridently striven to emulate. Every goddamn Weezer hit since has been more and more tailor-made for the Buddy Holly jerkoffs that really think "Hash Pipe" and "Beverly Hills" are any good. Look, they're hooky, but imagine if - instead of going the horseshit pop-route - they went more towards "The Sweater Song" route or even the Pinkerton classic "El Scorcho" route! What a band it would be...

A Day in Blair's Life (Paris 2004)

2010-04-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

February 2, 2004

Jitterbug Per-FOOM what a day to be living in Paris! This would be the prime-time full-on example of what a day in the life of Monsieur Bush should done be made up tuh resemble! Aside from that blissful tidbittery, I also figgered a reckoning be in order, and by reckoning I mean journal, and by journal I mean totally sweet.

There should be more frequent entries, by God by God, and this here entry gone be coverin’ a LOT of ground. Lots of intrepid wanderings by our nonsequential meanderer. Get some, spellcheck! Lets see…there’s a badass clown shop or some other similar jobber that has about a dozen or so fairly nifty and elaborate masks adorning its austere display window…superb thing about ‘em is that they sit on knobs with mechanized jaws…lemme back it on up a spell to see if I can’t show you more along the lines of what I saw, THEN we’ll ruin the magic by explaining it away, ‘kay?

I round the enFrenchened corner with a poet’s eyes and hasished mind…I scan a disturbing trophy-wall of some nightmare big-game hunter, renowned for his intolerance of clowns, movie monsters and downright creep-factors. Fine, fine…French killers ain’t limited by law of man or nature or nothin’, that’s fine. Only problem I gots with this wall is that some of the noggins? Yeah, they jaws still metastasizing or some shit, cause they’s chomping for all they’re worth. Bodiless or not, they’ll be cornholed in the eyes if they’re gonna stop hubba-bubbaing for anybody.

So, obviously the delightful, innocent thoughts derived from that experience were swept clean away by the realization that the jaws were hooked up to ye olde electricity, making them a non-magic lot, suitable for carnies and diamond-mine workers only. Still, a cool effect that managed to creep me the fuck out a few more times. Well, all the time. Okay, I take detours just to get a gander at the eternal jaw grindage, all right?

What else? The first hotel we stayed at was a Formula1, a wayfarer’s standardized, cheap and effective, yet very tidy, inn’s inn. Coded entry doors, full bed and single bunk above and perpendicular, tiny corner washbasin, lights that rotate on the divider between bed and bath areas (meaning you have only one fixture with a casing that revolves providing a lot of lighting level options), remote for TV encased in the frame of the upper bunk beside the light, so all of these things are within arm’s reach, a clock mounted to the headboard…basically everything a fella or gal could want, yet accessible, practical, and efficient. There are only public bathrooms and showers, but each one has sensors that wash and disinfect after every use, and they really work. Automatic lights and lock when you enter, even soothing music in one of the showers!! Can’t speak highly enough for economy here. This place rocks the socks. Tired, ready to read…more to come.

Rapture-Torment, A New Orleans Snippet

2010-01-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

Aug.6, 2004
12:43 AM

And how in the hell do we as a city, as a collective, as a hodgepodgery of unique and mystical and striving and mythical entities, cope with a geographic location as corporeal and presence-laden as our lady New Orleans? In a town full of rationalizers, addicts and self-deluded artists overflowing with creative juices yet stagnant in their execution, how does Johnny Twelvepack maintain control over his life-path? How does Jenny Eightball keep her mental and physical hygiene up to par?

And the true sizzler is this: the rapture-torment allure of this palpable beast may be shunted to the bottom of the list of tasks to be accomplished, but the more she is put off, the more viscious her vengeance will be when she slams full-bore into your awareness.

No matter what month, day, or hour the man-made calendars and timepieces proclaim, there is always the most balls-out not-to-be-missed happening pulsating somewhere in the immediate 50 square miles. The experienced and self-realized being may not bat a metaphysical eye at this, but adventurous monkies with only 18 years of living under their belts can be masticated and digested by the greedy lady before they experience the overwhelming and very necessary self-realization they may otherwise have attained without the welcoming arms of our mistress beckoning from every drive-through daiquiri shop and 24-hour bar.

BlairBush - Ballsy Baltimore Band Blog Begins, Buckos!

2010-01-08T05:01:00.000-08:00

So this is the new lineup! BlairBush rides again, as the alliterative title of this 1st new blog suggests. We're comprised of yours truly, Nikki Smith on lead, Jay Blass on drums, and Chris Hicks on bass. We're pumped, and with the addition of this blog site which unfetters me from the limits of twitter and Facebook word limits, I am here to declare that I now have an outlet for my wordsmithery and plan to use it well! Keep an eye out for posts as I hope to be here a lot! Now to plug stuff...

Our tune "Swagger" is appearing in the upcoming documentary "Journey to the Center of Artomatic," which you can find here:

http://www.artomaticvoyage.com/

Our new song "Norman is up on our very own website which you can find below. Have a good'un!

BlairBush
(703) 945-2776
http://www.blairbush.net
http://www.myspace.com/blairbushmusic
http://facebook.com/blairbushmusic.
http://twitter.com/BlairBush