Jay Bennet, etc.

Jay Bennet,smoking while playing a keyboard,is not cool. Levon Helm,smoking while posing in a field,however is (if you look closely there is the nub of a cigarette in his hand). Not that cigarettes should be glorified in any way, but it just seems a hell of a lot more lame and pretentious when Bennet is chainsmoking on Wilco's I am Trying to Break your Heart Documentary, than Helm's laid back,gritty, trucker/farmer/coal miner, southerner smoking in The Last Waltz.

Me smoking is very not cool. Stay in school kids.

I'm hoping to get started on (so I can finally get finished) recording Pennsylvania Gothic, under the name Tiny Bones Snail. I wrote a lot of the music while Bottled By Fools was still functioning. We're pretty much broken up now, but there has been no formal announcement of it. PA Gothic is going to be released as a collection of short stories with an album serving as a soundtrack. Some of the songs directly correllate to a few of the stories, but most are either separate tales themselves, or readings of parts of stories with background music. But, it takes money to make money, or atleast break even.

I haven't been motivated to blog lately, and I don't feel like typing anymore tonight.

I can't complain. Life is good.

Joshua

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

-Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms.

You and I scout, The world broke us. But today I realized I have something with you that's stronger than I ever imagined, something beyond whatever title might've been dropped. I am so damn thankful for you, and all we've been through. I am not pained to listen to the ocean through my stereo, sending memories of Mexico smack into my brain, as Conor Oberst secretly sings Cleanse Song to me in my car (gotta keep my street cred). I cherish it all. Everything. You are worth more than all the slurpees, Very Best milkshakes, signed Jack Kerouac photographs, American Spirits, Devendra's naval hair, and Tiffany's earrings combined. The world's a strange place, but atleast we have Ernest Hemingway's bearded-shotgun-blown off face smiling down on us. I love you.

Coffin Joe, and a West-Nantmeal show

Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe), the alter ego for actor/director José Mojica Marins, is one bad mamajama. Somewhat of a method actor, he grew out those giant ass fingernails you see above, living the image he created as Coffin Joe. There were little regulations for films in Brazil at the time his career started in the late 60's. The result was a series of gorey, sexually explicit movies all for the sake of 'The Continuity of the Blood!'
I caught one of Marin's films, "This Night I'll Possess your Corpse", not too long ago as it was part of IFC's friday night Grindhouse. I didn't see the whole film, but I caught enough to become interested in its overall aesthetic appeal, as this vampiric-Frida Kahlo-looking creature was given a few redeemable qualities (at one point he saves a child). The ending was phenomenal with Joe accepting Christ as he is sinking in a swamp. There is something so attractive to dark films/music with Christian undertones and morals. I don't find it sacrilegious at all. I find it a hell of a lot more real than half the sterile art in the Christian genre (of any medium).

Last night I went to a show in Honeybrook, a remote farm 30 minutes south-west of Pottstown, called the Crackhouse. I was amazed at the directions Mapquest gave me, as they took me on backroads running along Rt. 100 and 23. I witnessed a crow eating the remains of a possum, a large mansion with a sign on their mailbox reading, "O Lord, how we are poor", and dozens of homes bearing electric candles in their windows- a cliche among Pennsylvanians (my house is no exception). My car is out of commission at the moment, covered in pollen with a missing grill as I am typing this, which is why I've been driving the truck (as seen in friday's adventure). Without any Compact Disc capabilities in this late 80's Ford, and obviously me not having an I-Pod, I trecked the vast distance through the wilderness along the highway listening to Johnnie Ray,as well as a few tracks from his backup band The Four Lads, on the World Cafe. This pre-rock & roll form of music, inspired by Blues and Jazz with more Gospel type vocal harmonies ( yet absent of the grittiness of American Roots music) was a beautiful missing link to modern music, that I have not paid enough attention to. To me, at the time, it sounded so familiar yet so different to/than these influences. I say 'at the time', because I tend to be blown away by some old music on first listen, just to find it much more lackluster when revisited (Not the case with Conway Twitty's, "Hello Darlin'", with its fucking amazing rhythmic wurlitzer bouncing over all the crooning and tear-filled sideburns.)
I pull into the Crackhouse and follow a road-cone lined path on a tractor trail to a small field for parking. I'm wearing paint covered jeans, chucks, and a teal shirt underneath a marroon Thermal sweater. I didn't plan on arriving scrubby, i was just being lazy and didn't want to shower or put on clean clothes (though the thermal sweater might've made the outfit look all the more pretentious, the thing is i have an obsession with thermals). Within a few steps out of the truck I see the crowds of teens smoking around cars, many dressed in flannel or dirty bohemian type clothes. Some people were barefoot, many of the girls didn't brush their hair, and nearly everyone was fascinated by the farm animals residing on the property (chickens and goats mainly). I realized it didn't matter that I was dirty, because everyone else was dirty. It was such a comforting thought. Nobody cared. Nobody seemed to be judging anyone else. The kids were there just to have a good time. Get trashed and dance to the music. It was all that the Pottstown scene was missing (save for the substance abuse), and it all seemed so surreal. Like something I'd drum up in my head and pine about (i know that sounds very teen-girlish). I thought to myself as I watched the blissful red-eyed crowd, that a lot of these kids probably didn't have Myspaces either. In fact I felt uncomfortable pulling out my sexy phone to text, because for the first time in a while I was in a place where the room wasn't full of distant texters. I had found a community of people, I thought didn't exist anymore, because they didn't exist on the internet. None of us existed. We were at a show in the middle of nowhere, exhibiting trends and styles reminiscent from both the late 60's and early 90's. It was all so remote from the 21st century, yet so fresh. It was a step ahead of the snobby Indie hipster music that still has that cutting edge quality.
My friend Boog played first on his beautiful tiny acoustic with a wide fretboard, his large beard which I'm envious of eating the microphone. He was the reason I was fortunate enough to find this magical land. He played phenomenally and made a few healthy bucks from selling merch. Next up was Pantsless, a mostly instrumental band, that I swore had random singing come out of nowhere from what I could tell was not any of the members. But this singing, whether real or cronstructed in my imagination from a series of overtones, blew me away. Meat Rainbow was the last act I caught, for I had to get out of the field when it started raining to avoid being sucked into the ground like Coffin Joe. They reminded me of a poppier version of the Appleseed Cast, with much more discernible singing (given the condition of basement acoustics). Each of these bands sets ended when a guitar player broke a string. It made me miss the days of playing raucous punk rock, and jumping off of shit.
I can't wait to make it out to the crackhouse again; the drive itself is worth it, I swear. Despite my constant anxiety, and deteriorating social skills I had a fucking blast in this world, where I'm older than most of the people, but look so much younger.

laser-tag, cops, and a quarter-life crisis

What does it mean if someone doesn't have a facebook or a Myspace? That's something only a Facebook or Myspace user could answer, which i am pretty much not. Are non-users branded as social lepers for not participating in a physically unsocial activity? The point is, I really don't care. About any of it. But I've come to the realization that I need it. Worse of all in my case is that I'm a musician, who let his myspace page (his band, Bottled by Fools) fall to shit (as well as his own myspace page (repeatedly refused to let him sign on, despite multiple account changes)), which has greatly effected his "career" as an artist. I don't like computers. I use them for school, work business, awful advertising and promoting, "career" business through email, finding music, and looking up weird shit on Wikipia, but that's about it. There was a time where all i did was be on the internet. I loved it. This period runs from the early 2000's up until the middle Myspace era (relative to the present I Guess). I loved to watch the Homestar Runner cartoons, and see the strong bad emails moments after they were posted. Then it became a fad, at which point i was too damn hip to continue doing so. I knew the Chuck Norris jokes before everyone else, and became sick of them before everyone else - noweadays I like to hear an obsolete chuck norris joke from someone who is even more out of touch than me.

But over time I gave up on the internet. I just found all of the communication sites so empty, no matter how helpful they are in keeping people in touch. The fact that my DSL was so unreliable didn't help either, but luckily just a few days ago I got Comcast, and it hasn't failed me yet. Still, I feel like I'm dipping my toe into an ice cold pool, trying to decide if I should jump in or not. And this is a whole nother (South-Eastern PA accent or something) reason for mine not adjusting to the information age. If I do jump into it, how long can I stay in? How many hours do I want to be tied to a decently comfortable swivel chair, neck bent upwards towards the monitor, only able to be positioned on the top part of the desk? Is it better to avoid Unsocial socializing on the internet, than to become part of the web, and then "dissappear" again? Is that somehow worse? God, it's strange how your like a ghost when you're not on the web (isn't that term dated?). Sometimes it feels like you don't exist. My name is Joshua Snell by the way, and this is my attempt to be integrated into the 21st century. Stage one was already completed when I finally got a cell phone, this is the first leg of stage two, I suppose.

Down to the brass tacks, why the hell is there a child model advertising home laser tag equipment at the top of this post? Well, last night, my friend Scott and I decided to buy laser tag equipment. What else is there to do in Pottstown, when you're in your early twenties with a quarterlife crisis? I would've been perfectly happy being drunk as a fox, but we decided to revert back to childhood, and play laser tag behind K-Mart. All was fine and dandy, till we got into a close range battle. The 5-0 showed up, very confused as to why grown men are playing with plastic guns, each pointing theirs at eachother. The officer looked like Dean Caine if he ate Brian Wilson during his fat era. He wore a bullet proof vest under his uniform, which jutted out severely; I bet he rests his chin on it when no ones around. So after we get kicked out of k-mart we go to Scott's old house to play, which is abandoned, but still owned by his family. We had a few nice games here, with more sniper action- probably because my nasty smoker's lungs don't permit me to run for long periods of time anymore-until the same cop pulls up again with a partner of his, a man who resembles Robert Patrick with more of those bumpy wrinkley scars on his face (I always want to know what exactly they're from when I see people with them). I come from around the house with a spotlight shining in my eyes, and officer Dean Wilson (they fused like Voltron) telling me to hold my gun by the barrell. It was all very bizarre. Probably more bizarre for the officers, but I took some amusement out of it. So, after these coppers give us a second warning, we go inside to this house with no electricity, because if we hopped in the truck and left it would look too suspicious. We have a flashlight on us, so we decide explore Scott's abandoned home.

I have been best friends with this man for years, and he's always been very peculiar about company. I have only seen a fraction of each of the houses he has lived in, and am always bothering him to unlock the forbidden door to the attic of his new place. The previous owner very sternly told his family not to go up there, without giving a reason. Very Strange. So at this old house I am finally allowed to look through the empty rooms, where his witch grandmother (literally) chain smoked and practiced spells. Scotts trying to find belongings left there he wants, I was looking through boxes of books. I take out Hamlet, and a book on what would've happened if the Nazis won WWII. Scott has put fake blood on the walls to scare off ransackers and vandals, who've already broken into the house, without penalty from the law. We're about to leave, at the last moment grabbing firewood for my house, and a light shines through the sliding glass door of the empty living room. I turn off my own light, realizing it's too late to jump into a corner, so I stand there with books in hand and my plastic laser blaster tucked in the back of my pants, sometime after 11 o'clock. I really didn't even want to do this whole laser tag thing, I got dragged in to humor my friend, struggling to grasp the fact that he was getting older just as I am. somehow i ended up paying for them, from a toothless fan of Bottled By Fools, who had an obsession with me about a year ago, when things were kicking a bit more with my music, but here I was being busted a third time by Dean Patrick (they also fused together to make an even greater force to be reckoned with) for being in posession of English literature and laser armaments while breaking and entering into a house, technically held by the bank, for firewood. Scott is a master weaver of coverstories, though there wasn't much for us to cover.we weren't doing anything wrong, though I'm sure if the Patrick side of Dean Patrick would've seen the fake blood while he was searching the second floor, a whole nother predicament would've occured. So he gave our bizarre explanation, and the cops escorted us out to the truck dumbfounded, after a call to scott's mom was made to clear up the confusion. The Dean side of Dean Patrick told me, "behave Mr. Snell", before he pulled away. It's not like I was going to get high by the Chimneya and talk with my near-straightedge friend about all we were discontent with in life.

I'm too tired to write anymore. This is a good start. Even if no one reads this.

Tiny-Bones Snail