mr dave

It’s close enough to Valentine’s Day to make this one a little sappy, only not really. Way back in 1993 I was in grade 11 and V-Day happened to fall on a Sunday. I remember this because I had been working my first part-time job at a local grocery store for a while and had arranged to buy a guitar from a fellow student and co-worker, on ‘Sunday’ the relevance of the day being completely lost on us. So that fine Sunday morning I got my Aunt to give me a drive to pick up my first guitar (she’d get me to babysit, I get her to chauffeur me hehe), $250 later I’m the owner of a jet black ‘Jaguar’, not a Fender Jaguar, just Jaguar – a cheap Strat ripoff – but whatever, it stayed in tune and made me feel cool and that’s really all that mattered.

After we get back from the pickup it was my Uncle’s turn to hook me up. He dug out one of those old 10 000 Chords books and proceeded to circle the 7 shapes that make up the major chords, explained to me how to read the charts and tune my guitar, then sent me home for a week to practice. A week later I’m back in their living room and showing off the chords I’ve learned and wanting the next ‘lesson’ so he circles the most common minor chord shapes (Em, Am, Dm) and maybe a few common ‘fancy’ chords like The Hendrix Chord (7#9) and send me back on my way. Another week and I’ve got another set of chords down pat and I’m stoked for the next challenge, so I get back to their place – Alright Uncle what’s next?

That’s it.

What?!?!??

That’s it. You’ve got your major and minor chords right?

Yeah….

Then that’s it. You’ve got all you really need to make music. Now you just need to go out there and do it.

… but….

Go!

Not the kind of results my 16 year old half-spazz brain were ready to accept; though in retrospect he was totally on the money. He’d provided me with the basic building blocks of creating music. The only thing ‘missing’ was barre chord theory, but considering my uncle was a bluegrass guy I can understand why he didn’t bother. One of my best friend’s older brothers ended up hooking me up with that last piece of fundamental theoretical knowledge a little while later and then my guitar neck opened up way more than I had ever imagined possible.

I remember being a little pissed off and frustrated toward my uncle that evening when he stopped giving me what I considered ‘lessons’. I took it like he didn’t really want to help me learn – which was totally false – I just wasn’t used to having to do the majority of the legwork myself. The other thing was I saw him as a veteran, he was experienced, he’d played the instrument for longer than I’d breathed – how could he teach me everything he’d learned in just a few hours? It seemed foolish, like he was holding back on some tricks or something. Only I was the fool, making the same mistake the friend who sold me the guitar about warned me about, I was putting the cart in front of the bull and focusing on superficial lead licks and noodley bits without learning how to properly play the fundamental rhythms that supported them.

Without my uncle’s structure and direction I turned to magazines as my substitute teacher, I bought SO MANY Guitar World/Player/For the Practicing Musician magazines in the mid 90s it’s hardly funny. When I moved away to college a few years later I actually cut out all the tabs from the magazines and packed them with me instead of taking the full magazine copies – it still took 2 full grocery bags for those tabs (and I ‘might’ have looked at a dozen of them through college haha). Still those magazines were invaluable back in the day. Keep in mind this was before the internet was everywhere and even if you DID have access to the net you were getting your tab pretty much exclusively from OLGA (the On Line Guitar Archive) and all of it was homebrewed so the quality of anything more complicated than an average Nirvana tune was usually leaving a lot of room for future improvements.

The other reason I relied so heavily on magazines was that none of my peers would play with me hahaha. The reason I wanted a guitar in the first place was because I’d heard Jungle Man by the Red Hot Chili Peppers a few years earlier and it triggered something even if it did take me quite a while to build up the nerve to try stepping up (then to find an actual sale in pre-Craigslist and eBay days). So while everyone else seemed content to cheese out with Mr. Big and Extreme ballads as their attempt to modernize the default classic rock set everyone out there seemed to learn I built up technique – funky technique.


The problem with only learning technique and within a closed environment is that you become a robot. I didn’t realize how limited I truly was until almost 2 years later when I tried college for the first time (18 years old, and dropped out after Christmas because, well, I was a stupid 18 year old). I had actually met another RHCP fan (strange how rare we were prior to Californication) and he setup a jam with myself and another dude. I couldn’t do squat unless he played specific bass lines from Blood Sugar Sex Magik or some other recognizable tune. Just trying to improvise proved an impossible challenge at the time; I was far too concerned with playing the ‘right’ thing instead of just playing. That’s the final lesson my uncle tried to impart onto me when he told me ‘that was it’ after my 2nd lesson – to stop worrying about playing it right and to just play music instead. Like the classic Blues adage – if you’re thinking, you’re stinking.

Looking back it seems a little odd that my father, an actual working musician, never actually taught either of his children how to play music. Granted he was living in LA during the mid-90s (illegally - but he’s white so no one cared) but he never seemed to have the patience or inclination to pass on the music. I often wonder if it was a conscious decision he made to try shielding us from some of the less glamorous aspects of the business or that he was unwilling / incapable of sharing what made him special with others and thereby minimizing the attention that would normally be focused on him.

Either way, it was again my uncle who made it a day back in October of ‘95 to take me to the local music store along with his sons to help me get my first ‘real’ guitar on my 19th birthday. I still can’t believe that Mexican Stratocaster (made in ‘94) would now be old enough to vote if it was a real person. My Marshall amp would follow me home from that same store exactly one year later.


In November of 1997 my uncle suffered a massive heart attack and died in his home. The autopsy results indicated that it was the kind of traumatic injury that couldn’t be avoided. Even if he’d been visiting a hospital when it happened they wouldn’t have been able to save him, not that it really makes it any better. I just tell myself God needed a serious banjo player (his primary instrument) and needed one NOW. I also fully expect to drop some funky bass lines for his noodley banjo pickings someday, until then I’ll keep looking for another muse to lead me through the next phase of being a musician (though I write way more than riff lately). For now, all I can say is - Thanks Uncle, wherever you are.

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Eric Dolphy – You Don’t Know What Love Is

This is at least the 3rd time I post a clip of this tune on this site and it continues to shine above any and all other pieces of music I’ve ever heard.

Originally crafted as an actual lyrical pop song by Gene de Paul and Don Raye for a 1941 Abbott and Costello film the song was originally scrapped prior to the film’s release. It got re-introduced as part of a soundtrack for a lower quality musical film the following year. It’s only when Miles Davis and other jazz cats started recording and covering the song in the 1950s that it took on a life of its own and became far more than just some throwaway pop tune for a movie. To be honest I didn’t even know there were lyrics to the tune before I Wiki’ed it for its credits just now.

This particular version is featured on Eric Doplhy’s Last Date album, recorded just a few weeks prior to his own untimely death. The album also features a rare oral statement from Dolphy –

“When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone, in the air, you can never capture it again.”

That line truly exemplifies what playing music is about to me. It’s about experiencing and reflecting the moment as it happens - to be able to step out of the constraints of your conscious mind and let your eternal soul dance freely for however long the moment lasts. It becomes a sort of meditative exercise with results that make it relatively easy to understand why so many people draw parallels to religious experiences (consider how many time you’ve heard someone claim ‘musician X IS God’).

What really set this track apart from the other exploratory free jazz of the period is that this piece doesn’t seem to just reflect the moment, but reflects the totality of existence leading up to that moment, as if time is truly irrelevant and existence is an all or nothing affair.

Consider the 20 seconds of silence at the start of the clip, it’s dark, silent, nothing, an absence of sound, soul, and life. Then it cuts into the applause, on one hand a minor cacophony of atonal appreciation and acknowledgement of the potential to come; on the other hand a external bang to initialize and propel the fleeting moment the musicians grasp onto to shape their performance. It’s like staring off into the blackness of space and having a tear open up and a beam of light escaping to the dawn of a new world and within that light the seed to some new life.

The ebb and flow of the intro flute solo serves to gently bring that light and life to the surface where the long slow notes of the bass serve to grow the seed outward, slowly pushing the stem and leaves outward while the fruit still desires to reach the stars. The introduction of the piano into the piece pulls it out of the eternal and into the modern, the stark simplicity of the interplay between the flute and piano is replaced by a more intricate interplay within the full group and a shift away from long slow bowed bass notes to more traditional plucked tones. Like how the scope of the world changes from our youth into our adulthood, the flower never gets lost but it transitions from observed to observer.

The piano really seems effective at representing a more modern world, being a more mechanically complex instrument as compared to the rest of the ensemble. Having a more atonal piano solo also serves as perfect counterpoint to the melodic solo the flute provides for the majority of the piece; especially as a reflection of the way some of the flute notes come out at the end like they’re being blown too hard. It’s like an attempt to project the last bits of life possible into the melodic wind that carries a flower over the world in hopes it can continue to float over the hustle and bustle of modern life only they get brought down under the mounting pressures of the piano trills that serve to introduce its own solo.

Even with the jagged accents coming through the piano like footsteps trying to crush the petals into the pavement it doesn’t die. The flute comes back, something picks up that flower again from the dirt, and in that moment they’re transported away, the modern world fades and the moment takes over again. The wind carries that flower and the observer back up and away and into space. The day ends, the world fades away along with the band and that final solo – each note in that staccato melody is like a star shining through the blackness of space for the first time to the eyes of the observer; the ascension of the observer from the confines of their individual being into the totality of their existence, to be capable of abandoning the body in order to become light. It goes through the full cycle of life, ending where it began, but offering infinite insight within itself for willing observers.

I won’t call it ‘the best’ but this is truly one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded.

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i am the universe

mr dave

While the correct answer to that question will always be “I WANNA ROCK!” the truth is… hell if I know. There’s something offsetting to me in seeing a middle aged person trying to rock out like it still matters; whether it’s a complete refusal to let go of the styles and sounds of their youth, or the lame creepiness of being a 40 something still holding fast to being 21 and obsessing with the latest pop star drama, it’s just a little off for me. It’s like a comment I got on this site once about how cool it was that I was a 30 something who still puffed weed everyday and liked making shoegaze music, I don’t think it was meant as a back handed insult but it still made me feel like a stunted adult.

That’s not to say that I think there’s an age limit to particular styles of music as much as there definitely seems to be a correlation with the attention given to certain aspects of pop culture within certain stages of personal development. I’d go so far as to say adolescent rebellion is one of the most substantial phases of personal development within youths today, it’s when and how a young person differentiates themselves from their parents and really starts getting a true sense of individuality. For the most part (especially in the western world) rock/pop music is the soundtrack to that rebellion, it means so much to so many because I think for a lot of young people it’s their first taste of a grown up communicating at them like individuals rather than children - especially since the 80s. It provides the child with another perceived voice of authority and provides them with alternative options on how to deal with daily conflicts. Whether it’s some pop garbage talking about trends, or some heartfelt reflection of the soul is irrelevant so long as the young listener feels an impact.

The problem occurs when you get people who don’t recognize the underlying reason for the appeal and run with the belief that the personal pop culture of their youth IS the superior one that shouldn’t ever have to be remixed by the mainstream. Whatever, they’re the same kind of people who’d complain about Amy Winehouse getting added to the 27 club but were defending Kurt Cobain against the exact same ‘logic’ back in their own heyday. I don’t think we all need to become cranky old curmudgeons, but at the same time I sure as hell don’t want to be a frat boy forever.

Having said all that, if rock music is the soundtrack to adolescent rebellion – how do you rebel against a rock musician?

I’m still not sure, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s kind of like a magic trick, once you understand how it works it’s not special anymore, it just doesn’t matter. In my case, it was owning up to the realization that I was abusing music as a way of getting back at the old man. I know I’ve got ‘potential’, not enough to sell millions of records and tour the world but enough to have other people pick up and comment on it - I spent years burying that potential under a mess of noisy improvisations. Problem being, I was blind to the fact that I was actually following rather closely to his early path.

I don’t have that many memories of seeing my old man in action, in fact I only ever remember seeing him actually perform once (some promo gig in the mid 80s for a local tv spot). What little I do remember form back in the day were rehearsals and the unbelievable boredom within – STOP! START IT OVER AT THE CHORUS AND GO THROUGH THE BRIDGE! GOTTA GET IT TIGHT! 2-3-4! GO!... ALRIGHT! NOW FROM THE TOP!

…. Oh. My. God. It was so boring. I remember being like 5 and thinking ‘Why can’t you guys just rock out? Why do you have to keep stopping every time it starts getting good?’ Soooooo boring, and 20 years later, I had no intentions on reliving that shenanigan, or creating a new stage for some sycophants to latch onto. In my mind his music was lame and corporate, his focus on commercial success and his discipline towards the quality of their sound just turned me off. Turns out that boring level of discipline is kind of exactly what you need if you want to be taken halfway seriously as an actual professional working musician, and if you intend to pay your bills without having to work some lame day job you’d better believe you need to approach performing with the same attitude as a corporate professional.

But… I’m a hard headed idiot, so rather than learn specifics I worked off my assumptions. Here’s the kicker though, a lot of my initial rebellious attitudes were not only seen as correct and viable but actually encouraged; we were NOT supposed to want to emulate the past, as grunge kids we were NOT supposed to openly want commercial success. And with peers that shared those initial attitudes it took me a long while to recognize how foolish I was being and how closely I was actually following the path we all thought we had turned our backs on.

I’ll cut this rambling here for now, but I’m sure I’ll come back to this topic for further introspection in the future.

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Anyone who’s ever paid attention to my posts when it came to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, classic songs, or major influences knew this song was coming. This is the lightning bolt that refried my brain after it froze up following the breakdown of my family.

Everything about this track is badass, from sounds to sights I’ve never seen anything quite like it before or since. I’d seen other bands who looked all freaky and punkish but the hardcore styles I’d hear as a result didn’t appeal to me. I’d heard other bands who sounded kind of funky like that but never without a bunch of keyboards and shoulder pads (it was the 80s after all). Ultimately everything I’d heard before the Chili Peppers got compared to some imaginary line I’d established through my old man. Then again when all you heard was 80s AOR radio rock like Don Henley or Phil Collins or Journey or Foreigner it’s easy to think that most music is boring grown up stuff.

Jungle Man is not boring grown up stuff.

That bass line entered my head the same way you’d swing a baseball bat into a bag of garbage - it splattered ALL OVER THE PLACE before Hillel’s guitar scooped it all up into a new container. I remember laying on the floor in the living room at my aunt’s house doing homework, and then stopping completely, mouth agape, entirely possessed by what I was seeing and hearing on the tv. It’s the first time I remember recognizing the popular value of a piece of media completely independently of any other factors.

In fact I got social pressure from my peers to distance myself from the band because ‘they were gay’ in the days before Under the Bridge becoming a hit and making it ‘ok’ to like the band. Looking back this attitude is definitely one of the factors in my frustration with musicians who would talk about their ideals on how to create music but wouldn’t actually be willing to attempt any sort of public display of those ideals until another group has proven the viability of the action through their own means. I mean, really, if WE did it first someone might laugh at us, and we certainly don’t want to be risking a little ridicule in light of being potentially seen as innovators, no sir.

This song is also the first time I WANTED to play guitar, though I also remember thinking I wanted to play guitar because I’d never be cool enough to play bass like what I’d just heard. Though in reality…
---------------------------------------
---------4-----------------4-----------
---------------------------------------
--0h2--X---2--0----0h2--X---2--0--2--
… is a pretty easy bass groove.

My other big thing for the Chili Peppers is all the indirect influence they had on me. I’d pick up any magazine I could find that featured an interview with Flea and whatever guitarist they had at the time and in every interview I learned something more about either playing music or other musicians. Again this is something that the proliferation of the internet has changed immensely. You don’t need to wait for a new magazine to be printed to learn a bit more about a person or their influences, you don’t need to make a list of people to check out in the future when all you need to do now is clear off enough hard drive space prior to clicking on the discography download. But back in the day those magazine interviews could provide real substance and I was lucky that Flea always took advantage of those opportunities to discuss some of his favourite musicians with the hopes that kids like me would explore music beyond the tv and radio and discover some new sounds and grooves.

I can’t actually think of an interview where Flea acted like he was above the situation like a big star, or glamourized the lifestyle or talked about partying and banging groupie (I’m totally making this expression a thing now). It was ALWAYS about the music first and foremost, and for being a consummate musician like that, even if the last few RHCP have sounded bland to my ears, I’ll always have time to hear what Flea has to say, no matter what voice he chooses to use to speak it.

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i am the universe

Janszoon

Heh. Even though it was quite awhile ago, I remember that exact comment you're referring to, and exactly who said it, and I have to tell you, even though it was directed at you not me, it made me feel the exact same way about myself when I read it.

I can totally related to relate to this entry, by the way. There are so many times I wonder what fourteen year old me would have thought of current me, a thought which always leads me directly to wondering why thirty-four year old me should give the remotest fuck what some simple-minded kid from the early 90s thinks.

Also, "Jungle Man" is a great track, though not as good as "Catholic School Girls Rule".

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

mr dave

It's all good, I often wonder if that feeling of stunted maturity is one of the main reasons bands break-up due to 'creative differences'.

I also agree that Jungle Man is not necessarily the best old-school RHCP track out there (I'd go with Funky Crime myself) but JM was the catalyst in my youth. I can't deny its effect on my growth.

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i am the universe

mr dave

People In The City is from Air’s 2nd full length album – 10 000Hz Legend, it’s one of the standout tracks on the disc. I had the chance to see them about 3 weeks before that particular clip was filmed, at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC. I remember the bass being punchier in the middle at my show, a little rougher around the edges if you will; it made the whole thing rock a little harder in my opinion. Live footage starts about halfway through the clip.

Now as for the way I got to see that show. Wow. Fasten your seatbelts because this particular rabbit hole gets really retarded really fast. Have I ever mentioned how stupid I used to be? Stubbornness and naivety can only take so much blame…

This goes back to the Winter of 2001. The previous 6 months had been quite eventful, graduating from college in video game design (which was really more like 2 years of ‘high’ school), a job training / work term thing of questionable legality in Seattle that was supposed to be a week but turned into 3 months yet somehow didn’t completely blow up in everyone’s faces (mine and 4 others), and a subsequent contract to work on a small scale game with a major online presence.

That’s where the good stuff ends.

The reality of that new job with the contract was that we were for the most part idiots in terms of managing ourselves. We were all too young and too concerned with remaining friends for one of us to step up and be the boss. The two graphics guys literally spent every single afternoon of our employment playing NHL ‘92 on the Sega Genesis. None of us actually went to work, rather we hung out in the office and ‘worked’ on our game. That’s not entirely true, the 2 programmers tried to work but a company without an actual ‘business’ man at the top is just a bunch of dudes hanging out regardless of intentions or words. I was the level designer with a serious case of tunnel vision on the special-ness of my snowflake.

By the time the winter set in I’d started ‘working’ later hours, showing up around 4 in the afternoon and sticking around until 4-5 in the morning. Part of the reason was due to rendering times for the worlds I was trying to create, lighting could take upwards of 90 minutes to render prior to being able to test the result to check for bugs / issues. That alone should have been enough indication that I should have scrapped everything and started over but that would have required experience and knowledge. But I was the only one who really knew how to create the worlds in the proprietary 3d game engines we had at the time, hell even my teachers would refer to me in class when it came to specifics about building in them. And so, my head kept swelling.

The other reason I never bothered revising my method was because of the seedy underside of the early days of the net. IRC. I’d start the render and fire up a chat client and start the sad dance of lonely nerds. Ahh yes, the late 90s / early 2000s - the heyday of long-distance e-relationships. God. Damn. We were STUPID.

So anyway one fine January evening I started a chat with SillyGurl (all names have been changed to protect me from those who have threatened legal action in the past) and we hit it off. First I added her to ICQ to help her with computer issues at her place. She worked some minor bookkeeping job in Baltimore. Within a few weeks it became rather apparent that she was obsessing with me and trying to gain my approval or praise on everything she did. I mentioned smoking weed, and having experimented with other psychedelics while in college, she’d never had that opportunity so within a few weeks of ‘meeting’ me online she’s now telling me about having started to puff and partying then how she tried just tried LSD randomly about a month into her new change. Even as stupid as I was I recognized that as dangerous behavior and tried counseling her to slow down a bit.

My main thing with ‘meeting’ people online back in the day was that the relative anonymity of indirect communication made it easier to be completely honest about ourselves. It’s not like Facebook existed yet with the majority of our specific personal information listed for the world to see. That’s not to say I hadn’t hidden the personal information I’d listed in ICQ when I filled out my profile as a ‘professional’ for work

So anyway, stupid boy and broken woman kept chatting. She’d start to obsess, I’d push her away, get bored after a few days, go back and the idiocy perpetuated itself. Ignorance doesn’t absolve guilt. Fact is though, the back of my head was tossing up as many red flags as it could produce I was just choosing to ignore them.

It got to the point where she claimed to be chatting with me during a party at her place. She’d have people over but kept excusing herself to send messages back to me. At one point one of her friends popped onto the pc and asked me a few questions and if she could add me to her own chat client at home. So I added DirtyGurl to the mix. Yeah… effing genius…
So that obviously created the start of a whole pile of dramatic e-love triangle drama. The main problem was that I was still very much a stupid ‘nice guy’, I wanted to help out SillyGurl, I also have a very hard time saying ‘no’ so when DirtyGurl claimed to want to help the situation I accepted. Reality was DirtyGurl was a poop disturber who just wanted to cause strife, and SillyGurl was a drama queen who took any comment to heart then emotionally overreacted to everything.

That actually lasted for a couple of weeks. By the time we could see the end of Winter things had calmed down a bit. I think it was near the end of March where I started asserting myself more and putting my foot down on the situation. I’d grown tired of constantly defending myself against their bickering to the point where I blocked DirtyGurl and gave the Silly one an ultimatum – do ‘not’ reference any more of her garbage drama to me or I block you too. The calm only lasted a few hours, so I blocked both and then went to bed.

Next day I get to work and my coworkers tell me about a phone message from a law enforcement type. Here’s another thing about letting a bunch of idiot nerds run an ‘office’ – we had two separate offices, one for artists, one for programmers, we only bothered getting a phone in the programmer office. So they had informed this LawLady that I normally worked evenings, and so she’d try calling again that night, only the programmers locked their office when they left that evening. The phone rang non-stop for over 4 hours that evening...

Next morning when the first programmer showed up, I got his help. 2 minutes later we’ve got the number for the missed call and one Google search later and we’re seeing an area code map of the Baltimore area. Time to come clean a bit, it helped that he was actually in the process of marrying a woman he’d met online, so no mockery or ridicule, and a definite plan to leave the door unlocked that evening.

Fast forward a few hours, this time I’m able to get the call from LawLady who described herself as a Sherrif’s Deputy for the area dealing with an attempted suicide. Apparently after I blocked SillyGurl she sent me some messages letting me know she couldn’t go on without me and that she’d take a bunch of pills if I didn’t reply (she was already blocked by this point so I never got the messages). She apparently smartened up after taking the pills and called 911 who then found her unconscious and took her to the hospital for treatment. Part of her ‘treatment’ was directly addressing her actions with everyone involved and since I was technically the last person in communication with her (our chat screen was open with suicidal messages when they found her) I was involved in that process.

LawLady and I talked for over 3 hours.

During that time I agreed to unblock SillyGurl so that we could chat a bit and hopefully smooth things out a bit. I did feel guilty and I agreed to help – for recovery, as a result I ended up with LawLady’s chat info as well just in case SillyGurl seemed to start freaking out I could warn her of a potential 2nd attempt on her life or something. SillyGurl and I chatted a few times after that but it was obviously not at all the same anymore, she had quit her old job and started studying tourism at a local college and I encouraged her to keep up with it. This would have been around April. As things cooled down with SillyGurl they started to heat up with LawLady.

Over the next 2-3 months LawLady and I started chatting more and more, even to the point of giving her my phone number so we could actually talk on the phone. She had apparently studied psychology as well as corrections to end up in the position she had with the county but it wasn’t going to last much longer. She found it too stressful and wanted to take some time off to work on her Master’s thesis – about how the increased popularity of the internet affects interpersonal relationships. Well isn’t that a nice co-inky-dink; and with my recent direct involvement with an e-relationship gone bad I was a perfect candidate for ‘research’.

That’s when the suggestion to visit Baltimore for a week in June came up, and within it the chance to see Air.

On that note we're over 1500 words again so I’m gonna cut this off here for now, part 2 will follow in 2 weeks (it has a car chase ).

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i am the universe

Trollheart

Man! I know it's your life, and respect that, so don't think I'm trivialising what happened, but this is more like a movie of the week or something! Really interesting, and two weeks seems a long way off now to wait!

Most interesting thing that happened to me with IRC was that I got hooked on it, to the point where I spent my entire two weeks' holidays chatting till about 6am then going to sleep, missing the day. After a while I realised it was taking over my life and cut it out completely. Never went back. I found people got very possessive on IRC: if you werent there EVERY DAY at a specific time (never mind the time difference --- why is it Americans think it's always their time wherever in the world you are? I would say at 3-4 am time to go to bed and she'd say but it's only 7pm or whatever! ) they got annoyed, upset, clingy, as if you had nothing else to do. Well, I didn't, but that's beside the point.

People laugh, but IRC addiction can be as bad as any drug I feel. In fact, as you've demonstrated above, it can be worse, as it can hurt others, often without you even knowing it (suicide notes on a blocked screen). I don't think anyone I dealt with was that unhinged or desperate, but then I cut all ties so I would never have known. Glad things seem to have worked out for you anyway.

Great journal, great writing. I always check when you post, as it's always, without exception, worth it.

TH

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

mr dave

Thanks for the feedback, I do appreciate any comment even if I don't reply immediately. You're not the first person to say it sounds like a TV Movie either, I even had someone ask me if he could use my experiences as the basis for a script he wanted to write so who knows.

I could (and will) comment more about IRC and relationships in my next update. I really thought I could write up this whole incident in two chunks but it's going to take a third one for the resolution (including the promised car chase).

And this is the condensed / light on details version of things...

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i am the universe

mr dave

… Like I used to before.

Trans Am is one of the ‘original’ post rock bands that emerged in the late 90s in the wake of more experimental groups like Tortoise and Slint with a fair amount of Krautrock influence throughout. This particular track is from their 5th full length (Red Line). The only other thing I’ve known about the band is that they’re from the Washington DC area, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So back to the crazies…

As Spring progressed into Summer there were more and more phone calls to the point where we’d chat then talk on the phone for a few hours every night before bed. The line between personal and professional didn’t get blurred; it got completely scribbled over and ignored. In retrospect it makes me wonder how much loneliness is a factor towards making foolish interpersonal decisions.

Regardless, at the time I was still incredibly naïve and immature, difference now is that I can recognize it rather than thinking everyone else is stupid. We made our plans to meet. I wasn’t completely dumb, I did press for proof of authenticity in regards to some of her claims, like her association with particular universities. I received formal looking notarized documentation on the proper letterheads so I didn’t think more about it.

As the actual visit drew nearer I think we both started getting cold feet. I started pushing more on the angle that I was going there for ‘professional’ reasons, as a matter of assisting her with research for her thesis. She got defensive thinking I was trying to dump her. That should have been a red flag but I’d just write her off as unfocused and needing my help to get her work done. I wasn’t open or honest about much of anything in regards to my so called relationship with this person with any friends or family until about a week before I was supposed to take off.

I didn’t tell my mom until about 2 days prior to leaving, for obvious reasons she didn’t like the idea. The next evening I got a call from a gentleman identifying himself as the president of one of the universities LawLady claimed to be associated with to explain his concerns to me about this matter. Mainly because he wasn’t able to find a record of her association with his school and none of her methods were standard practices. Regardless, I stood my ground, I think deep down I wanted to make this decision for myself on my own, I didn’t want to be told or advised by ‘grown ups’ on this matter like I was some dumb kid, especially not for something about the internet, I mean really, how would those old farts actually even be able to get it? Did I mention I was stupid?

So anyway, next day I get on the plane. This is all pre-9/11 so I didn’t need a passport or much of anything besides just showing up with a printout of a receipt for the ticket and maybe a photo ID and I was off. I spotted her as soon as I stepped off. She didn’t quite look as I expected, something was just a little off, but I justified it as her sending old photos, another flag I ignored. She also always told me she drove a green Toyota Celica, a friend of mine had actually bought a new Celica that year as well. First he told me – that car isn’t available in green. She then claimed a custom paint job, fine. Though, once we stepped out of the airport, there was no green Celica in sight, but there was a stretch limo. Ummmm k.

I’m not one for ostentatious displays of material wealth. I’ve never been one for flashy stuff. That part of myself has never really changed for as long as I can remember and it’s an attitude I’ve always been rather clear with. I’m very much a function over fashion kind of guy, so having to step in the limo raised a flag I couldn’t ignore anymore. Especially once LawLady started pointing out all sorts of various historical landmarks and factual tidbits about the area like she was a tour guide (what SillyGurl had been studying) instead of a psychologist working towards their Masters degree. I remember sitting in the back of that limo and making the choice to play dumb rather than address some of the red flags even I couldn’t deny anymore.

We made it to the hotel without incident, I got checked in, and then we did some interviews which she taped on cassette. At that point things seemed to be going back to ‘normal’, at least until she got a call from her brother late in the afternoon while we were getting ready to head out for food. I couldn’t make out any specifics but he was FLIPPING OUT HARD, like I’ve never heard so much screaming and hollering coming out of the side of a phone before or since. She explained it as him being overly dramatic about their shared phone bill because she was staying at his place for a few weeks while hers was getting renovated.

So we got through that first day, 2nd day started as more of the same then I got a phone call after lunch by these two guys who identified themselves as former police (detective and sergeant) and current university security guys. They’d been investigating this matter as a direct request from the Prez of their institution so they were likely heads of security. Anyway, neither of them could find tangible proof and requested that I check in with them once a day, just leave a message saying “Yeah, this is Dave, it’s today and everything is cool.” Next day, more of the same, made sure to call in, then it was time for the midweek break from all the interviews and for the trek down to DC for an overnight stay.

So I check out on the 4th morning of this trip, and we take off for DC. I had a giant music nerd moment on that train trip when I noticed the transit map featuring coloured lines showing the various routes around the DC area and a particular Red Line, that also ended at a spot called ‘Shady Grove’ not unlike a particular closing track on a particular album. Even nuttier was re-listening to that track and realizing it was a bunch of samples recorded from within a train car exactly like the one I was on (same station announcements etc.) with the drummer doing his best impression of the sound of the train starting and stopping between the stations.

Once we got to DC we checked out all the cool stuff at the National Mall like the Smithsonian and Museum of Natural History, as well as a lot of other stuff but those two were amazing. I highly recommend both, along with everything else available at the National Mall to anyone who gets the opportunity to visit. Then we headed to our hotel downtown, had a meal, and got ready for Air.

They were beyond awesome; Sebatien Tellier was the opening act and set the mood nicely. I remember being amazed at the amount of free sampler cds people were trying to give away to patrons outside the venue and LawLady giving me derisive attitude for accepting a bunch. Whatever, my friends appreciated the free collections of random tunes once I got back.

I did not call in.

The next day when we got back to Baltimore we ended up at some Chinese takeout place and while we were waiting for our food she checked her messages for the first time in two days. I didn’t hear what was said, but she got a weird look on her face then forced her phone into my hand and MADE me call my mom and leave a message. No waiting to get to the hotel or nothing, RIGHT NOW. Apparently Mama Dave doesn’t mince words when she thinks her baby is in danger. In retrospect where she did manage to get the president of a rather large university to call me directly, I don’t think it’s beyond reason to consider the probability she’d made contact with the FBI or other security agencies. Again this is all pre-9/11 so it’s not like there were terror watch lists, crossing the border for something like this was still just considered dumb instead of suspicious.

So I call my mom and leave a message, I also check back in with the university security guys and leave my voice mail check with an apology for missing the previous day. At that point our day was ultimately shot, we’d gotten back from DC late that afternoon, she was frazzled by whatever phone messages she had and we made arrangements to meet the next morning to continue with interviews and start wrapping up the research.
Next morning, I get up, shower, do my regular thing and get ready for the specified hour. She doesn’t show up. An hour or so goes by and then I get a phone call. She asks me to check out of my front window and to tell me what I can see. Nothing. At least nothing out of the ordinary to me, there’s a parking lot, and a street, and a McDs across the way and a couple of cars in that parking lot too. Except they were parked behind a big tree and I could only see the front corners of the police car and university security truck that had apparently been parked there all morning staring at my hotel window.

About 20 minutes later I get a knock at the door; Police officer and two older dudes. They proceed to identify themselves as the university guys and establish decades of experience and ask me to prove my identity and safety. At this point there’s no more denying the red flags. I explain my perspective and version of the events, they explain in turn that they don’t actually care about anything specific regarding the people involved; it’s all about serving a Cease and Desist order to protect the integrity of the university’s reputation in case any details about this now obvious shenanigan went public.

It sounds cheesy as hell but after we confronted her with proof of deception on the phone she came clean and we all met up at McDonald’s for cheeseburgers (I swear to Christ this line is 100% truth hahaha). She confessed and apologized for misleading me and agreed to the C&D action. I must say the security guys were top notch, they could have been teasing and ridiculing my situation to no end, they could have just walked away once she signed the order but they didn’t, they honestly helped me out and got in contact with the airport to help bump my flight home ahead a couple of days, they even drove me to the airport after the McMeal. Mind you they also had a good laugh about how fast she was flying along an adjacent highway to get there first. She insisted on paying the transfer fee for my flight since everything was technically her fault. I shouldn’t have even acknowledged her but it was easier to let her do it than confront. I didn’t hug her on the way back but I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder when I left the terminal. It’s not that I wanted to get one last look, it’s that I ALWAYS look over my shoulder on the way out of anywhere to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

I know I promised a car chase last time. I didn’t realize how much typing was involved with this craziness.

It’s not over.

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i am the universe

Trollheart

Great stuff as usual Dave, but I'm a little confused. What scam was she running? Why were the authorities after her?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

mr dave

Sorry I got lost in the details and didn't actually write out the resolution I planned

So... to recap.

I met SillyGurl, then her friend DirtyGurl got rolled into the mix for drama. Then SG tried to commit suicide and LawLady entered the picture. LL claimed to be working through a major university. I was to visit her area based on some of the work she was doing for that institution.

The reality is, LawLady was a lie. 100% same as her name, career, personal history, home, car. It was a new persona SG took on for herself after the attempted suicide (I do believe she did try). I can't say if DG was real but I'm inclined to believe that one too. There was never an association with the university, hence their concern on the matter, but where she claimed to be getting funding from them and faked documentation they didn't want to take chances in handling the matter, justifying the Cease and Desist action. Her funding actually came from her brother, which explains the insane screaming I heard (turns out he'd just gotten a phone bill for something like $500).

The authorities were never after her so much as just trying to get to the truth of our matter due to her choice of indirectly associating them into her mix of lies and deception. Their entire concern was protecting the integrity of their university's reputation.

The only scam she was running was being desperate for love.

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i am the universe