On the other side of a roll of dark photos is my sister, enjoying the last time that I saw her. A set of images underexposed and dark taken from a $5.95 disposable camera that was taking priceless pictures we thought at the time were disposable too. They're almost all pictures of me and Ro, or me and Mom, or me and Nugget and Ted, or me and Rex... or just me. On the other end of the camera was my sister. And one would think she came all that way just to take some pictures of me.

It seems so selfish now of the last time we had together to have a handful of barely legible photos of everyone but her. Mom sent me all these pictures of us... and I have too few pictures of her. On my mantle in the living room is the few we have together, almost all when I was either just waking up or just going to bed; when she was a bundle of energy and I was the uncool older bro.

For her birthday all Vickie ever wanted was picture frames. But, she never had a picture of her that didn't have her with one of her friends. Her room was a collage of her life and the lives she touched. Smiling faces holding up bottles of beer, making obscene gestures, standing next to the geographic center of the United States. I keep my pictures in a pair of shoeboxes in a closet.

I wonder if now I should go buy some frames.

Hearty congratulations to our friends in Sasquatch and the Sickabillys for winning the WBRU Rock Hunt. Both performances were stellar and between their professional show and unbelievable work ethic, the better band most definitely won.

After catching their winning performance, the boys and I headed out to the Cape to begin recording a little demo for you cats and kittens. I have to admit a certain amount of elitism when I so casually say, "head out to the Cape" almost as though I am joining the Lowes and Hassenfoofers (of the textile Hassenfoofers) for a fine bit of yachting. Though the locale is high class, our weekend started out anything but with an hour and a half attempt to actually gain access to Ted's parents' summer home, frustrated by the small detail of a missing key. While I worked on breaking in through a side door that was missing its deadlock with a pair of visegrips and baling wire, the boys searched around for the missing key with Nugget earning the MVP by finding it precisely where it was supposed to be.

Nugget said as he held up the key, "I know you don't believe in God, but there is a reason why you met me."

And here I was thinking it was divine punishment.

Once we gained entry to the still half-finished house, we were missing a couple key elements like running water and heat. After a while we got at least half of that problem solved, and we were ready to rock with our respective setups.

We were soon humiliated by the self-esteem crushing task of playing to a *gasp* metronome which only a third of us could play with any reliability (I'll give you a hint... it's the third that's a real musician). Wallowing in my ineptitude, we banged out some scratch tracks and got our alpha mic setup for Nugget in place.

Being at the Cape in February proved to be an enormous boon with virtually no one around to recognize our horribleness.

Have you ever woken up early to head into work for a special project, hurriedly stumble around in the dark for your clothing in a desperate effort to not wake the missus, and head in at the crack of dawn all the way knowing, dreading, *feeling* that something was wrong. Not horribly wrong mind you, but a distinctly incorrect sensation that not all was balanced or right in the world. And then, on the first potty break of the day mid morning, you unzip to discover that you put your underroos on backwards?

Neither have I. I was just asking.

This morning I had to make a a horrible decision. The kind of decision that would give any man pause; a short, brief moment to decide between harsh reality and one's principles. The decision, indeed, between bad and worse. These are the times that try men's souls, and my time was no different: 7:02am on a Tuesday.

I reached for my Mach 3 Turbonitrothunderfuck razor and pulled it from its overpriced holster out of our shabby New England medicine cabinet. In my clumsy motion, I struck the release button for the top, disposable razor at such a unique angle that it shot off the stick like a cannon. Firing a shot through my very soul, I saw a perfect arch and 720 degree rotation through the air as it plopped dead center into the toilet. That I had just used.

And that I had not flushed.

Frantically, I threw back open the medicine cabinet door and grabbed the holster only to discover my greatest fear was indeed here as the razor that was now in a pooper half-filled with my own pee was the last I had in the house. The drugstore next door opens at 8am, and I had an interview at 10am.

The sacrifices one makes in times of crises speak a lot of a person. I can only hope my decision speaks well of me. That and that my memory of one's own urine being sterile to oneself was based on scientific fact, and not locker room fancy.

Like a medical experiment chimp reaching for the cigarette with the full knowledge of the imminent electric shock I tuned into the Grammys tonight, and promptly got shocked into a neutral, passive state most capable of consuming quality goods and services from well-marketed companies. After celebrating and shooting some emails off to friends about Green Day's victory of Best Rock Album, I returned to catch the tail end of J.Lo and Marc Anthony deplorable duet. With the New Orleans Skynyrd hangover still ringing in my ears, the dude from A Time To Kill introduces three pop country shitnecks to play, of all things, of all unspeakable, unholy, and thoroughly *un*rocking things, "Freebird."

This is the year that all the publicists for the RIAA said that it was cleaning up its image. No more Monday morning discussions about the "Grannies" and their complete cluelessness to the truly innovative work happening in rock and roll. No more hokey jokes and hip-hop ignorance. No more ridiculously contrived on-the-spot collaborations. No more pathetic pleas to stop all the downloading. It was when I returned to the living room to find Ro had changed the channel to watch Family Guy while adding that I shouldn't change it back to the Grammys that the spin hit the shitfan. One click away I caught three horrible, terrible seconds of Tim McGraw and Gretchen Wilson singing "Sweet Home Alabama."

Then we were off to the bedroom to the other TV as I fucking broke the power button trying to shut that trainwreck off. A few moments later I was delighted to find that Maroon 5 won Best New Artist... except for the fact that Howie and I were listening to the same record 4 fucking years ago in my dorm room. As ever, the corporate machine that calls themselves American Music rings hollow and empty, like the recording of a child screaming through a bullhorn into a discarded Pepsi can. When "overnight successes" with careers 15 years old take the stage to introduce another the latest pre-packed R&B star from the presses, it takes a band like Green Day giving the performance they did to wake America up to the fact that, as Armstrong says, rock and roll can be fun and dangerous at the same time.

Green Day grabbed six nominations for the Grammy Awards on Sunday. Now is as good a time as ever to explain why American Idiot is most important record for the our generation.

Arriving in the middle of a bubblegum crisis of commercial music, Green Day fits as fitting, if unsuspecting saviors of rock and roll. On the brink of marginalization and irrelevance, the 21st Century was looking to many as the beginning of the end. Between half-baked Godsmacks trying to recreate the magic of a majestically unplugged Alice in Chains of nearly a decade ago and J.Lo-okalikes prepackaged with scientifically proportionate bling-bling to booty swing, it seems as though the days of four chords, a 4/4 beat, and a passionate idea were long lost. So close to losing it all, the pundits said we were precisely four Hoobastanks between us and oblivion and losing rock and roll would be our own fault. And then either through design or disaster, three punk rockers came back from the left field of greatest hits to teach us all what rock and roll really is.

Is it so surprising that these three would go from records named after dog shit to operatic greatness? Many our age discounted Green Day as a passing phase; the record that introduced you to punk rock, but dismissed once you learned anticapitalist rebellions from the Dead Kennedys as too corporate. It served as the soundtrack to every senior year of the Class of '99, and Dookie, Insomniac, and Nimrod likely sat next to each other in the CD collections of everyone with a graduation cap at the end of the Twentieth Century, but how many among us count them as their favorite band? How many listed "Basketcase" in their All Time Top 5 Best Rock Songs? How many went to more Green Day shows than Sunday School classes, and still hold up Dropkick Murphys as his/her favorite band?

I always said Green Day was the sleeping, most important band of the 1990s. *Everyone* had a Green Day record and could instantly recognize the heavy radio play of a Green Day tune, even when they wouldn't catch In Utero unless someone points out a heart shaped box. It is little wonder then that the single band who spent more time in American car stereos likely than any other in the 1990s comes back after a poorly selling greatest hits record with something like American Idiot: the album punk rock has always wanted to produce.

It has been coming for a while. The movie industry has long been in the embrace of the long form ever since Braveheart. This summer will be filled with more widely-distributed films weighing in over 3 hours than any other summer movie season before it. Scientists talk about a TV Nation full of ADHD quick-clickers, but you wouldn't know it from Lord of the Rings ticket sales. A five movement, nine minute punk song like "Jesus of Suburbia" then is not miraculous in its commercial success; it just seems that Green Day finally got away with something the music industry should have figured out long ago - Americans can handle long, intelligent sentences.

Filled with the imagery and storytelling of Dylan with a razor sharp rock, American Idiot succeeds on levels so subtle its hard to believe seven chords and three keys produced them all. But when one picks up records like Nimrod in retrospect, one has to wonder if they maybe haven't tried this before. In a lot of interviews I hear about Billy Joe talking about the maturity gained from having kids and the desire to "get more political," though I would argue that this record is less a political commentary and more a social one. The concept of the character of a "Jesus of Suburbia" rising from obscurity to save the souls of millions is not a concept too far off from our the televangelist machines now wielding significant political clout in our halls of government. In this Green Day are not left-wing zealots but zeitgeist-tapping professionals doing the real work of rebellious rock while Bruce Springsteen sits at home with a faded Kerry/Edwards shirt wondering where it all went wrong.

In the end, it won't matter on Sunday whether Green Day wins big or not, like it did't matter if it happened to Nevermind. The reverberations of a record like this are going to be well felt throughout the rest of the decade. Will its full meaning be understood by the masses? A fair question, but I suspect this record will rank with Tommy and The Wall as epic as the physical manifestation of God; even sheep bow their heads before something so mighty.

In a corner over by the crapper in a honky-tonk in bumfuck Kansas hangs a picture of a pair of rockstars taken at the beginning of their respective lives.

Finishing up a quick stay back home to check in on Mom, I headed over to Aaron's show over at Buster's last night. Compared to our pretty humble beginnings, I would say we both have come a pretty significant way. The establishment thankfully only had a few acquaintances, so when Traffas brought me up shortly after I had entered, there was a fair amount of confusion. I quickly snagged his Red Sox cap and played a few of the tunes I used to do around this area. Predictably it was some redneck's 21st birthday, and by our estimation it was likely going to be an easily forgettable one. As it should be I suppose in a small town on a Saturday night.

There are ghosts from one's past, I think, one can never escape. I think for every megacorporate meeting I attend or presentation I give or punk rock show I play, I'll still have the ten o'clock shadow of a high tech redneck getting up for the third cover set in a Kansas bar. No matter how firmly I plant in the East, my roots will still run to the Midwest. And I think with the picture on the wall of Buster's, I'll be okay with that.

Big Business in the Big Easy: Conclusion

New Orleans fucking sucks.

Heading out to catch a plane to visit my mom after eight days of beaten ass, eight dollar drinks, and probably ninety different renditions of Sweet Home Alabama the lady at the front desk of the hotel asked, "Did you enjoy your stay?"

I zoned off for a few minutes thinking back to the sixteen hour days, the fruitless pursuit of a lost wallet, and the massive aerola of a 300 lb. flashing woman, I was at a bit of a loss of words. She snapped in front of my face in the rude, expectant attitude that is thoroughly New Orleans, and I said bluntly, "No. This is among the worst places I've ever been."

Not that I've been in too many awful places, but I had high hopes coming into the Big Easy. Visions of overflowing double pints while dancing in the street to traveling zydeco, sharing company with scantily dressed co-eds ready to toss their shirts off for a single pair of beads. Well, let me tell you sister, this festering craphole is about one thing and one thing only: your dinero. From twenty dollar whores to twenty dollar gin and tonics, the facade of Mardi Gras swerves as the most transparent dirty sheet over a town devastated by poverty and lack of sustainable industry. Gangs stand at nearly every street corner and the homeless beg from every gutter. The streets are filthy with bayou-driven rainstorms mixed with frat-boy driven vomit. Townie bars are inhospitable, tourist bars are intolerably corporate.

To top it all off, I spent my last night in town going to bed at 8pm to wake up intermittantly during the night in a pool of sweat with vicious chills; I think its safe to say the city kicked my ass. My feet are bruised and swollen, my usually short temper now razor thin from the back-slapping white boy politics of automotive sales. Somehow it is an appopriate venue for such false enterprise, for surely there is no better city in the entire world for phony smiles and duplicitous handshakes as New Orleans. Smoke and mirros as a thin veil of filth likely made these guys right at home, as greed is the only language in the Big Easy.