Chipotle - The Football of Food

On a random day four years ago, a friend asked me if I wanted anything for lunch. I was working at a small guitar shop in Greenwich Village were we often grabbed lunch or a snack for each other to save time and just to be generally cool to each other. I said sure, and to my happy surprise I was greeted but a bountiful foilwrapped burrito with everything just as I wanted it. I'm a picky eater. The idea of watching someone make my food right in front of me, in a Subway kind of way, is great for my more-of-this/none-of-that attitude toward food. After that day I became the maven of Chipotle runs at work, I actually started buying enough of the hot salsa and chips, I'd carry the extra salsa in a paper cup brimming with the firemouthed goodness. I'd go for a steak, chicken, or mixed (steak and chicken) burrito as many as 4 times a week, week after week.

My friends would give me gift certificates for Chipotle all the time, it was awesome!

I moved jobs to another guitar shop in the fast moving and uber-expensive Time Square Area. Lunches around the center of the universe are expensive, to the point were I thought I may need to stop eating lunch all together in order to pay my rent. Then... OH HAPPY DAY!!! A beacon of burrito goodness shows up on the very block I worked on. When others didn't want to brave the rain or New York cold, I'd run down the street and for under $10 we'd eat like kings.

I'm no longer a slave to the whip of anyone else, so as I maneuver through the big apple I visit my favorite burrito place as often as I can, knowing if I have a burrito, I may not need to eat for the rest of the day. Now I am a vegan, and my black bean burrito is still just as filling and delicious as I could ever want. I'm so glad that a company as big as McDonald's (who owns Chipotle) would have vegan and healthy carnivorous options in this world of crappy fast food that is never satisfying.

Why am I writing this? I don't know. I had a great, filling, and reasonably price outing today. Yeah! I may eat Chipotle again tomorrow, maybe not, but I will again enjoy the football of food.

Go Here:
www.chipotle.com
Vegan Options at Chipotle


"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835–1910).

Arthur

One random Monday in Febuary Bucky, my upstairs neighbor bandmate and friend, knocks on my door and asks me if I was busy today... I not usually busy I spend most of my days watching car shows and Mythbusters or playing guitar with WAY too much reverb on. So he says, " I know you're not much of a dog person but would you mind watching Sugar (his dog) for a few hours?" I've never owned or taken care of a dog, most of my life I've been horribly scared of dogs in fact, but I felt like Bucky was reaching out to me, that he really needed me to do this solid, so I said sure. Sugar came down and we spent the day together. It had turned out, Bucky's other dog was passing and they were taking her to be put down, this is where the tears can start. I spent the day doing my thing, walking into my kitchen to do the dishes, talking to myself, playing guitar, watching tv, but I wasn't alone. I wasn't talking to myself for once, I'm not as crazy as you'd like to think. Anyways by the end of the day, I liked having a dog around, I actually knocked on Bucky's door the next day and asked if he wanted me to watch Sugar, he said it was gonna be home all day but he said thanks.

That night I told Vani I thought I may want a dog. Vani has always wanted a dog, though wanted to wait until she had a yard for it to run around in. Well if I was in, she was in. We immediately started scouring the internet for a great shelter dog that would make us both happy. We looked at picture after picture, emailing each other every hour or so from work the latest find from the far reaching corners of the world wide web, then on a Thursday, a new dog. At the BARC Shelter we found Arthur.

A purebred sheltie (think of a small collie, but more awesome) that had been found wandering the streets of Bushwick in Brooklyn, his top front teeth had been broken off, they think he may have been kicked or something. Vani went and saw him the next day and immediately filled out papers to adopt him. As part of BARC's policy, I also had to meet him before we could take him home. So the next morning, before going to work, we went and met Arthur. I sat down on the sidewalk and put him in my lap. I had a dog.


Vani took this picture that morning. She hates when I say it, but I really think he's my dog. As I spend most of my time at home Arthur give me a reason to wake up in the morning. He gives me a reason to go outside. He makes me feel more responsible. Maybe he's not my dog, he just my friend. He gets me going, you know. He makes me happy when I come home late and he quietly jumps up on me while Vani is fast asleep. I like having a dog. This last year of my life has been so strange. I've changed in so many ways. I recently took Arthur home to Virginia to meet my parents and brother. They could hardly believe I had a dog. Me, scared for so many years, holding a dog in my lap. I try to train him, but he doesn't listen. I try to carry him, but he hates it. I try to let him swin at the park, but he's scared. I guess I'll just let him do what he wants to do. He lets me do what I want. It's only fair.

Jay Bennett died in his sleep.

A lot of people don't know who Jay was, a lot of people know exactly who he is. Jay was 45. He was one of the many lead guitarists / multi-instrumentalists to play with the band Wilco. Jay wrote many of the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (my favorite record) along with Jeff Tweedy. Earlier this year he was trying to sue Tweedy and the band, he needed a hip-replacement that he couldn't afford, he had fallen out of the bright lights that had been his home for so many years.

A mad scientist of a musician, often linking multiple tape machines only he knew how to control through out the vast Wilco loft to create the massive bed of sound that gave the records he worked on the lush bed that made them so special. His work with the band on Being There, Summer Teeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and the Wilco/Billy Bragg record Mermaid Avenue was amazing. He played guitars, keyboards, pianos, everything. He's famous for buying and learning to play a Mellotron while recording Summerteeth and adding the famous Beatle keyboard to nearly every track because the band was so in love with the sound. His amazing lead work complimented by his sense of space and texture gave the band the sound I grew to love listening to the records as a senior at Pulaski County High School, it changed my ears. I had been listening to Rockabilly, Grunge, and Punk, but now here was music that spread out like a table in front of you with so many levels of sound to grab onto. It sent me into looking for sounds and no longer listening to the band in college. Bennett left the band in 2001. When I started to listen to wilco again after college, they had changed, I still like them but not for the same reasons.

Jay went on to make music. I saw him at a smallish showcase in Austin, TX a few years back. Last year he offered up his new record as a free download. Some things are magic, they work, fit together in a way that doesn't make sense but is perfect; that is what I think of the tension that existed in Wilco, bickering makes for good music and lousy relationships, which in turn makes better music and more intense lyrics.

I hate I never got to see play with Wilco. I saw the band play at Madison Square Garden on New Years Eve a few years ago with my girlfriend Vani, it was awesome, it renewed my love for a band I had stopped listening to. Shortly after that I bought the Wilco documentary I'm Trying To Break Your Heart as well as tracked down the documentary on the making of Mermaid Avene, and there it was the band that helped change my ears, being amazing, evolving, creating, and finally breaking up. All things end. I just wish they didn't have to.

While living in New York, I've met and hung out with Jeff Tweedy at a guitar shop in midtown, he was mixing Sky Blue Sky. He would tell me about the record, I'd show him the gems of Rudy Pensa's collection, and eventually he called me his "escape hatch." Just a few months ago bassist John Sirratt bought a vintage bass amp from me. Life is so precious and as we go through it, making connections, and letting people leave their finger prints on us, we change. We become everything we ever feared and loved in our fathers, we hear our mother's words tapping on the shoulder as we go into the darkness. Things we've seen, heard, and touch make us how we are. So Jay, wherever you are, you helped me become who I am. It may not to much, I'm sure you don't remember shaking my hand after you got off stage... but I do. I always use to think and pray that if I died, I'd die in my sleep; so I hope it wasn't too bad, and I hope you come back to Earth as a beautiful blue songbird.

My prayers go out to Jay's family and real friends who knew him.










sorry for the rant

Rocksalt Shotgun - Keep The Car Running ( Arcade Fire Cover )

This song is a birthday present for Maggie Kannan. Happy birthday Magpie!

Bucky Hayes and the Radio - Blindly

Watch this one in HD if you can, the detail in the pictures is stunning. The pictures are from Ron Hester, shot at Rockwood Music Hall at our CD Release Show. I really love this song.

Wilco Loves You

This is an old mug from my parents house...

This is the new Wilco record...

http://beta.wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/index.php

enjoy

Car Shows

In my often free days, when I'm not walking Arthur I'm watching a variety of car rebuilding shows on The Discovery Channel. I've been watching shows like this for a long while, one of my favorite shows all through college was Monster Garage. Well this morning someone was rebuilding a 1970 Ford Mustang Fastback, my Dad's was a 69 or a 70. I really want to to buy my Dad his, or a similar, Mustang for him to have to work on/rebuild in his retirement, if not just to have to ride around and enjoy. I would love to buy his exact one, a guy in Pulaski,VA owns it now and has had it under a tarp for years. My Dad told me he had it repainted, originally it was a pale yellow, now I think it may be green, but other than that it has just sat there. I just it I sold a few guitars I could scrape up the money, but I'm not sure he'd sell it to me, or for how much. For some reason this is all I can think of, my Dad smiling as he cruises down route 11 in Pulaski, window down, listening to the radio with my Mom sitting shotgun asking him to slow down. I don't think he'll ever slow down.

Pink Houses

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what John Cougar had in mind, a giant pink painted brown-stone in the middle of Park Slope Brooklyn. Now ain't that America, its something to see.

Everything that is going to happen...

So this weekend I had a show with two great bands, Hooray For Goodbye! and Dirty Excuse. The drummer from HFG broke her wrist so I was drafted. A few rehearsals later... rocking. This weekend I was also offered a new job as a Project Manager for the web business I was freelancing for, at first I was super happy took the job and starting training yesterday. But today after dealing with only 24 of work I was done. I have a really hard time getting into something just for money sake, sure everyone has a price, but this just wasn't me. I'd rather get paid peanuts for something I dig then get paid a bit for something I hated, and the training pay was horrid. So here I am continuing my freeform life. I was super happy that my video for "Flame" got 77 views this week, it made me feel like maybe I'm doing SOMETHING right. I really need good things to happen.

This week is pretty slim in the music world for me, so I may have to stretch out with another flame-like project.

This is one of my favorite songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7YK6zW4nI

Its by Superchunk, a band from Chapel Hill,NC. I may do it...

I think I'm hyper enough as it is, I think I'm hyper enough.

Rocksalt Shotgun - Flame (Sebadoh Cover)

This is what I did Monday and Tuesday, two days to a new song and video.