Blog
Chapter 5: The Death of A Professional Clown
Camera: Sony A7C / Lens: Sony G-Master 25-120mm / Location: Yellowstone National Park
About two months ago, I got the news that my friend had died of cancer. At 30.
It happened 5 minutes before I was going up to give our end of the year awards (“The Mookies”) on the balcony of the 5 O’ Clock Bar outside the unofficial home away from home of Pali Adventures: The Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. I was preparing to entertain the overworked counselors in a rousing roast to cap off the summer when my friend whispered in my ear: “He’s gone.”
At the moment, my body was already primed full of gin and sodas and a few substances that shouldn’t be repeated on an open forum, so the immediate reaction time was a bit slow - the synapses had a bit more separation than you’d find on a sober-minded man.
I stared at him, blankly. Words you thought might come to mind when presented with this situation evaded my smoothed brain, and all I felt was a dull pain wash over my already dulled body.
“He would have wanted you to do the awards. Keep the party going.”
Cut to - walking up to that balcony. Body alive, eyes lifeless. Thankfully no one could see my grief-stricken pupils from 10 feet away on the street below me - even if there were 100 of them, all staring right at me.
If you’ve ever worked in the entertainment business, you ought to know as well as I do - the show must go on. So I mustered up the energy that was deep inside me, brewing from the gin soaking my liver, delivering these jokes i’d written for these fine people while the lifeless face of my friend was imprinted in the frontal lobe of my brain.
Through a broken smile I got through my lines to the unbeknownst crowd. Make ‘em laugh, and maybe you’ll feel less of the pain - I thought.
After walking off the improvised stage, I gathered with the old-heads of Pali, that all raised a toast to the memorial of our dearly departed friend.
And then the night continued. Like it was us mournfully taking a shot to our losing football team during the playoffs, and skirting off to the next bar to shake off the loss.
I tried my best to put it in the back of my mind like my fellow friends were doing (all in their completely validated form of grief), but the only thing I could think of was reaching for the closest bottle of anything that burned and flirting with the closest thing that had a skirt on so I could dull the thoughts that encumbered my altered mind:
“Holy shit. He’s actually gone.”
“Is this how it would be if I was suddenly gone? A shot then off to the next slot machine?”
“What the fuck am I doing with my life?”
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At first when I kicked everyone out of my room at 6 in the morning as I knew there was only so much energy left to keep the demons away, I was angry. Like, cursing every version of God i’ve ever known angry.
And then came the overwhelming depression.
Maybe it was the come-down from the various things I had assaulted my body with, or maybe it was the feeling of feeling again.
I shook awake in my hotel room while the morning light crept in like a cruel joke to my restless, crust-ridden eyes. Thank god for Vegas blackout curtains. They know their clientele.
At about 3PM the next day, I was dragged out into the pool to get some Vitamin-D. Thank God I did, because I would have been sunk halfway into the bed and maybe half a vein open if they hadn’t. But even surrounded by my friends and fellow counselors drinking in the Nevada sunshine, I couldn’t shake the cold, frosty embrace of depression sinking it’s claws right back into me.
“Fuck, I’m gonna have to process this at some point”, I thought as slugged my 4th slightly-warmed Coors Light to chase the sweet burn of the Jim Beam I just shot.
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It all came to fruition the day I had to send my video message to his family in Australia. They wanted his camp friends to send in messages for his funeral. I held off as long as I could - the minute I pressed record, I knew it was going to finally be real.
And so I did.
That’s when the true, chest-heaving tears came flowing. The ones where you can’t get enough oxygen in to cry as hard as you want to.
And I felt a release. A shatter in the universe that I had been living in - a warm blanket in a desert of freezing wind that eased my bitter, chapped skin into a sweet surrender.
I knew he was there. Somewhere. I couldn’t place it, like anyone else can’t. He was just… there.
And I felt peace.
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Death comes for us all. In both the actual, physical sense, and in the metaphorical sense. I’ve felt death in it’s many forms, but the one I’ve recently been coming to terms with is the death of a previous life.
I’ve been a professional clown for the past 2 years. My official title may have been “Entertainment Director”, but when you live long enough with that title, you see the sheen slide off after you drive it off the lot and witness it for what it really is - the professional fun maker and good-time creator - which comes with it’s own physical and emotional tolls.
That day at the Flamingo bar was the last time I knew I would put on that make-up. I had made the choice to move on from my vagabond lifestyle for a chance at an adult career again - working in San Francisco at a start-up company as employee #1.
For all of you reading this that are younger than me and aren’t staring down the barrel of 30 years old, i’ll tell you something that I’ve learned over the past year - there will be a point where the road doesn’t go on forever and the party finally ends. (Don’t judge me, Robert Earl Keen.) You’ll start to feel like it’s time to get to settlin’, and no matter how hard you try and shake the feeling, you’ll know deep down that it truly is that time. The time when your body just can’t take the sunrise nights and the violent come-downs of what a select few consider a damn-good time.
You’ll start to dream of the day that you come home in your grass-stained New Balances with a bag of ice and a six-pack of a local brew to a few kids in a modest house with a grill pre-heating in the backyard, where your wife greets you with a kiss that makes you feel like there’s never been a home before she came along.
I’ve lived a few lifetimes over the past years. I traveled and lived across the country, drank enough beer to drown a small village, lost enough sleep to put a horse in an early grave, worked every job you can ever imagine, fell in love with a woman who lived 5,000 miles away from me, and gained and lost a few too many friends along the way.
All of those things made me exactly into the man I am today. I rise, slowly with aching bones, from my new apartment in the heart of the Mission District of San Francisco, to a new life i’ve created for myself, and one that my loved ones have supported and lifted me into. I’ve got a future to finally look forward to, and not one I just daydream about while dancing to The Wobble for the 47th time in Huckleberry Hall (the Pali cafeteria).
When death stares you in the face, whether as a bystander or an active participant, you have to make a choice. Do you go for what you may think is fun in the moment, chasing the high that will always have an expiration date, or for what you truly yearn for before your door is finally knocked on?
All I know is that I will continue having fun, but with a path ahead of me that I really can’t wait to see while it unfolds before me. There may be some twists and turns, but if you follow your own GPS (with maybe a few cheeky detours along the way), you’ll get to the finish line with a smile on your face as you pass that checkered line.
Here’s to you, Voyage. I raise an ice-cold Coors Light to you out the window to your view from across the great divide as I try and make this life as worthwhile as I can. As you would say, “We’re not here to fuck spiders”. I’ll be seeing you when I see you, and you know damn well that when my kid turns 21, he’ll finally know the transcendent joy of a Roadie For Brodie.
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ALBUM RECOMMENDATION:
Jason Isbell: Southeastern
If you haven’t listened to Jason Isbell, then you’re missing out on one of the best songwriters of our generation. This album has brought me to tears just about as many times as i’ve screamed it in the car.
Just do something for yourself: Listen to “Cover Me Up” on a mountain-side and feel exactly how I felt that one hot day in September (for reasons i’m going to keep to myself - you already got enough out of me in this post).
Chapter 4: A Reminiscence of the Ski Bum
Skiing: the art of catching cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk. ~Author Unknown
As I sit here at my computer desk for the last time before packing up my dingy, most likely black mold-infested psuedo-apartment-slash-attic barely stilted above a very nice Mexican family below me in the main house, I can’t help but take a moment to metaphorically wake up from a 2 year long fever dream of epic proportions. It was the longest of the two years, it was the shortest of the two years. I can recall precise weeks of my time here and exactly what I did, and there are months that decided to completely elude my memory.
I was both prince and pauper here, experiencing feast and famine in short and long stints. Money in a tourist town comes in like the snow, and dries up like spring. Some days you’ll be buying a new set of skis without checking your bank account, and others you might have to look in your car’s middle console to find quarters to get that McDouble that you know for a fact will end this two-day hangover. I’ve had so many different types of gigs and jobs in this town that I couldn’t verifiably put them in a list for you. Although, I do know how to clean a deep fryer and cook a chicken tender to the optimal temperature with a subconscious poultry clock in my mind.
When it comes to South Lake Tahoe, the town I have called home for the past two years, there are two undeniable truths - When you date someone, you haven’t broken up, you’ve just lost your turn - and you will see more illicit substances than you have ever seen in your entire life. More on the latter, later.
South Lake is a town with a population of just about 25,000 year long residents. Now, if you do the math, with ages in that population, about 20,000 of them are retirees and families that live and work here in town. Not the retirees, obviously - they are here just to block affordable housing and whisper racial slurs in the top floor bar of the Hard Rock Hotel. So we’ve got 5,000 left. Let’s take out 3,000 of those for people that keep to themselves or for the couples that you see on instagram living the perfect life due to a very well arranged trust fund. So, technically, the social circle within South Lake is just about 2,000 people in my age and class range, and that’s being generous. You will meet these people, and these people will know you. After a good six months, you can’t go to Safeway without running into someone that knows your name, for good or for worse. If you go on a date with someone, you almost have to expect someone approaching you at the next bar you arrive at telling you that their ex just got out of prison and is looking for you. Now, it’s not that dire all the time, but you would be surprised with the amount of times I have seen and experienced that exact circumstance. It’s a town of people that have escaped something for greener pastures, without knowing the inevitable truth of the fact that problems don’t have a geographical location. It’s a town of people looking for a way out and ending up at a really, really, pretty wall. It’s like if a town was filled with people that came to life from Billy Joel’s song Piano Man. Now it’s a gorgeous town, on the outside. But the longer you live here, the easier it is to see the veneer slowly slide down and reveal the dark underbelly of a town that doesn’t have enough therapists in it’s gorgeous mountain side slopes to account for the even larger size of collective trauma. To quote a man named Breck who I worked with at the ski resort who was a life long South Lake resident - “You are either here for 3 years, or 30 - and 30 doesn’t look too pretty”. I decided to cut it one year short to be safe.
Now, there are exceptions to every truth. I’ve met, and became friends with, some of the kindest, truest, most wonderful people i’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. People that know exactly what they want, and how to share their passion and love with others. I’ve met these people in dive bars, at work, and even on the ski slopes, and they will be in my life until I can’t remember my own name. They took me under their wing as a new frosh ski bum, and taught me the ways of surviving in a town overrun by tourists. They taught me lessons I didn’t even know I needed to learn. And for that, I am forever grateful.
As someone who lived both as a corporate drone with a healthy salary and as a fry cook who’s only money goes towards a 10 pack of fireball shots for my days off on the slopes, i’ll tell you that both sides have their benefits and drawbacks. There’s a freeing nature and meditative state in being a ski bum, but with the mind altering substances constantly thrown at you, it’s hard to find your zen sometimes. The rose tinted glasses faded quite a bit ago living here, and now my sight is leading me into a different horizon. I’ll never regret my time as a ski bum here in Tahoe. It’s a life i’ve always wanted to live, even in a short stint. What started as a way to escape the pandemic became a way of life that I don’t think i’ll ever quite get rid of. So, with this, I’ll pack up my computer and move on to another mountain side to entertain children for the foreseeable future. To all of my friends in Tahoe - I love each of you individually, most likely for different reasons that I cannot explain. Thanks for the wildest 2 years of my life. Now, time to slowly pay off the credit card debt i’ve amassed living in this expensive fucking town.
And to those of you looking for a paragraph dedicated to the drug portion of the two truths, i’ll keep it simple because I know my family and possible future employers will be reading this - my mind has been expanded, and my mind has been shrunken. I’d like to think that they evened out.
Album Recommendation of the Week
Here’s my skiing playlist that i’ve amassed over 90 days on the mountain. It’s full of genres that go from both extremes of the spectrums. And before you judge me, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go is easily the best skiing song you can ever listen to on any mountain. If you disagree, get 90 days on your ski tracker and we’ll talk.
Chapter 3: The Emotional Intricacies Of Being Technically Homeless
Film: Lomography Earl Grey 100, 35mm
Distance Traveled: 6210 Miles
Having a car as your only domicile has taught me two very important things so far:
The freedom you gain from having no property except what you can fit in between 4 wheels is both incredibly intoxicating and at some points drastically suffocating.
Peeing in a jug is a skill that is learned, and should not be taken lightly. Can’t get good without spilling a few drops.
Home has started to become a very abstract concept to me. To quote both Elvis Presley and every white woman’s painted wood plank above their dining table: “Home is where the heart is”. Yeah, while that may be true, Elvis and Susan, home sometimes means what you return to every night. While the concept of home is where you feel comfortable and loved, what does that mean when you are in the middle of backwoods upstate New York completely alone cooking ramen over a camp stove watching over your shoulder for that weird reflection in your headlamp that was definitely a mountain lion stalking me for 15 minutes? Does it revert back to your parents house? As much as I love my parents, that home is no longer my home - maybe because my dad told me when I was 18 that I couldn’t come back if I failed out of college (which was obviously something said out of love to make me work harder so I didn’t have to), which has weirdly put a nonsensical timer in my head every time I come back to Houston that makes me hit the road as soon as the metaphorical clock strikes zero. Hey, it’s made me a very industrious person, so no hard feelings, Pops.
There’s been times that i’ve come to the cold realization that yes, I am technically homeless. Of course, in my head, it’s “homeless by choice, for, like, a short while, in a cool granola ‘fuck the system’ kind of way”, but that doesn’t stop my brain from comparing myself to a hobo with a goddamn bandana attached to a string holding cans of beans. It’s made me compare myself to my friends and their marriages, families, and career successes. It’s not a mental road I like traveling down, but you can’t help to sometimes drive along it. There’s a fine line between a man who hits the open road to whatever destination which may call him, and a man who is desperately trying to find meaning in the squalor of living in his car - which has been a line i’ve become quite familiar with.
After about 5 months now with no address to call my own, my brain has started to craft new inventive ways for me to accept my own versions of home. I once found home in an Oyster bar in Mobile, Alabama, after a man bought my meal and multiple beers once we found out we were from the same area in Houston (Shoutout to Jason - hope your kids are enjoying their new school) Me and the bartenders were so amazed by this dude, that we started talking, and I stayed 30 minutes after closing shooting the shit with them. Side note - when I asked the bartenders what was the coolest spot to visit in Mobile was, one of the ladies said in that wonderfully sarcastic southern tone, “The road out of here”. Can’t beat that.
I felt home laying in the back of my car in the Niagara Falls parking lot, watching a slow pitter patter of rain fall on to my car roof. Maybe it was the safety I felt being protected from the cold rain, or the peace you can only find in the sound of water hitting metal. Whatever it was, it was transcendent.
Home is an absolute human need. When deprived of it, you’ve got to find ways to fill that void, or depression is going to be waiting for you right around the corner. Even if finding home is finding a quiet picnic table to sit with your thoughts is all you have, take the time to do it.
I do wish for a place I can call home again. I do yearn for 4 walls to call my own. I daydream about going to IKEA to buy pointless Swedish shit to decorate my house with. But that’s going to have to wait. There’s more road to be conquered.
Album Recommendation of the Week
Now if you haven’t appreciated The Boss for the fantastic folk singer he is, brother, you are missing out. His album Nebraska, released before Born in the USA, is an album unlike any other. Ol’ Bruce recorded a bunch of demos that he wanted to record with his backing band. After the band tried to make the songs better by layering in other instruments, they realized one thing - “we can’t beat those fucking demos”. The only thing you’ll hear on this album is Bruce, his voice, his guitar, his harmonica, and an occasional tamborine. It’s like if Bob Dylan went to the outskirts of Atlantic City to bury a body instead of going to the Monterrey Pop Festival. And it fucking rocks.
Chapter 2: The Legend of Roger the Donut Man
Davenport, Iowa / Film: FujiFilm Pro 400h, 120mm
Distance Traveled: 2272 Miles
As my Midwestern chapter of the trip comes to a close today, I look back at all the beautiful sites I came across: The cold embrace of Lake Michigan, the grand power of the Mississippi River, and corn.
So much goddamn corn.
Seriously, how much corn can be produced? Does corn come with every meal, or is it served like bread in a basket as an appetizer at local restaurants?
My Midwestern friends said the reason the sky was always so hazy was because of corn production. EVEN THE HEAVENS ABOVE ARE FULL OF CORN.
Alright, enough about corn.
As much as I’d like to share my story of the road visiting friends, family, and seeing some of the most gorgeous countrysides i’ve ever laid eyes on, it’s all overshadowed by of the best tales I’ve ever been told - one of those tales that is just begging to be retold.
This is the story of Roger the Donut Man.
This story starts in a place in the heart of Illinois called Rushville - a sleepy little farming town with a population just barely cracking over 3,000. My good friend Colin (who was a fellow counselor of mine at good ol’ Pali Adventures) was born and raised in Rushville. Like every good American small town, there is a donut shop just off the town square. And the purveyor of these donuts is no other than the man, the myth, the legend: Roger.
Roger is a cross-eyed, portly-sized man, and the only provider of fried dough in the greater Rushville area (at least, so i’ve been told. I’ve never met the man. But i’m sure, just as I do, you’ll want to meet him). Roger is the father of Colin’s good friend, and a local hero. He wakes up at 1AM, drives down the icy morning roads of rural Illinois, and begins making the donuts that the town so loves. As the Midwestern sun crests over the hilly landscape around 4:30 AM, the doors open - with a line already out the door. The townsfolk can’t get enough of his donuts. Legend has it, if you don’t get there before 6AM, you’re out of luck - the donuts are already sold out. But don’t fret - you can buy the day-olds for pennies on the dollar. “Why are there day-olds if the donuts sell out?”, you may ask yourself. That is a question i’ve been excruciatingly pondering for the past 2 weeks, and it only adds more mystique to the legend of Roger.
Roger’s bakery is the diet staple of Rushville’s elderly community - which constitutes a grand majority of the Rushville population. They can’t get enough of it. They are there, waiting, ready to pounce on Roger’s business to get a taste of those sweet, sweet Midwestern donuts. All signs point to this being a successful, small town business that supports the community, which any purveyor would love to provide. But, here is the kicker:
Roger is absolutely done with running the only donut shop in town.
He constantly begs his sons to return from St. Louis and from civilization to take over his beloved bakery. They always refuse, prying away the icy cold small-town hand that always tries to retrieve it’s brood once it’s left the roost. This leaves Roger with an absolutely daunting task: to run the donut shop on his own, tortured by the very donuts i’m sure he once loved.
Here is a man who for the past 30 years has neglected the human need to sleep during the fall of the sun, and in defiance of nature, God, and everything that is healthy, has woken up every day at 1 AM to provide fried dough to a community that is holding his very soul hostage.
He would come home at 2 PM when his shop closed and plant himself on the living room recliner, where he would root himself in before the donuts came beckoning for him to return to the fryer. Most of Colin’s friend’s memories include his father in a half-sleep stupor on his chair - either watching the television or fading in and out of consciousness. His fatherly duties overshadowed by the donuts that provide the very shelter that sits over his head.
Once, Colin’s friend approached his dad while he was rested on his recliner, who’s eyes seemed to swirl around his head like a cartoon character who had just been hit over the head with a wooden hammer.
“Dad, are you alright?", he asked.
“I must…tend to the donuts.”
“Dad, the shop closed 3 hours ago. What donuts?”
“The donuts… THEY ARE IN MY HEAD.”
This man is constantly haunted by this Sisyphean task of his own creation that is slowly driving him mad. Like a true Shakespearian tragedy, he has yet but only one choice - keep making the donuts, or have the townsfolk outside of his house pitchforks at the ready. Part greek myth, part destitute French new-wave film of the 1940’s, Roger is held prisoner in this jail he unknowingly designed himself.
I don’t know whether to feel pity or pride for Roger. Here I am sitting on a porch of a campground typing this story, knowing that Roger is already pouring a lop of sweat over his fryer as he drops another ring of dough into the deep, billowing depths of oil that invisibly shackles him to his haunting task. All I know is that Roger deserves a vacation, an ice cold beer, and a fucking statue erected in his honor in the middle of the Rushville town square.
So if anyone is looking to take over a bakery, I know exactly the man you should call.
ALBUM RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Once I was lying on my good friend Emory’s couch during a visit to LA, directly after a bar-hopping adventure all over West Hollywood. He said to me, “You want to hear one of the best albums you’ve ever heard?”
Thus started my first listening to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. An entirely melancholy album full of some of the best songwriting you’ve ever heard accompanied by an almost haunting-yet-soothing plucked guitar, this album will either get you in the perfect mood to see the fall leaves change in the trees around you or will make you lament a heartbreak you haven’t thought about in years. Like Van Gogh, he was a man who was entirely not appreciated during his short lifetime. Give the album a listen, and i’m sure you are going to save it for the next time you wander into a rainy field to try and find beauty in sorrow after your next break up.
Chapter 1: A Pirate Looks At 25
Photo: Cape Lookout, Oregon - Kodak Portra 400, 120mm
There’s something that a lot of people don’t talk about when it comes to getting older. When you are young, there’s an abundance of emotions. New experiences around every corner, which begets emotion - good or bad ones. Those emotions you feel sink in, and create memories that are burned within you for a lifetime. All those emotions you feel so constantly during your adolescent years slow down time somehow. Don’t you remember those summer breaks feeling like a lifetime? Or how those 4 years of high school seemed entirely longer than the 4 proceeding that? What i’m talking about is how emotions seem to somewhat… dull over time. Or there’s just not enough new experiences to bring about those extreme memory-creating emotions - and it’s absolutely soul crushing when you think about it hard enough.
For the past three years, I worked a corporate job with a nice little salary, I lived in my own apartment, and I had a long-term girlfriend. From every thing I was taught growing up, this would be a typical measurement that one was living a “great life”. My bills were paid. I had someone to come home to every day. I could go out and buy the next best video game to play without breaking my bank. It was something that people yearned for, and I was living it.
But here’s the truth - I could not tell you a single thing of substantial note that happened those entire three years. They passed me up before I could even look at them, only now looking at them in the dust behind me. Sure, I had some great days. Birthdays, anniversaries, vacations. I felt joy, love, sorrow, happiness. But during those three years post college when I returned home to Denton after my stint as a camp counselor at Pali Adventures, there was a serious void of memory-striking emotions. I let life happen to me. It felt like I had no control over it. I was just carelessly clocking in my punch card every day, letting each day pass. At the tail end of those three years, this all culminated into the single most depressing thought I’ve had to date: “Is this the best it’s ever going to get?”
That thought led me into the deepest, darkest depression i’ve ever faced. “If this is the best it’s going to get, then what the fuck am I living for?”
Scrapping out of that hell was a process. My then-girlfriend and I split up, even though we loved each other, because we both knew for a while that weren’t truly meant for each other. I went on Lexapro, which might have been the best decision I’ve ever made (thanks, family-inherited mental illness). I soul searched for months on end to find that special thing that would finally make me happy.
But there’s not a special little thing that’s going to make you fulfilled. True fulfillment comes from getting your life back to a point where you can start grasping those radical emotions that can break into your mind and form those special memories that are key to growth. That all starts with creating a life that will always bring you new experiences.
So for the past two months, i’ve been straight up unemployed. Like, waking up at 4PM, watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, eating a family sized bag of Ruffles, and going to sleep - type of unemployed. Definitely not the type of life that i’ve been droning on about creating. So, one day, I walked myself out of my self-induced sorrow, and applied to jobs at a ski resort in Lake Tahoe for the sole reason of living in Lake Tahoe. I secured one as a line cook. Is it the most glamorous job, one that’s going to get 200 likes and a heart reaction from that girl you wanted to impress (but who truly doesn’t care)? Probably not. Am I excited? You bet your sweet ass I am. But hey, I’ve got 2 months until then. What will I do?
Fuck it, I’ll build a micro camper in my Honda Fit and travel around the country. Because, why the hell not?
This may be a roundabout way of getting to my point, but it all kind of culminates to this - don’t let anyone tell you what you have to do to make you happy. Trust me, i’ve done it. I didn’t like it. In fact, I hated it. It’s your goddamn life. LIVE IT WHILE YOU’RE YOUNG. Christ, do you really want to finally go backpack Europe when you are 50 with a bad back and erectile dysfunction? Don’t you want your kids to look at old photos of you on your adventures and think “ah, shit, my dad was cool!” instead of “My dad sure looks like he’s excited about that Lean Cuisine he microwaved in the office kitchen”?
So, what will 25 bring you? Will it bring upon another year that will pass you by until you wake up 40 years old with your envisioned life laying only in your dreams? Will it bring you that promotion from a company who will lay you off at the drop of a stock market ticker? For me, it’s change. Drastic change. Cause that’s what you are going to remember when you are older and allowed to eat a family sized bag of Ruffles on the couch because goddamnit I deserve as break from the kids and I just want 10 goddamn minutes to myself - and so far, i’m fucking loving it.
Now I promise that the future chapters of this bastardized online journal of my travels will actually include tales of my travels and not sound like it’s being read out of a teenager’s heartbreak diary, but currently, it’s day 1. Hard to write about 24 hours of driving and sleeping in my car next to a swampy lake in Arkansas with mosquitos assaulting every vulnerable part of my body. Not very exciting stuff. I’m sure i’m in for a more tale-worthy time when I cross the Mason-Dixon line.
ALBUM RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK
Jimmy Buffett - A-1-A
Birthed from a Modelo-soaked lawn chair on a Florida beach is Jimmy’s first album, A-1-A. For you non ParrotHeads, this is not “Cheeseburger in Paradise” Buffett. This album is full of amazing songwriting, classic Jimmy vocals, and the feeling of a conflicted old soul trapped in a young man’s body.