Strange Dealings in a Brave New World.

It's been a while. I wonder what random act brought me here today. The IPOD is shuffling through an assortment of eclectic alt music. I put too much store in music. It truly is a drug and like a drug, its effects weaken over time.

It's a strange world in which we live but then I guess it's always been a strange world it just seems a little stranger as you get older. A couple of week's ago Michael Jackson died. Like most people, I was hit by the initial shock. I wasn't a huge Michael Jackson fan. Most people I know weren't big MJ fans. I'm not sure I actually know anyone who has an album by him, (does calling it an album give away my age?). Surely someone I know must have had one cd of Michael Jackson tucked away. After the initial shock gave way a strange thing happened. I stopped thinking of Michael Jackson as a strange looking, alienesque creature who had little in touch with reality and started remembering him as that guy from the early 80s that was a monster musician. This would have been nice if it had lasted but within a couple of days, a media blitz constantly shoving MJ down my throat made me turn again to total ambivalence. Again, I wasn't a big fan of his music. I didn't see his death as a great tragedy. A drug overdose after all is self inflicated even if death was not the intended result.

All of this hype led me to think of the other death that day that being Farrah Fawcett. Fawcett's death was completely overshadowed by Jackson's death yet, at least personally, it affected me as much. When I was a child everyone seemed to proclaim Farrah Fawcett as perfection in beauty and frankly, I believed them. As celebrities go, FF was as big to me as MJ. What really strikes me as strange is why do I or anyone else care. I didn't know either one of them. Neither had even done anything that I had cared about in almost thirty years. Yet, of course I care. I'm not crying outside anyone's house and leaving flowers on the sidewalk but it does affect me.

jeep pics

The Longest Day

It was the summer of '92. I was a twenty-two year old who would be twenty-three by summer's end. I can't remember the exact date, maybe it was July—it seems like it was July. Whatever the date, I was about to start one of the greatest adventures of my life and it began on that hot summer, Florida day which would become literally the longest day of my life.

As a little bit of background, the events that led up to that day began some time before. My father was working for one of those Silicon Valley computer companies. Overall, life for my father was pretty good. He was in his late forties and worked a nice white collar job that offered benefits and stock options. He had been divorced twice—neither divorce really seemed to weigh on him too much. He enjoyed his single life.

I didn't understand it then but now as a man in my early forties I definitely get it. The question that sometimes arises in the man that seems to have the world where he wants it is simply, "is this all there is?" You can see your youth slipping away and with it, all those dreams that you once had of living a Hemingwayesque life of international adventure. These thoughts crossed my father's mind and my father was not someone who would let that go.

My father started working on a transfer in his job. The company he worked for had positions in other parts of the world. My father picked the Far East megatropolis of Hong Kong. He was overjoyed when the transfer came and took the job. Unfortunately, before he could really immerse himself in his Far East adventure, the U.S. economy went south and my father's position in Hong Kong was eliminated. He could have come back to the U.S. but then that wouldn't be in character with my father. Instead, he took his severance, cashed in his stock options, married a native and bought a British Pub. Once he was established in Hong Kong, my father wanted to fly my brothers and me out to Hong Kong. My brothers, the products of the second marriage would fly in from Canada while I would fly in from my home in Florida.

My life prior to that flight had been in a little bit of turmoil. That January, my fiancé and I had broken up. I felt lost. She had quickly moved on and was living with the man that she would eventually call her husband. My hopes of being an actor as a career were going nowhere and my real occupation was pizza driver. Though I was only twenty-two, I felt the pressure of a life that seemed to be spiraling away from me. I was lost and I lacked direction. My father's invite to spend the summer in Hong Kong was the perfect opportunity for me to take a figurative timeout and try to reassemble the pieces of life on the wrong track.

My adventure that day started on an early Orlando morning. I boarded a plane headed for Dallas. That plane would then eventually land in San Francisco and there I would disembark and board another plane that would land in Hong Kong.

My early morning flight began with a sun rising from the East. Approximately six hours and three other time zones later, I was in San Francisco. It would have been late morning or early afternoon Pacific Time. The flight to Hong Kong from San Francisco was a fourteen hour straight flight. I tried to sleep but couldn't. Though my body thought it was night, my mind couldn't grasp the concept with the bright yellow sun poking in through the plexi-glass window of the plane.

As the sun finally started giving way, my plane came down for landing. We flew in over Hong Kong's famous harbor. The lights of the city and the lights of the advertisements that peppered the harbor were starting to light up. Prior to this trip, I had only been out of the country a couple of times and those times were to Canada. Immediately as I could see the junks in the harbor, I could feel the alien nature of the place. Instead of causing any apprehension in me, it had the opposite effect. I felt giddy. I was suddenly as far away from home as I could possibly be and it felt like . . . destiny.

I was landing in Hong Kong almost exactly twenty-four hours after I had gotten up that morning. It was only then that I saw the sun set. To boot, I had also crossed over the International Date Line. I had crammed almost two full days into one day before the sun had set.

I was right about being giddy about that trip. I met a wide array of people from different countries who became fast friends. I worked as a bartender slinging drinks to the many ex-patriots that frequented my father's bar. The adventure didn't end when I returned home either. After that summer, I decided that I needed to leave Florida. I went back to school, transferred to Alabama, and eventually attended law school. It was literally on the flight home from Hong Kong when I decided that I was going to go to law school. I think most of my friends got a chuckle out of my "leftfield" decision. It certainly wasn't in my nature and to give them their due, I had spent the last four plus years in and out of community college. I was on the twenty year college plan. Once my decision was made though, I had finished my last two years of college in about a year and a half. I then finished law school and shortly thereafter, I met my wife when I was an assistant prosecutor in a small Georgia town.

My whole life travelled in a new direction starting on that "longest day." Many of the people that are closest to me would be faceless strangers but for my boarding that airplane that morning. A few years ago, I found myself in my father's position wondering if there was more. As a happily married father of three, I answered that question differently. I decided to write a novel. What did I have to write about? I could have written some legal adventure, science fiction, or maybe wrote about vampires. Instead, I decided to write a fictional tale based on a twenty something guy in the early 1990s whose life is spiraling out of control and who gets an offer to go to . . . . where else but Hong Kong. It probably sounds like a thinly disguised autobiography but it isn't. My lead character stays in Hong Kong where I left. He is my parallel life. Maybe one day my manuscript gets published—maybe one day it doesn't. Publishing is nice and I am certainly trying to accomplish that but my goal was always, simply to write it, to memorialize that which had meant so much to me and in that, I succeeded.

Don't Panic! - A look back at Douglas Adams's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Trilogy?

You may be wondering why there is a question mark after the word "trilogy." If you are unfamiliar with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, then you should know that Douglas Adams wrote five books in his trilogy. This was to the sheer delight of his rabid fans, (including yours truly), most of whom, were ill prepared for the series to end after the third book. When I first sat down to write this article, I thought about writing on some of the great books that I have read. In the end, I chose the Hitchhiker's Guide series, (yes we can refer to it as a series and not a trilogy) because of how influential it was in my life.

I first discovered the series not in book form but on television sometime around 1982. I picked up the book a year later when I saw the paperback in a drug store. As a side note, the series didn't begin in book or television but was a 1970s BBC radio show that had its roots entwined in the Monty Python avant-garde humor that was popular at the time. The radio series inspired the books and the books led to the television series. Like many things British, the television series made its way across the Atlantic via American public television. Nestled in between documentaries of the Serengeti and Bob Ross painting puffy little clouds was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a bizarre little miniseries with the absolute worst special effects ever attempted. The television series and book begins with hapless, earthling Arthur Dent waking up to find out his house is to be demolished to make way for a new bypass. This pales in comparison as he then learns that his best friend, Ford Prefect, is an alien and that the earth is scheduled for demolition to make way for a . . . . wait for it . . . . new bypass. The earth is blown to bits and the only survivors are Arthur and Ford who have managed to hitchhike on board the spaceship that just destroyed the earth. If that sounds like a lot, it isn't, what I just described is the opening of Book 1, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The books follow Arthur Dent through a series of misadventures. These misadventures go back and forth through time and across all of space. What makes these books so special is that although it is a comedic series, it is superbly written from a literary standpoint and from a scientific standpoint. Through Adams's absurd humor, we are treated to a humorous look at the age old question "why are we here?" As mentioned above, the earth is destroyed in the opening of the book. Ford Prefect is a writer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His assignment was to update Earth's old entry in the Guide. The old entry listed the Earth as "Harmless." The new entry updated the Earth to "Mostly harmless." Adams, like any good satirist, knows that nothing is sacred. Adams addresses religion in the book stating that God disappears never to be seen again after he unwittingly gives proof of his existence, thereby destroying faith, and thereby again, destroying his existence. Evolution doesn't fair any better. In the series, the apes die out because they are supplanted by a bunch of useless hair dressers and phone sanitization workers who have deliberately been crashed into the earth by their own planet as a useful way to get rid of them. The meaning of life?—well I won't ruin that one for you but suffice to say, the answer is enough to make you laugh out loud.

The series spends a lot of time making fun of us. In Adams's universe we are backwoods ruffians who are still impressed with digital watches, (it was written in the 1970s). Per the series, we aren't even the most intelligent creatures on the planet, we come third after mice and dolphins. From a literary standpoint, the series has all the classic elements. It works so well because our "hero" Arthur Dent, is the perfect humorless straight man and foil to the greatest comedian, the Universe. The series revolves around a series of random coincidences. Adams's creates a vehicle for this, (literary and literally), via "The Heart of Gold" which is a new mode of transportation that can transport a spaceship anywhere by configuring odds of probability. The side effect is that the occupants are frequently subjected to a series of bizarre coincidences.

Douglas Adams was a closet scientist whose fascination for the subject matter gave his series far more depth than corporate science fiction or fluff humor. Since the third book, Life, the Universe and Everything, Adams would always say that the series was finished, yet another book would roll out. After his final book in the series came out, Mostly Harmless, it seemed that maybe the series had finally come to an end. During the year 2000, Adams was starting to contemplate a sixth book in the series while he was working on getting a movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy released. Sadly, Adams died of a massive heart attack in the spring of 2001, maybe even more sadly, a movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide did come out and absolutely failed to capture any part at all of what made the series so magical. What makes this series so special is that Adams's quirky way of looking at things comes through with such force that it greatly influences the readers to see Adams's points of view on well, life, the universe and everything. Usually satire is myopic by its nature. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a satire of all of humanity. If you can temporarily set aside what you hold precious and think you can find some humor in the foibles of humanity, then this series is for you.

Blind Melon's "Soup"-- A Requiem and a Mystery

Note:  This article was originally published at http://www.searchwarp.com/ on October 4th, 2011.

       Have you actually clicked on this article and made it this far? If you have, my guess is that you are wondering why anyone would bother to write an article about a mid 1990s one-hit-wonder band. It turns out that with Blind Melon's Soup album there comes a bit of a mystery. The answers to that mystery died with lead singer Shannon Hoon and the mystery was only created by his death.

     First let's start with a little background. If you know anything about the group Blind Melon, you know that they penned the song No Rain. No Rain was a big hit in the early to mid 1990s and it was made all the more famous through its iconic video which featured a young girl in a bee outfit. No Rain was from their first, self-titled album. Despite my better judgment I bought the album when it came out. This is the kind of purchase that nine times out of ten leads to me listening to that one song and having to suffer through the others before I grudgingly admit I have made a bad purchase. Fortunately for me, this was a one out of ten deal. It turns out that, in my opinion, No Rain was probably the weakest song off of the album and not because it was a bad song but because it was clearly added to be a pop song to drive the sales of Blind Melon's other songs. In my case, that marketing strategy worked perfectly. No Rain was wedged into a great group of alternative, blues songs that all carried a melancholy tone.

      Now you are saying, "so you think Blind Melon's self titled debut album was a good album. So what? It's not worth writing about seventeen years after the fact." In that, I would have to agree. Actually this article isn't even about that album but the one that followed it--Soup. If Soup had any recognizable, radio played song it was Galaxie. This song was probably played on the radio for about ten minutes and if you blinked you probably missed it. Soup's main claim to fame is that it was the last real album for Blind Melon. While on tour to promote the album, Shannon Hoon succumbed to an overdose of cocaine on the tour bus in New Orleans and it is here that the mystery begins.

      While attending the University of Alabama, I found a compatriot in my love of Blind Melon with my very good friend and roommate. He and I seemed to be the only people in the world aware of just how good Blind Melon was. When Soup was released we both went out and bought it and we both listened to it over and over trying to get a feel for how it compared to the first album. My first impression was that the album, although good, sounded very disjointed in parts. I don't know if it was recorded in odd time signatures but the album has a weird flow or lack of flow to it. Beyond that and maybe because of it, I realized that though it wasn't as easy to fall into as the previous album, Soup was probably the better of the two albums. It was also a very dark album. The previous album had a sadness to it but it was in no way a dark album. Soup was very dark with many of the songs having to do with death. Ironically and I am sure deliberately, the happiest sounding song was a summertime fun ditty about a real life, serial killer who used his victims' remains to make furniture. It was that kind of a dark album. There was an exception to the darkness of the other songs. The song New Life seemed more sad than dark and was more reminiscent of Blind Melon's first album. In New Life Hoon is singing about the birth of his first child Nico and is asking himself if Nico's birth is going to be enough to save him from the downward spiral of his life. Other notable songs were Lemonade which was an allusion to drugs and was deliberately recorded in a very chaotic manner to reflect the affect of the drugs. In my opinion, the best song off of the album was Mouthful of Cavities which captures the melancholy, hopeless depression of the first album and takes it to an entirely new level.

     Somewhere in the midst of still exploring this album came word of Shannon Hoon's death. I found myself thinking about Hoon's death, the circumstances of his death and the odd similarities to parts of the album. My roommate and I bounced various ideas off of each other. What we found was a very odd mystery.

     To begin with, Soup is encompassed in a New Orleans funeral. In New Orleans, it is tradition that when a body is being carried to a grave that a slow, New Orleans jazz is played. After the funeral, when the mourners are heading back from the grave site, the music that is played is a happy, up tempo, New Orleans jazz. Just prior to Soup's first song, Galaxie, the album opens up with a slow, New Orleans jazz and after the album's last song is played--Lemonade, the album closes with the New Orleans up beat jazz. Soup was clearly intended to be a New Orleans funeral. It would seem odd and highly coincidental that Shannon Hoon died in New Orleans while on tour for Soup.

     If I left it here, it would be odd but then something happened one night to add to the mystery. While I was at work, I was talking with a fellow coworker. I mentioned Blind Melon and how it was a shame that Hoon was dead. We talked about Soup and I mentioned how much I loved the album. He then told me about a hidden track. I don't remember my reaction but I probably told him that there wasn't a hidden track. I had played that album religiously and I had not heard any hidden track. He then told me that it was a uniquely hidden track. He told me how to access the hidden track. As soon as I was off of work, I ran home, pulled out Soup and followed the instructions while my roommate watched on.

      Of course he was right, there is a hidden track on Soup. Unlike most hidden tracks, the hidden track on Soup is extremely well hidden. If you put the compact disc in and play it from beginning to end, you will never hear it. It starts out with the slow funeral music and ends with the happy funeral music. To hear the hidden track, you have to put in the compact disc and immediately hit pause. Once the compact disc is paused, you then have to hold down the back button and reverse the compact disc to approximately negative two minutes and forty seconds. At that point, you can play the song. The song is appropriately titled Hello Goodbye and is a strange song with backwards lyrics. The backwards lyrics are from the song New Life. Hoon was basically telling us that he knew that even the birth of his daughter would not be enough to save him. After all what is the opposite of New Life? Now all this in and of itself would make this album a masterpiece but then Hoon's death vaults this album into territories where albums just haven't gone. Shannon Hoon, a kid from Indiana, died of an overdose of cocaine in of all places, New Orleans. Whether Hoon predicted his own death, commited suicide, or fate played tricks on him, I will never know. People have mourned the loss of Kurt Cobain as the great Rock and Roll death of the Gen X crowd and I agree Cobain's loss to my generation has been monumental but in my heart, Hoon's death has rocked me far more.

Chapter One - Reflections of Colette Street (most recent version)

Chapter 1

     I stare out of the window of the airplane.  The City—my city is coming into focus below.  Until eight years ago, this city was the city that cradled me from birth and swaddled me in its loving—smothering arms.  Eight years ago, I left this city much like a prisoner who finds the door to the jail cell wide open and I bolted almost literally in the middle of the night.

     I have spent the last eight years in a self-imposed exile—not coincidentally, in a place across the world from this city.  This city.  This city is coming closer and closer to me through my little, plexi-glass, airplane window.  It welcomes me with its glowing orange-yellow street lights.  The cars below me move like ants with shining halogen eyes.  I adjust my perspective. I can see my face reflected in the little window. When did I get so old?

     Flight attendants, prepare for landing.

     Eight years ago, I ran away from this city to Hong Kong and now eight years later I am repeating the same act only in reverse.  I have run from the frying pan, to the fryer, and now back again in hopes that the heating element underneath has gone cold.  Has it?  These thoughts race through my head as the city comes closer into view.

     As I look below, I  start to recognize the city.  There is Banks Street.  There is the Orange Gulf Bank Building.  Over there is where Colette and Lafayette intersect.  I snuck out of this city with hardly so much as a goodbye.  Now I am sneaking back in much the same way.  I have only told my old friend Trent about my return.

     The Captain's voice comes over the airplane speaker.

     "Flight Attendants—prepare for landing."

     A few minutes later, I feel the strength of the plane's brakes as the wheels touch the runway underneath.  For the first time since lift off, I feel the real power of the airplane as it comes to its eventual halt.  After a few seconds of hard braking, the plane is coasting like a car on a Sunday drive.  I have been on more flights than I can recollect.  I have no fear of flying, yet every time the plane has landed, I always think the same thing.  Safe!

     For the last time, I look out of the plane's window.  I watch the terminal come into view.  The plane comes to a halt.  I stand up and begin to gather my things.  I have a beat up, Eastpak backpack that has seen me through trips across the U.S., Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Vietnam, and various Far East locales.  I have a little music player filled with favorite songs.  I carry two novels.  One is a Douglas Coupland novel that takes its name from an old Smiths' song.  The other novel is a Hunter S. Thompson novel about a free-lance journalist living in Puerto Rico.  It seemed fitting to bring a Douglas Coupland novel along.  It was on my flight to Hong Kong, eight years ago, when I read my first Douglas Coupland novel.

     As I gather these things, I am already planning my next move.  I picture myself as a spy behind enemy lines.  Today the fantasy is fitting.  It is not the first time that I have played these Walter Mitty styled games.  My mid-twenties have become late-twenties.  The big three-O is around the bend.  I am far too old to be playing pretend.

     My plan of attack is to get to baggage claim and quickly find my suitcase.  Do not stop to get a drink.  Do not stop to urinate.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.00.  I am on a mission.  How quickly can I exit the plane and be away from this airport?  The airport is too public.  There are too many chances to see a familiar face.  There will be time to see them soon enough but it will be on my own terms.  Very soon I will again be a resident of this city.  For this trip, I have only packed for a week.  The next time I arrive here on a plane, it will be my permanent exit from Hong Kong.  I originally thought about going somewhere different—another place, another exile in another paradise, but I realized that, at least for a little while, I need this city to take me back in and to hold me tight. This city and I have unfinished business.

     We passengers of flight 803 stand hunched over—awaiting our exit orders.  Once received, we slowly work our way into the aisle and out of the plane.  I stare down at the red and blue, checked pattern that adorns the airplane seats.  It is probably the same pattern that was used in the 1960s.  In some ways, time stands still on airplanes.

     This fantasy mission I have given myself makes me want to hurry.  I want to push past the little old lady who is in front of me.  She arrived on a connecting flight from DFW.  I was forced to listen to her conversation with another passenger in which she espoused her belief that “God has a plan for us all.”  I don't know what God's plan is for me but my plan is to get out of this airport as quickly as possible—her plan, albeit subconsciously, is to stop me from executing my plan.  God, I don't want to get old.  Yet the alternative still scares the hell out of me.

     On the way out, the stewardesses…No that's not right—the flight attendants beam at me with their all-too-perfect smiles, thanking us for flying with their airline.  I give them a none-too-perfect smile in return.  It is a smile of a broken man.  If they notice, they don't show it.

     I travel through the portable, rolling tunnel, and emerge under the bright, fluorescent lights of the terminal.  As I enter, I see that some of my fellow passengers are being greeted by loved ones.  Hugs and kisses rule the day!  None for me thank you.  I am the thief in the night.  I am the spy behind enemy lines.  For a second—not even a second, I wish that there was someone here to warmly greet me.  Coldness washes over me as I fully contemplate why I am alone and why I am back here.

     I quickly work my way to the tram that will send me, like a bullet—Jetson's style, to the other side of the airport.  The scene feels surreal.  It is hard to believe that I am back.  Were the last eight years just some dream?  I wondered if I would ever see this city again.  Now, mysteriously and inexplicably, here I am.  I am here as much by choice as I am by random chance.

     The tram lets us out amid the neon signs of the airport bars and franchised restaurants.  The pretty lights and corporate trappings that are designed to pull me in, hold no appeal for me.  I want to escape this crush of people, grab my bag, and find a place of solitude.  Come tomorrow, I will be confronted by faces of my past—again that will be on my own terms.  Even though there is just a minutia of chance that I will run into a familiar face here, I don't want to roll the dice.  Sometimes I can be that unlucky and lately I appear to be a prisoner of tragic design.  I want to take no extra chances today.

     I make it to the baggage claim.  I have a few minutes to wait before the serpentine conveyor starts up in its mission to dispense the luggage of flight 803.  I stare at the motionless conveyor belt unsuccessfully willing it to move.  Just when I am about to give up on my mind's telekinetic powers, the red flashing light spins, the warning buzzer gives two sharp cries, and the machinery of the conveyor comes on.  I give a quick glance around the baggage claim area and survey the familiar faces of my fellow passengers.  Some faces reflect smiles and others are almost expressionless with possible hints of sadness.  I wonder how many divorces, deaths, and lost opportunities, those expressionless faces have experienced.

     My bag is one of the first to roll out.  The Gods of Airports have seen through to my anxiety and have shown me blessed mercy.  I am the tragic Greek hero of my own invention.  Regardless, right now I have won the luggage lottery.  My suitcase is winning the race.  I watch it proudly like a parent who is watching their child beating out the other children in the potato sack race.  Go for it baby!  I'm proud of you!

     My suitcase is easily recognizable—it being cloth, plaid, and manufactured in the early 1970's.  Over the years, it has served my family well.  What it lacks in style and looks, it easily makes up for in history and durability.  In truth, I realize that it probably wasn't fate being kind but simply having an ugly, old suitcase that the baggage handlers noticed immediately.  If it was a charging soldier, it would be the first one clipped by an enemy bullet.

     I grab the suitcase.  I want to flaunt it to everyone around.  Mine was first!  There are advantages to having the ugliest suitcase in the airport.  After giving everyone a quick, victory stare, I head towards the car rental agency.

     Once at the counter I am greeted by another perfect, airport employee.  I think to myself that she could be related to the flight attendants from my flight.  No, the more I think about it, I realize that she looks nothing like the flight attendants.  It dawns on me that the car rental agent and the flight attendants are pressed from the same corporate mold.  It has been eight years since I have felt the power of glossy, corporate America.  I am ill-prepared to handle the reflection from their gilded sheen.

     After some initial pleasantries, we get down to business.

     "Okay Mr. Rowe. I have your contract right here. Will you be accepting the insurance?"

     "No thanks."

     "Very Well, initial in the box there." Ahh there it was, the first falter in her perfect smile.  She does not approve.  It is irrelevant that my auto insurance will cover the rented car, I have refused to buy their superfluous insurance and I have effectively and temporarily chiseled away at corporate perfection.  The best way to break through any corporate veneer is to hit them in the wallet.  It works every time.  The falter though is short lived.  She quickly recovers and the plastic smile is back.  We finish up and I am given some paperwork that I will never look at along with a key to a car that is probably designed to neither please nor offend.

     Escape is the prevailing theme of the night and I am close to accomplishing my goal.  For the first time since landing, there is a little spring to my step.  Escape from this press of humanity is an aphrodisiac.  I take an elevator that deposits me to an outdoor garage and for the first time in eight years, I inhale the air of my city.  The city blankets me in hot, humid air not much different in climate than the air of Hong Kong, yet this air is sterile by comparison.  The smells of Hong Kong are gone and in their place . . . nothing?  I smell nothing.  It is as if someone has taken a deodorizer to the city.

     I walk through the parking lot through the rows of almost identical cars until I find mine.  It is a small, boxy, ugly thing in blue metallic and the pride of South Korea.  I place the key in the door and it thankfully turns.

     Inside, the car is stripped of almost anything that would be considered unnecessary.  Where the ashtray should be is a sign showing a circled cigarette with a slash through it.  I roll down the window, pull a pack of smokes from my shirt pocket, and have my first drag in about five hours.  Damn that tastes good.

     Now I have one last step to freedom.  I drive to the toll booth.  I am in a rental and do not have to pay for the parking.  I still have to show them the contract.  In true Walter Mitty Style, I imagine myself at a checkpoint in some Eastern European country during the cold war.  Instead of the friendly Latino girl in the booth, I picture a stern faced Russian or East German with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

     "Thank you Mr. Rowe."

     The bar swings up and I am free.

     Instead of the hotels near the airport, I have driven almost a half an hour to find a hotel in the affluent suburb of Scarlet Hills.  I say I am from the city but almost my entire life I have really lived in Scarlet Hills.  We moved in from the city when I was seven.  I went to Scarlet Hills elementary, Scarlet Hills Junior High, and eventually Scarlet Hills High School.  At least superficially, I am here for my ten year high school reunion.  It was a reunion that I had no intention of attending a month ago but then fate, life, God, aliens from the planet Zigaxxxt, had other plans and now here I am out of Hong Kong and sitting in the Park Avenue Inn of Scarlet Hills intending to go to my ten year reunion.

     The room is nice and why wouldn't it be?  It is smack dab in the middle of one of the nicest suburbs of the city.  Everyone in the city wants to live in Scarlet Hills.  You may meet some who say they don't but it is only because they lack the means to do so and can't admit it to themselves.  That sounds snobby.  I'm not a snob.  I'm a pragmatist.

     Before getting to the hotel, I stopped at a fancy little convenience store on the corner of Park Avenue.  I paid too much for a six pack of imported beer and got myself my first pack of non-imported American smokes in eight years.  Mmmm.  Fresh tobacco.  Marlboros just don't taste this good in Hong Kong.  I may be creating little cancer cells in my lungs but at least, starting tonight, the act of doing so will taste a little better.  I pull a beer from the hotel supplied mini-fridge, pop the cap, and head towards the little sofa.  The beer tastes like most imported lagers.  I am always amazed how German, Belgian, Japanese, and Chinese lagers can taste so much alike and why American lagers taste so weak by comparison.  Was there a secret recipe that was given to every country in the world but the United States?

      Lately, I can't stand to be around people yet being alone is worse.  Regardless, I still crave the solitude.  It must be the masochist in me.  When I'm alone, dark thoughts take over.  The memories both good and bad come flooding in.  Recently, those memories have been bad, very, very bad.  It is strange, as time goes by the good memories are just as painful as the bad ones.  I think this is the real definition of melancholy.  The good memories are wrapped up in a warm, fuzzy haze and the reality that those times are forever gone cuts to the very core of my soul.

     I have the sliding door to my balcony open but the curtains closed.  I love it this way.  I can secretly sit back and listen to the chatter of the people down on the avenue below.  Again, I am the spy.  Passing below me, I hear a group of teenagers.  From their conversation, I would guess that they are two happy couples.  I hear their happy laughter.  I imagine them to be the carefree double couple.  One of the boys teases one of the girls about her breasts.  Her retort back to him is a quick stab about the size of his penis.  Their laughter is like an old song that transports me back in time.  Has it really been ten years since I was one of those teens?

     The passing teenagers and my upcoming high school reunion send my thoughts racing back to my graduation night.  My friends and I were heading into what we thought would be our last summer together before various colleges threatened to tear us apart.  Every high school has their cliques and Scarlet Hills was no exception.  My clique was the theatre clique.  We collectively referred to ourselves as The Scarlet Hills Crew.  On that night, I remember sitting at our favorite late night diner, Zeus' Grotto.  Zeus' was a mainstay for The Crew.  It was fitting that we should be there on graduation night.  Graduation night alone would have made that night special but in our collective history, that night took on a historical importance in which our graduation was merely an added bonus.  It was on that night that Trent proposed a crazy idea.  This, in itself, was not uncommon.  Maybe it was the euphoria of graduation night, maybe it was the fear of separation but for whatever reason, we didn't dismiss Trent's grandiose idea as would have been common for us on any other given night.  Trent's idea became known in the annals of our collective history as Colette Street.  Colette Street managed in one simple night to change the lives of everyone who was there at Zeus'. We didn't realize it then but we suddenly took our respective lives off of our planned, predictable paths, and broke hard left.  I have thought back to why we were all so willing to go along.  Trent was after all a starfucker and there probably was not a week that went by where he didn't come up with some crazy plan worthy of a late 1970s A.B.C. sitcom.  For years, I think we all considered ourselves to be so brave in going with Trent's plan but with the perspective of time, I now realize that we were afraid—afraid of change, of moving on, of losing our friendships through distances of geography and time.  Of course we were foolish to think that we could stop change from coming.  No matter how hard we tried, change did come.

Chapter One from my current work in progress, (working title is The Tragedy of Tristan and Isolde) unedited

(The Faux-Forward that proceeds this Chapter is below.  I recommend reading that first to put this Chapter into perspective)
Chapter 1


Interview with Gary Hunter, September 20, 2009.

JF: First of all, I want to say thank you for agreeing to be a part of this book.


GH: (laughs), Yeah, I have to say that I definitely have some reservations about it. I can't believe you found someone willing to publish it.


JF: I had some friends that owed me some favors. (pause) Considering your reluctance to address your time in Tristan and Isolde in prior interviews, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by your willingness to be a part of this.


GH: Yeah well, honestly, my inclination was to tell you to go to hell but I realized that if I didn't, you were only going to get her side of the story.


JF: You're referring to Emmie Ware.


GH: (pause) Yes. (long pause). So what do you want me to do? Should I just start talking about her?


JF: Actually not today. My thought was that you could take me back to how you got into music in the first place.


GH: Jeez, hasn't everyone heard that story a million times?


JF: I'm sure your fans could recite the story as well as you could but there is the possibility of people reading this book who aren't familiar with you.


GH: (laughs) Who the hell would read a book about me that doesn't know anything about me? (pause) Oh well, it's your dime.


JF: So you got started in Orlando?


GH: Yeah, (sarcastic laugh) the music mecca of the known world. I guess it was back in '82 . . .

I was living in a shithole apartment in one of the rare, poor sections of Winter Park, Florida. It wasn't exactly the 'hood by any means but it was definitely lower income. Apartment living was something I was used to. My parents got divorced when I was five and after that, it seemed every year was spent moving from one apartment to another. By sixth grade I had managed to attend five different schools and I never left the Orange County school district. This tended to make me a little more outgoing around people. I was the perennial new kid wherever I went so it was always up to me to make friends.

In 1982, my mother managed to get us into Jackson Square apartments. Again, it was a shithole but its one redeeming quality is that it was in the Winter Park Junior school district. Though my mother was happy, I was like a fish out of water. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by kids who were from well to do, affluent families. I was suddenly the poor, trailer trash kid. Fortunately, I wasn't alone. There were about ten of us that lived in Jackson Square or the neighboring complex Park Green and we kind of banded together. We were, in short, the bad kids. During this time, I read The Outsiders and needless to say, it became my favorite book. I think I read it three times that winter alone.

After school, we would take the old, yellow 383 bus home. To be honest, I'm not sure how it happened. All I remember was that Ricky, my new best friend at the time, told Jimmy and I to come over to his place after school one day because he had something he wanted to show us. Honestly, I don't think Jimmy and I were too curious about it. We probably just figured it was a new 2600 game. Fucking Atari. That stuff was like crack back then.

JF: This is Ricky Sedgfield and Jimmy Kaine?


GH: Yeah. . .

Anyway, we get over there and he pulls out this old LP. It's Genesis' Foxtrot. I'm pretty sure Jimmy and I were initially disappointed but man o man talk about a moment that changes your life. Ricky told us that he had found the album while looking through a box of his father's stuff. Ricky's father died of a drug overdose when Ricky was seven. I remember Ricky telling us that he pulled it out and thought that the cover looked cool. I don't know if you are familiar with the album but on the cover is a drawing of what appears to be a slender woman in a red dress except that where the head would be is the head of a fox. It's definitely something that immediately grabs your attention.

Ricky puts on the album but he doesn't fuck around. He goes straight to Horizons which then is immediately followed by Supper's Ready. I would still say today that I think Supper's Ready is my favorite song of all time and of course, I now know that Supper's Ready is full of all this hidden meaning and is basically a song version of Revelations from the bible. I didn't know any of that shit then but then again, I didn't have to. You could hear Supper's Ready and feel like you were entering another realm. I think it also blew our minds because it's not like we didn't know Genesis. Those guys were regulars on the radio stations back then but the stuff that you heard on the radio hardly sounded like anything off of Foxtrot. It was like it was two different bands. Of course, as we later found it, it really was like two different bands. The threesome that was left after Gabriel and Hackett left the group were more interested in Top 40 hits and didn't seem too concerned about staying loyal to their core audience. Beyond the musical influences that we got from Genesis, we definitely learned other, unintended lessons about keeping our core of fans. I think we've done a pretty good job.

Well after we listened to Supper's Ready we listened to the whole album all the way through. I was shocked when I recognized the song, I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe). I think Jimmy and especially Ricky were surprised when I could sing along to some of it. On Sundays, there was a radio station that would play a lot of classic, oddball, rock songs and that song along with another old Genesis song, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway were somewhat main staples. I think over the next few weeks we wore that LP out. I'm sure it was getting more scratchy and poppy. To be honest, I don't remember who suggested it though I know Ricky always claims credit for it but someone suggested that we form a band. There were a few problems with this suggestion, namely we were three thirteen year olds that couldn't play an instrument between us and didn't have any instruments even if we could play. Still, I guess that was the beginning of Dean's Acid Project.

What we lacked in talent and equipment, we definitely made up in heart. Ricky and I had a couple of old tennis rackets lying around. I don't remember what Ricky's was but mine was one of those old, Wilson T2000 metal tennis rackets. I was lead guitar, Ricky was bass and vocals, and Jimmy was drums. I do remember that Jimmy's drums consisted of a couple of old paint cans, some school books and two of those fat pencils that little kids use when they are learning to write.

For a couple of weeks it was fun and just like a real band, we had our first, real controversy. It turned out that Ricky wasn't much of a singer. After some talk it was agreed that I had the better voice. Ricky then wanted me to give up lead guitar and take the bass but I was pigheaded, I mentally saw myself as a lead guitarist at that point and I wasn't going to give it away. I don't know who finally figured it out but somehow we discovered that bands usually had more than one guitarist and that one guy would play lead while the other played rhythm. This helped us to avoid early disaster. We continued on in our new formation for about another week but you know, honestly, we were thirteen and a little too old to play pretend. For a while we drifted back into the video game scene and then someone, Ricky of course takes credit again, and he's probably right, suggested that we actually try and get our parents to get us real instruments. At first this was met with skepticism. As I stated before, none of us were rich. Musical instruments were the domain of rich kids, not poor kids living in Jackson Square. Ricky did keep talking it up though. He kept saying that they didn't have to be good instruments and that if we agreed to tell our parents that that was all we wanted for Christmas we could maybe swing it. Look, this went over like the proverbial lead balloon. It meant no video games, no new bikes, no cool toys. Jimmy and I were definitely hesitant but Ricky kept hammering, "look you guys, if we make it as a band, we'll be rich. We can buy ourselves all the bikes, games, toys that we can dream of." Eventually Ricky won out and operation, "get instruments for Christmas" was well on its way.

I really give us a lot of credit. We could have easily sold our dream for some crap video game but the three of us stuck to our guns, we leaned heavily on our parents and I think we were shocked when it actually worked. I wound up with one of those crappy, Japanese, Harmony guitars from the 1960s. I loved it though. Ricky got a Global guitar which was basically a 1970s, Sears version of a Stratocaster. His guitar was way cooler than mine. Jimmy got screwed. His parents refused to get him a drum set because of the apartment situation. He wound up with some shitty keyboard and he got signed up for piano lessons. I've never seen an unhappier kid at Christmas time. I think a lot of it was that Jimmy thought we would move on without him. Instead Ricky and I immediately started telling him how the keyboards were cooler and that instead of being Phil Collins, he was going to be Tony Banks. I don't think he liked the idea at first but we were like, "hey man, Phil sucks, Tony's the awesome one." Of course Ricky and I didn't believe that, piano lessons just seemed like the stuff of sissies but really looking back on it, we were dead on. Out of all the members of Genesis, the real heart of that band is Tony Banks. His work on the keys is incredible.

We were definitely on our way then but we did have one more issue to tackle. My mother couldn't afford guitar lessons for me. Fortunately this was rectified because Ricky's mother signed Ricky up for guitar lessons. Ricky went to a half an hour guitar lesson after school every Wednesday. Immediately upon him coming home, Ricky would sit down with me and we would practice together with Ricky literally parroting the stuff he learned that afternoon to me while it was still fresh in his head. After we practiced, I would sit down with a pencil and paper and transcribe all of his tab that his teacher had written for him and make a copy for myself. Looking back on it, this was probably ten times better for Ricky and me than if we both had had guitar lessons. This basically forced us both to practice. It also really forced us both to understand the lesson because I may have a question and Ricky would really have to understand it to explain it to me. When I transcribed, I really had to understand what I was writing. If we both came across something that neither of us understood then Ricky would ask his guitar teacher on the following Wednesday and we would have our answer. I do remember that Ricky and I got into a fight about something stupid at one point. Neither one of us remembers what it was about but the effect was that I was cut off from the guitar lesson that week. Man o man you can bet that I kissed his ass after that to make it up to him. Ricky was the kind of guy who wouldn't take advantage of that. He's still that kind of guy. Anyway, that's it, version number 1063 of how Dean's Acid Project got started.

Faux Forward from my current work in progress, (unedited).

Forward

As a journalist who covers rock bands for various magazines, I'm not used to writing forwards. Please forgive me if it seems a little amateurish. When you write a book, you have a tendency to be excited about it and you are consumed with an overwhelming desire to tell your friends, family, and colleagues about it. To be honest, the initial responses were underwhelming. Most of the reactions I received were along the lines of "why the hell do you want to write a book about Gary Hunter, Emmie Ware and their time together in Tristan and Isolde? There are a thousand other things you could write about that would be far more interesting." Five years ago, I would have readily agreed with them. My interest in Gary Hunter and Emmie Ware came about quite by accident and was built up through a few interviews that I had done through the years.

Like most people my knowledge of Gary Hunter, Emmie Ware, and Tristan and Isolde was limited to the basic facts. Hunter and Ware were members of an early 1990s alternative band with pop overtones named Tristan and Isolde. The band had some commercial success but like a lot of those early 1990s bands, they quickly faded way as the decade came to an end. I knew that Hunter and Ware were an item while they were together. I knew that they frequently sang duets which seemed to be their band's hook and I knew that they had a bad breakup that resulted in Gary Hunter leaving the band.

On the surface, focusing on Hunter and Ware's relationship during their time together in Tristan and Isolde definitely would seem anti-climatic. Of course Hunter is far better known as being the front man and lead guitarist for the modern progressive foursome Dean's Acid Project which has had far greater success than his time in Tristan and Isolde. Most people will rightly assume that Hunter seems to be embarrassed by his time in the pop driven duet though to give the devil his due, T&I's hit, Bad Boy Bad Girl is the highest charting song of Hunter's career and is still a main staple today on many radio stations. Ware, of course, disappeared for quite a while after the eventual break up of Tristan and Isolde but recently found major critical success in her melancholy solo work with the release of last year's Dance of the Blue Girl.

As so many people pointed out to me, a much more interesting book could be written on either Hunter or Ware based on their work outside of Tristan and Isolde. Again, there was a point in which I would have agreed but as I discovered and I think you will too, so much of who Hunter and Ware are is based in that Tristan and Isolde time period. I will tell you, the title is misleading, this book does address Hunter and Ware from their beginnings to where they were at the time the last sentence of this book was written but don't be mistaken, the center of it all emanates from the days of Tristan and Isolde.

Okay, enough about the content. I think once you read the book, you will feel the same way I do about the importance of the T&I time period. I do want to comment on the style of writing. When I first decided to write this book, I debated back and forth about how I was going to write it. Should I write it in a narrative form, basing the various scenes on the many interviews I conducted or should I write it in the style of an article that I would write for a music magazine? I realized that if I went with one direction that the story would lose something and if I went the other direction something else would be lost. It may seem obvious now but what I eventually decided on was to incorporate both styles where it is appropriate. At times, the story will be in interview form and at other times, the story will be a narrative. It should be noted however that almost all the dialogue is backed up by at least two sources and sometimes more than two.

Primarily this book is told from the perspective of Hunter and Ware even though I interviewed several people while writing this book. Though both were interviewed extensively for this book, they were never together in any of the interviews. Since their break up and Hunter's leaving Tristan and Isolde, they have spoken very little to each other through the years and those conversations have been nothing more than superficial.

I also realized early on that to keep the content of the book pure, that I couldn’t tell what I had learned from Hunter to Ware and vice versa. To do so would have literally destroyed the book before it was written. It is only with the publishing of this book that Gary Hunter and Emmie Ware are seeing their different perspectives on events that happened so long ago and had so much of an effect on each other's lives. My silly little hope is that somehow this book will cause a reconciliation between Hunter and Ware. Truthfully, I realize how vain a thought that is. I am not a therapist. My guess is that Hunter will read Ware's account and chalk it up to self-promoting b.s. and that Ware will read Hunter's account and be greatly saddened by it all. If Hunter and Ware find nothing of value in this book's content, maybe you the reader can find some sort of greater message in it regarding forgiveness. (Wow, that's some grandiose bullshit. Skip that, hopefully you just find it to be a good read).



Jake Farris

12/10/2010