make no mistake - i'm no shameless huckster, selling you on something to make a dollar. in fact, i'm not really concerned with that AT ALL, and i am not making any profit from it AT ALL...this page is originally inspired by my grueling on-line search for information about cello amplification and such things that it doesn't seem there's an expert on. in fact, i couldn't even really find suggestions much less an expert...so, though i'm no expert, i do have opinions (and some of them may not make any sense, just bear with me here or hit the "back" arrow), and i just wanted to let all of you know about some things that...well, that i have been, um, known to like, some cello-related, and some that are not...just check it out...
08.17.01 :
well, as i was entering the date for this entry into the computer, i realized that it is 3 months to the hour practically from my getting pulled over and arrrrrrrested(!) for DWI and put in jail. how time does fly. you know, i still haven't been sentenced...i keep getting "the letter" from my attorney that says when the next court setting is, and that i need not appear. *whew!* i just thought i would mark that moment in time. on to the entry, and this is a good one that i've been thinking about and researching, and if you're not in for quite a ride, i suggest you scroll down a ways to the next humorous entry - 'cause i'm about to get serious.
so, i read a great book a few months back called, "the Covert War on Rock", written by one Alex Constantine. subtitled, "what you don't know about the deaths of :...", and lists off many famous names including Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Marley, Peter Tosh, John Lennon, Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. to name a few off the cover - many more are covered inside. now this book is really the conspiracy theorist's playground. "but Lisa, conspiracy theory is so....90's!" well, sure. that's what They'd like you to believe, isn't it? basically the gist of the book relates information carefully footnoted from requested and declassified government files, interviews and the like that add a somewhat grim insight into the "untimely" deaths of some of the greater speakers out there at a politiacally pivotal time for media figures to be speaking the truth.
it's horrible, really, but utterly informative and fascinating. i read it in sections, piece at a time, because some of the shit in this book is so vile, it really was making me sick - i can only take so much of this brutal truth voluntarily at a time, i guess. i consider myself an opinionated and somewhat educated musician, and the prospect of being systemmatically hunted and dispatched for expressing these passions throught my music...well, it's a bit scary to imagine, and more than a bit inflammatory to digest. i finished the book a while back, and what i read therein has just been simmering on the back burner of my mind since then.
time passes...life happens. it turns out the other night after work that i am home and have some spare time to lounge. i slap in a Bill Hicks video, to entertain my sensibilities. and the longer i watch it - this is the performance at the Dominion in London, one of the later ones after he's quit smoking and sobered up and not lost one whit of comedic power, but rather sharpened it - the more i realize that he was just so honest, about things most people just swept aside as "too controversial", "too touchy" and "too extreme"...that his death just didn't make sense.
this performance i watched contains the same rant of material sampled by Tool at the end of Aenima - the same album dedicating an entire page illustration of the liner notes to Bill Hicks - the bit about "...people who don't think drugs ever did anything good, go home and take all your records and tapes and CDs of the artists who've made this music and so enhanced your lives throughout the years...and BURN 'EM. 'cause you know what? the people who made that music???....rrrrrrrrrrrrrreal fuckin' high on drugs." or how about Radiohead's dedication of the highly acclaimed "the Bends" to dear old Bill Hicks? no, he wasn't some unheard comedian. he was sort of an underground hero, even after doing comedy for years, appearing on Letterman a number of times...he still never really got into the spotlight, and probably didn't really want to.
think about it. i mean, i hate to raise an issue and mar the relatively unscathed surface clamped neatly onto the death of the dark poet comic who died before achieving the kind of success that would guarantee that his message was delivered, by him, to the world...but it doesn't make sense, as many tragedies do not. here is a man who was so overwhelmed my the truth of what he saw - the fickleness, the frailness, the poison in humanity, and also the promise and potential, and he turned it just sweet enought to be laughed at...usually. but the potency of his message was never diffused by any humor he draped over it. that's just the proverbial spoonful of sugar to slip the truth into the docile mouths of many many stupid people. and he knew it - made an art of it, really. telling the truth in such an attractive and funny manner...
and the more it seemed like the medicine was going to heal the chosen frailties of humanity - the ignorance, the greed the graft the corruption - and then simultaneously celebrate the bounty of beauty within like a lotus growing out of the muckiest muck...well, the more it must've seemed like this is a dangerous message to have spread around. makes people think...maybe too much. if the governement would be willing to snuff out a great rock star or two, why not a comedian with all the dangerous sensibilities and allure of a rock star - one who told the truth too blatantly for the average passerby, much less the powers high up in the regimes he called out and put on the spot? why not get rid of him before he REALLY gets going, REALLY gets heard? that makes an easier target.
now i may be way out of line - so be it. it still makes me wonder. i mean...pancreatic cancer? that smacks of suspicion to me. even with a hard-partying devil-may-care lifestyle. it's not a common cancer, is it? not like lung cancer...skin cancer...cancer of the liver, the brain, the genitals...perhaps i'm just not informed properly, but i just don't see it as being so different from Brian Jones "drowning" in his home swimming pool as the "constructon crew" doing questionable repairs looked the other way, Mama Cass "choking on a ham sandwich", Bob Marley dying of an "undiagnosed" and "lingering" cancer spreading from a broken toe (acquired while playing soccer) that just would NOT heal, and it happened to be a toe on the foot injured on a pair of boots with some mystery wire stuck into the sole...that were a gift from our government??? read up, people, wake the fuck up. it's not ALL poilitical hype. it's just MADE OUT to be that. maybe. that's merely an opinion.
but is this how we serve these leaders' legacies? because they were all leaders in their own right. well i guess i think that's wrong. i just do not see it. in fact, as far as facts do go, i haven't seen it. even if i did, if conspiracy IS IN FACT conspiracy, even if i did see "it" i might not recognize a cover-up, a sub-plot. and the alarming lack of information regarding the possibilty of conspiracy in Hicks' death? who else ever made an entire bit out of both the JFK assassination and the crucifiction of Christ in the same joke??? he was admittedly a conspiracy man, and it's the pivoting point in multiple jokes and rants. what could possibly be more ironic than if his death were the result of a conspiracy the extent of which he had already discovered and publicly denounced...see what i'm getting at?
the man was very informed, very clever and very aware of how to pull an audience into his trip, his freak - even if it was like the nightmarish Wonka Boat ride where it makes people sick, makes them dizzy, makes them feel like their surely hallucinating..."and the rowers keep on rowing...they're certainly not showing...any sign that they are slowing...." well stop the fucking boat, man, because if i ever smelled a conspiracy, i smell it on the untimely and tragic death of possibly the only rock'n'roll comedian ever, the legendary and much-under-known comedian and philosopher, Bill Hicks. though i don't have time or energy to search the entirety of the internet for other threads about the Bill Hicks Conspiracy, in the searching i did accomplish, i found no mention. i'll let all of you know if anything trickles back down to me along the way, but i expect that the message he spoke will be shrouded in the mystery of death, except for recordings of his performance. find them - check him out. it's good for you.
and i only hope that someday someone may either uncover the unusually silent questions surrounding his death with the grace of an answer, or simply put his raging ghost to rest by virtue of finally telling the truth to all the children of this world (grown and immature) so that it may be heard, carrying on his legacy of unveiling what has been covered up.
and that's all i've got for tonight. thanks - god bless...
i don't really think there's too much i need to say about this 1904 advertsiement, except that you can really sell ANYthing at aBay, and, well, this just cracks me the fuck up.
copy of today's e-mail to my father, titled : "hey there i'm still alive and stuff"
"i did manage to score a week off...well, it was more like they called me up and told me that they thought i should take a week off and i agreed, but either way, i got the damn week off. i got Kathy Greto (who was in town for about 5 days) back on the plane to CO and then spent a week doing laundry, cleaning, taking care of my new legal b.s., playing music, and also saw BOTH of my ex-boyfriends who BOTH had BBQ's in that week. one of these guys is going to be a daddy, and the other is trying to court me again, i think. (his mistake - i'm DONE) both of them told me i looked good and it was nice to see me, were impressed by what i've got going on. i felt like it was a small victory. it was not the MOST restful week off, but i needed time to take care of other things, so it worked out fine i guess.
"today on Oprah (my roomie, i, watches Oprah pretty regularly) the whole show was about the 20-somethings growing up in the 21st century and what it's like, why there seems to be overwhelming confusion and depression and ambivalence in this age group. Oprah came with the point that young adults in the 21st century have more going for them than ever before - more opportuities, more choices for the future, etc and that was fine - i can see her point. what she didn't seem to realize - and what i believe a lot of adults from (beggin' your pardon - hate to do this to ya) YOUR generation DON'T realize is that there are also more expectations BECAUSE of those opportunities, more SUPER YOUNG millionaires (see .com's and teen pop), and more pressure from an uncompromising world than there was before, say even 10 years ago.
"i have been growing up in an "instant" society built on microwaves and one-stop shopping centers, built on technonlogical leaps of efficiency and convenience stores, minute rice and instant coffee with powdered creamer for it and ten types of sugar substitute in addition to good ol' sugar - a culture based on K-Mart and Wal-Mart and drive-thru's and divorces and Disneyland and Freedom and masses of broken homes, the Cold War (a sham), the Gulf War (an even bigger sham), and the Drug War (about the worst one yet), the internet's boom and recession.
"THAT is the figure-head i have been raised by. media and free thought and what have you not - NOT religion's dogmas, NOT society's demand to conform, NOT "the bell curve". in today's world of teen-pop and white-bread rapmetal multi-millionaires who are rich and famous for their images, the world of internet superiority and access to anything you can point-and-click your way into, the world of Instant America, the bell curve average has become increasingly obsolete.
"it's like an object in nature, out of it's natural state, propelled by a force - America has been brashly in love with itself for a few hundred years, and now the romance is starting to wear off and things are, like any other objects propelled by a force (like love) which must resume their normal stasis, returning to their natural states. that means that the "charm" is gone. the magic of instant efficiency and endless power supplies are gone. the days of smoking and drinking and sex being "cool" are over - those can all kill you, and quite efficiently, or so i am NOW told.
"and THIS is the world i grow up in, knowing that EVERYthing is bad for me, disease is even spreading through the very fucking AIR, there's NO God except in the movies, the Earth is dying out from under us as we suck her dry - that "democratic" elections can be bought and sold by any well-connected Old Boy from the south, that there are 15 year olds who have more money stashed away in savings and accounts than i may ever imagine collecting in my entire life...well, yes Oprah, i'd say that i really DO think i may have a reason to be concerned. yes, in fact, there may even be a few. i do not believe that it's all a reaction based on a spoiled generation's response to the consistently trying pains of "growing up". and if it were? well, who raised us, Oprah? you did, honey. you did.
"so yeah. that was my nugget of wisdom for the day. when are you coming to Texas again? i miss you! we have a show coming up this Friday - it should be cool. i'm excited! i love ya lots and hope that this finds you well. and by the way, i got the Cherry Poppin' Daddies CD in the mail today - thanks, yo! i loves to swing!!! take care - L.
here is someone from the past, whom i discovered while looking fondly over the amariz guestbook. back in the distant days of high school amariz and a band named Sweaty Palms shared the bill (with many others) of a no-budget high school show. this guy, Mike, was in Sweaty Palms. in an ongoing effort to highlight those folks who've known Us (as in the Royal We, any of the Jasmine Reign ladies really) since then, since the music was young and unpolished and rough...since back in the day long ago when we of amariz were just pups, scraping by playing wherever we could get booked, living in Colo Spgs. this is one of those special folks, and here's some stuff of his.
i must say that i like the taste of freedom. there's nothing like having it threatened seriously to make it all the more valuable. there's nothing at all quite like the horrible, giddy, stupid feeling that wells up inside a person who's knowingly fucking up the roadside sobriety test, unable to do anything but fuck up and try not to fall over onto the concerned and none-too-impressed police officer. nothing in the world like hearing the words, "i'm going to have to put you under arrest for DWI, Driving While Intoxicated" and feeling those cold, cold handcuffs click around both wrists behind me like little venomous steel snakes sinking their fangs in, and i'm knowing that this is just the very tipmost tip of the fucking iceberg and it's going to get worse and worse from here out...
there's no feeling like the feeling of stripping naked in front of an ogreish police lady and crying in front of those haughty agents of "the law" out of sheer frustration and humiliation. being told to hand over my panties, as if they could somehow facilitate my escape from jail in a single bound. no, it's a feeling like at that moment, "if only my enemies could see me now, for they would be unhinged with delight." it's a feeling like being turned into a number, systemmatical dehumanization. it makes it easier to treat people awfully when they don't look so much like people, when they're objectified and slipped into scratchy blue uniforms without any of the trappings of their previous selves, the merits of their individuality to keep them from being swept into the gutter category of "less than human".
so yeah, one could say that it makes me happy to walk down the street, even though i know that i could get whisked away, back into the putrid bowels of the "Justice System" (HA!) for even the most minor little offense...yes, it feels good to be alive and free. it feels like fucking terror to get into a car and drive down a road filled with only police officers, all waiting to pull me over it seems. nice, though, to have streets to walk down, to have my mobility, and to know that it could always get much worse than it is now - it's somewhat comforting in a cold little way. it feels good to be taking care of business, to be responsible...it feels good to be out of fucking jail.
here you have it - the new and updated Archives, Vault 1, and Vault 2. Vault 1 has June 2000 - when this page was created - through Dec 2000, roughly. Vault 2 has everything from Jan. 2001 up through June 2001. they're split up so that these pages won't take as long to load as they would if they were all together. dig?
