I've never been much of a scenester. As a younger man I hung around with a pretty punk rock crowd, and later I lived within spitting distance during the great metastasis of hipsterdom in Brooklyn, but as often as I've stylistically appropriated elements of those (and other) cultures, I've never really felt like calling any of them home.

I wonder about this for a few reasons. I've been considering my relative lack of a peer group anywhere in California. LGD and the Redman are moving on up/out, to Portland and South America and various new forms of domesticity beyond. I say more power to them, and in a lot of ways it's possible that having them on hand as my crew was a contributing factor to my late psychosocial cocooning. Nothing like your old friends to make you feel comfortable. But the takeaway is that with them on the go, I'm going to have to find some new ways to spend my time.

Another prompt for this thinking is that the bounty of Facebook has been visited upon me in spades this season. In the past month it seems like there's a been a surge there outside the nerdy/poitico factions who heretofore were in the majority of my connects. I've discovered/been-discovered by old lovers, highschool and college crushes, and most interestingly a whole slew of my old fellow-artisans from the Experimental Theater Wing.

For, you see, this brings me to reminisce about those heady old days in 721 Broadway. Studio. It was a shining time; young and firey and flexible I was, making art pretty much all the time. Granted, ETW could itself be something of "a scene" -- though in keeping w/the above I shied away from that for the most part -- but it was also a real community, and the friendships that remained after college formed a foundation for, I think, the most positively connected phase of my life to-date.

Kudos to Dr. Robbins for achieving entry into a Masters program in construction mgmt. He's poised to join the ever-expanding ranks of peers who out-certify me.

It seems like a trend these days, how people are shifting towards Green Construction and related fields. A good trend, mind, but I can't help but think of the career advice from The Graduate, "I'll give you one word: plastics." It is, we hope, we fear, the boom to come.

Anyway, good to have friends in high places.

It's a heady collection of tags: authentic experience, nyc, love, sex, friends; should be a real barn-burner of a blog.

Back in Humboldt for a week now, feeling the raw world-conquering momentum bleed away into wood smoke and the smell of fallen leaves. It's not unpleasant at all, this country home of mine -- next week will be alive with family and friends; the way I fell in love in the first place -- but today it gives me a feeling of wistful sadness.

It seems I make myself a smaller person here, or maybe it's vice-versa with the Mother City making me bigger. Much as I believe the hype about the internet flattening the world, it will always be true that different things happen in different places. It was an immense recharge, to walk again the streets of Brooklyn, to feel the quick hard snap of real subway doors, the great heaping crush of humanity, densely packed ambition and excellence. I draw power from the capital of the world.

And it's not just the women, but I won't lie: they're a big part of it. I have a no kiss-and-blog policy, but this little slice from William Gibson has stuck with me since adolescence, and pretty much nails me to a T:

But Bobby had this thing for girls, like they were his private tarot or something, the way he'd get himself moving. We never talked about it, but when it started to look like he was losing his touch that summer, he started to spend more time in the Gentleman Loser. He'd sit at a table by the open doors and watch the crowd slide by, nights when the bugs were at the neon and the air smelled of perfume and fast food. You could see his sunglasses scanning those faces as they passed, and he must have decided that Rikki's was the one he was waiting for, the wild card and the luck changer. The new one.

My good friend Frank writes:

Josh,

Thinking about the current financial crisis/bailout predicament, I noticed that you've begged off in your blog from weighing in. I thought it strange until I remembered something you'd said to me perhaps 200 times before:

"In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,
I shot his fellow of the self-same flight
The self-same way with more advised watch,
To find the other forth, and by adventuring both
I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof,
Because what follows is pure innocence.
I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth,
That which I owe is lost; but if you please
To shoot another arrow that self way
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,
As I will watch the aim, or to find both
Or bring your latter hazard back again
And thankfully rest debtor for the first."

If you remember, that didn't end very well. I was heavily invested in overseas contracts and you convinced me to leverage myself even further (deregulation had laid the way for exotic, organ-backed securities). Ships are but boards, sailors but men and when I lost all three ships, I had an instant liquidity crisis. If the judicial system hadn't been biased against predatory lenders (and had I not enlisted a knowledgeable corporate legal team) I would have lost everything.

Lucky thing, that.

Baby pictures are in: Frank Edward Robbins VI; aka "Freddy"

Farsheed makes music!

Awesomesauce.

Joe Felice is blowin' up bigtime. This was on the frontpage of youtube.com, and is smart and clever to boot. Go Joe!

It's on.

I suppose the natural follow up to a wave of weddings is a wave of babies. Trinity County Outlaws faceman Shamus just had his, The Mordecais report "Epidural and hard contractions now," and Frank Robbins VI will be upon the world soon.

Pretty neat! Congratz to all and sundry. I look forward to more opportunities to play non-blood-relation uncle (ala "Uncle Beefcakes" to the magic rollertots).

Very good times here in Portland. Only way it would be better is if I was actually on some kind of vacation now and could stick around for a few days and see the people (e.g. I don't even get to visit w/my dang sister, let alone any of the ultrahot girls I not-so-secretly admire up this way). It is the way of these things for the time to be compressed, for a half-hour stomping around a gravel yard and bonfire screaming along with The Eastern -- a.k.a. our lovely friend Jess and her giant tattoodled marmite-savoring redbeard hombre Adam from New Zeland -- serving in place of lengthy dinner conversation.

This is human, to engage in such rituals. We are all here together. It's a celebration of life.

Sadly the sun also rises, and yesterday was spent mostly fighting off the blood-thirsty death-panther hangover and then putting in a mild six-hour workday trying to scramble back in front of some deadlines. I assume at some point my life will return to a more equalized state, but for now chugging away the afternoon in Beulahland ain't so bad.

And so I've gotta roll, waiting now for my ride to tearass through town from Tacoma. It's another insane week ahead. I'm planning to make it back here in August, work and time and transport permitting. That'll be good. For now there is but one thing to do: ride the fuckin' lightning, bitches.

Soon the sassy bastard will be mine: squid w/monocle. Want your own? Talk to the boss-lady

Bonus pic!