Weekend Update

I was going to take the weekend off. I actually had a few things planned to write about but they would be a little more involved than I am willing to start right now. Instead, this:

I put my contacts in today since leaving the house before noon was involved. (Sheri and Celia and I went to "Art in the Park" with Celia's friend Roxie and her mom, Suzie.)

Celia was just in the bathroom and I guess she found my glasses on the counter. So she ran out into the living room with them.

"Here, daddy."

"Oh, thank you."

I then pretended to put them on (thinking she would just run away and get into something else.) Seeing that she wasn't going anywhere I tried to make a show of it and put them on upside down without unfolding them, going for the cheap laugh.

She just stood there watching me and said, "No, Daddy, that's wrong." Then proceeded to climb up onto the couch and put them on "properly" (unfolded, still upside down with lots of smudges on them.)

That's all you get.

That Heavy Metal Music the Kids Like These Days

That Heavy Metal Music the Kids Like These Days

I am trying to keep my word on the daily posting front, this could get really boring for you if I keep posting about what I am up to today. I could tell you about what it was like watching "Brave" for the 200th time with Celia or I could expound on regulatory risk factors for mortgage brokerage start-ups. From there I could have Celia tell you about risk factors related to the movie "Brave" with insights such as "Be careful, horse. SLOW DOWN. You can get a big owwie." We'll skip that for today.

In the formative years of my musical tastes, where you start to associate the kind of music you like with the kind of person you are (or are thinking you will become), I hated Heavy Metal. At least I hated the idea of it. 

I went to stay with my cousins in Manhattan for the summer when I was 13. My cousin Robbie and I were not getting along, I liked Duran Duran and the Police and he liked Motley Crue and Ratt. From his perspective anything "new wave" sucked, from repeated exposure to Motley Crue's video for "Smokin in the Boys Room" -- metal sucked way more... the music was terrible and they looked stupid playing it. Before I went home that summer, I saw the cover of "Metal Up Your Ass" and was convinced metal was idiotic. 

Over the next few years, as I got into punk rock and hardcore, I hung onto my strong aversion to metal. I could not understand how someone could like punk/hardcore and metal at the same time. Fast-forward to my first summer after high school. Driving around with Buck and Jim Reynolds, I was completely won over by Slayer.

A decade later, it struck me weird when Drowningman would get reviewed in metal magazines. Truth be told any "hardcore" band at that time was more influenced by Slayer than Bad Brains.

My point? RIP Jeff Hannem. If it weren't for that "metal," that music I hated as a 13 year old, my band and many others never would have existed. 

Because some of you are reading this -- and also to relieve the sole-sucking boredom of the work-related writing I do -- I am going to try to post something every day. Or as close to it as humanly possible...

It's snowing in May in Kansas. In Vermont I expected it, here I am genuinely offended. I front-loaded my work week, missing out on nice weather earlier in the week.

Brought Celia to "Music Together" class this morning, she was pretty subdued. However, the teacher finally recognized a bit of her genius when she started arranging the toy drums into a drum-set. It made me nervous that she might be showing too much interest in the drums, this will need to be taken into consideration when house-hunting in case she ends up living in the basement until she is thirty-five.

But anyway, the teacher was impressed. Imagine if she had heard Celia's original composition "you be careful tiger"she was working on last night.

Busy Signal article in May 2013 issue of Terrorizer

With the re-release of the first Drowningman record, this blog is being mentioned in magazine articles and linked on websites. Since I haven't updated this in about three years, seems a fitting time to start.

I guess I have a few updates.

I did get married.

I am still living outside Kansas City. 

I did graduate from law school (Business and Transactional certificate earned "With Distinction.")

I did pass the bar. 

My wife and I are expecting our second daughter in 3 weeks. 

I do have a two-and-a-half year old daughter who inherited a very loud and piercing scream.

Life is pretty different on the surface than it was 15 years ago when that first Drowningman LP came out on Hydrahead. In a lot of ways, I am still the same person as I found out after spending a few months out of law school trying out jobs that made me miserable. 

I now work from home, consulting with businesses and have been lucky enough to add quite a few clients who are artists/writers/musician.

Javin and I got together to do an interview for Terrorizer in March when I was back in Vermont. It had been about a decade since we had hung out, talk did turn to playing music again, but we'll see if that comes to pass. We've talked a few times since I got back from our trip, and honestly it was just good to catch up with my friend.

So what have you been up to?

and

i'm getting married in 9 days. i haven't been posting anything on this but.. yeah. there is that.

the scheme demo re-re-upped

let's try this again