alexandre

"...have faith because there are many people in hairdressing who do not have either the talent or the faith. its faith and, above all, enriching oneself. i want young people to go to museums! they do not go to see exhibits, colors, or see styles. i have the impression that certain young people do not have faith and they become hairdressers without knowing the classics. their styles are done with awful things. hair must be pretty and wonderful. it must have a base. we need extraordinary people, people who are dedicated to their art and their craft."

"but if you do not know how to do a chignon, how to do a wave, how to color hair, how can you do anything? if you do not know about these basic things, you have failed as a hairstylist and do not have a chance of big success. you must take your work and build upon it. you train to make your own style and, in doing so, you must know everything."

never was

Did I already title a post that? Probably. Its a ringworm song. Its an amazing song.

Lawyers, in general, do not seem like "nice" people.

Sitting at the Lamareaux Justice Center in Orange, ca. Waiting for a court appointed mediation to happen. Trying to change custody stuff. That's all I can really say.

Finally hooked up the printer/scanner that Erakuh got for me. The quality isn't the best on some of the photos, but I'm stoked to finally be able to share some of them. I've had them just sitting in a box for years.

I made a huge mess around the new desk. Photos, flyers, papers strewn everywhere. It really blends in well with the fact that the kitchen ceiling is leaking from the shower pipe/drain upstairs. Like.. When devin and erakuh took showers I had to change the pot and watering can twice. Maybe we should have refrained from showering but... gotta stay clean right?

Read "do princesses wear hiking boots" to dev's class this morning. Stressful going in but I was a smashing success.

The trackball on my sidekick isn't scrolling down and its REALLY annoying, but obviously something like that can't stop me from blogging. Ftw.

get off the stage

Haven't written in a couple days. I guess that's what happens when you don't own a computer. Well.. Maybe if I had one I wouldn't have the time anyway.

When it was announced that NO FOR AN ANSWER, Blackspot, and CHORUS were playing Chain Reaction, I was stoked. When it came time for it, I didn't care and the thought of putting my new desk together seemed more appealing.

As Mark said "it was a total let down"

I haven't gotten tickets to see Unbroken and Undertow at the Glasshouse, may 9th. Ten years ago, I would have shit my pants twice, trained by moshing in front of the mirror, possibly ironed a bandana and been up front for every song of every band.

Priorities change. Maybe that's why so many people right now have taken an interest in preserving the past and memory of hardcore. It REALLY WAS BETTER "BACK IN THE DAY". I'm sorry, its true.

Anyway, I'm gonna finish my ultimate cheeseburger and go back to work.

confession

I'm bored. Like, looking for stuff to clean bored.

Got another remixed Disembodied song last night. A cleaned up version of "Confession" off of the Confession 7". When Joel sent it to me, it just said "track 1 rough" but as soon as I put it in iTunes, it said Confession.

Pressed play and the same snare fill came on, but slower, and the vocals had a weird effect on it. I had to ask Joel if it was a different version, and he said no. It took me a couple times to get into it, and I was afraid that I offended Joel with my reaction.

I threw it on my iPod and blasted it in my car this morning. HOLY FUCK. You hear a song for years, on vinyl, then on cd, and then someone "cleans it up" and totally changes the dynamic. Sometimes for the good, sometimes it hurts the original song.

In this case it made the song undenaibly better. The break where the guitars cut out, where its just the drums and Tara's distorted bass sounds amazing, and I don't remember any vocals on that part at all, but apparently there were some there and they add a whole new element.

The completion of this product is drawing near, and I get more anxious and excited every day. I might cry when I get the finished record in my hand, knowing that I had a part in bringing it together.

eulogy

I pretty much just had 4 days off work. Sunday off, monday 4 hours at commissary, tuesday home with a sick kid, wednesday took the day off for birthday.

Today, back to reality. And the reality isn't pretty.

So goodbye to blue skies over Disneyland. Goodbye to quiet mornings. Goodbye to sushi boats and waffle cones filled with cookie batter ice cream.

If every day was like yesterday, I would never ever be in a bad mood.

My fiction beats the hell out of my truth.

a nice day for a sulk

I used to hate my birthday.

Maybe its because when I was 8, the wind blew my birthday away.

Maybe its because when I was 18, my grandma, neighbor, and history teacher all died the month before.

Maybe its because when I was 21, I had a 104 degree fever.

The last two years have been good.

Spent my 30th at the Cashbah with Mark, Travand Jadlish, drinking PBR and watching Sweet and Tender Hooligans.
Last year, Erick came down and we raged for 3 days, including the only time Disembodied and Moz were spun in the same set at Avalon.

This year, Dev drew me an awesome pic that Erakuh framed. Eri gave me some awesome shirts and a sweeeeeet digital camera. My mom is giving me a desk. And we are goin to Disneyland.

As of right now I don't mind growing older. 29 was way worse than 30 because of the impending doom I felt growing over me. But when 30 hit, it wasn't that bad.

Now lets see what happens when 35 comes.

its complicated being a wizard

the new calvin klein ads sport a dude with surprisingly white hair. im impressed. that tone is not so easy to achieve.

been thinking a lot about hair lately. about how to make money. i am good at what i do, that is cutting and sometimes coloring hair. im not amazing, but i know what im doing and given the chance i could pull some pretty cool stuff out of my ass. i have studied a lot about it, have learned from some of the best in the world, and think my time to "break out" might be approaching. ive taken steps in the right direction recently, and i think leaving all the hot-shot, egocentric, thrill seeking days behind me has helped.

i have but one motivation to succed now: family.

i want to provide for my family, and for my family to come. i want to not have to call my mom and say "hey i need 100 bucks to pay my phone bill" or "hey can you buy me some plane tickets to chicago to see disembodied?"

tomorrow i will be 32. its time i blazed my own trail.

my grandma said it took her 80 years to be happy with her life. i dont have that kind of time. im not impatient, but i gotta start making things work. asafp.

fuck this shit

THIS is why i hate the world

things done changed

can we start again

There is a belief that it's difficult to get rid of rats because they're smart. Some say that if you try to hit a rat and it manages to escape, rest assured that it will seek revenge – the offended rat will chew on your favorite shirt!

that was taken from Be@rbrick love, one of my new favorite blogs. check it in my new LINK section...

changing the layout of my blog. i guess out of no reason other than boredom and need for change. like the quote above says, the rat is hard to get rid of. some of the problems and challenges that ive been having since last year and even before that have proven to be hard to get rid of.

two of my biggest downfalls are self-confidence (or lack thereof) and anger. they have gotten better over times, but anyone who knows me as "the meanest guy in orange county" or "that asshole from the mistake" would tell you that its quite obvious that i have suffered from both for many many years.

one of the problems with changing is that we dont know that we need to change something until it is too late, or almost too late, and we've hurt somebody or lost somebody.

one of the other changes im making is changing what i collect. from one kind of vinyl to another.

styrofoam death machine

Eating at jack in the box. Going back to an old favorite, the ultimate cheeseburger. I've been eating less meat. I acutally hardly eat any at all. And as with cigarettes last year, cutting them out of my diet only makes them taste worse and makes me feel worse when I do eat it.

Sometimes I get the urge to light up, especially when I take out the trash for some reason. Maybe its cause when I was living in Santa Ana, I'd only smoke at night and use taking out the trash as a reason/excuse to go outside.

There are three other men eating solo here, and we are all facing the same direction.

Twitter is a national craze now, being talked about all over the media. If I were in a band, I think Twitter would be one of the best marketing tools, provided that all of their "fans" had access to mobile internet. If I were an artist, dj, or anything like that where getting people to come see you can be like pulling teether, it would also help.

Not everybody Twits about shitting and going to Target.

Speaking of Target, I tried to find the new Morrissey cd there, and it was sold out. I did get Erakuh the new New Found Glory, which came with a Target exclusive shirt. That's one of the weird/ interesting things about Target and Best Buy now... they always have exclusive tracks or packaging or bonus discs. For completist fucks like me, this is a blessing and a curse.

I really want to listen to Bob Segar right now for some reason.

the art

Paint me a pretty picture
make sure it's black and white
the colors would hurt my eyes
no imperfections or I'll cut them out
paint me a pretty picture
I painted over all my others in red


ive been studying a lot about color. about melanin, pigment, and color theory. why? just to know. i have this weird thirst for knowledge about it.

today, i read something that blew my mind. occasionally that happens in my field of work. DJ Muldoon blew my mind with his theories about haircutting. Robert Cromeans blew my mind with his theories about the industry.

today i read that the primary colors are not red, blue, and yellow. they are actually MAGENTA, CYAN, and YELLOW. mixing all three together makes black.

i also read that colors that i THOUGHT were tertiary, such as blue-green, red-orage, etc... are NOT tertiary but secondary. tertiary colors are apparently made by mixing three primary colors in varying ratios, which actually make browns and grays.

will i teach this to my students? no.

its funny too because this morning for a bit i was listening to Ravindra Svarupa Dasa speak (it randomly came on my ipod thanks to Shelter). he was talking about scientific theories, and about how we all think a certain way, until we learn SOMETHING NEW. then all of the sudden, the way before becomes "well, before we thought THIS, but now we know THIS"

maybe the universe is trying to tell me to question everything. to seek knowledge.

or maybe im just not as smart as i thought.

ill just fall

last night i fell down. i turned on the stairway and the carpet was slippery against my clean feel, and i slid down and landed pretty much on my ass.

my back hasnt really felt right since.

i have a long history of falling, most notably memorialized in the Mistake song "why does the ground hate my face?"

it goes back even further, though. i fell off my skateboard the first day of summer going into sophomore year, and as a result the doctor found i had scoliosis.

basically, im a mess. im pretty clumsy. i have cuts all over the back of my hand right now, including one that will be a pretty scar. no fucking clue how i got any of them.

makes things interesting i suppose, and im almost used to it by now.

something wicked

working at commissary. ive got to pee real bad. listening to isis and bloodlet.

did some hair yesterday (not for compensation ;)) and then went to California adventure for like an hour. drove the 11 minutes to Sonic on the other side of Anaheim just to get an ocean water. so fucking good.

i feel like i had more to write about, but its escaping me now.

oh, was awoken at 4:10am on saturday morning to Dev pounding on the door. she informed me that the tooth that we had tried to remove some 8 hours prior had come out. i didnt have any cash, so i told her to go back to bed and that we'd put her tooth under the pillow on monday night, cause the tooth fairy had the weekend off. quick thinking.

kill an addict

You've made excuses for the fucked up things you've done
But everyones heard them before
Your lying and stealing to feed your addiction
Won't be tolerated any more

I tried to help you
,but you spit in my face
So now you're on your own
I see your life slipping away
You brought it on yourself
Go
Those I've hated are the ones I've held so close
And those who use betrayal will be the ones
The ones who suffer the most

-Hatebreed

back to the old house, part 2

I've been remembering more about my family.

I remember going back to Yuma quite frequently between the ages of 8 and 12. I usually spent time with my (great) aunt and (great) uncle, Josephine and Ron. Josie went by the name Cheppie. They were not only my dad's aunt and her husband, but my god parents. They couldn't have kids of their own so they took very good care of neices and nephews. They had a large house, like 3 or 4 bedrooms, and a revolving cast of young people came and went. My uncle Stevie was among them. He was like 21 when I was young, and was a wild reckless bachelor. He once got detained in mexico for weeks. We thought he'd just disappeared or worse, and one day just returned with a tale of corrupt mexican cops holding him for flipping his truck.

I called Ron and Cheppie Nini and Nono. I know, sounds super mexican. But that side of the family had all married mexicans, so that's what I grew up around. And everyone had Nana and Nini and Tata and weird names like Linca and Lupe and Hender. Anyway, Nini and Nono had a huge yard with goats and a german shepard named Basha and a boat and a satelite for the tv and basically all this cool stuff that I didn't. Of course I'd love to spend the summer or xmas with my rich, childless relatives who loved me dearly.

Now, in the summer, Yuma gets above 120 degrees. Its hot as fuck. Return Of the Jedi was filmed nearby. There were cactus and gila monsters and well, it was the desert. During the day they'd go to work, and my aunt would come visit for lunch. When she got off, we'd go to the video store and rent 3 movies, which I'd watch the next day. On the weekends we'd go to the river or lake and fish and swim. I learned how to drive and dock and launch a boat at an early age (my moms family had boats as well). There were a few other neighborhood kids I ran with as well.

Toby lived next door. He was the all american golden boy type. Copey lived across the street, and he was a real nutjob. His sister was like a valley girl and very flirtatious. J.R. lived at the end of the block, was the richest and was very proficient with a bow and arrow. All of the kids on the block had hunting weapons of some sort, bb guns/ pellet guns, bows, etc. And we would regularly go out on the block in the early morning hours and hunt birds.

As I grew older, my frequency in visiting dwindled. I think the last time I was there to visit was maybe 8th grade. I had a picture for a long time of my dad and I in my Nini's yard, with her dog, me wearing a Genesis "susudio tour" shirt. Writing this makes me want to write to them, telling them about my life.

I've never been good at communicating with my non-immediate family. While I talk to my mom 2-5 times per week, I talk to my grandma 2-5 times per year, and the rest less than that. Maybe I should work on that.

we dont have to worry anymore

at commissary, listening to the Exploding Hearts

i picked up on this band really late, but i fell in love quickly. Jerry had told me for a long time that id love it, and im sure other people over the years had too, but im soooo closed minded when it comes to new bands that i didng pay attention.

i think i like SHATTERED more than GUITAR ROMANTIC. i dunno why. maybe cause the sound is more raw, or maybe i just like the tracks better.

if you dont know anything about this band, they were a "power-pop" band from Oregon, and driving home from a show three of the members died. crazy.

heres a video from the enhanced cd




in other news, my hands are cold and im hungry.

my 32nd birthday is coming up. going to Disneyland on my birthday. dont know what else. maybe vegas? maybe seaworld? meh. going to Chicago in April, maybe thats good enough.

by the way, i have the best parents ever.