With Princess last night. We were cruising down the strip listening to Jay Z and P. diddy and Outkast and she couldn’t believe I had all the hottest tracks. I don't even know if I enjoyed myself though. I mean a part of me is into the whole idea of collecting experiences, you know. its like that for me. always has been. like a pirate. Somehow I am able to warden a part of myself off so while another part goes off in these adventures collecting experiences and treasures. So last night was another one. but I don't think that these kind of adventures, as much fun and rare and exciting as they are, satisfy my heart or my soul as much as other things could. I can always tell cause I wake up the next day feeling weird rather than good. When I was cruising last night and some other things were going on that I won't mention, I'm thinking, yea this is cool. Cool breeze blowing through our hair, the lights, the beats are pumping. But I kept thinking about the front page of the society section of the New York Times that I ripped out and hung up on my wall a few weeks back. George Plimpton had these book parties for like forty years at his apartment in New York before he died. Real intellectual affairs. I have the pic on my wall now to remind me to get the hell out of here just as soon as we are done recording the new album. 

This is the type of thing that Bas and Ferret and The Tortoise and the guys in the band find deadly boring---and we just really veer apart on these type of things. I can see them looking at me now, standing there brooding, just hating me for bringing them to these affairs on the rare occasion that I do. they hate it when I take them to stuff where its not just a big drunken fuck fest; which is understandable certainly. Who doesn’t like a big drunken fuck fest after all? But I think for me it would be heaven to start hanging out in my own environment again a bit more. I miss affairs like that terribly. Not getting them in Miami. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. The real question may be so why do you live there then? Yeah I know. Long story. Got me thinking, maybe that's not the rock singer thing, which has always sort of been one of my many dilemmas, but I don't know if I really am too much of the rock singer except that I happen to be a singer in a rock band. [just read a review of Edie Brickel’s new one in Blender Mag and the guy says “if her new album was a TV station, it would be PBS: sincere and dull.” I had to do a double take. I'm like ‘I love PBS.’ I don't think its dull at all. but then I remembered that when I was a real little kid I did used to think PBS was dull. Real dull. I hated it. and I was too young to understand the concept of sincere. But yea man I could relate to that, but not for decades now. once you grow up you really start digging on PBS.

So then I'm thinking man how old is this guy writing the review of Edie’s new album? 7 or 8? I mean what's up? Or could it just be me? Since I was 16 I stopped getting into the smash em up action adventure movies. Man I'm lying. I never got into them. not even as a kid. I always thought they were irrelevant and stupid. Even as a kid. Seriously I was lucky to make it out of childhood alive AND sane. [o.k. perhaps I didn't make it out quite ‘sane,’ but last time I checked I was still alive. But I did have the perception to understand that I was in the minority. Everyone around me was always so into these dumb action adventure movies. I remember being in junior high and we all went to see the new Rambo movie. I went along even though I didn't know what Rambo was. I couldn’t stop laughing cause it seemed so dumb. But I was assured by my buds that it was not a comedy. And this was one of the pretty good ones. By the middle of the movie, I was thinking what the hell am I doing in this stupid movie? I started looking around me, and all my friends were really into it, mouths dangling open, fists pumped up in the air. And I'm thinking oh fuck mission control we have a problem. I think I got off on the wrong planet, or in the wrong time zone or something. I started realizing that I was just totally not connected to everyone else in my age group. 

I just couldn’t believe that people were taking this movie seriously. So transparent. And silly and inane. And I was like twelve years old prob. Man that was a sad moment in my life. it was not a good feeling. You had a choice. Play along and act like you're like everyone else and you like all these movies and cheesy music and all the rest of it so you can fit in, or you start separating yourself from the pack, being a loner and a big loser. This was pre-Internet, so being a loner back then really meant being a loner. You couldn’t even connect to people in your own town with the same interests let alone across the globe. So me as always I did a little bit of both. I faked it enough to fit in and not get my ass kicked, but I started going off in my own direction. By the time I hit 21 when me and Toad dropped our first hit of acid on our way home from a show we just played on South beach, that was it, I was gone. I couldn’t fake it anymore. Man was I a freak. For about five years I wasn't a part of anything. Just me myself and i. Alone in an apartment with no electricity most of the time, no TV, no phone, no car, no drivers license, and almost never any food. 

Me and Toad and Wolf and Coon and lots of books and cds and movies and drugs and guitars and drums. And cigarettes. And booze, when we could afford it. that whole scene. by the time I hit 26 and went off to New York I was dying for daylight. Man I was aching for the mainstream. Me and Toad used to call the “yellow light”, meaning for one, just daylight itself, because we had a tendency to stay up all night and sleep all day, and two, it just referred to the shiny happy mainstream world that most people lived in. I had been to the other side and was happy to have lived through it. now I'm at this age where I think I have found a happy medium, between both worlds. The mainstream can be cool sometimes. For me, I need it to stay sane. That's why I love working out so much. Just keeps me grounded. And talk about a head trip. One of the few rockers who works out—musicians just look at you like you're crazy when you say you just got back from the gym. They're like “where?” and then you're like the only guy at the gym with painted nails and hair down your back. and you're hanging with the short hairs afterwards and they’re like ‘where exactly do you fit in bro?’ and I'm like You’re asking me? Man I have no fucking idea. I think sometimes we just don't fit in anywhere really. Not into any one group. We make our own groups. Although I'd like to come back in one life as one of those guys that totally does fit in. I think that would be really cool. 

I would like to come back as a quarterback for an NFL team. That would be awesome. I'd have real short blonde hair and sparkly white teeth and my name would be something like Rand McNally. Everyone would just call me Ran. And I'd have a super hot cheer leader girlfriend named Phoebe. And my best friend would be named Luke. And we would drive old classic convertible mustangs or something like that. and we would drink a lot of beer and win a lot of big games...

  

O.K., so yeah last night. I'm not digging the casual sex anymore man. Call it what you will but this transformation is taking me a bit longer to get in touch with maybe.... [sometimes you just have to let it rip. Man that's just the curse of being a man. Frankly sometimes I wish we weren't hardwired that way cause I think things would be a lot easier for us.] I listen to a lot of hip-hop and urban music right now. I'm addicted. Musically its just so creative. Way more creative than what rockers are doing these days. I'm trying to get the guys in the band to listen to it so our new album can be good, but they won't give it a chance. I just mention Beyonce or Justin Timberlake and they cringe but man that's too bad. Cause they're missing the freshest stuff going right now. Rock is just boring me to pieces. I love that new tune from diddy. How can you not its so phat. But the downfall of mainstream hip-hop—the reason why more educated white peeps don't get into it---is that lyrically modern mainstream hip-hop is made up of one main component divided into a bunch of little ones: and that be bragging and boasting. 

The formula is simple: brag about how cool you are, what a good rapper you are, how good looking you are, how rich you are and how much money you make, how many cds you sell, and how many chicks you hang out with. That's it in a nutshell for them. and the problem is that true rockers are the exact opposite of that. If you’re a rocker you brag about how poor you are, how ugly you are, what a loser you are, how miserable you are is always a favorite, how you don't have any girls, and how unsuccessful you are. So there's this huge chasm between the two worlds. And for a long time I was in world number two. Shit man when beck sang ‘I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me’ I think we all felt like we wrote that song. He just appropriated it. Ferret was already driving around with a license plate on the back of his car that said ‘loser’ and drove around with it for years. 

Then I started getting into the whole hip-hop scene. And that's a pretty different scene. The positive lyrics were so completely different than what I was used to. Sex and money and sex and money. I dig the beats and all, but if that's it, man I am thoroughly bored with it already. I'm wondering how to anyone that can be it. cause its just not cutting it for me. I'm looking at this girl last night while we are driving and I'm thinking, this is cool, but I'm not going to know this girl in two weeks. And maybe at some point in life that's a cool thing. But for me now, that's not a cool thing. How is this important to me? How is this fulfilling me? is being cool enough? Is collecting new adventures enough? G2 is doing the same thing down in Chile, God love him. he's racking em up like notches on a bedpost. A lot of my friends are. all the singers in bands are. just going crazy. being guys. Getting it from all sides. But I think that it only satisfies from one angle. It’s a sex thing. It's an ego thing. It’s a guy thing. But it's not a deep thing. It's not a soul thing. It's not a heart thing. Sometimes I look inside myself and I think “who are you? you bore me. You're getting a blowjob from some chick you don't know while you're cruising down the strip in a convertible? So what? And now you think you're fucking puff daddy or something? And this is it?! this is your life?! this is what we've worked so hard for all these years?! pretty fucking deep man, let me tell you, pretty fucking deep.... You're supposed to be the next Shakespeare man. You’re supposed to be the next Davinci or at least Warhol, and instead you just waste day after day being some worthless asshole lothario. One day bro you're going to look back on this and you're going to realize that there is more to it than this. a lot more.” 

Current Spin: beach boys, surfs up. and My morning jacket, still totally digging it.  

Last Screening: Diner. because someone recommended it. A classic. Prob the biggest collection of unknown stars ever assembled in one movie. Well, except for godfather. Good to finally see it. can’t believe it’s a movie. Seems so real.