First, the weather went bad … literally raining on mine and my bandmate’s plans to get shot for promotional purposes. So I stayed in all day, whiling away the time until my 11:30 hockey game. I spent the bulk of the time working on our band’s webpage. It’s more or less ready, now. We could probably move forward if we had the photos. But we don’t.

I walked to the train at 10 p.m. last night, huge bag of hockey equipment over my shoulder, it’s cold and raining out … but not until I get to the station, three blocks away, and DOWN the STAIRS, do I realize I don’t have my fucking wallet. Yeah.

So, I walked home with all my equipment, got my damned wallet and walked back to the station. When I got to 23rd Street, there were no buses in sight, so I then had to walk the four avenue blocks to Chelsea Piers and then the rest of the way into the complex to the end of the pier, which comprises about another city avenue block.

I’m fit. I’m in good shape. It wasn’t a problem, but it did start to nag at me as the game wore on. My knee isn’t quite back to 100%, though it’s pretty damned close. My team played like shit. I couldn’t score despite a bevvy of great chances … I even got stoned on a sliding two-pad stack save. That was some old school goaltending … but, fuck, did I feel snake bitten; I got great wood on the shot, lifted it too, but all it hit were the pillows. Fuck my life.

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Since I’ve been so busy with CrippleBush lately, I’ve neglected the hell out of Divided Front. Today, I tried to remedy that. I planned on re-recording a handful of tunes but, now that the day is done, I managed three. It amazes me sometimes how I manage to piss my time away without accomplishing anything substantial.

As it is, I’m glad I managed the three tunes. I took a decent chunk of time to tab out “Down and Out in New York City” … it’s been bugging me for so long that no one else in the world has tabbed the song.

It isn’t laziness that kept me from doing myself, though. I can pick out a song, find the notes, figure out the riffs and fills, the chords and the melody … but it’s such an arduous, harrowing process. It doesn’t come easily for me. I don’t pick the correct notes right off and blaze through a tune in minutes. I have to painstakingly dissect it, find a sequence of notes and then use that to determine the key and, from there, I start to learn the song.

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Talent and skill are two things in short supply. They are one of many rare tandems in life … brains and beauty comes to mind.

I predominantly spent this evening writing. I also made a simple and delicious dinner, played the guitar and the piano and found various ways to waste time on the temporal vacuum called the Internet. I did find an article on time signatures and learned some interesting things.

I play instruments, but I am loath to call myself a musician. To me, a musician is like a carpenter. They have a skill that they parlay into a trade that yields them pay. Musicians are people who play instruments professionally, for money. I play instruments because I can (to a reasonable extent) and because I enjoy creating things and expressing myself through song. I would love to be paid, but I am not willing to put myself on public display … which is a pretty crucial component of being paid to entertain people.

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I saw a concert at the McCarren Park Pool last night. Decent show. The Black Keys. Couldn’t hear the vocals at all, but no one else seemed to mind. Then again, based on the appearance of most of the crowd it didn’t appear that they cared about much of anything.

I’d never been in the Pool before. It was a decent venue. A lot space, which made it nice to be able to sit along the edge of the basin far away from the crowd amassed in front of the stage. I could see just fine and hearing the music wasn’t any issue at all; I could have heard it for free sitting on the lawn of the park across the street. The aforesaid lack of vocals wouldn’t have mattered then, either.

Thanks to celiac disease, there was nothing I could drink and I don’t smoke, so I just sat there on the crumbling, weed-choked cement against an old metal railing and took in the show. Simple, straight-forward blues-inspired rock ‘n’ roll. I like the band, so I didn’t wrestle with that much ambivalence when deciding whether to go. However, I generally detest concerts.

I don’t like mass gatherings. I need my space. I don’t think claustrophobia is the word, in this case … what’s the term — besides misanthropy — for a dislike of proximity to other people, or detesting the lack of personal space? Because of this crowd aversion, I tend to avoid concerts. This one being outdoors, with an abundance of room, motivated me to go … but I also don’t like concerts due to the quality of sound. Last night, I couldn’t make out the words. The engineers were more focused on pumping out the guitar and drums than they were of pushing the vocals above the din. I tend to like songs as a complete work, so to hear only the music with only a vague sense of lyrics being sung makes concerts less enjoyable.

The set was pretty short, too. They didn’t go on until 8:30 and then were off a little after 9:30. By that time King’s Feast had already closed and there went my one thought for getting some chow before heading home. I grabbed a bus back to Flatbush and was dumped at Empire Boulevard where the connecting bus never came. The overwhelming fatigue that had set in deterred me from walking home, and when I saw a yellow cab drive by, I hailed it.

It didn’t stop.

The windows were open. I know he heard me. I walked over and tried the door, but it was locked. The driver heard me and turns around and gives me the “Huh?” — intentionally playing stupid, like he has no idea what I’m doing trying the door handle of his in-service yellow cab.

“I’m going your way, right down the street.”

“Huh?”

“I’m going ten blocks down the street.”

The door was still locked.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

My indignation had boiled over by this point. The guy was sassing me. He wasn’t opening his door and despite heading in the precise direction I was going, despite his lack of fare and the light atop his cab showing that he was in-service, he was not going to pick me up.

So I said: “You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and go to hell, you fucking prick.”

As he drove away and I proceded to walk home, I guess I showed him.

The bus came after I’d made it a few blocks, so I got on and took it the remainder of the way. No buzz, no looming hangover upon waking up, just the memory of a passable show, enourmous fatigue, an empty stomach and the sky starting to drizzle accompanied me home.