you can still grab the Floating CD HERE… it’s a great deal. 16 songs, 6 bucks. Hurry! not many left

smart poetry extraordinary guitar goosebumps

I have. I was a landscaper for a while in San Diego, years ago. I loved it. Out in the sunshine, feet in the dirt, free avocados, working in back yards, often with an ocean view. It was hard work but it paid well and I had three babies.

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I talked to my middlest son on the phone after a recent gig of his. He told me a story about "one of those moments." I've tried hard to teach them to enjoy the moments.

There are those moments in my mind of him as a baby, him being born, him climbing a tree, first day of school, first guitar, first band all that stuff. Then there are the moments we share as performers. Bad gigs, good gigs it doesn't matter. We can relate. Venue owners and band mates and promotion and gigging provide us hours of conversation.

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What would you say to your Dad today if you could?
For thirteen years I have been asking this question on Father's Day at Fark.com. 
For thirteen years I read the threads and cried and laughed and cried again.
For thirteen years I told you this was cathartic, heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.
For thirteen years I tried to come to grips with my own story and move past the pain and use Father's Day as a way to turn what was really bad into something that is really good. You be the judge.

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A happy fail. Man plans, God laughs and points. Whadayagonnado? This is the story of the 4x4x4 sessions that turned out to be a 5x1x9 event.
(There is a video at the bottom you can listen to while you wade through this if you want. It's a fun read.)

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Here's the thing about double vision: it drives you nuts. The patch helps but it just aint the same as seeing like I used to. One of the things I have learned to love is the dark. In the dark I can have both eyes open. lids relaxed and I won't get seesick. In the dark I don't have to hold one eye closed. In the dark I don't have to wear the patch and the rubberband around my head. In the dark I am as likely to bang my head on something to the right as on the left.

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Oh, my friends, this is hard to write. As blessed as we have been to be the ones that get to live here, the family has decided to sell The Magic House. We will be leaving here soon to start a new adventure. I can only begin to tell you how bittersweet it is. There are so many stories, so many lives changed, so much music, so many memories… it overwhelms me to think about it all. Trying to decide what to pick out to relive the magic with you here knowing that, perhaps, it is better that some stories go untold.

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So, this happened.

I am addicted to Tillamook Sharp Cheddar singles. We always have some. Two of those on potato bread and I'm good to go. It's a one-handed lunch. Know what I'm saying? Convenience food, comfort food, good with beer OR wine food.

Just like when I was a kid with Kraft singles, I often take one to bed. Just like when I was a kid I fold it in half, then in half again making 4 bite-sized pieces. Each one the perfect size to just overfill a round Ritz cracker or slice of pepperoni or something. Great bed food. No crumbs, no ants, you don't even need a napkin. 

One morning, not too long ago we awaken and are having coffee and I lean over to reach the cookies and Wakitu says, "What's this?" and she peels one of those perfect squares of cheddar deliciousness off my ass. 

I look her square in the eye, without blinking, and in a tone that suggests she must have been in a coma all this time and deadpan, "Bed Cheese." There is a blink of time and we both crack up for like 5 minutes, I couldn't hold a straight face. So, needless to say, henceforth and forever, our favorite single-slice cheese snack we now call "bed cheese." This is our life now. "I'm at the store. How we doin' on bed cheese?"

"We need bed cheese sammies for the road."

"WHAT!?"
"I said, DO YOU HAVE THE BED CHEESE IN THERE?"

I certainly hope that this information doesn't affect you good folks in any way, shape or form the next time you are enjoying your favorite cheesy single snack.

I don't know quite why this struck me as such an odd thing. I should have known.

A while back we found a deal on a 2005 Jaguar x-type with minimal front-end damage. We put a little money in it and took it on the "Get In the JAG Tour" playing music up the coast of California and on up through Oregon and Washington. We had a ball! The trip was a nightmare.

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My body hates me. I'm allergic to everything and, if it isn't a big enough dose, I collect it until I have enough to ruin my week with a migraine or worse. Then I got Grave's Disease and double-vision, so now I wear an eye patch full time. It sucks.

I shopped for a long time and have tried many to find a patch that is comfortable and fits my lifestyle. It's a silly thing but, to be honest, most of the ones you find are more a part of a pirate costume than anything else. Also, I have eyelashes to die for and I need a full half-inch of blink clearance. Well maybe not a full half-inch I just love the full/half phrase like "I used the full half-hour" or "I ate that whole half-a-pie in one sitting."

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30 years ago a woman planted bulbs around our house. The Magic House we call it; it has a great view and a calmness that heals you. The bulbs grew these tall pink flowers and long green leaves that overflowed out of the middle. I have no idea what they are. A lily maybe? I suppose I could look it up but it wouldn’t change the story. They lived here a while and then we moved in. In a year we will have lived here as long as she did. At some point, she still had a bunch of bulbs left and one day she dug a hole and put all she had left into it. They would start there and live there rather than die in a box. Every year or so she would dig one up and plant it somewhere and she told us we should dig 'em all up and finish planting them around the house. We replanted a few but honestly we sort of forgot that part of the story after a while. Every year the long green leaves would grow out and all of a sudden, near my birthday, they would bloom all around the house. Of course, we always got a good bunch under the eucalyptus tree from the pile of bulbs that were buried there.

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What would you say to your Dad today if you could?
For twelve years I have been asking this question on Father's Day at Fark.com.
It has been so "cathartic" for so many, myself included. Each year I seem to gain something from the words of strangers. It lifts my heart. It has been so long now, that it is hard to remember his voice, his face. It is now a collage of real memories and old photos and context. His voice a whisper in my ear. His absence still the only consistent part of our relationship. 

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This is silly but, there is something about going to the dump with your son. It's a ritual by now. We get a trailer full of junk and off we go. The stinky dump with the huge tractors on sheepsfoot wheels climbing over the pile of American over-packaging castoffs and old broken toys and shower doors. CRASH! The squeaky sound of the tractor, the gaggle of geezers unloading trailers of yard waste and couples with their remodeling demolition piles so proud of their working together... High Five! Adorable, right?

Today was oddly fun.

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For the most part you need to prepare yourself for YouTube comments. Internet comments in general are a mixed bag of nice, inspiring, insane, rambling, hateful, hurtful and silly. I have fared fairly well with most of the negativity restrained to the quality of my playing or the length of my hair. *Shrug.

It’s silly how a comment can just make your day though. I let the negativity slide off but man I love the positivity and feedback with fans that instant comments brings. It is totally worth the trade off. I have been playing few shows while recovering and boy do I miss a live crowd. I need some applause stat! lol!

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Well shit, I did it again. I overdid it. The trouble is, in my head I’m still 19. My body, on the other hand, is 62. In my zeal to get a little camp trailer remodeled and ready for a weekend in the mountains, I missed a chance to go away for a weekend in the mountains. Everything took longer than expected; everything was heavier and I just ran out of gas.

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We are really lucky to live on the shore of a lake. It’s beautiful most of the time and the wildlife is amazing. For 20 years or so, we held an annual event we dubbed Jam at the CAM.

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Have you ever been detained? I have, when I was a child. I spent a year and a half inside a facility for kids. I wasn’t ripped from my mother’s arms; they bullied her to sign the petition. It was as traumatic as you might think for a 12-year-old. It unequivocally wrecked me for years afterwards, with much therapy and growing up to get past it.  

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What a wonderful day! I got to be alone at home for a little while, carving in wood out in the sunshine. I played some guitar. I played my Dad his song. I realized something.  For a long time, I wondered if he would be proud of me. I realized I don't care anymore. Atlas has shrugged and the world is off my shoulders.

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This will be the eleventh year we have been posting this thread on Fark.com.
It has become an amazing thing.
It has been called "cathartic" by many. 
It's time to get it off your chest.
Say the things you would have, could have, should have said...
if only you could. (Clickable links to past years' threads below.)

Here's this year's FARK Father's Day thread.
Click the link below to join in the conversation.
Dear Daddy, what would you say to your Dad today if you could? What did your kids say to you?

Link To Last Year's Thread

The 10th Annual "What would you say to your Dad today?" FARK Father's Day thread. This thread is older than your nine-year-old

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What’s the biggest bird you’ve ever seen in the wild? I live by the lake and it is like wild kingdom down there. We have huge herons and egrets and pelicans. Big birds, bigger than the biggest Thanksgiving birds, nearly six-foot-tall birds, some with seven-foot wing spans, all feeding in my yard and flying in my airspace. How cool is that?

We watch them hunt and pair up and make more big birds. They live a really long time too. First, we had a dad and now two of his sons that live in the neighborhood and have been here for 9 years or so… They know us.

They like our tall trees, some of the strongest branches in the hood. They have totally wrecked the roof of our ancient gazebo. They are simply too heavy for 1x4s with dry rot.

Still not the biggest bird I’ve ever seen.

When I was younger, much younger, a friend and I went for a hike in northern San Diego County in the friendliest village called Fallbrook, out in the boonies east of acres of empty land that belongs to the military. Aint nobody out there, it is untouched California and it is gorgeous.  We had a couple of beers and some local weed and you could drink water out of the creek. We set out and followed the creek for a ways. At one point we looked up and there was a spot on the wall of the canyon where a rock fell out and it looked like you could sit up there.

It was an easy climb and we were the kind of friends that could sit in silence for hours and we did. We sipped the beers and just sat there.

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