YMCA Concert (finally!)

Well, wow. The much-touted, twice-postponed YMCA concert has gone from the realm of fearful expectation to 20-20 hindsight and vivid memories. Here's the short story, as related in a text message I sent at 7:10am Saturday morning:

24.5 hours awake.
20 straight hours
working on concert
stuff. 2 sunrises.
Good morning; I'm
going to bed.

And for the long story...
I got up at 6:30 Friday morning, Nate, Shannon and I left at 7:45, we got to the Hoffmans at 10:15, and we started working on stuff for the show at 10:40. At 7:40 the next morning I was also at the Hoffmans, the sky was light, all the speakers and cables and equipment were in their normal places, the big gym at the Y was bare and waiting for someone to start banging a basketball around in it...but much had happened in the interim :-)

I'll skip all the painful deals of loadup and setup. Basically, Nate was a HUGE help (he made it happen, IMO), and Shannon, Steve and Brian all worked very hard. We filled my wagon, the Chima's Bravada (sport ute), the Hoffman's minivan, and a monstrous gutted conversion van Mike had borrowed from First Assembly. Loading it all at the Hoffman's was a lot of work, so when we got to the Y and I heard people talking about "up" when I asked where the gym was, I was almost disbelieving. Sure enough, all that stuff had to be taked down a long "U" of hallway and up either stairs or an elevator. Help from some of the folks at the Y helped a lot, but it was still a long, strenuous process. It left my muscles teetering on the verge of cramping, my shirt sweaty, my feet and knees battered, and the gym full of stuff.

So far my fervent prayers during the past two weeks had been answered. We were in the gym, it was about 2 o'clock, and Steve already had the stage up. Everybody kept at their tasks, and the rig started coming together. The drums arose on their 3-foot platform like a glittering white monster, the stage got clothed in its black garments, racks and boards congregated at the sound booth, and soon a living creature of a thousand tenticle wires began to crawl through our gear. It was happening! The weekend was here, we were in the gym, and it was getting put together!

The happy times evaporated 'round about 5:30 when the 1400W power amp didn't work, everybody started drifting aimlessly, impending showtime leaned over and pressured us like a heavy weight, Screaming Silence (the opening band) arrived, and good honk, nobody's even sound checked the drums yet! I frantically took over the sound booth and started yelling orders while Mike troubleshooted other problems, and basically careened through that last hour or two with my brain bursting and confusion all around me. But finally we were done, Scott said we still had 10 minutes till 8 o'clock, and I surrendered. I left the sound booth, said hi to some folks, and ended up holding Elisa's new baby for awhile, which really helped calm me down. She was very cute, and from what I heard she was movin' to the music during the show :-)

In that brief interim between setup and Screaming Silence starting I got to collect my thoughts, and as I sat in my car changing into my All Stars I struggled with the realization that hardly anybody was showing up. I had been suspicious of the 200+ people the Y said would come, though the fliers handed out at the local 1000-student high school had excited me with the possiblity of this really being a big show. Now I was looking at maybe 25, 30 people, standing there dwarfed by our monster stage. I kept the thought at bay, though it had to brush through my mind to some degree: the concert was most likely bombing. I suddenly realized how nice the CoGA benefit concert had been, with its automatic draw of 150 school attenders and parents, and I figured local bands just have to deal with this, 'cause not every show's going to be big. So I faced the apparent failure, laced up the faded blue canvas, and went back up to the gym. Screaming Silence fired up, and the show began. (And I scurried to the sound board to help Scott fix the myriad sound problems that immediately started screaming out of the speakers)

One of the things that really juiced up the night was the 10 Pittsburghers who came to the show. Dad and Lisa drove 2 cars from Bethel Park, arriving a few minutes after SS started. Having friends from the 'Burgh brought a fun depth to the evening, and I was excited for them because, other than Dad, none of them had seen anything of Pure Boss except our album. It was cool to get to show them what I'd been up to all these weekends :-)

SS played a great set--lots of energy, some excellent songs, and great stage presence. We took a dragging 25 minutes to switch over things for Pure Boss, and finally we rounded up the necessary people, the music stopped, we were introduced, and I hopped up on the stage and walked over to the bass amp in the darkness. Strap over my head, chord in the jack, power up the amp, and grab my pick. Brian test-fired a couple guitar chords and I heard something about "ready to rock" from Steve's mic behind the drums. So we stood there on the stage, feet at chest level with the audience, silence and screams from the fans filling the gym. Look at Brian, smile, and start jumping up and down in time. He hits the chords, I come in with the bass line, and in a few moments the lights come on and we're playing -- trying to hit the right notes, trying to move around, trying to look up and look happy, and not really realizing at all that I was playing a rock concert with a band.

To me the show seemed to go pretty poorly. We kept losing bass or guitar, which utterly butchered several of our carefully-wrought arrangements, and from what I could see there was basically nobody out there, and they weren't moving around at all. The one encouragement was Mike's head, far above the masses at his feet, which I could see moving up and down and bobbing around. I appreciated his energy, but pictured him dancing alone in a bored scattering of people. We had lots of dead time between songs, and had to keep covering for technical problems. When at last we crashed the last crash at the end of "Ohio" and I stood up behind the drums, I was pretty discouraged. For two songs, "Beautiful Day" and "Hit the Wall," I had really "felt it" and had a great time. For the rest, it seemed like varying degrees of failure.

After the, as I staggered around talking to different people and starting to tear stuff down, God began to utterly change my impression of what had just happened. I brushed off Wes's ecstatic praises as his typical overstatement, and though Heather seriously said it was good, their opinions couldn't counter the weight in my mind. Then as I sat surrounded by cables fiddling with something or other, Mike came over and said "Dude, Screaming Silence couldn't stop talking about how much they loved you guys." I was stunned. As he elaborated (Mike? Elaborating? *gasp* :-P), my disbelief slowly had to give way. Heck man, Screaming Silence is like a real band! Those guys are good, and I respect them a ton. They're in a different league than us, in my mind, and here they were, raving about our show and starting to plan when they could hook up a concert with us. As Mike talked, a great weight lifted off my chest, and in its place came the glow of realizing that God had done "above and beyond all I could ask or imagine." I had asked plenty, pouring out prayers for the past two weeks, and here before my eyes, flying in the face of dying bass and lost guitars and trashed setlists and dead power amps, God was answering those prayers. I had lost faith and lost heart, but God's overflowing goodness came anyway. The glow of that moment of realization still sweetens my heart when I think of it. I don't know if we'll play with SS, or how big we'll become, or if we're even honestly any good at all, but right there God blessed us, and for that I am amazed and grateful.

Finally everybody left, the glow settled back in my mind, and teardown began to stare at us with bleary, bloodshot eyes. The warm humidity of the afternoon had given way to a blowing wet cold that chilled to the bone and some light driving spit from the sky to boot. The halls must be walked another 40 times, the cumbersome and overabundant gear must be hauled and loaded once again into the cars, and the poor girl from the Y had to wait around till we were finished to roll up the flooring and lock up the gym. Time rolled on meaninglessly as I worked alone carrying and loading most of the conversion van. I fought the weight of those speakers and boxes with a blind desperation, hunched there in the van's gaping metal interior. Everyone plugged away, especially at the staging, which took so long to move downstairs. Mr. Hoffman almost broke his wrist wheeling one load out, which was pretty scary. The one real bright spot in this time was when Lauren and Tori (sp?), who had stayed very late helping, swung back by and dropped off a bag of Chalupas and a flat of Dr.Peppers. Oh, gloriousness! The food made me realized the hunger I had been ignoring, and that sweet crisp enlivening Dr.P made me wonderfully happy.

Finally Scott, Diana and Philip left, we finished up the last bits, and closed down the Y. I sipped my Dr.Pepper as I drove home, one in the caravan of 4, and on the strength of that caffeine I went the rest of the night and morning. We unloaded everything at the Hoffmans, but compared to the trek to the gym, hauling stuff 10 feet into the garage felt like doing hopscotch. Then I settled down on the livingroom floor and started pulling, separating, winding, sorting and storing Mike's cables. We had to get the studio operational that night since Mike was going to Aero Team all day Saturday and Scott needed to record the soundtrack for the Easter dance program the following weekend. All Mike's stuff had been a disaster with all the practices and gigs of late, and now was the time to get it back in order. Mike worked on the rack, Steve and Brian kept unloading in the dark driveway, and I sat and plucked and wound and placed and sorted and set aside and organized. After some indefinite period of time all was unloaded and all the church stuff was set aside, so Mike, Steve and Brian drove to the church and wired it all back up. That was the time of stasis, when I basically mildly enjoyed the craziness of the situation. I was up ridiculously late, after having done a ridiculous amount of work, and still having a daunting amount left to do, and I liked that. Rarely do I work hard or do hard stuff, so I was content to let the silence pass by in the sleeping house while I kept plugging away. If it sounds like I'm impressed by myself and the work I did, well, I am :-P It's so dumb - even when I actually do something somewhat impressive, I'm so impressed by it myself it's ruined. Ah well - I'll never be Ken. Regardless of all that, that time really was pretty weird, and especially tearing down at the Y was pretty rough. Overall, though, I enjoyed the work and the weirdness, and was in a mildly happy and zone-out mood that morning. The strangest moment, when the magnitude of the time and work really hit me, was when I took some tools out to the garage and heard birds singing. I walked out to the doorway, and indeed there was the sky, lightening blue at the treetops. It was a new day, but it came after no break from the one before it. As only my second all-nighter, that was quite an odd biotemporal realization, and I savored it.

The work concluded up in Mike's room. Steve had gone to bed a couple hours before, down with a hurting leg. Brian had helped and helped, and at last it was down to Mike crammed behind the studio rack and me handing him cables as he called for them. We told Brian he could go and worked on, Mike babbling like a pothead and me handing him cables while moving as little as possible. At last the final patch cable was popped in and the studio was together. We pounded fists, staggered about a bit getting ready for bed, I sent the text message, and at last Mike retired to bed and I retired to a hot shower. The grand show was over, and the night I could not imagine had been done. Yay!

That morning Brian and Steve had soccer, and Mike was a ref for one of the fields, starting at 10. I decided that if 2 band members had to be up at 9:30, so would the third. Amazingly, after less than two hours of black dead sleep, I arose feeling rested, and feeling like there had actually been a night and today was a new day. Funny how the body works.

Soccer was cool, and I'm glad I went. Brian scored a goal, I got to talk with friends, and I got to be a windbreak for the poor freezing girls who had only hoodies in the bitter wind. I also got to go BACK and pick up Steve after he had ignored all attempts to wake him up on time :-P Ah well, I still love 'im. I got to meet Pepper, too - the Turner's new dog. Cute puppy. Sharp claws and teeth! After soccer the Hoffman household slept from noon till about 7pm. I arose from my impromptu power cable pillow in the livingroom at 6:30, smiling at the strangeness of a house full of sleeping people at dinnertime on a Saturday. Not much happened that evening at all. I don't remember if we had any kind of dinner, but I remember around 9:00 everybody watching the Chronicles of Narnia in the den. I wanted to do nothing at all except watch some brainless light movie--definitely NOT Narnia. I wandered around for a few minutes with absolutely nothing I wanted to do, and finally settled down on Steve's bed with a bowl of frozen fruit and an acoustic guitar. After an hour or so he came up and joined me, and we plunked around until about 11.

Sunday was pretty nice. Church especially was great. I was able to jump right into worship surprisingly easily, and I had several great purposeful conversations with folks. It was new members Sunday, and I was heartened by the joyous, love-filled testimonies shared by several of the incoming folks. It reminded me again of our ordination by God as His church, individually members of His body. I was spurred to consider what I could do to strengthen this church which God has put me in about 1/4th of the time. Great time :-)

Lunch was ok, though it was with a group that embodies everything socially that I am not. So I didn't say much, listened to the small talk, analyzed the Bose woofer above our heads, and heartily enjoyed the appetizer platter.

Back at the Hoffmans I entertained thoughts of going to the Murphys or somewhere and hanging out while Steve did these chores and stuff he had to do. But I ended up helping him load all the staging back in the van and put away the drum stuff. Then he and Mr. H left for the church and I became possessed with an inclination to do something purposeful to serve this family that had hosted me so much. The dirt-tracked entryway that had originally inspired this thought was already cleaned up, so I turned instead to the morass of Steve and Philip's room. All the laundry went in and on the basket in the corner, and I set up the whole drumset, getting it out of the basement where it really couldn't have stayed. It felt to good to do something and work some more, and seeing the wide open carpet and gleaming drumset in the room was immensly satisfying.

The day was capped off by me and Steve going to the Chimas to be with Brian and watch the video his parents took of the concert. It was fun, as always, to chill in the Chima's sweet house with its funny inhabitants. Mike arrived after an hour or so, and the four of us (plus Nick) watched the video in the basement. It was pretty nerve wracking, constantly fearing a mistake, waiting to see how it went, how it sounded from out front, what we looked like. I was tired from the suspense by the time the video was over, and then we sat around and talked and talked and talked about what to change and what we could buy and things we could do as a band. Finally my brain was overloaded with important things that I could do nothing about at the moment, and I asked if we could just stop, and please not watch the video of the benefit concert. It was rather overwhelming thinking about all that we could and should do to improve, but it was good to talk about it together. I just keep submitting it to God and praying that His will be done, not mine.

Monday morning was another wake-up-early-and-go-to-work-from-the-Hoffman's routine, and in two hours I found myself back in my homey office at Nova, dull from the weekend and staring at a stack of turbidity circle charts. I called Mom to let her know I had survived the weekend, and proceeded with the day. I caved to my craving for fatty, salty food and went to the Midway at noon for a salad and Dr.Pepper. I brought some work to do, and after finishing I hunched over a notepad and wrote out everything that was on my mind. Everything we had talked about with Pure Boss, financial stuff, projects at home...all the things that weigh on me and take up my brain's RAM. I felt better after that brain dump. And as I thought about all that was represented by those three pages I saw that I must pray hard for God to show me the priorities that He wants me to work on.

Aight, it's 2:15am, I'm sleepy, the couch is soft, and tomorrow I don't have to go in to work! I'm going to brush as quickly as possible, without disturbing my sleepiness, and curl up here on the ouch and close my eyes in sweet surrender. This is quite a detailed post, for better or for worse.

Good night,

--Clear Ambassador

Hair Pain (well, roots, but ya know...)

I have discovered a new kind of pain! When one wears a driving cap placed low on their brow and then pulled backwards to a normal orientation, one's hair apparently get's pulled back under said cap. Wearing this cap in such manner all evening leads to hair that grows forward standing straight up on one's head. Touching said hair elucidates an unsettling achy sensation in the poor roots, which have been yanked around like teeth with braces. It's like a surface headache that goes away as soon as you stop touching your hair. Ineffably odd, and something I never would have thought of.

I just hope I don't still have this regiment of hair standing at attention on the back of my head in the morning...

--CA

Crazy Horse Tacos

Hey! I had a weekend in Pittsburgh! How crazy is that, eh?

It all started when I drove through the greying wetness of post-rain Pittsburgh to a Mexican restaurant off Carson Street, there to join fellow collegiates in supper and laughter. More laughter than supper, but we ate a lot too. Plans shifted all over prior to that dinner meeting, but they ended up with Mom and Dad at home getting pizza, my car at home with a flat tire and recently-dead battery, Daniel at play practice at the Church office, and Ken who knows where out West like he always is.

I woke up Friday morning having slept a good hour or so extra. It was bright outside, and after two weeks of dedicatedly trying to sleep more I arose rested and refreshed. I put on a bright blue Hawaiian shirt to celebrate the delightfully warm air that blew on my face as I walked out to my car, and that shirt pretty much represents my mood all day. I truly enjoyed being that chipper and saying funny stuff and being friendly with folks at work. Plus I got to walk around the plant for two hours tracking down all the waste drums in satellite accumulation areas and correlating them with the in-plant inventry printed off of the Waste EMS database at the beginning of the month. A cajun chicken salad with ranch and a Dr.Pepper at The World-famous Midway perked up the midday and packed my stomach tight, though I still find room for a piece of pizza left over from the lunch for the air FSA auditors. The traffic on the way home was jaw-droppingly bad, and I finally resorted to following the little squiggly lines on my trusty AAA Pittsburgh Metro Map to try getting to Becks Run Road a little bit quicker. Didn't really help much, but I felt a little less hopelessly trapped on the clogged roads. I felt sorry for the poor wet biker dude stuck on the Parkway.




Katie and Sarah, Mike and Shannon, Nate and I. That was our dinner crowd. I was still chipper and full of funny comments (according to my self assessment and Nate's laughter), and it was really nice to hang out with this solid group of folks. I almost got the veal tongue taco, but settled instead for a Pambazo (or something like that) that I'd never heard of. It was ok, but the tail end of Sarah's burrito which I tried was fantastic. I definitely want to go there again. OH, and the cantalope "Fresh Fruit Water" was amazing! Musta been blended up frozen cantalope and water..maybe some sugar, but that's it. Straight-up fruit, bursting with genuine cantalope flavor the way God made it. Ahh--exquisite! The conversation was basically a long string of serious questions followed by real answers and lots of joking :-)

Then we retired to the Calano's abode, in whose living room we wiled away the night with balderdash, ice-cream sundaes, crazy antics, and Elmo's Book of Love :-D Balderdash is a great game, and we had our fair share of crazy words and crazier definitions (An ox cart used to haul hard coal). I came down from my Two-Dr.Peppers-and-a-Pepsi caffeine high round about 11:30, and was half dead to the world after that. Mike laid around on the floor by the couch and was weird. Katie texted everybody from Mike's phone. Sarah yelled as only Sarah can. Daniel sat by the play pen with his freshly cut hair. Rebekah took a far second place to Sarah's dominating 33 points. Nate was Nate, in all his joviality. We finally wandered out the door around 1:30 am, bemused and relaxed.

For Saturday and Sunday I'm gonna pretty much copy and paste from an email, with a few streamlining edits:

Dude, Saturday was totally a malesh day :-) I slept till 1:00, and after lunch I pretty much just layed down on the couch and let Daisy sleep with her head in my hands until Dad was ready to give me a haircut. Then Nate came over for dinner (Grilled teriyaki salmon to die for!) and we talked for a long time, then Jonathan came over and he and I jammed downstairs, and then we pretty much layed around in the family room and watched funny video clips and random basketball games until 1am. So much for the huge list of stuff I need to do on my precious weekends at home :-P

I thought several times this morning about the conference in Wadi Natrum [in Egypt] as I played acoustic guitar for worship. It helped me remember that worship is not about me but about God, and that this stuff is real and exciting. But mostly I was consumed with the firey pain coming from my left hand fingers as I had to keep mashing them into the strings. I had jammed out on electric for hours the night before, and my digits were tender before we even started practice :-/ Ah well. We got through, and God was worshipped and extolled.

Mr. Pierson preached a great sermon on evangelism, based on John 1:43-51, where Philip goes and gets Nathaniel and brings him to see Jesus, the Messiah they found. I have always liked what Philip says after Nathaniel asks "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" He doesn't rattle off all the good things about Nazareth, or argue his logic, or whatever. He says "come and see." Come and see! You ask how God can be good if 9/11 happened? Well, good question. Just come to church, and see what you see. Come on over for dinner, hang out with me, look at my life, and see. Ah, what simple freedom! "We are bringing people to a Person, not to a set of religious beliefs" was a great point. We've got an Easter service coming up, to which we are encouraged to invite folks, and a survey about peoples' beliefs about the resurrection to give to folks. Should be quite interesting.

After church we had a worship team meeting at the church office to officially commence Ryan's reign as leader of the team. It's great to have this change force a fresh look at what we do and why, and to have Ryan's diligence and organization come into play with a schedule and such logistical aids. Nate and I are also being drafted as 3rd and 4th string worship leaders, which is cool. I'm especially excited for Nate--he's gonna make a great worship leader! For now Ryan and Rick are taking most of the load, and Ryan will be conducting some "musical interviews" for folks who are interested in joining the team. Aahhh, fresh blood and fresh stirring! I'm highly expectant for the coming months with the band.

So, that's pretty much the weekend. I've been sitting here on the couch in the family room since getting back home, watching some Simpsons, writing the email above, listening to some music, and wishing I had Daisy sleeping next to me. Mom and Daniel are on their way to Chicago to chill with Grandma and Grandpa for a week, and they took my little beaglet with them. It's amazing what a psychological difference it makes when you remember that there isn't a little tail-wagging big-brown-eyed soft-eared dog waiting for you at home. I mean, Dad's nice and all, but...it's just not the same :-P

I think I'm gonna go fold some laundry, run another load of darks, straighten up my room a bit more, and put my two beds into an "L" shape along the walls, rather than the parallel configuration they've been in for the last year or two. It's already 8 o'clock (good gravy!), so that'll probably finish the day off. It has been a lazy weekend, I've gotten almost nothing done on my to-do lists, but I had great times with the ever-deepening and ever-richening friends at Providence, and I enjoyed the indulgent relaxation that will soon enough be impossible to find.

Anotherweekofmylife, here I come!

--JPB

My Dwive Home

by John Bewenz


I got a flat tire. Very sad.









So I had to spend a lot of time trying two leak plugger thingeys and then putting the spare on. I was happy that it was warm and sunny outside. But the spare tire is dinky and I had to drive all the way home on the highway at 50 miles an hour.



That was sad.









But I had a Mountain Dew Live Wire from Wal-Mart, and that made me happy!








So I drove on in the sunshine. The sun was going down so it was very pretty outside and I liked it.








I looked forward a lot because that was the direction I was going...








Lots of people passed me because I was going so slow. I felt bad because they all had to get around me.









My class started at this time, but I wasn't there because I was driving because it took so long to fix the tire. I got there 50 minutes late and came in the back.








The sun kept going down and made long and longer shadows.








Even going slow, I still liked my car. It's a Mazda.









It was probably interesting for everybody passing me--looking to their right and seeing this college age guy in an anachronistic brown leather two-snap driving cap munching a sub, contentedly motoring along in a cool sports wagon at 53 miles an hour. Then we hit the rush hour traffic and we were no longer contentedly motoring. I've been in enough traffic and was feeling happy enough that I was still content, but you could hardly call what we were doing "motoring." It wasn't as bad as I expected though, and I always liked it when I could go over into the left lane and drive with the fast people, 'cause "fast" in that case was more like 30mph.

Class was good even though I missed stuff at the start, and I answered a question and the professor really liked my answer and said so like 3 times. And when he was leaving I called out and reminded him to take his wireless mic off 'cause he would have left with it on and we would have heard all kinds of stuff! The two guys in front of me laughed and turned around and talked to me for a sec 'cause he had left it on once before and walked out of the room and we could hear him talking through the speaker in the classroom. Then we had a teacher evaluation survey, and I was the last one to leave. I said to the nice girl who had to wait for me "Sorry 'bout that. Survey people always hate me :-) I actually think about what I say!" And she smiled and said "have a good night!" and I said "you too!" and walked out the door and sang "Folsom Prison" loud in the big tall hall. In the bathroom I was still singing and when I hit the low note it happened to resonate with the room at that point and sounded really loud and sweet, so I felt powerful like Johnny Cash and smiled. Then I walked over to the other side of the room and it didn't resonate anymore so I didn't feel powerful anymore. But I still had my sweet hat on, so I was still cool. Then I went outside and did hackey sack by two sidewalk lights for half an hour until I could barely lift my foot any more. I didn't get 20, but I got 18 once, 17 several times, and 15 a bunch. It felt really cool to hack again, and I felt light on my feet like I was defying gravity with my sweet moves. Probably how dancers feel when they're in the groove.

On a different note, I just came upstairs from playing guitar for 30 minutes in the pitch black in the basement with my eyes closed. Closing your eyes is a great way to practice soloing because it makes you learn stuff by feel, strengthening your tactile awareness for playing rather than going from sight alone. I'm playing two solos for the concert coming up, and some pitiful results at past attempts are driving me to work on it so as not to be ashamed before the crowd :-) Apostle Paul's lingo is in my head from listening through his epistles for the last week or so. He sounds like quite an interesting guy, no-holds-barred, sorta like me in that way. Hearing his letters read out loud (on CD) makes them seem much more like letters, and I'm thinking of them less and less like "Booksss in the hooollly scripturrrzz of the Lorrrrd" (spoken in the pious drone of the preacher from the Simpsons). By hey diddly ho they're just letters, I say (Ned Flanders there). Also, all that electric guitar was played quietly through my big Fender amp, meaning there was no distotion and not much extra gain or sustain beyond the natural vibrational life of the strings. That's a great great way to work on solos because it forces you to play and hear and USE the notes, not get lazy with a bunch of wacky cover-up sounds from some crazy distortion. I think hearing a bunch of BTO and CCR and Doobie Brothers on random shuffle the last two days has helped, too. I got up to about 160 songs today, out of like 2936 or so. 10 hours down, 7 days 14 hours to go!

This whole post has been written in the lyrical style of Mike Quinlisk because I read his blog last night and it made me laugh because it was funny. I was bored going so slow on the highway, too, so I took all those pictures. It was really pretty and warm and I had my windows open and played Switchfoot, and enjoyed everything except when I hit that one pothole with the spare tire. Ouch for skinny tires.

I have the screw that was in my tire sitting on the passenger seat. It's more than an inch long, and it's a really sharp wood screw. I'm trying to think of what to do to it or with it, since it's probably going to cost me about a hundred dollars to fix what it caused.

Mountain Dew Live Wire is very good. Buy some today at your local Wal-Mart for only 97 cents plus tax! $1.04 for 20 ounces of orange happiness!

Night y'all. Time to pray for Palestine and CoG and take a shower and sleep. I should shave off my goatee, and BTO is sweet.

--CA

Good-bye Grovers

Well, yesterday was another Sunday in Pittsburgh, but it was also a sobering milestone in our little church's life. Eric and Bethany Grover--care group leaders, worship leader, founding member, one-third of the leadership team--are leaving. For several months now it has been clear that God is leading them to move to New Jersey to help a church which has just become a part of Sovereign Grace Ministries. There's no doubt it's God's plan, and Eric, Bethany, and all of Providence Church want nothing besides being a part of God's plan to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and build up His church. I've been gone so much that I haven't had to face the reality of their departure, so it was strange to realize, as we all sat in the cafeteria eating lunch and sharing encouragements and thanks with them, that next week they wouldn't be here.

As Mom remarked later that day, it was as good a send-off as you could wish for. Eric preached a sermon about the Kingdom of God and giving ourselves to that purpose, which is his passion and the reason they're willing to leave and we're willing to let them go. After the sermon Mr. Pierson came up and interrupted Eric's preparations to lead "Your Great Renown" to close the service. To express our gratefulness for the ~700 times Eric has led worship here (not even counting the hundreds of care groups he's played for) we gave him a new guitar amp to replace his battered Roland. And of course, it's a shame to plug an old guitar into a new amp, so we brought out the new guitar we got him too :-) I suppose it may have been an emotional moment for people as Eric led us in his song "Your Great Renown" one last time, but I was pretty much consumed with the low levels in my headphones and then the no levels at all when they fell off my head. Such often are times of worship when one is playing electric guitar.

The luncheon in the school cafeteria was nice. Good food, TONS of desserts, getting to talk to folks, and then people coming up and sharing stuff with the Grovers, bearing witness to the many works of God in and through their lives. I thanked Eric for the time he gave helping me set up my recording stuff, and the example of patience he showed as the CPU gave us endless trouble. I also appreciated the months when we met for lunches down at Pitt and he listened to the stuff going on in my life and prayed with me. In the end, when I think of Eric, I think of what I've said to several people in Ohio when they ask "so, when are you moving to Akron?" I say I'm not planning to, even though Akron's a blast, 'cause there are people in Pittsburgh like Eric Grover who cut my pride no slack at all. He's not mean by any means, but he just won't be impressed by me or cater to my ego at all. He has kept bringing my high flying electric guitar personality down to earth--doing all for the glory of God. Even his memory will serve me as a marker of focus on God, and that's what real friendship is all about. I will miss the Grovers (though not as much as many whose lives have been more tightly knit with theirs), but I know the effects of their lives here will continue bearing fruit for God, and I'm excited to see what God does as Ryan takes on leadership of the worship team and our care groups get re-formed.

This is now the second pillar of strength we have sent out from this church (The Praters leaving several years ago was the first), which I find interesting. God does seem to be using us for "church planting" in that way, but not quite as we might have expected. He alone knows what's coming next as we've got a crop of youth approaching adulthood. Michael, Jonathan, Ryan, Daniel, Justin...where will we be in five years? I don't put anything past God to do, so we can only walk on and see where He leads.

Bye Grovers! Great is the God we serve!

--Clear Ambassador

The joy of chemical names

Good gravy! Did you know that 2,7:3,6-Dimethanonaphth [2,3-b]oxirene,3,4,5,6,9,9-hexachloro-1a,2,2a,3,6,6a,7,7a-octahydro-, (1aalpha,2beta,2abeta,3alpha,6alpha,6abeta,7beta,7aalpha)- metabolites are CERCLA regulated substances?? Me either 'till just now. Man, that changes everything!

This easily takes the award for the most gnarled and ghastly chemical name I've ever come across. I've never even seen, let alone been taught about the alpha and abeta nomenclature in there! Heh - the common name is probably something like "Red Dust" :-P

It's funny to see the kind of contortions we get ourselves into when we try to name the chemicals that God put in this world. We can hardly even adequately describe most of the stuff around us!

--1,2-dimethylclear-[2alpha,2abeta-tris-nonylambassador]phosphite

Orange Street Weekend

Ah, what a sweet weekend! If you're wondering how the gig at The Orange Street went, it went GREAT. If you're wondering what The Orange Street is, it's essentially a teen club in Akron. Like a normal run-down joint where local bands play, just minus the alcohol, and they finish up before midnight 'cause of the curfew on under-eighteeners. In other words, the perfect place for Pure Boss to play.

Basic chronology: I took a half day Friday, got to Akron at 2:45, we set up and practiced for 2 hours in the Chima's barn, then frantically packed up the cars, figured out our outfits and drove to the OS. Set up our stuff, finally the sound guy hooked us into the system, we sound checked, waited around, then played, then hung out and watched the 5 other bands play (minus the one we missed while getting dinner at Taco Bell). I go back to Chimas, we hang around and watch a movie, I play myself sleepy on acoustic guitar, we sleep till 11 or so in the basement, wake up and get moving, Steve comes over, we set up again in the barn, and then practice for hours getting ready for the YMCA concert. Lunch break (Yay Lance for bringing pizza!), set list creation, running through setlist, then yet another tear-down and load-up-car routine. Dinner with the band at Baja Fresh, then I'm on the road home, arriving at said place of residence at 11:04pm. Hard to believe that was all just 34 hours. Felt like a whole weekend!

The Orange Street is a great place - scroungy, dirty, beaten-down stage, dusty stacks of speakers reaching up to the low ceiling, bank of dusty orangey yellow lights glaring down on the stage (leaving mysterious dark corners behind the speakers), and a very disconcerting stairway at the back leading down into corroded bricky darkness. Gives me de jibbleys, as Strong Bad would say. Basically, it's exactly the kind of place you'd expect to hear loud, harsh-sounding pounding music from local bands. Honestly, though, it wasn't that hard core. Some of the bands were really mild (i.e. lame!), and most of the crowd was pretty benign.

We pulled up out front, parked, and just sorta walked in the door like, well, um, we're playing here tonight, but we don't know how anything works or who to talk to or what to do, so we'll just walk in and put our hands in our pockets and look at the emo music people around and try to sorta look cool and not clueless 'cause we're actually playing here in a real music place :-) There were already maybe 20 people mulling around, mostly groups of high-school/junior high friends, some of 'em mildly goth looking. Finally I saw somebody go up behind the sound board, and knew I had found the man to talk to. We were cool, talked about how it works and what to do, and then we started bringing our stuff in and setting up on the stage (since we were the first band playing). It's a funny dynamic when you have a bunch of band people around, all playing that night, all checking each other out, but not wanting to look like you are, and all wondering how good the other people are, and either being egotistical and thinking you're awesome, or feeling pretty inept and out of place 'cause everybody else is probably better than you, and I'm sure they're all real bands, and we're not a band, we're just me and Brian and Stephen.

So we set up, and then came a time of being told that we had done all we needed to, and the sound guy would set up his mics and such for the house system, and tell us what to do. He was nowhere to be found, and it was past seven, when we were supposed to start, and geez, where IS he? Hmm...maybe down in the undisclosed depths of the basement.... but ah, there he is now, and yay, he's setting up drum mics! Oh, and at some point everybody who had trickled in (maybe 40 people) were told to go back out side and come in again, and pay and get their hands marked. So we herded out the door like sheep and made a little crowd on the sidewalk outside. How sweet to say we were one of the bands playing, and get to go in for free :-) No $6 from me, baby!

Finally he said we were ready to go, so we sorta walked through the folks grouped up in front of the stage and hooked up our instruments. It was kinda funny because the "stage" was about 2 inches above the floor, and everybody was basically standing in a mass 5 feet in front of us. Lights were blasting down on us from the ceiling at the edge of the stage, so we really couldn't see the people out there very well, but they were like right in front of us. Definitely different from a big tall stage in a big room. Cool, though, and very personal. We sound checked real quick at the directions from the sound booth, and then I was like, "so, we're ready to go?" in to my mic, and he gave me the thumbs up. Then, to the consternation and amazement of all present, I got up, Steve gave me his bass, and we switched our instruments! One guy was like "WHAT?? What are they doing??" :-) Brian leans up to his mic and says "Hi, we're Coldplay." And he and I start jumping up and down in time(no music yet). Up to this point I really didn't know how things were going to go--if we'd be stuck with a bunch of depressed emo kids who were too *cool* to have a good time and rock out, or if everybody would hate us, or what. The group of junior high girls who'd been gaggling around all evening seemed ready to rock, though, and when I looked over to the left where they were clustered and saw them start to jump up and down with us, I knew it was going to be sweet :-) Brian started the F - C - Gm - Bb progression, and the gig began!

Folk were indeed ready and willing to rock out, and we had a blast. It was so small and close that we could hear everything quite well, and we were very tight as a band. Brian rocked out like I've never seen before, BUT BUT BUT he didn't just mash the strings and throw his guitar out of tune and break strings and all, so we didn't have dead time. Steve sang well and got into too, hopping up on the kick drum and doing guitar jumps and stuff. And I could feel the low end from the speakers every time I hit the kick drum, which gave me a feeling of solidity and power that bolstered my playing a ton. We were very well practiced up, and since this was only a 30-minute set we played the best of our songs and kept them coming. We rocked out, moved around a ton, and each new song came in snappy and tight. As 5 family members told us afterward, we played the best that night that we ever have. And the non-family non-church people who'd never seen or heard of us before loved us! We sold SIX CD's, signed a bunch, got in some pictures, signed some pants, and when we crashed out the end of one song I heard from somewhere "Will you marry me??" :-P Girls do make the best fans, 'cause they get into it and rock out and scream at the end of every song. They were a geat crowd, and I muchly appreciated their participation. It was a great feeling when we finished the set and knew that we had played our best and kept it tight and energetic. So sweet! It was basically the perfect concert, and now I'll stop blabbering about it :-) And I'm not being proud in what I'm saying, like we're something great or anything. It's just that we've been beating ourselves up about how lame we look while we're playing, and how much dead time we have, and how our songs are crummy and our music is boring and nobody will get into it and we're just totally not like a real band at all...but it actually went off like a good band! We were the second-best band there that night, and definitely got the crowd into it the most. It was very encouraging, and just a lot of fun!

Four of the other bands were quite lame in various ways, but it was still fun to hang out and watch them. The last band, Templeton's Zeal, was...well, they could easily be a pro band, they just haven't gotten their break yet. The drummer was stunningly skilled (and rip, too), and the guitar player was obviously immersed in the school of Hendrix and Zepplin and the likes, and was bested by them by only subtle points of technique and skill. Seriously--he was stunningly good. The few of us who hung around to the bitter end pretty much just stood or sat at the foot of the stage and watched them in awe, happy to sit there as long as they would play, watching something so much better than we could ever play or think of playing. Very cool, and they were really nice guys, too.

It was cool spending the night at the Chima's house and practicing there Saturday. I've wanted to get to know Brian's family better, and it was cool to go to Akron and not be at the Hoffman's house (no offense at all--it's just something different). Jake and Tojie are great dogs, big friendly black labs, and their house is sweet. We practiced in their barn, which is like an unused 2-car garage out behind the house with carpets on the floor and couches around, and record covers up on the walls and random speakers and drum sets and stuff laying around. The perfect place to practice, even if it was 40 degrees and chilling. I kept wiping condensation off my mic, and poor Steve and Brian had a deuce of a time playing with stiff cold fingers. It was a good practice, though, and by the end we were ready for the YMCA gig--all 1.5 hours of it. I got really ticked at one point, sorta building on the fact that my $400 effects pedal had crapped out on me and we were getting ear-piercing feedback for no apparent reason. It's weird--sometimes I just get in this realy ticked mood while we're practicing. I actually think it's related to having that much loud music pounded into me for so long. It just seems to aggravate me for brief periods, even though there isn't a clear reason that meets the level of felt aggravation. Practice and setup and teardown and concert stress are providing many many times to work on not getting angry at stuff. Ahh, how good of God to keep providing instances for me to work on this besetting sin (strained smile of exasperated faith) :-D Ah well. Still good times, definitely.

After practice I wasn't ready to just drive home, so we swung by the Hoffman's, I found my leather jacket and iPod (thank you Lord!), and we piled into Brian's sweet Celica for a quick dinner. It was a great time at Baja Fresh sitting at the high table by the fake tree in the cool eating room chomping down tasty burritos and talking. Dude, we're a band! We're brothers, we've been through sweat and stress and lots and lots of practicing and hard work together, and we're coming more and more into agreement and unison with our purpose and commitment as a band. We know our songs really well, and there is a special kind of connection with people when you are all so familiar with a common thing. I love it when we sit down and plan out a setlist--going over the songs, talking about stuff nobody else would know or understand. It's cool, and very "bandy" :-) I drove away that night quite curious about what God is going to do with this brotherly bond we've got goin' here. See shall we.

It was a nice drive home that night. I was comfortable in the seat, tired but not sleepy, happy to be gently rocked by the road. It was better when there were no cars around. Even though I missed people, I was happier alone. I didn't turn the heat on. For some reason it was better to let my feet stay cold. And I didn't turn any music on either. Any sound would have been a tasteless intrusion. Left hand on the steering wheel, head leaning to one side, legs stretched out--every limb laying in peace, yet not motionless. From deepest childhood, the many nights spent falling asleep and waking up in a motor home rolling down the highway, the feel of a steady-moving vehicle is a comfort. Time kind of becomes irrelevant, and you watch the lane markings clip by and the dips and turns come and go, and you feel the road under the tires, and the darkness all around you is a warm, benign companion. Eventually I sat up straighter, put on Elvis, and warmed up the car, but for a long time I was content with the stasis of the dark car and the spot of passing road in my headlights. I was sad when the city got closer and the darkness was broken by street lights and more cars. There is something restful about darkness, and when you're not drowsy a long dark highway is a pretty happy place to be.

And below it all there was my mind thinking about how ironic it was that my primary "experience" of this experience was in thinking about how I was going to write about it when it was over. Ah well. It was still a nice time, and I arrived home as mellow as a bowl of chicken soup, ready to quench my brimming somnolence with slumber.

As I am ready now. Good night.

--Clear Ambassador

Ahh, Dr.Pepper

My blog has been very hospitable lately. As in, it's had lots of visitors :-) Many of them seem to drop by from searches for Dr. Pepper-related stuff. "Dr.Pepper song," "Drink Dr.Pepper be a Pepper," "Dr.Pepper pictures," and my personal favorite: "Amount of sugar in Dr.Pepper." :-)

Oddly enough, I was once trying to find that exact same information last semester. We were working on a project for transport, and I convinced our group ("Team Bloat") to make our project a heat exchanger to cool Dr.Pepper from 2-liter bottles. Heh. I spent one afternoon in the lab calling around and searching the net for the heat capacity of Dr.Pepper, and eventually for the degrees Brix of Dr.P (grams sugar per 100g solution). We eventually found it. So, buddy, whoever you are who searched for that, here's the dope:

Dr.Pepper has 40 grams of sugar per 370mL of solution, meaning it is 10.8 °Brix (A concentration unit common in the beverage industry).

The density of Dr.Pepper is 1.04 g/mL (4% higher than pure water)

The heat capacity of Dr.Pepper at 25 degrees Celsius (room temperature) is 3.94 kJ/kg K. But who ever drinks Dr.P at room temperature?? GOSH. At 0 degrees Celsius (cold as ice. That's better, baby!), it is 3.92 kJ/kg K.

And in case you were wondering, don't run to Wal-mart and look for a chiller for your 2-liter bottles of pop. What we came up with weighed about 500 pounds, was 8 feet long, and cost around $4000 :-) Just put 'em in the fridge, folks!

--Clear Ambassador

A couple other things

Mostly just go read the post below. But in addition,

• So much for knee therapy and push-ups while I'm sick :-( I was up to 64 with no form and 56 with my head not bent down. My knees are doing better, though I despair of my hamstrings ever loosening up.
• Probably the defining image of this trip is my sickness. The crazy cracking of my voice and the obnoxious pain every time I swallowed are the most present things in my mind as I look back over the weekend. That and Jen's water bottle :-)
  
• I spent the whole night tonight writing this blog. Malesh. I've wanted to write harder for awhile, and I'll do what I need to and make do with what I don't.
• I got home this afternoon to find I was locked out. The screen door had been bolted at some point, and nobody has the key for it. So I paced around, called Mom, and finally discovered that by unscrewing the trim I could loosen the stop of the bolt and get to the main door, for which I had a key. Happiness, even though it was a pain for awhile.
• I miss Daisy. I keep looking at the blanked balled up at the other end of the couch and thinking it's her, 'till I remember. :-(
• My typing has been super werid tonight. And that happened for real, as a true, uncorrecte example. Weird :-/
  

--CA

The weekend of a concert and a sore throat

I'm trying to think of where and how to start this post, and all that really comes to mind is "Sheez...another whole weekend in Akron!"

What was supposed to be a Friday night concert and short Saturday practice turned into a whole Friday afternoon to Monday morning extravaganza, setting me once again on the Ohio roads I'm feeling more and more at home on, and mixing me in yet again with the Ohio people I'm getting more and more familiar (like family) with. When I walked in to Covenant of Grace's vaulted little sanctuary for the second week in a row, Jason shook his head and said "Man, you really could take the new member's class!" And after going up for prayer after the sermon, and lining up with others who wanted the gift of prophecy, and standing arm-in-arm with Dr. Negi and Justin Murphy praying for each other, you could almost agree with him.

But it's not really like that, and I definitely felt a bit funny being there and totally missing another weekend of the life of Providince Church of Pittsburgh. I guess it was Eric's last Sunday leading worship (Ryan's leading this week), which was a downer to miss, and I didn't see his email about playing in the band until Saturday night. I definitely know I can't keep up this level of Akron activity indefinitely. It completely amputates the weekends from the rest of my days, and it surrounds me with people I feel very comfortable with but whom I don't actually know that well, and who don't actually know me that well either. It makes me do and say a lot of things I don't do or say with the folks in Pittsburgh, and it lets me be something I can't really be here. But it sure as heck is fun!

Like Steve said last weekend: in some ways these are golden days of our lives, and we'll look back on them fondly yet sadly when they're gone. Jobs, families and responsibilities will soon enough blow away these random, somewhat wasteful, free-wheeling times. But as Dad is quick to point out, they bring with them deeper and more lasting joys--the things God made us for as men and women. I do think there is a special, God-given pleasure in the freedom of youth, though, and I bet it touches on a hint of the feeling we'll get when we arrive in Heaven, and realize we don't have to consider time any more(!!). So, I'm enjoying these times very much, even as I know they can't go on for long.

And you know what else? I have learned a TON about people and life through my adopted citizenship in the rubber city. I never knew how atypical Mom is as a representative of the females of the species until I became Mrs. Hoffman's "#1 son." I didn't used to know how to hang out with people who wouldn't talk seriously about meaningful things. I did not realize how little I knew about people, and how much of them was actually there under the hasty-yet-certain judgments of my over-eager brain. I hadn't seen as clearly how people really do change, and how they change without me lecturing or badgering or teaching or reprimanding them. I didn't realize that I was not above erupting in spouts of real anger towards my brothers and pets given the right provocations and miscommunications. I did not realize how much God has blessed PChOP with a peaceful life and a gloriously smooth transfer of senior pastorship. I didn't know how much fun it is to have an 11-year-old brother around to babble and help with stuff and hang out with whatever's going on. And honestly, I just didn't have nearly as much respect for other people. Even as I've been somewhat puffed up by the mystique of ignorance and the apparitions of talent, I have been deeply humbled and profitably deflated in Akron by seeing my prideful judgements proved dead wrong and people, totally apart from myself, changing and growing and being real. It's hard to describe exactly, but it has come from a year of experience, which gives it a practical vigor that money can't buy. It's cool, and I'm happy to find myself a fool :-)

So...this weekend in particular? Heh. The concert doesn't even seem like the same set of days. But it was, and here are the shining moments in my memory as I look back:

Walking into the big gym-type building (simply referred to as "Mull Ave.") and seeing, rising before me like something I shouldn't be around, a huge black stage and glinting drum set, and a mountainous sound booth crowned with a 15-foot-high projector. It looked like Switchfoot should be playing, not me and Brian and Stephen! Dude, Stephen's stage, which was just stacks of rough-sanded boards and flanges and pipes last week, was covered with black flooring; the edges had black fabric down to the floor; all cables were run underneath, and it all rose two or three feet above the room. And there sat our subs, products of such imprecision and agony, in brooding black, crowned with stacks of speakers. I was awe-struck as I walked up to the stage, there in the dark echoing empty room. I began to realize that this concert was actually going to happen, and it was actually going to be a pretty good show :-)

Mike arrived at Mull Avenue a few minutes later and juiced up the system, giddily eager to show me how it sounded. He powered up whatever amps and EQ's resided in that moster rack of his, and soon enough the opening strains of "Beatiful Day" started coming out. He pushed up some faders, and the whole room seemed to come into line with the sound waves. I started to praise it, and he shooshed me. "Wait 'till it really comes in." When the bass and drums came crashing in with Bono's voice on the chorus, I finally realized that what we had made WORKED. And moved air. I shook my head happily as those boxes of wood we put together pounded the air in that whole building and sounded good! That was a happy moment--the feeling of a creator seeing his creation succeed. (And I was only like 2nd string assistant creator. Mike did the hard work.)

Major shining moment: sitting behind the drums, pounding away like I have for dozens of practices down in the Hoffman's basement, and realizing as I looked out between the cymbals that there were a couple hundred people out there jumping up and down and screaming to our music! We were finally here! We were on a big stage, the sound was working, there was enough low end, we could hear well enough to play together, and there were other people who were actually enjoying it! And in the haze of residual smoke machine fog and the glow of stage lights, those fans looked pretty cool, and it really seemed like we were playing a concert :-) Now, *cough*, most of those folks knew us as friends and would probably love whatever we did, to some degree, and there were at tops 200, and the sound wasn't perfect, and between every song we had to kill time while Brian tuned or swapped out his guitar after busting another string...but still, we played, we had a blast, and they had a blast. I guess from a Godless standpoint that's really what rock bands are all about, and it was quite an experience.

Let's pause for a few details and lowlights :-) I woke up Friday morning wretchedly sick. I ached unbearably, my head was on the edge of dizziness, and the back of my mouth began that hateful swelling--one of my least favorite feelings ever. I still got up super early, though, and got to work at 20 to six. I finished the DMR and a few routine items, croaked with Jane a bit, and then staggered out to my car at 11 o'clock, dreading the hour-and-a-half drive ahead of me. It ended up being ok though, mostly because of the sunny sky and the Advil I took. I got to Mull Avenue at 12:30 and from then till 4 or so I and an ever-increasing group of people prepared and set up for the concert. We sound checked and practiced early in the afternoon, and then the other bands practiced. And we started getting worried, 'cause they were really good and we felt pretty sucky and lame. But alas. We're creative and original, we're only 3 instruments, we have a lot of fans who love us and know our songs, and we're really not hung up on ourselves. The other bands played, starting at 7, and did rock the house, but not so much so that we didn't hold our own (according to people we asked). I was sick all day, but still sang and played. The teardown afterwards would have been abject misery, but Jen pushed me into a couch and brought me water and made me rest, which probably kept me from getting totally washed out. Nevertheless, I was up till 2am loading and unloading hundreds of pounds of gear in the bitter cold night. Teardown sucks, and that night was perhaps the lowlight. But really it was all fine.

Sleeping in Saturday was blessed. Sleeping in till 2:30, though, was a bit much! That left the rest of the day basically taken up with Brian getting here, trying to round up him and Stephen, and making two trips to Mull Avenue to get all the stuff. Bless 'em, though, Bri and Steve did the first trip themselves and let me and Craig take the bass amp to Lentine's and go to the Hatterie. That got me moving enough to help with the second trip, despite my plaguing dizziness and painful throat. It's getting to be more and more fun to hang out with Steve and Brian as a band, and Brian even sorta regretted setting up dinner with other friends when he realized we could have hung out and had taco salad at the Hoffmans.

I loaded up my plate with this huge taco salad, eager to dig into Mrs. H's great food and give my body the nourishment it needed. I pushed it away 20 minutes later, one-fourth eaten. My energy had given out and my appetite had died at the foot of my cold. I eventually finished it, but that night I was really under the illness, and made for bed as soon as possible. "No, I'm not watching the Bride!" *more whining from the den [:-)]. Come watch the Bride!* "Sorry, I'm sure it's a great production, but I'm going to bed." And so I did with the firm resolution of desperate need, and so I procured nearly 10 hours of sleep while still getting up at 9 o'clock Sunday morning. The time between 11pm and 1am sucked, though, 'cause I just couldn't sleep, and tossed and turned under the sleeping bag, and drove Brandy away, and poured sweat, yet got chilled as soon as I got out from under the covers. Rarely can I not sleep, and I did NOT enjoy the experience. [I don't know how you do it, wood elf.] THAT was the lowlight of the trip, no doubt. Not a fun time. But finally I took calcium and B, and was asleep pretty soon after that. Yay for witch doctor drugs!

Church was good, but also kinda weird, as I said above. I almost played one of my recordings from my iPod for the offering music, but we didn't have the right adapters :-( Rebekah was on spring break, so she was there, which was an unexpected bonus. Got to hear more about the upheavals at PHC and God's accompanying grace.

Another good highlight was going to lunch after church. I asked around and kept asking, and finally rounded up Steve, Mike, Jess, Jen, Craig and Chad for Chipotle (Brian man, you missed out!). It was very much like last summer. We got our food and sat around a double table outside (yes, outside!), and with one question I started a productive conversation which lasted the duration of the dining. We mostly hang out in rather superfluous ways, so it's always good to hear what God's doing in our lives. We'd all gone up that morning for prayer after church, so we went around and shared, if we wanted, what we'd gotten prayed for. It's just cool to see God making changes, showing us previously unseen sins, convicting us of areas that need work, and blessing us with His Holy Spirit in real ways. Like I said there, in ten or twenty years we're going to be the people leading the care groups and preaching the sermons, so if we don't start getting real with this stuff now, when will we? It's good stuff :-)

Sunday was the marathon day. Church, lunch, loading up and setting up for practice at the Chima's, practicing hard for four and a half hours, hanging around in the Chima's house for a long time, going back to the Hoffman's, unloading more, helping Steve with his paper, and finally turning down more appeals to watch "The Bride" and going up to bed at 11pm. Practice was definitely a highlight. One of Brian's neighbors and her little daughter, huge Pure Boss fans, came over for it, and ended up sitting in the chilly garage for all four and a half hours watching us play and singing along and dancing around the driveway :-) It made us enjoy it a lot more, even as we dredged up 6-month-old songs and hammered through tough arrangements like "My Plea" and "Fly From Me." We're still amazed that they stayed the whole time! We're very appreciative :-) Hanging out after practice was fun, too. I had been thinking lately that I'd like to spend some time at the Chima's and get to know Brian's family better.. and we did! Mrs. C graciously brought us hot chocolate out in the garage, and when we came in later she heated up turkey for us and got us pop. That was hotrockinawesome, to say the least. We planned out the set list for the Orange Street gig this Friday and then sat around the kitchen table with Nick and bantered for like an hour. Brian and Nick are some funny guys, I tell you what.

My throat was raped from that practice, and the rest of Sunday was spent with pain at every swallow and rasp in every spoken word. It's like that now, Monday night, and I just pray that as I eat well, sleep tons, drink lots and lots of water and try to talk little, my body will get itself back in shape for this Friday. I sound like my voice is changing :-P

Monday morning I got up in time to be at work like normal, but called in and said I'd be late, and got another hour and a half of sleep. No messing around--this cold is going DOWN! Sleep is good, and was a highlight of the weekend. I think for a few days there I actually got enough sleep, and wasn't tired during the days! Kinda crazy. I'm going in to work late tomorrow, too, for the same reason.

For now, the house is empty, and I've been pretty lonely tonight. I've been sadder leaving Akron these last few times, and especially now, as Mom and Dad are in Orlando and Daniel's in Chicago and Daisy's at the Quinlisks. I'm sorely missing the bubbly company that surrounds me over there. But that means I'm setting myself less on God. So I'm letting myself feel the loneliness, and taking it to Jesus, offering it up and praying that He will be that to me, and much more. It's easy and attractive to fill yourself with happy friends who like you and fun things you do, but if there's nothing else beneath that, you're gonna feel the pangs of emptiness as soon as it's taken away. Such I have felt, and feel a bit now, and so I go to the Jesus that John wrote about, to the Jesus magnified in Hebrews, to the Jesus who sends the whole universe fleeing at the sight of His face in Revelation, .. to the Jesus who stood there in the dusty temple and told the people standing in front of Him "Before Abraham was, I am." .. to the Jesus who immediately reached out His hand and caught Peter as he started to sink on the waves of Galilee. Ah, may I come to actually know you, Lord! Thank You for Akron, and may Your will be done there, and here, as it is in Heaven. Amen, and please help my cold to heal very fast :-)

--Croaky Ambassador

The show must go on

I'm sick (but thankfully not as sick as Shannon), and I'm heading out to play a concert tonight.
:-) for the concert
:-( for the sick
:-) for leaving work before 11am (worked late last night, got in super early this morning).
:-( for the crazy aching everywhere
:-( for having to drive an hour and a half
:-) for the rig already being mostly set up at Mull Ave
:-) for smiley faces

--Sick Ambassador

New Song!!

Well, after wishing I could write some more songs, I have written one! And guess where it began? Correct--the bathroom! That plumbed source of all inspiration led me to begin singing whatever came to mind at the end of the workday today, and soon out popped this little jumpy melody and some words. So I spent the drive home composing it and recording little snippets on my cell phone. Here are the words. Think Death Cab meets Coldplay meets Keane, with a dash of the Beatles...

Time after time, time after time looking out the door.
Time after time, time after time what's he waiting for?

But you were always on my side,
I couldn't tame you, I couldn't blame you;
You were always on my side,
I couldn't trace you, I couldn't chase away your plans for me.

Back of my mind, back of my mind it's been pa - id for.
Back in the time, back in the time that he ca - me for,

'Cause you were always on my side,
I couldn't tame you, I couldn't blame you;
You were always on my side,
I couldn't trace you, I couldn't chase away your plans for me.


I've had several thoughts about a bridge or alternate section, but it's already dangerously similar to lots of modern stuff, and those additions would push it over the edge. I'm hoping to soak it with layers of vocal harmonies, of which I've had multitudinous ideas.

Praise God He's on our side! What unmerited mercy!

--Clear Ambassador

Stuff I like right now

Flipping through some old old memories ("The Behrens Home Gazette" archive) made me consider again the nature and purpose of this blog. I want to remember what I'm like right now, not just what I'm doing. So, I'm going to list some stuff I really like right now:

I think I like and respect Switchfoot, Jars of Clay, and Johnny Cash the most right now. "Nothing is Sound" is just stunning in every way--lyrically, compositionally, arrangements, recording, production... Jars of Clay just delights my soul at a deep level with their God-glorifying songs (especially "Redemption Songs" and "Who We Are Instead") and good-enough-to-respect-and-love music. "Redemption Songs" is one of the only albums I'll play when I'm feeling depressed or emotionally sensitive. It takes me the right places, and it's enjoyable (vs. basically all worship music). I'm also excited to be liking in a functional way Bela Fleck, Nordic Roots, some oriental stuff, and Elvis. I'm loving Elvis, after the subwoofer weekend in Akron!

Dr.Pepper continues to be a delight, and Cherry Vanilla has taken equal footing with it's progenitor. CVNDP has its good days and its bad days, but I keep coming back. We also discovered a great new drink last weekend: the "Pure Boss." *roughly* 2 parts silver rum, 3 parts Dr.Pepper, and 2 parts Mountain Dew Live Wire. Virgin ain't bad either, but leaded is amazing. Truly transcending its components. Good scotch, VSOP cognac, Killians and JW Dundees are also very enjoyable. They justify their little two-carbon hydroxy molecule.

I really truly do like good healthy food. Fast food and freezer meals and such just aren't meals! Real meat, real grains, and especially REAL VEGETABLES are just plain critical. And because of this, I think I'll probably always eat pretty well, even though I most definitely enjoy and partake of junkfood. When it's time to really eat, go for food the way God made it. Veggies make a uniquely-satisfying snack, too, if they're good quality. Mom's cooking is just amazing. It's good not because of the easy cop-outs (salt, fat, sugar, butter, salt, and more salt), but because it's REAL food! It's like scotch versus pop. Pop tastes good because it's sugar water loaded with a single, cartoonish artificial flavor. Scotch is good because you can taste the oak barrel it was aged in, the charring inside of that barrel, the grain it was brewed from, and the myriad complexities that developed as that blend of biological molecules aged for 12 years. Such it is with Mom's cooking--you marvel at how good real meat, real wheat, real vegetables, and real herbs can be, especially when put together. Thanks so much Mom! You rock :-)

One of my all-time favorite things is contact from people on my stuff online. Whether it's comments and view on my Flickr pictures, comments or visits to the blog, or postings on such sites by others, it's always exciting to see what other people say and do. I really don't miss AIM, though, which is nice. I wonder if other people care as much as I do about comments and stuff.

I really really like doing stuff on Excel. Even if I wasn't paid $17 an hour to do it, I would happily hunch over a keyboard and figure out a solution to some need using Excel and the marvelous depths of its commands and capabilities. The type of thinking required to harness the bland blind little functions and exploit the drag 'n' copy capabilities is just delightful. I was SO excited when I discovered the INDIRECT command. I ran into Tom's office and just sorta blurted it all out. I've looked for that function for years! [He interrupted me suddenly and asked "When are you graduating?" with tilted eyebrows. Another indiciation that I think God wants me to work at NOVA after I graduate] I don't know how this will relate to my career, or what I should do, but I just love it. Remember the stuff I set up with LOOKUP for Tier II monthly reports? Ahhhh :-)

I like my car, but it's filthy freakin' dirty inside and out, the clutch is wearing out, and I'm always nervous about the skinny performance tires and expensive alloy wheels. Plus it has crappy traction, which really ticks me off. When you decide to sacrifice the clutch and the gas mileage and gun it, though, it can really tug. I used to get 30mpg while working, but now it's like 28.5. Probably because I go to and leave work an hour later than I used to, and I spend a bunch of time in traffic. Ugh and I hate myself for staying up so late and screwing up everything :-(

I love love love playing with Pure Boss! I care about concerts only insomuch as I wish I could transmit the joy and energy of our practices to other people. There is nothing like the feeling as I squeeze out from behind the drumset after a set that went really well. I love Brian and Stephen and am respecting them more and more as for-real people, friends, and in Stephen's case, a real brother.

Hanging out with youth is way cool, as always. God is chipping away at my pride and coldness in this area, and underneath is more freedom, joy and richness in relationships. It's not all good, 'cause of my terribly self-centered mindset, but most of the time it's a blast. Akron is obviously super fun, but Pittsburgh is sorta cool in a deeper way. It's cool to see folks becoming more serious, relationships becoming more meaningful, and activities becoming less limited.

I really haven't done much with music other than Pure Boss. No time at home period. I got a new recording computer, though, 3.2gHz, 160 gig hard drive, 1 gig of ram, and a QUIET FAN!!! Ahhh, it's gonna be incredible once it's all set up and I have time to use it. Acoustic guitar is cool, and I'm finally at the place (have been for ~6 months) where I can sit and plunk around on it for as long as I want, and not be bored, frustrated, or irritated at what I play. I was thinking today that I want to write again. Other than Daniel's song I haven't written anything in months. We'll see what happens. Recording is almost hard to enjoy because of the limitations of outboard compression, preamp quality, sonic isolation, and acoustic guitar. With the right intangible, indefinable, unpredictable SPIRIT, though, I can still get sweet stuff.

I DON'T like Physical Chemistry. Not because I hate the subject matter, but because I hate turning my mind to it in the midst of all this other stuff going on. I've reached the point now where I'm saying "Screw the homework, I'll take a B." We'll see. I do the bare minimum and get right back on with life after class. Ugh.

I like taking pictures. Freezing and preserving one instant of time lets you get sweet effects and makes stuff look really cool.

I like American Eagle--coolest clothes I know of, and they have some good clearances.

Daisy! Of course! Heh, every day the wonders of her cuteness are as fresh as the day we got her.

I really really like the gospel of John. The dialogues are just stunning. What Jesus says, and the situations He said it in, are just riveting. And the Pharisees are so crazily contrary to everything they purported to stand for, it just shows the utter hopelessness of the human situation without God opening our hearts. Ah, it's an amazing gospel, and I like focusing on Jesus Himself, the person, in whatever comes up in life.

OK, enough. Still have 5 of 8 homework problems to do before 6pm tomorrow :-P These are busy days, future self. I feel like there is no time whatsoever during the week, but I'm also starting to apply the rigorous discipline and prioritization of work to home, and it yeilds surprising results.

Oh, and I also enjoy working out, even if it's just knee exercises, push-ups and thera-band stuff up in my room. The muscular effort feels great, and, I dunno . . . it's just nice to not be anemic. I'll never be a beast, but at least I'm not "without form and void" :-P

--Present Self :-)

Workend of Week

I was there from Thursday afternoon till Monday morning.

We built two beeeg subwoofer cabinets.

We built most of 8 sturdy sections of stage.

We ate bags and bags of chips, bottles and bottles of pop, and bags and bags of candy. And several great hearty meals graciously and generously prepared my Mom #2 (Thank you Mrs. Hoffman!).

We practiced fiercly on Sunday and our band knit together in deep ways that night.

We just worked really hard and really long! My jeans are coated in wood glue, my jacket is choked with sawdust, my body is drooping from late nights and strenuous days, my expectations are missing hang-out time with friends, my head is bursting with concert prep, my second house and second family are seeming ever more like home and brothers and parents . . . and I'm going back Friday afternoon :-)

Once again, check Flickr for pictures. They will give you a good idea of the chronology and events of the weekend. At least go see me drilling into my ear and check out the slick-looking sub cabs :-)

I will journal some chronological details in the next few days to bring this trip to distinction in my future memories, but for now, this really sums it up. Go look at the pictures!

--Clear Ambassador

Update from the co-op

Some news from work:

• Last Friday I sent my 150th email of the semester.
• Today I stapled the best staple I've ever stapled.
  No joke! I had removed a premature staple and was now restapling it correctly. But I never like the gaping holes left behind a rescinded staple, so I tried to line it up the new one to go in the same spot (always hard to do). *Squint* . . ~aim~ . . . #chunk# ..I looked at it, blew away any stray flecks, and breathed aloud to the listening stacks of papers and the watching computer screen, "I dare say that's the finest I've ever stapled." My friend, a forensic engineer could not tell that manifest had been stapled twice!! *sigh* I can now retire at the top of my profession.
• The best part about work this Friday is that it won't be!
  (Meaning I'm taking Friday off to go up to Akron and get ready for Saturday's big concert.)

Peace

--Clear Ambassador

Those who want it too much...

Right now I'm seriously butting up against discouragement and hopelessness. For the last few days, building on the last few weeks and months, I've seen lack everywhere I turn: I go to work and fight my confounding laziness; I go hang out with folks from Church and see my cold unfriendliness and disconnection from people; I go home at night and see a room full of stuff mocking me for not cleaning it up and taking care of it; I go to class and see tight social circles that I am utterly removed from; I wake up in the morning cursing myself for staying up hours and hours too late and sleeping an hour later than I'd hoped; I hear music, and my heart cries because I can't make music that good; I go downstairs to record, and walk away deeply frustrated by the limitations of my equipment and mostly the grinding limitations of my musical abilities and skills; I look in the mirror and see the blackish-blue below my eyes and a face covered with zits; I talk to Dad, and I see a life that should be strong and upright for God, and is instead hunched over like I am now in my chair, corroding away in its own feelings and neglecting what's of true importance.

The challenge is to look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now lifted up at the right hand of the Father (Hebrew 12:1-2, roughly). This is true. And it can make me happy, or joyful. But still these areas seem to go on unaddressed, and I wonder right now about the overall state of my life. Still, it's true.

Something I've seen poignantly lately is a life principle, a staple of good stories (and probably an ancient Chinese proverb :-P): Those who want it too much can't have it. I always think of Hank the Cowdog on this topic, especially that night in the house when Little Alfred was going to give him a strip of bacon, and he tries so hard to get it that he wakes up the parents, they go skittering into another room to hide, the bacon disappears, and Drover ends up chomping it down. Hank craves the bacon like none other, but he's so calculating and (falsely) smart in getting it that he screws it up, and quiet, dumb little Drover (who isn't nearly as dumb as he or Hank thinks) opportunistically and simply nabs it.

This analogy doesn't cover all situations, but you get the idea I hope. I want to travel the world. Reading Kayte Bell's accounts of her times in Cairo right now has made my heart ache and yearn for the rich, challenging, paradigm-shifting experiences she writes about. I so wish I was that kind of person, that I had done such things. Semester at Sea could have been like that, but I conducted myself in semi isolation the whole time, both from my shipmates and from the people in the countries I visited (Getting back to that coldness and disconnection I mentioned above). Basically, I want to travel so badly that I can't imagine God actually letting it happen, 'cause I'd go nuts with pride and idolatry over it. And even from a humanistic point of view, I'd be trying to make myself into something, trying to prove something to myself and others... I don't think I would enjoy it and enter in to it like I should.

Ugh. I'm always up above stuff, looking, thinking, analyzing, calculating...and that seems to take a lot of things away from me, even as it brings some benefits. It's just hard for me to enter in to almost anything--joking with people, chilling with a group, traveling somewhere, recording music... All are stunted by the intelligence and analysis that are trying so hard to procure them!

The spiritual version of this is basically that when we seek our own way, for pride, selfishness, idolatry and self-glorification, we screw everything up, we can't enjoy what we craved so much, we mar God's gifts, and we ram up into God's resistance of the proud. The only solution, the only place I can look around here that doesn't lead me to despair, the way out that the World doesn't know, is to just drop your pride and your quest for glory. Why do I want to travel? Because I deeply admire those who have traveled and lived in other countries and I want to admire myself that way. Why do I want to be a popular, cool, person in groups? Because I'm not like that, and I think people who are like that are way cool, and I want to be way cool myself. Why do I want to record great music down in my basement? Because I have an almost mystical wonder at the people and processes who make the music that stirs my soul, and I want to be the object of that kind of wonder myself. Every one of these areas roots from me trying to make much of myself. Period.

All around me I see people getting and enjoying what I really really want. There are more examples even than I have given here. But I am coveting my neighbor's things, I'm worshipping another god before God Almighty, and I'm wishing to be worshipped myself. I think I'm feeling the weight of God's resistance right now, and my bright mind also sees clearly the worldly wisdom that says that those who want it too much can't have it. Or, put more simply, "too smart for your own good." (Though that brings into question the validity of the purported smartness, methinks.)

I see the solution, but still I struggle to let this glorious picture of myself, which is rooted deep deep in my soul, come crashing down. What's left of me is a piece of lazy, unimpressive, unaccomplished, unskilled and unadmired crap. But dangitall, that's what I am (till I see Christ and so become like Him, hallelujah!), and it's frikkin' not about me! Don't you see that, idiot? Geez. So I return to a prayer I came up with earlier this year, and that apparently I haven't been praying nearly enough :-)

Lord, help me to enjoy You making much of Yourself.

--Clear Ambassador

Making the many pay for the mistakes, malice, or muttonheadedness of the few.

That is a ubiquitious part of current America which loads our everyday lives with inconvenience, impersonality, uncommonsense, and an insipid, barely-tangible hostility.

A few children get hurt on metal-bar playground equipment. Some in the normal line of playing, some because they were being idiots. So now we have bulbous plastic playgrounds with staticy slides and toned-down apparati. Every kid in America pays for the injury of a few. Every kid's playground is made a little tamer and blander to guard against the possibility of a few getting hurt.

A few callous fools deface the beautiful hot water pools in a national park. Now every one of the millions of visitors who see that pool each year are kept back 20 feet from its edge. Gone is the simplicity and direct experience of staring into the pool from right next to it. All are held back because of the crimes of a very few.

Email accounts are now a battle against spam, balancing the convenience of keeping a certain account with the ever-increasing amount of junk mail that arrives as time goes by. The spammers (who even ARE theses people????) deleteriously affect the email experience of every user, every day.

A final example is one I am very aware of: On a chair in my boss's office at the chemical plant sits a 8-inch tall stack of printed-out federal regulations. These are merely the applicable selections from the full pool of regs that is available online. Every chemical plant in the nation must follow these myriad rules, and failure to do so is unflinchingly treated as an intended crime, because of abuses of materials handled by plants in the past. Because of the inconsiderate and illadvised actions of plant personnel long in the past, the production of any chemical is saddled by a money-sucking, resource-leeching barrage of stringent regulations. Common sense can not be relied on, because the few people who decided not to use it have brought great penalties to the entire plant for which they worked. Tasks are dumbed-down to an infantile level and insultingly-basic checklists and procedures must be mutely followed, because one mistake has the chance of wreaking devastating havoc on the entire workforce. The chance may literally be a million to one (a sufficiently-large crystal of benzoyl peroxide somehow surviving in a drum of liquid, which could ignite, given the perfect combination of placement and a spark, creating a state-reportable process fire), but the weight of bureaucratic legal penalties that would fall from that eventuality make the "risk" not worth taking.

Our nation has reached a level of prosperity that allows us the luxury of preventing these small-percentage injuries, dangers and problems. But our trump-all concern for the mere possibility that someone could get hurt, or an accident happen again, robs our citizens of the responsibility of exercising their minds to protect themselves and consider their neighbors. We are raising a nation of blame-shifting, irresponsible, victimized, hyper-cautions dumb people, not forced to think for themselves, lest perhaps, oh dear god, they mess up!!

Not all these precautions are bad. Airbags are a very sensible way to cushion the unavoidable forward motion of humans in suddenly-stopped cars. It is indeed very bad when someone dies of asphyxiation from standing next to a nitogen-inerted tank. But what I think our nation is missing is the fact that you cannot prevent all eventualities, and the more you try to shut out, and the more improbable they are, the more freedom and responsibility you must necessarily strip from all people. There is risk to trusting people to take care of themselves, because not everyone will do it right, and sometimes they can hurt others too. But somehow there's a difference between loving our neighbors like the good Samaritan and trying to keep everybody from traveling that road to Jerusalem because there might be robbers there and they could get hurt. The philosophy of law and government seems to be legislating broad, over-compensating edicts to address and prevent specific issues and possibilities. This is not the personal care Christ commanded us to exercise. This is letting the laws do the work for us so we don't have to think or love or look at who's around us and get out of our comfort zone. Find out who's needy in your area and give from your paycheck to help them? Heck of a lot easier to just let the government take a percentage of your paycheck and dole it out nation-wide through welfare and healthcare. Trust parents to teach and care for their kids, and trust kids to learn from the knocks of life? Easier to just make plastic playgrounds so nobody can possibly get hurt.

Ultimately, life is not fair, life is not nice, and life gets people hurt, disadvantaged, and sometimes even killed. We're trying to stop that in America these days, but it can never work, and we're putting greater and greater burdens on everyone, and dumbing down our lives more and more. I fear for the future of this "soft" people, and in some ways I long for the closeness of reality that existed in older days and older cultures. Even if it means I break a leg, or am poor, or die at 30. That's life.

But I like my soft bed and salted roads and protective laws too. This is a hypothetical post, and it touches on something that I, at times, deeply long for, and get very frustrated with. I have to admit--it's easy to say all this from the comfort and safety of my middle-class suburban life. I can't say I'd think the same way if life started really knocking me, or the people I loved, around. Who knows.

This life, this country, this class, and this prosperity, is where God has placed me in His sovereign wisdom at this time. I don't want to disparrage these things and beat myself up, or others. I just want to think, and express what tugs at my heart sometimes.

--Clear Ambassador

Pure Boss Concerts

Friends, family, and fans:

Aight, here's the big news: Pure Boss, after months of productive reticence, is hitting March with a bang: three concerts in a row! If you've wanted to see us play, now is the time, and you've got 3 weekends to choose from :-) And by the way, we've got several new songs, and almost all our old ones have been vastly improved and arranged and rocked-out. Should be kickin' :-)

The gigs are as follows:

Saturday, March 11th at a YMCA in Akron (Cuyahoga Falls), evening.
We're playing a full show kicking off a newly renovated gym. The biggest show we'll be doing. The address is 544 Broad Blvd, Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221.

Friday, March 17th at an Assembly of God activity center in Akron, at 7pm.
The school at CoG is putting on a benefit concert for a Ukranian orphanage. We're the fourth band playing, and we'll be doing a 50-minute set. The address is:
859 Mull Ave.
Akron, OH 44313
(Near the I-77 White Pont/Mull Ave. exit)
Cost is $5 or a brand new article of teen clothing.

Friday March 24th at The Orange Street, a concert club in Akron.
It's an all-age venue, we're one of six bands playing, and we'll be doing a 30-minute set (rock face baby!!).
The cost is $6 at the door, doors open at 6:30, and we play around 7pm. The address is:
951 N. Main St.
Akron, OH 44310

I'd recommend the CoG benefit concert show 'cause we'll be playing a good-sized set, we'll be experienced from the previous show, and the cost will directly benefit a good cause. But any show you could make it to would be sweet :-) And by the way, Akron is 2 - 2.5 hours from Pittsburgh--a nice drive down I-76 West.

If you've got any more questions, drop an email or give me a call (412-736-1524).

Hope to see you at a show!

--John Behrens
   and
     PURE BOSS

http://www.myspace.com/pureboss
http://www.artistcollaboration.com/~pureboss

---

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aNOther practice? Sheesh!

Yep. Basically, I realized that we're headlining a full show in two weeks, and next weekend is Daniel's birthday, so it's now or never. We have a totally new setlist with three new songs, and we've gotta be tight, confident, comfortable and competent. So, the plans were laid and on Friday, with a deep breath, I passed the turn for 60 south, pulled into the right lane, and hit the highway for home #2, hoping I wasn't heading for a weekend of burned-out practice and overstretched relationships.

Short story: we didn't.

Slightly longer story: We practiced Friday, everybody else was gone at a dance show, we had mad crazy times with Nick, Josie and his friend Nate at the Chimas that night, slept long, ate Taco Bell, practiced more, practiced more, got food, hung out more at the Chimas, and I drove home.

Mentally protruding points of interest and memory:

Walking in to a house full of girls when I was expecting everybody but Steve to be gone. Then walking up the stairs and in the hall seeing Stephen, with his long mane of shoulder-length wavy hair cut down to a childish-looking mop on top. Crazy thing is...I'd gotten a haircut that week too! Poor Steve--he looks 12 now, and we pounded him endlessly on that! At least I was honest. Everybody else said it looked fine. Pfft :-P

Nick, Josie and Brian seriously acting like we were going to stop practicing at 7:30 on Friday and go hang out. I'm pretty used to dealing with vagrants and those not wishing to buckle down and work, but when Brian started taking off his guitar, I laid down the line. I hate to crack the whip, but there are times when we've gotta work to honor a comittment (playing a gig), and all joking aside, we've gotta practice. And they were cool with that, once it was made clear. Brian especially has given up a ton these last weekends to practice, and that means a lot to me and the band.

The change in Phillip from a 10-year-old little brother to the man chillin' with his man John Behrens after everybody else left. I volunteered to stay home till Scott got back from the show, and let Brian and Steve go hang out. It was just funny to see how Phillip's demeanor changed into something subtly and laughably, yet innocently, pretentious. And I was happy to hang out, play some PS1 and get some Taco Bell with him. Until we got home and for some reason he turned bratty. Then I was happy to leave the house. Ah well; he's still 10 years old :-)

It wasn't a highlight for me or Nick, but for the other guys going to the ghetto McDonalds and meeting a carful of 16-year-old girls who'd tossed them their number at Donato's was the highlight of the weekend. To my dry reasoning eyes it was ridiculously pointless, but they all spazzed out about it, and after they stood in the cold outside my car talking to them (as they sat in their car with the windows open), they spent the rest of the evening talking about it, trying to find them on myspace, talking about it more, texting their cell, and talking about it more. Pfft. I'm so disconnected from that whole scene and concept, it's kinda funny.

Watching Zoolander was sweet, especially 'cause it was Steve's first time. Such a funny movie! So many great quotes! Ahhh :-)

It wasn't so much a highlight, but it was notable: I flopped on the couch midway through Zoolander and ended up not rising from there until noon the next day. Jake (one of the Chima's dogs) was at the head of the couch, and he became my pillow for the entire night. It wasn't too comfortable, and I kept partially awaking, and my back got fairly sore, but sleep was sweet. Ooh, and I didn't brush my teeth, or take off my shoes, or even unclip my cell phone! It felt weird, but I never wanted to stir myself enough to do any of those. And so I slept on, on my breathing pillow.

The SECOND time we ran through the set on Saturday. That was the highlight for me. Steve was rested, he could breathe again (getting over a cold), we were all warmed up and practiced up, and we tore through the songs like it was summer '05 again. I just can hardly think how to describe how sweet it was. Let's look at the drum fills, since they're a good indication of how I'm playing. I toned them down so there were very few "adventurous" ones that mess up, but what I did play flowed out and pounded power into the songs. Steve even noticed them on "Straight from the Nails," which we played fantastically. My limbs were limbered up, my mind was focused, the songs were all fresh in my memory, my foot was rested, Steve's sub was pounding the air in the whole room every time I tapped the kick drum, and I sat upon my throne and commanded the drums with the swinging tips of my sticks--hickory extensions of my musical mind. Our sound was one. The bass amp throbbed, Steve lightened and loosened up once he switched back to his old bass, and Brian worked the guitar tones from my two pedals deftly. We brought the house down with "You Were Everything," hopped and danced to "Summer Song," pounded out "Northeast Tragedy," and when Steve called out "Break it down!" on "Ohio," aahhhh, it just brought a smile to my face. Sweet. Sweet like good scotch and fresh Braeburns. Sweet like deep conversation. Sweet like driving fast on an empty winding road. Sweet like putting something together and watching it actually work. Sweet like I hope and pray and cry that we can play for the actual concert. Oh please, let it go well! Please!

The other high point was probalby me and Steve and Brian hanging around the Chima's barn after dinner at Chipotle tonight and talking. We'd had a great dinner with Nick, good talking and joking, and now we were sitting around heedless of time, freezing in the night air, and sharing stories and asking questions and laughing. I really wanted to stay and watch Zoolander again with them all, but I knew I had to get home, and it was 10:30 already, so off I went. Brian and Nick are great guys, and Steve, of course, is like one of my best friends. In fact, he's probably 3rd on the list, after Daniel and Dad. Funny how that happens.

Anyway, this weekend, like the VSOP I just got, has left a deliciously sweet taste in my mouth. It was just great that Brian was a part of it all--the music, the hanging out, the talking--and that that last run-through was so good. If the sound and technical side is good at the concert, and we can somehow get well warmed-up, we are gonna rock the place and have a blast. Lord, may it be so, and Thy will be done, and thank You for this weekend! Bless church tomorrow please, and help me look to You, Jesus. Amen.

And rock on!

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