Author: substitute

nope

this was a stress management thing for him

Blake juror promoting six-song recording

LOS ANGELES – A juror who helped acquit actor Robert Blake of killing his wife is promoting a six-song recording he produced during Blake’s trial.

Roberto Emerick, 30, publicized his album, “Judgment Day,” during an appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” soon after the acquittal. Emerick said he has received hate mail from critics who accuse him of making money off Bonny Lee Bakley’s death.

“This was a stress management thing for me. This is how I was able to cope with the pressures of being a juror and not having anyone to tell about it,” he said Friday.

Emerick said he and his rock band, Mission in the Hills, recorded songs before he was summoned for jury duty. As the trial wore on, he realized he needed an outlet to express his feelings. Emerick said he rewrote and recorded new songs that focused on the trial.

The album’s title track looks at what Blake might have been thinking as he waited for jurors to reach their verdict.

Under state law, Emerick cannot receive more than $50 from the venture until at least 90 days after the trial. He plans to put the album on sale June 14 and is meanwhile offering free downloads from his band’s Web site.

“Show me all this money that I’m supposedly making,” he said.

I could fly higher than an emo

Last night was a light rain, which meant the distinctive sound of oversized yuppytrucks spinning all four wheels on wet pavement as bro guys looked for the heart of Friday night. Today is one of those beautiful scrubbed post-rain Southern California days and I’m about to go and enjoy it. A. is supposed to have dinner with me before she goes to her séance (don’t ask), and it’s always nice to see her.

I was making a mental list of things that always come up in conversations with my group of friends. So far I have:

  1. Drugs & alcohol
  2. Bad art
  3. Talking shit on other characters from the patio
  4. The same 50 stories
  5. The follies of the rich
  6. Gadgets & science
  7. Peoples’ shitty jobs

We should probably cut out #1, #3, and #4 but hey that’s us. I’ve always had a group of friends like this, starting when I was 13 or so, so it’s a comfort zone for me to have smart, bitter, self-justifying, and somewhat blocked people around. People like me.

When I was a kid, a lot of us in the house played piano. I played classical, my brother played that and a lot of ragtime, and my dad sometimes played jazz. To this day I have a nostalgic reflex response to stuff like solo Monk, and anything Scott Joplin. I think the Bach Toccata & Fugue in D Minor has more of a PTSD reflex for me, since it was my final huge performance piece before I went to college and quit playing, and it was a huge public disaster. Oddly, Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony is a lovely memory for me even though it represents a huge musical failure. When I was 12 or so I tried for a while to learn violin, and was in a youth Symphony for one season. I was a terrible, horrible, no good second violinist and it was emotionally bruising for me. I finally quit. However, I remember the amazing high of playing in in an orchestra, being INSIDE the instrument, and that symphony was our big piece.

And now, a vegetarian corn dog for me.

through the looking glass back to a time between 1988 and 1993

I feel nostalgic for being flat fucking broke, drinking cheap beer in my friends’ apartment in Glendale sitting on the floor, hanging out all night in a Persian recording studio in Van Nuys, driving to the South bay in back in Greg’s minitruck because that was the only way to get A/C, being a nighthawk at the diner at Dolores in West L.A. at 3 am reading mysteries. We ate at a hundred bad cheap restaurants and played each other records. Greg and I were inseparable, the two lonely amigos who finished each others’ sentences.

I remember sitting on my porch in Hollywood on the hottest day of the year watching a squirrel and a cat have a two hour faceoff and listening to the drug dealers whistle at each other up and down Yucca. Or buying my bus pass at the Pimps R Us check cashing joint on the boulevard and then eating bad steak ‘n’ eggs at Legends of Hollywood with Johnette Napolitano at the other end of the counter.

Sitting in a little apartment on Mammoth Avenue in Van Nuys listening to Mudhoney on a crap stereo and drinking iced down tapwater to kill the taste. Greg’s sister had a fishtank without fish in it, but with one of those aerators hooked up to a diver guy doll so it kept going up and down whacking its head on the top of the tank; existential aquarium. Half our friends were a slightly younger bunch who all worked at a record store in Glendale and didn’t know what the fuck was going on with their lives either. There was one new year’s eve party that resulted in about 3 marriages and a lot of other chaos in that group.

I saw a million bad bands for free and had a great time doing so. Crap progrock band playing in a fern bar in Calabasas; they passed out their lyrics as a libretto, sounded like Rush. Horrible series of gloom glam rock bands with superannuated guys in tight leather pants, bands all called something like Blood Red Roses or Mary’s House of Guns. An electronic dance band that had three costume changes during a half hour set in a shit nightclub, one of which involved tuxes and throwing monopoly money around while they yelled RICH KIDS, RICH KIDS!

We were on the edge of about three scenes. We knew the famous talented people kinda, and rejoiced in their success when they got signed to some record label and sent off to learn songwriting with Jane Wiedlin in a chateau or something. No one we really knew well made it big. A lot of people got eaten up by the music thing.

And hours and hours and hours on the bus, the thing no one rides in L.A., with me and all the other poor people and the very old and very young and insane and handicapped and drunk and everyone else who didn’t fit. Buses smelled like sweat & vomit, someone was always upset. Waiting an hour for a transfer to get another 15 minute ride. Untreated depression fit in really well on the bus; no one cared that I was unkempt and smelly or occasionally weeping.

Going down to the newsstand on Cahuenga at 3 am because I couldn’t sleep, watching the newsstand guy yell at the men in the porn section to get out, you’ve been in there long enough. I’d come back with four or five magazines to read during my meals alone on the boulevard.

All my friends were yuffies, people who should have gone on to middle class success but we dropped out or they were musicians or they had a big problem with the head or maybe there just weren’t any jobs because it was the early 90s and we were all awash in homeless people and layoffs and the death of opportunity.

But we could still go out to see each other play the crap tuesday night slot at some bar and then spend too long at a coffee shop having the pancake special and way too damn much bad coffee and arguing happily about nothing. Or spending three hours eating cheap thai food and drinking our own beer at some hollywood thai joint. And then a long, cold walk back home to lie on an uncovered mattress and wait for a little sleep before that part time job.

We were all either trying to make something of ourselves or kill time fucking dead, or maybe both at once.

I hated it at the time, but part of me misses it. And I really miss being Greg’s right arm.

this is probably the only TV show where the hosts’ bios mention urination.

It’s the dLife show!

I used to say that everything in America is eventually viewed as a lifestyle choice. I should amend this to “everything that has a targetable audience who purchases known products is eventually viewed as a lifestyle choice”.

I sincerely hope that the material on the program is helpful and educational and makes people healthier.

That aside, it’s increasingly weird to me that everything that happens to us — literally everything — is now represented by people laughing and having a good time.