Monday, June 18, 2007

Bad Luck for Robman

Many of you out there are probably wondering….what’s the deal with Rob’s recent string of bad luck? I heard some whack shit has been happening to him lately. Quite lamentably my friends, this is true. Let me elaborate.

1. My iPod breaks:
Two Thursdays past, I’m sitting at my desk, merrily avoiding work and listening to my Ipod, when the damn thing freezes. Just stops, mid-song. Very anti-climactic, actually. I always assumed that my iPod would meet its end a bit more conclusively: in pieces on the pavement after a foolhardy drunken spill, or maybe in the depths of Spreckels Lake after a Christian Okoye-style fumble in the park. Instead, the damn thing stops what it’s doing, for no reason at all. What a piece.

2. My car gets busted into
It’s Saturday night and I’m out on the town with Jimmy “Southbound”, peeting, govreeting, and checking out newly purchased flying V’s until 4AM or so. Upon awakening the next afternoon, as we head to Potrero for breakfast I become aware of the fact that my car window has been smashed. Now…I fully understand the social context of this event. It’s part of our deal with the crackheads and degenerates that we get to live and park in areas of great consumer-based convenience, and they, in turn, occasionally break into our cars and throw the contents of the glove everywhere, while still managing to miss the stereo located therein. But---that being said….this was not what had occurred. This scoundrel didn’t even go inside my car. He apparently had no interest in ripping off my stereo, or even in snatching up my car-stored goodies (which include a multitude of CDs scratched into un-playability by my treatment of them as baseball cards, and various sweat-stained Chop accouterments left there by my considerate and tidy-minded bandmates). I’ve had my share of criminal urges but mindless destruction was never one of them. Fucking delinquents.

3. I wreck on my bike
Well, actually, it wasn’t my bike. It was the company bike. People at my job complained enough about having to walk stuff to different buildings that they managed to commandeer themselves a bicycle. Its intended purpose is the work-related portage of tissue samples and lab supplies but at the time of my shit-eating, I was doing no such thing. Instead I was coasting around campus on a sunny afternoon (Monday) enjoying an abundantly tarnished view of the bay. Interesting thing is, I wasn’t even doing anything particularly foolish on the bike. You see, it’s one of those fold-it-up-and-take-it-on-the-train bikes. I have no doubt that when train-commuting from Vacaville (or some other God-forsakenly distant place that people still seem to commute from) having a bike which folds up to the size of a 486 computer tower is quite convenient, but the design’s utility eludes me when the handlebars opt to fold 90 degrees inward as I’m riding along at a reasonable clip on relatively flat ground. Luckily, I found the pavement to be warm and forgiving, and I made it away with a few minor scrapes. The worst of it was that my palm was all muffed up, which seriously inhibited my high-fiving ability for a week or so.

4. My guitar amp breaks
The day before we leave to gig up north, we’re at practice and my poor little amp is making this God-awful din up and above even Dr. Cock’s Pure Noise Machine Synth Monster 7000. A couple Fezzik-style jogs to the frame caused the noise to stop for a while, but it’s clearly getting worse as the night progresses. By the time Tits is polishing off his third Red Bull, the amp no longer responds to repeated pounding. It then also becomes clear that the speaker itself is ripped (a technically unrelated, though possibly correlated, problem). Some amply funded guitar players would revel at this chance, I’m sure. An excuse to purchase some piece of vintage wonderment they’d been eyeing for a year on eBay. Not me. I don’t know what to get. I haven’t been eyeing anything. But clearly, this problem needs a solution. I guess I’ll be keeping my ears peeled for that magic combination of growling midrange and super-70’s gain that made the Peavey so damn special.

Groin-grabbingly yours,
Rob