.
So here's an excellent band I've been meaning to tell you about for like a couple of years now, and a bit of a look at two of their albums …

Yeah, there's a few "band I've been meaning to tell you about", but this one is still intact and they're young(er than the others) and super talented so there should be a lot of long-lasting mileage here (hopefully!). Joker's Republic deserve attention. They're a trio from New Jersey and you should buy their music—all or most of it is on BandCamp. You should see them on the tour they just kicked off last night at Scottish Dave's in Clinton, CT. They're playing This is Not Croyden Fest in Bensalem, PA Saturday 4/25/26.
((ooops, I didn't finish & post in time, so Scottish Dave's was 2 nights ago and they already performed at Croyden earlier today (Saturday). But they're "hanging out all weekend" so maybe you can still see them in some capacity))
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The first time I saw Joker's Republic, I think it was August or September 2023 , at the Agonizer's CD release party. It was at the Cellar on Treadwell. I'd never heard them before, but Danielle—who'd been talking me into every $10 ska / punk / ska-punk show within a 45-minute drive from me but who was also NOT there that particular night—told me they were awesome and that I was going to love them. 

Danielle can say that about a lot of bands when she tells me about shows with bands I'm not familiar with, and sometimes she's more right than others. I mean, I tend to like things. I like liking things. And I really like live music. So she's never wrong. But sometimes she's REALLY right. 

She was really very GDMF right on this.

For that first show, I remember standing there next to Phred, and there was this moment a few songs in when I was thinking, "fuuuuck, this band is fuckin' awesome," and right around then was when Phred said something like, "wow, this band really brought it tonight." 

So, yay, OK, it's not just me, they really are really good. Phred's a musician among other things and somehow his 2¢ helped validate it & seal the deal. Hey, I like what I like and know what I like, but the autism zone of my neurospiciness means I still can't help looking around to see how others are reacting. Sometimes IDGAF by choice, but the awareness is still there.

Their set that night was excellent, but not being familiar with them at that time, I can't name every song they did. I'm 99% certain "Gin and Tonic" was in there (hey, available for free at BandCamp), and "Politics Still Belong in Punk Rock." Two from their album "Necessary Evil" and two of my favorites for sure.

At some point, they let the audience choose for a cover song, "Offspring or NOFX," and it was overwhelmingly NOFX. Phred again expressed being impressed by their choice of a "deep cut" and doing a hell of a job with it. I don't know NOFX well enough to remember what it was, but it did sound fucking excellent. 

I should note that Phred recalls none of this. When we saw them again on 12/27/25 at Spring-Heeled Jack's Holiday Romp & Stomp at Space Ballroom in Hamden, CT, he "wasn't sure" if he'd seen them before. Phred has stated many a time that his memory has always been shit, though. Phred recalls none of a lot of things. I should feel grateful that he remembers me after being friends for ±35 years LOL.

So, after their set I go to their table and ask for Necessary Evil, the name of their newest CD they had at the time. Whoever it was asked me which one, thinking I meant one of a few different t-shirts. And I was like , "oh, no, I mean the CD. I need the music" or something like that.

There are not a lot of albums that I've bought that demand being listened to multiple times a day every day for several weeks. This notably happened in the 90s when I first fell down the Mighty Mighty Bosstones rabbithole. In the following weeks, Necessary Evil claimed a place on that list.

I think if I'd loaned Phred the CD I bought, that night would've stuck in his head better. 

There is something to be said about an album that comes along at just the right time. Necessary Evil came along at just the right time for me. Needing new music, still slogging through the loss of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, needing an album to fall in punk-love with.

Necessary Evil starts with the brilliantly self-aware title track, which puts their talent on full display from the get-go. 

"This song's been written
Four-hundred eighty million two-hundred fifty times before 
By everyone who's ever learned to play guitar. I'm not original
But it feels so fresh to me…It feels so fresh to me"

But it IS original, even with the hat-tip to ska-punk history – a trumpet riff guest played by Buddy from Less Than Jake that evokes Rudie Can't Fail from the Clash (which is possibly my favorite song of all time and absolutely why my orange boy cat is name Rudie). 

I tried a bit of it from video I took at a show, but YouTube wants to make it a "short" because it's vertical, and weebly doesn't want to embed that like it usually would something from YouTube. So, anyway, they played Scottish Dave's in August 2024 and their bassist couldn't make it and so they opted for an acoustic set, complete with kazoo because taking yourself too seriously doesn't help and they still, IMO, "brought it."

Here's a link to view it from google photos (I feel so technologically defeated, I used to be able to beat all these stupid things at their little games and find a way (without having to pay more at my webhost for moar features & shit), but I've been away from it too long…).
(Or hey, I embedded it from Insta, just use the right arrow to get past the photo to the videos (two of them, I split it in half for some reason).

Lorelei from last night. Not the first song I've ever heard by that name, but these days it's my favorite one. 

So, Saturday 10/18 was my 5th time seeing the Kilograms perform live. The first was when I WON a ticket to Supernova Ska Festival 2024. The next chance I got was October 2024, in Boston with Big D and the Kids Table— the same day that one of my other special interests had an event, but I managed to pull it off and pulled a few other friends along with me. The next was at Space Ballroom in New Haven, December 2024 with Spring-Heeled Jack, Mephiskapheles, and also 9th Wave with my friend Phred on drums, omg how cool was that? Then there was a lull for opportunities (during which the album was released), until this past Wednesday at Scottish Dave's, where CT-SKA hosts so many shows and I just wish the venue were closer to my area of CT (near Hartford)…and had AC for the heat waves. I don't mind getting sweaty at a show, but good grief, that one very hot & humid summer's day show I saw there made my hot flashes feel like a breezy beach. And I lived in Savannah for 2+ years.  ;)  If you read this, Scottish Dave, it's meant with great love and gratitude for all the hospitality.  

Anyway… The most recent show was at the Middle East with the Pietasters, the Doped-Up Dollies, Raging Nathans, Cuidado. All in all a very memorable night, but the Kilograms absolutely stole it. 

There is a shared sincerity, integrity, and passion with this group that is a joy to see and an inspiration to feel, particularly in these weird-ass modern dark ages. 

They're outstanding accomplished musicians bringing their unique experiences to create a new, unusual, and excellent experience, overflowing with soul and heart and hella creative chemistry. And they're also all-around good people who will post a public invite to a pre-show meet & greet and start conversations with folks. Between songs they'll also tell all the radical right hater-types (fascists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, sexists, etc…) to GTFO, and remind you to Support Trans Kids. REALLY good people. <3 

So, if you get a chance, GO SEE THEM. Maybe you'll see Sammy K's FCK NZS guitar (it didn't make it past the first song in the most recent show due to technical difficulties). You'll definitely see Jay Duckworth bouncing all over the stage. And if you look close enough you'll see Joe still wears the beaded friendship bracelet our friend Caiti gave him at Supernova Ska Festival 2024 (she made one for me, too. It's says "SKA*CAT" and some of beads GLOW IN THE DARK which is a ridiculous love of mine, so it gives me SO MUCH JOY and I wear it to every show!). I wouldn't expect to see Joe TIE HIS SHOE during a song & hardly miss an important beat, but every show has it's delightful surprises.  O_O

So anyway, I love these guys and their music. Someone please fix the still-scrambled white matter connections that used to make it less hard for me to socialize with people I don't yet know!  I would like to converse more, and be more clued in to cues in a timely manner. 

I need more practice, or something. 

Of course, I might fare better if sizable events from my different special interests would spread themselves out more across the calendar. This happened last year, too, with the Big D & the Kids Table / The Kilograms show the same day as the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. 

So this Saturday despite my best efforts and doing pretty well for a few weeks, there wasn't enough brain space to pre-load all the New England Horror Writer content while leaving enough free for my ska-punk Bosstones buddies conversations (but I did get, like, MANY names right, if slightly delayed. That's a win!).  So brain did a little bit of each, which I fear wasn't quite enough to come off as less than a little weird in both environments.  ;)   But moderately weird is better than really really weird, right? I think most folks who know me a bit "get it" and hopefully don't mind so much.

ANYWAY: Favorite songs (out of all, not just Beliefs & Thieves) include but are NOT limited to:

Can't be Beat 
Drop that Guff
Beliefs & Thieves
The Hoodie Song
Faith & Love
No Reaction *
Lean on Sheena **
I'm gonna stop now because I'm on the verge of just listing ALL their songs

* If you're enjoying the rabbit hole so far, check out Joe Gittleman's solo title that helped get me through that terrible 2024, Hold Up, ** as well as his other non-Bosstones band, Avoid One Thing. 

So much musicianship, skill, heart, and soul here. Check it out. 

If you see the relatively short snippets of "ok," "not ok," "REALLY not ok" and "ok but not really ok" facebook posts from me and wonder about the details, where here's a bit more info about the how I'm really doing picture. 

I'm working part-time. It works out ok. I can do it from home and it doesn't usually suck up too much brain or really any creativity. I like it pretty well and even love some aspects of it, and it does good things for the brain. It doesn't pay all the bills, but it does most of the most important stuff. I am not able to do that job full time. I tried last Spring, and while it kinda went ok as far as the work goes, everything else in life was all but completely off the table. I don't think I did any dishes for like 4 weeks. And then it took at least 2 weeks after going back to part-time before I kinda sorta resumed what had been passing for normal functionality (*for me, which is a low bar). And that wasn't even FULL full time. It did 30-35 hours/ week for 4 weeks. It was not a good time. So, day job has to stay part-time.

But since day-job takes up very little creativity, I can work on art or writing in some of the remaining time. It uses different brain and contributes greatly to the "positive feedback loops" that my brain most needs, so the cumulative effort cost of that + day job part time is lower than the effort cost of day-job at full time. And when art pays, it pays a lot more. I've been very fortunate to bring in commissions (combined with graphics & video gigs) with increasing consistently for a bit now, even though the pace at which I can get them done wobbles a bunch & varies widely. 

Great, right?  Well.  So here's the thing. 

Not a lot of people know, but I suspect many could guess, that I've been on medicaid for some years now, during the worst of the brain injury and the very slow and very wobbly ramp to current functionality. And yeah, I was on SNAP ("food stamps") for much of that, too. 

With that consistent extra artstuff income, I have edged above the medicaid qualification line (I haven't qualified for SNAP for quite a while now). I still qualify for tax credit / subsidy towards an individual healthcare plan, but even low premium / low co-pay is beyond a budget that is still struggling to handle the rates increase on electricity. Going from no-copay to "just $20" for my once-a-week therapist (yeah, that's $80/month if you math, on top of the premium and any other health stuff that might come up) gave me a helluva few meltdowns. Oh, and all my prescriptions have co-pays now, too, to the tune of $85+/month total. And that's after my awesome pharmacist has searched high & low & far & wide for discounts & coupons. I am looking into direct fill options to see if that can save a little $.

Multiple people suggested going to the therapist every other week to reduce the costs, but I don't think the world could handle more unsupported meltdowns (I KNOW that I can't). 

I am doing VERY well COMPARATIVELY speaking, but it does't take much to trigger a meltdown, whether it be water in the basement again, not getting invited to a thing, or dealing with the health insurance options that changed from 2023 to 2024, it's been weeks since I've had a week without a meltdown. Unless some of y'all want to volunteer to handle the off-weeks' meltdowns, it's not viable. And then there's TRYing to return to the big stuff & EMDR I was working on BEFORE the accident happened. I'm a mess. 

I have wonderful amazing supportive friends and I am deeply grateful for & indebted to, but they have their own things going on and boundaries and some things are really truly therapist-only, and much of what I need is not just someone to listen. And no, some cheaper or free online therapist is not viable, I switched last year and it took like 6 sessions just to get her up to speed on most of the lay of the land. And I'm picky about therapists. I need way more than another set of eyes / an objective perspective on life. I have old traumas I'm trying to (re-)process. In the years before the accident, I tried a few therapists to work on that stuff, and it took a bit to find someone that was right. I'd rather switch cars while speeding down the highway than add a personnel change to my current mess

Have I mentioned all that stress & meltdowns seriously impacts my ability to get those artstuff commissions done, AND also impacts my day-job capabilities, not to mention getting to *my* personal art & writing projects… ?

Somewhere in there, and medicaid woulda covered it or at least appeared like it was going to, I got referred to ADHD / neuropsych testing, the theory being that with a better sense of what was up on my brain, I could develop better strategies to ease the load and level up and be capable of moar. I even had appointments all lined up for the end of last year, but had to cancel them when the insurance changed. Sure, a quickie gofundme might've covered it, but at the very least, it seemed prudent to wait so it would all apply towards 2024's deductible. 

And so that's where it's at. The Amazing Heather wondered very quickly if a gofundme should be the answer to the ADHD testing. And then more recently, tallied up the expected costs of my healthcare throughout the year. And the Amazing Cousin Amy also offered to help with some costs. So there will very probably be a gofundme thing about that stuff relatively soon, and so the immediate short term and mid-term extra red-alerts will probably be yellow alerts soon enough. Then maybe long-term possibilities can find their way to the table. In the meantime…

With the alleviation of some of the worry over the things that are the scotch tape & rubberbands & paperclips holding me together, I can maybe figure out how to sort out the Oranges' health care needs - They're a month overdue for routine shots, and as they're turning 16 and the end of February, they need full senior cat test panels. And there's enough elder kitty "up" with them that they might need additional tests or imaging. 

Can I just say I hate this? That I can be doing SO much better and still be SO far behind? To have had SO MUCH HELP already and still NEED SO MUCH MORE? I have climbed SO FAR out of a VERY DEEP HOLE, and there's still SO MUCH MORE HOLE ahead of me. Someone keeps kicking sand & rocks & twigs from above, too. 

This is not where I thought I would be as I muddle through my mid-50s. Particularly with the suspicion that there may be no combination of therapy & prescriptions & diagnoses that will ever really get me over the functionality line to actually manage the minimum requirements of getting by.

Here's another picture of my cats. XOXO & peace. 

Edit/Addition a few weeks later:  After some further healthcare plan adjustments and financial shifts, things are less overwhelming and bleak, tho' still needing some assistance. It's more finite, and I'm still gathering data before doing anything further or more specific. So the cats' needs are more pressing now while "my" kerfuffle is sort of leveling out.

First: A moment to honor all the Cee-yoU-Next-Tuesday bombs I cut from this, even though I did not come up with an adequate replacement. 

I have listened to a few songs from the New Band formed by the Former Lead Singer of my Favorite Band. No links. No oxygen for this, beyond this post, which I do not intend to even share on my social media. Not sure who I'll tell at all.

I wanted to give it a chance. I felt like I owed it to… I don’t know all the years and good times and other songs, all the things the previous music got me through, particularly the worst of the past 7 years, to see where it goes from here. I mentally committed myself to giving it at least one listen, and forming an opinion, that I might or might not share. 

Before I get into it, I have a few things to say. 

JesusFuckingKentuckyFriedOriginalRecipeChristDeliveringGlutenFreePizzaOnAUnicycle, am I really grateful that I ended up just smart enough to have much smarter friends to learn from and glean wisdom from. 

An atmosphere of knowledge and thought and perspective and context makes a huge difference. Doctor friends. Health department friends. NIH friends. MFA friends. Writer and creator friends who do deep research for the sake of a story. Statisticians, social psychologists, analysts, researchers, nerds and geeks of all shades, some rising and shining to heights within their specialties, and some of them graduates of some dang impressive schools. 

Yes my friends circles expand well beyond there to so very many different walks of life, but the point here is having smart and trustworthy folks in the circle, around for the heavier duty things that my BFA in Illustration and MFA in Sequential Art don’t provide much insight into. Hey, some of those friends might look to me for some technical details about the materials of painting, or a chunk of trivia about an artist or movement or, y’know, painted comics. 

Some folks like to cry elitism or something at that, some soundbite word pushed to sow doubt and undermine trust in knowledge and experts, but if someone’s performing surgery, or diagnosing a weird disease, or figuring out the really weird shit about how brains work, it helps if they’re smart AF and/or educated AF. 

I – WE – don’t have to know exactly how every damned little thing in life works because others have done the work. Some can even explain it, if we want to listen well and long enough. But that takes time that not all of us are able to willing to invest.

Anyway, I’m grateful because otherwise, well, I don’t think it’d be that otherwise, but I can, from where I stand, if I squint real hard, almost see the appeal of going down some of those anti-stuff rabbitholes. 

We’re hardwired to look for patterns, to try to piece things together, to try to make connections in the ongoing quest to make sense of the world. And sometimes, we see things that aren’t actually there. Jesus toast. Mars rock face. Bunny clouds. Drunk octopus fisticuffs hooks. 


So if you’re looking for a pattern, you’ll find one if you want it enough. Even if it’s not actually there, and especially if someone who you believe knows more than you whispers in your ear that it’s there. And very especially if it makes you feel like you’re now in-the-know on something SO MANY PEOPLEZ don’t know about. Especially effective if there’s some brewing disagreement between you and your other friends.

Like snake oil salesfolk of times past, they spout just enough… sciency-ness? science-ish-icity? science-sounding-not-actual-science and/or much-abridged-science and/or egregiously microscopically cherry-picked data to make it sound plausible to any random armchair wannabe-expert. They throw in a few scary words like “experimental” and distill it into sound bites and one-line “arguments” like “worse than the disease” for trolls to spread as they LOL at those who “expect cloth to protect you from a deadly virus” (yeah, I saw someone actually using that to mock) and waving their hands over “big pharma.” 

I won’t argue that big industries of any kind aren’t problematic or shouldn’t be watched, but much of what’s gone around the past few years is 2nd-grade-bully-level logic playing on subconscious fears, at best. At best. At worst, well, we’re still going down that deep deep rabbithole. 

I acknowledge that there are a range of legit reasons & concerns for some to not get one vaccine or other. I know a few. I further won’t argue that the vaccine didn’t give some people a particularly rougher time than it did the vast majority. I know a couple. That stuff should be studied and something done for those affected. Statistics still speak to its effectiveness, and the more vulnerable in our communities make it important during a pandemic for those who CAN get vaccinated to do so. To take care of each other. Or get thee to a mountain or deep forest or desert while said pandemic gets more under control. 

Y’know, while deniers and anti-maskers held rallies, spreading the virus far and wide and counteracting much of the good that masks do, then used that as proof against the effectiveness of masks. 

JesusFuckingKentuckyFriedExtraCrispyChristJugglingFlamingPoopOnAVespa.

Like, dudes, you’ve seen what medical staff do and wear going into the ER, right? Washing your fucking hands is a protection against deadly viruses, and so is a scrap of material in the right place. It doesn’t guarantee you won’t get or spread anything, just like seat belts & airbags don’t guarantee you won’t get hurt in a car accident, or a helmet doesn’t guarantee you won’t get a concussion, or fuck, a condom doesn’t guarantee the spermy little swimmers won’t get where they’re not wanted. But you use these tools to reduce risk. To add a layer of protection. I mean, most of us “get” that, right?  Right?

But somewhere along the line Americans grew to expect everything to work exactly right to full efficacy and complete guaranteed protection and no side risks either and “RIGHT NOW WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG” and it better be on the dollar menu, too. An order of large fries with that, please. “Oh, it’s ready? Well, that didn’t take long, how did that happen so fast? That can’t be good…”

Psssst - that’s not how shit works. Shit is complex. The world is complex. Civilization is complex. Sometimes simplifying a few factors in an explanation can help with understanding, and sometimes, well, it just makes a fucking mess.

Anyway, on to the music…

As an artist, I can’t stand folks who say bands or writers or actors or whoever shouldn’t be political. That’s horseshit. They should write and sing whatever inspires them. So we all know who they are, and we should believe them when they tell us.

The first song they posted, I listened to it once that day, had some brief thoughts, and intended to listen again and review it by the end of that weekend.

Instead, my computer died, and procuring a replacement consumed any extra time I might have had to do anything even remotely like blog. Then things got way busier, and doing the listening & posting started to feel like homework I didn’t want to do, then I didn’t get back to it until today, with more songs from them lurking and an event at the Punk Rock Museum in Vegas on their calendar. 

Well. So, that first single: Dead Language. I found the tune catchy and well put together. Something I might happily sing along with in my car. 

Unfortunately, the message smacks of, bluntly, and I fucking hate to say it, “old man yells at cloud.” 

For decades previous generations have tried to blame various societal ills on “whatever the kids are into these days.” Cars, radio, comic books, rock & roll, TV, D&D, video games, Internet, smartphones, social media - they’ve all spent some time targeted & demonized by those who tend to only see the bits that support their critique. These criticisms like to ignore the positive contributions and inflate and misinterpret the negatives.

I hope I’m not the only one who sees irony in here: That what they’re criticizing - Internet/ social media - has contributed to the spreading disease of alternative-f@c†s, big lies, anti-vaxx misinformation, and conspiracy inklings - including some of the very things they’re aligning with. 

Anyway, I don’t know what else to say about it, except as someone turning 54 in the near future, I am fighting like heck against ever being that kind of Aging Person. I might not fully “get” it or participate myself, but I will try to understand the uses & impact both positive and negative for any future tech or culture things that strike me as weird as the world gets weirder and often more wonderful.

Song 2:

The song Where Were You? breaks my heart, as it’s a song of lost friendship and burning bridges. My heart goes out to anyone who would feel that way. 

I find the lyrics “The rearview mirror caught my eye /  So goodbye to everyone in it”  depressing as fuck, particularly on the other side of all the love and joy I experienced in the crowd at Bosstones shows. 

A rift like that leaves an ideal spot for some other something or someone to shove in a crowbar and pry apart permanently. And part of me wonders if maybe that first friend did try to be there, but someone wasn’t listening… The world may never know. But as a writer, I can’t help but try to imagine the unseen dots to connect. Because sometimes people don’t want the help they need.

I can’t listen to it. The music, again, is catchy & competent, but not irresistable. The sort of song that if the lyrics hit right, I’d stick it out and let it grow on me. But they don’t and I can’t.

My heart does break for anyone really feeling that way. I can empathize, but not actually relate. My friends were there through the mTBI / post-concussion syndrome hole of helplessness & spiraling depression that occupied a good chunk of the past 7 years. Some friends weren’t there, for all kinds of reasons or just boundaries. I don’t hold it against any of them. There were plenty who were there, well above and beyond, and I’ll always be grateful. So I have no desire to try to sing along with this. I listened, and I'm sorry for you. I hope this song helped you. I hope you find a way to fix what got broken. That's as far as I can go.

Song 3: 

And now we get to the third song they posted, the one that I could hardly get through. The one I draw the line at. I’m not giving their stuff another second of my listening. 

This song belongs in the dictionary as a top-notch example of what the kids these days call “cringe.” I kept pausing, it was so fucking cringe. 

“Where did Liberty Go? is the cringiest “later career” thing out of a musician I’ve been a fan of & respected. And I was a Styx fan in the 80s (owing to my older brother’s record collection) when Mr. Roboto came out and the whole Kilroy Was Here production. Yeah, to 13-year-old me, it was SO cool. Fast forward 40 years later, a few weeks ago, it came over the audio system while I was at a local store, and my brain screamed with the cringe the entire time.

Somehow, this song manages to be worse. I’m sorry, someone’s got to say it. 

After the car accident (Sept 2016), I joked a lot that I’d knocked myself into an alternate timeline. The years that followed brought a lot to fuel that feeling. With the brain doing better, I’ve let go of the joke. But this song brought that feeling crashing back. WTF is up with this timeline? Am I being punked? (LOL)

There’s a point where cries of “what about freedom & liberty” have more in common with a 14-year-old grounded for taking a dump on stage during the high school talent show. It’s just plain infantile. Anti-vaxxers / anti-mandaters are NOT some victims, they are aggressors. They put everyone around them at higher risk, just like a drunk driver.

(This is where it got very hard to remove all the Cee-yoU-Next-Tuesday bombs).

Stroll around the comments on these songs on YT, you’ll see what the Defiant are fueling: Little keyboard crusader trolls appropriating “bodily autonomy” and “pro-choice” (as if the flames of this insanity aren’t fanned by some legacy politician who supports banning abortions after some absurdly short length of time). 

I’ve asked it before: CONTEXT - Has it become optional? A vaccine is not nearly even remotely the equivalent to using a person’s body by force as a life support for a fetus. 

About choices: You can sit at home and drink all you want, but if you get behind the wheel of a car, you’re a danger to everyone around you. It’s not just your risk. Same thing with vaccines during a pandemic. Your community isn’t required to tolerate your willful ignorance so you can walk around the mall. Your unvaccinated ass increases the risk for everyone you come in contact with, which increases the risk for everyone they come in contact with, and so on AND SO ON. You’ve heard “going viral,” right?  VIRUSES is where that phrase comes from. Your “choice” can affect the health of everyone around you, not just you. 

Then worse, other trolls creep through the comments with declarations about how un-punk it is to do what you’re told — a 2nd-grade-bully dig at those who got vaccinated at best, it might be laughable if it were coming from someone under 10 years old, instead of some grown-ass ‘adult.’ 

Newsflash: Everyone who got the vaccine isn’t some fucking sheep, or blindly trusting, or a mindless zombie, or just not “bothering to ask” about it all. 

I have a suggestion. Try questioning some other answers, like the ones that feed into that ego-indulgent self-important notion that you’ve uncovered some secrets about the world. It doesn’t take a lot for the armchair “scientishts” who fed you those to sound a lot more credible than they even very remotely are. There might be a few actual scientists among them, but there’s fringe to be found in any arena. As with, say, global climate change experts, the 97% who agree on most of it should probably count more than the fringe. That history has some at-the-time fringers who were quite right (hey, Galileo) does not support your theories the way you think it does. FFS, take a closer look at the contexts. You're not the Galileo side of this. 

And finally, hey, Cee-yoU-Next-TuesdayS: Uneducated is NOT Punk rock. Willful ignorance is NOT Punk rock. Punk rock is NOT mere rebellion & contrarianism for the shallow sake of it. There are grown-up ways of questioning things and solving issues. 

I'll go with this actual punk rock, thank you: https://eugeneweekly.com/2022/05/12/punk-and-the-pandemic/

The Defiant want to pass their rhetoric off as punk, but it’s just getting the homework wrong dressed up as punk for Halloween. And it’ll be trick-or-tricking itself all over the Punk Rock Museum tonight.

For the record, I have no hate here for the individuals, just… deeeeeeep disappointment. And fear for the spreading ignorance. I still wish everyone involved well as much as I desperately wish they’d come to their senses. And see what they're standing next to. See what's using them.

I’d managed to cling to optimism for a while after January 2022, and maybe still have a sliver of hope that these rebels without a clue will eventually learn enough to unlearn the wiggedy-wack that’s taken them in and convinced them to spread it further like a virus against knowledge… Some sliver of hope that some stellar, soul-healing Mighty reunion, complete with a new friendship song above and beyond Don’t Worry Desmond Dekker (because if anyone could write such a thing, I wanted to believe Mr. Barrett still could), might materialize some day.

But that sliver has grown quite thin, and, depending on a lot of factors, I’m not sure I’d be there for it. Legends stumble. Many a thing I’ve fanned over has twisted its ankle and/or set itself on fire or otherwise dissolved in one way or another. 

(( Side note, I need (and intend) to spend some attention on what other Bosstones have been doing, particularly Joe Gittleman. And lots of other things. Working on it as best I can. ))

The line between clever & stupid is not that fine. The Defiant try to be clever, but it only looks that way to those more easily fooled than they. Some of the music (the 3 songs' worth I sampled) is pretty catchy, but not enough to warrant wading that deep into wiggedy-wack.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Fall 1989, Junior year. The class was ILS 330, Intermediate Illustration: Color. The previous one had been all black & white.

It might have been the first project, or the first significant project. But it was watercolor. We were working on it in class. Winsor & Newton Series 7 #3 sable watercolor brush. Bainbridge 80, or possibly Crescent 300 Illustration board.

While I had displayed some talent and worked a lot at developing drawing and painting skills since adolescence, I had completely and totally and utterly failed to establish any real lasting friendship with Watercolor.

So, on that day in September (probably) 1989, I was making a bit of an uncontrolled mess.

The professor, Dennis Nolan, came around to check on my progress. He said, something to the effect of, “Ok. We’re gonna let this dry for a bit, take a break, I’ll be back in about 20 minutes and I’ll show you some things,” in possibly the most helpful, most friendly, welcoming, unobtrusive, completely nonjudgemental kind of way.

He might as well have said, “Hey, looks like you and watercolor haven’t quite met yet. Let me introduce you…”

Some 20 minutes later, on a scrap piece of illustration board, he demonstrated a different approach to handling watercolor. And I got it. Y’know? One of those moments when a lightning bolt of EUREKA! carves a path through the brain.

I’ve shared little slices of this story through the years, and have always credited Dennis as “the teacher who helped me make friends with watercolor.”

The painting I was working on was the Strawberries. A few months later, it would be accepted into the 1990 Society of Illustrators Student show, a very competitive show, and would hang in their gallery in New York.


Without that Eureka! session on watercolor with Dennis, there would be no Strawberries. Nor Indiana Jones. Nor the Endangered Species series, which got into the 1991 Society of Illustrators Student show and won a scholarship prize as well.

Nor “Rough Landing," from 2016, finished a few weeks before the accident.
Nor Princess, painted last year, Summer 2021 for my friend Drew McMillen.

Maybe I’d’ve figured it out eventually, or another teacher would’ve helped me bridge the gap. I've been fortunate to have many top-notch teachers. But it didn’t have to be anyone else - the others could teach me other stuff. Because for watercolor, it was Dennis, on that day, Fall 1989.

He was truly among the best of all teachers, and witty and kind to boot. Not only was he an outstanding instructor on technique, he was a wise mentor who absolutely knew when something was up and what to say.

Not every medium can be my bitch, and not every piece of art I create comes out stunning. It’s something artists have to make peace (at least an uneasy peace) with, but at that point, not even 20, I hadn’t yet. With the move into color pencils and other mediums, my next few project or so came out … fine. Ok. But not outstanding, and that brought out anxieties, insecurities and frustration that, after leveling up with watercolor, not every single thing I made could be better than the thing before.

Well, Dennis had a clue-by-4 for that, and more. Because there was more to it. Yeah, I’ve always been overwound and the reasons are many and varied and some of them only recently identified and still not all sorted.

I kept in loose touch over the years. My sister worked at a photo developing place where Dennis would get film developed, then later as a server at a restaurant he and his family would frequent. The first time she recognized him (she’d visited me at Hartford, and spent a year there herself as well), she said something and he absolutely remembered me.

He wrote one of the letters-of-recommendation when I applied to grad school. I can’t remember exactly when it was, but I had coffee with him sometime well after I got my MFA, and had self-published the first issue of BloodDreams. Searching through my computer’s Calendar, possibly May 2011. Sunday the 19th. Too too too long ago.

When I came back to New England, I’d hoped to check in with him again. But everything got busy, and extra complicated around family & the house & all that came beyond it. And then the accident happened (six years ago just last week!).

Nobody knows the full depth and width of how things changed inside my head after the accident, in varying ways over the course of years –– For all that I’ve tried to reveal some of it to people, I’ve never really fully communicated exactly how bad it got in my head - the words fail me, and few people are that patient and as good at listening as would be required if I could organize all the thoughts.

But for a while, I wasn’t sure I would return to art. The right-front area of the head is a particularly shitty place to get hit for an artist & creative person. A lot of important things live around there:  visual spacial skills specifically used in drawing, painting, composition, creativity and creative drive, as well as executive function & emotional regulation. Wrap that up with an extreme sensitivity to light—something kinda necessary for painting—and audio processing issues that made every sound exponentially harder to process, and well. There's something that few people 'get' unless they've had something happen to their brain, and that's how you can really truly not feel like yourself on the inside in the midst of all of it. But there's habits and motions you go through, so most people are inclined to write it off when/if you try to tell them about it. It's hard imagining being in someone else's head, and inconvenient and scary to try when they appear well enough on the surface (see also: depression and a wide range of 'invisible illnesses').

Anyway.

I’ve wondered many times if Dennis might’ve said something that might’ve helped through the Brain Injury years. He probably would have known just the right thing to say, or something extremely helpful. But every little thing took so much effort, so much brain, and, with the additional drama of the lawsuit and my mother passing and Smudge as well, just looking into the path to reconnect with him was unfathomable. Too many steps, too many unknowns, so much overwhelm—and often a too-unreliable vehicle anyway. By the time brain & life were ok enough to maybe look into it, COVID hit, closing everything and bringing with it new anxieties for a wobbly brain to chew on.

So, when I learned back in August that Dennis had passed away, it hit hard. It’s hit me a few times, in waves, since then. Today I attended a celebration of his life, and committed to finally finishing and posting this post. I still don't know how to wrap it up, so …

Farewell, Dennis. I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you more recently how much you affected my art and my life. But I do think you knew it. So that has to be good enough.

And, to be honest, there aren’t words that can really do justice to the impact he had on my life and my art. I wish I were a better communicator. But I suspect the lack exists mostly in language itself. There are some things that defy description.

Maybe I’ll try to paint it out.