curating my brand.

apparently i need work on my "social media image". people seem to think i've never heard of "bloodshot records" or "insurgent country" when in fact i was listening to "outlaw country" in the womb. granted, waylon jennings was somewhat mainstream thirty years ago, but i do believe most of the "alt" or "insurgent" or "cosmic" or whatever "i gotta distance myself from nasheville country label you wanna put on it" artists would list him as a major influence. emmylou harris' "cimmaron" record put me to sleep my entire childhood. "another lonesome morning" still makes me shiver. i'm down with billy joe shaver. as to the bloodshot records label, um, ryan adams? not exactly "insurgent". maybe "drank like a river" was "insurgent" back in '97, but "stars go blue"? come on. tim "i'm with her" mcgraw covered it, and somehow made it sound less whiny. AND IT STILL "UDDERLY" SUCKED! in this day and age, listening to mainstream country radio just may be the only refuge for the "outlaw". watch this: I'M DOWN WITH MIRANDA LAMBERT. does that make you shudder? i hear her like three times a day on KMPS if i wanna. maybe more. WHAT?! CAN'T TELL ME NUT'EN!
anyway. on to more important things.
after like five inches of snow, crystal is posting up a "planning to maybe think about opening" day of wednesday, 11 november. don't know why they even bother. i mean, loveland opened on 7 OCTOBER FOR GOODNESS' SAKE. can you say "way behind the curve?" if crystal REALLY wanneda make waves, they'd build a "climate box" over the upper silver creek drainage and drop the temps starting in august for a 15 SEPTEMBER opening. then they'd really be "git'n'r done". the upside of all this wet slop falling from te sky is that i get a $2.50 raise when we open. somehow my "customer tunes" are more valuable than my "rental tunes". same "steeze", diff'rent "deez", i'd say. in fact, i should be worth more while tuning rentals, COS ALL DEM BITCHEZ BETTAH RECKANISE! y'know. "jus' sayin'".
oh, last thing--the green river ain't flooded yet, despite the best efforts of all the local mainstream media. funny how the stranger, which doesn't stand to make any money on the coverage of a flood, hasn't joined in the fray.
okay, this is really the last thing, and it ties together a couple themes: i ran out of gas on the way home from the hill thursday. about four miles from town. i'd anticipated this, and anywhere i could, i used my--wait for it--"georgia overdrive". y'know, "six days on the road"? gram "cosmic american music" parsons covered it? okay. maybe that's a stretch. but it reminded me of the first (not the only, dammit.) time i ran out of gas. i had a righteous '81 toyota tercel that i bought with my own money ($1700!!) back junior year of high school. i was in running start at green river my senior year cos there wasn't anything left at the high school cep jazz band and jazz choir and symphonic band and marching band and pep band (sense a theme here?), all of which i took for no credit cep jazz band cos it was zero hour. i also "worked"--read: got paid to do my homework--at the 76 station across from les schwab along with the 2nd trombone kid in jazz band. he was "dropping" some running start as well and we carpooled a lot cos, let's face it, i'm awesome and e'erbody wanna be seen wid me. (he also din't have a car or license, but that's secondary.) anyway, we were heading up 212th outa the green valley on the way to work, in uniform, and the toyota starts the "i'm melting, gimme gas" jig and we hadda pull over. ask for gas from neighbours, all the while carrying big "76" patches and stripes on the front of our matching blue jackets. righteous, indeed.