Hey. What's going on? I haven't been around for awhile. Place still looks the same though. For a long while I could not post anything onto LJ. Don't know why. It was taking forever just to log on. I gave up after a few months.
   Anyway, things is happening. We've got a new bass player, Chris Riter, in the band. We've also been working Mr. Dave Stinton and his hot accordion into the mix. We've been rehearsing a lot and it's paying off. The Crimebusters and I have added a lot of stuff to our alt.country library for gigs like The Horseshoe where we need nice long sets. We recently played a short set at the Elbo Room. That turned out great. It was our first gig at one of the more "Premier Rock Clubs" in Chicago. A Sunday night but we had a fair amount of friends come out and listen and they were an enthusiastic bunch. We got invited back for a Friday night, March 19th. 3rd slot right before the headliner. We are going to slaughter. That's all I have to say. I like that club and I am going to do my best to keep us booked there and move up the rock club food chain.
    We also have gone live with the website over at www.ravindave.com. Please stop by and sign the guestbook.

Man...LJ is starting to really suck. It's hard to log on anymore.
If you are walking around by that ballpark up on Clark Street tonight, stop by Yak-Zies and have a beer on the patio and give a listen to me and The Crimebusters. This is Tom's last gig as our bass player and I'd like to give him a proper sendoff.

Resident artist, killer bass player and all around cool Crimebuster - Tom Benjamin is leaving. Moving to North Carolina as part of the witness relocation program. We had rehearsal last night after a two week layoff and instead of sucking, like he should, he absolutely sparkled which pisses me off even more. Just rubbing it in I guess. In truth we are lucky to have him for the short time before he splits and if you come out to our shows in July (Red Line Tap Sunday July 12th and YakZies Friday July 17th) you'll see and hear why. He will be missed.
Moving forward we have the suave and smooth Chris Riter taking over on the 4 stringer. Chris is half of the brain trust at GreyZelda Theater and and bad MoFo besides. Being from West Virginia he gives us the Hillbilly Cred we so desperately need. He's started rehearsals already and will be up to speed and breaking hearts in no time. I'm not sure what sort of Hazing Ritual I need to come up with for new Crimebusters but I'll think of something.

I'll be in the Smoky Mountains for a few days during Memorial Day. While I am enjoying the time off with some friends grillin', drinking beer and laying about I'll also try to remember what the whole thing is about.
Breeds Hill
Yorktown
Ticonderoga
Fredricksburg
Antietam
Gettysburg
Belleau Wood
Ardennes
Wake Island
Tarawa
Hurtgen Forest
Iwo Jima
Inchon
Pork Chop Hill
Ia Drang
Pleiku
Khe Sahn
Kandahar
Tora Bora
Fallujah
  This a just a fraction of places that should be on a list somewhere. Every one of these names represents the shock of thousands of broken hearts and lives destroyed. Some in good cause, more than a few for no fucking reason at all. Wearing a uniform means you don't get to pick which battles you fight and whether the sacrifice will have value. It means you trust the people who put you there had good reason to do so. In a representive democracy that's you and me Brothers and Sisters. It's a burden we are all meant to share. I think that's we are supposed to remember.

"Shit, man, think about it! I guess it's what they call a "way homer." 
"Why's that?"
"Cause you only get it on the way home."
"I'm already home, Glen."  - Raising Arizona

Except I wasn't on the way home. I was riding my bike into work this morning around 5:30AM. With no radio to listen to things randomly pop into my head while dodging potholes, left lane hogs, electric shaving assholes, makeup installing fuckos and cell phone chatters. For some reason I was thinking of the use of the Beastie Boys song "Sabotage" in the new Star Trek movie and it occurred to me that JJ Abrams may have been having a bit of a laugh at Shatners expense. After a quick google it appears I am not the only dork out there who has thought of this.
<sigh> Not even close. I have a lot of company out there in Geektown.

    I saw Star Trek Saturday morning. I came in anticipating full on hatred of the thing and left anticipating the next one. The BoR and I saw it in IMAX which was probably a mistake. So many quick edits during action scenes, which are plentiful and long, things got jumbled and confused on a screen that big. The plot really made no sense at all. I won't even get into it. It was just a contrivance to bring the core crew together. And a good crew it is. Quint as Spock was a natural choice. Since I had avoided all the publicity about the movie I didn't know Simon Pegg was cast as Montgomery Scott. That was a nice surprise. Uhuru? Wow! Just....wow.
   And Kirk? Listen, I've heard people bad mouth Shatner for many years now but nobody ever wants to give him his due in developing an iconic character in James T. Kirk. The quirky speech pattern, the nonchalant attitude in life threating situations, the general don't give a fuck attitude towards authority. All meant to inspire confidence and loyalty in the people around him. The people that really matter to him.  You can see why his crew would follow him wherever he goes and I don't believe for a second that just any actor could pull it off.
   Chris Pine nailed it. It would be so easy to do a Shatner impersonation - everybody does one. Pine's portrayal shows what a little prick lothario Kirk can be but then matures him enough later in the film to use those qualitities of brashness in a controlled manner. The Kirk in the latter part of the film becomes a little more like the Shatner version. Young Kirk gets busted for the cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test. Mature Kirk will pull off  "The Corbomite Maneuver" - when it really counts.
  

  Once again I had make somebody shut the fuck up in a theater. Some asshole was sitting behind me explaing stuff to his seatmates. Because? I don't know.  I guess they didn't know that Spock was from Vulcan and what a Romulan was...blah blah blah. When he started going on about the history of the Federation I'd had enough. This was like a 45 year old man and I had to treat him like an errant teenager. It's not important how I did it but he was blissfully quiet for the remainder of the film.

I heard some really cool music on the way in to work this morning.  One is Eddie Noack's "Psycho". Not your typical old school country song. Man is it bone-chilling. Then, and I find this hard to believe as I type it, a cover of Seven Nation Army by The Oak Ridge Boys. I was never a fan of theirs and I was really wanting to hate them for fucking up a White Stripes song but, godamn,  they really pulled it off.
Here's some Psycho for you. I may have to cover this with The Crimebusters.

   A friend of mine over on Facebook asked for music suggestions. My first instinct was to recommend Ray Wylie Hubbard to her because...well, he's so freaking good. He's the Godfather of that whole Austin Bohemian Cowboy Buddhist type of songwriting.  I chickened out and said Neko Case.
   I don't know why I did that except maybe I felt like Ray Wylie Hubbard would be a little too hardcore for this woman. Which isn't really fair to her or His Rayness.
   Not that there's anything wrong with Neko Case. She's a cool redheaded storm and a bonafide badass.
Still I think I may have been a bit chauvinistic in my suggestion,  thinking that females of a certain age group and educational background might not "get" Snake Farm.

    It's a little spooky how new words come into our lives and we just accept them like they were always there. I'm sure If I went back in time to visit my 20 something self  in the late 70's and said "In the future it will be necessary  to de-friend people on the internet" it would have haunted me until I needed to be locked in an asylum. It sounds as sinister as Soylent Green when, really, it's just being a click away from the sweet relief of not being annoyed by ignorant assholes who weren't your friends anyway.
Click  "Goodbye crazy-eyed religious MySpace nutbar who writes misspelled right-wing screeds in all-caps. I'll see you on the news when you bomb an abortion clinic."
Click  "Goodbye other wacky MySpace cliche cracker white trash KKK hausfrau who's status was "I'm so angry at how stupid people can be" the day after Obama was elected. Sorry about all the negroes using your water fountain down in Atlanta."
   I've dumped a couple on the opposite spectrum as well. Politically correct uber-libs looking to be offended as a hobby? Bye-bye. Take your judgmental horseshit elsewhere. I'm at the age now where I don't have the time to waste with your lectures. No need to send them to me. I'll just ignore them and mock you.
    Some are a little harder than others. I recently defriended this lady on MySpace because she updated her status about three or four times a day. Even if it never changed. Just to keep her name on your page I guess. She has a tight band and she is a great singer but wow, that was such an obvious maneuver I couldn't take it any more. Click...gone. Now I have to get rid of someone on facebook for over-posting her status. Really. 15 times a day is a bit much. I'm not that interested. It's not personal. Shes' not a bad person. She's very nice as I remember. I just didn't care about her breakfast and what shoes she was thinking about wearing to the Tapas Bar. It was getting in the way of me seeing what folks I really know were doing so I could comment on their shoes and what their 5 favorite movie animals are.
   Of course if I went back in time I would probably just tell myself to buy all those toys from that Star Wars movie and put them away someplace safe.
I'll never learn.