Random Thoughts on a Saturday Afternoon

Got the gig tonight. Gonna do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time - tell a long, funny, weird, personal story - here’s hoping that goes over well. It’s the whole of my act, so.. we’ll see.

..and let’s see what else pops up when I write at random

I’ve told the story to so many people in the last 6 years now that I’ve got it memorized practically word-for-word. Even so, I’m performing in about 4-5 hours and I haven’t spent a single minute rehearsing the actual story, nor the build-up to the story. I really should get on that. Maybe in a few minutes here.

My mom’s Cancer treatment is going well, but she’s feeling weak and beaten down. Her being the perpetual worker, moving around at 100 miles and hour all the time, this is really pissing her off. Kinda funny when you think about it that way, she’s one strong, determined lady, and stops at nothing to get things accomplished so this Cancer is to her a "big inconvenience". That’s what we call fighting.

My father has this recent tangent he loves to indulge in with people he knows, myself included, about determination in people - more importantly, their motivations to succeed. He says that most people are living up to only about 20 percent of their full potential. His distaste for my personal style/dress/attitude can hold weight in an argument because he says that I’m limiting, if even in a very small way, the full spectrum of my potential. The argument he uses is that because I’m a "shock" to people, there are likely to be those in the world who won’t give me the time of day that otherwise would. My take on it is the same it’s been for years - "if they’re not willing to take me as I am, I don’t need ‘em anyway". He’s never a mere quip away from beating that argument down with a laugh and a quick one-liner that somehow also wins. No one can out-argue my father and I’ve learned everything I know about effective arguing and debating through the 100’s of hours logged into phone conversations with him. This latest philosophy of his, about the potential of people, he’s so invested in that he actually travels the country giving paid lectures about it. Kinda like Tony Robbins.

He says that in his 50-some-odd years on this earth, there is only one person he’s ever met that when they put their all into something could be unstoppable. The only person, he feels, is capable of using every last ounce of their 100% potential. That person is my mother. One of his favorite tales is that when she used to make these little Santa dolls for our family for X-mas, he brought one into a holiday store and used his uncanny salesman abilities to sell them on the idea of these little dolls. They demanded 50 of them. My mom, being the sole worker on this Santa-making force, delivered all 50 of them, personally, ahead of schedule. Yeah, she’s insane.

While I’m talking about my father….

He’s been telling me for about the past year or so that a semi-distant relative of mine, Frank Marzoni, wrote this exhaustive piece of literature about the full history of the Marzoni family. He’s just fascinated by this. I finally said "hey.. send me a copy". I received, just a few days ago, a spiral bound book, measuring a full 8×10, and about as thick as your average King James. Inside is, as my father promised, an exhaustive account of the Marzoni family. I haven’t had much of a chance to look through it, but while flipping through it I found the last 10 or so pages to be a collection of signatures. Along with this book, my father sent me a picture of him golfing on Pebble Beach, a blank sheet of paper with his signature, a little "hello" letter, and a short list of the full contents of this package plus instructions.

As it turns out, the book’s last pages - with the signatures - are the signatures of every Marzoni in the history of our family. That piece of paper w/my father’s signature, I was told to also sign, so that my signature could be added to the book. The book is a living documentary of our family. It’s really fucked, for me, to think of living in such a historically-rich family. I never thought much of it, until just recently. My father is Leo Thomas Marzoni III. My grandfather was Jr., and his father was Senior (of course). My father is the oldest living of the "Leo T’s", considered to be the "top" of the Marzoni tree, for whatever reason. Frank, the author of that book, says "The Leo T’s are the GodFathers", making my father now the GodFather. My brother is the last of the Leo T’s, being the IV. His wife wouldn’t allow him to name their child, Robert, a Leo T. So my father has asked that I carry on the Leo T legacy, should I have a son.

The picture of my father on Pebble Beach really pulls at my heartstrings. I’ve known since my childhood that Pebble Beach is where my father wants his ashes spread, as he considers that to be the greatest place on earth. The picture merely shows him hitting a golfball, mid-swing, over some water. The frame around the image is your basic off-white matting, and he’s written the location, date, and who’s in the image (him). That’s just what he does with pictures - writes little details about them either on their frame, or on the back. In the upper left-hand corner of the frame, he wrote "HEAVEN" (in all caps) because to him - that is heaven. I feel honored that he sent me this image, likely one of the few in the world that show him doing his favorite thing in his favorite place.

I’m supposed to see my mother out in Colorado in 2 weeks, during her last days of treatment. I’m going to need all the strength I can muster to handle that situation - but for my mother to be at her strongest, she’ll need mine and my sister’s strength as well, and I’m gonna give her all the fight I’ve got left in me. Tonight, I’ll be calling her from the stage so some 200+ strangers can yell "HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY" at her.

Got a few new albums recently (within the past month), some are actually new releases, some are just new to me .

NIN - With Teeth : I’ve mentioned this album before, but I’ll bring it up again. It’s a solid offering, as music goes, but it ain’t the NIN I loved in my mid-teens. It’s not a bad album, per se, just.. different. I dunno. I like "All the Love in the World", "Sunspots", "Don’t You Know What You Are", and "Beside You In Time" - so it’s worth a listen. I remember Trent saying, time and time again, that this album was supposed to an "all-out assault" and that it would "kick your ass from beginning to end". There were even references made to Broken and that With Teeth would be, at times, even more assaulting than that. This is an exciting ideal - but uhh.. I think he’s talking about a different album. This isn’t much more "assaulting" than 1999’s The Fragile. He did say that he wrote a shitload of music for this album and that he’ll be releasing another album of all the other shit he wrote, sometime down the line. Maybe that’s the assault album. My personal feeling is that he’s gotten really soft in his older days, and maybe thought he had the rage of his earlier years when making this album and in contrast to some of the other songs he’s made in the last 5-6 years - to him, this sounded a lot more "hardcore". I really don’t know what else to say about it, but.. I’ll figure out where its place is in my collection sometime down the line.

Weezer - Make Believe - I’ve only got about 8 of the 12 tracks, but this is gonna be one to listen up for. Very solid offering, no deviation from "classic Weezer" and yet it shows them maturing, even more. I’m thinking this is going to be one of the "Top-Shelf" release of 2005, and even though I’ve only recently gotten into Weezer (thank the Ex for that one) - I’m diggin’ this one somethin’ fierce.

Scissor Sisters - self-titled - I got their song "Laura" (no jokes now) from the iTunes Music Sampler that one can download, for free, if one buys an iPod. A quick Google search can also reveal the link to this free download, if one is so inclined. Laura’s a good track, but the rest of it is a bit too silly and dancy for my tastes. Perhaps if I were geigh and really entranced by a nouveau-disco sound, reminiscent of Abba and the likes - I’d be more into it. Not a bad album, per se, but you kinda have to be into that style.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm - Downbeat indie rock. Not much more you can say about it, really. It’s not bad, from what I can tell, but I don’t think I’ll find myself going "Dude - put on that Bloc Party track again" anytime soon. Still, I probably won’t hit "Skip Track" on my iTunes remote when I’m chillin’ on my bed, if one of their songs comes on. These guys are pretty much reserved for when you just want mellow music you can put on in the background, not have to sing along to, won’t invade whatever you’re doing, and you don’t want to have to skip tracks. The full album, from start to finish, is one constant mood. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Gonna need to revisit these guys at some point, though, cause I’m sure there’s a gem of a single just below the surface and I haven’t really "gotten it" yet.

The Bouncing Souls - Anchors Aweigh - This was recommended to me by someone who’s into that upbeat indie rock sound. Not sure how I feel about it, cause all the songs kinda melt into one another and start to sound like… "insert upbeat post-punk indie rock song here". It doesn’t really grab my attention, but maybe it needs a few more listens. I wasn’t blown away, and I didn’t realize I’d already had the album repeating for the 2nd time before I switched back to listening to that Weezer album again. Yes, I’m well aware these guys have been around for awhile, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them before but I’m about as entranced by their jams now as I’ve ever been at whatever psuedo-punk party they may have provided part of a soundtrack for in my past. That is to say - ehh.. not especially spiffarific.

System of a Down - Mezmerize - I read this article in Wired the other day, which was an interview with their guitarist. Apparently, he’s spent the better part of the last 2 years locked up in this special ‘room" he had built in his house for auditory experimentation. Amongst other things, he had at one point tiled the walls with acoustic guitars so when playing loud bass tracks, he could inadvertantly "play" some 50+ acoustic guitars and use their reverberations in his soundscapes. The result of his experiments yielded something like 100 tracks, whittled down to about 45 tracks, the majority of which are being split up onto two albums - this month’s "Mezmerize" and a late-year release of "Hypnotize". This whole thing sounded really intriguing but… I’m none-too-impressed wit the outcome. There’s very little experimentation in the tracks that I could really tell, so I thought "well.. maybe they went for experimentally poppy". That’s fine by me - I consider it genius when an act can make experimental shit also catchy, and I would venture to say some of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard are a perfect mix of those two things. Faith No More’s Angel Dust, and NIN’s "The Downward Spiral" both come immediately to mind. Unfrotunately, I didn’t find muhc on this album in the 3-4 times i tried to sit and listen to it that really made me say "wow" or even "oohhhh… this is a good one". But, maybe a few more listens to it will reveal something deeper that I’ve yet to discover. I’m not beyond giving it a few more tries, because anyone who dedicates a room to their home, several thousands of dollars, and 2 years of their life for experimental music-making is gonna get my ear for as long as I can muster giving it to them.

StereoPhonics - Language. Sex. Violence. Other? - I heard these guys years ago, when someone suggested their song "Maybe" to me. I thought "this sounds like the song you put on a mixtape for that indie chick who works at the coffee shop down the street, and you want her to think you’re really ‘deep’ because of your love for pansy-rock". This album doesn’t have that track on it, but there’s at least a few songs that evoke that same vibe. It’s also just basic downbeat indie rock, but it’s got a bit of a dreamy feel to it, so I actually kinda dig it. I can’t help but feel like a pussy if I listen too long, but in just the right amounts - they ain’t too bad at all. If I were to give "buying advice", I’d say you need to hear "Dakota", "Girl" and "Deadhead". If you like all 3 - you’ll like this album. Deadhead’s prolly the best track on the album from what I can tell, but the others are by no means "bad".

Time to go off and figure out this comedy thing. I’m not feeling particularly funny, least of all when I think about what was going on in my life during my last performance - but I’m nothing if not perfectly able to hide everything in my head for the sake of a good laugh, so I should be fine.

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