HELP ME KILL THIS NUMBER!

1/24/08 THE EDGE OF QUARREL DVD is finally finished and out! Here is what it looks like: The initial response has been great, and I am in the process now of getting some serious distribution set up for it. I only had 2000 copies made, and by DVD standards that is not a lot, so I am working to get them sold as soon as possible. I spent many days at the start of this month packing and shipping the copies that had been pre-ordered, and let me tell you, that was some serious work. Aram came down from Vancouver to pack up the pre-orders for the first release on his new record label React Records, so we joined forces. We spent four days in front of a TV in a room full of boxes just packing and taping interspersed with short trips out for coffee or to take 30 or 40 packages each to the post office. We plowed through two full seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Aliens, Wedding Crashers, Brick, many rolls of tape, and all the patience and tolerance that the postal employees had to offer. It was really very cool, actually. In other news, I just got the online store going for Rocky Votolato and have sold a bunch of shirts for him right out of the gate. You can check it out here. Pick up a shirt or a CD while youÕre there and I will be the one packing up your order. Much thanks to Derek Linaman for getting the website issues worked out! My situation right now is strange and a little confusing for me. I feel that I am on the verge of great things, but the only real money that I have coming in at the moment is from sales of the DVD. I can not use that money to live week to week, and so now that the bulk of the real work is done I will need to find some other source of income. I am making small amounts from my various different tasks and schemes, but I need to secure something a little more stable as a base. It looks like I am going to have an opportunity to return to my dealing job at the Red Dragon on a part-time basis, so I will be going back to the poker dealing world temporarily. If any of you that are close to me notice that becoming the focus of my world again, say something to me! It is supposed to be a means to an end, not an end in itself. And let me just throw it out there that if anyone has a lead on a job that would better fit my strange life and/or lead me in a more creative direction, please do not hesitate to let me know about it.

12/7/07 Isn't it funny how a person can say "couple of days" and actually mean "a little over a month?" Or maybe the word that I am looking for isn't "funny." Perhaps annoying would be a better term? I certainly think so, and while I did have every intention of getting together a report on my activities and posting it up here, life has kept finding a way of getting in front of that plan. Until now, that is. I have reached a thin space in between two major projects and so I can take a moment to catch my breath, and also update those of you out there who read this on my current and recent activities. So here we go... "Are you employed, sir?" - Jeffery Lebowski Employed? I still do not have a job, but that is not to say that I am not working. I have been, over the last couple of months, working both more consistently and creatively than I have in years. Apparently the results of my endeavors on my attitude and general state-of-being have been noticed by those around me as I have received more positive comments from friends about the direction of my life than I can ever remember getting in the past. The work that I have been doing is primarily the same combination of Ebay selling and band related merchandise creation/sales/shipping that I have done for the last few years, just cranked up to a higher level. I have also had the opportunity to use my extra free time to get the U.S. DVD release of my movie The Edge of Quarrel ready. My movie has been unavailable in any format in the U.S. for the last couple of years, and has never been released here on DVD, so I am excited to announce that it will be in stores early by in the new year. Getting the DVD together has been a lot of work, but the lion's share of that effort came to a close last Tuesday when I finally shipped out all of the parts to the manufacturer. Now it is just a matter of waiting for the finished product. If you are interested in getting a copy of the movie, I have a pre-order special going on right now at www.excursionrecords.com. There are only 2000 copies of the DVD in the first edition, and they are all hand-numbered by yours truly. If you go to the catalog section of this very website you will find that I have a deal going where if you buy 10 links for the front page you will get one of the DVD pre-order packages as well. My next project, and one that I will get going while I await delivery of my DVDs, will be to set up an online webstore for merchandise sales for this man: For those not in the know, that is Rocky Votolato. If you would like to hear his music, you can check out his myspace page here. Apart from being a good friend and top-notch musician, Rocky is also the star of that aforementioned movie of mine. Give his songs a listen and I am confident that you will conclude that he is the real deal. I have written in the past that he has the ability to write songs that can change lives for the better, and while I am aware of how dramatic that may sound, I stand by it. I know it to be true. On the ironic news front comes word that my old boss at the casino I left 3 months ago has walked out on his job and now said casino is offering me my old dealing job back. While this constitutes an enormous personal and moral victory for me, it is also problematic. The response to this news from my friends has been a pretty much unanimous chorus beseeching me to not go back. Aside from that I have created so much work for myself, with the promise of even greater things on the horizon, that I cannot currently spare the time to work a full time job. I am going to be completely honest here though; I really do miss dealing poker. The solution to this dilemma may well be to accept an "on call" position in the poker room and just deal every now and again when they need someone to fill in. It is good money, after all, and if the bad elements that gave me so much trouble before are removed it could turn out to be the great job it should have been all along. I will report back on how this pans out when it does.

10/28/07 OK, I will admit that part 5 of THE STORY has been taking a whole lot longer than planned. I have been extremely busy over the last month with a ton of stuff that I am going to report on in this very blog... in the next couple of days. In the meantime you should click on the picture below to find out what's making that poor pumpkin so unhappy.

9/26/07 Ah. Yes. It is well past time for an update. Where to begin is the question, I suppose. The last twenty or so days have been the most eventful for me of the past four or five years. Much has occurred, and most of it very good. It all starts with my leaving my poker dealing job. I won't go into too much detail other than to say that it was my choice to leave and it was definitely time for me to go. The job was work that was actually fun and very good money on top of that, but for my own safety and sanity I had to walk. To call it an abusive atmosphere in that casino might be a tad overdramatic, but at the very least unhealthy is an apt description. My post from earlier this month addresses the situation in a somewhat coded manner, and I don't want to say much more about it than that except to say that at no point have I doubted for a moment the correctness of my actions in this matter. So one of the first things that I did upon leaving my job was to start a new website: PENNYPROJECT.NET. A silly idea, yes, but something creative for me to fixate on instead of the negative feelings surrounding my new self-imposed unemployed state. The site is simple, quick and easy to update, and people do seem to find it funny, although probably none moreso than myself. The Penny Project is no substitute for an actual job though, so I quickly got an application together and submitted it at a much larger Native American run casino to the north. They told me that it would be at least two weeks before I would hear anything either way. I have not heard a thing yet, but in the time since I applied I have become quite comfortable with the idea that it may not be in my best interest to ever go back into that industry. Perhaps it is time to make a real go at something more substantial and fullfilling instead? The next item on my plate was my father's book. My dad has written a book detailing his many experiences that have occurred in search of gold. It is called Gold Prospecting: The Ultimate Adventure, and I love it dearly. Yes, I am biased as he is my father, and I even appear in the story at the age of 16, but I really do believe that just about anyone would find this book enjoyable. My dad published this book himself and is now hard at work on book number two which I am sure will be equally excellent. To try and do my part I am helping him sell copies. In order to get his book to stand out in retail locations, I put together a small display box featuring art from the illustrations in the book. Here are what the book and the box look like: The challenge of getting that box together was fullfilling on many levels for me, and the entire time that I worked on it I had a sense of waking back up to a creative life that had mostly slipped away from me over the past few years. By the time that I had ten boxes finished and ready to go I knew that I wanted to stay awake like this more than just about anything. If one wanted to get their hands on a copy of my father's book there are a number of ways to do so. I will soon have it listed as an item offered for sale on my record label website, EXCURSIONRECORDS.COM I am also putting a website together for my dad at GOLDADVENTURE.NET. The book can usually also be found on Ebay being sold by yours truly. You can see all of the items that I am selling on Ebay at any given time HERE. The third way to get a copy of the book is through the catalog section of this very site. Purchase the correct level of links and I will gladly send you a complimentary copy. See the CATALOG page for all of the details, as I will have that going soon Having no job to go to, my dad's book box to work on, and the lady of the house once again on tour in France has given me more opportunities than usual to spend time with my parents. They live in Bellingham, which is only about 90 miles up the interstate from me, but when you figure in the day to day rigors of a job combined with everything else that goes into making up your life that distance can sometimes feel more like 900 miles. It has been great to be able spend some quality time hanging out with them, and if nothing else that has been enough of a justification for me to take this time off and realign my priorities. There are a number of other things going on in my life at the moment. Some of them are very exciting, but I am going to hold off on talking about them here until they are just a little further down the pike. I will certainly report as they get closer. Until then, look for Chapter 5 of THE STORY. It should be posted in the next few days.

9/4/07 Dear Larry, Have you ever seen BAND OF BROTHERS? You know that part where Sobel gives Winters the choice between punishment or a court marshal for something completely asinine, and Winters chooses the court marshal? It's kind of like that. So thank you. I had forgotten, for a while, that I am the hero of my story. "Never again will I put my faith in flawed men." - STAYGOLD, Pills and Advice. Amen, brother.

8/15/07 20 years ago today I made a choice that changed the course of my life, and in my decision making history it remains as one of the best I have ever made. I was 16 years old, and my friend Randy and I were opening our small skateboard shop in Bellingham, WA. We had spent the summer leading up to the opening of our store doing a fair amount of drinking, but I decided that if I was going to try to be responsible enough to run my own business I should probably just take the plunge and declare myself Straight Edge. August 15th, 1987 - Present. Nailed to the X. (I will be explaining how this all came about and what exactly it all means in THE STORY, but I have not reached that part of the tale as of yet.) Another reason why this date is special for me is that by some cosmic coincidence it is also the birthday of my girlfriend Michaelanne. She turns 31 today, and the decision to pursue her was another of my life's great choices. Happy Birthday, My Love. Here is a photo that one of her coworkers took of us some time back:

July ??? I can't even be sure what day it is exactly. I suppose that I could look at a calendar, but that would take all the fun out of it. My dear Miss Michaelanne is once again away on a tour guiding trip to Europe and I am left alone here at home to hold down the fort for a month. It is no fun at all having her gone for so long. One thing that does tend to happen when she leaves is that I get into a serious working/planning mode after a sufficient amount of time has been spent laying around doing absolutely nothing. The result this time, thanks in large part to discussions with my friend Drake, has been a plan to make a feature length movie with the band SPEAKER SPEAKER that will take only one day to film. I am not going to give away too many details here yet as to what the plan is exactly, but I will say that I have talked to nearly everyone who will need to be involved and all parties are excited for it so far. If all goes according to plan we are filming in September. This will be the second project I have done with the Speaker2 boys; the first being this music video that we made some time back. Planning the video shoot.

7/1/07 Two things: #1. It is my sister's birthday today. Happy Birthday Beth! #2. Jeep Brah is awesome.

6/8/07 I have this thing about flying. I absolutely hate it. I hate it because in order to fly I have to mentally and emotionally be prepared to die before I get on the plane. I have to be READY. It is just not possible for me to feel safe on an airplane. I don't care about statistics or safety records or anything else; nothing is a comfort to me on this subject. The fact of the matter is that in order to fly I must surrender completely my control of my own safety, and that is difficult for me. On any normal day in my life I don't think in these terms, but then again the possibility of falling thousands of feet out of the sky strapped into a malfunctioning metal tube doesn't exist for me on a day to day basis either. I have spent a significant amount of time working in manufacturing, much of it from a quality assurance/testing perspective, and that experience has in no way instilled in me the sort of faith in the ability of others to do their jobs to the level of excellence that would be required for me to risk my life on it. As a result, I view every successful landing as SURVIVAL. Every time that I have walked off of an airplane I have had the sense of cheating death one more time, and have experienced an elated feeling that I can only assume is similar in nature to what actual near-death survivors report. I tried to explain this to my lovely girlfriend Michaelanne as we stepped safely onto solid ground in the SeaTac airport on Monday after our return trip from Las Vegas, but she seemed to think that I was joking, instead of just, you know, crazy. Ah yes, Vegas. That was the actual thing that I intended to write about here. Considering the financial situation that is my basis for doing this site, I do feel that some justification may be required. So here it is: I was Best Man in my friend Aram's wedding in Las Vegas this last weekend, and that honor was the reason that I was willing to spend the money to make the trip. I did the whole thing on a fairly tight budget and didn't go nuts gambling, and as a result I did not add at all to the debt that I am hacking away at publicly here on this site. That is fair enough, I think. The whole weekend was great, crappy service from the people at The Luxor aside, and I had the first real, enjoyable break from work that I have had in years. I was responsible for setting up a bachelor party on Friday night for about 25 people, most of who do not drink, and it actually came off fairly well. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe and then spent and hour or so at the Casino before loading up into a limo and heading out to an undisclosed location for the remainder of the night. It was just wild enough without being too sketchy, for most of those involved anyway. Beyond that... well, you've seen the commercials. Apparently it's supposed to stay in Vegas. THE GREAT MOUSTACHE FIASCO also occurred during this party. The plan was for each of the guys attending the party to attempt to grow the most horrible moustache possible in the week beforehand without Aram's knowledge and then to just show up with them like it was normal. Good times, right? When all was said and done there were really only about 6 guys who actually got serious about it, so I guess in the end it didn't really qualify as a full blown "fiasco." Regardless, it was fun walking around Vegas with a wicked 'stache. And despite my threatening otherwise, I did shave the hideous thing off before the wedding. The wedding took place the next day in the chapel at the Mandalay Bay Casino. It was actually very classy and reverent, more so than I think I expected from a Vegas wedding. I was responsible for holding the rings and giving them to the minister at the appropriate time, which I did without screwing up. My visions of chasing a dropped and rolling ring down the aisle proved to be false, thankfully. The whole deal was over quickly and then it was off to a small reception for cake and coffee. At the reception Aram and Kim had these little pin packs passed out with the cake to all of the guests. Amazing. I gave a toast as is traditional for a best man. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to say and as a result I am not sure what it was I actually said, but a number of people said it was good so I feel reasonably confident that it didn't suck too much. After that Kim's father spoke for a while and it was full of praise for his new son-in-law and some good natured poking fun at the music that so encompasses the lives of most of us that were there. It came off well. Then Aram's father spoke. Now, I think Aram was pretty nervous about how this was going to go. His father is a small, white haired Armenian man with an amazing accent and it is fairly obvious that English is not his first language, which is not to say that he does not speak it well but just that there are certain pauses and misused tenses that occasionally give it away. He gave us all a brief history of Aram, from his birth all the way up through his world travels with his band, and told us how proud he was of his son. He gave Kim and Aram a traditional Armenian wedding blessing that he translated as, "may you always share the same pillow." It was really very cool, and I would have to say it was the highlight of the entire trip for me. Afterwards we all split up into various groups and went about enjoying Las Vegas on a Saturday evening. Later that night most of us met back up at New York, New York and got a chance to hang out one last time as nearly everyone was leaving in the next morning to head back home to Canada or California or Boston or wherever else might be the case. It was good. Sunday came along and found Michaelanne and myself, along with our roommate Bob finally with some time to do whatever we wanted on our own schedule. Old Vegas was the destination we chose, so we loaded onto "the Deuce" (a double-decker city bus that runs along the strip) and headed out to see some history. I got a chance to finally see Binion's casino, the birthplace of the World Series of Poker, and Michaelanne started winning at gambling for the first time ever by pulling in over $100 from nickel slots and nearly that much again from roulette. Old Vegas really seemed to suit us better than the strip, so we vowed that next time we came we would stay there. My Pilgrimage. After that there wasn't much more to the trip. We went by the Hilton on our way back and checked out the Star Trek Experience, which wasn't nearly as cool as we had hoped it would be, and then rode the monorail back to our hotel. As is my own personal Las Vegas tradition I spent the entire last night awake in the casino. I managed to make a little money playing roulette, but sank it all into a Wheel of Fortune slot machine hoping for that elusive jackpot, so the night was a wash. I made it back to the hotel room with about 20 minutes to sleep before we had to head out for the airport, which was nice since I was able to sleep for most of the plane ride home. And like I mentioned earlier I have this thing about flying. I absolutely hate it.

5/22/07 Updates have been fewer and further between as a flurry of activity has seemed to engulf my life. Most nights after work have found me falling asleep on the couch with no ability to stave it off. It is a comfortable way to go, but I usually fade out with at least one task unfinished. As much as I enjoy it, I would stop sleeping altogether if I could. Anyway, this is just a note to say that I am still here. Alive and kickin'. While I'm here I might as well say that HOT FUZZ is a truly great film. No drop off in quality at all from SHAUN OF THE DEAD. The people that make these films obviously love what they are doing, and it shows.

4/25/07 I found this picture today while going through a bunch of photos for this site. Scott, known to some as Sea Hag, drew this version of me when we were roommates for a time after I first moved to Seattle in 1993. I hadn't seen this drawing since around the time he gave it to me and I didn't want to have to wait until I get to that part of THE STORY to post it, so here it is. If you see this Scott, thanks man. I had forgotten all about it.

4/15/07 I finally had two days off in a row after about a month straight of filling in shifts at work. It was GREAT. Spent Friday working all day packing and shipping Ebay, Excursion, Himsa, and Speaker Speaker orders. After that I met up with my writing partner to go downtown and do some research at the library for a screenplay we're working on. It was almost six when I picked him up, and he was certain the library would be closed. I remembered going there after work a couple of times back in the Kinko's days of the 90's, so I assured him it would indeed be open. "It can't close at six," I claimed, "because taxpayers pay for that place and what would be the point in having it open only during hours when people are working to pay those taxes?" Solid, common sense, right? His response: "Yeah, but it closes early because the homeless all just go there for BMs." Also possibly correct, I suppose. As we approached this supposedly useful depository of knowledge the conversation turned to whether the new building design is more LOGAN'S RUN or THX-1138. My vote was for the former. Logan's Run or THX-1138? This was the topic being vigorously debated as we approached the doors only to be turned away by a security guard who was locking up for the night. "Told you so, dude." I glanced around and noticed that we were standing in a crowd of bathroom-needing looking street folk, so I was grudgingly forced to concede his point. Still, I was not entirely wrong. The library is open until eight PM Monday through Thursday. Not that it helped us any. Locked out from the information we so desperately needed, we pursued the only viable option left to us and spent a couple of hours in a nearby coffee shop going over our basic plot structure. It was less productive than I would have liked, but still a good time. The whole experience did however leave me with this one conviction: THE LIBRARY SHOULD BE OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY. My quest for knowledge should not be impeded by completely arbitrary "hours of operation" especially when I am working on something as groundbreaking as this new project. It is a historically based horror/fantasy film that takes place in Ireland in the 4th century called SNAKEFIGHTER: The Legend of St. Patrick. Yeah, it is that good. (You can see why I would be annoyed at having my progress obstructed on this project. The world is waiting for this story, even if they don't know it yet.) After that I met up with a bunch of friends for dinner and a screening of GRINDHOUSE, which ended up being a great movie. Saturday was an altogether different yet no less necessary sort of a day. I can't really remember much of it as I spent a good deal of time crashed out asleep on the couch. While this situation is quite common at night after a long day, I very rarely get the opportunity to make it happen at two in the afternoon. After I finally managed to rouse myself out of my lethargic state, my lovely lady and I went to a get together at her aunt's house at which a big group of her relatives were having a $5.00 buy-in Texas Hold 'em poker tournament. There were 18 players total and it went on for a few hours. When we first arrived one of her cousins told me, "This is going to come down to you and me." At about 1 AM I was looking across the table at just him, as predicted. Unfortunately I was also looking at his monster chip stack that outweighed mine by at least a factor of five. Second place was fine by me and good for $29.00 to boot. Not a huge payday by any means, but it was a really good time. I work in the poker industry, so it was nice to be able to play and actually have fun for once where it didn't feel like a job. It reminded me of the reason that I wanted to get into the business in the first place. So yeah, it was a good weekend. I could use a few more of those.

3/31/07 Days like today I really wish that I didn't have to go to work. It's not that I'm tired, because I'm not tired at all. That's the problem. I am full of energy, and I am going to burn it all out here at my job. What a waste. I am currently sitting at a poker table in between dealing stints writing on my Dell Axim Pocket PC, which was a gift from a friend and comes in particularly handy on a day like this. I started out more awake than usual, lying in bed with my eyes wide open, having turned off my alarms early and worrying not at all about falling back to sleep. By the time I hit the shower my mind was filling itself up with new ideas and extensions of old ones. When it's like this, I can plan an entire day's worth of creative endeavors by the time I get my hair washed. What good is that if I am going to have to spend the entire day working for somebody else? I get only a handful of days like this over the course of a year and I hate to have to waste them like this. I can only hope that some part of this feeling will remain when I get off work tonight. I won't hold my breath. In other news, I watched THE SALTON SEA again. I really love this movie, but it seems to get very little respect. I heartily recommend it if you haven't seen it. And BRICK. You've got to see BRICK. Also, I am starting to expand my efforts at getting people to check out this site. It feels a little weird, but I have to do it. There's very little point in doing this if people don't see it, right? To this extent, I have started up a Myspace account called Dave's Off-Ramp. If you have a Myspace account you should add me as a friend. Thanks in advance! Cool.

3/15/07 Got an unexpected call last night from a friend that I had not talked with in several months. I could hear the bad news in his voice before he told me. Daniel, another friend and ex-coworker, had been found dead that morning. He apparently died in his sleep, from what exactly no one yet knows. Daniel was a good guy and I genuinely liked him. He had come in to my work about a month back to play some pool and touch base with people, and he told me then that he was hoping to eventually get back on with us at my casino. He showed me his new tattoos and explained the work that he was going to have done that would give him a full sleeve on his left arm. He said that the guy doing his ink work was a "hardcore" like me (his words) and that he would introduce us one of these days. Daniel was one of the only people that I have met since I got into the casino industry that had any real awareness of my music scene. He had known people in his earlier, wilder days that I know now. Every once in a while when it came to music he would know what I was talking about, which was nice. I would rarely see him anymore, but I will miss those infrequent moments when I would hear someone say my name while I was dealing and upon looking up would see Daniel standing there smiling with a drink or a pool cue in his hand. Unfortunately he would usually be gone by the time I'd get a break. His last time in was really the only good chance I'd had to visit with him in the year or so since he left our casino. I wish there had been many more. His number is still in my phone. I can't bring myself to erase it.

3/13/07 I fell asleep on the couch watching TV last night. That is a regular occurrence at my house so there is nothing particularly special about it. What was strange was that when I woke up it was about two in the morning and I had the sudden urge to go get coffee. The TV was tuned to Adult Swim, and the mom and dad on The Brak Show were drinking coffee. For some reason seeing that made me want a cup so intensely that I really felt like I had no choice. I grabbed my writing stuff, threw on my slippers, and drove to Denny's where I watched crazy drunken freaks do their crazy drunken thing, and finally knocked out the last of part 2 of THE STORY. I had forgotten just how crucial late night coffee was to my creative process. It was an excellent night all the way around.

3/9/07 I have decided that I need to have a place here that I can update more often than the rest of the site. THE STORY section is going to take me many months to write, with each new section going up every couple of weeks as I complete them. It will not be dealing with current events, so this will be the place where I take care of that and whatever else might come up.

I guess I will start with the fact that this site has already caused a bit of controversy. (It was really only a matter of time anyway, I suppose.) A friend posted about it on some internet message boards that are frequented by people from the Hardcore/Punk music scene. On one board in particular, not everyone was thrilled with the idea of this site. (Here is a link to that thread, assuming it is still available.) Now, I understand that not everyone is going to love this idea no matter what I say, but as it grows I do hope that it will become apparent that there is more to it than a guy begging for money. In fact, ultimately it should become abundantly clear that this site has much more to offer. If you read the $ page you will be able to see a breakdown of my monthly payments to the three credit accounts that are the source of my pain. Each month I am paying a lot of money towards that total debt out of my own pocket. Those payments are going to have to be paid by me one way or another. I am not expecting others to pick up the tab for my mistakes, as was suggested on that message board. If I can create something here that can draw and hold a person's interest, and in some cases inspire a person to contribute something to my cause, then I just don't think that it is the same thing as begging. When I spoke to a friend about this, he pointed out that people will see it that way if only because of the way that I have framed my approach. "Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?" and all that. And he is correct in that respect. The site is called SPARE CHANGE THE INTERNET, after all. I am not going to change the name or approach that I am taking, however. All I ask is that people take a good look at what I am doing here before making any judgements as to it's validity. Read my story and these updates, check out my catalog to see what I am offering, and follow some of those links on the front page and see where they take you. It's all free, and I'll be putting a lot of work into it. I do feel like it represents somewhat more effort than scrawling some plea on a piece of old cardboard and standing on the corner. (And hopefully, if this site works, I will never actually have to do that.)