Doing nothing, but really friggin busy

It's been a couple weeks since I wrote anything here. Don't feel bad, though, it's been three months since I wrote anything for VMM.

I'm not ignoring anyone, I'm just amazingly busy of late, and there are other things on my mind. The racing season, on paper, is almost four months away. You may see that as a third of a year, but I see it as holy-shit-that's-tomorrow. I've been hard at work helping to build a new company at one track, keeping another track in the news, helping some racers get a few sponsorship bucks on the side, and trying to help the new VMM management without being a nuisance, all pretty much non-stop since October.

I'm effin' psyched for everything to start in late April/early May, but at the same time, I could use six more months to prepare and probably still want more time. Our momentum is rolling, and that's a great thing, but there are also a ton of loose ends to tie up before the first race. A TON.

Either way, I feel like I'm really helping to make a difference this year. I feel like what I'm helping to build from the ground up is going to mean something to people and make them happy. I feel that way because I've already seen some of it. It's very, very rewarding.

I've stopped to smell the roses (and occasionally Rose) a few times, even if only for a couple of hours. I've taken in a few UVM basketball and hockey games, went to a show with Rose a few weeks ago, and we're headed to another one on Friday, but it seems like it's all been between breaths. We're also looking for a new apartment in the Vergennes/Middlebury area so that I'm a bit closer to work but that she's not a billion miles from school and her own jobs, and that has taken some time up, too.

By the way, it's clear that things in my current apartment are deteriorating in a hurry, which makes me want to spend even less time there than I already do (and at an average of 1-3 nights per week, that ain't much, Ted). There's a steadily-building pressure cooker of resentment and anger among us roomies, which I've totally seen coming since, well, the beginning. I'm a pretty easy-going dude. I was fine, and I didn't have a problem with anyone that I was aware of until today, and it seems to be the latest in a months-long line of problems within those walls. "The lease is up in May," I keep reminding myself, but still, it kinda blows feeling like none of us will be able to be friends after the end of our lease, if we're even still friends at this point now. It seems so forced lately a great deal of the time, and that's a shame. I feel like it's affecting my other friends' opinions of me, too, and that's simply because I'm not around enough to see them on a regular basis and let them know that I'm not as big an asshole as the picture that may or may not have been painted of me might suggest. Seems I don't get invited to much anymore. Maybe it's out-of-sight-out-of-mind with them since I'm not around a lot, and I hope that's all it is, but I have a feeling that there may be outside influence at work, and I don't care for that too much.

As negative and nasty as that all sounds, I assure you that it's not something that consumes me on a daily basis. Do I miss my friends? Of course. But there is so much more in my life that is positive right now that I don't care enough to dwell on the negativity. I did that for far too long. In fact I spent more time writing all that out just now than I've spent thinking about it.

One of the constants I can depend on, as always, is music. I've been listening a lot lately and taking an interest in stuff that's new to me that I may not have ever found if I hadn't gone looking for it. It's not necessarily weird or "different" as much as it is unfamiliar. I love the thrill of discovering new music, or of discovering highlights in familiar songs that had escaped me.

But now know this: I love my job, but I hear an unacceptable amount of country music at the office. It has only reaffirmed by belief that I don't like country music not because I wasn't willing to give it a shot, but rather because the genre, as a whole, gargles my balls. At least the majority of the last 10-15 years' worth of work, anyway. The number of half-assed, pop-laced, strictly-for-record-selling, franchise-building, vomit-inducing "country" songs that are being churned out of Opryland these days just blows me the fuck away. The number of shitsack rock or pop songs (almost none of which were good to begin with) covered by country artists these days is goddamn astounding. And, of course, America fucking loves it. Apparently, though, the record companies and radio stations are beginning to notice that their product sucks, and rather than playing the songs written for country radio, they're just saying "Ah, fuck it," and playing the actual pop songs themselves, as originally recorded. But then, of course, the retarded mother fuckers over at the pop stations are scooping up Toby Keith and Taylor Swift and whatever the fuck band did that "Life Is A Highway" remake a few years ago like they're the next MJ or Britney or fucking Led Goddamn Zeppelin. Mumford & Sons, you assholes, are not a country band. They're folk-pop at best. The Pixies didn't write country songs, and something tells me that the band that covered "Where Is My Mind?" might agree. And the first sonofabitch who tries to tell me with a straight face how the christ Adele ended up on country stations is getting a right hook to the goddamn jaw. I can't stand her bullshit on regular pop stations, and I sure as hell don't want to hear it on country stations. Fuck.

I'm not even sure where this rant is going. All I know is that I'm right. And I'm tired.

The year in phone pics: 2011

Looking back at some of the cool things I got to do in 2011, seen through the lens of my cell phone camera. You can watch the slideshow, or click on the photos to go to my Picasa album. (Clicking means you can see the captions!)

Remembering the ODT

It's funny some of the things you remember better than anything else.  I feel like I'm pretty creative, like I've got a pretty good wit and sense of humor, my I don't hold a candle to my old man.

He was a funny-ass guy, much funnier than I could ever hope to be, and the other night my uncles, a couple cousins, and my sister and I gathered at Uncle Jeff's house and had some beers in the garage.  We dug out a couple of old audio tapes my dad made for deer camp back from about 1988 to '92.

The back story: The Orange Dog Tavern was born in 1970 when a group of sick and twisted St. Louis guys and a few buddies went to deer camp in Worcester.  The "orange dog" part came from a poem my grandfather once told:

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow.
Everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day
And a big orange dog came along and fucked it.

So, that being the premise of the ODT, you can imagine what deer camp was like for about 35 years.

Everyone had a nickname.  Uncle Gene was Goat Lips I, his son oldest son Kevin is Goat Lips II.  Uncle Gary was The Green One, my father Ron was the Reverend RNNN (pronouced "rin").  Family friend Mike is Mr. Lunch, I've always been Skippy.  And so it goes.

Anyway, Dad created WODT, an on-tape "radio station" for deer season, completely packed with original -- and highly offensive -- material.  Highlights from the 1992 tape include a football game between the Steelers and Cowboys with commentary from Howard Cosell and The Hindu Wisdom Giver, an essay by legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite in which he compares the assassination of JFK to his sexual fetishes with his wife, community announcements sponsored by Reverend RNNN's Holy Church Of Latter Day Guys To Whom All Things Are Swell, and an AIDS awareness message so unbelievably funny and politically incorrect that the back of your head hurts from laughing so hard when you hear it.

I hadn't heard any of those skits in years, but we popped that tape in on Friday night and I found myself reciting almost every word verbatim.

"Uh, hi.  I'm the guy at the brain store, um, down the street.  Yup.  And today, we're having a sale.  If you come down today, I'll sell you some brains for... for two dollars."

It wasn't just the tapes, either.  There were written poems, videos, and even "The Book of Bambi" featuring cartoons of Stick Man and Barney, Bible verses from the Book of RNNN.  Birthday roasts with acted-out skits featuring characters like Roy Music, the Mayor of Worcester, and race car driver W.D. Forte involved not just my father, but all of the brothers.

I went to Barnes & Noble last night with Rose, and we flipped through a photography book that the Burlington Free Press published highlighting all of the devastation caused by the weather in 2011.  I was amazed as I looked through the photos at how little I remembered of the horrendous storms that hit this very area in which I live so hard not even a year ago.

But those tapes came on, and I remembered everything so clearly and vividly.  I like that.

We haven't had deer camp (by the way, nobody actually hunted at deer camp) in almost ten years, but I'm hopeful that we do again at some point.  Friday night was awesome.

Long live the ODT.

This One's For Me... And You, I Suppose

Hey there, I'm Justin.  You may know me from the 1,500 (give or take) articles I've cobbled together covering local stock car racing in the last decade-ish, or the radio programs I've done, or whatever else it is that I do in public.  I've been writing about race cars for a long time, but not really about anything else, and I'm tired of it.

Don't get me wrong here, I love telling racing stories and I don't see that changing, but I need an outlet for all my other ideas.  MySpace stopped being cool before it ever started being cool, and I refuse to go back to that for my blogging needs.  Facebook, meh, I could take it or leave it.  I do like the Blogger software that Google offers, though, and having been pretty familiar with it, I figured it was my best option.  (Wordpress is nice but it just takes too damned long to figure out what all the gadgets are.)

Anywho, this little blog'll be about whatever the hell I'm thinking at any given moment.  It may be about racing.  It may be about how much I love my girlfriend.  It may be about how much I miss my father or how awful the parental battle over my son has been for four years.  It may be about my undying love for this messed up little state that I live in (and I do mean Vermont, not anything else, sickos).  It may be reminiscing over good times, or looking forward to the future.  I may write poetry.  I may steal poetry and re-post it.  Posts might be funny, sad, or laced with swear-words and foul language.  In fact, I can almost guarantee the foul language, regardless of topic.

Balls and farts.  See?  It's started already.

The name "(802)zoom" is something I've been trying to find a use for for about three years now, and I might still use it for some other project down the line.  I mean, first of all, it sounds cool when you say it out loud.  "Eight-oh-two-zoom."  Bad-ass.  Second of all, it obviously means something to me because I'm an unabashed fan of Vermont, my home state (our area code is 802), and zoom infers speed or racing or whatever.  Third, when you use the parentheses as I've done, it becomes a title with a trendy, big-city, designer storefront douche vibe to it that might help it to catch on and get some regular readers who want to pretend to feel as hip as I pretended to feel when I clicked "publish".  Fourth, everything else I wanted was taken.  Fifth, I actually only tried two other titles and they were taken.  Seventh, I forgot how to count and I'd really like a sandwich.  Other seventh, I forgot what I was talking about.

So yeah, this is a start, anyway.  Thanks for stopping in.  If you wanna leave a comment, please, by all means, do it.