randoms.

shape made a guest appearance on thursday night which ruled. i don't even remember what i did friday. thanks to dawn, i have discovered that the 13 dollar gallon of carlo rossi burgundy wine pretty much rules. dan and i are considering just stocking up on them and having like 3 or 4 in the apartment at all times. saturday, dawn and the bauer boys ate and drank like champs. steaks. sides. rossi. then missy and frank came by and we hopped in the spaceship to go dance with wolves and bearded dragons. shortly after, a dingo ate our soul and then we wound up back at ground zero.. aka the bunker. cheers mate.

whiskey freakout.

thursday night, i had kind of a weird religious experience. and honestly, i feel like i still haven't woken up from that night. i kind of feel like peter from office space after he goes to see that hypnotist. anyways, that night after work, i went to my girl dawn's house, who was kind enough to fix me a huge plate of hot food because she's fuckin awesome like that. a few people came by, and from there we proceeded to finish a huge bottle of southern comfort and some beers. once the soco was done, we moved on to jack daniels. me, being the alcoholic that i am, found myself still awake in a house full of passed out drunk people at 5am, but yet i continued to sit in her kitchen and drink jack by myself.

for whatever reason, i put on godspeed you! black emperor, who i've blogged about a few times before. but it was this one song in specific. it's called sleep, and you can download it here. just right-click and save that shit. and listen to it. it's about 23 minutes long, but well worth the listen. these dudes write like epic, saga-type songs. almost like modern day operas. there are like 9 or 10 people in the band. violins, guitars, drums. so much shit. so amazing. if that link ever goes dead, hit me up and i'll get you a copy of the song.

ok so to me, this song is one of the most depressing songs ever made. i don't know what possessed me to put it on at 6am with a bottle of whiskey in my hands, but that's neither here nor there. anyway, one of my last memories was sitting in this kitchen, drinking, listening to this ultra-depressing song, and i just started thinking about all kinds of shit. old friends, old times and places, dead friends, dead relatives, childhood memories, shitty ex-girlfriends, my 16 year old dog who is probably going to die soon, my parents getting old. just a real volatile cocktail of shit spinning around my head at a million miles an hour. these thoughts, the inhuman amounts of alcohol in my blood, the song.. i'm not sure what snapped, but all that i knew was that i needed to be driving fast with the radio loud and the windows open with the cold air blasting me in the face. so that's what i did.

i vaguely remember any details of driving. i just know at this point people were out and about, probably heading to work (it was like 6:30-7am), and i was speeding around drunk out of my god damn mind on the verge of a mental breakdown. somehow, i made it home. i slept until almost 7pm the next day. i don't think i've ever slept that late in my life. i woke up and sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the wall for almost an hour. i got up, showered and went out, swearing i wasn't going to drink. but of course, i met up with carson and she always has a bottle of jack daniels handy, so the whole 'not-drinking' thing went right down the tubes. shit.

so we went over to halligan's in west orange because division east was throwing a video premier for the new alien workshop video called mind field. i have to say, it's one of the sickest skateboard videos i've seen in a long time. definitely worth owning. (available now at division east, by the way haha). anwyay, the skating is just ridiculous. the soundtrack is insane. the production was so, so amazing. so well put together. one of the dudes (josh kalis i think) actually skates to a bullymouth song that was put out by division east records, but those fucks didn't put shit about DE in the credits. but i digress.

i said my hellos when i got there and bullshitted with everyone for a while. but it didn't even seem real. i remember shape bought us a round of car bombs, and that got me a little wacky. but by a certain point, i pretty much sat in the corner of this bar drinking beers and barely talking to anyone. it was weird, i just felt like i was drugged or something. i was just in a constant daze, but i was focused on the video. i watched it twice in its entirety. i have to say, my friend carson really has a heart of gold. she knew i had some shit going on and she pretty much didn't leave my side for the whole night. thanks mi amor. after halligan's we stopped at the midland house to smoke a blunt. then i went home and passed out, but i still never felt like i ever woke up.

i kinda had another mini-freakout last night, but i think that might have been tequila-induced (thanks dawn haha). but yeah, i left the bar and didn't say anything to anyone and then i sent out some kinda nasty/sarcastic text messages which i feel really badly about. i don't know, it was kind of a blur, as was my drive home. i should probably stop doing that, as i'm pending trial for a felony right now. but i got home and to my surprise, there was a massive bottle of absinthe in my house. awesome. so, of course, i drank it until i fell over. literally. on my kitchen floor. then i went in my room and put on the most depressing song in the world. yeah, you guessed it. sleep by godspeed you! black emperor. then i passed out.

in my daze this weekend, i did manage to catch a couple flicks. this first one pretty much sums it up. that's the 'lights are on, but no one's home' look.

felony status.

ok so if you read my last blog, you know that i'm in some shit right now. but, its actually a little worse than i originally thought it was. apparently, the state of new jersey is really cracking down on a lot of offenses due to rises in gang violence, etc. what i got in trouble for this weekend, would have been a misdemeanor with a fine a few years ago. now, its actually a felony, which makes this charge a whole lot worse.

if they decided to throw the book at me, i could actually do a short period of jail time. i have a good lawyer, so that's not going to happen, but i'm in some real financial strain right now. my boy bailed me out with his rent money for this month, because i was under the impression that i'd go to court, plead guilty, pay a fine and then i'd get the bail money back. turns out, it's an indictable offense, so it's getting transferred to the county court. this means that i can't get the bail money back until all of that is done. so now i have to find someone to lend me a 1000 bucks to give back to my boy because he has a wife and 2 kids and he needs this money for his bills like ASAP.

on top of that, i just got myself a lawyer. thank god for good friends, because my friend's dad is a retired lawyer and recommended me to his old partner is who doing my case for about 2000-3000 dollars less than i would get it anywhere else. he knows all of the judges in the county, all of the prosecutors and will definitely get my charge knocked down to a misdemeanor. i'll have to do probation and pay a fine, but i shouldn't have anything on my record after that.

it just really sucks. i have my boy's wedding coming up in march, and i already didn't have money for that before any of this happened. i really wanted to go on some kind of trip this year, which i'm almost positive is not going to happen now, since i won't have money and probably won't be able to leave the country and/or state if i'm on probation.

wrong place. wrong motherfucking time. what a whirlwind of shit. but whatever, i'm grinding right now. picking up extra freelance work, and just hitting the pavement and handling my business. yeah this shit sucks, but ain't nothing ever gonna keep me down or keep me from getting mine. i might have to put some shit on hold temporarily, but i'll be back on top in the end. right now i'm just gonna concentrate on my art and design work, and important shit like my friends and family.

big shout outs to my brother for staying up til 2pm the next day trying to get someone to get me out, bobby and stacey for bailing me out, dawn for always putting a smile on my face during this whole shit, and to maura, tara, mikey, thaddea, andy, dave, jen, freddy dingo, carson, eric, jim, greg, ruben and all my other friends who reached out during this shit. i have the best group of friends anyone could possibly have and you all mean the world to me.

wrong place. wrong time.

apparently, these are a highly illegal thing to be carrying around:


(mine were actually a LOT nicer than the ones in this picture)

anyway, friday night started off pretty awesome. i got drunk early and i hit the bar and got drunk all night with a lot of good friends. it ruled. i caught a ride home from a couple of my boys who stopped on the way to partake in some shady late night activites (i'll just leave it at that). i was just basically a drunken bystander, but when the cops rolled up on us with guns in our faces, i was guilty by association. i was searched and this cop seemed like he got a boner when he dug into my pockets and found my "problem solvers", as i like to call them. i was immediately handcuffed and thrown in a squad car.

on my way to the station, the officers in the car were so generous as to speed up the car and then hit the brakes so my head would hit the flexi-glass divider between the front and back seats. a real stand-up bunch of law enforcement officials. they got a lot of good laughs at that one. glad i could be there for their amusement. we got to the station for processing, and i figured i would get a summons and be released. this was not the case at all. they really wanted to have fun with us.

so they emptied all of our pockets, searched us and did all the necessary fingerprinting, etc. i've been arrested before, so i know the process. it was kind of funny listening to these officers talk. the one officer was so impressed with my brass knuckles, because they were "WAY nicer" than his pair that he had at home. he was so impressed, that he said he was most likely going to take them for himself. ha! what a model citizen. arrest me for something, but its ok for you to have your own pair and now MY pair just because you can hide behind your badge. fucking awesome.

so when i thought everything was done and i'd be released, i come to find out that i have to post bail. fucking bail. ok, this is a misdemeanor possession charge. there should be no bail for this. i really don't understand any of this. right after we got in, they brought in some 19 year old kid who was wasted out of his mind and driving a STOLEN car. they processed him, gave him a summons and then he was able to go. i mean the kid was so wasted he fell into one of the computers in the office. hmmm, DWI with a STOLEN CAR: you can go home. a pair of brass knuckles in your pocket: you spend the night in jail. that makes sense. oh yeah, and your bail is $10,000. are you fucking serious?

i was given one phone call, so i called my brother and told him to call everyone under the sun, which he did. (thanks to him, i eventually got out and everyone and their mother heard about what happened in his effort to find my bail money.) but from there on out, i was kind of clueless as to what was going to happen. we got put in a cell around 4am. of course me and my boy were the only white boys, but it was all gravy because we are personable people and we just bugged out with all the dudes we were locked up with. homeboy in my cell was on a parole violation but we were just clowning on the dude in the cell across from us. for breakfast and lunch they actually give you mcdonalds. an egg mcmuffin in the morning and a big mac for lunch. luckily, i was out before it was dinner time. they told us if no one came and got us out that night, we were getting transfered to the county, which i was definitely trying to avoid.

finally my boy came and bailed me out at 6:30pm. i spent about 15 hours in this shitty cell and i got no sleep. people were just too loud and i was just too pissed off to even sleep. actually, i've gotten about 5 or 6 hours sleep in the last 48 hours since as soon as i got out, i showered and went on a heavy drinking binge with my girl dawn, who is seriously one of the best chicks i've ever known in my entire life. honestly, sometimes i don't know what i'd do without her.

best part about this story:

when i got home from being locked up, i realized that these fucking cocksucker pigs stole a HUNDRED bucks out of my wallet. straight up jacked me. i know that there are a few decent cops out there, but the ones i was dealing with are some real scumbags. and what am i supposed to do now? call and say they stole my money? i'll never get it back and now these pigs have an amazing pair of brass knuckles and a hundred bucks of mine. awesome.

anyway, i'm going to court tomorrow morning. my charge is possession of a prohibited weapon. its a class 4 misdemeanor, so from what i've been hearing i'm going to have to pay a fine, but there is no jail time on a first offense. i'll be there bright and early to talk to the prosecutor. hopefully everything will be alright, because right now i'm kinda stressing a lil bit.