Wide Open Spaces, pre-reading setup.

Later that night, Mo responded to The Cat Signal. 

I used to be good at writing. I used to have concentration and was able to build worlds with words and trying to connect each string and build upon that. Sadly, lately it's more a race to be an adult and work on things outside of what I'm trying to get done. But I'm trying, and I think that's what counts. I have projects I want to do next year, and I'm going to have them finished and prepped for getting it done. There's nothing standing in the way that can't be taken on and overcome.  I just wish it would go faster.

Took a big hit by not landing a job that would have taken me to the next level. And then on top of that, lost two more jobs of smaller importance. And I'm just sitting here thinking... Okay... one large step back, but need to put my best foot forward and jump back on track. Which means universe, I have goals and I need to meet them, so either help or get out of my way.

I have loved Richard Avedon since I lived in Pittsburgh and found his photos in a magazine (Rolling Stone, maybe) and felt like I was in the room with the subjects and they were looking at me.  I bought a huge coffee table book of his work and hauled it around for years before sadly decluttering it (I don't like coffee tables because they collect stuff, and coffee table books don't fit on bookshelves).

When Avedon took portraits, he stood next to the camera, not behind it, so that the subject was looking at a human, not a lens.  He fixed them with his intense gaze and got back an intimate portrait, a view of their soul, if you will.  He got a genuine engagement, not just a pose.  This is one of his most famous portraits - Marilyn Monroe, except not looking like a glamour shot, looking like a vulnerable human:

I found out recently that Avedon was Jewish (he died in 2004), and that an exhibition of his portraits was in Philly at the National Museum of American Jewish History, which is around 8 blocks from my job.  The exhibit closes on Sunday, and I was determined to get there, so I took off half an hour early from work and speedwalked there in the rain so I could get half an hour in the Avedon gallery.  The exhibit lives in Israel normally and Philly is the only United States location where it will be seen.

Entitled Family Affairs, the exhibit featured portraits that Avedon had taken of Allen Ginsburg and his family.  Relevant to our other conversations, Ginsburg's father was a poet. The other part of the exhibit was a set of 69 portraits entitled, "The Family."

Rolling Stone tasked Avedon with election coverage leading up to the 1976 Presidential Election and paired him with a writer to do so.  What he did, instead of illustrating articles, was to take 69 portraits of the people who he thought were relevant to the election, including many faces the public never saw.  As an example of his perspective on history, of how visionary he was, he clearly did not take pictures of every politician, but he did photograph Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (though Bush makes sense since he was the director of the CIA at the time).  He photographed Jules Stein, the head of MCA Records, Donald Rumsfeld, Pete Rozelle (head of the NFL, creator of Monday Night Football), Jerry Brown, Ralph Nader, the head of the teamsters union, the head of the mine workers' union, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm ...

Anyway, he photographed the power and the power behind the power.  He saw the wheels turning inside the machine, he didn't just see what came out on the conveyor belt at the end of the line.  My father also has that perspective, he looks at world events and sees the underlying issues and what is really at stake.  I admire them both.

I want to submit this assemblage to the MoMA with the title, stuff my mom is holding on to in case my Grandmom comes back. ​

Out with:

• facebook
  
• reddit
  
• imgur
  
• twitter
  
• instgram
  
• netflix
  
• amazon instant video
• fark

Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, except to clear space for...

In with:

• onepostwonder
  
• khanacademy
  
• github
  
• https://berniesanders.com/news/
• news.ycombinator
• project euler
• goodreads
• rmbryan.com

I've always loved that California uses the letter Q on license plates (is it the only state to do so?). They make it a bit smaller than the other letters to better emphasize the squiggly thing that cuts through diagonally on the lower right corner of the Q, and said diminutive size makes it extremely cute! Click here for a photo I found on the internet illustrating the Q.

Well, I finally decided to make my move here official and get California plates last week, and wouldn't you know it, by sheer marvelous luck of the draw, I got a Q! I am thrilled!

So now I'm a member of The Q Club. The Q club, while a small minority, still comprises many members--the only thing is, none of them (to my knowledge) even knows about the club, or that they are in it. So I guess that makes me the de facto president of The Q Club.

I guess one other member knows about it--a woman in one of my dance classes has a Q, and I showed her my new plates the other day and told her that "see, now we are both in The Q Club." She smiled, although I'm not sure if it was from pleasure with her newfound knowledge about her membership in a club she hadn't known about before, or just pity.

And now, if you will excuse me, I will go about the rest of my wonderful president-of-The-Q-Club day!

I absolutely love making music with Jill "xtingu" Knapp . Love it will all my heart, liver, spleen, and other vital organs. Love it with all my soul, chakra, aura, and other vaguely mystikal terms that suggest life beyond this one. I even love it like a fat kid love cake. (Sorry about the bankrupcy, Fiddy. Something tells me you're gonna be just fine.)

Jill and I decided to go easy on the live shows this summer, especially once it became clear thatThe Big Reveal, the second full-length album from Hot Breakfast!, wouldn't be ready for a spring release. We decided October felt like a good month to drop an album - gives us of time to finish up without rushing, to get the artwork done, to book some "release parties," to dig into our savings account, to eat some fondue.

But opportunities kept sort of falling into our lap. And we are not ones to ignore the sage advice of the Pet Shop Boys, so we seized those opportunities, which led us to this lil' bullet list of What We've Played This Summer (so far).

• We were a featured artist at Wilmo Wednesdays on May 20th. We were to be in Austin for the entire week, but after a Rube Goldbergian chain of events brought us home a couple days early, we agreed to jump on the bill. Highlights included: getting to see my great friend and brilliant songwriter Brian Turner perform for an audience for the first time in years; meeting Mark Thousands (a wonderful guy and excellent singer/songwriter/guitarist/tattoo canvas); and checking out Anatomy of an Outcast, a ridiculously young & friendly hard rock/punk/soul quartet.
• We performed as a featured artist at McGillens Open Mic in Philly on June 11. We ended up seeing some really, really great acts and winning over a big, relatively young crowd, the majority of whom gleefully sang along with "Mr. Roboto," a song that charted, fell, and re-emerged as a cult classic before most of them had been born.
• We played at Yachtstock River Jam at the Deck at Harbor Pointe, a massive event featuring a bevy** of great artists we know and love, like The Joe Trainor Trio, Danielle and Jennifer, and Kuf Knotz. Tommy Conwell headlined. It was a really well-organized event that had the misfortune to be scheduled for June 27th - a day loaded with vicious thunderstorms and hurricane winds. Nearly half of the bands pulled out, and many who showed packed up and left immediately after their set. But while I didn't play well at all, by the end of our set, the 20 or so folks in the room had gathered around our stage, wondering "who are these wacky dorks singing about drunk guys named Larry and pants?" We also sold some CDs, added a buncha folks to our mailing list, and impressed the event's organizer, a guy who looked a bit like Sam Elliott in Roadhouse (read: a guy you absolutely want on your side during a barfight).
• July 3rd saw us opening for the Dead Milkmen at Crash! Bang! Boom!, the punk clothing store just off South Street that used to be Zipperhead, in an all-acoustic (no mics), invite-only show. That photo* up top, with Jill n' me singin' to a packed house in a hot clothing store? This is the coolest I have ever been. Here's a review from the owner, the lead singer/guitarist of awesome punk/goth/metal band Live Not On Evil. Best of all, our friends Kevin & Julie Regan were able to score invites.
• On July 15, we were asked to substitute for The Sun Flights, a band that sadly had to drop from the Ladybug Festival lineup due to an impending death in the family. So the next day, July 16th, we squoze Janice, my Mini Cooper S, into the last parking spot in all of Wilmington (I love Janice) to perform a half-hour set at Film Bros. on 2nd & Market, and MAN did we have fun. Our set went really well - we had a packed house that kept getting packedier (there was live music and open doors in a three-block area, so people could come and go as they pleased), and we got to spend some time with Joe & Kerry while seeing tons of old friends while catching some terrific sets from Margot McDonald, Sarah Koon, and Rachel Schain and the Comic Book Geeks. We made some friends, got recognized (always a kick), and thoroughly enjoyed the vibe and energy of one of the most beautiful nights of the year. Just seemed like everyone was happy, and every artist knocked it out of the park. We really wish we could have seen more musicians, but it was so great to be a part of it all, especially considering Gable Music Ventures turned us down for Ladybug a couple years ago.
• Say hi to Marshall. He was a guest of Joe, the Dead Milkmen's guitarist/singer (the "Punk Rock Girl" guy), at the DM's Crash! Bang! Boom! show. He's young and good-looking he and Jill chatted n' flirted like old friends much of the night, and then he asked us to perform with his punk band Sherwin in Lancaster for their final show on July 17 before he moved to Japan. So last night, we round-tripped it to a wonderful little punk dive/restaurant called the American Bar and Grill. And Holy crap, did we have a ball. Not only did we get to meet up with our friend Georgie, one of the most awesome people on the planet, but we ate some killer grub (chicken-pesto pizza for me, tenderloin tip salad for Jill) (I know, right? We're in DDD territory here!) and pulled out one of our best, tightest performances to date.
• Now, the ABG is basically two small rooms - one has bar in the center, which boasts an impressive beer/whiskey selection, while the other is a small dining room until 9 or so, when they tear down the tables and set up the PA and turn it into a "stage." The Dead Scouts opened at 9:30, putting the fog machine and stage lighting they provided to nice use. I loved how the beautiful, trippy guitar tones countered the hardcore-inspired vocals (think Fucked Up, a that wonderfully incongruous Canadian post-hardcore outfit). Good band, but so loud it was hard to stay in the room with them - maybe 6 people hung in there for the set. So when we stepped up for our half-hour at 10:15, we could tell the patrons were thinking "the hell are these guys doing here?" Well, we tell thee what, Doubting Levi, we're here to rock your lovingly hand-woven socks off, pal.*** By the end of our 6-song set over half of the crowd from the bar had piled into the stage room to witness the dork-rockitude and sing along with "Total Eclipse of the Heart." It was glorious. More on this in a bit.
• Anyway, then Sherwin - Marshall's band - came on. We had an 80-minute drive ahead of us, and we were already beat from an unexpectedly long Thursday. Before they started, we figured we'd give them a polite 20-minute listen before heading out. But ten minutes after they began, we knew they could have played 'til dawn and we weren't going ANYWHERE. They were seriously that good, mixing old-school punk with hardcore, rock n' roll, a touch of metal, and incredibly intense & honest vocals. Marshall rocked the drums - looking deceptively laid-back but driving every song, but every band member was top-notch, and the songwriting was incredible, merging influences from bands as diverse as Against Me!, The Clash, Minor Threat & Fugazi, Gorilla Biscuits, Bad Brains, even maybe some Black Flag. Best of all, they played the SHIT out of it, with a super-tight rhythm section and some of the best rhythm guitar playing I've ever heard. Bottom line: we love Marhsall, we love Sherwin, and I hope this music will live on somehow while he's 7,000 miles away. 

That brings us to today. 

After reading this over, I realize I've wandered off topic a bit. I was going to talk about how we sometimes have a hard time getting out of the house, either due to health- or social-anxiety, but we're almost happy when we do. We love our people, we really don't see them enough, and gigs are a great way of not only getting out and saying hi, but also connecting and reconnecting.

And that's all true, but instead, I'm gonna bore you with schmoop about Jill. Sorry. But here's the deal:

I love making music with Jill Knapp.

Whether we're performing at a gig, practicing at home or at our buddy Jeff Dement's house for a big Billy Joel Tribute show, recording a new song in the studio, or quietly learning a new song I wrote (one of the most intimate things we do together), I sometimes just realize how this gives me life. As we were halfway through our over-the-top take on "Total Eclipse" at ABG, I glanced at her as she gave it her all, combining theatricality with sincerity with comedy, selling it with her absolutely incredible voice,. and once again, I was overcome with how lucky I am to be this guy, to not only get to share our lives, but to share our music and our musical minds.

My fall is going to be devoted to getting people to listen to our album. We want it in stores, on radio stations, in homes, in everyone's iPod or iPhone or whatever new iDevice we'll all need six years from now. We believe in it. Look, it's only rock and roll - some songs are silly, some deeper, some tossed off in 15-minutes, some agonized over, some loud n' punky, some soft n' groovy. But ultimately it's just music, something most people maybe have on in the background as they drive to work, something to distract us in the gym. And that's cool - that's we need music for all that. But I've come to realize I'm at the peak of my communication skills when we perform as our silly, gimmicky duo. I want people to actually sit and listen, like we did in the old days. Not just because I wrote the music, or because we worked so hard on it. It's because when Jill sings the words, she's singing that indescribable thing that is us. And that's what I have to offer.

As I watch and listen to her sing, I'm filled with...something I can't explain. Love, yes, of course - more love than I ever knew possible. But when I listen to our music, whether live or captured on a buncha 1s & 0s, the combination of our efforts that created those sounds fills me with something that is probably the closest I will ever feel to believing in God.

That's right. "Hole in Your Pants" ain't just dorky. It's divinely dorky.

- Matt
​
* Speaking of, that photo up top was taken by Dean Clean. (Yep - I'm milking this "cool" think for all it's worth.)
​
** Congratulations, as you have witnessed the first and final time I shall deliberately use that word in print. 

*** That's right - three Amish jokes in one sentence. BURN! Or should I say...CHURN?***

****I'll just see myself out.