How many more times?

Makin' me feel the way you wanna' do.  This is the first of possibly many posts that begin with Led Zeppelin.  Bow down to the glory of, please, everyone.  This is also possibly the first of many posts that begin with Led Zeppelin but don't actually have anything to do with them.  Sorry bros and bras, mangs and melons.  This blog is, instead, about how many more things I can fall in love with that are about writers.

Let me list a few, in no particular order of greatness or incredibility: Californication, Mad Men, Bored to Death, The World According to Garp, Dead Poets Society, Shakespear in Love, Castle....my mind begins to lose steam, wheels slowing.  Funny how an idea can seem to incorporate every little thing you do and see, and then when asked to list it on a blog just a few atoms come up.  My point, and I will elaborate a few of these to make my completely random claims, is that as a writer, I absolutely LOVE media that has to do, specifically, with writing.

The first conscious awareness I had in this realm was Californication.  Here's a show about a lot of things (sex and David Duchoveny mostly...wait are those different? ZING!), but it is, at its core, about writing.  I stick to that honey laden Showtime wonder like a bee eaten by a bear.  The first season is an endless amount of Saturdays wasted for me.  And then, round two, season two, they cut the writing.  It is dramatic and sexy and lewd, but Hank the writer does not do all that much writing and doesn't seem to care that his book was stolen.  I realized as this second season fell into an abyss of suckiness what the writers (ironic no?) had forgotten.  A novel.  A new book.  Not a memoir of a rockstar.  Hank is almost literal fiction, an excellent genre, and they moved on.  

Then take Mad Men, the best (yes Dad, THE best) show on television as of yet.  It's about booze and women and secrets, but Donny D, the main man, is at heart a writer.  He has a book of creative work, he needs pencils and paper or he's screwed (too bad Iphones weren't around in the '60s), and he takes to heart what the world looks and feels like.  They may be working for the man, but the better part of that show is the creative acts of a new generation, and that will always be interesting.

I think the real thing that cemented it for me, even after these brilliances, was Bored to Death.  I am now realizing that all of my expanded examples are T.V. shows.  I clearly have too much time and an excellent internet connection with which to torrent.  Bored to Death is me: it is funny and abstract, it is heartfelt in a random act sort of way, and it is actually about a struggling writer.  Hank Moody has his books made into movies.  Don Draper...well it's quite obvious how amazing and well-respected that guy is.  But in Bored to Death, a young Jewish writer has completed his first novel (soon to be me?? hopeful eyes), works for a literary magazine, and is desperately trying to finish, a.k.a. start, his second great work.  He struggles and ends up being a private investigator via craigslist, a career-path I have yet to choose, but all the elements are there.  After watching that show I seriously thought about how dope it would be to work for a magazine and get paid enough to live and then try to write the great next thing on the side.  Or in the middle.  Or wherever, hopefully in New York, just like Ames and his wild antics.

Side note: another serious theme for me and this subject is the undoubtable presence of New York, the city of cities in this world of metropolistic future.  I love New York and I want to live there, write in the snowblown winters and dark maroon falls, thunderstorm summers and Central Park.  New York is a siren of old.

Anyway, I decided to talk about all this because I watched Wonder Boys the other night.  Never heard of it, never saw it, did not blip on my radar.  And then suddenly we are plunged into the world of academia and writers and publishing and funny stories that happen with dogs and fake capguns. And I am transfixed for an hour and a half and want to watch it again.

Possibly there is something in the adventures always told in the stories about writers; their lives tend to take random chance, danger, and a lot of substances and come out on the other side with something interesting.  It makes me wonder if I should take more chances, if I should go out in the dark night with a gun and flashlight and just see what comes at me.  Maybe even without the flashlight.  Or get in fistfights or answer weird craigslist ads or talk to strangers.  But even more possibly, I am semi-certain that the strange in life does come through me, that it blows and whispers and spikes the well of my creative water, and that my work does reflect this in a way.  Sometimes I just feel as if I need more.  Travel was good for that.

Oh the stories we all tell ourselves.

p.s. i don't have an idea for this one but I like the tradition of post scripting.  It comes from the latin post scriptum and means "that which comes after writing."  (Thank you wikipedia, thank you NOT Britannica, viva la revolucion technologica).  Isn't what comes after writing just life?  

The End of an Era

So, dear people, I think this will be a short post.  I know everyone loves my essay length thoughts about lots of "topical" things, but I'm feelin' a quickie.

The Era this title speaks of is a simple phrase, a phrase pushed into our skulls by modern advertising and common usage.  "Can you hear me now?" Short enough.  Pretty easy to say, pretty obvious what is going on, pretty clear that Verizon has questionable service all over America (I mean all that guy seems to do is ask if people can hear him...), but no more!  This is, indeed, a post about current technology and T.V.  Sorry for those who enjoy more esoteric topics.

Verizon, our beloved four-g, letter z using, Carson Daily look-alike contest winner of a company started an ad campaign many years ago that defined a new nation.  We need service.  We need to know where people are and what they are saying.  And we need to make sure they can hear us, because in this modern world if your voice does not make it through the mobile phone, onto the little invisible particles that are sent into space, and back again through the atmosphere into a friend's ear, we will perish.  And quickly.  Verizon sits high and mighty with AT&T (my personal provider, whadup unremarkable logo.  Is it a world?) as the two big phone networks in the U.S.

The campaign of "Can you hear me?" is actually pretty likeable, or at least I think it is, and through this Verizon is recognized.  Fairly recently, actually maybe at the Superbowl (see my American Tradition post), a new ad was released.

The camera follows a sleek black tablet-esque object through space.  The bands on its side shimmer in the distant galaxy's sun, it flips and turns and just pulsates with brilliance like no other object has in society before.  Epic music is playing.  People are probably making babies with this thing.  Oh, wait, it's an Iphone.  Damn, should have seen that coming.  The ad does this for a little while, pauses its music, pauses its visual; a silence is audible through America as many people hold their breath, and Verizon spokesmen Paul Marcaerilli (I looked it up) says, "I can hear you now."

What?  Did the invention of a single phone (invented quite some time ago I may add) just change a longstanding slogan for a national company?  I couldn't believe my ears.  The Iphone is great, really it is I have one and can't sleep or move or eat without knowing it has a charge and is listening, but it doesn't change the essence of a company.  I was shocked (as you can tell) that another product, another fiscal competing corporation (everyone watch out for Apple Phone Networks), could decide to do business with a company like Verizon, and in turn get hailed as "the answer."  I think they call the Iphone genius in the commercial after the jaw-dropping recognition of service.

Anyway, this is what I thought was interesting today.  In term's of writing, well I dunno.  It blows me away that a company would answer a logo based entirely on a question because a new model of an old phone came out.  This is the sort of culture change that interests me.  So if you don't have an Iphone can nobody hear you on Verizon?  That is what I'm thinking.  I don't know how this managed to turn into a longer post.  Too much free time on my hands.  I can hear you now, lateskies.

p.s. who saw the competing AT&T ad with the guy forgetting his anniversary?  Isn't stupidity and inattention to your spouse funny??

The Spiritual Words

So, hello hello.  If anyone reads the comments on here my mother (thanks mom) listed a pretty decent list of possible topic ideas.  While the fair majority of them are not-so-subtle ways to get to know her son better through his blog, one really stuck out.  So I thought I'd do a post on it.  Spirituality. Religion.  The big G.O.D (or whatever you wanna call it) that lives in the minds and hearts, or drags out the heart and mind, of every person on this planet.

What can be said about a topic so big?  Firstly, I did study this to some degree.  I have a bachelors in the subject, and so have approached it in a variety of ways over the years.  When I decided to major in this field in college I had to create an individual major (they did not offer it at UCSC, I guess religion just ain't that pertinent anymore, is it College 9??).  In doing so I had to write up a statement of purpose, a "why is this important to you, the college, and the world?"  I said big idealic things like religion is the fundamental element of life on this planet, the common denominator that has united man since they knew what they were, and that the study of it is there essential and relevant to all aspects of modern society.  I was an agent for change.  For understanding.  The bullshit slid and slipped a little on the slope of hope, but overall I still believe all that stuff.  The committee that approved me liked it, too.

But my real reason for studying religion, and this is a sentence I've said for the past four years, is that I love religious phenomena so much that I want to write about it. I love watching the history of mystical experience grow into a tangible human engine of world-wide change, and a novel or haiku or epic seven-book fantasy series that creates something similar, something parallel in scope and importance, is what really gets me going.  I want my fictional works to take their seeds from these seminal ideas of humankind, to reflect them.  I have always felt that these are the truest stories ever told, and the beautiful tales today are simply a re-telling.  So this is what I want, my aim my goal, and it is, as all things seem to be with me, wrapped up in religion.

Some examples?

Examples.  Hm.  How bout the guy born from the never-been-kissed and yet has a husband mother who defies and empire, gets strapped to a barbaric tortue device for three days, dies, returns from death in a flash of light, and levitates into the heavens, declaring a future age of weights and scales, thunder and lighting.  It gets more complicated and people do a lot with it, but that is arguably the story that our society is founded upon.  Themes?  A severed family, massing of a proletariat, the finger to the man, death, birth, salvation, betrayal, and above ALL, Harry Potter fans, love.  Love spilling from the fingers of a man through his invisible father, like a wand through his dead mother.

Examples, examples.  After ten horrendous plagues in the land of Sun Ra and The Mummy Returns a people, approximated at 40,000 inidivduals, fled together through a sea that parted into a desert. There they ate food that fell from the sky, prayed to a golden cow, watched a mountain thunder and lighting and then saw a voice, again from the heavens, saw it swing down through each of their souls and bind them together.  Their leader was an old stutterer and they were slaves.  Notice any similar themes?

How bout the prince who is exiled to the jungle.  His wife gets stolen by an evil demon who hordes a demon army, the prince tries to get her back and does so with a monkey king and his vast horde of monkey warriors.  Love war and a lot of drugs, I am guessing.  Or maybe the prince who renounces his throne, gets sick by a river and then finds the truth under a tree.  He spreads his message and inspires a modern rock band.  Or the prophet who saw an angel, wrote a book, and now holds the hearts and clocks billions.

I could go on, but I don't want to bore you. My point in all of this is that these stories, real or not, are fascinating.  This is what I want to create.  They touch on all the points of our selves our books today strive to.  And if you look hard and long enough you can see that the whole thing is like Regeanomics, it trickled down through the ages.  I want to be a part of the society that creates our society, I hope that doesn't seem odd.  A professor of mine once told that up until the Enlightenment in Europe, almost all great minds were religious scholars.  Religious issues were the greatly debated, they were political and powerful and about the masses, they affected all parts and life and to be on the stage of the world was to be a person of spiritual importance.  Maybe I'm just into old things.  I do love antique shops and yard sales.

The last (I think as I write) part of this that I want to discuss is the form of the stories.  Today we like our narrative, our I, you, he/she, our individual authors and publish dates and spell-checks. One of the coolest (I'm not a nerd I swear) aspects of all this religious crap is the way in which they wrote it. Parables in the New Testament, take what you will from this please.  Jesus taught and taught and here are some veiled versions of what that was so that you, the reader, can find peace in your own life.  They were less wordy than today's literature, but they certainly were creative.  And the repetition, you can see them sitting around fires putting everyone into a hypnotic trance as the wars of Troy trickles from the lips of some bard.  The need to get the story across, to plant it in your mind so that your soul can recognize it when life happens to you, these are seriously didactic stories that are told with power.  I love them for that.

So this is some of my spiel on religion and spirituality.  It is my passion you see, and so I can write forevs on this stuff.  I appreciate those of you who read.  I really do.  Also, I am currently reading James Joyce and he is really amazing, spews the spiritual catholic irish mentality out like nobody's business.  I love it, love it all.

p.s. god=dog?  think about it.

Left for Dead

So this break in the posting of blogs was uncalled for.  I really am not doing much with myself, so the very least I could do is to inform the world of that very little.  I like the way the title sounds and I think, just maybe, this post will be about stolen, retrieved, and forgotten parts of myself.  This relates to writing, I promise.

It starts with a road trip to my stomping grounds, those Petalumian fields of green.  The purpose of the trip was to collect and move my things, all those objects that I have collected over the years and after two quick looks in a box have determined still worth my time and energy.  My parents had them stored, for the most part, in our garage.  It is odd to see one's material life in a 8x4 space, duct-taped and stacked.  Makes me wonder why exactly I need it again, as I came here from somewhere, am currently alive, and have survived without all of it for some time.  But it is nice to be home, to have clothes for the cold California winter.

The main aspect of this life of boxes that touches on writing is, obviously enough, all of my books.  I graduated college some 6 months ago, and as an avid (AAAA-lliteration) book collecter I still have almost every single book I bought during that four year process.  I tossed out "Earthquakes and Volcanoes: A Shocking Discovery" though.  That one needed to biz-ounce.  So I have boxes and boxes of these books- Frankenstein, Frances of Assisi, three copies of the Bible, Hesiod, Illiad, etc etc etc.  I was a widespread humanities nut so I have most of classic literature in my parents garage, but the other thing I had, through only one creative writing class, was about ten books on the "Craft of Writing."  Now I'm not one for self-help books, but I wonder why I never read any of these.  Did you, other writers?  Do you read books on how to write a screenplay or the perfect short story or historical fiction?  I have one written by George Orwell.  That sounds like it could be good.

My point is that I have read a lot, but I have read very little on the craft of writing itself.  Part of the reason for that is the mentality that I don't need help, man.  I just need focus and determination, but I can write, thank you very much.  Now I know that is stupid and immature, really I do, but you still won't catch me flipping through "Writing Down the Bones."  I refused to read it even when I was assigned it.  I wonder if famous authors ever read those books; they were asked to write them (some of them anyway), so they must think it is important.

Anyway I think I left much of this part of literature for dead a long time ago.  I don't know if I ever will bring it into my circulation, it just seems to me that I should either be reading what I want to write, or writing it, and neither of those is instructional help.

This was the retrieval.  I went through the charred remains of a past self, collected what I still wanted to take with me into this brave new world, and then rolled on out.  Part of my experience was not simply retrieval, but an immense amount of nostalgia.  The longer I am out of college the more I seem to dwell on what it was like, how open, how each moment was about the next minute or hour or weekend.  I saw old college friends and we all talked about how this new life, this new existence, is really quite hard.  I guess I knew it was all fleeting anyway, but that is so easy to accept when you are sitting in a field under stars or playing Beer Pong in your backyard room called the "murder shack."  I just nodded and said, for sure man, it'll all be gone soon.  Smile, throw, owned.  But now, now it IS all gone.  So I feel as if that part of me was stolen, as if it escaped from my clutches and is now simply a memory.

But these hard feelings are what good writing is made of right?  I have a mentality (I have lots of mentalities, so get used to me saying it) that everything hard in this life will connect the me with what is hard in all people's lives.  And I will channel that, and I will write that, and it will be good. My theories don't include the out to sea feeling involved in experiencing hardship though.

Lastly, plowing through the coast of Cali, seeing old friends, and going through my objectified life, I saw the forgotten parts of myself.  I really do love collecting books.  I really do still own, use, and love my lava lamp.  I really ate pasta like every night from that pot, or cut a bajillion TJ's pizza's with that shiny circular knifey thing.  I used both crates of records and hung the tibetan prayer flags, lit candles and watched all those seasons of TV through BIT torrent.  I'm pretty dope.  That is what I forgot. What what.

I will try and post more! What are topics you want to me to address? I am great with assignments. Tell me what to do.  Please.

p.s.  Other things I left for dead: 20 pairs of old socks, a box of all my college notebooks, two moleskins I had not seem for some time, birthday cards from the past four years, a leather jacket from Italy that I had hoped was totally dope,  TLC's crazysexycool, post-it love notes, my cap (of cap and gown), Magic the Gathering cards, the Redwall series, naivetee, and about six Mars Volta posters.

An American Tradition

So, the superbowl.  I figure this happens once a year and happens to happen while I am writing this blog thang, so maybe I'll take a crack at it.  How this relates to writing and my life, I am not quite sure.  The only solid analysis I have is that instead of writing for like five straight hours yesterday I watched America's past-time.  So I guess it isn't helping.

I have a couple critiques.  I'll be honest, I don't watch football regularly or with enthusiasm, so this is sort of a once off exposition for me.  First, Christina Aguilara.  She messed up the words to our nations most historical song.  From a writer's perspective, this is like dropping one of the acts in Hamlet.  She seriously screwed the pooch.  Didn't she know that in Japanese The National Anthem of the U.S. of A. is an extended haiku?!  Leaving out those key words disrupted the flow of the river that is beauty, and therefore the game, and therefore the world.  We cannot just choose willy-nilly what words go into the song of a people.  We have meetings to decide those sort of things.  So Christina, take your grammys and figure out a 6-4-6 pattern that works in your ridiculous version the greatest song to ever be written.  

Now I take a step back and realize that I was not aware she missed those words as I watched her sing them.  Did you know that sometimes reading even great works of literature I skim?  Not often, but occasionally.  So maybe it's alright.

Second critique.  The Black Eyed Peas suck.  They look old and uncoordinated; their knees must have bullet hole wounds and Fergie is clearly a heavy smoker.  I don't think I have ever seen a half-time show at a Superbowl that lived up to what everyone keeps hyping the half-time show to be.  They all pronounce it (the announcers) with such clarity of voice and clear enthusiasm that every year I am fooled into believing it will rock. my. socks. off.  Nope.  Good thing I was wearing flip-flops Will.i.am, you owe me one.  I refuse to like any "band" that is presented as a "band" on national television where none of the members are playing an instrument of any kind.  They brought in Slash to play guitar and Usher to dance, so what exactly did the Black Eyed Peas bring to the stage?  Robots.  A space-tastic vision of the future that I actually quite enjoyed.  Those square-headed neon-suited dancers really brought it.  I could see their nostrils flaring in HD.  It makes me think about recorded versions of Aztecian blood-letting rituals in which crowds cheer an out of this world scene to tribal music.  I haven't quite figured out who gets sacrificed (maybe stage-presence), but it sure was a show.

Third critique.  I guess in the state of Texas when you show W. on the big screen the crowd is going to cheer.  But, like, really? The man pushed our country into massive amounts of debt and led us to a false war.  Need we cheer him because he is at a football game?

I realize football was only mentioned, just a moment ago, and in relation to the Bush.  Sorry about that.  The game was actually really good.  Rothelesberger is probably the biggest dude ever and Rodgers reminds of Anthony Green from Circa Survive.  I don't know why.  I guess there is not that much for me to actually say on the football part of the football game.  The pigskin carries its legacy into the year 2011, and I wonder if we will ever be such a desolate country that we cannot hold a grand event like this one.

The original idea I had for a blog post about the superbowl was about the commercials.  They are toted as the best of the year, and what that means to my ears is that big-league corporations are finally sitting down with some decent writers and telling a story that might matter, or a joke that is actually funny.  The funny lived up but the stories did not.  Senseless violence was used to great humor by Pepsi (I think) as many people got whacked by a can.  Not exactly a new idea, but classics aren't bad.  Go read Huck Finn one more time.  The best story I saw was for a car that flew through epic adventures.  It called on all well-known Western ideas of history and innovation, and ended (believe it or not) at an Aztecian blood-letting ritual.  Or something.  The commercial was cool, I'll give it that.

But it begs the question, why aren't ads in our world taken more seriously?  Maybe I have a skewed concept of how good it could be, entirely based on Mad Men, but I want more.  The next person to figure out a realistically effective way of advertising is going to make some serious cash.

I think the superbowl is a good past-time.  It distinguishes our country from the rest of the world, which could be a negative but in an increasingly evened out hierarchy I think pronounced independence should be regarded as positive, unless it is based on most bombs or largest military presence or....ok so the U.S. has some issues.  My point in all of this, I think, is that I appreciate that people watch a sporting event year after year, regardless of the status of our country.  I don't see Democrats supporting the Packers while Republicans back the Steelers.  Competition is rife but not in such a segregated way, and that is promising to see.  Yay!

p.s. this was a weird post.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

So, been a little while.  Oops on my part.  I think blogging is quite hard.  But I am attempting to establish rhythm and order to my life, and this should be part of it. I am attempting to have titles, believe it or not, that mirror or prelude my body posts.

So, lets start with the Good.  I'll be honest as we start the Good, the Good is on the shorter side this week.  I've got more chalked up in the other categories, but I guess the main Good is that I have found a residence. A decent place with tiles and carpet, a commode that does not bring the body's waste too close to its most cleansing of rituals, and quite the bedroom.  It has been some time since I've had a house.  A place, a space, a sacred area of love and devotion.  Four walls and a ceiling, just a little bit of what modern humanity can provide for you.  The college house was great but gross, got old a little too quickly for my tastes, and I left feeling like I tore myself from a great tree and plunged into dense jungle brush  below.  I think I was some sort of green camouflaged lizard that had tongue issues, and so I was feeling a little skittish under all those jaguar paws and what not.

But I did do the university slum, a couple of them actually, and learned what it meant to create a place with many people.  It can be frustrating sometimes, but for the most part I just laid back and tried not to care.  Usability was key.  Now, when it came to my own room,  I cared a great deal.  Certain posters have remained above my head while I slept since I was about 15 (can you say naked Led Zeppelin angel reaching towards heaven with no penis!?). Certain furniture has crept into my life slowly but surely; now all of it sits in my parent's garage, wanting release from exile. The space I cultivated for myself was the most artistic expression I got (besides words and music).  I like low beds and large walls.  I need more bookcases.  My Orange amp needs to bask in awesomeness while my pedals glow in the dark under the moon.  Ambience.  Ah.

I say all of this because the space you live in is the space you write in.  At least for me.  I find the coffee shop experience theoretically contemplative and bourgeois, sitting with your cold soul and a warm cup watching the daily folk go about their scrawny lives, but when it comes down to it I would blast Pandora and add people on Facebook.  A storefront distracts me, and so my home, in exchange, has always been the place that I write.  And I usually need silence.  Space and silence and some sort of peace so that my train of thought can flow.  Makes sense, right?

And now I will be, in a short couple days, creating a new space with a special person, and I am excited to view my surroundings once they are furnished.  Will I write on the couch?  Will there be a couch?  Will I write from a yoga pad staring at a tapestry or in my bed propped on a pillow (which is currently where I am writing btw)?  I am beside myself with interest (very bored you see..) to examine my new writing quarters.  I wonder if Picard dug his captain's office for his captain's log. Got to look into that.


The Bad.  So that was the Good, and it was pretty good overall and is something to look forward to.  The Bad is that this blog was supposed to be about how I wish I could write, but instead I spend all my hours wilting away serving coffee or roast pork or selling some pre-ripped jeans to teenagers.  Turns out it takes some time to be allowed to do any of those activities for money, and so I am unemployed.  You would think this would be in the Good because it means I have finished a novel or submitted something to Random House or finally have time for that book-tour, but I have just watched an incredible amount of T.V.   Read a bit too.

I don't know why I am so lazy about writing.  Sometimes the juice is there, and I pound out great stuff, and then other times I'm all dried up, spent, needing warm blankets and closed eyes. These are all sad excuses and thus in the Bad category; I really got to get my shiz together. The purpose of the blog was to train these dexterous fingers to write even when the heart and mind are lagging, and so I must must persevere! But I have been writing more, overall, and that is good.

One thing I've done with my free time is to build a garden with my girlfriend.  I always thought this was a romantic rustic sort of thing to do, and it was.  We dug earth and planted seeds and got on our hands and knees.  The earth is cool to the touch in the shade and does, indeed, make you feel at home.  I realized that people do this every day and the odd thing about wanting to be a writer, for me anyway, is realizing that anything I might write about (unless it's really quite odd) is something someone does every day.  They don't consider it a big deal.  They don't necessarily feel as if they are prophetic.  But when I considered tilling the land under the sun it always seemed so epic.  So much something that teaches the main character about the follies of life and how to continue towards happiness regardless.  Anyway, it made me want to read Steinbeck and figure out the different names for dirt.

I was wrong.  The Good was bigger than the Bad.  And now the Ugly.  I've got some sort of rash. Big looking insect bites on my legs.  After weeks of scrutiny, my girlfriend's brother claimed they were more like poison oak, and then wham bam four days ago I've got tiny pointed spots on my arms hands chest back belly ugh ugh ugh.  They say it should itch like the dickens and it does sometimes, but overall I just feel like I'm turning into a lizard.  Which is not the best feeling.  I don't want to be cold-blooded, that can't be good for my chi.  I'm getting it checked out by a medical professional, but all of this makes me think that Kafka had some crazy skin problems right around the time he wrote The Metamorphosis.

I've got to run actually. Kovorkian in fifteen.  I do like sharing parts of my life on the interweb. Makes me feel as if I'm contributing to a society that aliens will dig up millions of years in the future.  Hello! This is English! I am a humanoid!  Did I ever write a book? Why did we die?!?!

Peace.

p.s. I've never seen the Good the Bad and the Ugly, maybe I should watch things before I pirate their names.  Happy hunting.