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Corn Chips & Exit Interviews

A favorite Facebook post from February 6, 2016: I really wish there were exit interviews for relationships. You start each relationship with a hundred questions, why not end them with a couple? Most end in silence. How great would it be to hear, “There was someone who was just a little better than you,” “I’m not ready for anything too serious,” “That one time you came over to my apartment you smelt like corn chips.” You know, anything to help you be a better partner in the next relationship. I’m going to go take a shower and scrub this handsome body down.

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An ode to Alissa Rogers (1982 – 2016) Shreveport / Denver

From Alissa: “sorry you are in that, its retardation not blooming. think about birth and also how much the sun hates us, and how fucking special it is to be able to feel a past. smell it. converse with it. have it. but to have the benefit of a future, its our internal health plan. chew on bits of ice as well, very uplifting and constructive-but socially annoying. i enjoy it during large group meetings, and dealing with the homeless. i miss our high school car rides.” -Alissa Rogers Today would have been my friend Alissa’s 40th birthday. I’m sitting in Hawaii looking at the water and my face is wet as I think about Alissa and my thoughts drift to my sister Brittany, gone now 13 years herself. I think about my friends who recently lost siblings. I think about how I wouldn’t be sitting here in fucking Hawaii had it not been for these folks who helped shape me into the pear shaped individual I am today. Here’s something I wrote when Alissa passed some years back. I miss her and think of her often. This was written in grief, and a first draft was posted. It desperately needs to be edited, but I just can’t stop crying when I read this to make the fixes…. So please forgive all the grammatical errors and such… —– Alissa Rogers was the first woman who let me touch her boobs. She was wearing these fake silicon pads you put into your bra and wanted me to feel them too see if they were real. Years later she told me that was the night she wanted to take my virginity, but I was too dumb to make a move. Alissa Rogers is the reason I am the man I am today. Alissa Rogers passed away today. I’m sitting here trying to figure out what to write about that wild, wonderful and obnoxious woman. I’ve been sitting here in silence for the last 15 minutes trying to find the right words when it dawns on me, had she been here she would have said something wildly inappropriate to break the tension. She would have made me and every one else laugh. She was fierce. She was hilarious. She was my friend. I went to Byrd High school in Shreveport, Louisiana with Alissa and I fucking hated her. She was everything I wasn’t. She was loud, obnoxious and loved attention. Of course I would fall in love with her. It happened in a dream. I had seen her out and about at places like the Karma Cup coffee house or St Vincent Mall, but I didn’t know her. Then she showed up in a dream of mine. More like invaded it. That was more her style. It wasn’t a sexual dream, it was just a dream where this larger than life girl played a part in. Somewhere a switch in my head turned my hatred into adoration. I was shy and awkward. I didn’t know how to approach her or become her friend, but fate intervened as during those late nights loitering at the Karma Cup, my best friend Michael Burnley ended up dating Alissa’s friend Jessica. As Michael and Jessica grew closer, so did Alissa and I. All these years later, I’m pretty sure the only reason we hung out in High School was because I had a car. She knew I loved her, and I would drive her anywhere. I did it gladly, just to be next to and a part of that thing that she was. She became my partner in Crime. I’d drive her to school everyday. I’d drive her around Shreveport. We’d drive to Dallas, Houston, Longview, or Tyler, Texas to see Punk Rock bands play. It was one of those days where I was driving Alissa around. We were going to go hang out with her new boyfriend Joe. I was jealous, but I was blindly in love and would do anything for her. It was on this day, my life changed for the better. We drove across the bridge into Bossier City, to a magical place called Books A Millions. It was big box book store with a gigantic parking lot, just blocks away from the mall. All the cool kids hung out in that parking lot of weekend nights. There at Books a Million, on that faithful day, We sat down at a patio table and I met Joe Upton and his friends. I remember sitting down at the table not knowing a single person at the table. I was shy. I was quiet. I was nervous and scared. Normally I would not have said a god damned thing, but something happened that day, because I reached out my hand to the person sitting on my right. I introduced myself to the guy sitting next to me. That person was Matt Crowson. Matt has become someone I’ll never be able to get rid of. Also sitting at that table were two other very important people in my adolescence, Joe & Ivy Woods It was through that group of Alissa, Matt, Joe, Ivy and later on Jason Gay; that I would find my courage. I would find my inspiration. I would find the beginnings of the path that has led me here. I had always wanted to start an underground fanzine, and guess what? Joe and Jason had one. I started interviewing bands for Joe and Jason’s KGB magazine. Alissa was a big part of pushing me to becoming more comfortable with myself. She used her powers of persuasiveness to help push me down the road I needed to be on. Fast forward a few years later and it was New Years Eve of 2001. Alissa had just returned to Shreveport after living in Denver for years. It was the first time in my entire life that it had snowed in Shreveport. I spent that evening hanging out with Alissa driving in the ice and

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Review: BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999 Dir. Martin Scorsese)

When I was working at a Mom and Pop video store in 2000, the trailer for BRINGING OUT THE DEAD would come on at least once an hour on the trailer tape. The soundtrack for the trailer was “Janie Jones” by The Clash. I was a burgeoning punk rock fan, and it was that trailer that turned me into a CLASH fan. I remember finally taking the VHS home with me to watch, thinking the whole movie must be some kind of punk rock ambulance driver masterpiece! Scorsese and Schrader back again! I loved Taxi Driver! But it’s not Taxi Driver. My 18 year old brain didn’t know enough about film and the movies that inspired this film to get it. I just didn’t think it was that great and thought Ebert, who gave it 4 stars, was a fool. I hit play on it this evening, inspired by Cage’s admission that he thinks this is one of his top 3 films he’s made. It’s always held a special place in my heart thanks to its association with THE CLASH. It looks cool as hell. Maybe, just maybe I’ll like it this time. And damn! It was rad. It’s about Nic Cage, an EMT who hasn’t had a win in months. He’s lost every call he’s taken, and with his his sleep has gone with him. He needs a win desperately, but with each call he goes deeper and darker into the depths of madness in the boroughs of a very stylized NYC. DEAD is a film that rides the shimmer between reality and dream. The film is jarring compared to todays hyper realistic films. The film is often overexposed, or blurry. Nothing feels real. It creates this world that feels very much like those early morning moments, when you’re not quite awake yet. Things still feel like a dream. Instead in Cage’s place, a nightmare. As I watched, I tried to think of the films I could compare this one too, for those who might want to watch it. For some damned reason, I thought of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth first! quickly making the connection that DEAD feels much more like a “modern day” retelling of Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece THE SEVENTH SEAL! The Seventh Seal already has a most excellent re-imagining with Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, which was my honest to goodness introduction to the work of Bergmen! The tale of the Seventh Seal finds Max Von Sydnow as a knight in the times of the plague, who is running from Death. Literally. To slow Death down, the Knight challenges Death to a game of Chess. The game takes days, weeks, months, minutes or maybe seconds. The knight tries to stump and outwit Death at every turn… And as they journey through the countryside and see the ravages of the Plague, we meet those people most need saving. Bringing Out the Dead covers similar ground, but instead of Death taking on physical form, it’s very much alive in the work that Cage does as an EMT in the film. In the Seventh Seal, it’s made ambiguous if the Knight is even alive as he begins his journey and it made for a more enjoyable viewing experience to watch and wonder if this was all just the DMT being released in Cage’s characters brain and him trying to put to rest those he could not save. Really cool movie. Not great, but a lot of really cool ideas and shapes put to real honest to goodness film (this was 99 so that makes sense, but it’s nice to see in the days of over saturated digitalness. The film feels photographed. If you’re into out of your mind psychedelic rides that take on the meaning of life and death, I think you should check out, or at least re-check out Bringing out the Dead soon. It’s currently streaming on HBO Max.

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Dear Diary, Today I met Sona Movsesian. Today I met a friend.

Conan O’Brien is one of my biggest comedy influences. He inspires me to keep it weird and goofy. His podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend is my favorite podcast, and was a huge influence on me bringing my dead horse back from the grave. Whether it be his Late Night shows, his classic episodes of The Simpsons or his podcast, I’ve listened or watched thousands of hours of entertainment Conan has provided. In the last few years, his trusty assistant Sona Movsesian has become one of my favorite parts of any of his shows or projects. Sona is one of the co-hosts of Conan’s podcast. Listening to her feels like listening to an old friend. She’s fast on her feet with the smart ass comments. She doesn’t take any shit from her infamous boss, but also takes it all. It’s a fine line and they’ve become one of the best comedy duo’s, ever. Sorry Andy! Sona did a signing tonight for her new memoir/humor book, WORLD’S WORST ASSISTANT, all about her life and times with Conan O’Brien. I twisted the chain on the old ball enough to agree to venture down to the city tonight to go see Sona do a reading/signing in an old grocery store turned Sporting Goods store/Event Space.  The reading was great and at one point she asked the audience if any of us had seen the Showtime Original TV program, GIGOLOS. I enthusiastically raised my hand, because of course I have. An instant friendship with Conan’s assistant was born.  I had been wracking my brain trying to figure out what to chat with Sona about in our few short minutes. I didn’t need to worry thanks to the venue/event assistant who remembered my hand jumping out of its socket during the reading.  I could have asked about smoking weed (She’s a pothead), or ask her what it’s like to have the spotlight that’s been so near her, now on herself? Or who knows!  Instead, Here I am standing in front of Sona, thinking about all these damned things to ask her about and we stand there and chat about GIGOLOS. God damned GIGOLOS, a terrible softcore porn disguised as a reality tv show!  While I don’t recommend the show, I’m forever grateful for that night when I was scrolling through a Showtime free trial and asked, “what the hell is this?”  Conan O’Brien might be on the hunt for a friend, but tonight I think I made a new best one. And the great thing? I bet there’s not a single person who didn’t encounter Sona on her tour this week that doesn’t feel the same way.  I wish her great success with this book and beyond. I really hope I get to interview her one day.

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Happy Birthday to Claire!

Today is Claire Helme day! June 22nd! Happy 37th to my lover and Paramore! Claire, This last year has been rough on us both. We had been fighting a whole lot more, but the other night I wrote down this thought, “The pain we have been going through is the pain that comes with birth.” We are birthing a new life here in Napa, and it’s not supposed to be easy. This thing we are doing is supposed to be hard. I think we knew that, but we’ve both been surprised at just how hard things can be, while also feeling so damned easy. Moving feels a lot like building a house on quicksand, and that quicksand under our feet feels like I’m mixing too many metaphors. Since we sat down and REALLY talked about all of our fights and what’s fueling them, things have gotten so much better. The ground has started to feel so much more solid again. We feel connected once again. Before that talk, I had been looking for signs that we’re on the right path here in this place. I found that sign this last week when you frantically called me out onto the patio to see something fantastic! I was annoyed when I wandered away from whatever project I had been “working” on, but was so happy and surprised by what you had to show me. I can’t stop thinking about it. There it was, the plant that we had dropped on the hotel parking lot ground in Reno, Nevada. The planter shattered and we assumed the Spider plant was dead forever. Still, you listened to me when I wanted to replant the plant and see what would happen. I wanted to mix the dirt from our old life with our new life. I had faith in that plant. I had faith in us. And then the damned thing died anyway. It was dead, dead, dead. And then we were fighting, fighting, fighting. Nothing was going right in this new life and we were both so incredibly frustrated. I’ve been thinking a lot about garden metaphors, and when you called me out to the patio, I saw that the plant your mother had given us for our first home together, the one that we killed in Reno, had somehow magically sprung to life once again. I had been looking for a sign that we were on the right path, and once again the universe answered with a metaphor. We chose to come to this place with the clippings of our old lives. We replanted them here and panicked when it didn’t feel like they were growing. We forgot that growing things and life takes time. We forgot that pain comes with rebirth. We forgot how to tend our metaphorical garden. We just need to learn some more damned patience. We have to learn how to plant these seeds, and help them grow. And sometimes, we have to just plant the plant and then ignore it, only to be surprised months later that it’s not only alive, but looks to be thriving. It’s not as easy as some people make it look, and for us it’s mostly been easy. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to make your own garden grow, and that doesn’t even include all the work to grow that garden, together. Things are not going to just happen overnight for us. We have to till the garden and work to make things go. I’ve been watching more youtube videos late at night about gardening. I’ve been looking for more very real lessons and metaphors on how to continue to grow this life with you here in California. I love you so much and there is no place else I would rather be than on the couch, sipping wine, dancing in the kitchen and watching RuPaul. I can’t wait for us to figure out what we are planting here in Napa, and I can’t wait for us to help it grow.. Together.

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Full moon madness

Who else is feeling this FULL MOON juju? Claire says I’m feeling it extra hard because it’s a full moon in Leo and I’m one of the most Leo ever, but that’s magic and malarkey… isn’t it?I’m sitting here tonight in my living room in Napa with the Full moon floating right outside our patio door. It’s moonlight is the only thing lighting this living room, other than the glow of this laptop. I’m sitting here soaking in the night and I’m sitting here doing what I always do in these late evenings, thinking about life, the universe and everything. Claire and I sat back tonight and under the moonlight, we talked about our future.

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“Here’s Your Future” or “We’re gonna move to Northern California.”

YOU GUYS!!!! Claire and I are going to do the dang old, dang thing! Ha! No we’re not getting married or having kids….We are moving out of Colorado at the end of January! I have been here for 20 years, and while I feel like Colorado is my home and I will one day die here; Claire has lived in Colorado all her life and wants a taste of something different! So we are going to go off and have an adventure. We have no clue where we will land, or awaits us, and it doesn’t matter as long as we have each other and our Dick… the tabby cat. Claire has a passion for fine wine and has always wanted to live near the water. After talking her out of moving to Florida, we are currently looking towards Northern California. But we’re also looking at Burlington, Vermont after she had a dream about it a few weeks ago. So it feels like anywhere is on the table right now. I don’t really care where we go. I’ll go anywhere with her, as long as it is not Florida. I have no doubt that one day we will be back in Colorado one day, but for now, we’re going to go see where the roads take us. Life is too short. I’m already 40 and maybe we’ll get 40 years together… So why not get out there and see what is happening in the world? Plus, for the last two years I have sat here on the couch and “worked on myself,” and worked on my growth, while she has been sitting here feeling stagnant. It’s time for me to be the supportive partner and it’s Claire’s time to grow now! You know, but with a nice ocean breeze in her hair. We might land on our asses. It might be a disaster, but as long as we are doing it together… We’re going to have one hell of an adventure to tell you all about. I could end it there, but before I go I want to thank the Graf brothers for taking a chance on me at Music City Hot Chicken – Denver. I was ready to do something stupid. I was ready to stay here, while Claire went off to California without me. We would try the long distance thing and see where our roads lead us. But the brothers and owners of Music City, Sam and Jordan heard of my predicament and my own special version of “Should I stay or should I go now,” rambling through my head. I had been telling them that I wanted to stay here and build something with them here in Denver. I just wanted to be a part of something special. We sat down and they each told me it would be okay for me to leave and things would work out just fine. A few weeks ago, I was cleaning the fryers for the umpteenth time, “Here’s Your Future” by The Thermals, played unprompted in my head. That week, Claire had been in California exploring and looking for her future home. There was no one home waiting for me and I was probably going to fall asleep on the couch again that night, after drinking too many beers. I was sad and lonely and in mourning for the life I thought I was going to have to lose. “Here’s Your Future.” And I know it’s obvious to many of you, but remember I’m not that fast and on more than one occasion someone has asked me if I was on the spectrum…. I’m scraping the flour out of the bottom of the fryers, and then it dawns on me… It took me long enough to get there, but I figured it out. I was already building something special. I was building a life with this wonderful woman. I would be a fool to let her go on alone without me. I want to go on this journey with her. I decided to commit to her and us. Had the brothers not sat me down and told me everything would be alright if I left, I probably would have stayed and kept pushing through. I would have made a bonehead decision to stay here and potentially miss out on a great adventure with these women I love, oh so much. Also, if I’m being completely honest, I always felt in over my head in my job at MCHC. I wasn’t cutting it, and didn’t know how to communicate what I needed to make things work. Cleaning those fryers, I thought a lot about Eric Stoltz and his time on Back To The Future. Stoltz was originally cast in Back To The Future as Marty McFly, when Michael J Fox was not originally available. Fast forward seven weeks of filming and it just wasn’t working out. On paper Stoltz seemed like a great idea. It could have worked and it could have been great, but the chemistry just wasn’t there and during those seven weeks, Michael J Fox became available and the film would of course go on to become a classic. I’m excited for the young man who is taking my spot. He’s got way more knowledge, experience and the back of house skills needed to take the restaurant to where it needs to go. He’s younger, hungrier and incredibly positive. He’s what that place needs and I can’t wait to watch it become a runaway success… much like Michael J Fox and Back to The Future. So “Here’s You Future:” We’re going to go off and have some adventures. We are going to hunt for that simple, happy, healthy life. We’re going to do it together. We’re not leaving until the end of January. I’m going to be with MCHC till mid-January and we will be leaving heading somewhere the first week of February. We’re going to be looking for recommendations on where to go. She wants

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Breckinridge Bourbon Interview Hour With Dammit Damian

Dammit Damian! I’m sorry guys, but I did it again.I’m going to do another series of Mostly Harmless interviews.I did the first one today, and I have a couple more scheduled for the next few days.I’m sorry for what is to come…I’m going to be constantly asking you guys to listen to interviews with people you’ve never heard of and couldn’t care less.I’m going to work hard to introduce a handful of you to movies, comedians, records, comics, ect… that I love, and that I see potential in.In these next few weeks, I’ll want to reach through this electronic screen and grab you in by the collar and yell, “CAN’T YOU SEE THE POTENTIAL TOO?!?!”  I’ve been writing about art since I was a very little boy.I don’t think I can ever stop.I keep going and I keep doing it and I keep doing it and I keep quitting, but it keeps coming back. It’s that itch I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop. Or wait, is that just the eczema on my hands?Because I can not stop, here on this holiest of holidays, the day of birth of Mr. Kurt Vonnegut Jr….I pledge to you that I will only try to bring you the best of the best. I’m going to bring you the things I believe in. The people I believe in and the stories I want to tell.I don’t care about how many subscribers I have on YouTube. I just want the right subscribers. I’m not going to beg you to contribute to my Patreon, because I love this shit so much I do it for free.I just can’t stop thinking up questions. I just can’t stop wanting to share my love of art with the world, while also learning how to make my own art.I just want to create, it doesn’t matter how I do it. I just have to fucking annoy artists with my microphone, and then annoy all you to listen. But in the end, I love it. I love it all. It scratches so many itches I didn’t know it needed scratched.I just have to remember what’s important….Having fun. Being Weird. Being Damian.Shit, what was this post originally about?Oh yeah. Thank you. Thank you to all who have supported my ridiculousness.Thank You to those who saw this shy, awkward quiet kid and saw his potential. Thank you to those who let me know they saw any kind of potential.I’ve been very blessed with a number of friends who have supported this damned addiction of mine for all these years and helped me turn it into a real strange artform that I can never really stop experimenting within.I’m just going to create. It doesn’t matter how I do it.PS. Breckenridge Bourbon, you make a superior product. If you ever want to sponsor a lowly podcast about creativity in your 40’s and the adventure that is life… Give me a buzz.

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