I started writing for myself around 1987, I suppose in a journal-type sort of way. Mainly bitching about school and girls, celebrating triumphs, and questioning everything. I've kept most everything over the years, with a couple exceptions of shit I'd just like to forget. My writings more or less morphed into blogs over the past 10-15 years, with the more personal entries not being published. It's all therapy. And Jesus, I guess I've got a half-dozen or so blogs floating around out there. Earl's Brain was one I used for quite a while, kind of like this one--just writing about whatever. Earl's Blogazine was a fun project, incorporating interviews, happy hours, and magazine-type entries on artists, musicians, and the like. I'll have to do some digging to unearth the other blogs--they gotta be out there somewhere.
In my early days of writing, during my formidable years, I wrote on notebook paper with a pencil. Fucking weird. One thing I did on a semi-regular basis was create Top 5 Lists. This was way before "High Fidelity", so it may have stemmed from Letterman, or I may have just started doing because why fucking not? My Lists ranged anywhere from Top 5 Artists to Top 5 Cars to Top 5 Best Friends. More times than not, my Lists would turn out pretty similar from year to year. You can definitely tell when I got into punk, or when a new album came out, or if I was engulfed with hormones or angst. But they were fairly steady. Looking back now, not a ton has changed. There were a few surprises, but not many. Here're a few Lists from a while back, with a little current-day commentary... 1989 Top 5 Favorite Pastimes: 1) Drawing 2) Fishing 3) Partying 4) Jammin' 5) Skating Now, I'm not positive what Jammin' means, as I don't think I had started playing instruments in a garage at this point. Maybe it meant listening to very loud music with my buddy Kevin. Hope so. Top 5 Favorite Guitarists: 1) Eddie Van Halen 2) Eric Clapton 3) Angus Young 4) Steve Vai 5) Ted Nugent Ok, Eddie and Angus definitely track. Vai must've been on there because he was Dave Roth's guitarist, and Dave rules. We used to listen to Clapton's Time Pieces in high school, so maybe that's why he's on there. Or maybe I just wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about. Nugent? Ouch. What a terrible human...but you gotta admit that "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" is a banger (no pun intended). Top 5 Favorite Singers: 1) David Lee Roth 2) Sid Vicious 3) David Coverdale 4) Don Dokken 5) Brian Johnson +1 Elvis Presley Once again, Roth and Johnson track. VH and AC/DC will always be at the top, although 50yr old me prefers Bon. Sid Vicious? He was a bass player, brotha. Unless you count his beautiful vocal renditions of "My Way" and "Something Else" on the Sex Pistols' Great Rock & Roll Swindle. Just terrible. Bonus points for throwing Elvis in there last minute. Coverdale and Dokken? Fuck yeah, man. Top 5 Career Choices: 1) Artist 2) Musician 3) Canned Food Beach Bum 4) Movie Guy 5) Strike Oil & Not Work There's a lot to unpack here. I actually went to college with psuedo-ambitions to become an artist. In my 15yr old brain, I'm sure "artist" meant comic book illustrator. Guys like DaVinci don't really bring home the bacon these days. "Musician" was written before I realized I sucked at music. Definitely didn't get that gene from dad. Living on the beach eating Chef Boyardee actually greatly appealed to me at a young, impressionable age. No fucking idea what Movie Guy means. Number 5 makes the most sense, although I don't dig as much as I probably should. 1990 Top 5 Things I'm Really Sick Of: 1) Stupid People 2) Girls' Attitudes 3) Being Confused 4) Real Life 5) Everything-Nothing? The list could go on forever. Nailed it. What Am I Gonna Do With My Life? 1) Cartoonist - Yea, Right/Art 2) Musician - God, I wish 3) Surfer - Get Real!/Skater - I suck! 4) Bum - Probably 5) Serve in WWIII & get killed by poisonous gas before I'm ready to have a real life - WOULDN'T DOUBT IT! I had some major aspirations when I was 16. No surprises, though. I'm now 50 and still trying to answer this question. But it's funny, because "What you're gonna do with your life" automatically goes to profession. It shouldn't. It should automatically go to adventure and love and living and fun and experiences and kicking ass. Not what you do to pay the bills. 2024 Top 5 Favorite Guitarists: 1) Eddie Van Halen 2) Angus Young 3) Zakk Wyldd 4) Django Reinhardt 5) Joe Pass Fuck Eric Clapton. My three favorite rock guitarists are listed, as well as my two favorite jazz guitarists. I listen to all five fairly equally. Top 5 Favorite Singers: 1) Dave Roth (1978-1986) 2) Bon Scott 3) Lemmy Kilmister 4) Ozzy Osbourne 5) Joey Ramone I mean, this list could've been written 35 years ago. I hadn't quite gotten into Motorhead or Sabbath/Ozzy until a couple years later. These five voices compile the soundtrack to my entire life. Listening to them as I write this. And since it's my fucking list, I can cut Dave off after Eat Em and Smile. Rock & roll's fun. Top 5 Career Choices: 1) Educator 2) Cook 3) Writer 4) Fisherman 5) Dad/Husband Nailed it.
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"The older I get, the more I realize we have very limited time here and you don't have to blindly follow along with other people's bullshit. So much of life is other people telling you what to think and do but it requires your buy-in. You don't have to do that. Have a good Monday."
This quote succinctly greeted me this morning, shortly after I woke up, 50 years old. 50 sounds old. It feels old. It's a lot different than 30 or 40. It means that not only are you old, but everyone else is old, as well. I'm really no different than I was a few weeks or a few months ago. I've basically been 50 for a couple years now, at least in my head, preparing for the day when I, Bowie, Elvis, and Bruce Sutter all gain one more year of immortality. I had today off, which was nice. Had a pretty average morning--a couple-three cups of coffee, checked the phone, played Wordle, listened to "Powerage", and prepared mentally and physically for my oldest day yet. Then had a cupcake and danced with the kids to "Candles on the Cake". Got a couple more gifts, which is pretty special when you're an old man. One being a sans children trip to New Orleans with my wife. We celebrated the bday Saturday night with friends and whisk(e)y, so today was to be chill. And it has been. But although I've been mentally prepping for this day for quite a while now, I've been enveloped with a sense of wisdom. And It's quite possibly stemmed from this glorious quote that I typed out to start this blog post. Scroll up and read it again. I've lived 50 years. Fuck you. That's what I get from the quote. That's wisdom. From a young age--as far back as I can remember--I've struggled with people telling me what to do and how to think, to my detriment even. When you're young, though, you need that shit to a point--some guidance. I struggled with religion and politics, and which way I'm supposed to lean and what I believe in and if I don't all hell will break loose, literalIy in some respects. I've had two million jobs and I've struggled with every single one of them (until recently), dealing mentally with someone else telling me what to do and how to do it, seeing as how working a job takes up roughly 76% of your existence. And one thing that I've learned over the decades in dealing with the mental anguish of coexisting with humans...is that people are fucking idiots. Everyone thinks they know. The highly religious types that I grew up around in the Bible Belt of Southwest Missouri all know. They know that Assembly of God is the way to go...or you have to be Baptist or you're going to hell...or Lutheran or Catholic is what God wants from you. Faith and belief are good, I'm not taking that away. But the unfun part of growing up with all that is the constant judging. If you want to be religious, by all means do so. Faith is powerful. But don't look down on folks that don't see eye to eye with you spiritually. That happened quite a bit growing up, especially with parents, which is unfortunate. The one thing that I'm 100% certain of and comfortable with...I don't know. Nobody does. So please don't act like you do. We don't have a ton more time here to try and figure things out--life flies by, man. And let's face it, figuring things out just ain't going to happen. People have been trying to figure out why we're here, what our purpose is, what we need to do to partake in an afterlife, what the rules are, and how to coexist with one another for a pretty fucking long time now. I don't think it's meant for us to know. And I know I'm not going to listen to another person tell me what the answers are. "Buy in." You have to buy in to the culture. You have to buy in to the product. Buy in to the party. If you buy into this way of thinking, then you'll be more successful and secure. Please, buy in to this way of life, these precise rules, and this group of people, and all will be well. I'm not buying what you're selling. If I'm lucky, I've got another 20-30 years left in me. I'm at least a decade over the hill. So why bother with nonsense? Don't make no sense, man. For the next 20-30 years, I plan on mixing together a comfortable balance of laughter, adventure, libation, fresh air, music, gratefulness, growth, love, and kicking ass. That's what I'm buying into. And you can't tell me not to. I'm Matt Todd. (above quote borrowed from Ricky Cobb, aka "Super 70s Sports" on Xwitter) . |
AuthorI am Earl. Archives
May 2024
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