1. My BEST GIG EVER was a sound-check. It was 1989 in San Diego and my friend Ricky Wellman was late to the venue. He played drums with Miles Davis and the sound guy had a roadie banging Ricky’s drums all wrong to get board levels and such. I stepped up and said I was a drummer, I could play just like Ricky did for sake of a decent sound check. Please, he said. So I stepped up and sat down and began playing that DC style of groove known as Go-Go. Think Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, and you be thinking correct.

So one by one, the band comes out from the back as was customary. Each plugging in and joining in the jam. Everyone except Miles was out on stage now jamming, THEN Miles came out and never even looked at me, he just assumed I was Ricky. We played another 5 minutes or so. Fucking. Heaven. Best gig ever.

2. I am a zymurgist. Go ahead, I’ll wait. I’m fairly good at it. Lots of folks through the years have said I should drop the architecture, the art, the music ( well not the music ), the whatever and open a brewery. So thats exactly what I’m doing right now. I’m about to start the Funding Process, and in this laughable economy that should be interesting. The brewery will have a restaurant from the beginning, which will serve unapologetic food. If you have allergies, Vegetarian hang-ups, whatever, don’t come here for food. Later we’ll have a bee-keeper tending to those endangered little suckers that our civilization depends on, plus a non-profit radio station playing mostly whatever the fuck I like. Large video projections will play movies and also broadcast the daily, ever changing menu. That’ll save a lot of paper, and allow me to animate a baby-back rib getting jiggy with a taco.

3. I love to cook. I used to eat nothing but ramen and those boil-this-shit-up Chicken & Broccolli pasta packs. One day way back, a friend made me a 5-course Indian meal. All the masalas and what not were made with fresh ground spices, and the apartment smelled like a psychadelic potpourri of elephants, swamis, and Burka trees. Something about food changed for me. It wasn’t just fuel anymore. It held possibilities of being so much more. From that day on, I slowly acquired skills and gadgets and good pots and pans and at some point I just became a pretty decent cook. I once made Gumbo for 37 folks, which meant I had to make a gallon of roux. Can’t wait to do that again. I love to show others how to cook, as I think it’s such a dying art these days. Even with all the Food Shows and celebrity, most folks are nuking frozen shit and while thats ok to sustain life, its no way to live.

Pretty much my favorite evening is spent with friends over amazing food and conversation. A magical dinner party is the best.

4. I have First World Guilt. When I’m eating Delicious food I sometimes think I should just be having a bowl of rice, and I’d still be styling better than many millions of other folks around the planet. I don’t have a lesson or point here. I’m as clueless on this as the first time I had the thought.

5. Sometime in 2005 I finally understood what giving a great gift meant, and what procuring such a gift entailed. Ludwig Wittgenstein said it best and with his usual succinctness: Getting someone a great gift doesn’t take a lot of money, but it takes a lot of time.

So true, and what a wonderful experience having a random thought of somebody, and making/ buying just the right gift to really spark someones sense of what they mean to you. One time this had me buying baby blue Capri pants and a nice yellow top for a girl friend who wore mostly black. It was received very well, and she discovered she probably wore too much black. She really changed her palette after that, and I think she became even more beautiful than she already was.

My best gifts have always been randomly given. Xmas and birthdays people expect gifts. The out-of-the-blue gift? They never knew what hit’m.

6. Last year I read Freud’s Civilization and It’s Discontents. Wow. So many vague and ill-defined thoughts of humanity, sexuality, and repression floating around in my mind came into clear focus. We are such a fragile, flawed animal. All of us. I have my own repression on many fronts to address. Twitter has been great in exercising my creative dark side. I’m getting over the “approval of others” phase in my life, just being who I am. Low self-esteem is the root of all my problems, and I work every day at being better to myself, leaving the insanely self-critical dissension behind. Thanks Mom for keeping me busy. ( smiley-grammer here )

7. I am a great kisser. Everyone I have ever kissed has mentioned it. Too bad I’ve kissed no one since September of…………………………..oh fuck…………………………………………………….2005.

I’ve been slowly going crazy since about 2006, so forgive me if I eventually develop some sort of Sexual Tourette’s Syndrome. Or start stalking you.

I now Tag @MFlanders @nictate @thumbwave @AprilSTL @vixenmouse @FanEffingTastic @emzbulletproof @atsirhc @frostinglickr ( more than seven? Suck it. )