Territorial Enterprises

Let's get to the good stuff...

2012-02-07T16:29:00.000-08:00

So this brings us to '84 or so. Music was blowin' up all around us. Most of the bands mentioned in the previous post were honing in on what we know them as today. Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" came out and changed the game for me. Heavier, angrier, yet more melodic. You could see Cliff Burton's influence really start to take hold. The playing improved 1000% from the first album, and the songs were getting more complex. My life followed right along with those complexities. I went from "experimenting" with certain things to just flat out wanting to get fucked up at every moment. The home life sucked, I kind of felt lost in the shuffle, so I found a way to escape that reality I guess.

Girls really started to come into the picture at this point, and I was a typical 15-16 year old, trying to figure it all out. Music played an important part here as well. Feeling like an outcast put you into a group of like-minded people, who understood what you felt, what you liked, and were into the same things you were. Almost 30 years later,, the kids I met are still some of my closest friends. We share a bond that most people might not understand, and that's o.k. with us! We comiserated often with a fifth of Bacardi, and whatever beer
we could get our hands on. Smoked a ton of weed as well. We were lost, but we were lost together, and we didn't want to be found. I remember my grandfather's second wife seeing us walking down the street and saying "they walk around with no expression on their faces", like they were some gang of Zombies. It was just the look of despair, kids who felt like they fell through the cracks. Maybe we did, or maybe we just wanted to. Depends on who you ask.

Most of us were highly intelligent, and that might have contributed to where we were heading. Too smart for our own good.; for a few life was much more simple, not as deep of thinker's as we were. I think we might have envied them a bit; they didn't seem to have many cares. Life was just easy for them, do what you want, when you want. No repercussions, no regrets. Of course some of them are still doing the same shit in their mid-forties. I'm not so envious of them now.

Around this time the scourge of hair-metal was just gaining some traction. I'll admit it: I liked a few of these bands, even though I don't consider them "hair-metal" at all. Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken, these bands had something more than a stupid gimmick. They either had great players or great songs. Too Fast For Love is still one of my all-time favorite albums. Raw and nasty, it sounded the way we felt at that time. 14 and pissed off, ready to fuck or fight. We just needed a reason. There's one band that had this HUGE buzz around this time. We heard about them long before their debut album came out. The most notorious band of the Sunset Strip heyday. W.A.S.P. We heard about these legendary shows, meat, blood, torture, and a frontman who played with the New York Dolls. I still remember vividly, a friend of mine seeing them in some club(I can't recall which one), and him coming by the next day saying "I got Blackie's blood on my shoes". He had white Vans on, with the toes stained this reddish-brown color. Legendary.

As all this was going on, I was getting deeper and deeper into partying. Life at home worsened to the point that I left right after finishing summer school classes(which I had to take to make into the 11th grade). I literally left the next day. Moved to Ojai to live with my mother and her roommate. I was on my own for the first time. All she really provided me was a place to stay and some food. I took care of myself. I worked, made my own money. Registered myself in school. And completely spiralled out of control...

....And we're back!

2012-01-19T20:02:00.001-08:00

Part II of my story.

This just about brings us to 79-80. That's when music really blew up for me. I discovered that the world was much larger than Kiss, Aerosmith, etc. Van Halen, ACDC, Judas Priest, these bands opened my eyes to a new heavier soundtrack to life. Punk rock also played a part. I remember when the Sex Pistols came to America. I was 10 and was completely amazed, how could these weird looking guys with the crazy clothes get away with all this shit! And the music, it was so violent and angry. I loved it from the first note! Getting to junior high was like opening this huge door to a room filled with musical discoveries. I learned how to be an individual, picked up on new music from the new friends I made. The NWOBHM was happening around tjis time, and I loved some of these bands. Def Leppard(who hate being included in this, apparently), Saxon, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead. I loved Motorhead, fast, violent, angry and totally different from any other band. Still do to this day. Those beginning riffs to "Ace of Spades", forgetaboutit! Still makes me get "the leg" going to this day!

Ozzy, The Scorpions, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, all these band were about to blow up. It was, in my opinion, the greatest time for music. Punk bands like Black Flag, The Germs, The Exploited, all were prominent as well. We had a large amount of punks at school, all turning me on to bands on a regular basis. Around this time I really got into playing. I got my first "real" drum set. Some piece of crap my parents picked up somewhere. Blue flake, mangled cymbals and hi hat, crappy pedal, but I didn't care. This was my way into that brotherhood of music, and I dove in headfirst. I never took lessons, or took band in school, which looking back, was a huge mistake. I never learned the basics. 100% self-taught. I had a friends teach me a paradiddle, which is kind of like a basic exercise in drumming. Other than that, I learned by putting on records (those black things that spin and music comes out of), and figuring out the beats, fills, etc. Judas Priest's album "British Steel" was the best learning tool. Very basic, so i got to learn simple beats and song structures. Living After Midnight was as basic as it gets for a drummer, but perfect to learn from. Got the basic 2's and 4's after a while and stretched out a little more, bit by bit. Such a great time for music, I miss the feeling of discovering a new band, or a new song.

Me and my friends were so into music, and each of us had certain things we got into first, and shared with the others. I loved the heavier stuff, and my best friend loved the more melodic side of music.Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult. The next couple of years were cool. We'd go around the corner to a friends house, put some speakers out his bedroom window, and play baseball listening to music all day. We probably listened to ACDC's "Back in Black", 1000 times that summer. Radio in our area at that time just flat-out sucked! It was AOR, Top 40, Classic Rock hell. All that started to change in maybe '82 or so. You started to hear the stuff we loved every now and again. And then 1982-83 rolled around and changed the music business forever! This amazing string of albums came out, all in a year's time. Blackout, Screaming for Vengeance, Iron Fist, Breaking the Chains, Black Metal, Mercyful Fate, Metal on Metal, Scarred for Life, Vandenberg, Black Tiger, all in 1982. 1983 brought us Bark at the Moon, Holy Diver, Piece of Mind, Balls to the Walls, Melissa, Show No Mercy, All For One, Born Again(underrated album, in my opinion), Pyromania, Fastway(Still one of my favorite albums of all time!), Queensryche, Power and the Glory, Steeler, Never Surrender, At War With Satan, Mean Streak, and of course, the album that changed it all for me, Kill 'Em All! It still blows my mind to this day that all these great albums came out all around the same time, and I'm sure that there's plenty I'm leaving out as well. This was maybe the best time of my life, and the beginning of the end as well.....

Let the music do the talkin'....

2012-01-11T21:40:00.000-08:00

I really want to get to some stories and experiences I've had, and I'll do that soon, but I want to talk a little about something that's always been the love of my life. Music. I've always had a HUGE love affair with music. Music of all kinds. Growing up, music seemed to always be a big part my life. My grandmother was a huge big band fan, my uncle a big fan of the music of the 60's, and my mom of music of all kinds. It gave me quite an eclectic taste in music. I loved Gene Krupa, The Beatles, Janis Joplin etc. As a kid, I spent many weekends with my uncle, going to various places, and doing a lot of outdoor activities. Music was always a big topic of discussion between us. Sunday mornings with him would consist of breakfast at this deli in Glendale we loved, listening to Breakfast with The Beatles, telling each other what our favorite Beatles' songs were. He was a Philosophy major in college, so the discussions tended to be deeper than how a certain song was better than another etc. The Doors was a band we really dove into the lyrics of on that level. Jim Morrison seemed to speak to him in a language he could decipher on a deeper level.

My mother, on the rare times I would see her, always had the radio on. In her home, the car etc., and she liked to sing along when a song hit her the right way. She loves to remind me about her experiences at live shows, seeing bands on the Strip when they were club bands, going to Frisco in '67 when she was pregnant with me, seeing Hendrix, Joplin etc. I always wondered what she "did" while I was cooking in the oven, so to speak. I got many albums from her (I stole quite a few). My first two Sabbath albums, Paranoid,and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Those albums changed the way I looked at music at the age of 10 or so. Up to that point, my musical interests consisted of Kiss, Aerosmith, and Ted Nugent, sprinkled with a little Fleetwood Mac, and The Eagles. Sabbath opened my eyes to a larger world of music, taught me that it could be darker and more dangerous than my safe little 3 chord existence.

The very first album I ever bought was Kiss Alive, when I was seven. I remember seeing it on an end cap at Kmart, picking it up and being totally engrossed in the cover, these four guys in kabuki makeup and crazy costumes. It kinda scared the shit out of me, and I liked it. I liked the feeling of it being dangerous in a way, evil. That album set me on a life-long journey that I still love to this day. It made me want to play music, be the guy on the cover of an album. Never got that far, but I had a hell of a time trying! I wanted to be Peter Criss, a drummer, the engine that propels an unstoppable machine on the verge of going completely out of control! I had the posters, albums, pictures from magazines like Circus taped on my walls. Music was what I wanted to do, I just needed an instrument to get started.

I got my first "real" drum set when I was 11 or so. I had taken piano lessons before that, and hated it. My teacher was this old man who could barely keep himself awake long enough to pay attention to what I was playing. I wanted to quit every day, to play something else, anything but the piano. The guys on the posters in my room weren't sitting behind some POS piano, they had guitars, drums, and the world in the palms of their hands. I had an out of tune upright piano that I dreamed of lighting on fire. My grandfather wouldn't let me quit, telling me "if you learn the piano, you can play anything, any instrument, it all come from this!" I was a stubborn little kid, whodidn't think that old man knew shit about anything. After a while, I got my way and quit. Of course he was right, and looking back I really regret giving it up, because I actually took to it rather quickly. I guess I was meant to take a different path, but I always wonder what could have happened had I stuck with it.

To be continued...

Out with the old, in with the new...

2012-01-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

Another year has passed, and I'm beyond glad it's over. the new year brings a clean slate. It's funny how the passing of a year to the next brings some sort of feeling of the weight of the previous year being lifted from your shoulders. Like somehow turning the calender's page make it all better. But it does, even if it's all in your head. It's a chance to hit the reset button on your life, to wipe away all the problems that the year gone by has presented you. i like that feeling, knowing that I can just pretty much erase everything that went wrong, that blew up in my face the previous twelve months. It doesn't matter; you get a do-over, and I'm o.k. with it.

I look forward to setting goals for myself at the beginning of each year, then assessing those goals as the year comes to an end. Most times, I've missed the mark on what I wanted to accomplish that year, but there's always a few things I got right that makes me feel good about myself. I didn't fail, just came up a little short. As long as I'm moving in a positive direction, even it it's only an inch, it's progress in my mind. I'm hardly an optimist, I consider myself a realist more than anything, but I do like to feel that sense of accomplishment. I still have my wife, my house, my job and health, and those are good things for sure.

This year I want to take a bigger step forward in all aspects of my life. I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, so I'll leave that crap to someone else. And I'm not going to list most of my goals here, there for me. I do want to make every effort at work to make some hay in certain areas for sure, and I don't need some of the dead weight here holding me back. Eliminating that (or them) will not be a problem, if it comes to that. I want to get our financial house in order by the end of the year. We've learned to pay A LOT more attention to what we spend in the last six months, and that will help up throughout this year as we work to right our listing ship A baby would be very nice this year. I feel that window closing on me rapidly, and I'm quite disappointed we have gotten there yet, but we will, and I'm hoping this is the year!

So I look forward to a prosperous and successful year for us, and wish anyone who see's this the same as well. Happy New Year, and here's to a clean slate we all can enjoy!

Let's put this year out of it's misery...

2011-12-26T15:01:00.000-08:00

This year has been horrendous for us on many levels. Work has really slowed down to a crawl, which has had a negative effect on our finances. To put it simply, we're REALLY struggling with money right now! I'm just waiting for tax-time to get here to right the ship, get us in the black again. I feel much more withdrawn because of this, not wanting to socialize much, declining invitations to go out with friends, etc. We can't afford to live as we were before, and i guess that's not such a bad thing. It's teaching us to be more aware of our finances, think a bit before we buy. We're in the same boat as millions of other American's, just trying to tread water until the flood subsides.

I can live with the money situation to a point, but it's really negatively affecting the relationship I have with my wife. i snap at her a lot more about money, feeling a bit of mistrust when it comes to what she does with her money. And I have no proof she's just out there, blowing it on whatever she pleases. I just know I'm struggling to pay the bills "we" racked up, and not feeling like I get any help with this. It bothers me more than I can share with her for some reason; we can't discuss money without it turning into a major argument that I usually start. That's what kills me the most, making her feel like I'm berating her no good reason. She does everything for me. Cooks, shops, cleans, whatever I need she handles it. I couldn't ask for anything more, she just knows how to deal with me.

Feeling unhappy when you share a life with someone is the worst feeling imaginable. I'm not unhappy with her in the least, just unhappy with life in general right now. The more it sink's in, the more irritable I get. The stupidest things set me off right now, and trying to bite my tongue in certain company is getting next to impossible these days. The feeling of wanting to just beat the shit out of somebody because I feel they don't understand the difference between sarcasm, and sarcastic humor is terrible. I'm usually a pretty quiet and laid-back person, an observer more than a participant. I like to people watch; try to figure them out. Even that irritates me right now.

Work is another frustration for me. I feel like I'm completely wasting my ability and expertise in this job, but it is a job, and I'm thankful to have one considering what others are going through these days. I just can't imagine owning my own business, and running it in this manner. No direction and leadership, no plan of attack. Managers who have no business being responsible for anything, let alone a department that generates over a million in sales every year. So I'm taking it upon myself come the new year, to make my own situation better. I do pretty much whatever I like as it is, and have the freedom to make deals with customers in any manner I choose. So I'm choosing to get out once a week from here on out, do a little schmoozing, wheeling and dealing so to speak, to make my situation better. No more waiting for a game plan. I have my own to put in place. Time to make good things happen for myself and my wife. No more waiting for that leadership that will never come. I'll lead myself to prosperity in spite of the lack of support from on high.

2011 was a total loser for so many of us; here's to making 2012 a year to remember. Oh, and one more thing, if you see me coming, and it seems I'm looking right through you, get the fuck out of the way, because I am. Your standing in the way of my objective, and I WILL run you over to reach it!

No joy in Whooville

2011-12-22T11:31:00.000-08:00

   I'm not writing this to evoke some sort of sympathy, to get anyone to feel sorry for me, or to bitch and moan about how my life sucks. I just feel the need to say it ou loud, so to speak; get it off of my chest i guess you could say.

   I've never been a big fan of Christmas, even as a little kid. I don't think I was in a household that celebrated it until I was six. My mom's family is jewish, and they raised me from the time I was 3 months old. My mom had me, tried to take care of me, I suppose. My grandparents were living in Thousand Oaks at the time, not really sure where we lived (Strange that it's never come up, never thought to ask until now). One day she brings me over to visit, tells them she's going out for a pack of cigarettes, and never comes back. That was the beginning of my ambivalence towards Christmas.

   My grandparents were together until I was about four. They didn't get along at all at that point.My grandfather had been quite the womanizer for many years, cheating repeatedly on my grandmother, getting caught, and saying he'd never do it again. She finally got fed up with him, and filed for diverce, but it didn't stop the fighting. I can remember him coming over tho the house(at this time we were liiving in Woodland Hills), hearing the yelling and screaming, coming out of my room to find him just beating the shit out of her. She was on the ground in the foyer of the house, up against the door, bloody and crying hysterically. From what I was told, he was quite a violent man when the right buttons were pushed. He mercilessly beat my mother as well when she was younger. After they were finally divorced, I went to live with him in Oxnard,and much to my surprise, another kid was living in my new home! That year was my first Christmas, and i have no recllection of it at all.

   The next Christmas really got the ball rolling on towards my complete and utter disdain for Christmas. That was the first time my mother tried to buy me off; spend a bunch of money and forget the fact that I saw her only a few times that year, even though she lived in the area. A few years later, it was my first stereo, and some Kiss casettes that I really wanted. All the while, I still only saw her a few times a year, but now she would ask if I wanted to live with her. Of course I declined, as she never had a stable place to lived(she seemed to move constantly, always with some dude or another she was "engaged" to at the time).

   I just wanted to have the same Chrsitmas everyone else had, a stable family, that excitement of waking up Christmas morning knowing that something under that tree would excite me more that I had ever felt before. Of course, her asinine way of seeing things took that away from me, thinking she could check those things I most wanted off the list, and buying me off for yet another year. By the time I was twelve ot thirteen, I completely hated Christmas morning, and just wanted to stay in bed until the day was over. I would have been so much happier with having a real relationship with her and getting absolutely nothing under my tree. After that, I just kind of shut down and stopped participating all together for the most part. Christmas, and all the joys and traditions that go with it, could kiss my ass!!!

  So that brings us to the here and now. I'm married to a fantastic woman, who takes very good care of me. She does have a hard time with this though, as she's lived in a completely different environment growing up. She's absolutely trying as hard as she can to turn this around for me, and I admit it has a definite affect on how I see the holidays now. I've learned to get past what took place years ago, and enjoy the new friends and especially the new family I have now because of her. Her parents really are the best; they've been more than accepting of me, from the first time I met them. Just genuinely great people, with the values I hope to instill in our child one day, when that day comes. Her brothers are great as well, cool people who wouldn't hesitate to help you in any way. My wife has been the best thing to ever happen to me, and I can't imagine never having her in my life. She's giving me all the things I never had growing up; love, attentiveness, caring. All the things a person could ever want on a beautiful Christmas morning, and not a one you could buy in any store.

From special event to money grab

2011-12-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, right up to my 30's maybe, The Wizard of Oz was an annual rite for me. It was showed once, and only once a year. I admit it, I looked forward to it. It was special, something I shared with my grandmother when g I was younger. You looked forward to it every year, and got excited the closer it got. You couldn't even buy it on VHS, or later DVD. The only chance to see it was that one time a year. Then, all of the sudden, someone obviously realized that a ton of money could be made by releasing it to video, and subsequently showing it on t.v. Now, it seems its on constantly, so much so that we'll turn it on, only to get bored and change the channel. Yet another thing from my childhood that actually meant something to me ruined in the name of the almighty buck!

The Greatest Generation

2011-12-16T11:43:00.000-08:00

The Greatest Generation, a tagline we've seen recently in articles and on shows discussing the 70th anniversary of the bombing of pearl harbor. What makes this generation the greatest, greater than mine or yours? I've thought about this for quite some time, wondering how it's defined as such. Members of that generation fought the greatest war, invented the greatest gadgets, built the greatest country. They created the very world we live in today on many levels. They made the ultimate sacrifices, think about that. Brought into a war they didn't start, men and women joined our armed forces without hesitation, looking to fight for our honor as a country. but that's not the only sacrifices they made. They changed the very way they lived their lives, to ensure the "boys over there" had every resource necessary to fight, and win a war against everything we stood against.

Rationing food and fuel, metals and rubber, and never complaining, never questioning the of the few over the needs of the many. Ballplayers left in their prime to defend our country, not needing to think twice about it. Ted Williams would have been considered the greatest baseball player of all time, but instead chose to fight, losing the 4 best years of his career. He didn't give a damn, and would tell you so without hesitation. My grandparents did their part, as yours probably did as well. My grandfather was 4f, so he to work in the shipyards in NYC. My grandmother volunteered time at one of those places GI's could go to dance and try to have a good time while on leave, or waiting to ship out. My uncle Milton was with the Flying Tigers in China, a cousin in Europe, and many others fighting across either pond. I also had family interred in concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

I think about this generation because of a painting I have in the closest of our office at home. My grandmothers' cousin was a resident of one of those camps, surviving only because of his notoriety as an artist in Europe. Turns out the Nazi's were quite the art lover's, giving them some sense of culture or sophistication. Bullshit if you ask me, nothing more than common thieves, among other obvious things. Anyways, this cousin's name was Sam Markitante, a well-known painter and sculptor in France before the war. He managed to get picked up by the Nazi's and sent to a camp with the rest of his family, for no other reason than his religion(or race,depending on how you look at it.).

The story goes that he was at this camp, waiting for extermination, when Goebbels himself, pulled him out, after recognizing his name. He was sent to a chateau to paint and sculpt for the duration of the war, leaving his family behind to the whims of the Nazi machine. I always wondered what went through his head, as his life was spared while his family faced a tortuous death. Was it self-preservation, or a sacrifice for the greater good? Could I have done the same thing? I'll never know, we live in a different world now. He eventually made it out after the war, and made his way here to live out his life teaching art. Even taught my grandmother to paint. That painting sits in my closet, posing that question to me every time I see it. Could I make the same choice?

Probably not, as I'm not from the greatest generation.

Why I'm here

2011-12-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

I created this blog to express my opinions on certain subjects that move, or interest me. Things that compel my to think, evoke emotion of some kind or another. My mind tends to operate much differently than most people who know me would assume; I have a hard time these days vocally expressing myself for some reason, like my brain and mouth are no longer close, just mildly acquainted. So, i have this need to "vent", release the pressure I feel inside me. Hopefully those very few of you who come here to see what's on my mind will get a better understanding of who I am, what I believe in, and how I work. Maybe get a laugh or two as well.