Well howdy, Spoke with my good bud Grimes the other day and we decided that we weren't going to call our parties parties anymore. We're going to call them "Grimelocks". "Why?", you might ask. Well because we're really the only two guys we know who do this year in and year out for no particular reasons save the usual ones, i.e. desperate cry for attention, unyielding narcissism, free food, love of house cleaning and the ever present possibility that playing music for ourselves and our friends will somehow subdue the tide of unrelenting weirdness swirling about like smog from China and L.A. colliding over Haleakala. Music has that power to connect us in a place common and comforting. A place hopeful and in the groove. So, o.k. cool, second Grimelock of the season happening on July 5th, barring wicked bad rain, to be held at the Rancho from fourfiveish 'till I begin wielding a garbage bag, a broom and a scowl. Since it is fourth of July weekend, bring a pot luck dish that explodes, or bears the imprint of a patriot emptying his flintlock into some unsuspecting redcoat. Or just a flag will do. Woeful tales abound these days and I say rather than put on a happy face we should kvetch, kvetch, kvetch and then bllecchhcchhcchh some more.. It is catharsis, not optimism wandering blind that will move us toward dispersing the fog of fractured and fatuous consciousness masquerading as normal. It is empathy and dispassion that can both empty and fill our hearts with receptivity free of motive and virtuous in intent. Musicians worth their salt give freely, in the truest sense of the word. The joy is in the doing and the doing clings to nothing, like the blooming jasmine filling the night air and boldly going nowhere. So lets celebrate our tweensy little lives again and remind each other that truth is worth preserving and that kidding ourselves destroys all hope. When I was a kid, me and my bff's Reggie Logan and Tommy Whitmore had the great pleasure of spending some quality time on the links at Bethpage State Park out on long island. It's a beautiful spread of a couple of thousand acres carved out of abandoned potato farms. gently rolling hills and grazing land that got turned into five well maintained and increasingly difficult golf courses, four of which were eminently playable, especially if your prime directive was to goof off, smoke cigarettes, drink sodas, eat tuna sandwiches and those little cheesy crackers with peanut butter filling and pray for the one good shot that would bring you back with elevated norepinepherine levels. We had it made. Reggies older brother Bruno tended a string of vending machines and stocked them out of his garage at the hacienda del Logan. Talk about a score. He serviced every kind of machine known to modern man in the 50's and 60's. There were hot and cold drink machine stuffers, cigarettes of every cough, and the broadest selection of candy bar, cheesy poof, potato chip and packaged cookies in the known galaxy in case after case, stacked against the walls of the garage eight, ten feet high. Now Reg knew what the big sellers were and consequently knew that a few missing packs of unfiltered Kool menthols and Luckys would hardly be missed and that skimming the inventory was really doing Bruno a favor because hey, he was being a terrific big brother without even knowing it and Reg could kinda imagine liking him even though he was something of a schmuck. So we'd be cut loose at the clubhouse by a carpooling mom and walk the verdant fields armed with Arnold Palmer autographs, scuffed up golf balls and the luscious larcenous loot from the garage. We'd spend five or six hours wandering around in a nicotine fit hoping we had enough balls to last the round and enough matches to keep the chain of smoke going. Big fun. I can still remember some of the shots I hit. The courses are color coded and the yellow, red, green and blue courses had the least wait time in ascending order. We'd usually have to wait an hour or more to even get out on the yellow, which was considered the home of the hacker. Enter the legend, Bethpage Black. The hard core guys would come predawn to sign up for a three hour wait to tee it up on this masterpiece of a course. Designed by A.W.Tillinghast, it is the course on which the U.S. Open is being played this week. I played it in '01 when it was being groomed for the 02' Open. The rough was tall as Bobby Jones' nutsack and tees to greens seemed to span zip codes. I saw exactly where several of my balls disappeared into the primary rough and never found them. It is a brutal test of golf and even the worlds best will be left mumbling non sequiturs. The weather may be a factor as some rain is forecast. I will be couch bound and surrounded by a reminisence of garage goodies as I celebrate Long Island rowdy, course management, six hours a day of world class grimace and dismay and a few perfectly executed shots. Fairways and greens baby, fairways and greens. By the way, nicest greens i've ever seen. I've often thought about the notion of golf course retrofits or new buildouts that utilize the areas normally considered out of play and plant those areas with valuable tree crops and useful plant guilds. Water hazards could house and breed fish, fresh water shrimp, ducks and aquatic plants used for filtration and food. Foraging animals could be integrated slowly to provide weed control, fertilizer, eggs and meat. Communities that are planned around common park areas or golf courses or wooded lakes could easily plan for some measure of sustainability by simply choosing the right species of flora and fauna with which to work and then hiring a bunch of illegal aliens to take care of it. In many ways a move toward decentralizing giant industrialized systems of agriculture and energy is inevitable but the kicking and screaming is already evident and the firmly entrenched will not be easily moved. We're a culture of lip synching slogan slingers who rarely make moves designed to transcend self interest and who more often than not will take legitimate and urgent issues and turn them into t-shirts, coffee mugs, political slogans, bake sales, butt plugs, protest songs, wildass polemics and an upcoming movie of the week. I tawt I taw a puddytat. In the end its all the same, really. It's Humpty after the fall. Speaking of which, we've got nice eggs. Greens too as well as some fruits and a frozen foods section as big as Wyoming stocked with free range deer, turkey and pig which were flash frozen using the breath of a hundred ex girlfriends. They're just standing there, wide eyed and caught in mid thought as if its graduation day and the words to their speeches have gone begging. You'll find them to be great eating or lovely low maintenance pets. Also, in celebration of the U.S. Open we will be giving away t-shirts depicting a guy wearing a hat that says "I heart long island" and pointing at his balls with a caption that reads: "golf these." Nurse Lindsey is pounding away at the construction of our website and if one looks carefully , one can see the steam rising off her dimples, so intense is her effort. She sits there, hour after hour, pouring over layout, color scheme, pictures to import, links to create and ways to get me to quit changing my mind. While not actually saying it, she thinks "ohmygod, you are soooooo retarded". True enough. So, as I watch the crab spider who has spun its 3-d web in my office window wrap up a couple of morning gnats and then bite the head off an ant I bid you good day. Give us a call any old time for food or plants (878-6287), we'll check your credit rating and negotiate terms. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp