I’ve been spending a lot of time relearning Maktub songs in acoustic form. It’s refreshing to strip a song down to it’s bones. Guitar strumming patterns are friggin important and endlessly fascinating! I never really noticed how I was strumming in patterns before as it always came as part of writing a song on acoustic guitar. But when I learn some of these tunes for the first time I get a whole new appreciation for patterns and how they interact with Thaddeus’s lead lines and Reggie’s vocals. Strumming chords behind those two makes me a bit of a drummer — which doesn’t come naturally.

Currently there are 6 songs we’re actively translating from an electric band sound to a two acoustic guitar version with Reggie singing between Thaddeus and I. Depending on the strumming pattern, I can create a simple 2 beat pattern which works great for some tunes or a longer cycle that takes 2 measures to complete itself.

I had a guy over from Speedy Glass today to fix a broken glass pane on my attic window — it looked like somebody used a wrist rocket to break the window last week. Getting up to the window I had to go up a ladder through a small crawl hole to my attic. I realized that I really don’t care to be in my attic much — nor do I really care what’s going on up there until something goes wrong. My basement, on the other hand, was the first thing I remodeled after I bought my house. Strumming patterns are somewhere in between those two for me — never really thought about it, but now that I’ve been forced to it’s all that I hear.

Patrick Abe has owned and run Seventh Avenue Service at 7th & Jackson in Seattle’s International District for 20+ years (could be 30+ years … not sure). SAS is one of my all-time favorite places in Seattle. Pat, his son David and the other 7th Ave mechanics have worked on my vehicles for about 15 years. My brother Greg recently bought an ’84 GMC S-15 pickup from Pat. Pat had given the truck to his nephew who neglected to change the oil. The truck’s exterior is pretty beat up but has a new engine that Pat and David installed before selling it to the Spils brothers. David sold me the tires off his wrecked Cadillac a couple years later as the truck tires were wearing out. He didn’t tell his dad — but he threw in a set of used rims that had been sitting in the back of the shop for a while.

They’ve never updated the garage structure so you’re likely to dismiss it as a deserted, rusted shack if you drive by. Pat will offer you a donut from the brown cardboard box that I imagine he picks up every morning on his way to work. But the best parts about SAS are the customers (lots of older people who won’t trust anyone else with their car repairs) and the folks who work there. Pat scratches on a piece of paper what needs repair, puts it under your car’s windshield wiper and calls you later in the day telling you “Hey Spill, your truck is ready … come pick it up!”. He tells me that he lives in West Seattle now but grew up in Seattle’s International District when it was actually a neighborhood with houses and family residents. His family owned the market across the street and at some point he purchased the garage where SAS now resides.

You can stop by early (Pat’s there at 7:30am) — it’s better than calling first as he may tell he’s too busy, but he’ll always make time if you show up at the garage with your car.

Seventh Avenue Service
701 S Jackson St, Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 622-6511

Today the Robots and I launched Twinkler, the predecessor to 43things.com. Twinkler acts like a fish wheel randomly gathering wet, flopping goal statements from the big murky river of human aspiration. My favorite goal today, “finally get comfortable with my life partner (ie me)”. Whoever wrote that one deserves a gold star.

In 43 days we’ll release 43things.com in it’s entirety and hopefully people will find it useful. In the meantime I’m enjoying the Twinkler current.

I witnessed Metric on Monday at Neumo’s in Seattle. Great band; even greater live show. Lead singer Emily Haines may be the most impressive and vital rock star I’ve seen in years.

Pete Miser has a new album out this week. Pete is a Portland, OR transplant to Brooklyn a few years back. I love Pete — and appreciate him writing Scent Of A Robot.

Do you dream of disconnecting like I do? I wonder how much more walking, talking and coherent reading I’d get in if I didn’t spend so many precious hours online. I love this drug, but some day I plan to give it up for a long period. Which is scary … sadly. When was the last time you were disconnected from the internet for more than 3 days?

There’s nothing worse than musicians being off … which is what’s happening tonight. Why does this happen? In the case of me, Reggie, Steve and Sean (Synth Club) it’s due to not playing simple. It takes a lot of collective focus to play simple. The key to sucking, though, is getting over it.

Growing up in Alaska we had two rabbits — grey rabbit and white rabbit named after their fur color. One spring day they chewed their way out of the cage in our backyard and went exploring. We spent a couple days scouring the neighborhood and adjoining woods looking for our two rabbits. We eventually gave up. One evening my dad was biking by our neighbor’s log cabin and saw white rabbit hiding under a bush — frightened, but in good health. Our neighbor had three german shepards that ran free in the yard but white rabbit had somehow managed to successfully avoid them for a several long days and nights.

A couple days before this we found the bones of grey rabbit in our backyard just a few feet from his cage. Killed by dogs.

It’s 12:23am and time for the second set.

St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) 1995 my father broke his neck while cross-country skiing down a hill just a few hundred feet from our family home in Anchorage, Alaska. In May of the same year I remember sitting by my dad’s bed on the 9th floor at University of Washington Medical Center watching TV reports of the actor Christopher Reeve’s deabilitating spinal cord injury. At the time they (perhaps Reeve himself) were saying he would surely walk again. I remember telling my mom that poor bastard would have to come to terms with what’s happened (exactly what my family was dealing with at the time). In 1995 my dad and Mr. Reeve experienced almost identical injuries—fracture of the C4/C5 vertebrae that pinched their spinal cords and rendered them quadrapalegic, completely paralyzed from the neck down. I watched my dad decline in health over the course of 10 months. One day we sat in physical therapy together and he looked down at the body which had months ago been the picture of perfect health for a man in his 60s but which he no longer controlled. The once slender, muscular build from a lifetime of daily workouts was now wasting away with muscular atrophy.

The final 10 months of my dad’s life were anything but poetic or pretty. I saw him check out mentally. I saw the body I had always admired detriorate. I saw my family torn apart by the loss of my father and the financial and emotional prospect of sustaining him in a paralyzed physical state for an unspecified period of time. But I was also able to spend precious time with him talking about his fear of death, his desire to have it come sooner than later, his love of my mom and all of us kids. He was able to visit with a lot of old friends which was nice. That was definitely worth some of the pain of seeing him suffer over time.

Richard William Spils died on January 3, 1996. My brother Greg called me today (about 8 years after Dad died) when news of Christopher Reeve’s death surfaced. I don’t think Greg even necessarily knew why he was calling me, but over the years we’ve all silently watched Christopher Reeve and his family and understood from a distance what they must be going through. Mr. Reeve’s death seemed sudden like my father’s, and related to the peculiar ailments of paralysis. One of the last bits of news I remember hearing about Christopher Reeve was that he had developed alopecia. I developed alopecia universalis 6 years ago but seeing Reeve with alopecia made me realize what an insignificant condition it really is.

Christopher Reeve made larger leaps than I would have imagined for anyone with an injury as severe as his. He and his family deserve big props for their perserverance. I wish them the best as they deal with the related sense of loss and relief that my family felt when my dad died.

Goodbye Christopher Reeve. Goodbye Richard Spils.

This rates as one of my favorite gigs of the last 2 years. Steve on keys, Reggie on keys, Daniel (me) on keys and Sean on laptop. And about 15 to 20 people in the audience. We played at 5pm after a 1 minute soundcheck. Soundcheck grew into the performance and it was nothing short of glorious.

Synth Club is a dream I’ve had since I was 14 years old and I hope it never ends.

My brother Greg talks about reaching a point where he can take a 30-hour a week job as a driver for Seattle’s Metro bus system. He sees this as the ultimate job for a few reasons: 30 hours gets you full benefits, part-time work is better for humans, a bus driver is part of the lifeblood of the city, there is plenty of people interaction, driving a bus could be fun and it’s an important job.

I think he may be on to something.