Loud music and many cigarettes have inhabited my afternoon. Practice in Jersey with Sparky in for Mikey, who's off in Gloucester with his play. LOUD, motherfucker. Richie's 5150 came on like a thousand stampeding bison and wasn't feeding back every time he turned to look at Sparky. Screamed my damned head off, as always, sweating and bouncing (occasionally on purpose) and suchlike. Good practice, in other words. I'm just loving the band right now, and thinking more and more that I'm gonna miss that more than just about anything else on the east coast.

Hey, anybody in Seattle reading this? Cool. Find the music people and tell 'em there's a halfway okay punk rock/oi bass player heading that way, okay? Groovy, thanks.

Fucked for story ideas lately. I've got 'em, but they suck. Or I've got pieces of good stuff, but nothing coherent. Brass City board kids as couriers working for 'Hot Potatoes', Boop in a garage jacket skinnying her way through corporate America dumping titles and jewelry. Yah. Old thought. Back to Bill, him grown up, kinda, wandering out in the nowhere, but I don't know where to take him. Do I kill him off? Or do I go back to the beginning and tell the kids' story? Or do I just ditch the whole fucking thing and write it off as useless noodling?

I drive and I drive and I think up stories while I drive, stories that, oddly enough, have MUCH to do with driving, and they seem great at the time, and they probably are, but I dunno how to make 'em more than just shit in my head. I dunno why I'd even bother, and I think that's the problem. You love the words, so you put them down, but it doesn't take long before you realize, utterly, that you're telling the same fucking stories that everyone else is telling, and you're not telling them as well. I dunno if that's writer's block, and I don't really give a shit one way or another, but that's what's taking me out. I can put together the basic three-act, or the two-act or the nineteen-act, but when it comes down all the way, all I can see are stories that other people have told, pieces that I've stolen, cobbled together into something that tastes recycled.

My left pec is sore, and I dunno why. It's that kind of day. Could only do twenty minutes on the treadmill this morning, which just sucks fucking ass. I'm tired as hell all the time lately and this new Hilk movie is gonna suck shit, which angers me. Why the Hulk? He's a fucking gorilla who can throw Buicks around. What's the appeal? What's been the appeal? What am I not seeing?

Really, just tired of the superheroes. Some are great, classic. Spidey, Bats, a few of the X-Men. But, the Hulk? Only good when he's smart or split off from Banner or some damned thing. The second he's just big and green and stupid, though, he's just fucking boring. Marvel's gotta think a little bit more about the properties they're selling out. Spiderman and x-Men, cool, but, fuck, Daredevil was shite, and this new one's gonna bite ass.

Speaking of which, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen flick looks just wretched. The use of an alphabet soup title kinda tells us where the producers are expecting to find their audience. The Jerry Bruckheimer crowd, not the Darren Aranofsky kids, right? And as much as I love Connery (well, a little, anyway, if only for The Hunt For Red October), he's not right as Quartermain. Clint Eastwood with an accent would have fit Moore's character. And why is he the focal point? What happened to Mina? I'm sorry that Moore sold out so completely. Although, I'm not sure he owns the property.

Fuck it. I'm just rambling. Everything sucks and I can't do a goddamned thing about most of it. I'm gonna go call Buttons and weep uncontrollably.