Landscape Calrissian - Songs From The Last Q*Ball Album

She loved Star Wars.

She had a framed Empire Strikes Back poster in her apartment, her passion for movies and music surely rivaled my own.  She was the real deal.

We sat on her couch, finally next to each other.  Finally - and fleetingly - close.  It would be the only time.  The last time.

She clutched the remote, scanning through the seemingly endless stream of saved media in her Netflix Queue.  She wanted to watch a movie but I just wanted to watch her do anything.  It would be the only time.  The last time.

We knew a lot about each other but we had only met in person once before. We both loved a lot of the same things - Star Wars and Jim Henson, Halloween and Led Zeppelin.  We developed a rapport based on a similar work ethic in a cutthroat industry, surrounded by idiots and tyrants, yet plowing through with integrity.  We both cared about doing a good job even when we hated what we did.  We respected each other.

I asked her to shut the TV off.  We needed to talk.  It was already well past midnight.  Her roommate had mercifully gone to sleep.  I would be on a plane the next morning, flying back to reality.  Harsh reality.  I had been waiting for this moment for months and this would be my only chance.  My last chance.

Music brought us together, another familiar tale.  I didn't orchestrate any of it, the universe did.  The fates blew us into each others world even though we were thousands of miles apart.  We don't ask to get hit with the love sledgehammer any more than we ask for cancer or for a hurricane to destroy our house.  It just happens.  Life has a way of constantly reminding us that what we want and what we get are often miles apart, over the hills and far away.

She put the remote down and turned to me.  Finally, I had her full attention.  I could feel the weight in the air.  We were inches apart.  She was in shorts and a t-shirt, no makeup.  She wasn't glamorous at all, but she was beautiful.  We only had one day together, and this was the first time we would have alone.  The only time.  The last time.

She had a pretty, paper-thin smile, her voice was a lullaby.  We had talked on the phone only a few times, once into the wee hours of the night, one of those long-distance convos that stay with you long after you hang up the phone.  Hearing that voice now seemed a gift.  Being here next to her seemed surreal.

"Are we okay?," I asked.

I didn't have a speech prepared, I barely had a plan.  She had orchestrated this moment in her own way, had helped me book my flight, had invited me to crash on her couch.  She did her part to put me exactly where I was in this moment.  It's possible that her intentions were entirely professional, but I'd like to believe that we both knew better, that this was something more.

"Of course," she replied.

I had already made a few mistakes.  I was nervous as fuck, and my slip was showing.  Before lunch, she caught me staring at her boobs.  Before dinner, she caught me blowing up her bathroom.  Unspoken transgressions, but transgressions all the same.  In my own back yard, I wasn't this careless.  I was in control.  Here in La-La Land, in just one day, I was not.  I was a pile of melted goo in a Karate Kid t-shirt.

She could sense me prying that door open - taking it from casual convo into the confessional.  She resisted as best she could, but once it all came pouring out, she had no choice but to engage.  She read off a short list of reasons explaining her own stance.  It seemed like a list she kept in her back pocket for moments like these, moments a woman in her position had likely experienced before.  All her reasons for keeping things platonic made sense.  Practical sense.  We already knew what we had was impractical, but only one of us was willing to take the leap.

I challenged her.  It would be my only chance.  My last chance.  "I considered it," she admitted, only slightly defensively.  Was she placating me?  The monkey was finally off my back and had landed firmly in her lap, and I sat there watching her wrestle with it.

Was she letting me down gently, stroking my ego on my way out the door?  I don't believe she was.  She was being honest.  I asked what prompted this 'consideration'.  "Similar interests," she said.  No admission of physical chemistry or emotional longing.  Similar Interests.  Purely clinical.  Star Wars and Jim Henson and Halloween and Led Zeppelin.  But who doesn't love all these things, or things just like them?  Liking the same shit isn't enough, there has to be electricity and magic and - a yearning - otherwise, you're just spinning your wheels.  I've seen enough online dating profiles in my day to validate this.

Surely I knew the difference.  Because my wheels were already spinning.   Back home, I was with someone else.  This wasn't a secret, not to her or to anyone.  My real life relationship was deep in the shit box and she knew it.  She had bonded with me over this fact, sharing stories of her own romantic folly.  Encouraging me to be brave.  She was providing all the things I wasn't getting at home, encouragement included.  She complimented my music and eventually inspired it.  We complemented each other in a lot of ways, and sometimes found ourselves admitting this aloud - even tho the timing was all wrong, the obstacles great.

I wasn't withholding information nor stretching the truth.  I had done that when I was young and dumb - embellishing things to further my own selfish desires.  It's a lecherous practice, any way you slice it.  I dated someone recently who made that sort of behavior an art.  Seeing her in action gave me a new appreciation of how wrong and shitty it is.  We paint pictures of ourselves that make us seem much less ugly than we can often be.  

So I kept it real.  She could have let me in, but that would have been a mistake.  I was with someone else.  It didn't matter that my heart wasn't in it anymore.  It didn't matter that the store was closed and practically abandoned - I still owned the property.  I still had some unfinished business to attend to.

I didn't kiss her.  I wanted to, of course.  I wanted to do a lot more.  Maybe she did too.  But she was built differently.  Most women are.  Not all, but most.  Anything more than a conversation would have been unfair to all parties involved.  The burning in my chest and my loins was already unfair enough.  Why now?  Why her?  I didn't pick her out of a catalog or off a website, I didn't ask for any of it.  It was all laid out in front of me, another one of life's shitty morality tests.  The only reason I passed was by failing, and you never really pass when you fail.

We talked some more, then hugged each other goodnight and retreated to separate rooms.  She turned out to be smarter than me, more sensible.  If she would have let her defenses down that night, I would have turned my whole life upside down, and all that weight would have been on her shoulders.  I was ready to burst, and she knew it, and so the shields were already up.  

After returning home, I wrote her a long, heartfelt letter.  I made her a mix.  I was a lovelorn 17 year-old again, only 17 was well in the rear view mirror as I typed typed typed my feelings.  I don't remember what was in the letter, but I'm sure the more practical Ron typing this blog would have slapped the guy who wrote that letter right upside the head immediately upon reading it.  I'm sure there were good intentions attached to my words but they probably reeked of desperation, one final plea from an infatuated idiot.  I was in deep, as deep as I've ever been.

I don't remember what songs were on the mix, either, but I do remember the last song on the playlist - "The Rose," by Bette Midler.  If closing a mix with a Bette Midler song isn't a sign of how far gone a dude truly is, I don't know what is.  At least it wasn't "Wind Beneath My Wings."

I put the mix and the letter in an envelope and brought it to the post office with my heart in my throat.  It wasn't the first time I had done something like this - the guy leaving a note for a woman he has never met, surprising a girl he likes with flowers, showing up at the supermarket and buying ice cream just to talk to the girl behind the counter.  Sure, I was much younger when orchestrating these encounters.  And sure, some girls actually find little missives like that romantic, but others equate them with the words "creep" and "stalker."

The common thread here, at least for me, is that none of those moments have ended in a victory.  All of the loves in my life have been presented to me - in college, at my job, playing a show in a club.  I, of course, still had to make the first move in those situations, but it was always easy.  I didn't have to chase any of those girls.  Sometimes they even chased me.

It's only when I have played the bumbling fool, the obsessed idiot, that I have crash landed.  Nowadays, I find myself putting up walls and employing radio silence quickly, secretly wondering if I'll ever feel a spark like this again.  Crash landing hurts no matter your age, your gender, or where you are in your life.

Landscape Calrissian is about that spark, and the short-circuit that followed in the wake of one unfortunate late-night encounter.  I say unfortunate because, given a little more time or opportunity to communicate, I could have come down from Cloud City and handled things in a more mature, sensible way.  I say unfortunate because I only had one shot, and it's pretty hard to convince someone you're The One in less than 2 hours.  In 2 hours, you can decide that you love Star Wars, but deciding that you want to take a chance with a dude with baggage and a price on his head usually takes at least one sequel, sometimes two.

Those are the worst type of defeats, never knowing what could have been and choosing to turn off instead - forcing yourself to do something that doesn't seem inherently 'right' just to protect yourself.  Getting hit by lightning is never a choice, but turning off the power always is.  It has taken on new meaning in an online world.  We Unfollow and we Block, our passive aggressive way of relaying that we're angry or wounded.  We stop Liking photos, we cease sending e-mails and Instant Messages.  Just a bunch of dummies deleting contact information and text messages from our smartphones.  Ghosting.  Out of sight, out of mind, or at least that's what we like to believe in our simple little minds.

It is such nonsense, the harsh reality of 21st century interaction.  But that's what it is - reality, a practice reserved not only for romantic disconnections, but also for band mates, friends, and sometimes even family.  There is little sense of longing when it's so easy to connect, disconnect, and even reconnect.

That doesn't mean our brains have stopped working or our hearts have stopped humming.  That doesn't mean the memories of what existed, even for a fleeting moment, have faded.  The world finds a way of reminding us of what we once had, or worse, couldn't have.  Do we ignore these signs?  Can we?  Do we just take another punch to the gut and keep on truckin'?  Are we meant to resurrect relationships with zombies who were once dead and buried from our everyday lives, if not our own consciousness?

We're made to believe that Love Conquers All, that whatever hard journey that you took to get to the top of the mountain was worth the price because the reward seems so great.  But the deeper you dive, the more you stand to lose when it all comes to an end.  Life is just a series of chapters, of moments, good and bad, and love surrounds the best ones but also the worst ones too, suffocating you with joy one day and squeezing the tears out of you the next.

Landscape Calrissian is one of those moments put to music.  It's a beautiful scar.  I bear a few.  I bet the girl who loves Star Wars has a few of her own.  I bet you do too.  Each scar tells a different story, but ultimately they're all the same, borne by our belief that we are meant to be part of something bigger than ourselves, that we aren't meant to be alone, rather destined to stay connected.

However fleeting the moment is, however poorly it might end - be it in the form of an untimely death after years together or an awkward hug after hours together - it is a real, tangible thing, as honest as anything you'll ever experience in your life.  What's a few scars compared to that feeling?

Love in all its forms reminds you that you're alive, that you're significant.

There is no greater gift.

***
The Last Q*Ball Album by Ron Scalzo
Available now on iTunes and Amazon

LANDSCAPE CALRISSIAN

We're almost there
We were almost there
We don't talk anymore
We don't talk about the things
That should have mattered so much more
It's so easy to ignore
Now that we're stuck in this cold war
We're suffering
Sure we say a word
But not one that's heard
And those empty clicks are just a wall between us
That's the problem with me
I keep on trusting my feelings
The best way of dealing with it
Is to tell it like it is
But people always need convincing
And my blood's already splattered on the wall
And you're just like me
Yeah you're just like me
How can I make you believe
That we're almost there?

We're almost there

***
 

Ron Scalzo - vocals
Chris Pennie - synths, loops
Brett Aveni - guitars

Music by Chris Pennie
Words by Ron Scalzo
Copyright 2014 Bald Freak Music (ASCAP)

Recorded at The Boiler Room, Princeton, NJ
Engineered by Fight Mannequins
Mixed by Fight Mannequins
Artwork by Joseph Milazzo
Mastered by Michael Judeh at Dubway Studios

Last Call at Uncle Johnny's

It's Last Call at Uncle Johnny's

Life is a passport.  Sometimes we plan our trips.  Sometimes life has other plans for us.  Four months ago, I made an unexpected pit stop at Uncle Johnny's.  Now it's time for Last Call.

She took this picture of us - the woman who set me afloat again with her lies and her bullshit and her empty promises of maturity and change and commitment.  Johnny and I posed for her this past holiday season.  Look at us.  We have no idea that - five months later - our lives will intertwine.  No knowledge that, thanks to the latest misadventure in this very interesting chapter in my life, Uncle Johnny would be stamping my passport and welcoming me into his madness.

Uncle Johnny isn't really my uncle.  In fact, I'm not sure he's anyone's uncle at all - not in the biblical sense, at least.  He's a friend of my boss who makes occasional appearances on the syndicated radio morning show I work for.  We both have no hair, fake teeth, and we both sing.  Uncle Johnny sings Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" and I sing about 40 electro-pop songs you've probably never heard of.



I moved into Uncle Johnny's apartment in May, a displaced victim of infidelity still recovering from being displaced by a superstorm.  I can still remember that feeling after Sandy - that numbness.  No, it wasn't the drugs.  It was a feeling like you're on another planet.  Everyone around you is doing their everyday and you're a homeless person, a charity case, maybe even an afterthought.  Everyone's train keeps on a rollin' and yours has gone completely off the rails.

Sandy was like that - first everyone cared a lot, then everyone cared a little, then most everyone went back to their real lives, leaving only the people who were affected to continue to care a lot.  Hey Obama, you're still coming back to Staten Island, right?  Right???

That numb feeling had returned, even if this wasn't Sandy.  Even if this new challenge wasn't much of a surprise, even after all the 'told ya so's were elicited by friends and family alike - politely and otherwise.  It was a risk to cohabit with someone who had already shown her stripes, who had already proven herself to be a Love Landmine.  But love is love and faith is faith, and I am who I am, and I took the leap.  I'd say I have no regrets, but unlike the person who let me down, I am not a liar.

I had just unloaded my watery Staten Island mausoleum, short sold it to the highest bidder.  HERE.  TAKE IT.  An acceptable loss after all that had happened just two Octobers ago, after an 18 month battle with the bank that essentially became a second job.  Moving back in was never a serious consideration - a different dude bought that house 5 years earlier.  That dude drowned with all the Batman comics and the Led Zeppelin albums.  Staten Island wasn't exactly a mecca for dating.  The Express Bus and I were already mortal enemies.  It was a half a million dollar washout, it was most of my life savings and almost all of my life inside.  And I was glad to be rid of it.  I was not in debt to any institutions even if I still felt indebted to all the people who had helped me get through that strange Sandy trip.

And now I was in this kickass new construction building with all the fixins - doormen, amenities, a view of the NYC skyline.  I had come all the way back.  But something was up.  Something was off.  I had felt this feeling before, my burning gut.  I had gotten off the mat and was up fighting again, only I was fighting against a tidal wave of bullshit this time, all coming out of the mouth of one woman who I had chosen to put my remaining stock in.  It was just like the house - an investment that quickly turned to garbage.  Only this was easier to walk away from.  It's always easier to recover when something predictable happens.  The night I finally discovered the whole truth, a sleepless night where I was forced to take shelter at my friend's place nearby, he put it into perspective. "What did you really learn tonight that you didn't already know?"  Truth.

And so I found myself on my way up to midtown a few weeks later, walking down from Penn Station to Uncle Johnny's.  I stopped in front of the church across the street and saw the building's exterior and I immediately knew this was where I was going to live.

Because I'm big into signs and there it was staring me in my fat face.  GROW.  This is what it has been all about for me - this over-stamped passport denoting five different residences since Sandy - this adult limbo that I've been trying to shake.  Something amazing had to come from all this.  Moving to Park Slope after the storm, running the NYC Marathon, getting the girl.  I was workin it, girl - all with one thought on my mind.   

Don't survive.  Thrive.

And now all that was behind me, but there was still plenty of growing to do.

Uncle Johnny lives in a factory building.  He's lived in this apartment for over 30 years and he hasn't exactly renovated the place.  Describing the architecture of Uncle Johnny's apartment is simple.  Just imagine your grandparents' unfinished basement, only moved up to the penthouse.  Then add lots of green crystal, candelabras, zebra print, and Marilyn Monroe memorabilia.  Hey, maybe your grandfather was Liberace.

Oh.  And let's not forget the foliage.

Welcome To The Jungle

Uncle Johnny has 18 plants - I spent thirty minutes a day with Johnny's little green watering can, twice a week, trying to keep these monstrosities alive.  I was not entirely successful.  Uncle Johnny now has 14 plants.  Sorry, Johnny.




The building's single elevator is straight out of '70s-era horror films like Dressed To Kill - it's key operated and opens up right into the apartment.  Uncle Johnny's floor is the only one not separated by a door, so basically any stray homeless people or serial killers that get into the lobby can stumble right on into the living room at any moment.  It's really quite thrilling.  Needless to say, my baseball bat was never too far away.

Another "feature" of the elevator is that it stays open on your floor unless you send it back down to the lobby manually.  One night while I was making dinner, my dog Buttons was sniffing around and the doors closed on him, sending him down alone.  10 seconds later, I hear Buttons barking like a lunatic 7 floors below.  I would spend the next hour running up and down the only stairwell in this place in flip-flops, screaming my dog's name at the top of my lungs like a madman - "BUTTONS!!!!  BUUUUTTTOONNNSSSS!"  Buttons eventually turned up on the roof.  Boundless fun.

Uncle Johnny's bathroom was another adventure entirely.  For one thing, there was no cold water.  So if you're the type that likes skin scalding showers, this is the bathroom for you.  Ah yes, those hot August nights in Johnny's shower stall with a dozen mosquito bites covering my body (Uncle Johnny also has no screens on his windows).  Because, as we all know, scalding hot water is great for bug bites.

There were paintings where walls should have been, and I didn't dare to open the vanity under the sink for fear of what I might find inside there.  This was true army training - the sort of situation that makes you cherish the simple things in life.  Things like cold water and screen doors and a fucking bathtub.  Still, the bathroom wasn't without its charms.



Buttons and I were never short on company at Uncle Johnny's, sharing the space with all types of critters - roaches, skeeters, mice.  I soon became a vermin assassin.  The first mouse was a mercy killing - Buttons found it stuck on a glue trap and turned it upside down.  I put my face against my forearm, begged the gods for forgiveness and quickly stomped my foot atop the trap.  Sorry, Mickey.  The second mouse frizzle fried inside The Raticator.  Yes, this is a real thing - a Rodent Control System I bought online because Johnny refused to pay for an exterminator.  I returned from making music in Seattle to the smell of fried rodent and spent the morning scraping mice guts and burnt hair out of the trap with a wooden spoon.  Yep, this place was a real babe magnet.  Howyoudoin, ladies?

The third kill belonged to Buttons while I was at work.  Good boy.  By August, I was wearing war paint and throwing hand grenades - I was fucking Rambo and the mice were Afghan commandos.  They had no chance.

I retreated to the radio station one night in early July even tho I was on vacation.  It was cooler at work, and also vermin-free.  Heavy thunderstorms raged outside the window of my production studio.

I returned to Uncle Johnny's in the wee hours, waiting for the evil elevator to open, and I could already hear the water.  The doors opened and there was a waterfall in Uncle Johnny's living room.  The ceiling was leaking.  Badly.  It was the morning of the 4th of July, and Johnny was in Italy.  No one was coming to fix this problem, so I went up to the roof to discover about 6 inches of standing water on the level above me.

I laid towels and pots and pans around Johnny's living room, took a deep breath, and crawled up on Johnny's couch, where I always slept, thanks to my fear of things that creep and scurry in the night.  The rest of the weekend was hot and dry and the water on the roof dissipated.  Soon after, I was hanging on that roof nearly every night.  I had some drunken caucuses up there, I talked to God up there, I smoked a joint up there, I had some very public sex up there.  It was the discovery of the century.  Sometimes shitty things have to happen for new discoveries to be made.  That's pretty much been the story of my life for the past half decade.



Outside, it was pure madness.  Cabs, trucks, police sirens, drunk Rangers fans, crazy homeless people, tourists toting their luggage, tour buses, fire trucks, crack heads, prostitutes.  3 dollar a slice pizza.  Buttons hated it out there and who could blame him?  On the first night I stayed at Uncle Johnny's, there was a plastic container of piss on the sidewalk outside the door.  On the last day I stayed at Uncle Johnny's, there was a turd in the same spot.  Not doggie doo, mind you.  A man-sized dookie.  Welcome to Manhattan, American's toilet.

Up on the roof, however, Buttons loved life, always climbing to the highest point of elevation by the elevator shaft, surveying the rat race below.  My dog's well-being has become a big priority in my life ever since my divorce, ever since Sandy.  He has been through every step of this twisted journey with me.  Buttons could have had a complete meltdown at Uncle Johnny's, instead the situation became very manageable.  He is no longer crated, he gets on great with his boarder.  I take him on the subway now.  I take him to work sometimes.  He's running with me again, often 5 or 6 miles at a time.  And he fucking loves it.

Buttons healed up at Uncle Johnny's and so did I.  I ran in Hudson River Park, in Central Park, up the West Side Highway.  I discovered The High Line. I ate a Quarter Pounder with Cheese at 4 in the morning in front of Madison Square Garden and I didn't give a fuck.  I barbecued chicken on a small grill on Johnny's tiny terrace and watched sunset after beautiful sunset with a glass of whiskey in hand and my faithful dog nearby.




I was fucking free, and not just in the literal sense.  After Sandy, all those romantic feelings kept me tied down.  At the time, I saw it as motivation.  Live a better life, be a better man, and you will attain your goal.  And it drove me - more pushups, more miles on the pavement, more writing, more fighting, and more fearlessness.  At Uncle Johnny's I realized a few things.  I am a better man.  With or without anyone, I am a better man than I was before all this blogging bullshit, before all this bad luck and these bad choices.  I got fucked over - again! - but I didn't wallow in it this time.  I posted some true shit in this space that about 900 pairs of eyes saw, then I took it down and I moved the fuck on.

Some still tell me that living well is the best revenge, and I never disagreed with that.  Because I am living well again.  It's quiet in my back yard now.  I can hear the crickets at night, I have a tomato plant.  There is no evil elevator, no bugs, no mice - just plenty of space.  My piano is here, Buttons is asleep at my feet.  But revenge was necessary.  My boss told me that if slamming my ex in this space helped me move past the shitty feeling that comes with being cheated on, then it was a good thing that I did it.  Like most, he empathized.  And as usual, he was right.

Some still tell me that I should be writing full-time and I never disagreed with that either.  I'm just tired of writing about mishaps, about my shitty misadventures with unfathomable floods and insane ladies.  Sure, that's where the best material comes from. But it still feels more like my medicine than my destiny.  Some still tell me to leave New York and start a new life, and I made a real concerted effort to do that this summer.  But it just didn't happen and I'm at peace with it.  I put it out there to the universe that I'm game, I took that first big step.  it's just not time yet.

I went out to Seattle and made an album.  I surrounded myself with amazing musicians and once again benefited from the generosity of kindred spirits, only under much dryer circumstances.  I fell in love with a part of the country I had long yearned to visit.  I dated strange women and some not-so-strange women in five different cities, and I didn't fall for any of them.  Instead, I fell in love with making music again.  My new album will be out next month and it's nice to feel excited about the process, to be working towards another goal, another destiny.


And maybe - just maybe - I would never have done any of that if not for my time at Uncle Johnny's.  And so I'm grateful for the experience.  I dare say I'm enjoying the journey.  I lived in midtown Manhattan, a place I never thought I would spend more than an hour in without losing my shit.

It was pretty fucking awesome.  

It's Last Call at Uncle Johnny's.  We had a great time.  Just one more shot of whipped cream flavored vodka before I go.  Time for another stamp on the passport.  When I tell people about my time here, I won't think about the bugs or the mice or the cheater or the challenges.  I'll think about that GROW sign, I'll think about embracing more adversity, I'll think about this crazy shitty dirty city that I love, that I hate. And I'll think to myself, what a wonderful world.