My friend texted me today to tell me she was suffering from "post-vacation depression". She'd been on her first trip with her new boyfriend and apparently it went so well that settling back into her normal life has been a complete let down. I immediately have flashbacks of the scenes in Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" where they are hiding out in the motel.

I started to think about how I've kind of been suffering "post-vacation depression" for most of my life. Out of boredom I started attacking the big box of unsorted ticket stubs the other day and it's forced me to look back in a way that I always avoid because it's quite uncomfortable.


My ticket stubs from 1992-2000 are carefully bound in a notebook, but then after that I began dating my ex-wife and they just turned into stacks of ticket stubs bound with a rubber band. Those stacks turned into ziploc bags, the ziploc bags into a box, that box into a larger box, and so on.
None of these…

I still feel cold when I look at this building. I feel bone chilling cold, heartbreaking sadness, and a strange twinge of unbridled optimism. I remember countless nights of walking around that lawn singing along with my headphones as loud as possible, not another human being in sight. I remember standing at the top of the hill and hearing James Taylor playing at an amphitheater down the street.  I remember hearing the Bruce Springsteen "Unplugged" CD for the first time while washing dishes. On the top floor I remember hearing Matthew Sweet's "Altered Beast" for the first time. I remember listening to "Zooropa" on cassette. I remember having a Warhol "Elvis" silkscreen stuck to the wall above my bed with fun-tak.

I remember people. I remember things they said.

I remember spending Christmas in the lobby with a Christmas tree and other people.

I remember watching Bill Clinton get inaugurated on one of those awful Sony projection TV sets where t…

You know how it is. When the going gets tough, the tough play a freeform jazz exploration for a festival crowd. Listen to it here:

https://prettycolors.bandcamp.com/track/stimulating-the-economy