BLAKEBUCK's blog

I finally collapsed on the second landing of the stairwell.  I stared up at the shadows of the rot-iron railing cast against the ceiling of this extravagant mansion.  Perhaps in some ways, this lifestyle had become a prison of it’s own.  But no use looking for the answers now - the only thing my mind could process was how to keep myself from peeing on the persian rug.  No - if I wanted to find the answers, I’d have to look back.

There is no greater joy in this world than a Monday night in Oxford, Mississippi.  Sure, it’s not the biggest city (we don’t even have a Target), or the most socially equal one (black people were illegal here until 1984), but it has a certain southern charm that makes even the most seasoned of alcoholics feel right at home.  And it is on these special Monday nights that The Rooster has two dollar pitchers and three dollar wing baskets.  A social gathering I’ve lovingly come to refer to as WANG NITE.

After basket number two and pitcher number three, I’m ready to start spinning my tales to the eager yet easily distracted audience at my table.  “So then the hispanic guy starts getting frustrated, and says, ‘No, me amigo.  My friend say he want to party wit you” - suddenly my phone rings.  It’s Rob, texting the only possible phrase on earth that could pull me away from wang nite.

“DUDE, ALL THE BOOZE IS FREE.  Parrish’s is closing, tonight is their last night and they’re GIVING EVERYTHING AWAY”

I’m blazing my way out the door when I’m stopped by an old female friend of mine.  “Shut up Johnson!  No time to run game right now!” says Brain.  I’m out the door when the doubt starts to set in.  “Free booze?  Rob is drunk.  Does he even know where he is, let alone how much things cost?”  But as soon as I walk in the Parrish’s, it’s completely obvious he was right.  Every breathing creature in sight is obliterated out of their minds.  I quickly spot Sarah behind the back bar bouncing about to the blaring sound of Three 6 over set of speakers that have popped their last body.

“BLAKE BUCK!  WOOOOO!” she shouts which is Sarah for, “Hello sir.  I hope you are having as fantastic of an evening as I”  After taking up position behind the bar, I proclaim it to be shot time, but the it looks like the bar ran out of shot glasses a long time ago.  So I tell Sarah to open her mouth as I pour straight Maker’s Mark and Evan Williams into her mouth - a combination I was calling the “Chocolate Thunder” at the time.

Three hours later, I feel like I’ve just discovered every secret of the universe as my motley crew and I are shoved out of the bar.  “Let’s go geocaching on the square guys” Rob proclaims from several miles away from me.  No one seemed to think that was a good idea, which I wholeheartedly agreed with considering I was unable to see my legs.  After what feels like a 2 hour walk and an 8 hour drive, we arrive at Rob’s house.

I’d been to this mansion once before - 8 bedroom, 6 baths, a painting given by Frank Sinatra, and every room a potential cover photo for next month’s Southern Living.  This is a place where great statesmen go to retire; tonight, however, Rob’s parent’s were in Antartica, and it was a place for the kids to play.  More or less the college-age version of Chuck E. Cheese.

We raced through the house with a beer in each hand, trying to find the hidden passages and where they stored the slaves.  But after cramming five of us in the master shower, watching the pool cleaning robot make his rounds for half an hour, and breaking the floppy disk drive on the $50,000 player piano, we found ourselves dissatisfied.  Was this all there was to be had?  We ended up just sitting in a circle and talking, more or less like were in Parrish’s a few hours earlier.

After a few hours the talk waned thin and I wandered alone up the stairs and collapsed on the second landing.  That’s when it hit me - Parrish’s is closed forever.  And for what?  The hope that Mr. Parrish could perhaps one day afford a home and things as nice as this?  That didn’t seem like much of a fair trade at all.  I pull my phone out and look at Rob’s text again:

“THEY’RE GIVING EVERYTHING AWAY”

You know, that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to puke in the yard.

-BLAKEBUCK

I’m of the belief there are two kinds of people in this world - those who see problems and those who see opportunities.  Some of the most conflict-ridden places in the world today (I’m looking at you middle-east) are the product of many generations of problem-seeing people.  But don’t worry, I’m not here to wax poetic about race relations in Israel, I’m dealing with something far, far stupider.

Today I learned that Apple recently announced at Macworld it was making the majority of the music in the iTunes music store DRM free.  For those of you who don’t know what DRM is, congratulations - you’ve probably had sex before.  At least you’ve moved out of your parent’s basement.  DRM stands for “Digital Rights Management”, which is a set of restrictions that come on a piece of digital content (such as only being able to have 5 copies of an iTunes song, only being able to install a Spore on 3 computers, only being able to put a piece of bread in the toaster twice, etc.).

After Apple removed the restrictions for most music on the iTunes store, my first thought was, “Hot damn!  Sugar Pie Honey Bunch here I come!”  But soon I became curious about how all of the rampant “Anti-DRM” zealots would take it.  Surely this would be a great day in their eyes, as one of the largest digital merchants had loosened it’s restrictions.  They must be cheering Apples name!

Below is a snippet from the anti-DRM site Defective By Design.org:

• Today, a minor victory in the campaign to eliminate DRM, Apple, the last major retailer of DRM-encumbered music has announced, live at MacWorld, that music will be going DRM-free. Today, some 8 million music tracks and music videos are already available DRM-free, via iTunes Plus.
• We must continue to put pressure on Apple. That means continuing to boycott all DRM-content on iTunes, including the iPhone and the App Store. We encourage Apple to continue to remove DRM from iTunes content, including all movies, TV shows, games, audiobooks and applications, as well as support for free formats, such as Vorbis and Theora

Months of negotiating with record labels, mountains of legal work, and not even so much as a ‘thank you’ from these earbud-toting, north face jacket-wearing jackasses?  Why don’t you go order a Venti at Starbucks and tell me why you think weed should be legalized.

“But why do we need DRM at all?  It’s my music, I should be able to do whatever I want with it!”  An interesting statement, philosophy major who doesn’t vote because he says it doesn’t matter.  The reason digital content is restricted so much more than say an analog CD ten years ago is that digital files can be endlessly copied with virtually no effort and transferred anywhere in the world almost instantly.  While copying a CD was possible 10 years ago (can you say, mixtape?), it took a considerable amount of effort, which stopped a vast majority of “casual piraters” (which I believe is the bulk of the current piracy problem)

As a digital content creator, I think that protecting my content (which I may want to sell someday) from piracy is extremely important.  So stop whining about how these “evil corporations” are locking you in a prison, and instead look at all the amazing things it allows you to do.  I can watch Wall-E.  On my freakin phone.  Am I the only one still blown away by that?

Sadly, the anti-DRM may never be satisfied, just like the middle-east may never find peace.  On the upside, this week’s episode of The Soup just finished downloading to my phone.  Spaghetti cat, here I come!

-BLAKEBUCK

“Billy Bob Thorton is in Armageddon? Good god, this truly is a no-holds-barred, adrenaline-fueled, heart-pounding masterpiece”, I said to my roommate Calvin as I tore open the box to my brand new Rock Band Stage Kit.

My mind continued to churn on the improbability of a NASA director named “Billy Bob”, and how Steve Busceimi continues to get big parts despite his ghoulish face.  I then realized that trying to setup this fiendish contraption while watching one of Michael Bay’s top six movies was not proving productive.  “That’s it?  You paid a hundred bucks for a fog machine and a little LED light?”, Calvin asked.

“Shut up.  I can’t hear Liv Tyler’s awful dialogue”, I snapped.  Calvin’s lack of faith in a one hundred and seven dollar Xbox synchronized light show was starting to get on my nerves.  But that old buyers remorse was slowly creeping up on me.  “Why is this cable only four feet long?  This is all the fog juice I get?  Does this damned thing do anything?” I said, fiddling with the cheap plastic focusing ring.

By the time we’d gotten all the cables hooked up, the guitars plugged in, the fog machine heated up, and turned out the lights, I had already heard that Aerosmith song I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing about eight times.  It was finally time to see if this Stage Kit could dethrone my current favorite feature of the Xbox: Netflixing crap movies ALL THE TIME.

“No, don’t do Back in Black - I’ve had enough of that AC/DC pack.  How about White Wedding?”  I agreed, only slightly saddened that I wouldn’t be breaking this new stage kit in with Freebird.  The song starts out simple enough - a few flashing lights somewhat matching the music.  I was beginning to worry, until the fog kicked in.

In sixty seconds my living room was transformed into an electrified stage set for ROCK GODS.  Smoke so thick I could barely see the screen, blinding strobes flashing viciously in my eyes, shimmering beams sliding around the room like psychedelic spotlights.  By the time I’d stopped screaming the lyrics at the top of my lungs and jumping off the couch, I swear I could almost smell the tequila soaked vomit on the drunk guy in the third row.

“Oh my god.  That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done”  Calvin gasped, trying to catch his breath after all the jumping around in a smoke filled room.  And he was right.  This is the closest I’d ever get to living the Rock and Roll American Dream.

And when I fall to sleep this night, I know what I’ll be thinking.  I don’t want to close my eyes.  I don’t want to fall asleep.  Because I’d miss you Rock Band Stage Kit, and I don’t want to miss a thing.

-BLAKEBUCK

Alcohol - A Family Tradition

“And I made a page on the intercom, asking, ‘Is this anybody’s lettuce?’ And I did it two times, and nobody answered so I threw the lettuce out. Well come two o’clock, Bill comes up and he says, ‘Why did you throw out Tony’s lettuce?’ And I told him ‘I made a page and lettuce costs all of 99 cents, Bill, and you can get some more’”

My mother’s self-righteous monologue to my Aunt Bonnie would likely continue for another 30 minutes or so. I felt sorry for Bonnie, so I made sure her sacrifice would not be in vain. I ducked into the kitchen and grabbed the orange juice out of the fridge. I might not be getting much in the way of presents from at the Buck Family Christmas this year, but I was sure getting my money’s worth in screwdrivers.

My extended family continued to “visit” in the living room as I searched the cabinets for my cousin’s “good vodka”. Soon, I bumped into my Uncle Jimbo, pouring himself a hearty glass of straight Ciroc, a glass that still had the remnants of some quite potent eggnog. “Now Blake, you never drank when you lived with me in Nashville”, Jimbo muttered as I snatched the bottle of vodka out of his hand. “Well you know. The economy and whatnot.”

But Jimbo didn’t seem to hear me, he just smiled and wandered into living room. Perhaps he had another racist joke on tap, one that came to him in a moment of lucidity. And that’s when I had a revalation. One that I could only now spot, thanks to a fews year of experience with alcohol. Jimbo wasn’t just having a quick drink. It wasn’t just a simple sip before dinner. Jimbo had been drinking all day. And not just Jimbo.

Almost everybody at the Buck Family Christmas was completely smashed. And had been since 10 o’ clock that morning.

I took some solace in this fact, making my own alcoholic misgivings seem like a minor setback. But of course, it all made since now. The only way any of us could have a good time at this family gathering was heavy “medication”, and things had been this way ever since I was a child. How else could they all deal with the embittered attitudes, the two dogs tearing everything up, and the roaming gang of 4-year-olds demanding we open presents now instead of after dinner?

I now saw the Buck Family Christmas in a brand new light. Is every family more or less like this? But we hadn’t even opened presents yet - there was still plenty of fun to be had at this year’s party...

-BLAKEBUCK