Enough with the politics: let’s talk muzak.

It’s just about five months until my book is due (Oct 1 – yikes!), so that means one thing: I am going to procrastinate the shit out of the next few months.

Now, usually “procrastination” means “masturbation,” but that can only last so long, especially considering I’m 98% sure I either have the diabetes (pronounced di-uh-BEET-uhs) or am on the doorstep of the diabetes, so my sex drive is quite close to nil.

(I mean, do you see my knee in the lower right hand corner? If that isn’t the knee of a diabetic, I don’t know what is.)

And so, I turn to my other love: playing instruments poorly.

As you can see, after over three years apart (courtesy of my move to LA, and then my move back to NYC into a 400 sq ft apartment, before finally moving to my large Brooklyn apartment), we’ve got the whole gang back together. Here’s a quick history:

Bass – I played bass in a band in college. Neither I nor the band were very good, but I did get a blowjob in a the woods of Vermont after playing a show at Middlebury. So that was nice.

Banjo – bought on a whim a few years back, I tried to learn it the “right way” (i.e., fingerpicking), but almost immediately quit.

Mandolin – I’ve talked enough about this lately. I love it, and am taking to it pretty well.

Acoustic – bought as a gift for myself when I finished book #1. If you’ve read the book, you can see how it’s debatable or not whether I earned it.

Electric – bought when I was 13, when I was at the height of my Jimi-Hendrix-at-Woodstock phase. It’s a Japanese “70’s style” strat with a really nice reverby tone.

Ukulele – gifted to me by an ex. Very easy and fun to play at parties and while nude (a six foot tall, 200+ pound hairy guy with a beard playing a ukulele nude = INSTANT SEX)

For book #1, I procrastinated by “learning” the piano. Mostly this meant getting drunk at the computer and composing some original pieces (limited to five notes), but I did learn passable versions of Regina Spektor’s “Us” and the “Layla” outro, which is much, much easier than I thought.

For book #2, I think I’m going to follow the lead of the mandolin and go back to the banjo. Not only is it a very hot instrument right now, but it was such a spectacular failure of an experiment the first time around that I can’t possibly get any worse. If I manage even a few shitty songs, it will give me a self-esteem boost and thus help me write the greatest book ever.

And if the banjo experiment fails, I can always go back to the masturbation. October 1 will be here before you know it.