Ambush Interview #96 Irish Pimp

I love a man whose ear lobes I can look through Plus he's great to sit next to when riding in Fred's car around San Diego

6. Discuss the wacked out body modification crap you're into. pics
11. Discuss what you did when you manfactured piercing jewelry.

I don't know how much I will really write on this,
but I will at least give the history on it. you can still google
my name ?sean christian? with body piercing and get some
stuff that i have written over the years.

back in the middle to late eighties, northern California was a
really weird place. most of us thought that punk rock was dead,
and the gothic movement was really about over at the time. it
was really cool to be as sexually freaky as you could, and Jane's
Addiction ruled supreme. hip to be junkie sheik. so San Francisco
was a really weird place to hang out. it was common for the
twenty something crowd to be polygamous and to know as much
as you could about the church of the subgenius, so you could put
it down and say that it was ridiculous.

so I would drive up to San Francisco from my home town of
Sacramento and spend time with the freaks. at this time there
was no professional piercing shop there, and a few people were
just piercing out of their homes. the biggest house of this was
Esther and Vaughn, who a few years later opened Body
Manipulations. one of their friends was a good friend of mine,
teun ebbers. I also new this guy named Jay that used to live in
Sacto and moved to SF. he came back for a big party one night
and was talking about how cool he was or whatever, and started
talking about a cockring that he got put in. that was something
that I had to see. so off we went to the bathroom and he pulled
out a frenum piercing with a 12ga fixed bead ring in it. holyshit
I thought that was the fucking coolest thing that I had ever seen
and had to get one. so off to the city I went with him, and pierced
in someone's house It was so the first piercing that I ever got, other
than one earlobe with a safepin, was a 10ga frenum.

shortly after that I wanted to find out if there was anyone in
Sacramento doing the same thing, so I didn't have to go to SF.
but the only thing in Sacto was a huge underground gay men's
leather crowd. but there was one man that had been having
piercing parties for years, and low and behold if I didn't find a
way to get invited. he asked me to show up in boots, levis, and
a wife beater. I swear to god it took me years to realize that I was
the 'eye candy' at the party, young punk rocker with a shaved
head in tight jeans at a leather party. but I guess that everyone
knew that I was naïve to it, and nobody tried to play bad touch
with the straight boy. but at those parties I started realizing some
of the basics of piercing, really dirty bad piercing, but piercing
never the less. now I know that it was more of a S&M cutter's
scene, and just some cock torcher. but there were more than
enough guys around that would let you practice genital piercings.

so after a few years of dirty freaky deaky, both Body M and
Gauntlet were open in SF, and I started hearing about a woman
branding and piercing in the area also. I would go up to Body
M a few times a month and see what they were doing and try
to learn more about it all. at that point the jewelry was just
too expensive to get pierced much. a retail captive bead ring
was close to fifty dollars. so to get a hole in you, there was
big money to be dropped for a young guy. but one of my
SF friends moved to sacramento and started piercing out of
a tattoo shop that was opening there. his name was mike hare
and the shop was called the exotic body. he made some jewelry
there, and there was another guy in sacramento that started making
jewelry named scott rogers. scott was going up to Body M and
trying to get them to buy his rings, but they were very picky
about jewelry. I think that they had to see five of six sample
runs before they would buy a ring from him, but it pushed a few
him into making really nice rings. around the same time, I decided
that I want to move to the desert and find myself. so off to texas
I went.

I was living in El Paso and hacking people out of my house,
and every once in a blue moon driving to Dallas to get pierced.
there was one piercing shop there, and it was in a book store.
it was called skin and bones, and I got my nipples pierced there
in tandem. allen falkner (masumi max?s exhusband) hooked me up,
and I took what ever I learned there and went back to el paso and
worked in a small shop. texas was short lived, and I wanted to go
back to California. so I moved home and started working with
scott rogers making jewelry and have huge piercing parties out
of my house. we would have one a month, and invite everyone
over. scott and I would pierce as many people that would come
over, and we really didn't do that good of a job.

we started really getting scotts company rolling, and started a piercing
shop called Sub Q. at the time it was the second shop in Sacto, behind
mike hare's shop. both scot and I knew that we couldn't handle the
piercing shop on our own, so we got my old friend from SF, teun ebbers
to move to Sacto. he had moved to his old home town, Kansas city and
was piercing at a tattoo shop there call Grim's. there was quite a few
shops in SF by then, and there was one in santa cruz with this guy
named Eric Dakota. we would trade him captive bead rings for needles
that he had made for him. teun was a surgery field technician in the
air force, so he knew quite a bit about making a place as clean as you
could with what you had, and taught me how to stop cross contaminating
things. for quite some time we just rocked that piercing shop and had
a great time with it. we were friends with this cat in Arizona at the
time named steve 'the devil' hayworth. we used to ask him to make
us weird shit when we were doing projects. at the same time, a new
shop opened in SF called nomad. both teun and I knew blake and
christian, so we would bounce ideas off each of them and they would
do some of the same.

we kind of worked out a few idea's that using heavy cleaning agents
might not be the best idea, so both shops started telling clients to
use dr. bronner's castile soap. teun and blake both thought that salt
water soaks would help with the drying of the skin. so that went into
the aftercare. if it was a friend of ours, we just told them to leave it

alone and it would heal fine, if it got infected, soak it then. around
this
same time, California started talking about getting some legislation
about body piercing. that freaked everyone out. Sub Q was only a
few blocks from the capitol building, so I would go over there and talk
to the staff in the senator's office that was putting the bill through.
(side note, most of the above shops were using ET jewelry including
me) Body M, Gauntlet, Nomad, and Fakir could not come to one mind
about aftercare and skin prep. everyone was nervous about the state just
outlawing piercing, so they decided to start an organization call the
APP to help out with lobbying and solve some of these disputes.
Mike hare was going to a few of the meetings and was going to
get a board position, as almost everyone that was going to be in
the APP was going to have a position since there were very few
of them that were even willing to do it.

I was offered something then, blake asked me to be involved. I told
him that it was a San Francisco scrap that I didn't have the time to
get into. "decide what you want, and I will go to the senator's office
for you" it was a fun time trying to learn the right way to do things,
and we really didn't do it right. what did I learn out of all that?
Drama is dumb. don't use that big ass needle, and for god's sake, don't
put a taper behind it. its really easy to get burned out quick. Teun quit
the shop and decided to move home to become a nurse. I hung in as long
as I could, but scott and I were of two different minds when it came
to technique. I had to do something else. I didn't want to work for him
anymore, and I didn't like rockstar piercers anymore. so I decided
to start a small company with a few friends. Revolution Body Jewelry.
make the best of the best, comprise nothing.

that was a really fun ride for a few years, but i really thought that it
would be a small company so I just became partners with everyone
that I thought was going to be employed. me and two friends. you
know the old saying, don't go into business with friends, well its
true. we just had different visions of what we wanted. so it was easier
for me to leave than to fight. at that time I had been going to
different piercing shops all over the country to learn more about what
people were doing.

i sold that business to my two partners and left for santa cruz, ca
to work at the largest manufacturing plant in the world at the
time. it was called anatometal.

over all of this time, i met several very interesting people. one man
that i was amazed by was fakir. www.bodyplay.com in his own
rite and inside of this industry, he was and is considered a shaman.
he is one of the first of what we really call ?modern primitives? he
looked beyond some of the typical aspects of body modification
and studied the history behind it. he did want to pierce his nose
because he liked the way that it looked, but he also wanted to
know the meaning of it and the history behind it. he was the first
man that got me interested in body suspension and taught me
his ideas of the spiritual aspect of it. i dont know how much
i personally believe in what he was seeking, but i did
respect the fact that he was on a path and he was interested
in finding out if there was more behind it all.

what i did take from him was a huge interest in suspension
that i still have to the day. i really dont like the public veiwed
side of it, the fanfare that is around it now, but i still have
a love for it. and i few hooks still at my house.

ok that was a long weird story. i guess that the short part
of it that i at least witnessed, if not helped out a little, in
most of the early parts of the professional piercing industry
and ended up working in the field for well over a decade.
i was part of setting standard, and writing laws. but in the
end... i made cockrings and put them in people. this was
the industry that i was in when lars andi first became
friends, and it was the industry that i left to work for him.

oddly, i think that the two industries have quite a bit in
common and what i learned from one, i was able to take
to the other. both industries are sparked by people who
have lived outside of certain lines that society as a whole
have drawn. i see the adult internet industry started and
fueled by computer geeks that would sit and tweak with
the thing that they have fun with. they figured out a way
to make a living doing it, a job out of their hobby. i bet
that there is a huge chunk of people in this industry that
do not have formal business training or education. same
thing with the piercing industry. we wanted jobs doing
what we liked to do, we wanted to make a living at it
in our own and in our own time. so we learned these business
skills just out of necessity. it gives an awesome perspective
of being creative, since we really were never told about
guidelines that we should stay inside of.

i dated this girl for some time and put hooks in her


north shore


notice the seven seconds shirt on my friend


wearing gloves while putting huge hooks in a man, in the dirt


different girl's turn


dont worry, she was ok


last, but not least. having a party with a few friends. why not let them put some hooks in my back and pull me up on chains

allen falkner


his mife masumi


angel www.buckangel.com his wife


some of the kids from infinte in philly


she is an old friend


fakir and i


they have only give out a few

Damn Sean! This is my new favorite Ambush, brotha!

Let's catch up on today's conversation in Florida ... but please send me an LOI before then!

I am all eyes on this one

Sean is a great guy. Always a pleasure to be around.

All of the Island of Ireland used to belong to the British. I say you should give it them back.

wow - very interesting!

wow you knew Fakir. Now thats amazing.

I had no idea! Congratulations!

That's awesome on the APP award. Interesting read. I'm looking forward to more.

keep going sean. you've only just begun

7. What's it like to live in a house with 5 guys?

if you really want to see what i do and how i live, you can
check out my http://www.ilikesean.com there are pics of my house,
my friends, places i go, things i do and a lot of you.

there was a short time that i lived by myself. i think it was about
six months, from moving out of my parents house, until i ended
up with housemates. since then, i have always lived in a cooperative
situation. a few times a week we cook together, we clean the house
once a week together, we shop for food together (for the few times
that i eat at home)

most of the time they have been dry, semi-straight edge houses.
i use tobacco, one of the boys eats meat, things like that. most
of the time, we move together as a group. its not always just guys,
there is a punk rock girl or two that has been in the mix over
the years, but for the most its a house full of guys. as i type this
on a laptop, there is a band in my living room and i think that
we are all going to eat tofu scrabble burritos. after that, one of
the boys is going to help someone with his car and i have to
go with the other boy to his business that he owns and help him
with some contracts. ( i know about LOI now)

i really like living in a cooperative. its a ideal of community in
certain aspects. sometimes its a little much when you want a
quite place to watch a movie alone, like when i came home to
find the entire band ?the exploited? in my living room, i think
that last week it was ?go to hell?, and it makes me think that i
really dont need to do this and i can afford to not live here. but
then there are other moments that i like the fact that we can
provide, as group, for each member and for others. we also have
an open home to our community of friends. this is the house
that everyone gets together to watch movies. we have dinner
parties over here a few times a year. when there is a holiday,
and there are people in town that do not have family here, they
come to my place and we all cook together and have a meal.

so for about nineteen years now, i have lived in a household
full of people, four different towns, two different states. at one
point i even moved an entire household of boys from california
to texas. one day i might grow up and get my own room.


he is not really that hard


tv party tonight, tv party tonight.. we got nothing better to do


he spends a lot of time on his hair


i like orange


and buliding lofts. its kind of like having a fort to sleep in


sometimes the houses are a little 70's


that loft really didnt work out well


holiday potluck. i made everyone wear ice hockey jerseys


we end up with a lot of food sometimes


its hard to make your dining room look like your grandmas


thanksgiving morning


desert potluck


she got married and decided to move.


party in the yard


we used to live above the tattoo shop of course


and there are always lots of stickers on stuff

if you ever need a couch to crash on in santa cruz, you can always have ours

OMG, I get the heebie jeebies when I cut myself shaving my legs!!

sagi has corrected me. he doesnt know what a LOI is either. kathleen sends me text messages that have LOI's in them now. luckly, i think that there are a good amout of people at AFF that do know what those types of things are.
all and all, it has been nothing less that a major learning curve for me.

Great one....
Now these 2 fuckers make laugh my ass off every time i see them...and even when i dont to think of them...lol Great people....The Pimp is "the man"







Character...

8. You worked in rock and roll for years. Is that a fancy way of saying you were a groupie?

birthday party tonight, not mine. i will get to this one before bed for sure

Where do i start....
Sean is by far one of my favorite people i see at shows. There is never a dull moment, always making us laugh.
There is so much i didn't know about Sean's past but having read the replies so far, i have just gained so much more respect for him. A great guy to know and be around... I can't wait to hang with ya in our Cabana next week.

Lars, Sean, Fred, Sagi, Elli .... much love to all of you!

xoxox

bump just because

Ska!!! Dave Wakeling and the English Beat current line-up will be in San Jose on August 10th, doing a FREE Concert in the Park...

Can't wait to hear "Save It For Later" and "Mirror in the Bathroom" live one more time...

ADG Webmaster

we are going to have a lot of fun this year in florida

he sounds fucking perfect singing save it for later. he voice has got back to what it used to be.

so being a drunk skater kid in the eighties, i of
course fell in love with punk rock. i could not get enough.
i would make up excuses to sneak out of my parents suburban
home and i would go to shows all the time in downtown
sacramento, ca. even though the shows were cheap at that
time, it was getting a little hard for a kid to come up with
beer money and enough to get into the club.

what did i do? i talked to the promoter of the venue and asked
if i could work out a way to get in for free. i told him that i would
pass out flyers for the show at my school and to all of my friend,
and that i would put posters up in my area of town. in return,
i would get put on the guest list at the show with at least one of
my friends. i thought that it made look like a big shot and i
also could split the work with someone.

it went so well, that he started paying me to help promote the
shows. and that is where a lot of years started.

i worked with him for a long time, oddly doing punk rock shows
and dance nights in any venue that we could get. we finally found
a place that would give us three nights a week. they would get
all the bar, and we would get all the door. strangely enough, it was
a gay bar in sacramento. a place called bo jangles. we really could
not call it that on the nights that we were doing shows there, so
we called it Club Me. thought that it was funny.

punk started dying off quite a bit in the later eighties, and really
the only thing that was selling was hard rock and metal shows.
it was never really my cup of tea. so we wanted to reinvent the
club again, and a few nights a month, we called it the cattle club
(music that was meant to be heard). four nights a week with live
music then and one night a week we were still doing dance.

the cattle club really focused more on alternative music at the
time, and was too hip for its own good. there was an uncanny
knack of getting bands there right before they got big. so we
ended up losing money on a lot of shows. google that with
sacramento, and it will tell you the story better than i can. it was
a little crappy sweatbox bar that could cram 200 people in it
if we were lucky. there were more than a few nights that we
would figure a way to put double that in there. so many great
bands. remember this was a small shit box club. social distortion,
pearl jam, nirvana, alice in chains, mud honey, primus, janes,
lush, ride, the list goes on and on.

during most of this time when i was making a living as
a live music promoter, i really started digging into the
largest promotion company on the west coast, bill graham
presents. i used to carry a photo of the man with me in my
wallet, somewhat of a joke, but i would show it to people
and tell them that is what i wanted to become. so i started
moonlighting a little over there also.

just so we have the roll call right. i was promotion at three
different address at the time, working for BGP, and i was
trying to hold a little bit of a day job also.

i wanted to consolidate this effort and knew that i needed
to move to a bigger venue than that. i started managing and
promoting a club that we renamed ?the edge? and worked
there until i moved to texas.

when i came back to california, piercing almost full time, i
was still trying to do a little live music on the side also just
because i loved it so much still. i ended up working quite a
bit with bill graham presents again, but the story of why i
left there is almost too long to tell. the short of it was that
bill had been dead for a few years, and the company did not
hold to the integrity and standard that he always made sure
was a part of each and every event that he put on. make no
bones. he was the one that put together the first lallopolooza.
the first guy that understood how huge alternative music
could be.

when i left there, to satisfy my craving, i just started touring
with bands. road managing, sound tech, and even just simple
production on the road. i would only go out with guys that i
knew and liked. i did not want to babysit a bunch of drunk
asshole rockstars. so i ended up going out with a lot of medium
sized punk bands. but my favorite tour was in 94? with
7 seconds and the bouncing souls. youth brigade and screw 32
was a lot of fun, but 7 seconds will always be the best.




the fluid was a favorite of mine


victims family is a great band if you have never heard them


NOFX headling a small show that we did. five bands for five bucks


evlis is everywhere. i have a photo of me and mojo with no pants on somewhere


buck was shot by an old man feeding birds in the park


there are plenty of people that are descendants purists, but i love ALL also


mudhoney on a sunday night


primus could not headline a saturnight show at the time


i would date a girl that remembers that band. bigger show at the dance place





and one of the first dance nights that i did on my own. i was
still not even old enough to get into the bar

sunday am bump

Got a few that are missing to that thread (thanks Aly). All the love in the world Sean

I love Irish Pimp!

This is a great read ;-)

10. What the fuck do Texans want with vintage guitars?

after working in live music and the clubs for a good amount
of my life at that moment, and still living in my home town,
not really adventuring out of it, a close friend of mine since
childhood got stationed in El Paso, Texas and was going to
be there for the rest of his gig in the army. he was bummed
about some of the decisions that he made, and was really
homesick, so i decieded to load of some of the boys that
i lived with and move all of us to Texas.

rent was dirt cheap, it was right on the border of mexico,
and i was ready for a change. leave the faster paced life
that i was living and slow down a bit. i was in the middle
of a really big swing in a different direction. i had been
on the wagon for about a year, totally dry from drinking,
i had stopped eating meat, and i was taking a hand full
of political science classes mostly emphasizing in
feminism and socialism. it was a strange chance to try
coop living in a different place.

very early nineties now, we had just got done trying to
put together some outdoor dance parties on the west
coast, nothing anyone had been doing really (raves) and
i thought that texas might be a fun place to try something
like that also. we loaded up a huge white can that we
bought, took almost nothing but clothes and a few chairs
since there were only two in the van, and after driving for
thirty hours, ended up in the middle of the desert in a town
that i really was not ready for.

after sleeping off the drive, we ate a little food across from
the hotel that we were staying at and i met a girl there that
night that told me about the ?hip? club in town and said
the next night was the night to go. about two months after
that night i started dating that same girl and went out with
her for almost three years.

we went off to the club and it was a shock. we had been
on the edge of the dance thing in cali, and texas was easily
nine months behind everything that we had been doing.
started talking to the dj there about music and such, he was
all excited about the fact that someone there knew some of
the bands that he was into, and asked me what i was going
to do for a job in town. i told him that i had no idea and
no plans, that i had not even been there a week yet. he
gave me his card and told me to visit him at work the next
day.

turns out that he owned a vintage guitar shop and had been
dealing guitars for years on end. he offered me and job and
i told him that i knew nothing about old guitars, i just knew
about music. he offered to teach me anything that i needed
to know and told me that i would pick it up as we went along.
that started something that i did for almost three years. it
was a blast.

we would go around the entire southwest to old pawn shops
and estate sales. finding something hocked, or an old fender
that someone played in his high school band. if the year was
right, the finish was good, and the parts still original, we would
buy a $500 guitar that we would flip the next week for $7500.
he had a list of old rock and rollers that would collect, there
would be places like the Hard Rock Cafe or high end music
shops that would just buy guitars from us unseen just because
of our reputation at the time.

we made cash every week. traveled all the time. got to meet
great guys that used to play in bands that would listen to on
the radio, and we got to hang out with whatever big rock band
at the time was in town playing and most of the time sell them
something on top of it. the best out of that was when we got
to spend time with U2 on the zoo tv tour. the sugar cubes and
public enemy were on the bill also. it was nice to be able to
meet the guys in U2, but i had always had a thing for bjork and
got to spend a few nights with her.

eventually i got burned on living in the desert. no trees, everything
was brown, the summers were too hot, i missed northern califonia.
but i did get to take few great stories with me and i did get to
deal a few awesome pieces of music history. john lennon?s first
vox ac30, one of elvis?s acoustic guitars, a few gretches that i
wished that i had not sold, and more than one of the guitars from
the rolling stones. there are still times that i look at the wall when
i walk by a pawn shop just to see what they have, or stop and drive
by a yard sale because i knew that was a neck from a 67? tele.

that's sweeeeeeeeeeeeet!!
"but i did get to take few great stories with me and i did get to
deal a few awesome pieces of music history. john lennon?s first
vox ac30, one of elvis?s acoustic guitars, a few gretches that i
wished that i had not sold, and more than one of the guitars from
the rolling stones."

Right On

monday bump

Sean is a Super Human.

Im always proud to call him friend.


Big B

9. What is tower records?

when i came back to california from texas, i was still piercing
but i never considered it a real job, even something that i would
want to do as a career. i still had money from the guitar gig and
i didnt want to sit on my ass too long, so i went out to find a
meanless job to pay taxes on. something that would fill the hours
in the day and make me feel like i was doing something while
i was reinventing myself. i was working for bill grahman presents
on and off, making jewelry and piercing out of my house at
the time, but none of it really felt solid. because of too many
weird books and college courses that would never go towards
a degree or job of any sort ( i was spelling woman with a Y at
the time to make sure that i was not using male dominated
language and was vegan), i felt like i needed to go back to some
sort of artist type existence.

sacramento is the corporate home of my favorite record store
chain, http://www.towerrecords.com and they keep all the main
warehouses there. in its time, it was a great store and the catalog
that they kept for a chain store was awesome. still at the top,
family owned and run, it was something that i could sign up for.
i didnt want to work in the music department, i was too much
of a snob at the time, so i went to work in the movie department.

i worked in the foreign and independent department of the video.
basicly what my job entailed was to review movies and decided
how many of them we were going to stock at which stores. i had
a job sitting around all day and watching movies. some might
think a dream come true.

i would watch almost nothing but abstract indy films and things
with subtitles. some of them amazing films, and got into to it
so much that i was talking movies home with me and watching
them there also. i was up to about five films a day, sometimes
six. black and whites. french. things that were three hours long
and had no speaking parts in them. director?s cuts of films that
were abstract to start with. i started going to critic showings of
new foreign films. going to showing where the director whould
be there for a question and answer after the film. not calling
them movies anymore, just calling it film. i had become a
movie art fag.

i left that job and went full bore into piercing afterwards, and
still to the day, i have a hard time going to an independent film.
i will look at it and think ?this is going to be a movie about two
gay Pakistani men living in london. one of their grandmothers
dies, and they have to walk across europe to get her rocking chair.
there will be long black and white shots of them staring at each
other not saying a word, just smoking filterless cigarettes. after
the movie is over, there will be a bunch of people out front
talking about how it touched them and how mainstream media
can never really be art?

after that, i will go home and watch adam sandler or bill murry
movie and eat ice cream just to shake off the thought of even
seeing something like that again. it almost makes me want to
eat meat and watch porn.

12. What did you get a scholorship for? Why didn't you take it?

when i was in high school, i was a drunken punk rock skater piece
of shit pile. i mean i spent a lot of time vomiting during lunch breaks
when i was not getting into fights on campus with jocks. i picked
fights with teachers, counselors, couches. i spent time almost every
week in an office getting suspended or in detention.

oddly, though the whole process, i was in honor classes and got
straight grades. when i found out that public school systems had
to let all students try out for sports, i thought it would be the
most fucked up thing to make the football team just to be an
asshole to all the jocks that we were giving a hard time to. just
to ruin their little club. turns out that i was good at the sport and
ended up playing varsity for two years and a little more.

so there i was, major disciple problem, but an honor roll athlete.
the school didnt really know how to deal with me, so they let me
graduate early with a diploma instead of just expelling me.

this is the same time that i had been promoting shows and working
at a live music bar putting stuff together. every night i got to drink
at the bar after the front door closed, and every morning i was going
to first period history.

almost from nowhere, and i really didnt know, but i was offered
a scholorship for a private school. full ticket ride. so here is the
choice that i had in front of me. i had been going to school for
thirteen years straight, im not even eighteen yet, and i was looking
at moving out of my town and doing another six years.
rock and roll, or school? get to drink in a bar every night and
flirt with girls that were four or five years older than me?
move to a dorm room and start taking even more classes?
i turned it down flat and stayed in town. other than a few
classes here and there, i never went to school.

Sean, seen you around, but havent gotten to meet you yet.

Sick Ambush man! I'm really enjoying it.

Look forward to meeting you at a show soon

i will be in florida in a few days

13. Talk about your drinking days and why you quit?

oh... nights through all the teenage years, drunk most the time,
fighting, fucking, or a combination of them all. drinking before
a show, drinking at the park or down by the beach. waiting
until the front door of the bar closed, or back at someone?s
house, high school keggers.

one way or the other, i found myself drunk most nights night of
the week. teenage rebel years right? its what you do.

on the other side of things, i skipped college for the most because
i didnt want the party to stop, i blacked out on more nights than
not, fighting in the middle of the week, ending up in the hospital
more times than i can count. pissing shitting and vomiting every
which way that i turned. it started to become not so sexy and a
little more of a problem really.

most the behavior kept going the same way. at one time i was
living in a house full of drunks, four guys in a one bedroom
apartment, drinking in the middle of every day. walking up and
needing a drink to stop a little shaking from the night before,
and my health was starting to get a little weird. i was working
at bars doing shows, it was ok that i was a drunk, it was the
lifestyle at the time for me. rock and roll, drugs, and booze.

some of the guys that i had run into around town, coffee shops
and clubs, would help me with promotional stuff in exchange
for guest list spots and such. i would go out with them to different
clubs and shows promoting what we were doing, flirting with
girls, having a good time, and i dont think that i ever noticed,
but none of them drank at all. i was drunk, but they were not.

at one point, one of the guys asked me if i thought that the way
that i was living was a problem. at the time i think that i was
about 125 pounds (im 175 right now) whiter than i was right
now, and i would get nose bleeds constantly. i was starting to
think that it was a problem.

i decided to get on the wagon and try it all out dry instead of
loaded. i would go two or three days at the most without
drinking and then i would end up on a bender and try to start
all over again. at one point i finally was able to give it up.

i changed my entire lifestyle. i moved into a house with a
group of guys that did not drink. i gave up the bar job and
just focused on the larger club, and not too much time past that
i made the move to texas so i could fully shut the door on what
i thought was a life that was perfect and turned out to be something
so incredibly demoralizing i didnt even really know who i was.

i have not had a drink since that time, since that day. shortly after
that is when i gave up eatting meat, started reading some political
books, and really spent that time reinventing who i thought that
i was.

14. Why the hell are you involved with the green party?

well looking at a little of my past, i did punk rock shows out of a
gay bar, i worked at dance clubs, i am a vegetarian, the obvious ideas
that i got from my own surrounding ended up being a very liberal veiw
of things.

systematic wars overseas, increasing debt killing the middle class, senate
hearings that are forgot about a few months down the line. convictions
that had no real meaning, it was easy for me to identify the fact that our
two party system, that our government itself, is flawed from the top to
the bottom.

i spent a few years lobbying in california for the party. pushing what
i could. not really because i am all the ecominded, but it seems like
our first strong shot at a third party.

you can complain if you are not involved.

one of the reasons that i like adult, oddly, is because i really believe
it goes hard against the grain of the system. mostly, its a group of
people that did not go through the process of ?higher education?
which for the most produces quite a bit of debt at a young age to
start working for a corporate machine that fuels the top level of
economy it makes for a good redistribution of wealth. there are
a lot of people that make a good amount of money that do not
vote conservative for the most.

and then, i also like the fact that so many people inside this industry
are self made and self started.