Category: Life

As I remember it, I started playing with Johnny Rydell in my freshman year of high school. I started playing bass because I wasn’t that great at guitar, and hey, I wanted to be in a band.

First we were the Jackals, playing ‘Horror Business’ in Johnny’s bedroom. Then FCC. Then we had a few other great people join the band, and we needed a new name. We became Nameless For Now.

It was in Tim’s basement where I learned how to be a musician, as I was surrounded by super talented folks. We would sometimes turn all the lights off, save for a blue light in the corner, and just improvise with noise and dynamics. God dammit we were good.

He was John Frusciante good. ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’ came out in 1991, when we were just starting this thing, and we did a killer cover of ‘Give It Away.’ God dammit, I still remember playing that on stage at the Sherman Theater in like 1994 or so.

Johnny was that good. He filled any space, he brought us together, he was a monster on guitar.

Found out yesterday, Friday May 28th that he passed away.

We went out separate ways after high school. Him and the band left for Philadelphia to make it. I stayed home with my lame full time job at a grocery store.

And it all leads back to today, in a world without the magic of Johnny Rydell. Rest In Peace, man.

I love this story:

“Once again our estimate of the station’s size has been substantially revised. The station clearly has the dimensions of a large asteroid or even a small planet. Our instruments indicate that there are thousands of decks, each extending for miles across an undifferentiated terrain of passenger concourses, lounges, and restaurant terraces. As before there is no sign of any crew or supervisory staff. Yet somehow a vast passenger complement was moved through this planetary waiting room.”

From ‘Report on an Unidentified Space Station‘ by J. G. Ballard.

Lots of good offline conversations lately, at least out of the public eye, I guess. These conversations happen over email, DMs, and such, but they’re not out there in full display. A wonderful thing, really.

Been trying to be more present, and acknowledge than like 99.9999% of the time everything is fine. I have food, shelter, warmth. No one knocking at my door, no angry boss, no one is throwing shit at my windows.

Very simplistic, I know, but here I am. The CDC just said that if you’re vaccinated you don’t have to wear a mask anymore, but for fucks sake, THE OPTICS.

If I walk into a store right now with no mask on I’m gonna get the side eye, big time.

As if the work of retail employees hasn’t been hard enough during “these trying times,” now they have to navigate the “oh, but I’m vaccinated” crowd, without ever really knowing if they’re telling the truth or not.

The fun never ends.

My housemate read me a text they got, from someone saying “if you need a COVID vaccine shot, call this number, they have extra doses.” I called (I hate calling), and got myself an appointment. Just recently I got my second shot, so that’s good news.

Everyday is the same, except for weekends, when I stop getting emails from clients.

Random encounters are gone.
Bumping into an old friend, gone.
Trying something new on the menu. There is no menu. Stay home.

I go on solo runs in the woods, and hope no one is around.

Once a week I venture to the grocery store. I’ve taken to drive the extra distance to different stores, just to mix it up a little.

I got a bike trainer and a subscription to Zwift, so now I see people from all over the world as virtual cyclists. We give each other thumbs ups as we pass each other.

Just 41 days ago a shooting happened at a Boulder, CO grocery store. The fundraiser for Maggie Montoya and the pharmacy staff where she worked, it sits quiet and still, having not reached the halfway mark. The last donation was 15 days ago.

Everything keeps moving, business as usual. Yet everything is frozen in time.

It was around 8pm tonight, when talking to my housemate, where I said it felt like today didn’t even happen. There were conversations, some interactions, a heck of a basketball game (go, UCONN), but… eh.

Plain old days come and go, but not every day needs to be notable, I guess. Sure, be grateful and all, but trying my best to skip the guilt of the “make everyday count” hype.

This fund has been created for Maggie Montoya and her four pharmacy coworkers at King Soopers who survived the mass shooting on March 22, 2021. Many in the running community have reached out wanting to help Maggie. As many of you know, she is a national class athlete, I am part of her team (@JoshCox on social media).

I reached out to her and she was so thankful for the support but wanted the fund to benefit all five in the pharmacy that day (two pharmacists and three pharmacy technicians). 

100% of all funds collected will go to these survivors to aid in their recovery, therapy, self-care, and time away from work.  We are all grieving with them and these funds will help them navigate the long journey ahead.  

Josh Cox

What more needs to be said? I don’t know Maggie, but being a runner I follow her and a few other pro runner folk, and I see her training, her racing, etc. And now this… she was working, at her day job, and… more violence in America.

To think, also, that a Gofundme is even needed. To offset the cost of time away from work, for therapy, for take out, just to survive.

It reminds me of the insurrection. The tales of staffers and Senators who barricaded themselves in offices.

This is America, violent, dark, and scary.

If you can donate, click here.

Thanks to MTV and ‘Paradise City’ by Guns N’ Roses, I’m where I’m at today. I was surrounded by people in bands, always making music, then always writing about music, covering music… I’d say this all really started in 1991, when I started playing (my moms) bass. That was 30 years ago.

And I started a music blog in 2001, which really put me on the path to where I am today. That was 20 years ago.

Humbled, grateful, filled with bees at all times.

This is the second streak I’ve ended this year. The first was a 70 day running streak, where I ran at least a mile everyday. And now I made it 72 days posting not just an audio loop, but a video to go with it.

Instead of getting up early and working on a loop, I stayed in bed. Work ran late. Once I had the space to actually work on a loop, eh, I didn’t. And really, it’s not a big deal at all. I still make music. I still create things. That’s enough.

I guess it’s just important to follow your energy. Like, I ended my run streak, but I still run. I ended my loop streak, I’ll still make music. It’s okay. Our best creative moments can happen when not being creative. Our best runs happen because on the days we don’t run our bodies recover and grow stronger.

Streaks are neat, and all. Seems like 70ish is my limit. Onto the next, I guess.

This is as true today as it was back in 2007:

Email is such a funny thing. People hand you these single little messages that are no heavier than a river pebble. But it doesn’t take long until you have acquired a pile of pebbles that’s taller than you and heavier than you could ever hope to move, even if you wanted to do it over a few dozen trips. But for the person who took the time to hand you their pebble, it seems outrageous that you can’t handle that one tiny thing. “What ‘pile’? It’s just a fucking pebble!”

Merlin Mann

These days it’s not just email, or one inbox. We have DMs sitting in several social media apps, we have projects to follow up on, spread across multiple project management apps. Then we have text messages, voice mails, and oh yeah… email.

Lately I’ve been irritated by everything, mostly because everything is a pebble, and we’re all carrying around buckets of pebbles.

We already had to carry pebbles for our taxes and bills and all those emails, but we had release valves in the form of going to the gym, dinner with friends, going to a show.

For each of those activities we got to set down our bucket of rocks. The change in scenery, the change in context, it was a minor relief. We had a few of those per week, which was nice, because the bucket of rocks got heavy.

Now, on top of just all the normal pebbles and rocks, we see over half a million Americans dead. We see some states attacking transexual athletes. Outright racism. Dropping bombs. Rumors of another insurrection on the capitol. Texas lifting its mask mandate and opening everything up. No stimulus check. Massive unemployment.

Those are all pebbles, and rocks, and large boulders the size of large boulders, and they’re getting fucking heavy.