GUNS N ROSES, ALICE IN CHAINS, CAR WOES, ILLINOIS TRIP and RINGO STARR!!!

Hey friends. An absolute whirlwind of a weekend. Let me try to recap:

Thursday, I go to see Guns N Roses/Alice in Chains at Ford Field in Detroit. The opening night of the Guns reunion tour! While waiting at Hockeytown Cafe for a table before the show, we notice someone coming in who looked oddly familiar. My friend said "Hey thats a pretty good Ringo Starr lookalike." I look again.

"No, THAT is Ringo Starr!" Ringo was playing a show that night at the nearby Fox Theater and decided to go to Hockeytown Cafe for some pre-show eats. Amazingly, no one was bothering him and he only came in with one person. All them young folks probably didn't recognize him. He was literally 2 feet away from me at one point! My friend followed him and stealthfully snapped a pic:

"I'm very happy to be here!" Yes, I have now seen both surviving Beatles in the flesh!!!

I settled down for a couple mixed drinks and a nice BBQ burger.

Then on to Ford Field. Alice in Chains took the stage at 8:30 sharp and man did they sound great! Duvaul sang Layne's parts extremely well. They played all the hits too. Sean Kinney had a drum cam which they showed often which was great. I'm a big fan of his drumming. They played old stuff, new stuff... all of it well worth the price of admission. 

Jerry Cantrell had the vintage "Honeycomb" guitar he used to record all those old 90s albums!

Finally Alice in Chains left the stage and GUNS N ROSES came on literally 25 minutes later. Like, ON TIME! WOW! and Man, they were fucking killer. 25 songs. Deep cuts and covers like COMA, THE SEEKER, WISH YOU WERE HERE jam and so much more. Awesome, awesome show. 

Reports of Axel Rose signing badly are greatly exaggerated. He sounded awesome!

Everyone needs some DUFF in their lives.

Grand finale pyro.

I'd highly recommend anyone check out the Guns N Roses reunion tour. I got some audio from the show that I will play on my podcast in the future, so look for that. But yeah man. They put on a great show for us. Amazing!

Friday, I get up early and head to Port Huron to get my son Cody. The day before I got an oil change and they said I had a major oil leak and the whole bottom of my Bat Blazer was wet. I'd need an overall tuneup to the amount of like $600-800! UGH. But they said if I put oil in the car every stop or so, I'd make it to Illinois for my trip I planned. So once returning with Cody after a 4 hour drive, we drove the 7 hours south to Carmi, Illinois to see my dad. He was in good spirits and happy to see us.

Saturday we spend all day looking at the car. Surprise: NO OIL LEAK AT ALL. I have no idea what that guy was telling me at all. But I did massively overfill the oil on the trip down so that had to be drained and we put new oil in. I also desperately needed new tires so we drove to Evansville and had those replaced. Car is good to go for another long while hopefully. It was good to see lots of my family on so short a visit. And much thanks to Steve at S&E Auto in Carmi for dealing with my car woes.

I was juggling a lot on Saturday. Emotionally, with being down there and seeing mom's grave and all those things to some drama up north at home. It wasn't a good day and I was even more stressed than possible. But I just chugged water and tried to stay calm and enjoy myself. I spent time with dad and we had a good talk. Finally late Saturday we headed back home. Cody and took the long drive all night and finally arrived home at 4:30am. I was simply mentally and physically exhausted. But now I'm home and taking care of business. I'm working on getting the Starslam books sketched and other things taken care of. Lots to juggle. But I'll make it happen. It's what I do.

Anyway, back to the grind. At least I got my son here this week to keep me company!

Cheers, T

Old Junk Life

Hey friends. Its been a whirlwind of a week. An emotional one too. My dad appeared here in town out of nowhere. He's been dealing with the loss of his second long term wife, Gloria. So have I, really. I've just been working so much that I haven't had much time to sit and grieve or think about that or any of the other emotional crap on my plate much at all. I grieve sometimes, but my dad and I really haven't had the chance to sit and talk about it. I reached out to him with a letter last week about how I felt about him, Gloria and my life in general. And this week, he showed up out of nowhere. It was a welcome surprise. But a bit crazy because I had no chance to take a day off of work to spend time with him. But we worked around it and I saw him in passing in-between the jobs. He left and went up north to visit my brothers and then back to my place here in East Lansing. I had Wednesday off and he had a lead on a new car for me. I had to turn in the one I was using. I needed a vehicle of my own. We looked at newer cars. I wanted something safe for me to have the kids, good in the snow and would last a couple years without needing work. We just couldn't find anything in my reasonable price range. I don't have much money at all, really. But the lead came from back home, Carmi, Illinois where my Uncle Steve got a 1996 Chevy Blazer. 102K miles, good body and he'd put work into it to make sure it would run great.

At first I was a little disheartened. I had my idea set that I could afford a newer car payment. I wanted something that would be newer, impressive and would last me. An almost 20 year old vehicle really didn't sound appealing. But beggars cannot be choosers. So I had Wednesday off and we headed the 8 hour drive to Carmi, Illionis...

Passing through Indianapolis. Always a fun city to look at through the windows on the drive.

Here's my dad trying to talk his way out of a ticket for speeding! Yeah, we got caught for speeding. He got us about 12 miles from our destination too! Ain't that Murphy's Law for you?

But the cop was cool with us and we BOTH got warning tickets. Dad for speeding, and me for sleeping in the back seat without a seat belt on. I had worked the gas station the night before and was on zero sleep, so I curled up back there. Sue me! But its okay. Just a written warning. I'm no outlaw!

And we got to Carmi safe and sound. One of the things we did was visit the graveyard where my moms are buried. Gloria recently had her name put on the same stone as my parents. I finally got to see it....

Here is my Mom and Dad's stone on the front. My brother's is right next to mom on the left for the day he leaves us.

And on the back, Gloria's name has been added.

Dad and I had some deep heart to heart talks. We're both sorta in odd places in our lives. Lots of happiness but also some hurt to deal with. We hugged and talked a lot. I'm glad that I got to get rid of some of the demons that was haunting me on this trip.

Anyway, we went to S&E Auto Salvage and found my vehicle. My 1996 Blazer. I took it for a drive. The Steering wheel is crooked, the turn signal don't snap back after a turn, the Cd player don't work, Driver's seat has a rip, It take a while to get up to speed on the highway, Cruise control dont work and a slew of other minor problems. Initially, I was a tad bummed. But for some reason, I felt like I liked the old guy. And it is a guy. Most cars are referred to with a female vibe to it but no, this was a guy. A beaten up, older guy. Not too old though. Still good. Still runs. Beautiful paint job. No rust. In fact, its black with red trim. I've been referring to it as the BAT-BLAZER! Maybe I'll get some Bat Symbol stickers and make it a nice homage to the 1960's Adam West Batman series.

There's my old man. We made it back to Michigan together.

He rides comfortably. Spacious. It just felt like "home." And on the 8 hour drive back to Michigan together, I got quite attached to him. 1996 was the year I graduated high school. That year, we were both starting out our lives. We've weathered the worst storms possible until today. We're older, some things are a bit worn out but are still good. Still driveable. I just felt a kinship with this vehicle. I fell in love with it. Its me. My style. A nice allegory for how I'm feeling right now. I'm still breathing. Some things on me are beginning to break down, not run as great as it used to. And its not gonna get any better. But I still run good. I'm still drivable! As Indiana Jones put it: "Its not the age, its the mileage!" Most people would probably hate driving an older vehicle like this. They'd find it old, boring and embarassing and would want to trade it in for something new. But just because something... or someone... isn't as sleek, faster, stronger, smarter or pretty as something new, doesn't mean you throw it away. Sometimes, old faithfuls are worth it in the end. They are loyal and stay with you through the long haul. And they sometimes still purr like a kitten and have a nice shine if you care enough to look deeper and see it.

SO: We're back home and back at working my two jobs. Also doing art on my projects. I finished one card set and I am back to doing pages tonight and this weekend. Looking forward to kicking some ass on art! Thanks for checking back everyone.

(Special thanks to Uncle Steve and everyone at S&E Auto Salvage in Carmi, Ill.)

ADAM T.