9.26.99 Sunday  Weekends
Spinning: Buena Vista Social Club. Mia's pick. She says it's the bump's favorite.

Went into a used CD place in Silver Lake today and found our album in the bin for $3.99. Then I found two more. Then I found one in the cutout bin for $1.99 with the corner clipped off the case. I bought the $1.99 one. Supporting the band.

Then I went home and called Benji and Tate, and we're going to keep playing. Not "get signed" playing. Playing playing. Saturday afternoons in Tate's garage in Glendale, whatever shows come along, the Party Favors whenever Lenny calls, and Monday through Friday I am a man who owns steel-toed boots.

Mia says that sounds like a grown-up with a hobby. I said it sounds like a guy with a band. She said, "Those are the same thing, honey," and kissed me on the forehead like I'm the one who's pregnant.

Almost sixteen weeks. She's showing, a tiny bit. Tonight I talked to the bump. I told it that its dad was on MTV once, for about eleven seconds, at four in the morning, and nobody can ever take that away.

Thanks to everybody who wrote in. The guy in Minneapolis whose band got dropped in '96 and who now sells insurance and says he's never been happier: I don't believe you, man. But thanks.

9.22.99 Wednesday  Load Out

Second union call. Twelve hours pushing crates around the convention center for a dental supply show. I have seen more fake teeth today than any man should see. My back is shot. My hands are shot. Bed.

(Time and a half after eight hours. Mia wants to frame the pay stub.)

9.19.99 Sunday  Mambo No. 5 (Twice)
Spinning: nothing. Ears still ringing from Lenny's keyboard.

Last night I played my first wedding. Lenny, a keyboard guy who comes in the store for cables, runs a cover band called the Party Favors, and his bass player broke his wrist falling off a Jet Ski. $150 cash plus dinner. I said yes before he finished the sentence.

Hotel ballroom in Pasadena. Chicken or fish (chicken). We played "Mambo No. 5" twice because the groom's uncle requested it twice and tipped twenty bucks twice. We played "Livin' la Vida Loca," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Celebration," "Shout" with the whole little-bit-softer-now routine, and "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire, which is a perfect song and I will fight anybody about it.

Here's what I didn't expect. I had fun. Tinfoil Crown spent five years playing to rooms full of people with their arms folded. Last night a grandma in a gold dress danced to every single song and pointed at me during the bass line in "Celebration" like we had a secret. A little kid in a clip-on tie played air bass next to the stage for an hour.

Rode home at 1 a.m. with my ears ringing, $150 in my shirt pocket, smelling like cake. Mia was asleep. I put the money on her side of the dresser. Rent money. Crib money. Wedding money.

9.10.99 Friday  Overhire

My buddy Hector has been a stagehand for ten years. Health insurance. Pension. He's buying a house in Eagle Rock. Last month he said, man, come on, I'll get you on the overhire list. So today I went downtown to the union hall and filled out the paperwork.

How it works, as far as I can tell: you don't just join. When they need extra hands they call down the list, and you work the call, loading in concerts, trade shows, TV, whatever. Show up on time, don't drop anything expensive, and after enough days they might vote you in.

I have loaded in and out of maybe six hundred clubs in my life, carrying my own gear, for free. This is the same thing, except they pay you and you don't have to play afterward.

The guy at the desk looked at my application and said, "Musician?" I said, "Former." He said, "We get a lot of you guys. That's okay. You're used to nights."

First call is Wednesday. Black pants, black shirt, steel toes. I own a lot of black shirts. Finally the look pays off.

9.2.99 Thursday  150 BPM
Spinning: Sugar Ray, "Every Morning," in the car, at top volume, both of us.

Went with Mia to the doctor today. The nurse put some jelly on her stomach and held a little microphone thing against it, and there was static, and static, and then this sound. Fast. Galloping. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.

"Strong heartbeat," the doctor said. "About a hundred and fifty."

A hundred and fifty beats per minute. I have played with three drummers in my life and not one of them could hold 150 that steady. This kid already has better time than Tate.

I didn't cry. Okay, I did. So did Mia. Mid-March, the doctor says, and everything looks good. Mia is sick every morning and eats saltines in the car and says she's fine. Her insurance through the salon is the crummy kind, but it covers some of this. We're figuring out the rest.

8.23.99 Monday  Math
Spinning: "Californication," which may not be the best idea right now.

Did the math tonight on the back of a string envelope. Store: $9.75 an hour, forty hours if I'm lucky, no benefits till January. Mia: the salon, plus tips, good weeks and bad weeks. Rent: $725 for a one-bedroom in Echo Park with a kitchen the size of a road case. Baby: ??? (a lot).

Band: zero. Less than zero, technically. We're still unrecouped, which if you don't know record deals means the advance and the studio and the video all come out of our royalties before we ever see a dime, which we never will. We don't owe it out of pocket. It just sits there on a statement forever, like a tombstone with a dollar sign on it.

I called my mom in Reseda. She was quiet for a second, then said "Oh, Jakey, a baby," and cried, the good kind. Then she said, "So what are you going to do?" Which is the question.

At 3 a.m. I got up and played the bass unplugged in the kitchen, very quiet, old Motown lines, James Jamerson stuff. I don't know what I'm going to do. I know what I'm not going to do, which is raise a kid in a van.

8.13.99 Friday  Two Lines

Of course it's Friday the 13th.

Mia's been tired for weeks and I figured it was the salon. Last night she came out of the bathroom, sat down on the couch next to me and said, "Don't freak out." Which is what people say right before you freak out.

Two lines.

I did not freak out. I want that on the record. I said "whoa," and then I said "whoa" again, and then I held on to her for about ten minutes without saying anything, and then I asked if she wanted cereal. She did.

Four years together. We always said "someday." I guess someday bought a ticket. She's scared. I'm scared. A month ago I was in a band with a record deal. Now I sell tuners and I'm going to be somebody's dad. The plot twists come in bunches, apparently.

8.8.99 Sunday  Last Call
Spinning: our own album, once, in the van, which was a mistake.

Last night was the last Tinfoil Crown show. The Blue Palm in Echo Park, the same room where we played our first show in 1994 to eleven people and a dog. Last night it was about a hundred and forty people and no dog. Our old van guy. The girl who used to sell our shirts. Both of Tate's ex-girlfriends, at opposite ends of the bar.

We played the whole album and then the old four-track stuff, and we closed with "Big Blue Nothing," which was supposed to be the single, and people sang along, which they never once did when it was on the radio for three weeks in Phoenix.

At load-out Colin sat down on the curb with a beer and said he's moving to Portland. His brother-in-law has a landscaping business. "I don't want to be thirty-five and asking a bartender for a drink ticket," he said, and looked at me like I was going to fight him. I didn't. I get it. I'm thirty-two and there's a drink ticket in my wallet right now.

So the singer quit at the funeral. Tate cried. Benji got weepy on tequila. I drove the van home and sat in it outside our apartment for an hour with the engine off.

8.2.99 Monday  Hello, We Were Tinfoil Crown

I work at a guitar store. All day long people ask me if I'm "in a band." For five years the answer was yes, and for two of those years it was "yes, we're signed," and I got to watch their faces do the thing.

Short version. Tinfoil Crown, four guys, Los Angeles, 1994. Colin sings, Benji plays guitar, Tate plays drums, I play bass. In 1997 a major label signed us after a showcase. In 1998 we made an album with a real producer in a real studio with a real espresso machine. It came out. It did not sell. On July 14 our manager called me at the store and said, "Sit down." I was already sitting down. I sit on a stool at the register all day. "They dropped you," she said.

So. I'm thirty-two. I have a van with 212,000 miles on it, a girlfriend named Mia who is way smarter than me, and now a home page, because the kid in the drum department made one for his hamster and I figure if a hamster gets a home page I can have one too.

One show left on the calendar. Saturday. After that, I don't know.