I fucking love James Brown. For some reason, I was thinking of the time when I went and saw him a few years ago. I guess it was in 1997 or so�There were three car loads of us or something like that. The show was in Lowell Massachusetts, I was working in a town right near it at a used record store. We all met up at the store and went off to the show. There were four of us in my car if I remember. So we decided that we would smoke 7 joints on the way to the James Brown concert. So we did. We got there and it was filled with a strange crowd, lot�s of older folks, and us. Finally the band came out, as usual, the band came out and played for fifteen-twenty minutes before the Godfather of Soul came out. He came out and looked old. He still had most of the moves, except for the splits. He played all the songs you would think, and even busted out the 80�s track �Living in America�, wasn�t that in a Rocky movie or something? We all bought these big pins with James� face with a big shit eating grin on, and put them on our jackets. It was the dead of winter, about 20 degrees outside, no shit.

Upon getting back to the record store around midnight, we realized we still had a bag of marijuana we needed to divide, so we went back into the store. When we left, we got in our separate cars and started leaving the strip mall. My friend was at the red light in front of us, when I looked and saw a police car driving through the intersection with it�s headlights off, and then one behind us, and another to the side of us. Eventually, there were about five police cars surrounding both of our cars. First they pulled my friend Ken out of his van at gunpoint. I saw the look of horror and confusion on his face as they placed him face down on the cement in the 20-degree weather. He was wearing the James Brown pin, then they pulled the passenger out same thing, and then got to me, pretty soon there were about 6 of us face down on the ground with guns pointing at us, with those James Brown pins on. I, also have a half-ounce in my jacket pocket. The policeman starts going through my shit, and patting me down. Saying they got a report that the record shop was broken into. I started telling him I was in there waiting for my car to warm up, and I had the key, etc. Just as he was about to go into the pocket with the drugs, he told me to get up, and I handed him the keys to the store to prove my point. He let us go. That�s the end of that exciting story about James Brown and guns and drugs and shit.

I bought Quadrophenia on DVD tonight. That is a good movie, I remember my mother took my brother and I to see it when it came out in the theatres in 1979-80 or so. Hopefully the restoration will be good, as the videotape I had was shitty looking.

My video store experience tonight was not bad. I didn�t rent anything, and the people didn�t make silly comments about aliens and Kevin Smith and shit.

Okay, I�m tired, rock and roll will do this to a man.

Don�t blow anything up today.

before & after