My son has a toy guitar that he's had for years and one day my 2 year old daughter handed it to me and picked up a little plastic hockey stick. She pointed at me and said "Agh!" so I started strumming. She leaned into the hockey stick in a full on Vedder pose and started howling. I couldn't believe that she was actually doing it, so I stopped strumming and she pointed at me again and yelled louder. I started again and she started signing again. It is one of my all time favorite moments to date. So now I have two guitars that I have to try and learn how to play. I mean, if she wants to be a Rockstar, Daddy's gonna do everything he can to help.

I've always said that Rockstar is the best job in the world (the top five rounds out at #2 - Cult Leader, #3 - NFL player, #4 - Actor and #5 - Dictator of a small Carribean island country). After all, name another profession where all of your natural, self-destructive tendencies are not only over-looked, but actively encouraged. Slap a groupie with a shark & trash a hotel room and people will think you're the greatest band ever, even if the only thing you have going for you is a world class guitarist and an obscenely long song about absolutely nothing.

Now, of course, I don't want my daughter to be that kind of Rockstar (I'm thinking Tori Amos without the obvious daddy issues), but I always wanted to be. As I got older and realized that the whole literary icon thing probably wasn't going to happen and my best friend (like every other brother, apparently) kept thinking he was gonna drop an album at some point in his 20's and liked to try and rope me into it, I started thinking about songs. Not that I have any kind of inate musical ability (or, as I'm sure you're coming to realize, any kind of creative spark at all that doesn't involve avoiding jail time), but hey, I can make shit rhyme as well as half the song writers populating the pop charts, so I thought "what the hell". Here, as far as I can remember, is the first song that I ever penned. I leave the music up to you.



I am the Outcast
The Loser
The Freak
Not like you
All of you
Your conformity would crush me

You look down on me
You look over me
You try not to look at me
As you insult me
Because I'm not like you
All of you
Your conformity would crush me

So I have a mind
So I have a soul
I never sold mine
To fit a role
What you see is me
I choose to be the freak

I never liked your rules
Or your games
Or you dramas
Or your fames
I'm not like you
All of you
Your conformity would crush me

But know this
I am stonger than you
I am smarter than you
Simply for the choice
Not to be you
All of you
Your conformity would crush me



Nothing like classic teenage angst coming from a 24 year old. And to be completely honest, I was never really an outcast. My jackass friends wouldn't let me be. They kept dragging me out to parties I didn't want to go to so I could hang out with people I didn't want to talk to. And a good number of the people I hated in the few hours I bothered to spend in high school, I ended up hanging out with in my vagabond restaurant years. I was a hell of a lot more judgemental than any of the "cool kids". It's hard to have a raging superiority complex and feel shunned at the same time. Oh, and I'm pretty sure this was a blatant Korn ripoff, but to slightly misquote TS Eliot "immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." So there ya go.