Michael Louis Calvillo Must Be Destroyed

The haunt is going down on Saturday. Once a year, we go all out and have a Halloween party for friends and family. They’re usually pretty successful. Everyone has a great time. I also look forward to a little jamming in the garage. Like I said, it’s a once a year thing. It’s not often that we can all get together. The sucky part is that it has been a year. My rock skills are as rusty as my old guitar strings.

Never fear. If I get the energy, I’ll spend the next two days warming up.

(Odysseus rocking the mic)

It’s weird, because sometimes the jam consumes us and the groove is mean. Sometimes we fall out of synch and have to get through some noisy chaos before falling back in line. I like playing oldies and fun, easy rock jams – no finger melting metal or atonal feedback, just funky blues and bluesy funk. Sometime we get ambitious and go metal, but it always ends badly. Simple, catchy blues riffs, and a body moving beat, work well in a party setting.

Sometime we’ll pluck out a little funk rhythm and ride it for twenty minutes, taking turns soloing. It’s crazy fun and I’m super excited. I’m gonna make a six song playlist and print the music so we can take a minute and get it together. When I was young, forget it. I’d never stop to read some music and get in tune. I’d hold a fist to the drummer and then rip it up – hyper, fast, easy speed metal – Motorhead style groovin’, Nirvana-like power chords keeping up the 4/4.

But now I’m old and frail. I’m only 37. That not too bad, but I feel old. Man, oh, man Loyal Reader, I like to be in bed by 1 or 2AM at the very, very latest (on a weekend that is – during the week, it’s all about 10:30PM or bust).

Sometimes these things go on until 4 or 5AM!

I can’t take it!

  
(Me and mine back in the day and then last year. Man, we look awesome!)

Alas, I’ll try my hardest to stay up. I’m gonna outlast my guests. Then I’ll crawl into bed and sleep until four in the afternoon.

Then, Loyal Reader, then, I’ll reminisce and begin the long, cold wait until next year’s jam return to liven up our lives. Until then, I’m partying early and going to bed at a decent hour.

May you have a rocking Halloween!

Our new house is coming together. Michelle and Deja are kicking butt. Things are getting put away, furniture is being arranged, drapes are going up. It’s nice having our place come together.

This weekend we are having our annual Halloween party. It’s nice because we get to see all of our friends. For some of us, the Halloween party is the only time of year we get to hang out. It’s usually a great night.

Costumes are mandatory and we have a contest to see whose is the best.

Lots of my friends are musicians. We like to play music in the garage. It’s loud and I think it is going to be even louder here the way the garage and the house interlock. The garage shares part of the living room wall. That puts more pressure on the musicians to play better, to rock a party, because there isn’t a louder music source to keep the party going. Sometimes, with lots of different guitarists trying to vibe with one another, it gets chaotic. Once we get in sync it’s great, but then we fall out and…yuck!

I gotta get into the garage and help my wife set it up for band use. The drums are good, but we need to set up amps and guitars.

Oh, how I love Halloween.

Check this out:

See you later, Loyal Reader. I’m gonna eat some of this:

(Yum, yum, gonna gobble you up!)

…or, as The Who put it – alright.

Whatever.

Grammar can be so lame.

All right.

Alright.

They both seem okay to me, but only one is correct (that’s all right if you’re playing along).

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all English teacher geeky on you. I was just giving this post a title and the all right / alright argument presented itself.

(These guys don’t take no crap)

Okay, next…

Anyway, speaking of the title – I was recently added to a Facebook group for my upcoming 20th class reunion. Mind you, I didn’t join the group, I was added, but while I bail on most groups I’ve been added to without my initial permission, it’s been kind of interesting seeing what’s become of the class of ’92.

I haven’t kept in touch with anybody.

I’m awful.

But seriously. High school was simply four frustrating years of doing what had to be done before Real Life actually got started. It wasn’t so bad. I was a decent student. I had lots of chums. I was cool with the experience.

(Our mascot) ;-/

I wasn’t into school spirit. Instead, I prefered grimacing at the happy-headed idiocy and keeping it low key. I hung with a group of friends from elementary school all the way on up through the tenth grade (smart kids) and then I joined a band and ended up spending the rest of my school days hanging out with a completely different crowd (partiers).

Since, the further and further away we get, the less and less I seem to remember.

It’s kind of depressing.

I surf an army of names and profiles and my brain grinds, searching and sputtering and hissing like a corrupted hard drive, trying to pull info. Faded memory sparks. I get vague impressions. Something significant fires here and there, but it’s weird how much I can’t recall. It was a long time ago, but I have plenty of other old memories that work just fine. They play out behind my eyes and resonate and do what memories are supposed to do. What happened to my high school memory banks?

(More brains please)

Every so often one of the names triggers a flood of clarity. A dead part of my mind comes alive.

But man, oh man, something in my mental makeup just can’t seem to pull it together. Faces don’t register. Did I actually go to school with these people?

Anyway, it’s nice to see that most everybody is doing well. There’s lots of talk of happy families and good jobs, but then, it’s not all wine and roses. I was shocked to learn that a whole bunch of my former classmates have died. My stomach turned as I read awful news of auto wrecks, cancers, suicides, and even a murder. Life can be too damn cruel, Loyal Reader.

The class is reuniting in Vegas next summer. I’m not going. Like I mentioned, I can barely remember these people. I stalk the Facebook page out of pure curiosity (and, as it turns out, a sickening, morbid fascination). I haven’t chimed in and don’t think I ever will.

One of the classmates informed the group that she only attended our high school for one semester in her 9th grade year. Her family moved away and that was that. Still, she interacts as if she went to school with these guys forever. It’s odd, huh? Does she have another class reunion at the school she graduated from? And how can she remember anything at all? I went there for four ever-slow-years, every-slow-day, and I can hardly visualize certain parts of the campus. My mental map is all wonky with patches of shadow.

(Always be nice to others)

I’m not hatin’ though. Please, don’t get me wrong. That would be super lame. No. I say, go. It’s cool. There’s nothing wrong with making new friends. She seems to have a great time connecting with her old buddies.

Teaching high school, interacting with these kids, having lucid conversations, building memories, shaping ideas, it’s strange to think that some of them will forget, and some of them will hold on, and some of them will die, and some of them will even be up for rekindling non-relationships with people they used to know.

Just remember that life is cruel, the kids are all right, and it’s the adults we need to be leery of.

Stay cheery!

’til tomorrow, Loyal Reader.