Think twice before going to the ATM in your VW Jetta

As a kid, my family owned most of the cars that the term 'lemon' was coined for. AMC Pacer? Check. Ford Pinto? We drove one from California to Ohio, and for years after. But a problem I've experienced three times with two Jettas was completely new to me, and everyone I've ever spoken about it with outside of other VW owners.

From what I have learned about the inner-workings of Volkswagen door windows, they are held up by 5 clips, that at least as recently as 2001 (the year of my Jetta wagon) were made out of plastic. I don't know much about plastic, though I did have a junior year chemistry lab where we were assigned the task of trying to identify a variety of plastics by the way they burned, which was both cool (some dripped flames) and I suspect highly carcinogenic, but I do know that plastic often doesn't stand up to significant changes in temperature well. Twice on days that were well below freezing, and once on a suffocatingly hot day, these clips have failed and a window has fallen into the door.

The first two times this happened, it was covered by warranty, or extended warranty. Yesterday, when it happened a third time as I pulled away from the ATM in Lakewood, Ohio, I thought I knew just what to do. I dropped by home to let the dog out, pick up the lap top, and place calls to find out if any of the Cleveland area VW dealers could get to the repair that afternoon.

A windowless twenty mile drive across town in twenty degree weather later I found out that Volkswagen decided their willingness to stand behind their product had run out for my 2001. The bill came to $228, the replacement clips cost a total of $7.50 for five.

If by chance you're a designer of cars, or you count beans at a car company and are always looking for ways to save a few pennies, listen to me, the consumer. I would much rather have paid an additional $30 at purchase than to crossed Cleveland windowless in winter, sat in a dealership waiting room for hours, paid hundreds of dollars, and now live with the fear that another window may go at any time.

If you're thinking about buying a Volkswagen, think twice. Besides the window, in the past year I've had the windshield wipers fail while driving on a highway during a torrential nighttime storm. In VW's infinite wisdom, they decided that access to the wiper motors should be through the steering column (a move that allows them to install massive amounts of cosmetic plastic around the engine that inevitably adds time to any repair), that repair also involved a relatively inexpensive part, and more than $300 in labor.

It's not all labor with Volkwagen repairs either. A catalytic converter ran $700 for the part, many times the cost for most vehicles.

Customer Service at VW seems to exist only to read you a script and tell you that they'll send a report on to someone they won't let you talk to. I've submitted forms to the Attorney General's Office and the Better Business Bureau, and I hope to one day be notified that I'm eligible for a share of a class action lawsuit, but I suspect the only power I have in this fight is to sling a little mud VW's way.

Dear Elected Officials:

I believe the economy, foreign affairs, health care, the environment, education and on an on are all more significant issues than campaign finance reform, but it is becoming all too obvious that campaign finance, for candidates as well as ballot issues, is the flood gate standing in the way of the will of the people.

I urge you to draft a reform bill that is simple and clear, one that is accessible to the average citizen, and one that can be passed without months or years of debate and gridlock.

This is America

This is America, and it is both our birthright to spend money we don't have on whatever we deem fit, and to make money off other people spending the money they don't have...it's our birthright to look at Bill Gates and see that the most remarkable thing about the man was that he dropped out of college, and look at ourselves and see that we too can drop out college, even if we're dropping out as a result of drinking too much and waking up every day wondering if the sun is coming up or going down.

A strange twist of fate.

What seems like my first memory of Mike Skutt is him being called upon to do a dramatic reading of a call and response prayer from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle in my high school Modern Novel class.

Sometime ago he filmed a magic DVD. Actually, I think he's filmed a few.



A few months back I asked Mike about the person behind the videography and editing, hoping to maybe talk them into shooting a music video for me. When Mike said they owned a production company, I backed off, I didn't really have a budget, and I'm not comfortable asking a person to perform their profession for free, I was hoping that they were a film student.

A few weeks ago I came across an advertisement by someone looking to shoot a music video for free. Ryan owns a production company and teaches in the film department of a local college, and was looking for a project that he would enjoy, versus the usual work of filming weddings and corporate training videos.

A few days after meeting at an Arabica, Facebook suggested Ryan to me, and our common friends were Mike Skutt and his wife, and it turns out that he had done the video that I had asked about.

We had our shoot yesterday.

Danielle, Bob Willey, Bob's girlfriend Mika, and I had our first show, so to speak.

These are pictures, not stills.

All things go, all things go.

Drove to Chicago.

We finished tracking guitars with Chris Bober at Chicago Sound Lab on Saturday. I have a song that I need to add a little bit of piano to, one to change the lyrics on, and maybe a few vocal overdubs to do, but first I have to sort though the original vocal takes and see if there is enough to work with (cut up) from attempts that didn't make the cut as a whole.

Our friend Matt Schulz, one of my favorite drummers in the world (and my boy-crush), put us on the list (for the second time in three nights, thanks Matt!) for the sold out Holy Fuck show at the Empty Bottle. They really have me thinking about music in completely new ways, releasing tension at times with a heavy groove instead of just a consonant chord. The music I'm making right now might be too straightforward to incorporate it, but I'm taking on a new project soon, and I think there's a place for it. More to come on this soon, I hope.

Here's Sufjan on the Morning Becomes Eclectic:

I was born during a Memorial Day parade.

Danielle was born the next day.

The Cleveland Botanical Gardens were open without charge this past holiday weekend.

Sweep away your worries...

I had really hoped our friends Joe and Carolina could cast our first video for us. They're one of the best looking couples in Cleveland, and they met at the now defunct 80's night. All we needed was a single dancer.

Putting out some sort of casting call made me nervous, I didn't want to have to reject people on a couple photographs, or even worse, after some sort of dancing audition, not that I needed great dancing, the concept was based on a Mommartz short, of a mod-ish girl dancing by herself.

Joe and Carolina couldn't come up with anyone, but everything worked out.

Our friend Lauren (her band Chief Bromide just released a new album) did the videography. Stacy Candow shot still photography. Gina Mirto danced.

Oh it's such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you.

We didn't drink sangria in the park, but we did have peanut butter milkshakes from Swensons afterward.

Most of our trips to the Cuyahoga Valley coincide with fall foliage, or snowfall. Until today, we've overlooked some of the more lasting beauty of the park for the fleeting splendors.

My poetry was lousy, you said.

My parents kept the record player in the dining room of the house I grew up in. Most of the time the room was purely utilitarian, and all but a couple of the memories I have of it involve Christmas dinners, that record player and listening to Donovan in particular, as well as once deciding I was recovered enough from the flu to play ping pong and discovering I wasn't, are about all I can come up with.

My love of Dylan came from my dad, The Beatles too, but by the time I was digging through his record collection, it had spent too much time in an attic in Ohio, and most of it had warped.

My mom on the other hand has at times questionable taste. A fair number of Christmas dinners were eaten with new age versions of carols in the background, but she has moments of clarity too. Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen. We saw Joan Baez with her on Saturday.

Joan was great. Besides Dylan, she covered John Lennon, The Carter Family, Elvis Costello, and Donovan. I would have left happy having only heard Diamonds and Rust.

My favorite YouTube videos are usually taken from live television performances in Europe. I can't quite embrace home movies made at concerts. I searched and searched, and before finding the right version to post, I also found that Judas Priest covered my favorite Joan song. I've never really listened to JP, and even knowing they took their name from a Dylan song, it surprised me. I wonder if the shred bands that covered JP's version and posted their clips knew where the song originally came from.

This is Rock & Roll

There is no way you won't be disappointed if you stop watching before it's over.

Don't bother concealing your thievery

This isn't the first thing I've stolen from Even Cleveland. Danielle recommends it for Clevelanders and nonClevelanders alike.

Love is a burning thing.

Danielle's worst nightmare involves having her teeth smashed out. Sometimes I dream that I'm mysteriously missing a tooth, but I never know why.

Figuratively, my worst nightmare might involve a never-ending episode of Laurence Welk.

The Cincinnati Pops opened a new performance center in the first months of my first year of college, and in true Welk-fashion the grand finale was the Pops playing 76 Trombones, which they brought in part of my college marching band for (I didn't get a choice about being in the marching band).

Ray Charles played a few of his most recognizable songs too, but he didn't play this:

I wrote a simple song.

I shouldn't kid myself, everything I write is simple. Billy Preston, on the other hand, is a damn liar.

We started recording maybe our simplest song yet last night. Danielle also tracked new vocals, and we continued tweaking mixes, most notably of the trumpet parts on Emptiness Swallows Heaven and Earth. Three new versions of songs are up in the player.

Those funny little plans that never work quite right...

"When the Beatles were depressed-thinking the group is going nowhere, and this is a shitty deal, and we're in a shitty dressing room-I'd say, 'Where are we going, fellas?' And they'd go, 'To the top Johnny!' And I'd say, 'Where's that fellas?' and they'd say, 'To the toppermost of the poppermost!' and I'd say 'Right!' Then we'd all sort of cheer up."

A few days before Christmas marked a year of recording for us, but that's deceptive. For the most part, it's been a few hours here and there, and waiting for the mailman to bring new parts from elsewhere, or paychecks to cover expenses.

Everything was inspired by Richard Brautigan, and in no small part, Jimi Hendrix (really), and almost everything was guitar driven, most of it by the same strumming pattern that everyone uses for six/eight. Our first sketches of the songs didn't have any bass (although Chris played bass lines on a 7-string guitar), and only one song had drums.

I read a lot about the music industry. I'm not sure if Napster and Kazaa really killed it, but even if they did, I still think Lars Ulrich prick. That said, confronted with the numbers for pressing and printing, as well as distribution, I'm pretty sure that there's no way I could make an EP work.

In June we started recording 6 more songs, so we could release an album. I'm not sure we have an album. The difference between songs written when there were no plans for them, and songs written when you know you'll be supported by the kind of players we've been lucky enough to surround ourselves with is a lot of distance to close.

I'm focused on the full length, with the latest recordings, and two nights from now we'll be in the studio starting to record the songs that will flesh out the album.

I suppose delays are inevitable. I hope it all proves worth the wait.

This is the New Year (Bandido Americano)

New Year's Eve has never meant much to me, I only really have a clear memory of one of mine. My parents took me and my brother to a hibachi restaurant where I was convinced every woman at our crescent-shaped table was a prostitute, before dumping us off on a slightly older cousin with odd ideas about child-rearing and age appropriateness, who took us to screening of short animation films, most of which were pornographic, terribly violent, or both. Back at the hotel, Oliver and I fought as we always did, it could have been over anything, but most likely about who got control of the tv remote. I stormed out, headed downstairs to the lobby, which was across from a ballroom where people were doing the electric slide. Women who should have known better justified offering me drinks because it was New Year's. I couldn't have been more than twelve.

I remember my friend Bob's New Year's (the year 2000?) better than my own. He got up early and went to airport to watch the sunrise.

Bob's a lot cooler than I am. He did a remix of a Sound of Arrows song that ended up being used on Gossip Girl, and he didn't even know what the show was (although he has been living in Japan the entire time it's been on - listen to his own music at Bobcat).

I resoluted last night to watch the sunrise over Cleveland from Lakewood park this morning. Some of the pictures turned out a little like Mark Rothko paintings, and probably better than seeing the sunrise in person.



Only one other person came down to the park. I'm not sure if they didn't want to jump the chainlink fence (which I learned today isn't that easy to do with snow boots on), or if I scared them, I kind of gave off the air of a crazy Vietnam veteran with my militaryesque coat and scarf across my face. I know I looked nothing like him, but for a second I thought about Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy in Bolivia.

I saw the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean, from a plane, once. With the curve of the earth, the night sky was still starry and dark behind us, with a perfect sun rise in front. It wasn't that far off of pictures from space, I'm not sure any other sun rise will ever compare.