The day after...

What a lovely though bittersweet photo, huh. God I miss John and George.

Anyway...

I survived Christmas 2004. Well, it's not over yet.

Christmas Eve I had to do a rare road trip to the kids' grandmom's house. I ate pizza from a place called Taliano's where I haven't been in close to 25 years. Much to my shock, it's not owned by anyone named Habib or Jose or Igor (and this is not a racist remark, this is just a comment on the way the neighborhood has changed radically) but still the original owners -- yes, they are still alive -- and it was like a long forgotten taste of my childhood. Very odd, because with my own mom dead all these years and the rest of the family long split up, I have very few actual "trips home" I can take. So that was cool and we exchanged gifts and the kids' had arranged for their grandmom to buy me a one of a kind art piece - a black wrought iron wall hanging, sort of like a free form sculpture, of a quintet of jazz musicians. This will interest no one but myself, but I recently decided to paint my bedroom dark charcoal gray so this will look outstanding on the wall above my bed. (yeah, yeah, no floral girly prints for me. Laura Ashley go drown yourself. Oh wait - bad taste. She already died by tumbling down a flight of steps. Okay, Laura, tell your heirs to....never mind)

Christmas Day itself was amazing. I pulled off major surprises for the kids and I did't fuck up once, even in the boring sweater department, because my daughter, after scoring that Rickenbacker from Rudy's in NYC (and oh boy did she scream when she saw that) announced to me the following day sadly "that I know you must have spent a fortune on the bass and I'm not expecting anything else, which is cool, because I'm not a sweater person, anyway". Of course I'd already bought her really cute sweaters from the Gap and Urban Outfitters and I gulped because it was total news to me that Julie isn't a sweater person, so I frantically searched for the receipts and had them ready for the return process but turns out, she went nuts over said sweaters and face it, she'd look gorgeous in a shower curtain or a burlap potato sack.

Eric got some drum equipment (don't ask me, Julie orchestrated the entire purchase - the kid has three sets of vintage drums and all kinds of double pedals, etc. so I have no idea what I even bought him) but screamed out loud when he opened his turntable. "I CAN PLAY VINYL, I CAN PLAY VINYL," he shouted with glee.

God. It was just a year ago that he made fun of me for liking to still play my old albums even though of course, yeah, yeah, CDs sound better blah blah blah. Vinyl is suddenly "retro" and therefore very chic.

I still can't handle that the word "retro" means from the eighties. Retro to me sounds like art deco and I think of 1920, but then again, I would.

Eric also scored the money for a drum lesson with Gary Chaffee up in Boston in 3 weeks - Mr. Chaffee has only taught every great drummer alive today - and it's costing me $270 for one lesson plus the train fare to Boston but this is like a once in a lifetime opportunity and yep, I pulled that off, too. (www.garychaffee.com)

The family blew me away with a vintage Peter Max clock from the sixties still in its original box (thank you, Ebay), a brand new 20gb IPod, and all of these incredible craft vases and hand painted dishes for serving everything from sushi to a knocked out jug and matching tiny plates for olive oil and crusty bread dipping - it's too complicated to describe but it's gorgeous and I love it. It appears I almost have to have a party now - I've got all this fantastic serving stuff. Now if I only knew people I wanted to have over...

Actually, my brother and his family came for a visit last night - they took a six hour drive from Connecticut to celebrate with us -- and we ordered Chinese food and I did get to use some of it, but I don't think they noticed. They have little kids and we were all too busy playing with them. I bought my one nephew his first Game Boy and I think life as my brother and sister-in-law once knew it is now over. I warned them they'd better monitor that thing carefully. I know all the kids have them but I also know that they are totally addictive and destroy the creative process if you don't limit their daily time use. My kids were briefly into video games and I look at that as the darkest period in Slick family history, but luckily right after that they got heavily into music and I started them with art lessons at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Moore College of Art so they took all of their video energy into creating their own cartoons. So in case I haven't bragged enough about them, in addition to being rock stars, both Julie and Eric are also brilliant artists.

So speaking of Julie and Eric, today we go to NYC where Eric has a gig at BB Kings Blues Club (oh god, I can't believe I'm going back to NYC one week after my panic attack in Chinatown)...there's no rest for the weary this weekend at all...but then tomorrow, they go into the recording studio. As I said, Eric will be playing Rebel Yell with Billy Idol, etc. but there's been some new additions. Get this. Julie is playing Schools Out for The Summer with Alice Cooper and Peace Sells with Dave Mustaine of Megadeath. Both kids will also join Heart in a rendition of Baracuda. The kids are doing the tracks with these legends as this is the actual CD which will be the Rock School movie's soundtrack and distributed by Warner Brothers records or Universal...now I can't remember which one. Or is it Sony. Oh well, when the kiddies wake up, I'll ask them and clarify. If you go to www.newmarketfilms.com, the movie trailer will be available to the public any day under "coming attractions", and you can see Julie and Eric in action. I was privy to the preview, which will be shown on TV commercials for the film, and it's going to be surreal, seeing my kids up on the screen. You might not be able to live with me.

So...it's off to the showers because the NYC bus (this one is chartered just for us thank god) leaves at 12:15.

Hope everyone had as good a holiday as we did - and trust me on this - don't make any New Years resolutions cos' they never work, unless it's to eat plenty of good food, have a lot of great sex, and never expend too much energy unless it's on something or someone you love.

I'll probably start blogging a new novel starting tomorrow...well, I may be too hung over tomorrow...maybe some day next week...or maybe after the 1st of the year, but yeah, yeah, The Addicts are coming, The Addicts are coming. (..sigh...that's the working title of the book)

Hey..this just in...we're expecting six inches of snow today? Arghhh...and I'll be on a bus to NYC? Well, well, well. Doesn't that figure.

xoxo
Rob