Bleeding Neon

Most of my early adolescence was spent practically living in coffee shops. Without getting into the details (you’re best off reading my 6,000-word cover story that ran in the Las Vegas Weekly a few years ago), the mid-1990s was a great time for cafe culture along Maryland Parkway near UNLV, and nowhere perhaps better defined that era than Cafe Copioh.

I spent many hours fueled on caffeine and nicotine writing poetry, short stories and yes, even nascent journalistic-style pieces. And I drew. Because those two things seemingly have always gone together.

Going through my closets of boxes a few months ago, I came across this two-page comic strip that I vaguely recall drawing while at Copioh. It definitely is meant to take place in Copioh, because the “Mike” referred to in the fifth panel on page one is Mike Gazel, the then-owner of the European-style coffeehouse.

Anyway, I mentioned this discovery somewhere when I found it (Facebook, maybe?), and there was some interest by certain parties to see it. So here it is, exactly as drawn originally. The only thing I did was replace the hand lettering with computer lettering because, um, it was nearly illegible. Enjoy. Or don’t. Whatever.

(Click each preview image to make ‘em supersized!)

Another week, another Pj Perez takeover of the Las Vegas Weekly’s “Noise” section. This time it’s the double-punch of a short feature on pop-punk act Air Raid Anthem and a review of the new CD from long-time local hard rock band Slow Children.

Air Raid Anthem is not the type of band I’d normally listen to, falling in line with all those interchangeable, synth-infused, post-emo bands out there, none of whom I’d probably be able to identify on the radio if I heard them. But though I didn’t want to like it at first, the band’s debut EP, Ready to Get Sweaty, isn’t bad. There’s good songwriting, sing-along choruses and even some surprising twists. The second track on the disc, “Unsolved Hystories,” reminds me a little of stuff from The Killers’ first album. That’s a good thing.

Slow Children … well, I don’t want to write too much here, as I actually reviewed the disc already, but I will say that after only tangentially hearing about this three-piece band but never seeing or hearing them before, I now a) want to see them live and b) want As Yet Unbroken to play a show with them. I think our melodic, diverse, hard rock sounds would work well together. Let’s make it happen, guys!

As I may have mentioned recently on this blog thing, I recently moved into a new house. New to Sara and I, not new to the world. But it may have well been. It was completely remodeled by the previous-previous owner, and never occupied by the guy from whom we bought it.

Anyway, we’re not here to talk Better Homes & Gardens stuff. And I’m sure I’ll bitch later about pests, plumbing, pools and other homeowner annoyances starting with the letter “P.” We’re here to talk about something much more pertinent, something that’s close to my heart, something upon which I rely for my very subsistence:

The internet. Specifically, my lack of connection to it.

The last two weeks have tested my patience. I mean, really tested it. Like a giant final exam for which I didn’t have any time to study. Because I know this will turn into a disorganized ramble, allow me to jump to bullet points here:

Twitter: OK, if you’re a Twitter user, a Facebook user who reads Twitter-fed status updates or someone who reads tech news on a regular basis, then you probably know Twitter has been having some serious issues the last week. The site suffered what’s known as a denial-of-service attack last week, which basically means hackers flooded the site with so many requests it overloaded the servers, shutting Twitter down for about two hours. That’s fine. It happens. But after the site came back up, and I saw everyone else’s tweets streaming through the public timeline, I could not update my feed. Not from the web. Not via text. Not through my Twitter app on my Blackjack II. Nothing. It was a very strange feeling, akin to digital paralysis, where I could see and hear everything going on but not speak, move or otherwise respond or take action. Twitter is a free service, though, so I cannot fully complain, but my frustration was compounded by …

Cox Communications: Honestly, even Cox I can only be superficially mad at. We had high-speed internet via Cox at our previous house, so logically, we decided to transfer the account over to the new house. Easy, right? Sure … except that I spent half the day two Saturdays ago waiting for the installation guy to come out, he went and ran coaxial cable across a room to get everything in the right place, went to test the signal and … then realized our house was not connected to Cox’s lines. At all. And never had been. Oh, sure, the house itself was wired for four cable outlets. But they were connected to nothing. And neither have been the five surrounding houses on our street, which is a grouping of custom lots outside of any development or homeowners association. Cox was supposed to send out a team to survey the area and see what they could do, but after a week I said “f*ck it,” told Sara to cancel that nonsense, and I called up the local telecom company, through which I’d enjoyed high-speed internet access for a few years prior …

Embarq: Man. I thought this would solve at least one of my problems. I called Embarq last Thursday, my fifth day with no web access at home and the same day Twitter went kablooey. I called hoping for a quick solution, but the fastest they could activate our service was Monday. Monday. Mind you, I had two article deadlines that weekend plus Friday’s Utopian comic to post. But I was fine with waiting, as I figured I could just do the free WiFi thing at a coffee shop to get done what needed to be done, and turn in my stories on Monday when everything was back up and running. In the interim, I had wireless internet access on my smartphone, right? Um …

AT&T: I have a web-enabled, fancy-ass smartphone for specific reasons: Mobile access to the internet. To my e-mails. To Twitter. I pay a good chunk of change each month for unlimited data. I’ve been with AT&T for years, mainly because I was with Cingular for years when AT&T took over the company. I’ve had no problems whatsoever in the interim. Until last week. Until I couldn’t get network access, not even 50 percent of the time, maybe more like 25 percent. That’s unacceptable. At one point on Friday, I was ready to pull my hair out (chest hair, I guess): I couldn’t update Twitter. I couldn’t access the internet via my phone or at home. And then I went to ReJAVAnate, a groovy little indie coffee shop around the corner from my new house with free WiFi, and … my laptop would not connect to their network. It took me about an hour (and an iced decaf mocha) to figure out what the hell was wrong with my connection settings. But I finally did get online, updated the webcomic, did what research needed to be done, and went home, satisfied that something was happening. All I had to do was wait until Monday, and everything would be all right …

Except that Embarq blew it. On Monday, I plugged in my DSL modem, plugged in my wireless router, and … got reintroduced to internet speeds I haven’t experienced since I was on Netcom dial-up back in 1998. I am (allegedly) paying for the 3.0 Mbps DSL plan. I can’t get downloads faster than about .5 Mbps. Uploads, about a quarter of that. Youtube videos won’t load; Hulu just laughs at me. Even loading ONE basic jpg image either takes 10 minutes or doesn’t open at all. What. The. Hell.

That is where I’m at.  This morning, AT&T — after one customer service call and a long chat session yesterday explaining that at least 10 of my friends on Twitter were complaining about outages in the Vegas area all week as well — allegedly pinpointed and resolved what they finally found was a network issue on their end. Twitter has been — despite the usual burps — back up and allowing me to tweet to my heart’s content. Cox has been given its marching papers. Dish is coming out to install its equipment on Friday instead, and let’s pray that doesn’t get borked as well. And I have an e-mail into Embarq, which will be followed by a phone call here pretty soon. After I finish typing this rant.

Seriously. I can’t win.

It’s been almost a year since I last wrote for 944 magazine (Las Vegas edition). There was no particular reason for this dry spell other than 944’s editors stopped assigning me stories and I stopped pitching to them. Plus, much like the rest of the magazine industry, 944’s freelance budgets tightened up (not as much as some others). But a month or two back, I was given an assignment out of the blue by 944 to do a profile of Ryen McPherson, who co-runs the video production company Shoot to Kill Media. However, you might be more familiar with his earliest filmed work: Bumfights.

Yeah, I had to interview the Bumfights guy. If you don’t know the story, let me sum it up: Teenagers from San Diego get bums to fight each other on film in SD and Las Vegas. Make it into DVD. Becomes a cult sensation and target of moral and legal detractors. McPherson and pals sell off rights to Bumfights but still end up in court, doing a short stint in jail after some bureaucratic confusion over community service time.

By all reports I could find, McPherson was an anti-establishment, anti-internet maverick who did time for filming homeless men beating the hell out of each other. As you might expect, I was a little anxious about our meeting. But the Ryen McPherson I found at a Starbucks at Sahara Avenue and Maryland Parkway was a calm, reflective, tattooed 26-year-old, passionate about music and film and dedicated to producing the highest quality product possible. He excitedly showed me video clips on his Macbook. He freely admitted the Bumfights ordeal was a folly of youth but an education experience. And he revealed his fiercest ambition is to direct music videos — just for the love of the medium.

You can read the full article (“Killer View”) here, though because of 944’s limited space, you miss some of the context I provided above. Shoot to Kill just finished a new music video for local band Lydia Vance’s song “Again Tomorrow.” Check it out at Shoot to Kill’s website (click on the song title). It’s both funny and shocking, but overall entertaining. And the music ain’t so bad, either.

Oh, I’m also still writing about local music for the Las Vegas Weekly. My last article, on electrocore band This Romantic Tragedy, ran a few issues back, and I should have a couple more stories in next week’s issue. Also: The Utopian webcomic is back from hiatus. In case you weren’t keeping track. And I have another 944 deadline this week. So things are good. Keep your eyes peeled.