news flash

the band is done. the lgb is officially no more, at least not in its original lineup. as you all may or may not know, dave left the band in late july. he had some differences in musical opinion and wasnt satisfied with things and needed to try some new things.
in all the fiasco of trying to rearrange things laura has decided to relocate herself back to her hometown of chicago. she made the announcement to aloha and myself last night. i will respect her enough to allow her to explain herself in her own words. needless to say i am not at all pleased with her decision, but i am not about to fight over it.
it was great fun, i met some cool people. played some great songs. had some good trips. i gave up alot to play in this band, money, jobs, loves, futures, every time you choose to pursue something you are turning your back on an infinite number of futures. the trick is to choose wisely enough to not regret the choices youve made. in truth i dont, but i sure wish that this band did not meet its end prematurely.
so whats up next for the poot? well, now that i am not tied to boston for any reason what so ever, the world is mine to see. first stop might be tucson, arizona. completely random i know, but there is a great flight school out there, and living is ridiculously cheap. im looking into it, but we shall see, maybe ill regroup in ri for a bit. i cant say that i want to start something new musically right now, so ill just be looking up into the sky for everything for awhile. its a damn good thing i love the smell of jet fuel.
thanks to everyone who ever came out to our shows, you have made everything worthwhile. and the blog will continue too, dont worry about that.

wheres pooter?

i took the above picture where? in rhode island? no. in aruba? nope. california? another no. this incredibly tropical looking place is actually in canada. yeah. canada. granted this was in august, in a few months this will probably all be covered with a glacier. canada! who wudda thunk it?!

the top 25 proves it

iTunes has this cool feature that shows you the top 25 songs that you listen to. its like doing a demographical or behavioral study on yourself. so, without further, the chris porter top 25 most listened to songs:

1. grace - jeff buckley
2. last goodbye - jeff buckley
3. the shadowlands - ryan adams
4. forget her - jeff buckley
5. afraid not scared - ryan adams
6. untitled 8 - sigur ros
7. wonderwall - ryan adams
8. vancouver - jeff buckley
9. love is hell - jeff buckley
10. this house is not for sale - ryan adams
11. world war 24 - ryan adams
12. political scientist - ryan adams
13. lover, you should have come over - jeff buckley
14. unforgiven (last goodbye)(live) - jeff buckley
15. so real - jeff buckley
16. memories - eisley
17. mountain song - janes addiction
18. eternal life - jeff buckley
19. untitled 1 - sigur ros
20. untitled 3 - sigur ros
21. freeze time - 311
22. clarity - john mayer
23. my own way - laura glyda band
24. telescope eyes - eisley
25. hallelujah - jeff buckley

so what does that prove? couple things. first, that i pretty much listen to jeff buckley and ryan adams exclusively. second, that i am a miserable sad bastard, because almost all of these are miserable sad bastard songs. i should get some tiny tim or little richard or something and just loop it while muted at night just to make this list not so completely morbid. perhaps some uptempo bluegrass? its cool though, you put on the playlist and everytime a new song comes on you say to yourself, "hey, i love this song." and then you remember youre listening to your top 2-5 and its all good.

sigur ros @ boston opera house sept 15th...already shitting my pants.

Hamptons shmamptons and a JJ send off

the hamptons suck, or at least the airport does. rich folk have a rather poor reputation as far as being pilots is concerned. most rich folk like doctors and lawyers will learn the basic pilot stuff, go buy a really expensive plane ($300,000+, lovingly referred to as doctor killers) and proceed to never care to learn anything more than what they have learned and determine that whatever they are doing is correct. well. i submit to you exhibit A. east hampton airport, 3 runways. usually pilots will choose one runway to use as the winds will favor that runway (and no, there is no control tower to tell us where to go at this place and yes this is very common, more common than not actually.) so, 3 runways, pick one and stick to it. i get into the airspace and literally, every runway is in use. there are planes taking off and landing on each of the three runways. not only does this make the actual airport a cluster fuck but it makes the surrounding airspace unpredictable and dangerous. it seriously looked like a bunch of flies hovering around a pile of dog shit. unreal. needless to say i made it back alive but i will never go there again, at least not in season.
tonight the old NU crew got together to honor one of our fallen heroes. jimijames, JJ himself, is soon to be wed to his lovely gal. we took him out to dinner, to the dog track and then to the midway for some beers. i respect jj probably more than anyone i have ever met and can only hope that i enjoy his level of success someday. so cheers jj, you deserved every last bit of what you have, youve earned it all. one word though....roppongi.

into the abyss....

night flying...holy shit....coolest thing in the world. pilots deal with what is called currency, you have to fly so many hours and so many types of flying within 90 days to remain current. One part of that is that you have to do some night flying. so i went up tonight at around 8ish. first off, its incredibly weird knowing that you are about to go flying at night, it makes you just a bit antsy. you have to do your preflight stuff using a flashlight which really only adds to any apprehension you may have about what you are about to do. but you really do everything the same you would if it were noon. but you line up on the runway and there are all these lights everywhere and you cant see the end and it feels like you are in the middle of a PS2 game. you plunge down the runway...20....30....40....44....50 lets go flying. you pull up off the runway and its solid black decorated with a few spots of glistening gold. you cant see water, you cant see vacant land that isnt lit, you cant see horizon, and you sure as hell cant tell exactly how high you are just by looking down.
landing is equally cool. when you drive past an airport at night and it is lit, you say to yourself, wow thats alot of lights, and youre right, it is. but something you dont realize is that most of those lights are not visible from the air. you can only see them from certain angles. essentially you dont see the runway until youre on final approach, and even then you cant see the actual runway, just the lights surrounding it that hint that maybe, just maybe there is a runway right here. this is pure video game flying. two streaks of color and you have to plant yourself in the middle of it. rock. you dont really even see the runway until you are about 10-15 feet above it at which point you very much realize that you should probably pull up to avoid making some fireworks of your own. tonight was badass.

three more flights this week, one solo just goof off flight, two cross country flights (50 miles from home and back). im thinking maybe hyannis one day and then "flying out to the hamptons" the other. yes, those hamptons. i'll tell diddy you said hi.

allman oh brothers

last night i made the semi annual trip to the tweeter center with my former hippie of an aunt micky. to put it simply, she is the ultimate gregg allman fan. it is no coincidence that i have a cousin gregg, complete with three g's in the spelling. either way, i dont know if its me getting older, or soberer but i dont think i have ever seen so many drunk, high, dirty hippy kids in my entire life collectively as i did last night. it was simply amazing. this one dude kept coming up the aisle (i had an aisle seat as it were, go me) and stopping at everyone. this was our exchange:

overly drunk hipster dude without a shirt on: "hey man, peace man, peace. peace man."
me: "uhhh....yeah. peace."
odhdwaso: "yeah man, oh man, peace yeah thats the shit man. peace."
me: "yeah, go peace."
odhdwaso: "right on, see you get it man, peace! do you drive a bus?"
me: "a what?"
odhdwaso: "what do you drive? is it a bus?"
me: "yeah man, i drive a fuckin bus"
odhdwaso: "aww, man, thats awesome, is it ...cool?"
me: "yeah, its the shit. all the girls are like wow, nice bus."
odhdwaso: "what color is it?"
me: "blue."
odhdwaso: "blue peace bus. BLUE PEACE BUS BLUE PEACE BUS!!!"

he then turns and goes up the aisle shouting this. this was the first year that i can remember when the kids in their unwashed button down shirts sans buttons outnumbered the old dudes with scary tats and laconia '87 t-shirts. personally, ill take the old dudes. theyll get drunk, but it takes them roughly a gallon of 93 Octane high performance to get there, AND they guard their beers as if it is water from the cup of christ himself, complete with healing powers. the "new kids" that obviously dont know any allman tunes outside of what is on the greatest hits disc will dance around like unstablized lawn sprinklers with a weak water pressure, not paying any attention to the inertial effects their dancing has on the brew, thus making my foot rather wet and smelling of germans. some might say that im not down with the party or some shit. oh im sorry, i actually came here to see some musicians, perhaps be able to comprehend what derek trucks is doing rather than make a complete ass out of myself and get arrested for indecent expsoure when my pants that are way too big fall off as i am running away from the security gaurd for smoking a bowl right in front of him. moron.

numerous things

suddenly my mind is inundated with thoughts touching on a cornucopia of topics ranging from flying, to music, to love, to family to...just about everything.
just to get this one out of the way, i have always had a very romantic relationship with flying and the sky. up until now it has always been a romantic relationship in the same way that a freshmen kid has the hots for the hot senior girl and reluctantly is forced to admire her from a distance. but as things go, since you cant have them, you fantasize and dream about what it would be like, and what you would do. everyone has had this happen to them, i dont care who you are. i went out with dave and alissa the other night and some flight instructors that she works with came out and met up with us. they asked me what kind of flying i want to get into and i responded "aerobatics." i simply thought that they would all say something in agreement with it but they all kind of shrugged their shoulders and said that they had never any interest in it. 'scuse me? no interest in flying the airplane the way it should be flown? nope. you just want to go from point a to point b and then just hang out? yup. what?!?!?!?!?! how is this possible that there is someone that does NOT want to do that. and then it occurred to me that maybe i am approaching this whole flying thing from a perspective not often shared. it floored me, i still dont get it.
as far as music is concerned. here is a quick lesson: if it is on the radio, if it is in rolling stone, if it is on mtv or vh1, if it arrives to you through some form of mass media please do yourself a favor and disregard it as complete crap. i am really realizing that all of this, every single bit of popular music that is thrown out there is nothing more than a method to sell a product, and the product is not the music, trust me. all this crap music that is just getting shoved down our throats with the label of "hot" or "fresh" , is it anything more than just an image? is it anything more than just someone's idea that kids will latch on this false sense of rebellion which they are so desperatly craving at this rather important juncture in their lives? no, it isnt. please do yourself a favor and dig a little deeper to find the good stuff. listen to sigur ros' untitled album, or jeff buckley's live at sine, or even go pick up some ani difranco, just something you have to actually work for to find. trust me, the rewards will be so much greater than anything you have had before.
and just to round out the bases as i said, in abbreviated format perhaps to return later in full length: love is rare and treasured and is the only real point in life. family is the one thing that should be constant.

vermont, nyc, dc, or oh?

soliloquy

"...thats when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. i knew somehow that i had to stay alive, somehow. i had to keep breathing eventhough there was no reason to hope and all my logic said i would never see this place again. so thats what i did i stayed alive, i kept breathing and one day that logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, gave me a sail and now here i am. im back. in memphis talking to you i have ice in my glass and ive lost her all over again im so sad that i dont have ______ but im so grateful that she was with me on that island and i know what i have to do now, gotta keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise, who knows what the tide could bring."

rather fitting at this juncture.

hmmmm

recent conversation between me, and my flight instructor Tim:

me: "hey, uh, we are at 1600 ft, thats the traffic pattern altitude for this field."
tim: "yup"
me: "well thats fine, but the airfield is at 500 feet, its in a valley, 1600 feet is going to be scraping the tops of those mountains."
tim: "yeah well....hmm...uh....just dont hit the mountains."

genius. pure genius.

great weekend of flying. i had my first spinning experience. it was intentional, i wanted to see what it was like. remember in top gun when mav and goose are flying with iceman and they fly through the "jet wash" and mav's engines flame out and they go into a "flat spin, theyre headed out to sea" and they "eject eject eject" but silly goose crashes into the canopy, breaks his neck and dies? thats kinda like the spin i did, only we werent flat, we werent headed out to sea, nor were we in an f-14. picture a plane, now imagine trying to balance it on your fingertip. now tip the nose down a bit and the smack the nose so that it spins around on your finger with the nose pointed down and the tail up in the air. thats a spin. it was ridiculously cool. we did a bunch of them, and i could have stayed there all day and done them. so that solves that, aerobatics here i come.

my mom is going to hate you

i have the best friends in the world. but as the title of this entry says, my mom is going to hate you.

my days keep getting stranger.

i just got back from a trip. i flew out to wisconsin (me, i flew, not as a passenger, as a pilot) to go see Oshkosh. its basically the worlds largest gathering of pilots, airplanes, anything aviation related, in the world. it was absolutely incredible. i also got offered a job as a flight instructor, so we'll just have to see how that pans out.
in other news, i am really confused. despite that, i think i am on the brink of something. i dont know what, but something big. i have always said that everything big is going to happen to me when i am 24, its my number. that is only hours away at this point. the stage is set. certain events have transpired in the past couple days that have really set things in motion. to what end i will find i have no idea, but i am sure that it will be something that has a great impact in my life, where it takes me, and who i am, where i am. i have to keep on reminding myself though that i dont have to live my life in its entirety within the space of its first 25 years. but i am too impatient to wait around and see what becomes of me. i dont fast forward and watch the end of movies, but i come close. in the immortal words of the late great jeff buckley, "the goal is in the process." i really should start enjoying everyday, and i do, just not to the extent that i should. but, just to review, in the first 23 years of chris porterdom, i have been the following things:

a son
a brother
a friend
a teacher
a gas station attendent
a student
a runner
a goalie
an enemy
a patient
a guide
a musician
a writer
a dreamer
a drinker
a traveler
a foreigner
a dissenter
a pilot
a photographer
a swimmer
a graduate
a driver
a banker
a lover

happy
content
scared
stressed
optimistic
bereaved
complete
in pieces
egotistical
in wonder
sick
healthy
hot
cold
lame
funny
bored
boring
tired
pessimistic

not bad for the first 23. lets see what else i can rack up.