RIP JOHN SPALDING

My good old buddy, ex-band mate and roommate passed away last Sunday (11/23/08) after a 4+ year battle with cancer. What a horrible week it has been. But I'm also glad that John is now in the presence of God enjoying restored health.

John and I were room-mates in '98 for about 6 or 8 months and we played in Ninety Pound Wuss together for about a year. After that, we started Raft of Dead Monkeys together. John was one of the warmest, kind hearted people I've ever met, a generous room mate and a maniac on guitar.

There was a candle light vigil on Sunday and a traditional mass today both of which were beautiful. Anyone who knew John knows how much of a sweetheart he was. I was honored to write a short bio about John which appeared on the Tooth and Nail site. See below for the unedited version.

John Spalding, former guitar player for late 90s Tooth and Nail band Ninety Pound Wuss, died on November 23rd after a grueling four year battle against cancer.

Spalding was a mild mannered, working class man beloved as much for his uncommon warmth and generosity as he was respected for his mad genius when he wielded a guitar. Spalding cranked out the most caustic, angular, yet memorable riffs imaginable showcasing some of the best, and highly underrated, creative moments of the Tooth and Nail catalog.

After Spalding’s time in Ninety Pound Wuss, he went on to play in the art-damaged, classic rock meets punk infused Raft of Dead Monkey’s with other Tooth and Nail roster alumni. Spalding then studied abroad to finish his culinary schooling before going on to work at hip, fusion inspired Seattle area café’s until the time of his cancer diagnosis.

Over the years, Spalding amassed a sizeable library of home recording demos that, after his diagnosis, became a music project titled LoveLand. Members of Seattle area bands Minus The Bear, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Botch, These Arms Are Snakes, Roadside Monument, Blood Brothers, and others contributed to the recording that simply defies genre classification in a yet-to-be release titled, “The Beautiful Truth”.

LoveLand music is equal parts Prince, Minor Threat and Van Halen that becomes a rock-pop amalgamation showcasing Spalding’s spirit, grit, joy and frailty in a near real-time musical documentation of his battle against cancer. From the claustrophobic sounding buzz saw riffs of “Beautiful Girls Have Beautiful Apartments” to the anthem laden “Good People” to the gospel tinged lyrics of “Give Me Grace”, Spalding cuts through pretension and leaves the listener to face the bitter-sweet, beautiful truth of a life cut short but well lived by a young man desperately loved by family, friends and fans alike.

While most people’s spirits would be utterly ravaged by the experience of debilitating disease, John Spalding was the rare exception of a man that embodied redemption in his remaining days. John invited others in to his life and pulled people together for the sake of faith, hope, love and music. He will be sorely, sorely missed. John is survived by his wife, parents, brother, sister, grandparents and countless extended family and friends.

Brother John, rest easy, pain-free in the loving arms of your savior.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

WORKING FOR A LIVING PART V

Shipping/Receiving clerk

Between rock band tours (bout 10 yrs ago) my Mexi-buddy Benito hooked me up with a job working in the shipping department of a handmade-rustic-log-furniture company. I was one of the few white dudes on the job site.

There were two main operations at the factory. Operation one was production which took place in a huge open warehouse space where a group of about 20 Mexican men sanded, assembled and finally shellac-ed the furniture. The second operation was packaged and delivered the furniture. That part was up to me and Ben.

Our job sucked. Unfortunately, the owners of the company were control freaks that didn't allow the production managers any say on how the manufacturing was done. Which meant, in effect, second rate products (due to defects) and stalled shipments. This meant that I stood around a lot waiting for product so that I could actually do my job.

Ben and I had good times working together. Being bilingual, he was my cultural bridge into another world. Unfortunately I didn't work on my language skills during my time there since most the workers were brushing up on their English which meant I wasn't trying out too much Spanish. But somehow we figured out a way to communicate. This was mostly done through dancing. Allow me to explain.

I drove a box truck between two warehouse spaces that were about a quarter mile apart to pick up product from the production floor ---> take it to shipping. I'd back the truck up against the open bay door, hop out of the truck, throw the back door open, cock my head back cupping my mouth and give my best Mexican yell: "Aaaaaaaahhaaahhhaaahaaahaaaaaa!!!!" You know, the kind of drunken falsetto holler you hear in mariachi music that plays at a mexican resturaunt? I was / am a professional at this yell. And all my Mexican brothers at the factory knew this. It was how I gained respect with the tribe. Though I didn't speak Spanish, this was my communication for building camaraderie.

After I'd graced my co-workers with a perfectly authentic holler, I'd turn around and perform a little dance whilst standing in the back of the truck. All the guys in the shop would holler back and chant my name: "Mateo, Mateo!!!" If time had elapsed since my last dance, I would get fan requests. The request was actually a little bit more like and demand and went like this:

"Mateo! Nalga's!"

According to Ben, "nalga's" loosely translates as "buns" and or "butt-cheeks". Essentially, I was being asked to dance and shake my rump-aaaa.

I loved my Mexi-bros and they loved me. I was like their pet gringo. But one of them ended up loving me a little too much.

I used to wear my hair in a very particular early sixties kind of greased/Clark Kent look. Periodic hair maintenance was required to maintain this look which involved me running a black toothed comb through my hair, oh, every hour or so. One time, while on the production floor I was caught in the act of combing my hair by a Mexican co-worker. Word spread quickly that this simple sign of vanity meant that I was a homosexual. At break time I was the butt of all the jokes for being gay. One particular co-worker, who was nicknamed "guy-oh" (sp?), gave me a lot of heat by making kissy-noises at me every time I came into the room. This hazing was cute for about a week but it got old. Fast. This went on for months.

I was sick of being harassed and quit taking breaks in the designated area. Instead I opted to eat my lunch alone in the box-truck. Vinny my Mexican compadre (who sported the sweetest hockey mullet ever) helped me sort through this debacle so I wouldn't have to be the day-shift outcast anymore. He suggested that next time Guy-oh started teasing me, I should just sit on his lap and give him a hug. Vinny was convinced this would put a stop to the ongoing hazing. So I tried it out. It worked. I was never teased again.

WORKING FOR A LIVING PART IV

Building Maintenance Man

Once high school was in the rear view mirror and I had a year or so under my belt as a (community) college man, I decided to "take a break" from my classes in order to...I can't remember. Be 19 and foolish? Instead of continuing my education I took a job as a "re-lamper". This is not the best educational / vocational decision I've ever made.

Basically, it was my job to wear scratchy light blue coveralls and change each and every light bulb at a large downtown law firm. The sheer volume and variety of light bulbs in an average commercial workplace is astounding. This is not a sexy as it sounds.

To this day, the Light Bulb Changer-Upper gig may be the only job I've acquired without the help of a friend hook up (i.e. every job I've ever had came through a friend's recommendation) but before I explain the job, I should back up.

My buddy Aaron and I interviewed at a local building maintenance company that placed their employees into jobs as janitors, junk haulers, and--ta, da!--light bulb changers!

We both got scheduled for interviews at the same time. I crashed at his place the night before--since the offices for the interview were in the city and he lived down the street. We woke up early, got gussied up in clothing with buttons and groomed our hair. The career seminar advice I'd acquired had paid off. We were dressed for success.

The American Building Maintenance offices were located in a ghetto-ish part of town on Jackson street half way between China Town and the Central District. We walked into a cramped, dimly lit room with low, stained popcorn ceilings and bad, striped curtains. The room was packed with a dozen other prospective employees half of which looked to be homeless and or about to be homeless. We were clearly overdressed. There wasn't enough seating in the office and the mood was awkward. People bumping into each other, not sure what to do with their hands.

Then out came a short-ish, loud Asian woman that began barking like a drill seargant. She explained what kind of employees American Building Maintenance was looking for and that most of the people in attendance were not those people. She ordered us to sit back down (or stand around awkwardly due to insufficient seating) and advised that our names would be called for an interview.

Aaron went first and disappeared into a small office before exiting not five minutes later. He was wide eyed and silent which was a signal that he'd just had a weird experience. I was called in next and the little Asian lady spent the bulk of the interview time talking loudly on the phone while using F-word profanity. Not knowing quite what to do, I stared at the floor. She chain smoked throughout the entire interview. I don't ever recall answering interview type questions.

Both Aaron and I were hired on the spot (must have been that clean pressed shirt!) and told that work assignments were forthcoming within the week. We requested that, if it were possible, we be placed in a job together. Thinking back, that's a pretty a ridiculous request, to ask to be placed in a job with your best buddy. For some reason, they went for it.

Prior to the above mentioned "re-lamp" gig, our first job was moving furniture from a vacated office building down into the basement. All of it. The offices were located in a red brick, turn of the century charmer called the Jones Building on 3rd Ave. The Jones has since been leveled and is now the home of Benaroya Hall.

The building was falling apart. The plaster on the walls was cracked and the hallways were thick with a hundred years of dust accrual. The bathrooms smelled of years old piss and the huge porcelain sinks and ancient toilets were stained with rust.

We worked alone without supervision while the boss from a couple buildings down kept tabs on our progress via walkie talkie. One set-back to the job was that the radiator heaters in the building were broken and stuck "on". And the windows were all boarded up. We worked in 90 + degree heat all day long. It was miserable.

We lifted ratty old office furniture into a cramped elevator and took everything down into the basement. We'd last about 45 minutes at a time till exhaustion from the heat set in and we'd crash out on a crusty couch in a back room. The heat was so oppressive that it lulled us asleep on occasion during breaks. I was not developing a healthy work ethic. But the conditions were so brutal my body couldn't keep up. Musta been that vegetarian diet--imposed by the meat market job-coming to haunt me with muscle atrophy.

After a week of heavy lifting we were promoted to a "re-lamp" gig at the Washington Mutual Tower down the street. We started our shift after regular work hours and worked into the night changing hundreds upon thousands of light bulbs in an empty law firm. Florescent tube bulbs, desk lamp bulbs, the bulbs in the restroom, bulbs at the elevator, bulbs upon bulbs.

One perk to the job, extended to us by the boss, was an open invitation to use the soda machines in the cafeteria as often as we wanted. So we did. I must have ingested a gallon of soda each workshift. Every night was a Carbonation Inspiration Celebration. This newly found beverage fetish unwittingly hooked me into a a six-pack per day Coca-Cola habit for years afterward. My teeth enamel and adrenal gland function will never be the same.

The law firm was up 40 floors and had a spectacular view of the city and Puget Sound. We'd be in the middle of a relamp, standing on a desk in an executive suite, oblong florescent bulb in my hand, my head bumping the ceiling, asbestos tile dust falling into my face when a hypnotic reflection from off the water would catch my eye. The view was amazing. Mid re-lamp we'd plop down into plush leather chairs, turn off the lights and soak in the Seattle skyline sipping on our Cokes.

Eventually the boss caught us slacking and the jig was up. I got kicked off the job. Aaron finished the relamp without me and I was assigned other random janitorial jobs thereafter.

To this day, I have light bulb aversion syndrome and bad teeth.

WORKING FOR A LIVING PART III

Waiter - Old Folks Home

My high school buddy, Bryan, helped me land a job at the old folks home as a waiter. Bryan was a white kid that liked Reggae music. A lot. So much so that Bryan had salon-made dreadlocks. His hair was short, the dreadlocks uncooperative. So Bryan wrapped his Tootsie Roll hair logs up into rubber bands. It looked funny. But bad hair was excusable because nobody was at the height of fashion in 1990.

For some reason or other the folks in charge of the kitchen at The Old Folks Home hired all the teenaged freaks, punks, skaters and stoners in the South King County area. The chef in charge was a very gay, sarcastic, mustachioed rolly-polly man (who was later replaced by "Carlos", also a mustachioed man. But Carlos was Mexican--and to my knowledge not gay--with looks and mannerisms similar to Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi" who we played practical jokes on constantly)

Not only was it the job of the wait staff to serve the tenants lunch and dinner but to also (unofficially) make the most of opportunities for self amusement. This included role playing while waiting on tables. We pretended bad, exaggerated fake European accents. We were entertainers, of course. Most the tenants, being that they were senile and all, did not know the difference between our regular speaking voices and our stage voices. On occasion, however, we were one upped by some of the sharper tenants who would shoot back to us their food orders in like manner.

Ordinarily there were two choices on the menu. Something like, say, creamy garlic chicken with a side of carrots or skirt steak and a baked potato. Instead, we'd offer the earthworm patte or the honey glazed curd of Spam. We made it up as we went along. You know, improvisation. I'm sure it was great fun for the old folks.

Other ways of entertaining ones self as a waiter at The Old Folks Home involved playing out elaborate (fake) dramas for tenants. As an example, there were usually a few folks that either

a.) preferred to have their meals delivered vs. eating in the dining room or
b.) were not well and needed room service or
c.) were crazy and urged by management to stay in their rooms and have their food delivered.

We did not make it a habit to "entertain" sick folks.

Steve was a manager of sorts in the kitchen well known and loved by the tenants. Steve was of Latino decent. Steve and Bryan frequently paired up to improvise for Betsy, a crazy, old, jolly tenant on the 3rd floor. The scenario went like this: Latino Steve delivered the food to Betsy's room. As Steve situated Betsy's food, Tootsie Bryan pounded at the door.

"Open up! It's the border patrol!" cried TB
"Oh, no!" Latino Steve would say "help me find a place to hide Betsy, quick! I don't have my green card and they'll throw me in jail if they find me!"
"Oh goodness!" Betsy would say, flustered, as she proceeded to point out the way to the nearest closet.

TB would then burst into the room carrying on about the "wetback" that had gotten loose. TB would rummage through Betsy's apartment (careful not to make a mess, of course) and finally find LS hiding in the closet, yank him into the living room and pretend to smack him around a bit. Betsy seemingly loved watching the drama unfold. (To the best of my knowledge, Betsy believed these scenarios to be real. But I'll never know for sure.)

Latino Steve and Tootsie Bryan would repeat this routine frequently for weeks on end. For Betsy, it was brand new excitement each time as she customarily did not remember the happenings from the day before.

When I was trained for the room service run, Bryan and I played out similar scenarios but instead of me playing the role of the illegal alien, I was an escaped prisoner.

I got paid for this.

WORKING FOR A LIVING PART II

Butcher Cleaner-upper

When I was sixteen, in addition to my paper-boy gig, I took on a job cleaning up at a meat market after hours. I scraped fat buildup off the butchers block and washed the tools, knives and saws for the butcher after he'd gone home for the night. When I was lucky I even got to wrap plastic over steaks and I fed frozen meat into a grinder which spat the wormy looking cow product into a giant churning machine that mixed the ground beef into a giant, formless mass of red and white speckled rawburger. Yum.

There was a walk-in fridge locker at the back of the market where sides of beef hung on oversized hooks. When nobody was around, and when the meat wasn't too frozen, I'd use the sides hanging from the hooks as punching bags Rocky Balboa style.

It was common for the beef to drip blood onto the concrete floor and after the blood quagulated and froze, I had the distinct privilege of scraping the quarter inch thick spots up with a garden hoe type tool. The smell of stale, frozen cow blood is indescribable. But one thing I can tell you, it doesn't smell like cotton candy.

I also disassembled the table saw which had about 25 working parts that had to be soaked in a huge stainless sink filled to the brim with nearly boiling point water to wash the grease off. Thin rubber gloves are not quite thick enough to keep from burning your hands in almost boiling water. This requires care and proper timing.

The table saw had an inside compartment and a catcher that collected all the "sawdust". Except it wasn't wood chips, of course, but meat and bone dust. This sticky concoction was made for balling up into softball sized blobs and pitched onto the wall when customers weren't looking. 9 times out of 10 the spherical meat amalgamation byproduct stuck when it slapped onto the wall. It was a little game I played.

The butcher was an old, white hair bespeckacald guy named Ray who, unsurprisingly, happened to be missing a finger or two due to sloppy butcher practices from back in the day. Ray was not politically correct. Never in my life have I heard someone handle profanity as creatively as Ray. Listening to Ray's sailor-speak was like the aural equivilent of expert knife juggling.

I was a punk rocker back then with a wardrobe complete with the obligatory uniform of leather, studs, chains, bad hair and other such accessories. My being a punk rocker required of Ray that he call me a fag. I never was, and presently am not, nor ever will be, a fag. But it was Ray's joyful duty to name call. I didn't take it personally.

Needless to say, after working at the meat market, I became a vegetarian for a little while.

WORKING FOR A LIVING Part I

I was recently thinking about all the ridiculous jobs I've had over the years. From cleaning up after a butcher to Insurance Property Adjuster, I've done lots of junk. These jobs have taken a third of my life away since my mid twenties (but I've been working some kind of job since 13) and though I'd prefer to be a couch tester, you know, they pay the bills & stuff. Numero uno es Paperboy.....

My first job was a paper route. I was thirteen and I worked the route till I was sixteen. My being hired for the route came at a good time and served nicely as a ready made excuse for not having to play football. I tried out for the team, I discovered that football sucked, being tackled hurt, and I saved face having to commit to something else that was a time conflict.

I'd inherited the route from a smart-alec, bullying preachers kid from up the street who, when we were little, used to throw rocks when we were playing in the culdesac. Yeah, that kid.

My buddy Jim wanted the route too so we agreed to split the responsibilities down the middle. We raked in a whopping $48 each month in profits (per) which was, in rote teenage fashion, systematically blown on 7-11 nachos, big gulps, video games, punk rock cassettes and skateboard accessories.

I'd usually do my portion of the route on my skateboard if the weather was ok. The weight of the shoulder bag I carried the papers in made for awkward skating but it helped me develop an unshakable balance on my board.

there were a few drawbacks to the route, though, which included newspapery smelling, stained hands and evening deliveries. On weekdays I frequently had to bail on my friends mid hangout sesh to get the route done on time.

On summer weekends, I'd sneak out of the house at about 2 am (right when the papers were delivered to the pickup station outside our house) to get the route out of the way so that I could sleep in late. After I finished the delivery rounds I'd often go skate by myself till the wee hours. There's nothing like having a strip mall parking lot to yourself at 3:30 am. I didn't have to worry about weaving in and out of cars or getting yelled at by shop owners. It was just me, the sound of hard, urethane wheels on the pavement, the occasional automatic sprinkler system in the lot planters, and my thoughts.

Another highlight memory of the route included a Hangover Sunday when I puked on the ground next an an old lady walking her dog. There are few moments in my life that I recall feeling as crappy. Nothing like the smell of Olde English beer puke at 7 am and still having a solid mile to go. Good times.

LOOKING FOR A JOBBY-JOB

Uncle Matt is on the hunt for a job that will pay the mama's bills. Rose quit working a year ago, I live in Sea-town, it's stupid expensive and I gots me a mortgage. Check out the "Profesh Portfolio" tab to your right for a link with a resume etc as well as a new link to a virb page with my discography / music samples etc.

Being an American, I believe I can land a job I don't hate that will make me much mo money. This is the goal as things of interest in my world don't seem to produce the cold hard cash. So if I don't hate the job, I win. The dream? Give me a stack of interesting books, lots of time to read them and I will think deep thoughts, share them with you and even write book reports if you want. If I could get a little over $65K a year plus benefits, that would be fantastic. Thanks.