I haven’t been too vocal about this in public settings, mostly sharing it w/ my closest friends, but I stopped drinking about two months ago.  If i remember correctly it was May the 15th.  At the time I had no idea how long i would go without it, whether it was a short or long-term thing, but i knew i had to stop.  While it’s easy to say that I wasn’t as bad as a lot of people I was hanging out with, I can confidently say that things had gone too far for me, and for the lifestyle that i need to maintain to be productive and healthy.

At first, I just felt bored, which is ironic because it wasn’t like I was sitting at home doing nothing.  I was doing a ton of music and me and my dudes would go out all the time.  The problem was that we started to feel like we were seeing the same things over and over again, and that places that used to be our favorite spots just weren’t exciting anymore, unless we drank to the point to where we would have fun regardless.  This lead to a period of time where I was trying out new things, going to new places (mostly new bars), all in the name of erasing this bored with everything feeling that began to take over my outlook.

At home, I was feeling like my body was starting to talk to me, and tell me to slow down.  When i first started drinking I could drink until 3am, wake up at 9am, and still be productive.  But that’s not the case anymore.  Alcohol seems to have a cumulative affect on a person, whereas the more you drink the more it chips away at your productivity and clarity until you think that waking up at 2pm is ok, and as long as you’re not hungover for the two days then its ok to be hungover for one.   I began to notice that it became harder and harder to get started on my work before well into the day, and because i got started so late I would complete less, which would make me feel shitty about completing less work and want to drink more.  The cycle had officially began.

The album Columbus or Bust was released in 2005 a few weeks after 1988 was released.  I’ve always felt that because it came out so close to 1988 that it never got it’s proper shine.  This situation was made even worse by the fact that we licensed the record to another label to release and they did a horrible job in every aspect.  But that’s besides the point.  The point is that as we begin to release newer Greenhouse material, it’s important to us that people know that we have been around for a while, releasing records since 1999, and that we keep our older records available so that people can check out the older music and see our progression.  Hell, I never thought when i was dubbing tapes back in 1999 that doing music would ever be a full-time job and even if it was ever to become that, I never imagined I would be fortunate to do it this long.

So for those that want to take a step back to 2005 and hear some vintage Greenhouse Effect music (back before we dropped the word “Effect”) take a listen and enjoy.  The high-quality digital-version is the only version available right now, but next week we will release the deluxe digital versions and cd versions which will include all the instrumentals from Columbus or Bust.

http://greenhousecrew.bandcamp.com/album/columbus-or-bust-2005-retail-version

Thanks for your support

Time to start talking about music videos for the new EP.  Last time around “Cold Out Here” won the voting, and the video came out great.  Let us know what song from Electric Purgatory Part Two you would like to see as a music video the most?

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Thanks for the input!

p.s. if you haven’t heard it yet, go HERE, and download it! Delux and retail version available HERE

My dude Abstract Rude is playing tonight in Columbus at Skullys w/ Musab, Illogic, and The Midas Touch, so I figured I would post one of the first songs I ever heard him on “Keep it True” (featured on Aceyalones album All Balls Don’t Bounce that came out in 1995), and is also one of my favorite all time songs he’s ever done.

If you live in Columbus, I’ll see you out tonight @ the show.

Word is blog.

I stumbled upon this movie by complete accident.  I was using google to see if i could find some short films done in iMovie, trying to see just how far people had gone with it in their editing and film projects.  Apparently, they’ve gone pretty damn far with it.  I came across an article on Wired that talked about a movie called Tarnation that was edited completely using iMovie.  It went on to get tons of praise at the Sundance Film Festival.

Tarnation chronicles the life of Caouette’s dysfunctional family. His mother, a fashion model, was a victim of severe abuse, and Caouette’s childhood, spent partly in foster homes, included daily doses of violence, drugs and unpredictability.

Read More http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/multimedia/2004/01/61970?slide=5&slideView=5#ixzz0sV0nDCmn

I was asked to put together a music podcast for some friends a while back.  I was a little apprehensive about it at first because in general I feel like podcasting & videoblogs are great when done right, but usually boring as hell most of the time.  Videoblogs usually end up being somebody staring into the camera for 5 minutes talking about something that was only interesting for the first 30 seconds, and podcasts can end up pretty much the same way, except with more obscure music.  I would rather not do that.

At the time I was having problems with the PC in my studio and couldn’t get started on it, but this week I was able to work on it and it’s actually much easier and more fun than I thought it would be.  Not many people know this but I used to do college radio for 4 years in college and was a DJ and on-air personality long before I was rhyming or making beats, so I’m pretty comfortable with the entire thing and have always wanted to do it again.  It seems like podcasting could be a good outlet for that.  However, I don’t know whether the people who check for my music are currently into podcasts or would even be interested if I were to do one, so i figured i would take a poll and see what’s what:

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[poll id=”3″]

Word is blog

I will wholeheartedly admit that I have never really been a frugal person.  Not to say that I’m the kind of person to blow through a ton of money and not know where it went, but I’ve also never been the kind of guy to actually cut coupons out.  But like many other people, I’ve noticed that I start to actually pay much more attention to where my money is going the older I get.  About a year ago I started reading a few personal finance blogs and I’ve realized that like everybody else out there I’m wasting a decent amount of money on things that aren’t even necessary.  There are plenty of expenditures that I’m completely cool with (usually the music or drinking variety), there are a lot of things that I waste money on, as well as things that I need but actually hate spending money on.  Usually it’s things that i realize I get absolutely no joy out of and seem unnecessarily over-priced, like dishwashing liquid, washing powder, or toilet tissue.

I will confess that a lot of the reason i hate spending a lot of money on dish-washing liquid is because i hate washing dishes,  so spending $6 or $7 on those products seems like insult to injury as far as i’m concerned.

At any rate, today I made a run to Lowes to pick up some supplies for a flooring fix I’m to do tomorrow and realize that the adhesive has to be mixed and I should probably be prepared to be stirring it by hand, which seems kind of boring and tiring, so I decided that I should try to cop a cheap blender from the grocery store for this.  i dont own one, plus i would need it for other handyman jobs as well.  I leave Lowes and see a Goodwill next to it and decide to start there instead of going to WalMart or Kroger, and boy am I glad I did.

A couple weeks back I was taking a break from some home remodeling work and decided to hit up McDonalds up (i know i know McDonalds is the devil, just hear me out).  Since i was on the north side of town i hit up the one in Clintonville, one that i had never been to before.

As i sit down to eat, to my right I see a table of 3 younger boys sitting together.  They were probably about 13-14 years old.

At a table behind them was a mother with her teenage son.

To my immediate left was a grandmother sitting with her grandson.

On the patio outside was a father sitting with his two sons.