From the first moment someone liked what I wrote, agreed with it, or told me maybe it wasn’t for me I knew it. I knew I was trapped in the insane cycle of the creative. Pour your heart into something, work on it more, send it out to people and wait for the inevitable disappointment. I’ve never been a science or math oriented person, so I have no idea what that feels like. I can tell you what it feels like to be an art school graduate who needs to survive, but can’t give up art on the side.

I’m the guy that has a minor aneurism when I see a typo in text. It’s not just vocabulary, that’s like giving a professional set of golf clubs to a beginner. Some words are wasted on the people who use them. I never wanted to be that person, I never knew if I would succeed or fail or run along mindlessly not using my ability.

The world doesn’t give you many opportunities to show yourself unless you do it yourself. I can tell you that nothing made me happier than playing in a band, and that some of the best moments weren’t playing live, but that long post-bar practice session in the middle of the night. That session somehow didn’t get the cops to our place.

The almost universal truth about people who create is pain. I think it is through pain that we recognize how great the high points are. I have had some of those like graduating college or scoring a game winning goal, but nothing compares to the love of creating something and seeing people like it. I always need the audience however small it is.

Playing guitar again has been amazing, and I’m so glad I’ve been able to pick it up again. Writing songs is a challenge, but playing for an audience of nobody is still a satisfying feeling. Composing new things has been a great comfort to becoming the new person that I want to become. Maybe, like the song says, I just wanna fly.

I would be hedging my bets if I told you I believe, so I won’t. What do I believe in? I believe in playing golf with my best friend, who wasn’t fortunate or unfortunate enough to learn the game growing up. Equal parts of me want to appreciate and apologize for my dad teaching me golf as a kid. Similar to him introducing me to the Cleveland Browns.

I understand completely that you have to be of a certain means to play golf, and I hope that changes. I hope to change that perception and possibility in my circle of people. Fuck the Browns. There are almost 8 months of golf weather where you could be enjoying like minded peoples’ company in a far more productive manner.

Happy Birthday Jesus of course, we need to celebrate getting 2nd graders drunk as part of a ritual that makes absolutely no sense, but has continued for far too long. As long as we are celebrating really old things that make no sense, why don’t we give golf a try.

I promise you from the bottom of my worn heart, you will like golf more than Jesus.

As a self proclaimed expert on the subject since 2004 I can tell you that if you listen to these songs in this order, you will be a fan by about song 15.

1. Live Forever
2. Wonderwall
3. Slide Away
4. The Masterplan
5. Champagne Supernova
6. Supersonic
7. Don’t Look Back in Anger
8. If I Had a Gun
9. Cigarettes and Alcohol
10. Lyla
11. The Dying of the Light
12. Talk Tonight
13. Stand By Me
14. Whatever
15. Morning Glory
16. Sad Song
17. Columbia
18. The Importance of Being Idle
19. Half the World Away
20. All Around the World
21. (As Long as They’ve Got) Cigarettes in Hell
22. Rock’n’Roll Star
23. Let There Be Love
24. Some Might Say
25. Cast No Shadow
26. Ballad of the Mighty I
27. Acquiesce
28. Don’t Go Away
29. Let’s All Make Believe
30. Lord Don’t Slow Me Down
31. Riverman
32. Bag it Up
33. Fade Away
34. Falling Down
35. The Shock of the Lightning
36. Stop Crying Your Heart Out
37. Up in the Sky
38. D’Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman
39. Angel Child
40. In the Heat of the Moment
41. Flying on the Ground
42. Cloudburst
43. Stay Young
44. Where Did it All Go Wrong?
45. Everybody’s On the Run
46. Carry Us All
47. We’re On Our Way Now
48. AKA…Broken Arrow
49. The Girl With X-Ray Eyes
50. Sunday Morning Call

There you have it, if you enjoy great music then debate me on the order.

First of all a Corona without a lime and salt is a waste, that would be like you sending chicken wings without sauce.

Fuck Corona virus and all that it is. I’ve been surviving with a mask and staying inside.

I’ve also been NOT going to California with my best friend on the trip of a lifetime that has been postponed until further notice.

While I am livid every single day that I had my vacation taken from me, I am glad I’m where I’m at in central Ohio.

The only positive of this pandemic has been the response of Governor Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton. Without their swift response, we could be in a third world state as far as this virus goes.

Apart from that, the national response has been atrocious. I am too exhausted of Donald Trump’s lies to point out all of their ineptitudes. They knew in January this was a problem and they ignored it, what else can I say?

If I do not survive coronavirus, I want three things to be known:

1. Live Forever is the greatest song of all time
2. The Big Lebowski is the greatest movie ever
3. Zach Crist is my best fucking friend

3.31.13

Seven years later doesn’t make it any better. Every time I think about it, which I’ve conditioned myself not to, it makes me wonder what could have been. Maybe the band we were in had run it’s course, maybe we were never gonna be rock stars, but we were all going to be together in Columbus, what a fleeting feeling now.

What is there to say after seven years? Who knows. I like to think I’ve done something with myself that he would at least find acceptable, low as it might be. The thing I know is he never would have turned on me, never seen me as lower than him, we sweat the same battles on the soccer field, in college, in the band, in life.

I wonder what he would have thought of this coronavirus too, like anyone, we have no reference point. He would probably find a clever one though, or one that would justify more than 10 of us meeting to drink together, scientifically of course. He wouldn’t have been scared to do what he did, and defend the public like he could.

We all have a million stories about how Andrew Tarek Katbi affected our lives, so I’ll tell you mine. We were in a huddle as a soccer team before a game, and our brilliant coach John Munoz finished his speech saying this, “Here’s the captains band, and this is how we do it, I don’t pick it you do.” He then threw the armband down in the middle of us.

It was a tenuous second, maybe a second and a half before Andrew bent down, picked it up, and handed it to me. I like to think everyone had that opinion, but I could be wrong Nobody wanted to win more than him, so if this helped us, fuck-em-all lets go. That’s how I became captain of The Delphos Legend, and that’s how Katbi will live forever.

To all of my non-existent readers out there I’m sure you’re balls-deep thrilled about the fact that I’m going to California. The part that I have neglected to tell you about is who I will be traveling with. Luckily for you, WordPress has given me an unlimited amount of words to describe this asshole, so here goes.

I met Zach at Discover Financial Services in 2014 and in our training class I wasn’t too sure what to think of him. There was then a day when we both started trying to kick a ball of paper into the same trash can at which point soccer came up, and as they say, the rest is a silly, tragic, fun, drunken, unfortunate and fortunate bit of history.

‘You’re for Manchester United?’ ‘I’m for Manchester United.’ What about 200 miles of us growing up in vastly different places couldn’t separate was the beautiful game. The only unfortunate part was that he was a Seattle Sounders fan, and I’m still working on that.

We were inseparable at work from that point on, they asked us to to Q and As with training classes because of our charisma together. We had no offense to addressing the trainees, and we were the best of our class.

Fast forward to my new job that I excelled at for the first few months, and about the same time I’m failing at this new job, Zach calls.

The mother of his child had moved all of her things out of the house he rented while he was at work.

I brought a case of beer and all of my condolences. But that was just a start.

This part is none of my business, so I leave it out.

I was hospitalized for bipolar and Medicated.

Medicated Justin was not who I wanted to be. I took myself off Risperdol in 2016

One of the great things I decided to do while in the hospital that I boned up on was getting season tickets.

We did.

For 2016 Zach and I went to every Crew home game we could make. It was glorious.

Since then we have seen each other as often as possible and will be going to California in a month!

You and I are gonna live forever!

I wrote a similar thing way way back when I was a sophomore in college at the university of Toledo about my living situation being amazing while looking at the design of my ceiling. That was an ignorant observation to a world that had passed our neighborhood by decades earlier.

2020

Now it’s been ten years since I graduated from Toledo, and while I would give the University all the accolades a state school could ask for, the city is still a wasteland. I took my first trip back a few days ago with my best friend and future online Rocket Zach, and while being on campus again was nostalgic, I didn’t exactly want to show him where I lived.

Also 2020

The only thing I would change about Columbus is the climate. Some say that the harsh winters make the people who they are, they’re idiots of course, snow doesn’t build character. If you walk down Broad St. downtown you feel like you could be in any major city.

If you go out to Dublin, you can feel like the finest snob in the universe, attend The Memorial Tournament and witness one of the greatest golf courses in the world. The point I’m trying to make here is, I’m proud of my degree from Toledo, but I would’t live there for twice what I make.

So much of life is in the gray, you work, you breathe, you die. I’m only 32 now, and if you asked me 10 years ago when I was staring at that wonderful ancient ceiling in Toledo where I would be, I would have told you Amsterdam or London or Los Angeles. When I stare at the ceiling now, I see Columbus.

I’ve been on this thing for almost ten years now and I can’t say I’ve been introspective all that much, but it is lonely on Christmas Eve with nobody to celebrate with. I’ve had a good year, Browns not withstanding, work has been good, I’ve even dated a few people. How can I really complain? I mean, I talked my best friends wife into letting him come to California with me next year.

I also managed to save a lot for the first time in my life, I know I’m like 8 years behind the game at this point, no 32 year old should be proud of that, but it was savings to me for the first time, and out of credit card debt for the first time since I’ve had one.

As I write this, ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ comes on my Pandora, and how fitting, we are a slave to money then we die. I’m going to hibernate this winter and do next to nothing, in the hope that California is everything that I’m hoping it can be. Who knows, maybe I’ll even write more. but I don’t hold my breath at picking up a guitar again, as romantic as it seems.

This year I stay on the boring and straight and narrow and keep my head down and pretend like I haven’t been fucking around since college, that’s the goal. All I know for sure is that I’m ecstatic to be typing this on a MacBook Pro that I have made sacrifices for and now I’m back in the game.

I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down…again.

All that Britpop influence from college is finally sparking in me something profound…They didn’t know anything either, but they were talented. I have finally discovered that I am not talented at anything musically, and it’s kind of an absolution.

You sold your soul and made credit card debt to be in a rock band just because you and your best friend were good at guitar hero. You thought you were John Mayer or Jimi Henrix because you bought a Stratocaster like the one they played.

I bought my first Stratocaster working at gamestop in college. The mexi version…it was spicy. I played that every night after class hoping to become something. Learning all kinds of riffs and chords, doing it all from YouTube and tab, thinking, we really might have something here….

My best friend owned my old guitar, a squire Stratocaster, so we started practicing together with a few others from his college. What was that thing we were missing, A FUCKING DRUMMER!

When our drummer moved in next door, we knew this was fate, so I maxed my first credit card and got Katbi an epiphone les Paul. We needed it for the band. The cops were only called on us twice for practice, but it could have been many more.

The two shows we played at little Mexico in Ada, Ohio were two of the best nights of my life, chaotic as hell both of them, for different reasons, but great, and I will debate you until trump melts into the Potomac that we have the best cover of ‘Baba O’Riley’ on Youtube.

It’s the dream of all those that want to be movie stars and music icons, I just want to see it. I want to see and feel everything I’ve seen on tv and only imagined could be real.

Today I got the word that my best friend would be joining me on this journey,  and to say I couldn’t be happier would be an understatement. We have previous adventures to Arizona with a mutual friend and that went well so I have no doubt we will be fabulous travel companions.

But this new adventure to the far west coast, will be the best ever. California on Labor Day week will be perfect weather and all the drinks will flow.

San Diego may not have the Chargers anymore, but the will have Zach Crist and Justin Clark for a week. They may not survive…

Anyway, like Led Zeppelin, I’m going to California.