2010, a Year in review, KICKACTS and more….

Well, here I am at the end of another year of life on this great big blue bubble called Planet Earth that is floating around in space 🙂 it’s a nice place to be!!

As Gene Simmons would say, “Any day above ground is a good day” ( Hope he won’t sue me for quoting him)…But sadly, over the past year we have had to say good bye to a few friends and family members and in the world of Entertainment some really power house people too…May they all rest in peace…I know we all got a “carousel” date but I am in no hurry to go out on mine. How about you? …

So looking back I can say I had a pretty good year. I am 45 and do not take any medicines what so ever so far still. I am healthy and we don’t have much control over that… Of course we can exercise and eat right but if your gall bladder or appendix decides it has had enough; well you can’t do anything about that…lol. I recently got my hair cut, not really wanted it that short or short at all but it didn’t kill me. So we will see how it goes. It’s in between long and short so who knows what my next move is with it. I surely don’t know. I now have to wear reading classes too as well, and that’s embarrassing to me. Of course I am vain and I am an asshole so I have been told over and over. I used to have what I called “cats eyes” and basically had perfect vision. Not anymore. I had my eyes checked two years ago and the eye doctor said I would need glasses in about two years… I wonder. Did he jinx me?  So if you walk into my office I will have the readers on. I can see a fly on a fence post at two hundred yards and tell you which way he is facing but I no longer can read a restaurant menu. My arms aren’t long enough…Go figure…Go fish…

I also got my first tattoo. First meaning, there maybe more, but I am undecided on that.  Since I have “perfection” issues the tattoo will have to be perfect or I will hate it and either get the wrecking balm cream to remove it or try to scrap it off…(just joking about the scraping part) But the one I have needs tweaking and I haven’t been back yet to get it done…

KICKACTS officially went to print this year with the first Edition coming out in January 2010 and, officially went out of print six months later. It was a great experience and I have to thank Steve Champion from the Green Gazette for the valuable wisdom about print magazines. I could not have even gotten it off the ground for just one issue without his help. In the end I couldn’t find enough advertisers to justify printing it and all the money I poured into to it I hope to recoup at tax time… Who knows, maybe I will try to do it again in the following new year… I really enjoyed the challenge of putting it together. It was a lot of work and running but satisfying too.

KICKACTS had some changes over the past year too. As you know, we tend to change the “look” of it from year to year and though I liked the look of this past years format when we chose it. I now can’t wait to get as far away from it as possible.  It had too many damn check marks on the front page. We also lost a couple of contributing writers and gained a couple too. It’s the ebb and flow of things and that is how it goes…

KICKACTS is now rolling into its third year of life too. A lot of changes have taken place since we first started. It’s still just a hobby but we consistently draw a lot of traffic month after month and I have included a snapshot of out traffic history for the past year.

Now on to the next topic at hand…

A Riddle, a Parable”

“It’s the bottom of the ninth, bases are loaded… 2 outs on the board… You’re at bat…But you are also pitching….It is all up to you now. So now what?”

This is the time of year most people make New Year’s resolutions.  It’s a somewhat harmless goal or goals that we put on ourselves to change something about our self in the New Year. I don’t make resolutions. I make decisions and try to stick by them. I am goofy and OCD in an anal way about that. Resolutions are meant to be broken usually by the third day into the New Year but decisions are meant for a life time or at least for a season. I say if you want to quit smoking, just stop…that’s all. If you really want to quit, just stop. Who is bigger, you or the little 4 inch long death sticks? But most people say they want to quit and really don’t want to quit,. So there is never a change..I am not like that… Now hang on, I am not picking on the smokers…Smoke ‘em if you got them… just use your lungs and not mine  🙂 I could have used cussing, driving on the shoulder of the road or whatever as an example …So …

What are my decisions for the New Year?…

In no particular order…

1. I weighed 170 in 2001. My decision is to weigh that amount again before the next New Year is here, hopefully by this coming summer…  So I need to drop 20 pounds or so…. I started walking before it got too cold and I was up to 5 to 7 miles a day when I went, which were several times a week…

2. Pay off my loans and bank my money. I make good money but it doesn’t stay around. Too many bills, too many eggs and I play catch up all the time. I will have one loan paid off by the end of January and then knock the other one out a.s.a.p. I am not really buried per se in debt. Just tired, really tired of sending it out all week after week for not….

3. I am going to get a serious tattoo(s)……………………………………………………………………….maybe 🙂

4. The Yellow Short bus will continue to play as many shows as my sidekick wants too. We are like Simon and Garfunkel, Hall and Oates, or maybe Lennon and McCartney… I think a perfect team… First time ever in my career that Derek is someone I can work really well with. However I want to play out more and more so the YSB will keep on trucking but I will find a band on the side to help fulfill my need to gig more… No Offense to Derek, I totally understand…

5. I have a very dry deadpan sense of humor but I been called an asshole because no one gets it. I am going to work on that. Become a better asshole… The deadpan part I got down to a science.

6. I am going to find out why I can’t concentrate on anything very long…I have so many ideas and stories/songs that if I just sat down long enough I could get them out of my system. I have zero attention span…I get bored easily.

7. I am somehow going to purchase some real estate too.  I don’t want to be a slum lord but I want to own houses and rent them out.

8. I will take a few vacation days this year. I think I have some left over….

9. I am going to stop and smell the roses and try to avoid the pricks….

10. There are plenty more but this is enough for now 🙂 but I may buy a motorcycle too…

 

So enclosing… .

Peace out and have a…

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Chuck