Another Pedal Company Down

I haven’t been as out of control buying guitar gear over the last year or two as I was prior, but I have gone through stretches where I get hyper obsessed with making tiny tweaks to my guitar sound that require me to buy amps and pedals and accessories. I own a bunch of amps and a lot of pedals. I mean, a lot of pedals. Every now and then one of them bites me in my conscious’ ass. That seems to have happened today.

The first time it happened was when I found out the owner/operator of a boutique pedal company that made a really cool fuzz pedal that I really wanted had donated money to a church that sponsored pray away the gay conversion bullshit. When called on it he got defensive and just made a mess out of it. He also apparently ripped off a circuit from a woman and then got really ugly with his verbal attacks when he was called out. The woman was actually trans and he went after her and it was just bad. I never bought that fuzz pedal. I never will. I won’t do business with a putz like that.

Fast forward to 2020 and I put a second pedal company on the no-fly list when one schmuck in California went after people who were protesting the murder of George Floyd. He first implied that his neighbors store windows were more important than a human being’s life, and then when he was called on it he verbally attacked his own customers. He said if we supported the George Floyd protests we were unworthy of using his gear. Can you believe that? What kind of utter narcissist would say something like that? I owned three of his pedals. Two of them were on my main board at the time and one of them is still the best pedal of its kind I’ve ever heard. Those three pedals are now rotting in a box in my cellar where they will spend the rest of eternity. I don’t do business with assholes like that and I won’t let other people see me using his stuff on the off chance it might lead to a sale. Fortunately this asshole’s company went out of business not long after. Unfortunately, he has had some luck restarting it. 

Now there’s a new one to get pissed off about. Early this morning I saw a post on social media saying that the owner and operator of this very successful boutique pedal company that has been around since the birth of the boutique pedal market is a trump donor. The post included screen shots of receipts. I own two of this guy’s pedals. One of them is at my bass player’s house waiting for me to go over and pick it up. It’s possibly the best overdrive pedal I’ve ever played that isn’t made by Klon. The other is a mod of a well known overdrive that I put on my board about a month ago while looking to change up my sound for the demos I was making for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. One great pedal, one very good pedal. I was also thinking about buying another overdrive that this guy sells. I had actually put it into my shopping cart on musiciansfriend.com but had not yet pulled the trigger. Thankfully. I will not do business with a fascist or even a fascist collaborator. Not in this lifetime at least. To hell with this clown. I’ll have to pull his pedal off of my board. I’ll probably replace it with a King of Tone because Analogman is on the record as being very anti-trump and… well… selfishly and musically… its one of the best overdrive pedals on Earth. So… win win, I guess.

I hate it when fascism and racism and sexism and religious bullshit make me feel bad about myself musically. Fuck all of those assholes.

I wasn’t going to name names, but screw that. The gay conversion donation came from JHS, the George Floyd asshole was Fulltone, and the trump donor is Keeley Electronics.

Just Leak Them

How many people have seen the complete unredacted Epstein files? I saw a story tonight about a US congressman who was commenting on how the files definitely include something about trump raping kids. Has that congressman seen the documents with his own eyes? If so, I have one question for him and for anyone else who may have seen the full unredacted files…

Why haven’t any of you just leaked the whole thing to the press? Just put it all on a thumb drive or stack the print outs in a trapper keeper folder or something and just drop them off at your local newspaper office? 

Just leak the fucking files and get it overwith.

Your country requires this service. Leak the god damned files already. Help a country out. Do the right thing.

First of the Season

I looked out the window this morning not long after sunrise and saw this. There are actually two deer in this picture. The other one is on the other side of the bush that they were both sowing down on.

I took this through a window (obviously) using my iPhone. There was no noise at all but as soon as I snapped the pic both deer turned toward me and just stared at me. For a long time. It was like they were gazing into my soul, trying to decide if they were going to jump through the window and eat me.

I’ve had a super stressful week at work this week. Lots of shit going down. Nothing truly bad, just lots of stress. Knowing that I lost a staring contest to two super annoyed does at the very start of my day was just the kind of weirdness I needed to put it all into perspective.

Unrelated note: I think its 25 days until we see Rush again.

Frugal Film Project Take Two: September Edition

My first attempt at the Frugal Film Project made it through four months before it crashed and burned and died a painful death. May through August 2025, all success. September 2025… epic fail.

My second attempt at the Frugal Film Project has now officially survived through the first five months. We’re alive and kicking, kids! May through September 2026, all wins. Kick ass.

Take a cheap film camera like my Lomo Lubitel 166 Universal and a cheapish film like say Kentmere 100 or Kodak Gold 200 and shoot one roll each month for a year. Or you can be a friggin’ idiot like me and shoot two rolls a month in an attempt to punish yourself for screwing up your first attempt at this silly thing last year.

We start with a roll of black and white Kentmere 100 shot on Weir Hill in North Andover, MA at Lake Cochichewick on September 24, 2026 after a dentist appointment.

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I had such high hopes for this one… but…
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And there we have it. One roll of film down and one to go. The second roll started at Salisbury Beach at sunrise and then moved over to the Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island. They were taken on September 7, 2026.

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And that’s a wrap on the Kodak Gold 200 roll. Success. 12 shots on both rolls and everything came out. Amazing. 120 film. Medium format. Just dig that crazy resolution.

Now that its October I have to figure out what I want to do for month six. I want to do some fall foliage but the lens on this camera is slow and the two films I picked are also slow and I don’t think I will have much luck in the woods. Unless I bring a tripod. I could do that. Maybe. If I don’t I’ll just go back to Boston or something. We’ll see.

New California Film Day

I got the scans of my three rolls of film that I shot in California today! Happy new film day! Here are a few highlights to celebrate!

First, Pacific Beach…

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Next, Mission Beach… at this rate you’re all going to think we’re beach people when we are not… but when in San Diego, you go visit the Pacific Ocean.

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Up next is the Mission at San Juan Capistrano…

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And finally a few random spots on the road. There’s a scenic view spot on route 5 and a rest stop in the mountains overlooking Palm Desert, which we thought was Palm Springs but apparently we were wrong, and outside the visitors center in Joshua Tree.

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I still have a ton of digital photos to post and I’ll get to them eventually. For now though, the only question remaining is… when do we go back?

Lanterns

I had a million and one things on my to-do list for today and I didn’t Get to basically any of them. Now it’s 9:32pm and the only thing left is to watch the season finale of Lanterns. Let’s see if I can at least get that right. What do you say?

Kites

I took a shit load of photos in San Diego but I haven’t posted hardly any of them. What am I waiting for? Am I waiting for the film? Could be. I shipped four rolls of film to the lab in Los Angeles the other day and three of them were from the trip. I got the notification that the package had arrived yesterday. Now I just have to patiently wait for them to do their thing and develop my stuff.

For now though, while we wait for still more bad photos, here are some pics of kites on Mission Beach.

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The last one is my favorite.

So Depressed

The Cornell rape case

Trump expressed support for the rapists because of course the rapist supports the rapists.

They fired a bunch of generals. How much you want to bet that the firings were based on some sort of loyalty test? Gotta get rid of those who might not support the next January 6th, right?

Now we find that they are launching a probe to try to clear Nixon? Fucking Nixon?

The US is no longer worth saving.

Leaf Peeping

They are saying that the fall foliage is going to look really great this year but it for some reason is reaching peak early. We usually try to go u pto the mountains the second weekend of October. We might have to go the first weekend this year. That’s this weekend. Tomorrow is Thursday October 1st. How the hell did that happen?

Last week I went for a walk through the woods on a hiking path in North Andover, MA. I had my little medium format camera with me. I wanted to shoot a roll and that seemed like a good place to do it. The lens is slow though and the film I had was slow too. It was a bright sunny afternoon but in the woods I would have needed a tripod. I thought it would be fun to go back to that place when the leaves changed color in Massachusetts but I would not have much photographic success with the setup I had that day.

So the internets just delivered a few rolls of 800 speed film. That plus my cheap-o tripod plus some fall color and I think I might get some good pictures in the woods. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, I’m watching game two of the Red Sox wild card series against the fucking Yankees and the Sox have now gone 13 innings in the series without a run. I don’t know guys… maybe score some runs, m’kay?