A video i did of a Pecha Kucha presentation I gave  about the transplant, I altered the form to better suit the net but more or less its the same

You can also check out a story by  Kristin Tilitson in the Mpls StarTribune

Its new years and if there is a better time for self-reflection I can’t think of it. I am truly blessed, and blessed is one of those

Me and William the Conqueror

words I hate. Its usually uttered by people in lifetime movies whose lives seem far from blessed.  Its uttered by people who think that every misrung item at the grocery store is a message from Heaven rewarding them.  But I will use it because in this case its true. For Christmas I got a life back, a different life the one I had before but life none the less. I have been incredibly fortunate not just from  Scott’s graciousness, But the amazing people who helped in my care: my Dialysis team of Lindsay, Jenn, Kate and Chonda. A team that helped me to establish a new albeit temporary normal. I can’t state enough how incredible they were, they went above and beyond, bringing me from someone who couldn’t really walk and was a mental mess, to a normal productive member of society.

The team at the U being equally amazing: my surgeon Ty Dunn who is the kind of doctor that I thought only existed  on TV,  personable, real and went  far beyond the call of duty. The nursing staff of the transplant clinic that helped through  the rather rough transitional period, Dana and Rita in particular. This isn’t just about  the medical side  but the also important human side as well.

For those who are late to the story and in need of recap allow me to catch you up. On December 1, (2009) I received a kidney transplant,  after  6 month on dialysis (often refereed to  Happy Fun Time), this after being diagnosed with IGA Nepropathy (referred to as Harold) 3 years prior and probably having it since high school or junior high. My kidney donor the nicest man on earth Scott Pakudaitis and i arranged the whole thing via Twitter and Facebook, not meeting in meatspace till Thanksgiving,4 days before. (i did know him prior but not well. He named the kidney William the Conquer; he who defeated King Harold) .

They  say that in getting a transplant your essentially trading one disease for another, Its a disease thats not has bad to be certain. But its not without  its issues at least in the beginning. To be precise most of the first month after getting out of the hospital was spent going back and forth between the transplant clinic at the U. Getting infusions  which is a fancy way of saying iv treatments. In the beginning it was an anti-rejection drug called Thymo, a 5 hour affair  chock full of side effects like nausea, mystery rashes and my personal favorite red eyes giving me the appearance of an albino rat- not my best look. From there I moved on to saline , a much more palatable 2 hour process. Of course combined with testing and such it still made for 5 1/2 hour day (starting at the unreasonable time of 6:50 am). My new diet has an addition of some 40 separate pills a day, in addition to a minimum of 2 liters of fluid a day.  My job is in a sense to take drugs ,drink, pee and sleep; while that sounds like Hunter Thompsons dream life; it’s a lot less glamorous  then it sounds.

Of course these drugs have side effects, sadly none of said side effects are anything cool (once i want to take a drug where the side effect is  telekinesis  or invulnerability as opposed to” loose or watery stools”) I am finally getting over the side effects of a drug that I got in the hospital which was to make me very emotional. I would get teary eyed at the drop of a hat; at commercials,  “Bring it On”, an episode of Extreme Makeover. It made for an interesting holiday season.

Recovery is a weird process, mine was a bit more complex then anticipated, in part because of wacky blood pressure/ dehydration issues. int the beginning my blood pressure would barely be at 100/70 and would plummet to 65/50 when standing. Normal blood pressure is 120/80. Now i am on pills that make me hold on to water, which  in turn raise my blood pressure to 140’s/90’s  and then blood pressure bills which lower that to the the 130’s over 90’s I still drop 30 or so points when standing, but its still enough that i can stay walking.  Needless to say that sort of keeps me from getting back to a more normal life. But its a month out so really its not all that bad. The transplant coordinator, sort of your personal cruise director for your post transplant experience tells me this isn’t all that weird. and it will get sussed in the next few weeks.

The greatest risk in transplant rejection is in the first month, then it lowers by some big percentage for the first six weeks, then the first six months. Each anniversary the percentage lowers more. Rejection is treatable for the most part, but even still I’d rather not find out.

My goal is for this not to be a big deal, much the same way I dealt with Harold in the beginning refusing to let it define my life. I  still made records, made a film, not to mention a glorious if not completely unseen pilot for KTCA. The problem is for the time being recovery sort of takes precedent over life.  But that time will come when this is just an answer on a post card, much like

Me in Dialysis

“did you know George Lopez had a kidney transplant- say have you seen his new show. Yeah me neither”. In the meantime everyday i feel a little better, a little more me like.

I would be remiss also if I didn’t thank everyone for there support  which has been amazing  almost a 1000 comments on my profile the week of the surgery, and even more during the recovery time . I thank each and everyone, that made this so much better even though i was alone in my hospital room , just me and a morphine drip I knew I really wasn’t. That kind of support can literally help you move mountains. I am a amazed at peoples  generosity, be it with time, food , gift certificates for more food,a toy squirrel,  comics or just a nod in my direction. It is truly overwhelming and most humbling. I also need to mention how amazing my wife is: Mo went above and beyond,  she really was incredible and continues to be.  My wife rules.

The big fear with this: who am I when this is all done. We are in fact a big collection of chemicals  you change that balance you change your definition. Plus how much of the last year has been me and how much has been Harold. With Harold I felt old, really old. Every day that i had Happy Fun Time, I felt like i was being put out to pasture. Like it was a life less then vital, which for me was a special sort of  hell. I have been pretty fortunate in being the thick of things for most of my life/career, and now i felt like i was in the old hipsters home. Now I don’t feel that way at all its like my own personal youthquake- in spite of the fact I can’t bend over or lift anything more then 10 pounds. It feels like the start of act 2, as opposed  to the middle of the third act.

I have no idea what the future is going to bring right now, but I can’t wait. Whatever it is it’s gonna be amazing.

And Scott , i promise to live up to the potential you gave me

Ever start something silly that just sort of takes on a life of it’s own? Welcome to Snaildartha: The Story of Jerry the Christmas Snail. It started as a silly little idea: Make the Life of Buddha into a Christmas story oh yeah and make it a snail. The story was originally created to be read by Shawn Stewart as part of the Red Eye Collaborations Uneasy Listening series Holiday extravaganza. Cause nothing says Christmas like a whole mess of feedback.

Time marches on as Time is want to do and in 2003 we retooled Snaildartha this time as a Soul Jazz record, a Christmas gift for friends and family limited to 100 copies, then we gave it away free on the internet. It sounded , well kind of awful but it was free, two years latter we remixed it and it was released on Innova, as a limited edition of 500, and it did quite well. Then of course Tower records folded, and most of the copies disappeared into the either, now you can buy it from Innova, for a reasonable price, or on GEMM or Ebay for a ridiculous price (last time I checked about $35 (us)

All the while every holiday it seems my bandwidth bills would spike up in December, that’s when I remembered the original was still up.

So now we are taking it down, but not to fret here in its stead is the remixed, remastered version yours for free. Sure its available on Itunes but the labels never sent me a check, so pppbbbtttt to them. And Happy Holidays to you!

The band here is truly something else Organ by Scott ”Pink Slippers” LeGere master session player and demigod of the Ecletone records label, On Drums the Buddha of the beat Mr. Terry “Poker Face” Haanen, and rounding out the musical trio Free Jazz legend George Cartwright , one of the many things that makes this record special is that it marks a much more melodic side of his playing, as opposed to the insanity of his group Curlew.The story is told (and mostly written by)by Comedian and raconteur Matt Fugate. Mixed by Brian “don’t give me nickname” Jacoby .Mastered by Bob ”What’s with all these strange capitalization last names” DeMaa and produced and directed by me ; Chris Strouth.So here it is Download and spread the wealth, its Creative Commons licensed and you can use it as lon as its not commercial.

Happy Holidays from all of the Snaildartha 6 and your friends at AlliedChemical.com

PS: these are the liner notes from the original l release just for the purists:

So dig it: in your hands you hold a special Holiday gift just for you. well that would be the case if this was the disc, but since it’s the Internet you probably have something else in your hands…like a mouse! The Story was written by Matt Fugate and myself a few years ago for the Red Eye Uneasy Listening series Christmas Show, where it was read by Shawn Stewart, who still is annoyed about some of the tongue twisters she had to pronounce. To be honest I don’t remember what year that was, anyway suffice it to say Britney Spears was still a virgin.

The story hasn’t changed too much since it debuted. It was one of those ideas that I always wanted to revisit, so here it is, reborn as a soul jazz record. Well, a soul jazz record about a Christmas snail, that’s really just a thinly veiled retelling of the life of Buddha. But isn’t that what Christmas is all about; Jazz, Buddhism, and Snails. Well, it has as much to do with Christmas as a fat guy with a thing for elves.

As to why you have a copy, well, you must be pretty special because there are only 100 of these made.Ok well again since your seeing this on the internet you might not be as special, I mean i am sure your special to someone not necessarily to me but someone must like you.Even GW Bush has friends, granted there all on the board of Haliabriton but they must like him. Just a little bit of holiday cheer that comes from the heart, for people that are special to us, and of course you poachers on the net who might like it as well.
Happy Holidays,

It’s a little easier on my bandwidth if you just get the zip download, but if you want to here what it sounds like then here are the first two tracks:

Rhapsody In Snail
(1 Meg)

<A Snail is Born
(4 Meg)

This work
is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

The Uptown Bar really seemed to hit its stride in that mid late to late 90’s, for a good deal of that time there were really only two “credible” bars to do alternative shows, there and the 7^th Street Entry. No offense to the Fine Line but they were still having their supper club period and it wasn’t a great fit for a band like Dumpster Juice, The 400 hadn’t had their revival yet, and Goofy’s and the Longhorn were long since gone.

I think it’s important to keep in perspective the whole idea of  “alternative” at the time it was big culture wise, but not like it is now; a time before your mom listened to NIN. Then it still had some cachet of being underground, you still had to work a little to find ironic t-shirts or the first Yo La Tengo record.  Unlike today where every mall has a Hot Topic –the Emo Superstore, and everything is accessible all the time, then scarcity was still a commodity. That era helped to make the Uptown an important clubhouse in the fraternal order of hipsterdom.

During that time I was the Director of A&P for the Twin/Tone Record Group, I liken it working for Sun or Chess records- but in the 60’s: still cool but past the era of earth shattering. We did make some phenomenal records, they where just lost in a sea of  other records. When the Replacements came out there were maybe2-3000 records released a year in the US, by the mid 90’s that number was more like a 100,000, Now with internet and digital releases that number is really incalculable.

We booked a lot of shows at both venues, but probably a bit fewer at the Uptown for one reason: Maggie the booker scarred the hell out of me.

Bar bookers tend to be a legendary breed, they always at the center of tales told by musicians and management in the wee hours: their kindness, their curmudgeony, and their pure unadulterated craziness.  It was a business run by characters and Maggie was most certainly a character. She wasn’t inhospitable or mean, rather imposing, I never had a call with her that I didn’t feel like I was wasting her time, even when we did shows that sold out the room. As intimidating as that was it’s also what made that room great. You could have Oasis there one night and Vinnie and the Stardüsters the next, and it didn’t seem incongruous- it just seemed like the Uptown.

My favorite stories of that place though are much less specific, just great slivers of memory: The plethora of Funseekers shows, almost all of which where Keith Patterson one of the greatest front men the Twin Towns have ever produced would at some point drop his pants- and it sort of made sense; granted the same action now would probably find him sued. The freighting and mildly dangerous backstage area. The ripped booths and cantankerous bartenders and sound system that was always les then ideal- it was if all the negatives added to a plus- a Minneapolis CBGB’s but cleaner and with French fries.

Some of my most important memories of the uptown don’t involve bands at all; rather breakfast there the day after. More meetings and planning were held there then I care to recall. It was Zine head quarters for both And She Said, and the Wrap Up. Mostly because of it’s proximity to Kinko’s (well that and the Bloody Mary’s) where we would sneak time on the computers and be made fun of by Peter Davis while he worked on the far bigger Your Flesh.

I negotiated more then one contract at those booths, and laid the ground for countless others, met girls, dated girls and broke up with girls all to a stompin’ 4/4 backbeat and the largest food ever envisioned by man and the most disgusting bathrooms short of a bus station in southern Alabama. In short it was a bar like any other bar, and unlike any other bar.

Once Maggie was gone, it just wasn’t the same. Not for me at least. It’s liked the spirit left the building and I found myself spending less and less time there. When I did go it was for reason of sentimentality, but what they say is true you can’t go home again. At least that home was more of a sense of time than a sense of place.