So what is a solar panel anyway? It is basically a box that holds an array of solar cells. Solar cells are the things that do the actual work of turning sunlight into electricity. However, it takes a lot of cells to make a meaningful amount of power, and they are very fragile, so the individual cells are assembled into panels. The panels hold enough cells to make a useful amount of power and protect the cells from the elements. It doesn’t sound too complicated. I was convinced I could do it myself.

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This past weekend I had the pleasure of knocking heads with my old punk band from high school, Heel. We blazed onto the Downers Grove/Chicago punk scene, blew minds and then self-destructed in a fury of drugs and gay, inter-racial sex. They still speak of us in whispers when they are brave enough to speak of us. ‘Genius’, is a word often used. So is ‘Gorgeous’ and ‘Vaguely Interesting’.

Heel was fun and it taught me a lot about creating a more interesting life, designed by my own interests without waiting for approval from some untouchable authority or record label. Few people in the early ’90s were plugged in enough to make original music, press it to vinyl and distribute it all by themselves, but the ones that were doing it were a gold mind of people and offered a master class to a young suburban kid of the important task of TCBing. In addition to pressing 7″s there was a thriving zine culture and a strong community of kids who loved playing music, dancing, and supporting one another. This was before the internet, mind you, but there was still a community connected (by phones at the time) where if your band was playing at some shitty VFW Hall in Indianapolis or something there would be a kid who would put you up for the night, feed you, and help you find some amusing trouble to get into.

My time in Heel opened up the world of DIY to me, demystifying, first, the record industry and then so many other aspects of living after that. It turned me on to Veganism (which I’ve happily recovered from), design, music production, political activism, business and community to name just a few. In all truth, our songs were pretty shitty, but the friendships and the fun were very real, very funny, and pretty exciting most of the time. And that’s what punk rock is supposed to be about anyway, right?

The sad side of this - as with age many things seem to be driven by sadness or, at least, tragedy or struggle - is that the bassist for Heel, Craig Ackerman, recently discovered his youngest daughter has cancer. She is presently undergoing treatment and seems to be doing well, but the improvement of her health speaks nothing of the medical bills that Craig and his family are having to deal with. To help the Ackerman’s through this difficult time the community that I was very proud to be a part of 16 years ago is still supporting one another. Names have gotten more recognizable and the talent has gotten a bit more compelling, but if you look at the movers and shakers in the Chicago indie rock scene the faces are all very familiar (though a bit fatter…).

That’s the long dramatic story of this storied reunion I drank myself through the other night. Some hot-shot honest to god indie rock STUDS put their tickers together and played a sold out show at the Empty Bottle for Craig, Stella and the rest of his family. Very fucking cool to see people pull together for someone like that.

If you would like to do your part to help make a darling little girls difficult time a bit less difficult you could send even just a little money, by PayPal, to this account (forstella@emptybottle.com) and feel real good about yourself for the rest of the day. Seriously, if you’ve got a spare $5 it would really help.

Now go do something you’ve always wanted to and make it really fucking cool.

I was turned onto this tutorial on building “self-watering” planters from old pop bottles through the Homegrown Evolution blog that’s generally got some interesting stuff. There’s no better time to start growing your own food than right fucking now.

Due to my prolific need to clear my bowels, at home and during VYPH recordings, I’ve been joyfully escaping the borish realities of 21st century human behaviorisms by indulging myself in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed creation, Sherlock Holmes.

You could imagine my excitement when I just came across the news that Robert Downey, Jr. will be playing him in a new film adaptation directed by fallen Kabbalist Guy Ritchie. I believe this calls for a “Huzzah!”

I think the only thing that could make me happier than this would be to find out that Quentin Tarantino was going to take a shot at the Raymond Carver’s Philip Marlowe mythology. Seriously, how do we make this happen?

Read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories for free, on-line at Sherlockian.net

If you haven’t done yourself the favor of indulging in one of western literatures greatest fictional creation’s let me coerce you with this opening paragraph from the Musgrave Ritual. Come on, the guy is a coke-shooting Mason who, when he’s not solving fucking mysteries, lounges about his cluttered apartment in a drug haze using his pistol to languidly shoot sketches into the wall across from him. Keith Richards can kiss Sherlock Holmes’ ass. Read on:

“An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should distinctly be an open-air pastime; and when Holmes in one of his queer humours would sit in an arm- chair, with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V.R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.

Amazing. I love this guy and miss him so much.

I would love to get a hold of one of those fancy new guns that shoots voices into people’s heads and just run this bit on repeat to everybody in this fucking country.

“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”