[Note: the new Mixed Bag image is from a Google image search for Mixed Bag. This is apparently a mixed bag of yoga mats.]
I've been writing for this website off and on for over five years now. That's a long time. I have never had a girlfriend (or wife) for that long, I have never had a
band for that long, and I haven't lived in one place for that long since my parents moved us away from St. Louis sixteen years ago. Almost everything I've written
is archived here (there were a few of the early articles that somehow got lost - as evidenced by one of the articles being entitled "The State of the Union, Part 2"
with no part one anywhere) and you can see that it goes back to 1999. There was actually a precursor to Because I Can and Sex Stone called H.O.T.G. back when
I lived in Virginia. H.O.T.G. stands for Hammer of the Gods - a pretty lame Led Zeppelin reference, actually. When Jimmy Page was asked what he was looking
for in a promotional picture of himself he said "Power, mystery, and the Hammer of the Gods." (They also used the phrase in one of their songs, but I digress).
So, anyway, I thought that was a pretty cool and obscure reference to call my website at the time. Thankfully, I decided to change it (although the hits built up
from people looking for porn sites with "HOT Girls").
So I built this site and used Because I Can as the name of the online magazine portion. Because I Can comes from the old line about why a dog licks his balls:
because he can. Someone asked why I had a website and my answer was: because I can. It fit and I still like it today. Then, once other writers began
contributing to the site, Because I Can became the main menu and we each had names for our individual articles. I chose Mixed Bag for mine.
The name Mixed Bag goes back to a band I was in a long time ago (about, say, 1994-1996ish). We never did much except write songs, rehearse, and get drunk.
The thing about being in a band (for those of you that have never been in one) is that people are always asking you what kind of a band you are. The other thing is
that every musician hates to answer that question. They don't want to be labeled or say they 'sound like' someone because, dammit, their music is unique and
special and not like anything else. So, Mixed Bag got it's name from our refusal to come up with an answer to the question. Someone asked once and I said
something to the effect of "well, we've got a mixed bag of influences..."
The thing is, though, that I came to embrace the *idea* of Mixed Bag as a philosophy. I thought it would be an admirable goal to be a mixed bag as an individual. I
prided myself of being able to intelligently discuss just about any topic from politics to religion to movies to music to whatever. While the band, Mixed Bag, never
panned out, the name stuck with me. So when it came time to name this column that I've been writing, I figured that it was perfect, because the articles would be
a mixed bag of whatever topic interested me on a given day.
This brings me to the point of this inane discussion of the history of my website and the reasons why I've named things: I feel like I've lost my way somewhere
along the line. I have trouble coming up with things to write about, which is the antithesis of the mixed bag philosophy. I have too often relied on cheap gimmicks
like linking to a news article and making a sarcastic comment and then moving on to the next link. Those articles are easy, both for me to write, and for the reader
to digest, but really don't present anything of substance. Or I've fallen back on the old standby: movies from the 80's. There's nothing wrong with that, but how
many articles like that have I done? Eventually I'm going to be stuck writing an article about Teen Wolf Too and then you'll know I've hit the bottom of the barrel.
Ok, so I'm a crappy writer that can't even stick to his own philosophies - so what? Well, I don't know what. I'm not going to promise to make a change, because
those kinds of things sound foolish. But I'm going to try to try (as a wise man once said).
Now that I've bared my writer's soul, I will leave you with a quote (and if you can tell me where the quote is from and who said it, I'll give you $5 at the next Gogs
gig you attend*):
"Ladies and Gentlemen take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice."
*Members of The Gogs are not eligible for the $5.
And For No Apparent Reason
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