Round Two

I went to bed feeling AWFUL last night. My nose was stuffed, my head feeling like it was about to explode. I woke up about four times through the night in a fit, coughing and shivering. This morning I felt even worse. My whole body aches, and that’s after the ibuprofen and Sudafed. I’m still in bed right now. Morpheus came to cuddle with me though. If I haven’t already introduced him, Morpheus is my dog.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you that “Invincible” comes out tomorrow. It’s the second single from Roe’s Garden. The irony of my current condition isn’t lost on me. Unlike the song, I am not invincible, but I’m going to push through to keep this train rolling.

It’s round two! Beautiful Idiots LLC’s second release of the calendar year. We’re still on track, which is hard to remember when I’m caught up in the day-to-day, but I’m very excited to share this song with the world. I’ll talk about it more tomorrow.

I’m curious to see if we get any playlisting support for this song, because I was finally able to use the Spotify for Artists tools. “Where Do You Go” made it into some user playlists (thank you) and even one editorial playlist curated by Spotify, but it was pretty quickly dropped. Isn’t it funny that if your song doesn’t continue to grow at a particular rate, they’ll take your song off the playlist? How is the song supposed to spread if you remove it from the outlet that provides that opportunity for growth in the first place? It’s so lame to be so obsessed with trying to be cool. The music industry is super lame these days.

Be that as it may, we’re putting out new music tomorrow. Hope you enjoy. Back to bed.

-J.P.

Something Random

I was going to just list some random things that came to mind while I sat here, but then I looked up the definition of random and it’s “made, done, happening or chosen without method or conscious decision” so I think since I decided to do this that means it can’t be random. Anyway…

• I used to make my mom paint Allen Iverson’s tattoos onto me with face paint just so I could go outside and shoot hoops in the driveway.

• I never said goodbye when I would leave my grandma’s house. We would always just say “see ya later”. It was her birthday last Friday.

• I can’t figure out for the life of me why some days I have crippling allergy attacks and other days I’m fine. Very annoying

• I found John Cleese’s book on Creativity to be a very encouraging read. I appreciate how he breaks down creativity into a very simple practice and I try to implement his strategies when I get stuck in my process.

• There are 67 books on the shelf to my right, and I’ve only read 13 of them. I’ve got to get on that.

• Why is it so freaking cold again all of a sudden?

• I’ve been meaning to go to the Apple Store for approximately eight months now.

• I’ve completed the New York Times Crossword 143 days in a row now. I don’t think it makes me smarter but I do think it’s nice to start your day by accomplishing a simple task.

• “Invincible”, the new single by Roe’s Garden releases on Friday. I’m curious to see how it performs, especially after the first Roe’s Garden single “Where Do You Go” exceeded my expectations. I’m gonna try not to be too affected by the outcome, whatever it is.

So, that’s what’s on my mind today. Again, not random. See ya later.

-J.P.

Scheduling

In my opinion, keeping a schedule is super lame. I’m just being honest. The whole reason I started this Beautiful Idiots thing was so I could do what I wanted, when I wanted. As time passes though, one thing has become abundantly clear: you need a schedule. It actually frees you up more.

I know I’ve said this before here, but this whole business thing seems to depend on discipline. If I want to do all the things I said I was going to do, that’s seven different aspects of a plan that require consistent attention. I like to break my days up into 2-3 hour blocks. If I want to be able to give attention to each aspect of our plan, that’s 14-21 hours of work a day! If I’m being honest I don’t think that’s sustainable so not everything gets love every day, but I’m generally trying to get 3-5 blocks in Monday-Friday. It’s exhausting, but I think it’s worth my freedom, so I try not to complain.

I’m being honest today though, so, I complain all the time. I’m going to try to stop dragging my feet through this and be more grateful that I have the opportunity to do what I want to do. I’m also going to try to get back on schedule.

This one was another one that was more for me than anyone else. I’ll try to think of some more fun stuff to talk about.

-J.P.

Touchin’ Butts

Is there anything better than touchin’ a butt? You get a good handful of tush and all the stresses of the world melt away. Sometimes you might even wanna rest your head on a butt; take refuge on a rear, if you will. Only ever do this with permission, of course.

That’s just what I’m thinkin’ about today. Touchin butts. It makes life better. I hope you get to touch a butt soon. With permission, of course.

-J.P.

A;sldfkh

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I’m sick of this shit

I bet you are too.

Nah, I’m just kidding. Sometimes you gotta just not think about nothin and do whatever feels good in the moment. As long as you don’t hurt anyone. Let loose! Don’t hold on to shit. Have fun. It’s fine. Relax. Take it easy. Am I making myself clear? It doesn’t matter. Nothing really matters. Stop acting like it’s the end of the world. Seriously, will you just give it a rest? Who’s you? ME? No you! What is happening? Are my fingers connected to my brain anymore? Help! HELP! HEEEEEEEEELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I’m just kiddin.

-J.P.

I’m Good, Bro

I gotta be honest. It’s been a stressful two weeks.

February has brought lots of new people and ideas into my life, and mostly all in ways that should be very exciting. For some reason though, I had an awfully hard time getting excited about it. I think it’s because I like to be able to make a plan and stick to it. February is only the second month of a year long plan - one I spent the last six months of 2022 putting together. So when there was an opportunity presented to us to try to speed things up I tightened. It was a route I hadn’t previously considered and it through me into a whole new world of possibilities. I spent the last two weeks trying to shift things around and I lost a little bit of focus.

We’ve also added a new element into the mix here at Beautiful Idiots LLC: social media. Let me tell you, creating content at hyper speed is not exactly my cup of tea. TikTok tells me the average viewer is watching our videos for 2-3 seconds so… wtf am I supposed to do with that. You know what I mean? Not the point. The point is it’s another thing added to the pile that we have to do every week.

So that’s what it’s been lately. Meetings with new people. Feeling like maybe somebody might help with one thing, so we should consider how to readjust to fit everything in, then finding out that’s probably not going to happen but somebody else might want to help another way, so maybe we should consider how to readjust to fit that in. Plus we gotta make seven clips a week for socials, and shoot music videos, and get new pictures, and make sure releases are uploaded, and make sure taxes are in order because deadlines are coming up, and I just started to feel like my head was gonna explode!

But hold on. Take a breath. I was working out and finally when my head was clear I remembered: This was my plan to begin with. The only schedule that really matters is the one I set for myself. As long as we stick to that, we’ll be good. Sure, somebody might jump on board at some point and speed things up, but that’s icing on the cake. The beautiful thing about it is it’s just us, and there’s no pressure.

It’ll be fine. I’m good, bro. I’m good.

-J.P.

Boxes

Here’s a note I found in my phone from sometime in 2019.

Moving out of one box

By putting things in boxes

So that later those things can be taken out and arranged nicely,

In a different box

And there’s my life in boxes

Three across and many down

Memories saved for later

And there are all my friends in their boxes

Scroll scroll scroll

Double tap

Silently judge

Didn’t mean to, but I did.

Sent that one to “ass eatin’ ain’t easy”

What are your group chats called?

A weekend away and I fell in love again

It’s not fair

And I’m sure she knows

But what am I supposed to do?

It was never my choice

Closer and further at the same time.

Yeah… I don’t know what it means either.

-J.P.

95%

It’s wonderful to chase a dream and start a business with your friends and stay independent and all that but most days I just do a whole bunch of shit I don’t want to do and that’s incredibly annoying. What I want to do is perform and play music. Lately that takes about five percent of my time at best. The other 95% is spent doing shit I don’t know how to do. I have some interest in learning how to do about 10% of said shit. I wouldn’t miss it for a second if I never had to worry about the other 85% of the shit again in my life.

Nevertheless, I persist.

-J.P.

Wu Wednesday

Today marks the season 3 premiere of Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga. This is a special day because that television show made the existence of Beautiful Idiots LLC possible. I’d like to talk about this at length one day and explain in detail how grateful I am and will all always be for this opportunity but I am very busy these days. Here’s the short version.

In early 2019 I got a chance to sit down with RZA and explain to him my vision for The New Hippies, the band I started with Zane in college. I had just quit my job and we had big plans to make a lot of music, but I needed money. Having said that I had just finished a degree in Screenwriting at Chapman and that I had an interest in filmmaking, RZA offered Understanding and myself a chance to learn his process and help out with the music on a new show he was making. That show was Wu-Tang: An American Saga. Over the next four years Understanding and I spent lots of late nights in his home studios recording, interpreting, and arranging the ideas RZA wrote for the score, and also were able to witness a television show get made. We even got a chance to be in it! (Season 2 Episode 6 if you’re curious. Un has a couple lines.) Then when we started the third and final season RZA gave us a chance to write original songs and try to get them placed in the show. We had a lot of success with this, placing eight songs in the show over three episodes. The licenses and publishing advance we got from those songs became the seed for this company.

We compiled a bunch of the songs we wrote for the show (whether they made it in or not) and we’ll be releasing an album by The New Hippies in April, and there are even a couple songs by Roe’s Garden in the show too, which will be coming out this month and next. So I just wanted to say thank you to the RZA for giving us a chance, and I hope you guys watch and enjoy the show on Hulu. The first three episodes premiere today. Wu-Tang is forever, and Wu-Tang gave us a chance to build something that lasts forever too. So in the words of RZA… “It ain’t safe no more! Peace!”

-J.P.