Chasing Aces The Musical

Aaaand we're back and better than ever with lots to talk about. We've been relatively busy here at Desperate Times, and we relish the opportunity to share some of the fruits of our labor with you; our loyal followers.

Jared was in a movie, a movie musical to be exact. It is very short. It was produced by a great group of people, collectively known as Four Square Productions We wrote, rehearsed, shot, edited and scored this baby in 24 hours. Brainstorming began at ten p.m. Friday night. By 12:30, Eric had written the music and lyrics. We started Recording the scratch track around 1:30 at CBS studios, in the 'Guiding Light' editing room. By about 4 a.m. we had finished recording and headed out to Queens to shoot the outside chase scenes. Around Five a.m. Ben, Damian and I begin running around Queens in the freezing cold rain... Observers would have witnessed a magician running down Woodside blvd, being chased by a frenchman and a cowboy (I play the frenchman) It was freezing, we were exhausted and we had no water... it was a glorious experience, some of the most fun I've ever had. By 8:30 we were fed and setting up for the first interior shot. Shooting went smoothly and by 1 p.m. we had wrapped. We returned to CBS studios by 3:30 to edit and score the film. Aside from an hour of laying down guitar tracks, I was asleep for this period of time on a fake hotel room bed from the set of Guiding Light. By 10 p.m. Saturday we had submitted our film to the 24-hour NYC film race! The screening will be next Saturday at the NYU Cantor Film Center on Washington and University place. The cast and crew were all amazing to work with - we all had a blast churning this baby out. So here she is, without any further ado...

Chasing Aces

Chasing Aces: The Musical from Josh Miller on Vimeo.

Next up... Jared croons at the Wyndham Garden Hotel 4/1,4/2

Weekend Update with USA & Puerto Rico

This is the first straight up "Blog Entry" in a looooong whhile. First thing's first... a show is a coming folks - I promise that all you Desperate Timer folk, rock, acoustic, electri-pop, alterna-funk, prosaic-rock fans that there will be a Desperate Times live performance soon enough. We'll hopefully be playing with Kara Thrace's Secret Death Wish and The Secret Cyclon Club... somewhere in Brooklyn or the village... so please, look for that entry very soon. Leave comments like "Jared, get on this, we want to hear you again since Songs About Real LIfe (co-written with the hilariously talented Eric March) blew the roof off of Ars Nova last November!"

I hear you my children, I hear you. Give it a week and I'll have somethin' cooking that all y'all alterna-freaks and musical theatre punks will want to come see. It'll be one part prose, one part poetry, one part spontaneous rant, a whole lot of conga banging, Piano pounding and Guitar Thrashing... give or take a jews-harp plucking here or there.

I'm currently watching USA take on Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, which not a lot of Americans seem to give a shit about. Well, this American gives a lot of shits about it. Unfortunately we are down 6-1 at the moment in the top of the 5th. Go Jeter!!! More could happen, if we score - there will be a subsequent post... but we must continue.

Baseball Season is around the mother frakking corner and I'm groin-grabbingly excited to walk in to the new Yankee Stadium on opening day and re-proclaim my love for this beautiful ballpark & my loyalty to this awe inspiring team. This is it folks, this is the year we bring a championship home to NEW YORK FRakkin City! She deserves it, I deserve it, and even if A-Rod Doesn't deserve it, we'll let him ride along the victory parade float anyway just so he doesn't feel left out.

Times are tough and tight my friends. I couldn't find two quarters to rub together to get me out of borough today to save my frakking life. Oy - it makes me think there must be some kind of way out of here.

A word on the use of Frak - It's from Battlestar Galactica, the greatest show on television. Haters, give it a try - I guarantee if you watch the 3-hour miniseries and don't like it, it means you're not human and have no business on this planet.

We finally got an update from the good folks at T2R, by way of webmaster Mr. Jason "Sweettooth" Williams that Things 2 Ruin, the incendiary cyclone of Songs by Mr. Joe Iconis should be rearing it's ugly head sooner than you think. This is very exciting news for us here at Desperate Times. Mr. Iconis knows how to write a godsdamn good song... songs about hate and hope, jailbait and whiskey and Desperate fucking times. We eagerly await T2R's New home - so from us here at Desperate Times to ya'll over there at T2R blog - Godspeed and Good hunting.

Everyone else: Let's make some fucking art. If you have a poem or song or scene or picture that you'd like to see on the blog - let me know and i'll throw it up there asap! coming soon: The Fabulously Talented and ultimately adorable helen Parson and her cavalcade of comics.

Till then

Om Mani Pad Me Hum

I am Flight

Desperate Times Prose: Volume XI

I am Flight

Perchance to fly
to soar above the clouds
to slice through the maelstrom of human rage
to rise above the confusion

I pick up my left foot
the ground remains
I pick up my fright foot, it disappears
the ground disappears

I am become the angel of light beholding the glory of eternal futility
I am become a moment in time's pocket
I am flight

I remember, briefly
I must be dreaming
day begins to break and I walk the path between dreams and consciousness.

Consciousness resumes
I can't remember how to fly
In theory, I can recall how it's done,
Lift the left foot - Good
Halfway there now

"Lift the right foot," I tell myself...
Try Harder
...but it is no use, my foot remains firmly planted on the ground...

I recall my dream
I picture myself soaring through the stratosphere
higher and higher, out in to space
I pause and look to contemplate Earth
I see pain and suffering, and beauty; trying so desperately to be noticed
I notice,
I am calm
I am zen
I am flight.

Did I really remember how to fly in my dream?
Or did I just dream that I remembered?

Opening Night

Desperate Times Prose Series: Volume X

Life Is a dress rehearsal
Death, is the real performance



A Note from the author:

You've heard the saying, "Life is not a dress rehearsal" - I disagree
You've heard the saying, "bad dress rehearsal, great opening night" - I completely agree

Desperate Times Goes Global

The chart above shows how many languages our little site here is viewed in. As you can see from the pie chart, Desperate Times has indeed gone global. The page is now being viewed (by a very small percentage of you) in Chinese and German. I wonder if the fresh prose is translated accurately, and if it conveys the same meaning. Either way, you are welcome to read, listen, view and comment in any language. We here at Desperate Times thank you for making us the site we are today. We hope for future growth. In fact, it's my goal to have the fresh prose poetry being read in every continent and dozens of countries across the globe by the end of the year. So tell your friends, professors, classmates, brothers, sisters, savants, hobos, jews, gentiles, wasps, asps, elephants... anybody who has access to a computer.

More to come soon,

Next up:

Featured Artist Series Volume 1: Helen Parson

...till then...

Thanks for reading

-Jared