Shit! Tomorrow is already December 1st! I don’t know about you all but this time of year completely depresses me.

2005 (for me) will be known as the Year of Deception. It started out with promise though.

I really wish I could open up a little more and go into details …perhaps I would if I were blogging under a fake name…or perhaps I’ll just cut loose someday soon and do a blog-tell-all. Perhaps I’ll just forget about it all for now and continue to chew like this Giraffe. Probably for the best.

[Me and Mom at the Beach "Thanksgiving 2005"]

Well…As I mentioned in the last post, my mother flew in from Michigan and my Aunt and Cousin flew in from Pennsylvania. We did some tourist things…hit the beach…Disneyland…The Walk of Fame in Hollywood…Rodeo Drive…Melrose…Sunset Blvd… And we even managed to squeeze in a Thanksgiving meal(free of Bird Flu). It was a very nice visit.

Tomorrow, I drive to LAX Airport to pick my mother(who is flying in from Michigan) and my Aunt and Cousin(who are flying in from Pennsylvania)… then we’re driving down to Orange County (The OC) to enjoy Thanksgiving(Turkey Day).

I’m guessing at some point this weekend, we’ll probably do Disney; mandatory for someone whose 1st time it is, coming to Southern California (AKA My Aunt and Cousin). It should be a fun weekend(as far as fun weekends go). 

If you haven’t already noticed, there’s a recurring theme to this blog entry(with all these parenthesis). I’m going to see just how many times I can over-use these suckers(like this). It’s a little like the subliminal man character from SNL (for those of you old enough to remember that).

Let’s just see if (buy my T-Shirts and CD as Christmas Gifts) that subliminal stuff actually works. Actually, you might not realize this, but I now have this blog entry flashing secret coded messages(but only people who are color blind can see it). This blog is also transmitting an ultra-high frequency message promoting the the CD on iTunes(but only Italian Greyhounds can hear it).

Well…That’s about all for now(until the next time I give into my blog addiction). My guess is that over the next few days, I’ll be busy doing family stuff(like eating turkey and talking nasty about other relatives who aren’t around).

If by some chance I don’t get to blog again before(U.S. observed)Thanksgiving, let me say my Happy Thanksgiving now!

Hope those of you who are celebrating a holiday weekend have a great one!

(don’t you just love parenthesis?)

par-en’-the-sis ….it just sounds SEXY huh?

…Rats! I swear I was planning on not blogging today at all. ……must….not…….log in….wordpress…...[entering password]…

[clicking the "Write" tab]…..[Spinning my head around and spitting pea soup]

Call the blog priest! RELAPSE…but for good reason

Today I got a nice email from Chris [AKA C-Dogg] who I met at the Portable Media Expo last week asking me if I’d be interested in being part of a CD "The Top Podsafe songs of 2005"…count me in.

As some of you know from previous blogs I’ve done, Chris spins the top 10 songs by podcasters all over the world…This week "Upside Down" is #1. [Jumps up and does the "happy dance"] Sweet!

Click here to have a listen to my interview and the countdown.

Thanks Chris! And thanks to podcasters out there for spinning the track! Upside Down is just the song that keeps on giving. Anyone with a high speed access can view the QuickTime video here (performed live with my old band Moisture).

Ok…now I can go back to my 12 Step Blogging Program

I’m taking a Blog-Break.

For over a year I’ve been updating the journal on a daily basis…and yesterday, as I was sitting here thinking "oh, I need to blog" I realized… I DON’T need to blog. I don’t need to do anything.

I do like the whole writing exercise of taking time out of the day and jotting down what I’m thinking even when my mind is blank. The sad truth? I like to write, even if I may not be the best at doing it. God knows, I make enough typos and grammar mistakes.

So what’s this post all about Alfie? Well…what I’m thinking is, that I’m going to cut back on blogging. Perhaps weekly? Maybe I’ll do 4 days in a row …and then nothing for a week. I just don’t know… I’m just going to wing it from now on.

What I do know is that I’m starting to feel an obligation…obsession…addiction to public journaling. Sadly, I stumble through my day and if something strikes me, my immediate thought is "I’m so blogging this tomorrow". My guess is, most bloggers go through this too.

1. Obligation? It seems the more I write, the more the website goes up in rank. I set a goal to get the site under #100,000 at Alexa.com. It’s well exceeded that mark… and as of now, it’s #75,850. [Not too shabby considering I was at like 4 million a few years ago] All this leads me to:
2. Obsession. I am now to the point where I’m a little worried to STOP. So I’ll admit I’m competitive and I like to work for being the best at whatever I do. I doubt many people set out to do something badly, but I get to be borderline compulsive about things. The same goes for playing hockey, tennis..and music. And I’ll be the 1st to admit I have a highly …
3. Addictive personality. So now that I’ve psychoanalyzed myself, I’ve realized that a 12 Step Blogging Program might not be such a bad thing. And so…I’m taking the 1st step by admitting it. The 2nd step for me is to CUT BACK.

I know all this will make the site’s rank fall…and that’s ok. The site counter shows I average about 400 unique visits a day [which doesn't count the people who have the RSS in their newsreaders]…I know that’ll all drop. That too is ok.

Hell…maybe I’ll refocus my energy and just write a book…make a movie…finish the next CD…all of the above.

I hold back quite a bit on the blog anyway and open up much more in music[perhaps it's because I can hide secret meanings in songs]. Someone once emailed me saying that reading my journal was a sort of "Reality TV Blog" and that I expose myself for all to read….but in all seriousness, I try not to talk about anything TOO personal.

So before this entry turns into the never-ending post about nothing. Let me put a cork in it. To be continued…whenever. End of Season 1.

Of course…I might wake up tomorrow and think "what the hell was I posting about yesterday?"   We’ll call that a blogging relapse.

The new Superman Returns Teaser is supposed to air on tonight’s Smallville…but why wait when you can see it online? SWEEEEEEEET!

Well, yesterday was fun!

I arrived at the studio just having done a crash course in the song. Being familiar with a song and knowing it, are two different things…I was just familiar so I brushed up on the lyrics beforehand. Of course, I learned way more than I really needed. Basically it was the easiest paycheck of my life…and pretty damn fun! I was only there an hour or so and just had to sing about 2 lines of the song, which is all they needed.

Got a nice email from Chris afterwards saying:

Hey Bob,

It was good seeing you again. Thanks for coming over on such short notice.

I think your track turned out great…I’ll shoot you an MP3 of the mix tomorrow night. Your vocal sound is just what the track (and our client) was looking for. We ended up using your lead vocal, doubled with a touch of a low harmony done by this other guy. Your voices blend really well in this context.

Thanks again

And so…that was nice. Now let’s see if it gets aired. Either way…I had a ton of fun and felt at home being back in the studio again. It made me start to itch for more recordings. I’m going to see about booking some time at this same studio. More on that later…

This actually came at a good time…I have been in a massive funk for some time that’s really seemed to thicken up more lately and cloud the mind. Usually that sort of thing kicks in when I realize how utterly gullible I’ve been over the last 7 months to buy into the "let’s dangle the carrot over the donkey’s head and see if we can get him to jump"…

Chalk it up to just another lesson learned…but I’m so tired of unwanted lessons. My thought for the day is…people with good intentions mean well, but unless they follow through they’re just a distraction.

Either way…I need to move in ANY direction before I become a statue.

Sorry I didn’t write a journal entry yesterday… It just seemed like anything I would have said would have been pissy so I decided not to write at all.

Things started to brighten up at last night’s hockey game though. We MURDERED the other team. Final score 8 to 1 [I got 1 goal and 1 assist] and we were making some really great NHL type passing and shots. I’d like to think that we just got better as a team but I think the other team just played badly. [End of Hockey Blurb]

Driving home late last night I got an email asking me if I’d be interested in singing for a commercial for The Sheraton Hotel. And so today at 4pm I’ll be in the studio trying my best to sing a song made popular by Pat Benatar called "We Belong"…Chances are, I’ll just be singing about 30 seconds of the chorus and they’ll throw it in the background with some sort of narration pushing how you all belong at the Sheraton Of course, the original song is way out of my vocal range so I’m hoping they decide to do it in another key. More to come on this…it might not even get aired but I’m always hopeful. Either way, it sounds like fun.

Oh… for anyone interested, you can now get the song Upside Down and Babe as a Ringtone for your mobile phones. Here’s the link: BOB GENTRY RING TONES. Perhaps I’ll add more songs if there’s interest in those. Honestly, I’m not really sure how Ringtones work… but I’m told people go crazy with ‘em.

Need to run now…

Here’s more quickie shots from the Expo yesterday. I’m not sure how many of you have ever been to these sorts of conventions but it’s just a big open hall filled with booths. If any of you have ever been to Namm… this is sort of like a smaller version of that. [Namm goes on every year in Anaheim, CA. and has the latest musician gear(it's SWEET). This year's Namm show is Jan. 19 through 22].

I think the Expo will end up growing with each year…perhaps eventually it’ll get to be as huge as Namm. Actually…Podcasters would be wise to grab a booth at Namm for some cross-promotional stuff.

Here’s a little gadget I thought was pretty cool. A cube Mp3 Player by mobiBLUE. The gal in the booth said it holds a gig of memory….I think I’d be too worried I’d lose it…either that, or buy 5 of ‘em and play a game of Yahtzee

I snapped this picture of Rufus[below] posing in the booth that was showing off UNDERWATER CASES for PALM PILOTS (just in case, you need to check your Palm Pilot while SCUBA DIVING). I didn’t see one that looked like it fit the Treo 650 though

I’ll be the 1st to admit that I’m totally addicted to my cell phone/Palm Pilot…but I’m pretty sure I’d be able to handle not having to check my email underwater!  I wonder who saw a need for this product.

There didn’t seem to be too many people lined up to check out this booth. I guess there weren’t that many scuba divers at the expo.

This sort of reminded me of a product you might see in Sky Mall (You know, those magazines you find in Airplanes). Looking through Sky Mall Magazine is my most favorite part of flying.

Here’s another shot… Wendy from GABBER JAW [whose podcast I'm listening to now]and Chris from The PMC Top 10. Notice our little tags around our necks? That basically says we are important people [kidding] ….actually those little tags came in handy to me. It helped with starting conversations even though I found myself starting quite a few conversations the same way.  

Speaking of cool gadgets, Chris used this neat little digital stereo recorder about as big as a pen case to interview me. [Chris be sure to edit out anything stooopid I'm sure I said]

Well…that’s it for the photos from the Expo. All in all…I’m glad I went.

Normally, I have hockey games on Sundays but for some reason our game this week is Monday at 10pm. No big deal to me, but it does make today NOT feel like Sunday. "And on the 7th day, he Ice Skated"…isn’t that how the line goes?

I just stepped in a few hours ago from the Podcasting Convention in Ontario, CA … I took a few photos from it and will post those after I download them from the camera. I’ll try to get those posted by tomorrow.

The Expo was fun…I snagged Rufus to come along with me [since he's into electronic gadgets, computer software, and other forms of technology as well] and I think he enjoyed it too. Though the convention was geared more at podcasters rather than musicians, I still enjoyed myself.

I was happy to get to meet Chris AKA "C-Dogg"… who did a quickie interview with me for his weekly show. [I'll post more pictures from that tomorrow]

Chris was pimpin’ me to some of the other podcasters he knew there. Let me just say…how great it is to have someone saying something nice about you to others.

Back when I was in a band, I could easily pump up the group to other people and "sell it"….it’s much easier to say…"hey, check out the band I’m playing in, we rock"…etc… But now doing the whole "solo thing"…saying "hey check me out, I’m great" just does not seem to work. LOL 

And so…the trick is, how to learn to do self-promotion without coming across as an ego-monster-maniac. I don’t think I do that great a job at it… but I try. And so…I’m ultra-thankful when someone else has some nice words to say… It’s a huge relief. I think anyone who does any sort of art knows what I’m talking about.

Oh…here’s a picture Val took last night. My hair grew back pretty fast eh? Just over a month ago, I was damn close to being bald.

Basically, I was just digging the new Racer X Jacket and wanted to have a few shots taken in it. I have a couple others I like but I’ll spare you all the jacket modeling session …this is enough to see what it looks like.

I STILL have not been able to find a pair of jeans I like for a reasonable amount. The jacket was cheaper than ANY pair of jeans I looked at. Sad.

Well… I’m really tired for some reason. It’s not as though I spent the day at Disney Land, but my body sort of has that same feeling like I’d been waiting in line for a ride. Weird.

Oh…back to the Portable Media Expo for a second… I walked away with a handful of business cards that I need to go through and add to my podcast feeds. This might take a few days to organize, but I look forward to checking these out.

More soon…