I’ve spent the past three month sleeping on the floor because, while I still have my doubts about how long my ex-wife and I will stay together, I nevertheless wanted something that would last for a couple of decades while providing a breathable platform for a foam mattress. I let her pick out the mattress because I can mostly sleep on just about anything and I did take some of her input when selecting the bed. For example, I took into account that she wanted one low to the floor, which I did too, and I took into account hat she wanted a headboard, which we have never had on any bed we have ever shared. At the same time, I did not get a padded headboard like she wanted because my approach with so many purchases these days is to minimize points of failure. An upholstered headboard was bound to get torn, frayed, stained, or all of the above.
 
Ultimately, I didn’t think I was going to care all that much about the bed until I discovered Japanese-style joinery beds. As I do, I spent hours researching rather than just pulling the trigger on a Thuma. If anything, a brand that spends as much as Thuma does on marketing only makes me cast a suspicious eye upon them. I prefer a brand that spends money on sawdust over marketing. In the end, I chose Tatami Room. Specifically, I chose the king tatami platform bed in honey oak finish, the matching Magari headboard, and two of the matching bedside tables. At $2,045.34, it wasn’t cheap, but it was cheaper than some of their competition and, more importantly, I am the buy once, cry once type. My hope is that it will last me the rest of my life, though, if Trang and I part ways again, a king size is going to feel really overkill, considering I don’t move much in my sleep and typically sleep right on the edge of the bed.
 
Now, going with Tatami Room means being patient. They quoted me a sixteen-week wait before my furniture would ship and it shipped in thirteen. I had definite reservations about such an expensive purchase arriving with damage and the headaches that would surely follow, but, despite definite damage to the outer packaging, Tatami Room packages everything extremely well and nothing within suffered any damage, somehow making it all the way from Indonesia to California to Colorado unscathed. I nearly died hauling everything inside after UPS dropped it off on my doorstep, but the weight of it all was already a positive indication that this was going to be a step or two up from Ikea quality. Trang really wanted Ikea, but, having assembled my fair share of Ikea furniture, I did not feel confident sleeping on an Ikea bed. I shudder at the thought of all the tiny, fragile parts. In the case of my Tatami Room bed, there are virtually no small parts outside of a couple of screws for the center support beam. Everything else just slides into each other, meaning the number of potential points of failure with this bed are few and fucking far between.
 
I slathered all the joints and grooves with beeswax just to play things safe. The first night, though, I was a little disappointed to detect some creaking noises from one side of the headboard. I was ready to disassemble the whole thing and troubleshoot that weekend, but the creaking disappeared altogether by the next night. I think things just needed to settle. My ex-wife and I have since… tested the bed and it’s completely squeak free. I have heard no complaints from her aside from finding the bedside tables too small. They’re less than half the size of our old nightstands, but I definitely prefer the new ones.
 
Overall, after a week of sleeping on the new Tatami Room bed, I am completely satisfied. I will say though that, if you like to have a more active sex life with your romantic partner, you should get a queen-size bed. I only got a king because my son still sleeps between us all the time, which is basically not possible with a queen. I will also add that, if you have a thicker mattress (ours is relatively thin), you might do well to go with the Mado headboard instead.

Something has really been bothering me about Nene Royal’s rise to stardom. I’ve gone back and I’ve watched hours of her live performances at the Naka Night Market in Phuket going back years and almost all the people who stopped to actually listen to her, the only people who would so much as give Nene Royal the time of day, were foreigners. Then, as soon as she starts gaining some real international recognition with her televised performances on America’s Got Talent, her audiences suddenly became packed with Thai people, though none of them looked like they recognized any of the songs except the ones she performed on television. It was pretty evident that her Thai audience wasn’t there because they suddenly appreciate rock music, they were there just to see somebody famous or, more precisely, somebody in the process of becoming famous.
 
After she won America’s Got Talent using songs that would have been awful choices if her real ambition was to actually showcase her talent and not to win the competition, everyone in Thailand wanted to claim her as their own, including, apparently, the governor of Phuket. Among all these people, it seems doubtful that even a handful could tell you who Black Sabbath is. It’s not about the music to them, it’s about their pathetic national pride and their celebrity obsession. It disgusts me.
 
I only hope Nene Royal remembers who her true fans were from the start. Night after night, it was an assortment of mostly Westerners from dozens of countries who clapped and cheered for her, though it would be a crime not to acknowledge the fact that she also has the most supportive, most loving father. Her father aside, there were countless foreigners who mentored her along the way and got her to where she is now. Even the now iconic Ibanez she used across all her America’s Got Talent performances was gifted to her by a Danish fan.
 
Outside of all the fake fans who didn’t know what a guitar was two months ago, one of the real tragedies of her much-deserved rise to stardom is that we will never see those intimate performances at the Naka Night Market again. I will always be looking back nostalgically at incredible performances like My Sharona from two years ago:
 

 
Seeing her with all the makeup and the expensive-looking outfits, I look at that video of My Sharona and yearn for its raw authenticity. Her performances of Master of Puppets are viral and they certainly ought to be, but I don’t think you’ll find a less diluted, more pure incarnation of Nene Royal than fucking My Sharona from 21 January 2024. If she ever stops having fun like that, it’s all over.
 
I worry about her. I worry not just about what the industry will do to her, but I worry even more about the music she is working on. She has the guitar skills, the vocals, the stage presence, and the charisma, but, to truly become one of the greats, she will need to write her own music. While I enjoyed the one song of her own she has released, Real Verse, it’s ultimately a shred-fest that reminds me of the sort of masturbatory solo albums John 5 (currently of Mötley Crüe and formerly of Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie) has released. That kind of music isn’t music for people, it’s music for guitarists. I’m not saying I want her to write pop music, but what I want least of all is for her to release a total shred-fest without any hooks that regular people won’t want to listen to more than once. The fact is Real Verse was composed for a guitar competition, so I can only hope it’s not actually a sign of things to come. At the same time, I just saw a video of her practicing Inferno (Unleash the Fire) by Symphony X and that has me worried all over again because some music is just complicated for the sake of being complicated. Maybe I have nothing to be worried about though. After all, she did play Seven Nation Army as her finals performance at America’s Got Talent and that song is literally the easiest-to-play rock song ever written, though she did spice it up a lot.

Well, I did it. I bought a PRS SE CE24 Standard Stoptail Satin in charcoal. Yeah, the name sucks and I am probably just going to shorten it to CE24 or “the PRS” going forward, but let’s not linger on the name. I’m pretty excited, but I also feel guilty buying my guitar before my son gets his. He insists on waiting for the red one though and I respect that; besides, he’s not going to touch it until Christmas.
 
In the end, I had actually narrowed it down to the PRS and the Schecter Omen Extreme-6 in black cherry (I always go for the most evil-looking finish), but the CE24 felt like the more versatile instrument. Though the guitar will probably never leave my house, I still didn’t like the idea of being confused with one of those metal guys who only care about whether the guitar “chugs.” Since most of what I listen to consists of various sub-genres of rock, it can be easy to think I don’t have very diverse taste in music, but rock as a genre is incredibly vast and one sub-genre can sound like it’s from another planet next to another. The PRS also seemed the more beginner-friendly instrument. I certainly didn’t want anything too budget, though I also recognize from my experience in the world of audiophilia that price oftentimes has very little correlation with quality beyond a certain point. While it’s possible the guitar may eventually find itself collecting dust like my last guitar, I don’t want to feel like I have to upgrade later if I actually stick with it this time around, I want something that will potentially last me for years. In my son’s case, he is getting a significantly cheaper guitar mostly because he is going to physically outgrow it at some point, whether he is still playing by then or not.
 
I also bought the Orange Crush 20RT. I wanted a no-bullshit, all analogue (except for its reverb) practice amp that wouldn’t leave me or my son paralyzed by thousands of options, I just wanted something that would allow us to focus on actually playing and practicing. No apps, no Bluetooth, no “smart” features, no digital modeling, no batteries, no wall warts, and no fixed power cables. Springing for the RT model to get the digital reverb and the built-in tuner is about as much complexity as I was willing to add. Everything else is just a distraction. I went with the orange color because it’s iconic. I mean, the brand is called Orange. I may have to get a second amplifier down the road so my son and I can play together, but I’ll need to spend a bit of time with the 20RT to determine whether I should just get a second one or something else altogether. Beyond that, I picked up a basic Ernie Ball Polypro strap; some Fender strap blocks; a Fender universal A-frame stand; some Jim Dunlop picks; a pair of Gator Cableworks Composer Series cables; a clip-on tuner; and an all-in-one string winder, cutter, and bridge pin puller tool. At this point, the only things remaining are my son’s guitar, a kids strap, and some replacement strings, though I have not yet decided what strings we’ll be putting on either guitar. My research, based on my genre preferences, is pointing me in the direction of skinny top heavy bottom (10-52) strings for me. For my son, we’ll probably keep him on some regular slinky (10-46) strings. In either case, we’re going to play the factory strings until they fall off because, while I have restrung guitars before, it has been a couple of decades and I hate having to relearn it.
 
For the record, the guitar I had as a young lad was the Ibanez AX125. I also had some random Squier acoustic. I am not a believer in learning by playing Old MacDonald Had a Farm. I have already put together a playlist of songs to practice, which will serve as our curriculum. Here’s the playlist:
 
Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple
T.N.T. by AC/DC
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC
Highway to Hell by AC/DC
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath
Hurt by Nine Inch Nails
Lullaby by The Cure
Don’t Pray for Me by SKOLD
City Noise by Scarling
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica
Back in Black by AC/DC
The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails
Eiszeit by Eisbrecher
Head Like a Hole by Nine Inch Nails
Sober by Tool
N.I.B. by Black Sabbath
 
Realistically, this playlist represents countless months of practice. Unlike when I was a kid back in the early 2000s, I understand that the most important thing is muscle memory, so we’ll be repeating the same riffs until our fingers bleed and obviously skipping all the complicated solos. I’ve been working with my son on reading and writing evening after evening these past few weeks and out efforts are finally beginning to bear fruit. I was ripping my hair out a couple of weeks ago and now I mostly just sit back and listen to Green Eggs and Ham. I am hoping guitar practice will eventually bear fruit in the same way. If I can teach him how to read, I can teach him how to teach himself to play guitar. His mother keeps scoffing about the whole thing, shaking her head like it’s some idiotic idea for our child to learn to play an instrument. Have I mentioned what an awful mother and person she is? Surely I have mentioned how jealous she gets of all the affection my son shows me because I actually spend meaningful time with him. No matter what happens with the guitar thing, the fact remains that I am investing in my relationship with my son while she is rarely to be seen in the same room.