Jim's Trailer

Teaser for the Tesco USA Tenth Anniversary Industrial Music Festival and God Blast America! DVD release celebration November 9-12, 2011 in New York and Philadelphia.

Dedicated to the memory of our Friend and Producer James Elenidis, who created the GBA! portion of this teaser before his untimely passing in 2007. We hope to complete the project in the spirit and vision he originally intended, and we will always be grateful for his hard work.



If you look closely you can see Jim right after his name comes up in the credit!

I miss you even more

With every passing day I feel the absense of your voice exceedingly.
My attendence to another friends funeral brought up some issues but none more than wanting to call you, hear your voice and talk with the only man I knew could comfort me and make me laugh in the same moment.
I have never known a man with such vision, decency, humility and kindness all rolled into one. I miss you more today then those years that seem like centuries since you left us.
I love you Jim, always.

Not Fade Away

I got Ruby on 2/6/2006. Jim was so excited - he could not wait to come over and meet her. One whole year with two of best friends I will ever have.

Jim put this on a mix CD for me - seems appropriate to post it here.

My God and My Dog by David E. Williams

He was so generous with his music - tuned me in to so much. Except for Fairport Convention - I just couldn't get into it and it became a little joke. Love, Changes, anything but Fairport Convention!

I went to try to type out what I said at the service, but I was a bit surprised to find that the notes I had written out so damn lightly in pencil are barely legible now. I guess it wasn't meant to be, but the words are still with me.

Love is real, not fade away. You were there, Patti and Bob, Boston 1995.

Miss you JE. -je

By suprise

I tried to ignore the anniversary. Of course I couldn't... I'm incapable of describing the feeling in words. Disappointed, disenchanted, depressed, sad, shattered, hurt. Nothing comes close, at least not in my lexicon. Jimmy, unfortunately, you'll never know what a truly important person you were to me and what kind of effect losing you would have.

Combined with a couple of other minor personal events, your death completely changed the course of my life. It's most poignantly captured in this photograph from a couple of weeks ago. That's me, sitting alone on the summit of Aconcagua, crumbling and thinking of you. My climbing partner caught what was one of the most intense emotional moments of my life. I've wanted to climb that thing for over 15 years. Now I have. I also have a full catalog of other absolutely unreal adventures from the past year that I never thought I'd actually get to. It all changed when you died. I think about you all the time and it makes me keep moving, trying new things, seeing things in a fresh light and seeking out new experiences. I know now what I really have to do.


I wouldn't trade the past year for anything in the world... except to have you back with us. I owe it all to you man. I miss you terribly Jimmy Baby.





- Chip

One Year Ago

My Best Friend's Last Words to His People
via text message, ironically enough...

"Hey, my throat hurts too much to talk, my eyes hurt too much to text. Tomorrow is pain management so I'll be MIA for about 24 hours." -2/5/07, 4:14 pm

And off he went to complete his mission.

Jim, we used to joke about how you were a nervous motherfucker, but you're the bravest motherfucker I've ever met. Not a day goes by, practically not even an hour, that we don't think about you. Love, -je

Quitting...

Before I quit smoking, I was told by legions of ex-smokers that you never stop wanting cigarettes and that you'll still have the urge to smoke every day.

I quit July 9, 2005.

I never think of cigarettes.

I do still get the urge to ask Jim if he wants to go out later almost every day though...

---

We truly are all better people for having known him.

We miss you, dude.

No reason why would suffice and my heart won´t mend over the how and when you left. Liza´s birthday last year was to be the last time I´d lay eyes on you. An insubstantial consolation, at least every detail of that night is vividly etched in my memory. It´s both how I want to and will remember you.

Going through the photographs after you died, it´s so clear that you were ill then. In person you seemed absolutely fine. You never realy looked all that healthy to begin with. That night though, you were OK, recovered from the pneumothorax, maybe even a bit upbeat for you, smiling, listening, joking, talking... well mumbling, laughing & going up to the Larry Lawrence fishbowl just to smell the smoke. You were yourself. You were Jim and you were alive.

Out in Brooklyn with some of our closest friends. Celebrating. Immersed in conversation and catching up. We were holding Liza aloft and out gay-ing Crazy Dave and Frost and we were with Meg and she was wearing the hat and there was a parasol toting, tutu freak wearing a sombrero and the guy from Dave´s t-shirt was posing for a photo with Dave´s t-shirt and Frost was leaping for Spongebob for Liza and you were a wallflower while the girls danced to DJ Worst-Ever-In-Brooklyn and I made you dance. I lead, I spun you, I dipped you, I asked if it was hurting your lung, your face cracked from a sheepish expression and stretched into your broad, mischievous Cheshire cat grin and you laughed and laughed (I have a photo of Jim laughing on that night, it´s several thousand miles away at the moment, I´ll try to post it here when I get back).

When you went home we hugged. I told you I loved you, I told you that I missed you and we´d see each other again at Christmas. I didn´t come home for Christmas. We didn´t see each other. We won´t see one another again. We´re all completely crushed whenever we think of you then realize you´re not here with us anymore Jimmy.

It was our first and last dance. I don´t want another dance. I want to see my friend again. I want him back. He was such an uncommon person and he left far too large a hollow behind.

I love you Jimmy Baby and I miss you very much.

* I always preferred Jimmy Baby over Jimmy Honey. In my head, for some reason, it´s always enunciated in Telly Savalas´ voice. I don´t know why that´s fitting, it just is.

Unexpected

The other day, my roommate developed a roll of film off of a mysterious disposable camera. She brought the photos to me, saying, "I think you'd be interested in these!" She produced a relic: a paper envelope from a photo developing place. Inside were pictures from a trip we had taken with a bunch of friends, including Jim, to Coney Island two summers ago. There were several pictures of he and I, looking sunburnt, well-fed, and happy. It was so great to see him.

Something

I have a weird habit of remembering other people’s memories. For example, whenever I hear any song from XTC’s Skylarking, I remember the time three high school friends went to Dewey Beach, despite the fact that I didn’t go on that trip, because afterwards each time that record got played one of them would say “Wow, this totally reminds me of that time we were at the beach,”until it got to the point where when I hear that record or even think about it I remember a place I never was, and for a moment feel a towel under my ass and smell salt under a bright sky.

And so when I am cooking and I reach for the jar of bay leaves, I think of Jim. I never heard him talk of bay leaves myself, but I have heard Clay and Megan tell the story of Jim saying “I love a good bay leaf” so many times that as I type this I can see the particular expression they both make when they tell that story! puzzled and delighted and so very full of love -- the exact same expression despite being on two very different faces. Whenever I am putting bay leaves in the sauce, I think of Jim and wish I could ask him exactly why he was so fond of them, and if it matters if the leaf has a chunk missing from the side or not.

I did not know Jim as intimately as everyone else – most of our interactions were in groups, in bars, most always with other people around. Nevertheless, I can truthfully say that on some kind of limbic level I trusted Jim more than almost anyone I’ve ever met. When I was falling in love with Clay, it was, on some level, the fact that he considered Jim one of his best friends that told my insides that this man is a good man; you may continue to fall.

Jim and Megan came with us to City Hall to the day we semi-secretly got legally married so I could put Clay on my health insurance. After the hitching we proceeded to play drunken hooky at the Odeon, the Tribeca Grand, and all over Williamsburg. It was April 20^th, (of course Jim knew that it was Hitler’s birthday.) That night at Bozu, before I passed out on Clay’s lap mid-dinner, I remember babbling something to Jim about “Boy” and “Girl” (referring to our future children, using the actual names Clay and I have chosen but keep secret.) I had never said their names to anyone but Clay before: Jim was the one person it seemed perfectly safe and natural to tell, and of course he knew immediately who I was talking about.