Quote:Jesse Houts
April 4 at 11:35 PM  · 
Jesse Houts, born on March 16, 1975 in Santa Cruz, California, is a prominent physically disabled musician, manager, promoter, and activist in the Bay Area. Born with a rare non-progressive form of muscular dystrophy, Jesse has strived to be heavily involved in the rock and roll community since his teenage years. Finding that music helped Jesse cope with his disability more than any other activity, he attended over 400 concerts as a young adult and was known to be seen backstage at many shows for years. Since the early 00s, Jesse has booked shows for many artists in Santa Cruz including Ween, Secret Chiefs 3, The Sound Of Urchin, and . On 09/23/00, Jesse made his live performing debut by rapping onstage under the moniker MC Wheels with the band Estradasphere; then later performed in Los Angeles along with Tim Smolens, George Smith, Joel Robinow, and Joey Ryken in the only live appearance to date by the Estradasphere side project ISS. In 2003 he again worked with Estradasphere by performing a controversial bit of spoken word on their album Quadropus. 
From 2005-2008 Jesse played sporadic live shows in the Santa Cruz area consisting of cover songs with various backup musicians from Estradasphere and God of Shamisen. He is one of the few known singers in the world who perform while breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.
Jesse also holds a degree in film from UCSC and has many projects in development, including an independent movie based on his experiences as a disabled man and his relationships with women.

Quote:Estradasphere
Jesse was a dear friend of ours and a beacon of positivity to everyone who knew him. He will be sorely missed.

RIP Jesse Houts (MC Wheels)

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(11-23-2019, 06:34 PM)Drunk Monk Wrote: Then there's Billy.  Billy is old, frail, arthritic, half blind and deaf.  He was our neighbor's cat two houses down, but they gave up on him (in their defense, that neighbor's son was born without any body muscle.  His mom is his caretaker - he is wheelchair bound and cannot do anything really - needs help to eat and eliminate.  He's smart though - all he has is his mind.  I'm not sure of his age - 40ish - I know he met Shatner and Nimoy when they filmed ST4 in Monterey because he had a lot of pix of that.  I only met him once a few years ago when they needed some help moving him).  Billy used to have a tag with their phone number but they've removed that.  Now he just lives off Mary's feeding.  But he doesn't.  Skittle and Squirtl (Matt's cat from the other granny flat) are bigger and get all the food.  So Billy comes by our place.  And we started to feed him.  So now he's adopted us.  We just started letting him in now that it's getting cold. He's told us when he needs to go out and eliminate.  Stacy bought him a chicken which she cooked and stripped, and we've been feeding him.  I've been tapping Mary's tuna cache (she's given us a key to help but we don't get paid like our old neighbors).  

Billy is not long for this world.  He stumbles a lot and looks the wrong way when he hears noises.  He doesn't groom himself well so he's scruffy and kind of smelly.  He's been eating a ton.  He's very bony.  I'm a tad worried about fleas. 

It's cat hospice and we just hope to give him some comfort for the transition.