Last night Jeff and I were watching 30 Rock and eating truly terrible pizza. I remarked how much fun I was having and he thought I was kidding so he responded in typical Jeff candor - "I'm enjoying 30 Rock, not your company". Which made me laugh. The weather is so nice right now. I forgot how accomplished you can feel if you just do things earlier in the day. Can't wait to find a real job, but I will settle for this one for now. Below is something I mostly dreamed, but some solid stuff, I promise.
Cherry Blossoms and Bullet Trains:
So apparently that wasn’t a story. Well, what was it then? Other than an exercise in failure, per usual? It is what Ernest Hemingway would call a bathtub piece, apparently. I am sure I’ve mentioned that I hate Ernest Hemingway, but in another of the rapidly multiplying adulthood lessons, you can’t apply ad hominum arguments to reason. Another reason I love to be alive, a chance to focus on the artist rather than their art, thus illustrating my perennial immaturity. I just want to write something that will yield sweet soda ad fame. Reality has never been your strong suit has it? (The truth as a non-partisan, used as a child of divorce. Objectivity is for philosophy majors and other unemployable assholes.) You can hurt someone just as easily with the truth as you can with a lie. Karma is a not a contract killer. Just because they aren’t on television anymore doesn’t mean they are dead. They could be leading rich, interesting lives in any number of ways. Alternately, they could be mourning their careers, as they watched it hemorrhage on the table; all they could do is watch. Imagine the creepiest thing ever and be amazed how it barely fazes anyone because we all conceal our less marketable quirks, like a black eye on a wedding day. I imagined a lady somewhere in the Midwest that makes Dolly Parton look like a dowdy housewife who has funerals for T.V. characters and arranges marriages for her cats. There is glitter, track lighting, and a craft room that should have been a nursery. But that’s life. Seems the transformation of the “American Dream” into the suburban dystopia playground cannot scratch the surface of real loss and I’m not talking about property values. Whoever lobbied to transform the notion of bastard into a love child for the sake of polite company; that is the guy I want to make out with while listening to Depeche Mode in a nearly empty club while a guy in a fish net tank top is blowing himself kisses in the wall to wall mirror. I suppose I do the same thing when I tell someone in all sincerity that the song “Sex on Fire” was written about Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun’s sex tape.
[the good times are easiest to forget – two dates and a name remembered]
Social contract killer – photo of Hobbes
Family Circus Circus – if Sunday cartoons were designed by Hunter S. Thompson.
Analogy of post-modernism as a room made of screen doors and complaining when you get wet …
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Works in Progress - Chapter One
"Like getting a voice mail from Sid at a family member's funeral". Never taking it seriously, just the names and the inventory. If fear is your currency, you will be richer than God. I thought we were dealing with atheists. Just like imaginary numbers. Losing jobs, braincells, the will to live, that's when it kicks in. When you don't become a teenage statistic, you run the risk of being a twenty-something failure or a thirty-something waiter. I don't care cries the teenager eternal. I like to watch cries the history of the world. It was inevitable, but we got our passive aggressive "fuck yous" in there. All these notebooks, different colored pens, are a testament to my bloated alter ego and failure junkie creator. I'm full of shit and ideas - which makes going the bathroom a confusing place. Advertising, because no one likes big picture people. I'm no Dan Brown, you can thank me later. Now Christianity, that's brand recognition. Let's chase the success dragon and smoke a bag of possibilities. Can you dino-size that? Remember when you wanted to do that comic book with the guy who did meth and call it Ice Queen? He had the powers of denial and a lesbian side kick who fixed things and had an SUV and a dog? People don't care about the words, they ask if the voice is pretty. An epitaph of what if or a career hack? Artistic, more like Awe-tistic. In your case fantistic. No, that is when Dolly Parton two point Oh yeah shows up. He lives in his discoball of hourly companionship.
The Tender Violence of Adulthood
"Everything will be okay". I read this on a bumper sticker inside a van at this local legend pizza place. It has an icon of an old computer and makes me think of Radiohead. I want it tattooed on my arm as reassurance, or hope to get into a car accident and have my left arm leave my body like a Woody Allen divorce. This other tattoo idea has come to me more recently. An ourosboros encasing a lightning bolt. "You must come full circle to find the truth", the X-Files taught me. Plus lightning bolts make me think of Harry Potter, Amy Winehouse and Tennessee Williams. You have to rep your culture icons these days.
These are my thought as I stare into the bonfire. For whatever reason, bonfires are big in this town even though the weather eradicates any notion of practicality. But a fire is a nice place for thought and a myriad of potential accidents with drunken youths. I think about the personality economy; how the truth isn't a part of that stock exchange. You need a translator but the dialect is region specific, changing hourly in some cases.
He has been cradling his Jameson all night, a grotesque but appropriate teddy bear. It's going to be a long night. But now that he has a job, Nathan is eager to pay off his friendship taxes one drink or dollar menu item at a time. I come up on him talking to a girl from his high school. I am older than him and this girl is younger still. "Is that water in your bottle?" I ask her, hoping to find a mixer that isn't insecurity at this point in the evening. My earlier venture lead me to find the "hostess" and her foot soldiers doing blow in the guest bathroom. I am not impressed. "Vodka" she replies with the aplomb of a mid-nineties Janeane Garafolo. "Would you like some?" Is this fucking child challenging me to drink, nay, mix vodka she probably stole from her naive and terrible parents? "No thank you. Vodka is not a mixer and I'm drinking whiskey (out a plastic solo cup I might add)". She proceeds to rattle off her past sexual partners and their various shortcomings while flirting with our friend Jake. Jake has social anxiety and a car. He says, somewhat bashfully, he will take what he can get, even it is an under age carrier of disease and desperation in equal parts, served chilled. Nathan manages to have some fun with her, as she is a blast in the face from his illustrious past. He asks her if she would like some Jameson, to which she enthusiastically and unsurprisingly responds with a "fuck yeah". He asks her if she knows what Jameson is during this exchange. She does not.
It is in this evening I find cynicism exhausting and end up in the ever growing line to get McDonald's and pilot a spaceship, as the least drunk person in this group gets to be crowned D.D. I drive Jake's silver Asian podmobile because he is now indisposed and the drive-thru is the last call for tonight. Nathan's drunken conversation goes back to that girl, inappropriately named Lily, for she was not anything one would associate with a flower, Venus Flytrap notwithstanding, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend. "She's fucked to the moon and back" he asserts with comic seriousness as we assemble into this line while My Bloody Valentine plays in the background. "Are you concerned her number of partners is irresponsible or she wont find what she is looking for?" I ask him in mock concern. Justification is the post-9/11 yearbook entry and I cant wait for Nathan's Jameson induced logic to spring forth. It turns out he doesn't care about the number, he cares about her method, which feeds her teenage insecurity and entitlement with five inches of fury and vodka soaked sheets.
After Nathan screams "bullshit" at the closed McDonald's window for failing to sell ice cream after 2am and blames the recession on why he is being charged a quarter for Sweet N' Sour sauce, I decide that sleep is the cure for the disease known as Friday night life. I take him back home and walk the block to my own house. I am filled with whiskey, Sweet N' Sour soaked fries and the thoughts that maybe everything will be okay, just probably not today.
These are my thought as I stare into the bonfire. For whatever reason, bonfires are big in this town even though the weather eradicates any notion of practicality. But a fire is a nice place for thought and a myriad of potential accidents with drunken youths. I think about the personality economy; how the truth isn't a part of that stock exchange. You need a translator but the dialect is region specific, changing hourly in some cases.
He has been cradling his Jameson all night, a grotesque but appropriate teddy bear. It's going to be a long night. But now that he has a job, Nathan is eager to pay off his friendship taxes one drink or dollar menu item at a time. I come up on him talking to a girl from his high school. I am older than him and this girl is younger still. "Is that water in your bottle?" I ask her, hoping to find a mixer that isn't insecurity at this point in the evening. My earlier venture lead me to find the "hostess" and her foot soldiers doing blow in the guest bathroom. I am not impressed. "Vodka" she replies with the aplomb of a mid-nineties Janeane Garafolo. "Would you like some?" Is this fucking child challenging me to drink, nay, mix vodka she probably stole from her naive and terrible parents? "No thank you. Vodka is not a mixer and I'm drinking whiskey (out a plastic solo cup I might add)". She proceeds to rattle off her past sexual partners and their various shortcomings while flirting with our friend Jake. Jake has social anxiety and a car. He says, somewhat bashfully, he will take what he can get, even it is an under age carrier of disease and desperation in equal parts, served chilled. Nathan manages to have some fun with her, as she is a blast in the face from his illustrious past. He asks her if she would like some Jameson, to which she enthusiastically and unsurprisingly responds with a "fuck yeah". He asks her if she knows what Jameson is during this exchange. She does not.
It is in this evening I find cynicism exhausting and end up in the ever growing line to get McDonald's and pilot a spaceship, as the least drunk person in this group gets to be crowned D.D. I drive Jake's silver Asian podmobile because he is now indisposed and the drive-thru is the last call for tonight. Nathan's drunken conversation goes back to that girl, inappropriately named Lily, for she was not anything one would associate with a flower, Venus Flytrap notwithstanding, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend. "She's fucked to the moon and back" he asserts with comic seriousness as we assemble into this line while My Bloody Valentine plays in the background. "Are you concerned her number of partners is irresponsible or she wont find what she is looking for?" I ask him in mock concern. Justification is the post-9/11 yearbook entry and I cant wait for Nathan's Jameson induced logic to spring forth. It turns out he doesn't care about the number, he cares about her method, which feeds her teenage insecurity and entitlement with five inches of fury and vodka soaked sheets.
After Nathan screams "bullshit" at the closed McDonald's window for failing to sell ice cream after 2am and blames the recession on why he is being charged a quarter for Sweet N' Sour sauce, I decide that sleep is the cure for the disease known as Friday night life. I take him back home and walk the block to my own house. I am filled with whiskey, Sweet N' Sour soaked fries and the thoughts that maybe everything will be okay, just probably not today.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Happy Stuff List
As you may know, I'm still unemployed. How this affects this blog, well I found some good TV.
TV: Party Down, Bored to Death, Glee, 30 Rock, The Wire, Mad Men.
Music: Sufjan Stevens - The BQE, New Moon Soundtrack, Thom Yorke leaks, Rufus Wainwright - Milwaukee at Last!!!
Peter Pan Honey Roast crunchy, Berry Crunch yogurt, Oh's and Italian Wedding Soup
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
A change of heart is just a change of scenery
The worst thing about finding older writings is witnessing the evolution. I guess hoping greatness is a gift and not a skill is what separates the unemployed from the moderately known. The back and forth, the third and fourth. Seeing four years of writing, of lists, of similar joys and disappointments, we never change. Or we have a stopping point that causes us to do a 180. Not just figuring it out, but making it work. These things, we things. The number of times I have written "work out" on to do lists, good thing I rarely read the damn things after I labor over writing them.
Some books:
A Child's Book of True Crime - Chloe Hooper Reread
Poisonwood Bible reading currently, really good
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff (Christ's Childhood Pal) by Christopher Moore recommended
Save the Waltz, Tender is the Night recommended
The Idiot - Dostoevsky recommended
The Prophet - Kihail Gabrain recommended
Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins research
infinite jest - david foster wallace research
the saint in new york - leslie chaplis research
Some books:
A Child's Book of True Crime - Chloe Hooper Reread
Poisonwood Bible reading currently, really good
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff (Christ's Childhood Pal) by Christopher Moore recommended
Save the Waltz, Tender is the Night recommended
The Idiot - Dostoevsky recommended
The Prophet - Kihail Gabrain recommended
Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins research
infinite jest - david foster wallace research
the saint in new york - leslie chaplis research
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