Untitled Short Story. This is not a title. Dammit.

"I don't want to fucking hear it."  It was her go-to line whenever she didn’t feel like talking.  It was usually followed by a quick turn like a pirouette and a brisk walk into the bedroom. 

And the fight was over.  I cut into an apple and started eating.

I have never been confrontational. Not as some part of a clever strategy, I’d smile or laugh when a bully pushed or threw a smart remark my way.  I didn’t blame them for pushing me around.  If I were them, I’d do the same thing, I thought, like a perversion of the ubiquitous Golden Rule.

When I was 13 my best friend and I used to shoot off his pellet gun. It was old and rusted but fired true.  My parents would never have let me have one let alone shoot it around the neighborhood. They were too worried about me and my indiscretions.  It was my favorite part about going to Greg’s house.  His face was positioned all too close together and somewhat bug-like Kafka's Gregor.  He had the unfortunate habit of sucking his teeth as he breathed through his mouth like a trough.  Anyway, we’d take out the pellet gun and shoot cans, mostly, in his backyard and aim impossibly at black birds as they swept by. Out of birds and tired of cans we looked for other prey to satisfy our predatory child-instinct. I grabbed the rifle and lay prone like I’d seen in the movies and took aim at a white rabbit fifty yards away.  I was a lousy shot.  Greg took aim and crouched right next to me and got it with the first pellet. 

We stood over the tiny spasming bunny. Its eyes were wide in terror and confusion like I’d seen people do in the movies. A rich redness pumped out of its neck in beats. He’d hit it square. We just stood over it and watched it for a long time. I hadn’t shot it myself, but I had killed it too.

It was a good green apple.  Not too juicy, because I don’t like juicy apples.  I like a firm meaty apple.  I think about that rabbit all the time.  And my little bunny, pouncing around the bedroom, eyes wide with passion about something. I think about the rabbit and I get some small relief with the knowledge that I can pretty much kill it whenever I need to.

Magnetic Inspiration Sought and Found.

The only drawback of making poems with words of the magnetic variety is that they always sound so fucking deep and meaningful.  The challenge is to make them actually MEAN something. 

The first two are the ramblings of an old man who has had a stroke. The second two are of the deep meaningful variety.

It’s funny:

My life would read

In words

If not for

A good brainbleed.

If my body could move

There is a climb in this head.

I’d step; then go.

I fight to speak instead.

The Angel I dream of

Is a puppet

Played by a man

That is me.

She                        is strange and sweet

                                                              maybe good.

                              is the spider.

I                            see only girl

                             am a boy.

In Memoriam 2.0: A shout out to my cats.

My parents brought them home from the shelter in a box.  One was a white long hair mix, the other a short haired tabby.  Maybe a result of the last time my brother named our cat (he named her “Cat”) but probably because they already had ones, we were told their names were Bianca and Missy.  Bianca would become known as Beebee or Beebs and Missy was always Missy.  Beebee was assertive when she demanded attention but would otherwise slink away under the pressure of an attempted pet. Missy was sweet and loving and beautiful.  For all the femininity her Shakespearean name implied, Bianca was the tomboy and Missy the princess.

Like all things too sweet, Missy’s time was short. She got a brutal dose of kitty cancer and we lost her.

I was about 9 at the time, and I had already experienced human death – my uncle had passed away when I was in 4^th grade and, in the halls of the synagogue after the service, I distinctly remember suddenly recognizing what “forever” meant.

Maybe in an effort to replace Missy, maybe to give Bianca a new pal, it wasn’t long before my parents brought home another surprise.  She was also a tabby and the cutest fucking cat I had ever seen.  Never to forget her life before, she had been given the name “Allie” at the shelter.

Allie had the face of a kitten even into her ripe old age.  She was like one of those old movie stars that still has that spark in her eye in her 80s. 

Bianca and I were close and I spent a lot of time with her, but my brother Warren was her favorite because he’d spoil her with tuna fish and pretzels during the Nuggets games. Allie was every bit as explorative as Bianca but also lazier. Alley would chase me to the kitchen sink as I washed my hands to drink from the tap.  I’d turn it on to a trickle and she’d lap at it like a water fountain.  My mother eventually had to buy a special trickling water bowl because Allie would only drink from a moving stream like a snake who must eat its food live.

In our living room, the high octagonal shaped windows would cut sunbeams through shadows on the carpet like hotspots and Allie would stretch out in one like a sunning lizard. Her smile was as obvious as her purr and she’d arch her back as I pet-scratched her belly – the few times she’d allow such a thing.  I’d work my way up and scratch under her little head and she’d crane her neck forward and up so I’d scratch her bony jawline – like satin on a wood frame.  And then the top of her head and her ears and she’d move her head to position my hand where she wanted it.  Then I’d grow tired of it all, lay down next to her with my head on the carpet like hot sand and fall asleep with her next to me.

Bianca passed away some years ago – she made it well into her 20s.  I haven’t given her enough credit – she was an amazing cat and companion to me and my family.  She was long, slinky and beautiful.  She was a hunter.

Allie was gentler, like Bianca, and arrogant when she wanted to be.  She’d follow my mom into the bedroom at night – two ladies getting ready for bed, while my dad finished his shows. Over the last year or so, Allie kept them up at night, mrowing at their bedside for a lift to the sink where she could drink.  They obliged, of course – no one could refuse her mrow.  I told my mom what a pain in the ass that must be, and she said, “She’s brought us so much happiness and comfort; it’s sort of our duty to repay her the favor.”  It stayed with me, because it’s absolutely fucking true.

She as diagnosed with cancer, I think, a few years ago and was given 6 months.  She lasted until just last week.  She was 22 years old. Or around there anyway.

When people wonder why I like cats so much, this is why. The one dog I had as a kid tried to bite my face off.  So fuck you.

As a last minute addition, I wanted to send a shout out to Spooky, my friend’s cat, who tragically passed away this morning.  Police are still investigating, but early reports suggest a drug deal gone awry. Or maybe a possum.  But probably the former.

Spooky was a mischievous, independent cat.  She was smart, loyal, and affectionate.  She was stunning.

I Have a Puppy Card. It's fucking adorable.

My phone beeps and whirrs and whistles and vibrates whenever I get any sort of message from anywhere.  I usually turn it off during classes so it doesn’t distract me.  While other students are engrossed in online games during class presentations, my bound and gagged phone becomes a distraction for me.  I am an honorary member of the ADD generation. 

It was with little surprise that I opened an email from my bank entitled: Irregular Activity Detected.   I’ve gotten these emails before.  The bank’s detector device is usually very sensitive.  I’ve signaled the alarm before by having Starbuck’s twice in the same day…in the same city!   I was surprised, however, when on the automated phone line it was brought to my attention that a charge for $227 and change had been declined at a Wal-Mart…in Louisiana. 

At some point my card number had been stolen from somewhere.  A debit card machine, or more likely, a gas-pump.  How this particular feat had been accomplished I have no idea, but I imagine it takes some kind of Batman-like technology.  Don’t let their looks fool you, the ragtag bunch of dudes who hang out in gas station parking lots in rags are far more technologically savvy than you think.  They’re fucking ex-computer programmers and mechanical engineers, abandoned and left floating in the gasoline-sea of unemployment. 

Regardless, there is one gas station in particular I will not be filling up at anymore.  I should have known better.

Now until my bank replaces my newly canceled card, I am forced to use my emergency credit card with the $500 limit (big spender!) with the picture of a puppy and kitten on it.  Cute.  I wonder if a gun shop would let me purchase bullets with it.

One bird with two stones - When work and blog collide!

I’ve been writing a lot of toasts lately, which is ironic because I’m awful at actually giving them.

What I know now and what I should have realized then is that I should have made them rhyme.  They would have been more successful. 

A few of my current favorites:

A toast to the boys from back home;

      Who made me the man that I am;

       One day a year;

       We all do this cheer;

       and go back to not giving a damn.

Hoist a cup to those interred

In memory where they lay;

And if you choke

It’s their cruel joke

They hated you anyway.

Here’s to my friend, a singular man

And his peculiar smell that lingers.

Always a pal

He’ll raise your morale

Just don’t pull one of his fingers

Here’s to a night out with the boys

Making memories as we go.

Always high-fiving

And always imbibing

Together the travelling shit show.

Gather round and raise your mug

To another auld land syne.

It’s been swell

and it’s just as well

‘cause I had sex with all of your wives.

Okay that last one doesn’t rhyme.  I never said it was easy.

Ode To Rope Dog, a poem.

Ode To Rope Dog.

I snap down each letter on my board,

Shape each word each sentence like clay,

Stumbling bumbling vainly forward.

The rope dog has not come today.

I sit as arbiter to this game,

Robes a swirl of ash and gray.

No living soul trots by my pane,

The rope dog has not come today

Dry and cracked my palette pleads

Once again to play.

Still, nothing grows -  these spoiled seeds!

The rope dog has not come today.

Empty mind and blank ahead

Here in this café.

Still I wait for thoroughbred,

The rope dog has not come today.

Wearily I hike this low plateau,

Its tired towers of clay.

Crumbling tumbling down they go.

The rope dog has not come today.

Too long I sit too long I stay

The rope dog did not come today.

So dangerously short and sweet it may as well be powdered.

A short blog today, as I have much to write and much to think on.  I anticipate a very frustrating day of me trying to be smarter than I am. The more you try, the farther away the goal becomes.  Or something.

In new news, I’m slowly killing myself with vitamins.  Glad I found that out.  As a last ditch effort to maintain my healthy ways, I’ve been drinking Emergen-cee powdered vitamin supplements.  It comes in various flavors and is delicious.  I mix two packets in a big ass bottle of SmartWater and drink and refill it a few times throughout the day.  Sounds great, right? 

Well, each packet contains 1,666% of your daily value of vitamin C, or 1000 mg.  At the behest of my friends, I looked up the recommended daily value and it’s somewhere around 500mg.  The article I googled continued, to my horror, to suggest that there are health risks associated with overdosing on vitamin C.   My DNA could potentially begin to change.  Evidently, 6000-7000 mg of vitamin C really is too much of a good thing. 

 So that’s cool.

The Lifelong Student Has Become the Master. Sort of.

I woke up with the strangest feeling that I had spent the night digging through wet sand.  The idea must have sprouted during the night and by the time I was in the shower it had produced provocative fruit.

The FedEx guy must’ve forgotten to put a slip in my mailbox because it turned out that I had had a package waiting for me in the office for the last two weeks.  I claimed it on Thursday and knew what it contained.  My (only) two photo albums that I had left at my old apartment in Santa Monica.  My ex had sent them back to me, either as an excuse to start talking to me again (which has been semi-successful) or as a way to get my address so she can mail me an anthrax envelope.

I don’t know that I’ve ever owned a camera.  I like pictures.  I see the merit in taking them and putting them in albums.  But I rarely take any.  The two albums contain pretty much every picture I’ve ever personally taken along with a few other keepers.  Besides the dozen framed photographs I have scattered in my apartment, they house every picture I own.  I am grateful to have recovered them.

I flipped through the books last night before I fell asleep and was surprised how emotionally loaded they were.  There are the obligatory college beerbong photos and high school prom pictures but there are also pictures of my grandparents, now gone, and ex girlfriends, also gone but still very much alive.  

I have no regrets.  I’ve done a lot of silly things.  Stupid things.  Insensitive things. But, in the end, I am confident they have made me smarter and more compassionate.  It’s how it works.  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – it’s called learning.  But sometimes when I look through old photographs, I forget all of that and ask myself why – why did I do that?   Why did I sabotage myself? 

There is, of course no answer.  A very happy (very drunk, probably) me stares back at myself, blithe to the truth that the girl around my arm is possibly my most perfect match I’d ever know.  In some ways, I’ve never quite gotten over her – I don’t think I’ve wanted to, as silly as that sounds.   As a clarifier, this is not the ex that sent me the albums, but the previous one.  I know, confusing.

What better way to fall directly to sleep than to repeatedly cut yourself with the razor sharp edge of Regret.

I awoke with the image/story/idea of me on the beach, digging.  I knew it was the beach because I could feel the grit of the wet sand between my fingers and in my nails.  I was steadily and confidently digging directly below me. There was no other choice.  My hands several feet below the ground, I hit something.  Not hard like wood but soft like flesh.  It was my legs.  I had been unearthing myself. 

It’s not the most original thought, but it felt real and it comforted me.

Sometimes we help ourselves without knowing we do. Or we receive special insight from somewhere.  I don’t know, I don’t understand it.  But what better metaphor than life being a slow uncovering of one’s self.  You don’t understand or find yourself until you do, through long, sometimes laborious digging. 

Regardless of whether you live your life with regrets or not, no matter where you go, there you are.

I really hope my old employers don't read this.

Few things are better than driving around beautiful summery Seattle in a truck loaded with thousands of pounds of bounce houses and my very good friend.  Did I mention being really really stoned the whole time?  Oh okay.  Well, being really high helps.

That summer will go down as the one of the best summers of my life, along with my summer “working” at the psychiatric hospital and the following one painting houses for my buddy’s CollegePro thing.  Note to everybody who is considering hiring a bunch of college kids to paint your house for cheap: Don’t.  Despite what it looks like, they are still college kids and have no idea what they’re doing. They will destroy your house/make it look terrible.

The owner of the bounce house (or jumparoo) company entrusted us with the keys to a brand new Dodge Ram and a code to his warehouse.  We’d often work 12 hour days and get back past 10pm when the place was closed and have to unload.  We’d go to the movies in between drop offs and get to test the jumparoos to ensure the proper level of bounciness.    It was standard procedure, we ensured the renters, barely able to contain our broad squinty eyed THC-induced smiles.

One time, we threw a sweet party at our dilapidated college house with the peeling paint and a yard that should have been resodded for the last 10 years. We had been out late dropping off and retrieving the jumparoos and realized suddenly we had the code to an empty warehouse, keys to a sweet truck, and all the time the night could afford us.  What clever stoners we were.

Note to college kids everywhere: A bounce house is an incredible addition to any party.  Especially if it’s free.  

I quickly learned I do not like filing alphabetically while working at the psychiatric hospital. As the son of the administrative president-lady, my best friend got me the job there filing and doing data entry.  Data entry was mindless.  Boring, but mindless.  Filing alphabetically took brain-power and a level of concentration I could never muster.  Sanchez comes before Sandoval?  Whoops.

Note to people thinking of hiring a college student for any reason: Don’t.  They cannot be trusted.  Take it from me.

High School Dreamin'. Is There a Shrink in the House?

I had a high school dream last night.  I hate them because I always wake up angry. 

Basically, it’s always the same thing: I’m at a random party (as though I was invited to all of them) or in the high school minding my own business and I start to get picked on by the “popular” kids.  They approach me, get in my face and push and taunt me.  I get angry.

I must have a lot of unspent aggression.

The thing is, I loved high school. I had an amazing time.  But I think the dreams speak to two things – First, that anyone who questions the impact high school has on a person is an idiot.  If I’m still dreaming about it, it’s still affecting me.  Which is depressing.  Second, it illustrates the overwhelming competitive conditions of high schools.  I wasn’t picked on per se, but it was an extraordinarily intimidating environment.  Movies like “Mean Girls” only perpetuate the stereotypes and impressions of fear and “othering.” Now that I think about it, I remember seeing it was playing yesterday – though I didn’t watch it, I’ll bet that’s where my dream was inspired.

I opted not to go to my 10-year high school reunion.  Not explicitly because I harbor resentment toward most of my class (I don’t) but due to financial restrictions.  I imagine I could have put to rest some part of my subconscious brain that wants to go all Klebold on the school.  It’s embarrassing and a shame that I still dream about something that doesn’t affect my real life at all.  Though high school may have shaped me in some esoteric way, I don’t think about it unless my nonbrain is diarrheaing at night. 

The dreams are never violent.  Just confused and angry.  I recall (in that dreamy kind of way) that I responded very maturely to the bullies last night with a kind of “seriously?” vibe.  

I think I should see a therapist to instruct me how to stop dreaming about getting bullied in high school and more about having sex with the cheerleaders.  

A Half Remembered Poem From Long Ago-Fail.

Here’s a poem I wrote in college that I no longer have a soft nor hard copy of.  I randomly woke up this morning reciting it so I think I’m trying to tell myself something.  Maybe it’s that I have a terrible memory.  Here goes:

I wonder if, as boys

 Keats or Frost ever thought of counterpoise.

Or pictured the Thames deep yet clear.

Or if Pope was an sincere

As Keats and his lyric odes

Or Frost’s converging roads.

Did Keats ever go apple picking

And ponder time slowly ticking.

And that’s all I remember.   Fuck.  I’ll meditate on it and see if I can remember anymore.  I remember it being better. If anybody has a copy of this somehow let me know.

Fail.

Pretty much the best story ever told. Er, written. Whatever.

I met the lead singer of Journey once.  Steve Perry. 

Steve motherfucking Perry.

I was working at a restaurant in LA called Palomino and he came into the bar for a late lunch.  I recognized him immediately.  We had an amazing salad called the chopchop.  There’s romaine, basil, salami, turkey, cubed cheeses and a thickly rich balsamic dressing.  I think that’s it. Basil and Balsamic. Steve Perry.

Naturally, my first response was to start singing in the back kitchen hallways as I finished my closing duties.  The hallway stretched through the entire restaurant like an artery, opening into the dining room at three different ventricles. 

Just a small town girl…

The dishwasher, an enormous black man who started every story with, “…I knew this guy, man…” smiled at me as I walked past, my volume slowly rising into a different tune.

Some day, love will find you…

Well apparently Steve was a regular (I had been there at least a year and not seen him at this point) and my manager knew him.  The manager stopped me in the back hallway.  “Noah.  Come here.”   I turned the corner and wham. Steve Perry.

Steven Ray Perry reached out his hand and I shook it, and said something dumb.  He smiled and said,  “So you’re the one who’s been murdering my songs?”

Unbeknownst to me, my singing had been amplified by the cavernous hallway and had flooded into the empty restaurant like a tsunami.  Evidently Mr. Perry heard my siren song and asked my manager who was singing and the rest is history.

So, that’s pretty cool.

This is a ridiculous blog. There, I said it.

In my past life I’m relatively sure I was a wealthy land-owning knight.  Or a wizard.

I have a fascination with all things armor.  It’s really a shame people don’t wear 200 pound metal plating all over their bodies nowadays.  Other than setting off metal detectors, it would really come in handy.  There are just so many practical applications for full plate armor.

Deflecting arrows.

Looking sweet.

Reflecting sunlight in such a way to blind your opponents.  Unless they’re wearing sunglasses.

Sinking in bodies of water.

And...that’s pretty much it.

There’s an entire website devoted to things named Lance.  I googled “Famous people named Lance” because I was going to make a joke about armor being “Lance (Bass)” proof.  I’m glad I didn’t, it would have been terrible.  It did, however, lead me to the worst website on the invisi-verse. Http://www.1st-name.com/male/lance.  Take this blurb from the part of the site dedicated to books written by and about Lances:

Few people know exactly how lance Armstrong became such an amazing force in cycling. Now, in Lance, John Wilcockson draws on dozens of interviews with those who know Armstrong best, to trace his remarkable life, both on and off the bike.Family members—including his adoptive father, speaking publicly for the first time—recall Armstrong’s humble origins, the father he barely knew, and his single mom’s struggle for survival. His childhood friends and early mentors recall how he also excelled at other sports, including swimming, running, and triathlons.

So, just to clarify, the author sucks Lance Armstrong’s lopsided dick for 200 pages.  Wow.  That is a book I would burn through.  With fire.

Has there ever been  a guy named Lance who wasn’t a homosexual or a megalomaniac?  According to this website, no. 

But there was THIS “famous” Lance:

Lance Davenport に移動‎: Lance Davenport is known for his trademark "Norweigan Death Grip.

I will never ever ever ever ever create something as badass as a Norweigen Death Grip.  It’s impossible.  Lance Davenport, you win the “most badass” Lance award.  So famous your name got translated into traditional Chinese.  That is INTENSE.

Second place goes to:

Lance Stephenson […] for his offensive ability.

Evidently this dude was a total cocksucker.  I’m sure that’s what it means.

According to http://www.1st-name.com/male/Noah, the most famous dude with my name is the guy who took a picture of himself every day for 6 years and put it on youtube.com 

I’ll be on there soon as the guy who kept setting off metal detectors with his full plate armor.

 “There was never a secure place he couldn’t get into. Also, he looked sweet.”

Everybody Needs A Dragon.

If you put dragons in a movie it’s going to be good.  Point in case, Christian Bale’s not-so-seminal work, Reign of Fire.  All about dragons.   Breathing fire, flying around, smashing things, incinerating people.  That shit is fantastic.

If you make a movie and put a wizard in it, it’s also going to be good.  Harry Potter anyone? Lord of the Rings? People love magic but they’re ashamed to admit it.  Not rabbit-out-a-hat crap - shooting spells from their hands and Windgardium Levi-oh­-sa shit.  People can’ get enough of it.  And neither can I.

Why am I writing about dragons and magic?  Because they’re hot right now.  The World Wide Nerd Army is mobilizing and is poised to take over the world.  Suddenly, all the things we used to be hated for loving are now accepted by the cool kids.  Look at Comic-Con.  I had several friends go to San Diego this weekend and they saw Charlize Theron and some random pornstars.  Ten years ago comic-kids were drooling at pics of them online on their 54k modem as their pictures crept down the screen.  Now, those half nude boner-inducing .jpgs are coming to them. 

We talk a lot in ad school about First Adopters – people on the cutting edge of technology and in-the-know.  Creative types.  So why is Charlize Theron whoring herself out at Comic Con?  Why are super hero and scifi movies the only money-makers for studios nowadays?  Because Nerds are the First Adopters.   I’m not sure if it’s always been that way, or the rest of the world can finally admit that “maybe D&D would sort of be fun to play.” 

We’re instructed in ad school to target not the general public, but the people on the outskirts. To write highly specific targeted ads to the weirdos and the hope is they will tell their normal friends (with money) about you.  As a weirdo myself, I find this exceedingly hopeful.

A partner and I are working on a campaign for a protein shake that will (hopefully) include lots of dragons and epicness and radical shit.  I was skeptical in the direction at first.  Dragons?  On drinks for meatheads?

I’ve been known to dabble in a certain collectible card game.  As a kid I was quite the erudite Magic The Gathering player.  Nowadays the game is so diluted I don’t know which way is tap (inside joke for us nerds) and I don’t have the time.  Regardless, my buddy had a step-dad that used to play cards with us.  We had middle school bank accounts at the time (which is to say, no money) and this guy seemingly spent thousands of dollars on his cards.  This is relevant because he was also huge.  Like, the strongest nerd on the planet.  If our protein drink existed 20 years ago, he’d collect the stuff if it had dragons on the packaging.

The point is, dragons have always had mass appeal and been totally awesome. 

When the Nerd Army inevitably attacks, I will survive because I speak their language.  I also cast a wicked charm spell.

May Robot Jesus Be With You.

I used to understand technology.  It used to work properly.  It used to be easier.

Last night, my brand-fucking-new phone stopped charging.  I plugged the charger into the phone and put its other end into the wall. Doing this animated the power bar in the top righthand corner, indicating the phone is charging.  However, after 15 minutes, my battery-life percentage dropped from 15% to 10%.  I tried a different outlet, I tried plugging it into my car charger, and I prayed,  all to no avail.  It was useless.  My phone could not be resuscitated.  It had resigned itself to death like Baron Munchausen in his movie.  Incidentally – if you haven’t seen “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” you’re doing yourself a disservice.  Easily one of my favorite movies and one of the best designed. If you don’t believe me, it was nominated for 4 Oscars.  Anyway, like the Baron, my phone was quite happy flitting away its remaining hours of life playing cards inside the belly of the Whale of futility and Hopelessness. Later that night,  it died in my hands. - I’d like to think I helped make its passing easier.

When I got home, I plugged it into the wall and without hesitation it sprung back to life.  Right now it’s nestled in my pocket willing and ready as I am.  In other words, Jesus is an Android.

60 Years Ago Today My Dad Was Born. Oy, Don't Remind Him.

I lean over to sip my coffee straight from its big green bowl because it’s always on the verge of overflowing when bothered.

Today is my dad’s birthday.  He turns 60.  It’s a big birthday, evidently.   I get it.  There’s definitely something psychologically confusing about a 60^th.  It’s twice as much of a mindfuck as a 30^th.  Which makes sense.

I flew out for my mom’s 60^th.  Me and my eldest brother did. The one other one lives 10 minutes from her.  We surprised her.

No such luck for my dad’s.  I’m knee deep in the creative quagmire and even if I could get away, tickets are too expensive for a 2-day surprise.  Now, sitting at the coffee shop table, I feel terribly guilty. 

There’s always a pot of coffee on at my parents’ house.  Two, actually, if you count the smaller decaf pot.  The house always smells like freshly brewed coffee.  Or like my memories of New York.  It’s no wonder I started drinking coffee as a high school freshman.  As a kid, my dad used to drive his little Mercedes with an open cup of coffee (this was before Starbucks and the concept of a “lid”), and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  Just replace Che’s hat with a bald head, put a cigarette in his mouth and a coffee cup in his hand and you’ve got a striking resemblance to my father. That’s actually not true at all.  But the point is that my dad has a certain iconic look.  Years later, I tried and failed repeatedly at drinking coffee and smoking in the car.  Shifting from first to second was always considerably dangerous.

My dad’s hilarious. He’s a master at diffusing tension and controlling my mother’s solar flares. I blame him for passing down the “it’s okay as long as it’s funny” gene.

My dad is very funny but he’s sensitive too.  And I’m the same way. It adds an authentic aspect to the humor.  It comes from a place that’s real.  And more often than not, insightful.

I wish I could be over there today celebrating my dad’s birthday, even if I had to sleep on that fucking blow up mattress and wake up with my back in as much pain as his constantly is.  It’s not always possible to do what you want to do, or what is right.  It is always possible to feel guilty about it, though.  I guess I get that from my dad too. Happy birthday, dad! (Don’t worry, I’ll call too.)

No Superstition is as Cool as the Song.

For a few years my brothers used to drop me off at my middle school.  It was on the way to their high school and my eventual one.  I have fond, fuzzy memories of being pushed out of a moving vehicle and my brothers' exhortations I did not, at the time, understand the meanings of.   Being the last of three brothers each 3 years apart, I was usually at the mercy of their schedules and daily tempers.   I started each day getting abused by my brothers only to be bullied for the rest of the day in school by kids twice my size.  No wonder I'm cynical.

I always looked forward to those rides.  Some memories are special because of what happened.  My school-ride memories are all about nostalgia.  Also, I picked up a peculiar habit that still surfaces today.  This morning, even.

I went to middle school in the early and middle of the 90s.  I would argue that some of the best music came out of that half-decade, and every morning was like a  mono-colored roulette wheel of quality music..  No matter what played was usually pretty great.  This was the Nirvana Generation!  This was when Def Leppard was putting out NEW songs (that were good)! When Metallica wasn’t a household name yet!  So it was that I developed a predilection for judging the quality of the day ahead by the first song we heard on the radio.  Luckily 90s rock is amazing. 

I got into the car this morning and, oddly, my radio wasn’t on the worst classical music station in the country (because they broadcast NPR more than music) and was instead on the rock station.   The song?  Metallica’s Until it Sleeps.  Despite the title, it woke up me up and even energized me a little bit. 

It was written: today will be epic.

When an awful song came on next, I changed the station – back to the droning NPR and the non-music-playing-classical-music-station.  Music today sucks.

The Case of the Great Shrinking Blog! Part 1 of Infinite.

So now it's all about warming-up paragraphs.

It's a sad blogging truth that it requires time to perfect a blog.  When I started this my mornings were light and sweet like the coffee that accompanies them.  The beverage has stayed the same, if it's not sweeter, but the work is different.

It's a good exercise but it's also so much more.  I've grown to love the blogging process.  I was talking with my friend last night about blogging.  He didn't understand the concept and said it must be hard.  I couldn't disagree more. Writing is hard should have been my response.  

In the previous paragraph when I said, “talking with my friend” I really meant “texting.”   There’s a subtle difference.  It’s what my brother might call the “antisocial media” effect.    It’s clear that social media (of which I would include texting) has made connecting with people and sharing ideas infinitely faster. There’s no lag in migration of information.  It’s the communicative equivalent of the global economy.  My brother argues that the social media monster has actually eroded the natural methods of human communication.  You know, like talking.   Over the weekend, the same brother joined Facebook.  He’s good at it.

I think I just found the topic of my next warm-up blog.

The Culmination of a Week-long Game.

Every time I walk across the bottom floor of my parking garage to check my mail or on the way to the gym, I have to walk underneath it.  It’s hangs precariously across the alcove of one of the floodlights that line the ceiling.  Its cotton labyrinth lays across and around the socket as though it fell on the bulb upside down.  At its apex roosts the spindly eight-legged Minotaur.

It’s a beautiful horror and absolutely the last thing I want to see suspended above me.   The other lights have webs but they’re mostly cob’s or abandoned.

What tangled webs we weave when we practice to deceive. 

I’ve made some choices the past week that may have been the wrong ones so I’m in a little bit of a funk.  Some were school related. Others were motivated by personal reasons.   By the time I finish it, this blog should have dispelled my funk. That’s the goal, anyway.

The garage-spider weaves his web differently than any other spider.  It’s a jumbled heap of silly string but it serves his purposes.  Its motivations behind the web are clear, its intention obvious.  Instinctual. 

I’m currently enrolled in a Board Games class at school.  It’s fabulous.  It’s challenging.  My partner and I are tasked with concepting out and creating a board game from scratch.  She’s a designer so she will, uh, design and I will do the stuff with the words.  It’s far more difficult than I initially thought it’d be. 

We’ve got a rough idea of how the game works and some of the why’s but the what  is an issue.   To help, I pretend as though I am player and I have just drawn the particular card we’re concepting.  How would I react?  Do I curse my rotten luck or the rotten game?   There’s logic to the way board games work and I aim to discover it.

Currently, my web is as inefficient as it is asymmetrical.  It seems that while renovating it recently, I removed too many stabilizers and it collapsed under the weight and velocity of the ladybug that accidentally flew into it. 

I feel compelled to make a terribly complex board game.  It’s the wrong choice, of course.  The best board games are the simplest - except for Axis and Allies.  That fucking game comes with two instruction booklets and it’s the best game ever.

The natural state of the board game is simplicity.  Making it unnecessarily complex is just that ­– unnecessary.  

So it is that my decisions and choices were not wrong so much as unnecessary.  The fix is therefore easy.  To borrow from Dan Simmons’ genius award-winning Hyperion series, my answer is to “not choose.”  

Incidentally, I’m totally entering this blog into the “Best Extended Metaphor Ever” contest. 

I feel better.

Coffee Shop Mornings, a Glitch in the Matrix.

I see the same people every morning.  The same sweaty men and women slowly bounce their way past my little corner of coffee shop.  They run early.  Early, before the sloppy tongue of humidity makes the smallest movements exhausting.   They don’t look in my window and if they did they’d see me pretending not to see them.  They wear spandex pants or flimsy iridescent short shorts and shirts that wick. 

Every morning, the same guy behind the counter swipes my card and pours me my first extra large bowl of coffee for the day.  He speaks too loudly and is too proud and arrogant, given where he is standing.  He’s like the homeless man outside the bar in LA that berated me on account of the Triumph shirt I was wearing because I liked it for fashion, and not its rich motoring history. Except my coffee pourer smiles and is nice, and has not recently peed himself.

I see the same people every morning.  The woman who sits across from me every morning who shows all of her teeth when she smiles because it’s genuine. Small talk gets smaller and smaller and we are soon silently working. 

Clicking away. 

The guy with the Porsche comes in.  He is tall and half-Asian and has a ponytail.  I imagine him being an IT Director, the kind of guy I used to sell toner to.  I dislike him even though I don’t know him.

The same dogs waddle by, walking their owners.  The dogs are patient with them, stopping to let their anchors catch up.

When she comes in, I have to take a break and watch her. She’s small and thin and Asian. The IT Director’s sister?  She’s older than me and has impeccable fashion sense.  I never see her car because she parks around the corner but I can imagine her in an Acura, or a convertible.  She enjoys driving and looks good in everything.

The bicycle guy comes in and roughly sets his bag down on the table across from me. I’ve never seen his bicycle.

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

Exactly one hour later, my coffee bowl is refilled by the girl behind the counter. 

During the early part of the week, there’s a different guy behind the counter that says, “man” a lot.  As in, “hey, man, your usual today?  Cool, man.  Here you go, man.” I imagine he is aware of his speech impediment and is consciously making the effort to speak normally and failing.  Either that or he is not very creative.  I like him either way.

I sit down at seven in the morning and leave around nine.  Sometimes I buy a quiche or a ham and cheese croissant.  They are both my weakness.

The people here see me every day. They must imagine I am working on something important because I type loudly.

Ping Pong, Ambition, and Winning (even though I lost).

I’m still upset about it. 

19-21. 

Life is instruction.  It was no different last night during a game of ping pong versus a stranger, in a small tournament at a local bar. 

It had been a week and change since my last game against my brothers in D.C. and I was feeling confident.  After all, how many people can be that much better than us? As I watched warm-ups, my confidence was bolstered by the ineptitude of my competition: sloppy backhands, forehands like they were slapping a bug on the wall, ridiculous spin-heavy trick shots. 

But much like reading an ad headline and thinking, “that’s easy, I could do that” and doing it, the story was different during my game.  I was later told that I looked just as embarrassing as the rest of the paddle-wielding motley crew. 

19-21.  I lost.  I had a few nice forehands for easy winners but my usual consistent backhand failed me repeatedly. 

I blame many things, including but not limited to: not enough warm up time, my nerves, the two 9.5% IPAs I had prior to the match, not a large enough playing area, Arabs. 

But I also need to blame (credit) the guy I played against.  He didn’t hit the ball very hard but at least he was consistent and had a wicked topspin that I was wholly unprepared for.  The three-star balls had noticeably more pop than the single star (or no star) I’m accustomed to.  He had a decent serve - as soon as he focused on my crumbling backhand.  I crushed my forehand cross-court the few times he challenged it.  I mounted a mini comeback with my slice service that he repeatedly bonered into the net (yep I just made up a verb) and lost my grip when I imprudently switched to the topspin.  The final point (his serve still) was sharply hit to my backhand and my slice that would have tied the game at 20-up just missed the end of the table. 

Life has its little instructions and this was one of them.  Think it over, move on, get better.  End of story.

I’m now going to attempt to parlay this into something about ad writing.  Because, you know, it’s sort of my career.

Consistency both in pong and writing is good but it won’t win you the game.  Consistency is mediocre.  I can sit and write inane boring shit all day – and sometimes have to – but I’m always rallying to set up for the crosscourt winner.  Sometimes (most often) I miss wide or in the net, but it’s better to go big than let the competition exploit your weakness and tentativeness.

I hit the ball hard and fast in places you can’t return it.  You won’t see the ball I hit but you’ll know you’ve lost the point.  I aim to win the point quickly and decisively.  I play offense.

Playing defense is for people that never score.

So it is with writing, and day-to-day life.  I had a conversation last night (basically) about the price of success.  Ambition has always had a price, at least literarily, but only as a fatal flaw. 

Ambition is an interesting idea.  Ambition connotes a certain level of confidence, or “can-do-ness” but simultaneously implies an eagerness and preference for the process.  Overconfident Ambition doesn’t care for process and that’s when it becomes fatally flawed.   If you skip the process, you skip the learning. 

It’s hard straddling the line as a writer in ad school, especially because I’m extraordinarily competitive.    I’m confident that I’m a good ping pong player regardless of winning or losing.  Yet, I’m upset and embarrassed I lost. 

I may not be losing at ad school but I don’t think I’m winning yet either, and it may have something to do with my shot selection.  

I See Dead People Memorials.

The World War II Memorial is pretty great.  It’s enormous.  It has water features.  Plural.  And there’s a lot of concrete that signifies things.  My camera phone blows so I didn’t take any pictures of it and I’m recalling all of this from memory.  My phone at the time was an antiquated Blackberry that acted more like a rolodex and was designed like one of those Franklin-Covey planners that every high schooler wants but never uses.  Every year without fail I talked my parents into buying me one with promises of better grades and focus as though I didn’t need those things in order to use the planner to begin with.  Lesson: in order to be organized you have to be organized. 

To the best of my memory, there’s a circular water feature kids and adults alike can dip their feet into.  It’s shallow.  There may or may not be a fountain.  There is a sign that lets tourists know not to throw change into it.   The foreign tourists do so anyway.  Ringing the fountain on the outside of the ten-foot wide walking path are fifty (probably) statues and a concrete wreath hung on each.  In the rear of the monument is a wall of large 8-inch gold stars. Hundreds of them.  Each one stands for one-hundred Americans killed in the war. In total, something like 650,000-750,000 U.S. soldiers were killed or went missing in the war.  And not one of them was the father of the motherfucker that cut me off this morning.  Unfathomable.

But in all seriousness, that’s a lot of dead people.

When I was in 8^th grade, I went on a school trip to D.C. with the class and my principal, who I actually liked. I was a dork.  We did the whole D.C. thing and I remember walking along the Vietnam Memorial with amusement at its novelty and composition.  I remembered it being it bigger, with multiple black marble walls.  It’s just the one, though.  Something like 70,000 U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam.  A tenth of what we lost in WWII but it’s still too many, and the memorial succeeds in ways the WWII one doesn’t.  *Spoiler Alert* Engraved upon the memorial is the name of every U.S. man and woman killed in Vietnam (that’s the idea anyway, whether or not it’s actually true I don’t know).  The monument itself is a wall, maybe 300 feet in length, of polished black marble that buttresses a cutout wedge of a hill.  It’s understated, elegant, and striking.  It’s a touching tribute to the men and women who fought and died for our country. (Or, to protect it?  Why did we go into Vietnam again?)  But seriously, what a pain in the ass, keeping all of those names straight, making sure they’re up on the wall.  The monument doubles as a tribute to America’s bookkeeping ability.

Both monuments affected me.  I took it as a sign of my old-age again, thinking the whole time I was on the verge of mystery tears, “What the fuck is going on?” 

It’s a moving experience.  Honestly, I think it has to do somewhat with all of the shows about war.  At the WWII monument I had flashes of Band of Brothers and The Pacific. For me, those shows filled in the emotional gaps left between the cold, stoic petrified wreaths.  Even though I didn’t remember the character names, I had a relatable face.  I can’t think of a joke to sum this paragraph up so I’ll just move on.

As a new candidate for the “worst job ever” I submit “guy-who-works-in-the-Lincoln-Memorial-bookstore.”  The shop is INSIDE of the memorial.  It’s a whopping 8X15 feet of non-air-conditioned space within a stone’s throw of Lincoln’s lap. The line of sweaty foreigners stretches on interminably throughout the day.  At the end of each and every exhausting day, the poor cashier bids adieu to our 16^th president and limps down the 40 steps to his car, parked some mile and a half away.  All for minimum wage.  Worst. Job. Ever.  If I had that job, I would hate America and never use pennies or fives.

I think I annoyed my brother because I kept telling my niece and nephews, who were along for the grueling tour, “You really think the government would display the real Washington Monument? No, this is just a reproduction. The real one is in the vault under the Capitol.”  

I’m the best uncle ever.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Welcome to the Middle of School. Ooh.

Welcome to the beginning of the middle.

Today, I think it’s only natural to write about what the hell I’ve been up to for the last 2 weeks and try to describe something that’s indescribable like a real honest-to-god copywriter.

My cousin was married in New York on July 2^nd.  The whole affair was as amazing as I anticipated with a few unexpected pleasures and confusions. 

My cousin’s new husband, Tommy, played the perfect gentleman and was a mensch to the end.   Though it was the first time he’d met my entire family, he remembered our names and faces like we were family already. 

A quick digression:  I can tell I’m getting old (other than the 2 day hangovers) because I no longer have the ol’ highschool-in-my-underwear-and-I-forgot-I-had-an-exam nightmare.  No.  Now my nightmares consist of me at my wedding to anonymous-hot-girl and me forgetting-and-being-terrible-at introducing all of my and her relatives to each other.  Suffice it to say, I was very impressed by Tommy’s memory. 

Italian weddings are exhausting.  It ‘s not from running around or dancing like a madman.  It is partially from drinking copious amounts of free liquor, but that’s true at any wedding.  No it’s from the level of Italian-wedding gluttony.  I expected and was not disappointed by the spread at the cocktail hour.  Lobster, crab, jumbo shrimp, fresh oysters, mussels, clams, salmon. Chicken three ways.  Roast beef and other red meat preparations.  A finger food selection for each digit.  Any exotic fruit you could chuck a spear at.  A charcuterie plate Mario Batali would salivate for.  And that was just the appetizers.  After that smorgasbord, we were ushered to another room where we found our tables and were served the actual wedding meal. 

I ate it all.                                                                                                  I am a fat fat man.

I was surprised by a few things: To my utter amazement, for being such a pretty girl, my cousin had very few hot friends in attendance.  Here I was, a virile single guy at a wedding without succor anywhere in sight.  Captain of the S.S. Bachelor marooned at table 7.

By the end of the night it wouldn’t have mattered if I were in a brothel with Scoutmob, I was too tired to get much of anything up including myself out of the chair.

It had been at least a couple years since I had last been to Long Island or the City and was startled how much I missed it.  I was born on Long Island but having moved to Denver after just 8 months, never grew a childhood connection to it. 

Here’s the part where I try to describe stuff.

The City just seems so damned familiar.  And it should, since I’ve been there a bunch of times, but that’s not really what I mean.  Familiar like déjà vu-familiar.

New York City has an enormously loaded history.  Nation-building history.  It feels like a center and it is.  There is a sense that the city is a catalyst for it’s own evolution, like a perpetual motion machine.  I get caught in it like an undertow. 

Now, in real words: I missed the city even though I never lived there.  For the first time ever I felt like I could live there.  That I wanted to live there.  My whole family comes from New York, so for the first time, I feel that I have a duty to live there.  It's fucking weird.

Both of my brothers lived in the city for a number of years, one just recently (2 years-ish ago).  I’ve been there a dozen times or more.  Every time, I was glad to leave, except this time. 

So that happened.

I learned to hate trains.  Not so much the train itself, but the process of the train.  What a fucking ordeal.  What a schlep.  Once on it, the train is an antiquated but suitable mode of travel.  Any transportation you can sleep on is a good one.  Earlier this morning I said in conversation, “It’s funny, the quality of a plane is judged by how easy it is to sleep on,” but the same could be said for almost any mode of transportation.  On a 1-10, first class is an 8 (for John Q. Public, anyway.  I’m an amazing plane sleeper. First class for me is a 12).  Coach on a train is about a 5, me included. 

In D.C., I played a lot of pingpong, hot tubbed, played with my nieces and nephews, and saw the monuments and memorials till my feet hurt.  Tomorrow, I’ll do my best to describe the indescribable again (better this time) and write about concrete that signifies stuff AKA memorials.