Last night I had a dream about Sophie, the girl who lived two houses down from me when we were kids.
In the dream, I was 8 years old again, and the doorbell rang. I was back at my old house, where my bedroom window was right next to where the front porch stood, so I could see who was at the door before anyone else.
I raised the blinds, and there she was: her jet-black hair pulled back, the dark eyes, the pointy nose and the delicate cheeks.
She asked me if I wanted to play and I said, "Yes!" and I ran outside with a basketball under my arm and we played one-on-one until our parents called us in for dinner.
Then I woke up.
*/*
Where are you now, Sophie? Did you get knocked up by some vato from the neighborhood? Did you get married, gain 50 lbs, and get a job as a nurse? Did you get addicted to crack or speed or heroin? Did you become a whore? Did you join a convent or accept Jesus Christ as your Savior?
Where are you?
What I wouldn't give to know where you are.
Sometimes I see women on the street, in magazines, in movies, as extras on television, in passing cars, and I think they are you.
Sometimes I go online, on sites like Friendster or My Space, and I look for you. Sometimes I Google your name.
Once, I found a name that could've been yours, in the phone book. I called and left a message. I never heard back, and when I called the number again a month later the line had been disconnected.
I wonder if you have ever thought of me once in all of the years since we last saw each other.
The last time I did set eyes on you, time had changed the both of us. I was 16, with long matted hair and a surly attitude. You had your hair piled high and you were wearing make-up and a tank top and shorts that showed off your body. I remember that I couldn't handle the fact that you were no longer a tomboy. I remember that you were becoming promiscuous, and that all the guys were after you.
Last I heard of you, my cousin Johnny told me that he saw you at Magic Mountain, in line for Viper. He said you were acting a fool.
I have this idealized image of you in my mind, but all I want is to see what became of you.
I don't care if it doesn't compare to the image that is burned into my consciousness. I just want to know if you still exist. Occasionally, I wonder if you ever existed at all, because your absence from my life has been so complete.
Maybe I imagined you all these years. Maybe I made you up.
No, it was real. Too real.
Sophie, wherever you are, hear my plea, absorb it into your soul... I am looking for you. I want to find you. I'm not afraid of what I'll find. I promise I won't be mad at you.
I promise.
You've been gone far too long. I don't want to pick up where we left off. I just want a chance to tell you what you meant to me.
That's all.
*/*
This is my major malfunction, people. I don't think I'll ever be happy until I resolve this. After years of sorting through the various traumas and neuroses of my life, it all boils down to finding her.
I know she's out of my life, but I have a feeling that, if I can make peace with this, then it will be easier to make peace with other issues that I have.
I could hire a P.I. or pay one of those People Finder sites, but I'm too lazy, and besides-- what if she changed her name? What if she doesn't want to be found? What if she just doesn't want to see me?
What if she's dead?
What if?
I wish I knew where to start. I know her family moved to Oregon, but she stayed on here. That means she has roots here. That means she has a reason to not leave L.A.
I'm going to try and find her by year's end.
Wish me luck.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
MIRRORS
In the plaza of the Galleria where my office is situated, everything is covered with a reflective surface. There are lots of glass doors, plenty of windows, and even some of the steelworks have shiny, embossed sheens where you can clearly make yourself out enough to fix your hair or adjust your shirt.
It is a world full of mirrors.
Today, I am using it as a metaphor for the narcissistic society that we live in. Even as I try not to gaze upon myself in the mirrors, I am still prone to it by virtue of wearing dark, reflective sunglasses.
I noticed today that I use the mirrors to look at other people. Yes, I do tend to look a little longer at myself when I catch a glimpse of me, but then I fix my attention on someone else in the mirror frame. It is my way of looking at people without looking at them directly.
If I see a hot girl (and with the 24-hour gym located next to the movie theater, there are more than a fair share of those), I can look at her through the mirrors without feeling like a dirty old man. However, once I am aware of my lechery, I look away.
And that is the big difference, I think, between my narcissism and the narcissism of others: I am acutely aware of my self-absorption. And it bothers me sometimes, to be so vain, to be so solipsistic.
Can I say the same for others?
*/*
Yesterday was Eve's birthday. She is now 28. She and I have been keeping our distance but we are on somewhat friendly terms. I called her before I went to work and left a message on her answering machine.
She didn't call me on my birthday, and as much as I wanted to get her back for that, I decided not to stoop so low.
I had plans with Elle and the band, and I had plans with Paulie at The Garage. But by the end of my work shift yesterday, I decided to revolt. I went home, straight from the office, without calling anyone, lest I get roped into stopping by the studio or The Garage against my will.
Sometimes I feel like I give and give of myself and get nothing in return. I am a bass player who is paying money out instead of getting money for his work. I am an aspiring animator who is working alongside people who don't want it as badly as I do.
That's the story of my life-- no one ever wants it as badly as I do. They all have things to fall back on, but all I have is the love of creating. And that is no consolation during moments like these, when I want to move on to the next level and everyone else cannot see the hurry.
I went home and called Elle, explaining my situation. She told me that it was okay because the session had been canceled anyway. So, in other words, if I'd kept my end of the bargain, I would've ended up going out to the studio for no reason. This only made me feel vindicated in my decision to flake out.
Paulie called me up, because even if there was nothing to do he still wants me to hang around. That's because he hates half of the people he has to deal with at The Garage, and he knows that I am not there to leech off of him or waste his time. But I had to explain to him that I wasn't feeling it, and he understood.
I converted a bunch of Kinks songs to CD, as well as some more 45s and a few 12" singles. Around a quarter to 9, I called Eve on her cel phone. I got the voice mail, but I didn't leave a message. I don't know why I called her a second time.
She called me back an hour later, drunk as hell and ranting. Her old-ass computer was about to die-- it kept telling her "FAILURE IS IMMINENT"... Then, she talked about how she had two auditions coming up that would pay her handsomely. Then, she went on about how she's getting old, and how hard work is, and all that. I barely got a word in edgewise.
She said, "I appreciate you calling me on my birthday, even if I had to call you back to hear from you." I said nothing. She had seen my number on her cel phone, and I had not left a message. She was driving home from going out with her co-workers and had not heard my answering machine message yet.
She kept on talking, making no sense. We talked about inconsequential fluff. Feeling like I was just there for her to vent on, I finally got the courage to ask her if she wanted to do anything with me for her birthday.
She said, "No, I'm trying to let this one pass. It's not important. My parents are dragging me out to do stuff, so I have to do that. But no, I don't want to do anything for my birthday."
This pissed me off. Why did it anger me? Because it's the main problem between us-- she thinks she is being humble and modest, but really she is punishing me for my narcissism... by being narcissistic herself.
You see, when she got mad at me in January for not giving her due credit on the animation, I had no idea that she was feeling that way, and she let it simmer and stew inside of her until she decided to not call me on my birthday. And in a way, this is the inverse of that moment-- she has no idea how angry she makes me by dismissing my wish to at least take her out for her birthday. It makes me want to get her back, by cutting off her N-supply, by doing something to make her feel as bad as she makes me feel...
We're both narcissists, trying to make the other bow down. We're not happy if we cannot use the other to mirror our precious self-images. Whether it is Eve telling me she'd rather not celebrate her birthday with me, or whether it is me telling her not to lend me $100 to pay my gas bill, neither of us can give up on our preconceived notions of who we are. And we end up hurting each other because of it.
I went to bed last night quite angry. The only consolation was the mix CD I'd made, of songs that I had on vinyl.
*/*
On a seemingly unrelated note:
No matter whether you think O.J. Simpson is guilty or not, everyone must admit that the late Johnnie Cochran was a hell of a lawyer. His closing statement at the end of that trial will go down in history and is probably being studied in law schools all over the country.
I liked Johnnie Cochran. He was a great lawyer. There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a lawyer, and for all of my love of arguing, I think I would've been pretty good at it. However, I knew it wasn't easy work, and so I decided to pass on it. But I always respect a good lawyer, even if the rest of the world feels ambivalent about their role in society.
I was just like you once-- I believed O.J. was guilty at first. Given the circumstances, it looked pretty cut-and-dried. O.J. ran from the law, had a history of abusing his ex, and looked like he was capable of double murder.
I always wondered why O.J. didn't plead guilty and use as his defense the "crime of passion" ploy. It would've reduced his sentence to involuntary manslaughter if his lawyers could prove he acted impulsively, and he would've done five to ten years tops. I felt that his plea of "Absolutely, positively, 100% not guilty" was kind of ballsy. He was straight-out denying any liability or guilt.
A couple of things changed my mind:
1. The glove didn't fit. That was the pivotal moment for me. I even tried to reason with some of my black friends, who were on O.J.'s side, that he could've held his hand in a certain way as to make it seem like the glove didn't fit, but ultimately I had to concede the point. The fact is, the prosecution was saying this was his glove, and it didn't fit on his hand. That is what is known as reasonable doubt.
2. Mark Fuhrman taking the fifth. All you non-L.A. motherfuckers don't even know how corrupt the LAPD is. You read about Rampart, you read about Rodney King, but you don't really know about it until you live here and deal with the jakes firsthand. They are a racist gang with badges, and they brainwash their own to keep the Code Of Silence intact. It was no surprise to hear Mark Fuhrman's voice on that tape, saying "nigger" this and "nigger" that. I hadn't heard that much use of the N-word since N.W.A.'s Efil4zaggin album first came out. And I remember the day of testimony when F. Lee Bailey asked Mark Fuhrman if he'd ever used the N-word. I knew it was a trap, and I was intrigued by the tactic. It was good lawyering, the kind of stuff the prosecution should've been doing.
Let's face it: if Chris Darden and Marcia Clark had been O.J.'s attorneys, he'd be in jail right now.
3. The closing statement. A spectacular example of courtoom rhetoric. Cochran pulled out all the stops: he used humor, subtle outrage, and appealed to the common sense of the jury. Isn't it funny how juries who hand out unfavorable verdicts are always accused of being "dumb"? It happened recently with the Robert Blake trial, where the D.A. (of all people) called the jury 'stupid'. This offended the jury, of course, because they are not privy to the spectacle and media circuses that everyone else is treated to, and they cannot be expected to make the same decisions as the Court Of Public Opinion.
Cochran blazed his name into the history books with the famous line, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit". I actually stood up and applauded when that line came out of his mouth. It was stunning, masterful, brilliant. I compared him to Clarence Darrow, and all of my friends were amazed that I had been won over by his speech. They all looked at me and said, "Yeah, but O.J.'s still going to jail," and I said, "Don't count on it now."
A bit of trivia: Cochran was not O.J.'s first choice. The first lawyer Simpson consulted was Howard Weitzman, another high-profile L.A. attorney. Simpson didn't like what Weitzman had to say, so he sought out Robert Shapiro, who brought Cochran in along with Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck and Robert Kardashian-- the "Dream Team". After about a month, Cochran was running the show, and I think it's because Cochran understood the racial implications of the case. He knew that America wanted to lynch another nigger in the old-fashioned sense, but not with a rope-- this time they wanted it on camera. And Cochran, who has had experience with African-American clients being railroaded by The System, wasn't going to go down without a fight.
Yeah, say what you want about the ensuing civil trial and settlement, but I still spell Amerikkka with three K's. And that's the reason why people still smart over that verdict to this day: they wanted to see a nigger hang by his neck, and they didn't get their wish. This one had too much money and too much clout. And after years-- no, decades-- of African-Americans getting strung up to tree branches while their white assailants walked away scot-free, it's only karma that O.J. Simpson was acquitted.
No one wants to admit that. This country needs to take a good, long look at itself before it passes judgement on Simpson, who did what anyone else in his position would've done. Don't tell me that anyone else would've just turned themselves in-- that's a bunch of bullshit and you know it. Even if you consider yourself not racist and tolerant and all that, if you believe that O.J. was guilty then you were hoping that he would get his just desserts.
People are mad and say that O.J. got off because he had money. So? If he didn't have any money, he would've been awarded a Public Defender, and he would be in jail right now. Is that any better? Is that somehow more fair than the alternative? All I know is, O.J. is broke right now, but he is free, and in America, any black man will tell you it is better to be free and broke than rich and in jail.
What this trial taught me was that the maxim "innocent until proven guilty" is a wise one to live by. I didn't presume his innocence before the trial, and I can admit that now. Before the trial began, I just wanted to be on the winning side. Ironically, I ended up on the winning side anyway, by looking at the facts of the case.
Only time will tell if it was a just verdict. I have a feeling that the real story behind The Trial Of The Century, like the JFK assassination, will be a labrynthine maze of astonishing audacity and corruption, when the full details finally reach the surface. Don't sit there and act like you know the deal, because you don't. None of us do. I bet you even O.J. doesn't know. And fortunately for O.J., Cochran didn't seem to care either way-- he just wanted to do his job and get his client off the hook.
R.I.P. Johnnie Cochran, the man who got Geronimo Pratt off the hook for a crime he didn't commit, among other things. Like William Kuntsler, the man who defended the dudes who tried to blow up the WTC in the early 1990's, he felt that everyone deserves representation in this country, no matter what we feel the price for justice should be. Whether or not he was in it for the cash or the fame or the notoriety of the cases, Cochran was The Best at what he did, and you can't hate on him for that.
After all, it's what this country is supposed to be about: being The Best at what you do...
It is a world full of mirrors.
Today, I am using it as a metaphor for the narcissistic society that we live in. Even as I try not to gaze upon myself in the mirrors, I am still prone to it by virtue of wearing dark, reflective sunglasses.
I noticed today that I use the mirrors to look at other people. Yes, I do tend to look a little longer at myself when I catch a glimpse of me, but then I fix my attention on someone else in the mirror frame. It is my way of looking at people without looking at them directly.
If I see a hot girl (and with the 24-hour gym located next to the movie theater, there are more than a fair share of those), I can look at her through the mirrors without feeling like a dirty old man. However, once I am aware of my lechery, I look away.
And that is the big difference, I think, between my narcissism and the narcissism of others: I am acutely aware of my self-absorption. And it bothers me sometimes, to be so vain, to be so solipsistic.
Can I say the same for others?
*/*
Yesterday was Eve's birthday. She is now 28. She and I have been keeping our distance but we are on somewhat friendly terms. I called her before I went to work and left a message on her answering machine.
She didn't call me on my birthday, and as much as I wanted to get her back for that, I decided not to stoop so low.
I had plans with Elle and the band, and I had plans with Paulie at The Garage. But by the end of my work shift yesterday, I decided to revolt. I went home, straight from the office, without calling anyone, lest I get roped into stopping by the studio or The Garage against my will.
Sometimes I feel like I give and give of myself and get nothing in return. I am a bass player who is paying money out instead of getting money for his work. I am an aspiring animator who is working alongside people who don't want it as badly as I do.
That's the story of my life-- no one ever wants it as badly as I do. They all have things to fall back on, but all I have is the love of creating. And that is no consolation during moments like these, when I want to move on to the next level and everyone else cannot see the hurry.
I went home and called Elle, explaining my situation. She told me that it was okay because the session had been canceled anyway. So, in other words, if I'd kept my end of the bargain, I would've ended up going out to the studio for no reason. This only made me feel vindicated in my decision to flake out.
Paulie called me up, because even if there was nothing to do he still wants me to hang around. That's because he hates half of the people he has to deal with at The Garage, and he knows that I am not there to leech off of him or waste his time. But I had to explain to him that I wasn't feeling it, and he understood.
I converted a bunch of Kinks songs to CD, as well as some more 45s and a few 12" singles. Around a quarter to 9, I called Eve on her cel phone. I got the voice mail, but I didn't leave a message. I don't know why I called her a second time.
She called me back an hour later, drunk as hell and ranting. Her old-ass computer was about to die-- it kept telling her "FAILURE IS IMMINENT"... Then, she talked about how she had two auditions coming up that would pay her handsomely. Then, she went on about how she's getting old, and how hard work is, and all that. I barely got a word in edgewise.
She said, "I appreciate you calling me on my birthday, even if I had to call you back to hear from you." I said nothing. She had seen my number on her cel phone, and I had not left a message. She was driving home from going out with her co-workers and had not heard my answering machine message yet.
She kept on talking, making no sense. We talked about inconsequential fluff. Feeling like I was just there for her to vent on, I finally got the courage to ask her if she wanted to do anything with me for her birthday.
She said, "No, I'm trying to let this one pass. It's not important. My parents are dragging me out to do stuff, so I have to do that. But no, I don't want to do anything for my birthday."
This pissed me off. Why did it anger me? Because it's the main problem between us-- she thinks she is being humble and modest, but really she is punishing me for my narcissism... by being narcissistic herself.
You see, when she got mad at me in January for not giving her due credit on the animation, I had no idea that she was feeling that way, and she let it simmer and stew inside of her until she decided to not call me on my birthday. And in a way, this is the inverse of that moment-- she has no idea how angry she makes me by dismissing my wish to at least take her out for her birthday. It makes me want to get her back, by cutting off her N-supply, by doing something to make her feel as bad as she makes me feel...
We're both narcissists, trying to make the other bow down. We're not happy if we cannot use the other to mirror our precious self-images. Whether it is Eve telling me she'd rather not celebrate her birthday with me, or whether it is me telling her not to lend me $100 to pay my gas bill, neither of us can give up on our preconceived notions of who we are. And we end up hurting each other because of it.
I went to bed last night quite angry. The only consolation was the mix CD I'd made, of songs that I had on vinyl.
*/*
On a seemingly unrelated note:
No matter whether you think O.J. Simpson is guilty or not, everyone must admit that the late Johnnie Cochran was a hell of a lawyer. His closing statement at the end of that trial will go down in history and is probably being studied in law schools all over the country.
I liked Johnnie Cochran. He was a great lawyer. There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a lawyer, and for all of my love of arguing, I think I would've been pretty good at it. However, I knew it wasn't easy work, and so I decided to pass on it. But I always respect a good lawyer, even if the rest of the world feels ambivalent about their role in society.
I was just like you once-- I believed O.J. was guilty at first. Given the circumstances, it looked pretty cut-and-dried. O.J. ran from the law, had a history of abusing his ex, and looked like he was capable of double murder.
I always wondered why O.J. didn't plead guilty and use as his defense the "crime of passion" ploy. It would've reduced his sentence to involuntary manslaughter if his lawyers could prove he acted impulsively, and he would've done five to ten years tops. I felt that his plea of "Absolutely, positively, 100% not guilty" was kind of ballsy. He was straight-out denying any liability or guilt.
A couple of things changed my mind:
1. The glove didn't fit. That was the pivotal moment for me. I even tried to reason with some of my black friends, who were on O.J.'s side, that he could've held his hand in a certain way as to make it seem like the glove didn't fit, but ultimately I had to concede the point. The fact is, the prosecution was saying this was his glove, and it didn't fit on his hand. That is what is known as reasonable doubt.
2. Mark Fuhrman taking the fifth. All you non-L.A. motherfuckers don't even know how corrupt the LAPD is. You read about Rampart, you read about Rodney King, but you don't really know about it until you live here and deal with the jakes firsthand. They are a racist gang with badges, and they brainwash their own to keep the Code Of Silence intact. It was no surprise to hear Mark Fuhrman's voice on that tape, saying "nigger" this and "nigger" that. I hadn't heard that much use of the N-word since N.W.A.'s Efil4zaggin album first came out. And I remember the day of testimony when F. Lee Bailey asked Mark Fuhrman if he'd ever used the N-word. I knew it was a trap, and I was intrigued by the tactic. It was good lawyering, the kind of stuff the prosecution should've been doing.
Let's face it: if Chris Darden and Marcia Clark had been O.J.'s attorneys, he'd be in jail right now.
3. The closing statement. A spectacular example of courtoom rhetoric. Cochran pulled out all the stops: he used humor, subtle outrage, and appealed to the common sense of the jury. Isn't it funny how juries who hand out unfavorable verdicts are always accused of being "dumb"? It happened recently with the Robert Blake trial, where the D.A. (of all people) called the jury 'stupid'. This offended the jury, of course, because they are not privy to the spectacle and media circuses that everyone else is treated to, and they cannot be expected to make the same decisions as the Court Of Public Opinion.
Cochran blazed his name into the history books with the famous line, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit". I actually stood up and applauded when that line came out of his mouth. It was stunning, masterful, brilliant. I compared him to Clarence Darrow, and all of my friends were amazed that I had been won over by his speech. They all looked at me and said, "Yeah, but O.J.'s still going to jail," and I said, "Don't count on it now."
A bit of trivia: Cochran was not O.J.'s first choice. The first lawyer Simpson consulted was Howard Weitzman, another high-profile L.A. attorney. Simpson didn't like what Weitzman had to say, so he sought out Robert Shapiro, who brought Cochran in along with Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck and Robert Kardashian-- the "Dream Team". After about a month, Cochran was running the show, and I think it's because Cochran understood the racial implications of the case. He knew that America wanted to lynch another nigger in the old-fashioned sense, but not with a rope-- this time they wanted it on camera. And Cochran, who has had experience with African-American clients being railroaded by The System, wasn't going to go down without a fight.
Yeah, say what you want about the ensuing civil trial and settlement, but I still spell Amerikkka with three K's. And that's the reason why people still smart over that verdict to this day: they wanted to see a nigger hang by his neck, and they didn't get their wish. This one had too much money and too much clout. And after years-- no, decades-- of African-Americans getting strung up to tree branches while their white assailants walked away scot-free, it's only karma that O.J. Simpson was acquitted.
No one wants to admit that. This country needs to take a good, long look at itself before it passes judgement on Simpson, who did what anyone else in his position would've done. Don't tell me that anyone else would've just turned themselves in-- that's a bunch of bullshit and you know it. Even if you consider yourself not racist and tolerant and all that, if you believe that O.J. was guilty then you were hoping that he would get his just desserts.
People are mad and say that O.J. got off because he had money. So? If he didn't have any money, he would've been awarded a Public Defender, and he would be in jail right now. Is that any better? Is that somehow more fair than the alternative? All I know is, O.J. is broke right now, but he is free, and in America, any black man will tell you it is better to be free and broke than rich and in jail.
What this trial taught me was that the maxim "innocent until proven guilty" is a wise one to live by. I didn't presume his innocence before the trial, and I can admit that now. Before the trial began, I just wanted to be on the winning side. Ironically, I ended up on the winning side anyway, by looking at the facts of the case.
Only time will tell if it was a just verdict. I have a feeling that the real story behind The Trial Of The Century, like the JFK assassination, will be a labrynthine maze of astonishing audacity and corruption, when the full details finally reach the surface. Don't sit there and act like you know the deal, because you don't. None of us do. I bet you even O.J. doesn't know. And fortunately for O.J., Cochran didn't seem to care either way-- he just wanted to do his job and get his client off the hook.
R.I.P. Johnnie Cochran, the man who got Geronimo Pratt off the hook for a crime he didn't commit, among other things. Like William Kuntsler, the man who defended the dudes who tried to blow up the WTC in the early 1990's, he felt that everyone deserves representation in this country, no matter what we feel the price for justice should be. Whether or not he was in it for the cash or the fame or the notoriety of the cases, Cochran was The Best at what he did, and you can't hate on him for that.
After all, it's what this country is supposed to be about: being The Best at what you do...
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
VINYL
I decided to start converting my LPs to my hard drive.
For the past decade I have neglected my vinyl records, because I had a shitty record player, the all-in-one type that came attached to a double-cassette player and a cheesy tuner. Those players suck. They sound like caca. They damage your records when you play them. Over the years, if I remembered to do so, I would buy a CD copy of any album I owned on vinyl, but I own a lot of records-- there isn't enough time to go out and re-stock my collection.
Last year, The Gypsy sold me a Technics turntable for 50 bones. Now this is a real turntable-- direct drive, automated needle, high fidelity sound... Not only did I instantly hook it up to my receiver, but I actually started buying vinyl again. You see, a few blocks away from my humble abode is a record shop called Atomic Records, and they rule. Of course, the really good stuff is horribly overpriced, but luckily I own most of that stuff already.
I selected six songs from my collection to commit to the computer, as a test run. It will take up a lot of space on my drive after a while, so I want to make sure I can get the songs to sound the way I want them to sound. Then, when I have burned them to CD, I can convert each song to MP3 and delete the WAV files.
The six songs were:
Patti Smith, "Because The Night", "Gloria" and "Rock & Roll Nigger"...
ELO, "New World Rising" and Blondie, "11:59"-- both on 45...
Prince, "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" from Sign O' The Times.
These songs have been swimming in my head lately, and they deserve to be on CD so I can rock them in my ride.
Driving around with the six songs burned onto a CD, I couldn't believe how great they sounded. Snaps, crackles and pops aside, these records sound better than CDs-- which is not to disparage the digital format. These records were mixed with vinyl in mind, so the respective engineers no doubt crafted the mixes to expand dynamically when played on a quality turntable.
I find that records recorded with a digital playback format in mind are mixed to expand dynamically in a CD player, and they sound good because of that deliberate choice to play to digital's strengths. For example, all rap records made after 1995 sound awesome on CD, due to the heavy reliance on digital technology used in making the records.
But when you've got a record like Fun Boy Three's debut on vinyl, the CD version might sound good... but the vinyl sounds better.
I can tune out the scratches and the pops, provided that they are not deep in the groove. If it is ambient and barely noticeable, I can ignore it. In fact, there is a familiarity in hearing the soft crackling, like an old friend is sitting in my room with me, eating potato chips. It makes me feel good, it brings me back to sunless days spent inside my room, poring over album jackets and sleeves, analyzing lyrics, marvelling at the artwork and reading the extensive liner notes, watching the black circle spin like the passage of time, in a spiral, 'pataphysically repeating over itself, like a witch's incantation or a warlock's recital...
Some of my records are worth a lot of money. Others are worthless, as works of art or as collectibles. Some of them are warped beyond repair, while others are in pristine condition. I even own a few albums that-- believe it or not-- have never been opened!
Half of the records I currently own I received from a woman I met about twelve years ago. I was 19, she was 42. She lived in a studio apartment on the 14th floor of a high rise on Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica. The story of how I met her is a long, humorous one that I'll cut for time: she was a friend of Paulie's whom I started a phone relationship with, and soon I was over at her place, having a May-December romance and being instructed in the ways of pleasure.
After each session (that's all I could really call them), she would send me home with as many books and records as I could carry in my arms. I asked her why she was giving it all up, and she would tell me that she wanted to "start over again"... I told her she could fetch big dollars for her collectibles, and she didn't care.
She was a depressed woman, who had lived fast and hard in her youth. She was a faded beauty, who found her grip on reality slipping as her looks succumbed to the ravages of time, alcohol, and sex. She confided to me that she'd had three abortions in her life, and that she didn't mind them at the time but now she regretted them. She told me I reminded her of the Cuban lover she'd had when she was 25, a man who impregnated her accidentally. Of course, his child was one of the aborts, and she told me that she wished she had never done that, because she knew the child would have been beautiful...
These sentiments scared me. All I was looking for was a good time, not boozy recollections of a woman past her prime. I wanted to have sympathy, but what she wanted was a second chance, and I couldn't give that to her even if I tried.
I broke it off, and she called me for three straight months non-stop, until Paulie and I finally moved out of North Hollywood and into Sherman Oaks.
She was a writer, and I wonder if she ever got that non-fiction book about Los Angeles finished. Alas, I wouldn't know if she did, because she said she was going to write it pseudonymously. I wonder if she's still there, in that rent-controlled studio space on the 14th floor, overlooking the beach and the ocean, the waves of the Pacific...
Because of her, I own ten Bob Dylan records (the classic ones), five Roxy Music albums, a slew of New Wave titles, an original mono pressing of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, countless 45s, and quite a number of books on any number of topics, including some poetry volumes and photograph anthologies.
I bought vinyl before and after her, but I still recall which ones were hers. They are the ones that are nearly perfect in their packaging; the titles are the ones that I lusted after for years before I met her.
She gave them to me, even though I refused. I'm glad that she insisted, because otherwise I might have forgotten about that short chapter in my life. Playing some of these vinyl records reminds me of her. She taught me a lot of things in the bedroom. She made me feel like a sex object for the first time in my life, and it wasn't a bad thing. It increased my poor self-esteem, it gave me perspective... and it made me sad.
How many women will end up like her, drinking wine out of ceramic bowls because they are too tired to go out and buy wine glasses? How many women like her will latch onto a young man like myself so desperately that it sends them running in a beeline out of their abode? How many women will wind up relying on their sexual prowess to compensate for the loss of their external beauty?
I sat in my apartment and smoked a cigarette, and thought about her as I was converting the Patti Smith songs-- those were her albums also. She gave me an education, in music, poetry, sex, and life. Koo koo kachoo, Mrs. Robinson...
Knowing how my life is, I will probably run into her again sometime in the near future. I hope she found a reason to keep going on, because Lord knows I wasn't the reason at all. I would've destroyed her, with my narcissism, with my insolent youth, with my arrogance and detachment...
In my mind, she is vinyl-- she was in vogue for a long time, and then she became obsolete, and she became devalued. And, like vinyl, I still thought she sounded great, even if she didn't believe it herself.
I think the next song to bounce to my hard drive will be "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart.
Long live vinyl. Vinyl forever and ever.
For the past decade I have neglected my vinyl records, because I had a shitty record player, the all-in-one type that came attached to a double-cassette player and a cheesy tuner. Those players suck. They sound like caca. They damage your records when you play them. Over the years, if I remembered to do so, I would buy a CD copy of any album I owned on vinyl, but I own a lot of records-- there isn't enough time to go out and re-stock my collection.
Last year, The Gypsy sold me a Technics turntable for 50 bones. Now this is a real turntable-- direct drive, automated needle, high fidelity sound... Not only did I instantly hook it up to my receiver, but I actually started buying vinyl again. You see, a few blocks away from my humble abode is a record shop called Atomic Records, and they rule. Of course, the really good stuff is horribly overpriced, but luckily I own most of that stuff already.
I selected six songs from my collection to commit to the computer, as a test run. It will take up a lot of space on my drive after a while, so I want to make sure I can get the songs to sound the way I want them to sound. Then, when I have burned them to CD, I can convert each song to MP3 and delete the WAV files.
The six songs were:
Patti Smith, "Because The Night", "Gloria" and "Rock & Roll Nigger"...
ELO, "New World Rising" and Blondie, "11:59"-- both on 45...
Prince, "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" from Sign O' The Times.
These songs have been swimming in my head lately, and they deserve to be on CD so I can rock them in my ride.
Driving around with the six songs burned onto a CD, I couldn't believe how great they sounded. Snaps, crackles and pops aside, these records sound better than CDs-- which is not to disparage the digital format. These records were mixed with vinyl in mind, so the respective engineers no doubt crafted the mixes to expand dynamically when played on a quality turntable.
I find that records recorded with a digital playback format in mind are mixed to expand dynamically in a CD player, and they sound good because of that deliberate choice to play to digital's strengths. For example, all rap records made after 1995 sound awesome on CD, due to the heavy reliance on digital technology used in making the records.
But when you've got a record like Fun Boy Three's debut on vinyl, the CD version might sound good... but the vinyl sounds better.
I can tune out the scratches and the pops, provided that they are not deep in the groove. If it is ambient and barely noticeable, I can ignore it. In fact, there is a familiarity in hearing the soft crackling, like an old friend is sitting in my room with me, eating potato chips. It makes me feel good, it brings me back to sunless days spent inside my room, poring over album jackets and sleeves, analyzing lyrics, marvelling at the artwork and reading the extensive liner notes, watching the black circle spin like the passage of time, in a spiral, 'pataphysically repeating over itself, like a witch's incantation or a warlock's recital...
Some of my records are worth a lot of money. Others are worthless, as works of art or as collectibles. Some of them are warped beyond repair, while others are in pristine condition. I even own a few albums that-- believe it or not-- have never been opened!
Half of the records I currently own I received from a woman I met about twelve years ago. I was 19, she was 42. She lived in a studio apartment on the 14th floor of a high rise on Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica. The story of how I met her is a long, humorous one that I'll cut for time: she was a friend of Paulie's whom I started a phone relationship with, and soon I was over at her place, having a May-December romance and being instructed in the ways of pleasure.
After each session (that's all I could really call them), she would send me home with as many books and records as I could carry in my arms. I asked her why she was giving it all up, and she would tell me that she wanted to "start over again"... I told her she could fetch big dollars for her collectibles, and she didn't care.
She was a depressed woman, who had lived fast and hard in her youth. She was a faded beauty, who found her grip on reality slipping as her looks succumbed to the ravages of time, alcohol, and sex. She confided to me that she'd had three abortions in her life, and that she didn't mind them at the time but now she regretted them. She told me I reminded her of the Cuban lover she'd had when she was 25, a man who impregnated her accidentally. Of course, his child was one of the aborts, and she told me that she wished she had never done that, because she knew the child would have been beautiful...
These sentiments scared me. All I was looking for was a good time, not boozy recollections of a woman past her prime. I wanted to have sympathy, but what she wanted was a second chance, and I couldn't give that to her even if I tried.
I broke it off, and she called me for three straight months non-stop, until Paulie and I finally moved out of North Hollywood and into Sherman Oaks.
She was a writer, and I wonder if she ever got that non-fiction book about Los Angeles finished. Alas, I wouldn't know if she did, because she said she was going to write it pseudonymously. I wonder if she's still there, in that rent-controlled studio space on the 14th floor, overlooking the beach and the ocean, the waves of the Pacific...
Because of her, I own ten Bob Dylan records (the classic ones), five Roxy Music albums, a slew of New Wave titles, an original mono pressing of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, countless 45s, and quite a number of books on any number of topics, including some poetry volumes and photograph anthologies.
I bought vinyl before and after her, but I still recall which ones were hers. They are the ones that are nearly perfect in their packaging; the titles are the ones that I lusted after for years before I met her.
She gave them to me, even though I refused. I'm glad that she insisted, because otherwise I might have forgotten about that short chapter in my life. Playing some of these vinyl records reminds me of her. She taught me a lot of things in the bedroom. She made me feel like a sex object for the first time in my life, and it wasn't a bad thing. It increased my poor self-esteem, it gave me perspective... and it made me sad.
How many women will end up like her, drinking wine out of ceramic bowls because they are too tired to go out and buy wine glasses? How many women like her will latch onto a young man like myself so desperately that it sends them running in a beeline out of their abode? How many women will wind up relying on their sexual prowess to compensate for the loss of their external beauty?
I sat in my apartment and smoked a cigarette, and thought about her as I was converting the Patti Smith songs-- those were her albums also. She gave me an education, in music, poetry, sex, and life. Koo koo kachoo, Mrs. Robinson...
Knowing how my life is, I will probably run into her again sometime in the near future. I hope she found a reason to keep going on, because Lord knows I wasn't the reason at all. I would've destroyed her, with my narcissism, with my insolent youth, with my arrogance and detachment...
In my mind, she is vinyl-- she was in vogue for a long time, and then she became obsolete, and she became devalued. And, like vinyl, I still thought she sounded great, even if she didn't believe it herself.
I think the next song to bounce to my hard drive will be "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart.
Long live vinyl. Vinyl forever and ever.
Monday, March 28, 2005
WHAT'S IT GONNA BE, BABE?
Hey
What's it gonna be baby?
Do U want him?
Or do U want me?
CAUSE I WANT U!
Said I want U
Tell me, babe-- Do U want me?
I gotta know, I gotta know
Do U want me?
BABY BABY BABY-- Listen 2 me
Said I may not know where I'm goin' babe
I said I may not know what I need
One thing, one thing's 4 certain
I KNOW WHAT I WANT, YEAH!
and if it please U baby-- please U, baby
I'M BEGGIN' YOU DOWN ON MY KNEES!!
I WANT U!!!
Yes I do
BABY BABY BABY BABY I WANT U!!!!
Yes I do...
(OW-WA!)
What's it gonna be baby?
Do U want him?
Or do U want me?
CAUSE I WANT U!
Said I want U
Tell me, babe-- Do U want me?
I gotta know, I gotta know
Do U want me?
BABY BABY BABY-- Listen 2 me
Said I may not know where I'm goin' babe
I said I may not know what I need
One thing, one thing's 4 certain
I KNOW WHAT I WANT, YEAH!
and if it please U baby-- please U, baby
I'M BEGGIN' YOU DOWN ON MY KNEES!!
I WANT U!!!
Yes I do
BABY BABY BABY BABY I WANT U!!!!
Yes I do...
(OW-WA!)
Friday, March 25, 2005
"MULTI-MODE PROGRAMMING" (chapter two, work in progress)
SORRY I DIDN'T HAVE THIS READY LAST WEEK-- WORK GOT BUSY.
It took Robert one week to digest the entirety of Daniel Lazarus' novel, My Former Life As A Godless Heathen. He was a bit surprised that he actually enjoyed reading it. It wasn't a good book because it was well-written, in his humble opinion-- it was a good book because Lazarus had an interesting life story.
Daniel Lazarus was born to Communist parents who resided in New York. He was raised to believe in the Communist ideology that his parents, both Russian Jewish immigrants, had carried with them from their homeland. They were card-carrying members of the American Communist party, and young Daniel was a budding Socialist with dreams of overthrowing the Establishment.
He was affiliated, for some time, with the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA during the late 1960's. Robert found it hard to believe that the short, balding Jewish man who was hosting the Mark Rayburn show all last week had been friends with the likes of Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. That section of the book was Robert's favorite part, mostly because he always thought the Black Panthers were cool. The photos that accompanied the book showed Lazarus, long-bearded and bespectacled, chilling at the crash pads of leftist luminaries of all stripes.
He had more sympathy for Lazarus after reading his story. Yes, the man was an egotistical blowhard, but he had also seen and witnessed things that Robert could only dream of being involved with, and of course Robert could see how a New York Jew could be disenfranchised with a militant group like the Panthers, who eventually turned on Lazarus and other movement sympathizers who happened to be white.
Robert put the book down and began to roll up a joint. His cat, a black Abyssinian named Narcissus, sat and watched him as he licked the paper and twisted it tight. The cat's green and yellow eyes were merely vertical slits, staring at its master's activity. As soon as Robert was ready to smoke it, the cat (oblivious to everything else) jumped up on his lap and curled itself into a ball, which made Robert laugh out loud.
"Narcy," Robert said to his cat, pronouncing the pet name so that it sounded like Marcy, "get down and let me smoke."
As Robert puffed on the joint, his mind began to naturally wander, and he began to think about how he wasn't too far removed from the likes of a Daniel Lazarus. There was once a time when Robert lived his life in a certain way, and looking back on that time he could see the aimlessness much clearer now.
When he was younger and fresh out of high school, Robert was going nowhere fast: he elected not to go to college; he decided that hanging out with his friends was more important than trying to hold down a job; he broke up with the one girl who had ever made him happy on a continuous basis, all because of his irresponsibility...
Then, his father passed away, which caused Robert to reflect deeply upon his own life. He had never known his mother, and now that his father was gone he had no one to watch out for him, no one to guard him or warn him about what was coming next. James, Robert's father, hadn't been much of a parental influence, but he still filled a void in Robert's life, and when he was gone, Robert resolved to take control of his life and stop goofing off.
When Robert applied for the radio gig, he had no job experience and no background education. He lied and said he was a student getting ready to go back in the fall, and that he would only be working part-time. After getting the job, he announced to his boss that he wasn't going to go back to school. Oddly enough, his boss was delighted to hear it-- they needed a full-timer, and Robert was picking up the radio trade very quickly. He went from passing out mail to editing commercial copy within a matter of months.
Landing this job made Robert get his act together. He stopped hanging out with his friends, who all went their own separate ways once their social circle began to crumble. He stayed in touch with them over the years, but reunions were few and far between. And besides, out of all of the friends, there was only one that he ever cared to speak to again.
Fabian Rourke.
They grew up together, went to some of the same schools, had similar interests and got along famously. Fabian Rourke was the brother that Robert never had, a loyal friend and an honest person who didn't know what it was to tell a lie. They complemented each other extremely well: Robert was good-looking, confident, smart but not too smart, funny and charismatic; Fabian was a budding genius with no social skills but armed with a lacerating sense of morality and an eloquent speaking style that made everyone stand up and take notice.
The two boys needed each other-- Fabian made Robert look smart, and Robert was the person who introduced Fabian to the world outside of his room at his parent's house in Wholesome, California.
By the time Robert had broken up with Rachel, a mutual friend of Fabian's and the one girl who made him consistently happy, Fabian had done a 180 degree turn from his nerdy, condescending persona. The last time Robert saw Fabian in the flesh, he was talking about moving out of Wholesome to attend UCLA, changing his name to "Jimmy Drawers", and publishing a novel.
Robert wished him luck, and that was the last time he heard from Fabian. He admired how people like Fabian Rourke and Daniel Lazarus were able to just pick up and move on, leaving their former lives behind. They possessed a knack for reinvention that Robert wished he himself possessed.
He thought about Fabian, as the marijuana smoke swirled in inkblot clouds above his head, rays of light gleaning through the Venetian blinds, igniting the motes and iotas and dust morsels as they freefell, pelting the jacket of the Lazarus book gently, like feathers cradling their way down to touch earth.
He wondered what Fabian was doing at this very moment. Last he'd read about "Jimmy Drawers", he was managing a boy band known as N-Supply, traveling around the country on small-scale tours. He looked at the picture he clipped from the magazine article: Fabian was wearing contact lenses, not the oversized welding-glasses that he used to wear all the time. It was funny to see Fabian's face without glasses. Robert had a hard time trying not to see them there. It was as if they'd left such an indentation on his face, from years of wearing them, that even with them off they still looked like they were on.
Fabian's hair was short and neat. It resembled the way Robert used to style his hair... the way Robert still styled his hair! And as he looked at the photo some more, he noticed that Fabian was wearing the same kinds of clothes that Robert used to wear, right down to specific brand names and talismans and jewelry.
This didn't bother Robert at all, because Fabian once admitted to Robert that he was everything he'd ever wanted to be. Robert remembered the moment well, because for a short second he thought Fabian was going to tell him that he was in love with him.
"Robert," Fabian has asked, on a dark night, walking through the streets of Wholesome after curfew, "I want to tell you something."
"What is it, Fabian?" Robert feared the worst.
"I've always wanted to be you."
Robert thought he heard him differently. "Did you just say you wanted to be with me?"
Fabian bursted out laughing. "Uhhh, no. That's not what I said."
Relieved, Robert began to relax a bit. "Sorry, bro. I heard you wrong. Go on, continue."
"I've always wanted to be you, and I just wanted to tell you so that you don't get mad at me if I ever do anything to... you know, copy you. I hate it when people copy me, you know? But people never ever copy me-- they copy off of me, like on a test or something. They want my brain, but they never want who I am. But you, Robert... you like me because of who I am. And I just wanted to tell you that I like you for who you are too. But in my case, you are something that I wish I could be. And I just want to tell you that, so that you'll understand in the future..."
"What's there to understand, Fabian? You're my friend. We're brothers. If you copy me, I'll take it as a compliment."
"Good," Fabian said, smiling, almost crying. "I'm glad you understand. I've tried to tell other people this, but they all thought I was getting homo on them. Know what I mean?"
Robert winced. "Yeah, I think so..."
"Thanks, Robert, for letting me copy you."
"You're welcome, man."
Robert reminisced and smoked and then he was finally high enough to unwind. He put a CD in the player-- it was The Ramones' Road To Ruin. "I Wanna Be Sedated" started to jump out of the surround-sound speakers.
Robert had a ritual that he liked to indulge whenever he was alone, at home, with his marijuana, with his sound system, with his computer and the books he collected from the discard bin of the Rayburn office. He likened it to a trance, and it helped him to focus on certain aspects of his work with sound editing.
He'd read about sound frequencies and discovered the varying levels: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Theta. Delta and Theta ran the gamut from 0 Hertz (as low as one cycle) to 7 Hertz; Alpha covered the range of 8 to 12 Hertz; Beta covered the 13 to 30 Hertz range; Gamma covered 30 and beyond...
Alpha was Robert's primary obsession-- it is associated with relaxation mostly with eyes closed, day dreaming, and deep self-introspection. Sometime in the 1960's it was revealed that the key psychoactive ingredient in cannabis (THC) induced the Alpha state in humans. Scientist discovered it was the chemical THC that caused a euphoric feeling by being a substitute for the brain's natural pleasure chemicals (endorphins).
Robbert had become fascinated with Alpha wheh he'd read that women reported being moved to orgasm upon receiving frequencies slightly above the Alpha range. Although he had not been able to conclusively confirm this himself, he figured it was probably true and theorized that all sound frequencies can cause various reactions in the biochemical makeup of the human body, especially in the brain.
Sometimes Robert indulged in hallucinogenic "trips", and under the influence of such a drug he was an occasional witness to such phenomenon as "seeing" music. He invited a friend over to his place once, a musician who played acoustic guitar, and asked the muscian to play as they both tripped on psilocybin mushrooms. Both of them had reported seeing rainbow-colored "notes" emanating from the nylon strings of the guitar as they were strummed.
Robert had read about the electrical impulses in the brain, how certain barbituates like phenobarbital helped rein in overactive electrical brain impulses that cauzed seizures. Robert reasoned that sound frequencies, like certain drugs, could probably induce or control electrical brain impulses, depending on what was the intended or desired effect.
He stood in the center of his living room, dancing to The Ramones, reciting the lyrics to the songs. In his mind, images of fractal chaos generated endlessly upon themselves, causing him to lose equilibrium, to lose a sense of time and space, ever contracting and expanding.
The "trance" gave him insights into his own pathology and the world around him. It was a strange coping mechanism for him, to help him lose himself, his sense of ego, his sense of identity. Only when his mind was free from distraction could he focus on his inner-mind explorations.
On a hunch, he swung around to the bookcase and picked out a book at random. It was one of many conspiracy tomes that he'd picked from the Rayburn "Free Books" box. The title was a reference to mind control and the notorious program known as MK-ULTRA. He flipped open a page arbitrarily and read what was there to read*:
MULTI-MODE PROGRAMMING
K. Sullivan said that she was used to sexually service both males and females in the Beta mode, and to do assassination, bodyguarding and intrusions in hostage situations in the Delta mode.
And what is Alpha, Beta, Delta and Theta programming?
"Alpha was the basis for all the other programs," she continued. "It seems to be where a lot of information was stored in my memory, in my mind, that was used by programmers to develop the other programs. It's where some of my more generic alter states were also stored. Beta was the sexual servicing part of me. They also sometimes called the alter state 'Barbie'.
Survivors Cathy O'Brien and Brice Taylor were also subjected to Beta, or sex-slave, programming. They, like actress Marilyn Monroe, were called "presidential models", mind-controlled slaves for the use of high-level politicians.
According to [Fritz] Springmeier's book, "...in 1981, the New World Order made training films for their novice programmers. [Project] Monarch slave Cathy O'Brien was used to make the film "How To Divide a Personality" and "How To Create a Sex Slave". Two Huntsville porn photographers were used to help NASA create these training films."
Sullivan recalled: "I was used both as a child and as an adult in those alter states, and I had more than one. In those alter states I would not resist. I had no anger. I was an absolute sexual slave and I would do whatever I was told to do."
Delta programming is military-assassin programming that has trickled into popular consciousness through movies like "La Femme Nikita", its American remake, "Point of No Return", and "The Long Kiss Goodnight". Regarding the Delta programming, Sullivan said: "...it was when I was used to do hits, kills, and also bodyguarding and hostage extraction. I had a great number of alter personalities that had specialised training and had different modes to do different things."
Why was the training kept separate for different alters? "Part of it was so I wouldn't recall too much at any one time - if I did start to remember," she said. "And also because they hand-pick each part out for a certain type of situation. If you had a part coming out that was very loyal to people that that part was bodyguarding, you don't want that part going off and killing somebody. And you don't want a part that's specifically programmed to kill coming out and feeling sorry for the target. So you have to keep the emotions and the motives separate as well. And so that's why they had to have different parts."
Sullivan's description of Theta programming seems to correlate with the development and use of so-called extrasensory powers and extraphysical abilities.
"Theta was where they used - I don't like the word 'psychic' because I think it's been so misused - thought energy," she said. "I just knew it as magnetic-type energy from the individual to do a number of different things that they were experimenting with, including long-distance mind connection with other people - even in other countries. I guess you would call it 'remote viewing' - where I could see what a person was doing in another state in a room or something like that.
"It was both actual programming and experimentation. Because what they did - they kept it encapsulated in several parts of me, several altered states. It was a lot of training, a lot of experimentation."
Theta programming also implies the use of thought energy to kill someone at a distance.
"A lot of times I ran across other victims with Theta programming," Sullivan said in a recent CKLN radio interview. "One of the movie and book themes they used extensively was "Dune", by Frank Herbert. It won't be too hard to figure because what they taught us was that we could cause things to happen to other people. It was to build up rage inside. It would come out in a form of pure energy that would hit them... They had talked about people imploding internally in their digestive organs. I don't know because I can't see what goes on inside another body, but I do know that it does work."
The calculated admixture of doing good and evil seems to be a hallmark of the Illuminati methodology. It's as if they recognise, at a spiritual level, that all the horrible karma they create can be balanced by generous philanthropic gestures; for example, giving a billion dollars to the United Nations, or other feats of extraordinary compassion.
"Also, they tried to use me for hands-on healing because I had a grandmother who was a healer from Sweden," said Sullivan. "So they were trying - that was me and several other survivors I talked to since - to use them in that mode also. And hands-on healing means that you would focus electromagnetic energy into the other person's body."
What caught Robert's attention was the Greek alphabetical naming of the brain states described in the book, the same as the names ascribed to the levels of sound frequency. As he put the book down, he looked up at the TV, which was turned on with the sound down. This was one of Robert's favorite things to do: watch TV with the sound down, while another sound source was playing in the background. It helped him to make Jungian associations that he would not be able to make on his own.
On the TV, there was an ad for a TV show on the USA Network, based upon the premise of a female assassin who works for the CIA. Robert smiled.
He thought the actress was very attractive, and intended to try and watch the show when he could find the time.
Suddenly, Robert could tell that someone was at his front door, making noise. He thought at first that it may have been Narcissus, but when he saw his lazy cat reclined on the floor next to his feet, he decided to check out the peephole.
He saw the mailman walking away from his front porch.
Robert opened the door, wisps of pot smoke flowing out freely. He grabbed the mail and sorted it. Most of it was junk, and there was one utility bill in the mix.
He saw a letter addressed to him from one "J. Drawers". He opened it excitedly.
The letter was dated July 30th, 1998, and it read:
Dear Robert,
Man, how long has it been?
I'm doing real good. Life on the road is hectic sometimes but so worth it. My current job as a road manager has me booking gigs, hotel rooms for the talent, and handling per diem money. I meet a lot of people and have a gang of stories to tell you. One day it's all getting written down. Speaking of which, this is the first thing I've had time to write in a long time. I haven't given up on being a novelist, but with all the money I'm making and al the jobs I have going on right now, there just isn't enough time.
I talked with Kelly Paper not too long ago, and she told me you are working in radio. When I heard this, I decided to write you a letter, because you seem to have changed your phone number in the years since we last spoke.
Basically, I have a job offer for you, and if you are working with audio it will be right up your alley. We need an engineer for part of the current tour I'm on with N-Supply. The regular engineer is going to be taking a vacation soon, and we want to have a back-up on hand.
I have taken the liberty of express mailing this to you, and if you can do the job for me I promise the pay will be worth any time you have to take off of work. We won't be hitting the road until August, so you have plenty of time to contact me and tell me what your decision is. But even if you cannot take me up on this job offer, I hope you and I can at least get together and talk and hang out. It's been too long, old friend, and I haven't forgotten you.
Call me when you can,
Fabian Rourke (aka "Jimmy Drawers")
A phone number was listed at the bottom of the stationary.
What do you fuckin' know? Robert thought to himself. Fabian Rourke is back on the scene. And he's been talking with Kelly...
Kelly was Robert's "fuck-buddy" shortly after his breakup with Rachel. When he discovered that Rachel had run off with his friend Brian, Robert felt that it was only fair that he fuck one of Rachel's friends. Of course, the relationship went nowhere, and although he and Kelly left on good terms, he was ambivalent about seeing or hearing from her again.
Robert decided to sleep on it, and call Fabian in the morning. It made him feel good that Fabian had made it out of Wholesome and had not forgotten about the people who were his friends back when he was a nobody.
Robert didn't have any dreams that night. Whenever he smoked pot, he could not remember his dreams the next morning, for the life of him.
CHAPTER THREE COMES THIS FRIDAY...
*= Excerpt from Mind Control Slavery and the New World Order by Uri Dowbenko, 1998
It took Robert one week to digest the entirety of Daniel Lazarus' novel, My Former Life As A Godless Heathen. He was a bit surprised that he actually enjoyed reading it. It wasn't a good book because it was well-written, in his humble opinion-- it was a good book because Lazarus had an interesting life story.
Daniel Lazarus was born to Communist parents who resided in New York. He was raised to believe in the Communist ideology that his parents, both Russian Jewish immigrants, had carried with them from their homeland. They were card-carrying members of the American Communist party, and young Daniel was a budding Socialist with dreams of overthrowing the Establishment.
He was affiliated, for some time, with the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA during the late 1960's. Robert found it hard to believe that the short, balding Jewish man who was hosting the Mark Rayburn show all last week had been friends with the likes of Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. That section of the book was Robert's favorite part, mostly because he always thought the Black Panthers were cool. The photos that accompanied the book showed Lazarus, long-bearded and bespectacled, chilling at the crash pads of leftist luminaries of all stripes.
He had more sympathy for Lazarus after reading his story. Yes, the man was an egotistical blowhard, but he had also seen and witnessed things that Robert could only dream of being involved with, and of course Robert could see how a New York Jew could be disenfranchised with a militant group like the Panthers, who eventually turned on Lazarus and other movement sympathizers who happened to be white.
Robert put the book down and began to roll up a joint. His cat, a black Abyssinian named Narcissus, sat and watched him as he licked the paper and twisted it tight. The cat's green and yellow eyes were merely vertical slits, staring at its master's activity. As soon as Robert was ready to smoke it, the cat (oblivious to everything else) jumped up on his lap and curled itself into a ball, which made Robert laugh out loud.
"Narcy," Robert said to his cat, pronouncing the pet name so that it sounded like Marcy, "get down and let me smoke."
As Robert puffed on the joint, his mind began to naturally wander, and he began to think about how he wasn't too far removed from the likes of a Daniel Lazarus. There was once a time when Robert lived his life in a certain way, and looking back on that time he could see the aimlessness much clearer now.
When he was younger and fresh out of high school, Robert was going nowhere fast: he elected not to go to college; he decided that hanging out with his friends was more important than trying to hold down a job; he broke up with the one girl who had ever made him happy on a continuous basis, all because of his irresponsibility...
Then, his father passed away, which caused Robert to reflect deeply upon his own life. He had never known his mother, and now that his father was gone he had no one to watch out for him, no one to guard him or warn him about what was coming next. James, Robert's father, hadn't been much of a parental influence, but he still filled a void in Robert's life, and when he was gone, Robert resolved to take control of his life and stop goofing off.
When Robert applied for the radio gig, he had no job experience and no background education. He lied and said he was a student getting ready to go back in the fall, and that he would only be working part-time. After getting the job, he announced to his boss that he wasn't going to go back to school. Oddly enough, his boss was delighted to hear it-- they needed a full-timer, and Robert was picking up the radio trade very quickly. He went from passing out mail to editing commercial copy within a matter of months.
Landing this job made Robert get his act together. He stopped hanging out with his friends, who all went their own separate ways once their social circle began to crumble. He stayed in touch with them over the years, but reunions were few and far between. And besides, out of all of the friends, there was only one that he ever cared to speak to again.
Fabian Rourke.
They grew up together, went to some of the same schools, had similar interests and got along famously. Fabian Rourke was the brother that Robert never had, a loyal friend and an honest person who didn't know what it was to tell a lie. They complemented each other extremely well: Robert was good-looking, confident, smart but not too smart, funny and charismatic; Fabian was a budding genius with no social skills but armed with a lacerating sense of morality and an eloquent speaking style that made everyone stand up and take notice.
The two boys needed each other-- Fabian made Robert look smart, and Robert was the person who introduced Fabian to the world outside of his room at his parent's house in Wholesome, California.
By the time Robert had broken up with Rachel, a mutual friend of Fabian's and the one girl who made him consistently happy, Fabian had done a 180 degree turn from his nerdy, condescending persona. The last time Robert saw Fabian in the flesh, he was talking about moving out of Wholesome to attend UCLA, changing his name to "Jimmy Drawers", and publishing a novel.
Robert wished him luck, and that was the last time he heard from Fabian. He admired how people like Fabian Rourke and Daniel Lazarus were able to just pick up and move on, leaving their former lives behind. They possessed a knack for reinvention that Robert wished he himself possessed.
He thought about Fabian, as the marijuana smoke swirled in inkblot clouds above his head, rays of light gleaning through the Venetian blinds, igniting the motes and iotas and dust morsels as they freefell, pelting the jacket of the Lazarus book gently, like feathers cradling their way down to touch earth.
He wondered what Fabian was doing at this very moment. Last he'd read about "Jimmy Drawers", he was managing a boy band known as N-Supply, traveling around the country on small-scale tours. He looked at the picture he clipped from the magazine article: Fabian was wearing contact lenses, not the oversized welding-glasses that he used to wear all the time. It was funny to see Fabian's face without glasses. Robert had a hard time trying not to see them there. It was as if they'd left such an indentation on his face, from years of wearing them, that even with them off they still looked like they were on.
Fabian's hair was short and neat. It resembled the way Robert used to style his hair... the way Robert still styled his hair! And as he looked at the photo some more, he noticed that Fabian was wearing the same kinds of clothes that Robert used to wear, right down to specific brand names and talismans and jewelry.
This didn't bother Robert at all, because Fabian once admitted to Robert that he was everything he'd ever wanted to be. Robert remembered the moment well, because for a short second he thought Fabian was going to tell him that he was in love with him.
"Robert," Fabian has asked, on a dark night, walking through the streets of Wholesome after curfew, "I want to tell you something."
"What is it, Fabian?" Robert feared the worst.
"I've always wanted to be you."
Robert thought he heard him differently. "Did you just say you wanted to be with me?"
Fabian bursted out laughing. "Uhhh, no. That's not what I said."
Relieved, Robert began to relax a bit. "Sorry, bro. I heard you wrong. Go on, continue."
"I've always wanted to be you, and I just wanted to tell you so that you don't get mad at me if I ever do anything to... you know, copy you. I hate it when people copy me, you know? But people never ever copy me-- they copy off of me, like on a test or something. They want my brain, but they never want who I am. But you, Robert... you like me because of who I am. And I just wanted to tell you that I like you for who you are too. But in my case, you are something that I wish I could be. And I just want to tell you that, so that you'll understand in the future..."
"What's there to understand, Fabian? You're my friend. We're brothers. If you copy me, I'll take it as a compliment."
"Good," Fabian said, smiling, almost crying. "I'm glad you understand. I've tried to tell other people this, but they all thought I was getting homo on them. Know what I mean?"
Robert winced. "Yeah, I think so..."
"Thanks, Robert, for letting me copy you."
"You're welcome, man."
Robert reminisced and smoked and then he was finally high enough to unwind. He put a CD in the player-- it was The Ramones' Road To Ruin. "I Wanna Be Sedated" started to jump out of the surround-sound speakers.
Robert had a ritual that he liked to indulge whenever he was alone, at home, with his marijuana, with his sound system, with his computer and the books he collected from the discard bin of the Rayburn office. He likened it to a trance, and it helped him to focus on certain aspects of his work with sound editing.
He'd read about sound frequencies and discovered the varying levels: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Theta. Delta and Theta ran the gamut from 0 Hertz (as low as one cycle) to 7 Hertz; Alpha covered the range of 8 to 12 Hertz; Beta covered the 13 to 30 Hertz range; Gamma covered 30 and beyond...
Alpha was Robert's primary obsession-- it is associated with relaxation mostly with eyes closed, day dreaming, and deep self-introspection. Sometime in the 1960's it was revealed that the key psychoactive ingredient in cannabis (THC) induced the Alpha state in humans. Scientist discovered it was the chemical THC that caused a euphoric feeling by being a substitute for the brain's natural pleasure chemicals (endorphins).
Robbert had become fascinated with Alpha wheh he'd read that women reported being moved to orgasm upon receiving frequencies slightly above the Alpha range. Although he had not been able to conclusively confirm this himself, he figured it was probably true and theorized that all sound frequencies can cause various reactions in the biochemical makeup of the human body, especially in the brain.
Sometimes Robert indulged in hallucinogenic "trips", and under the influence of such a drug he was an occasional witness to such phenomenon as "seeing" music. He invited a friend over to his place once, a musician who played acoustic guitar, and asked the muscian to play as they both tripped on psilocybin mushrooms. Both of them had reported seeing rainbow-colored "notes" emanating from the nylon strings of the guitar as they were strummed.
Robert had read about the electrical impulses in the brain, how certain barbituates like phenobarbital helped rein in overactive electrical brain impulses that cauzed seizures. Robert reasoned that sound frequencies, like certain drugs, could probably induce or control electrical brain impulses, depending on what was the intended or desired effect.
He stood in the center of his living room, dancing to The Ramones, reciting the lyrics to the songs. In his mind, images of fractal chaos generated endlessly upon themselves, causing him to lose equilibrium, to lose a sense of time and space, ever contracting and expanding.
The "trance" gave him insights into his own pathology and the world around him. It was a strange coping mechanism for him, to help him lose himself, his sense of ego, his sense of identity. Only when his mind was free from distraction could he focus on his inner-mind explorations.
On a hunch, he swung around to the bookcase and picked out a book at random. It was one of many conspiracy tomes that he'd picked from the Rayburn "Free Books" box. The title was a reference to mind control and the notorious program known as MK-ULTRA. He flipped open a page arbitrarily and read what was there to read*:
MULTI-MODE PROGRAMMING
K. Sullivan said that she was used to sexually service both males and females in the Beta mode, and to do assassination, bodyguarding and intrusions in hostage situations in the Delta mode.
And what is Alpha, Beta, Delta and Theta programming?
"Alpha was the basis for all the other programs," she continued. "It seems to be where a lot of information was stored in my memory, in my mind, that was used by programmers to develop the other programs. It's where some of my more generic alter states were also stored. Beta was the sexual servicing part of me. They also sometimes called the alter state 'Barbie'.
Survivors Cathy O'Brien and Brice Taylor were also subjected to Beta, or sex-slave, programming. They, like actress Marilyn Monroe, were called "presidential models", mind-controlled slaves for the use of high-level politicians.
According to [Fritz] Springmeier's book, "...in 1981, the New World Order made training films for their novice programmers. [Project] Monarch slave Cathy O'Brien was used to make the film "How To Divide a Personality" and "How To Create a Sex Slave". Two Huntsville porn photographers were used to help NASA create these training films."
Sullivan recalled: "I was used both as a child and as an adult in those alter states, and I had more than one. In those alter states I would not resist. I had no anger. I was an absolute sexual slave and I would do whatever I was told to do."
Delta programming is military-assassin programming that has trickled into popular consciousness through movies like "La Femme Nikita", its American remake, "Point of No Return", and "The Long Kiss Goodnight". Regarding the Delta programming, Sullivan said: "...it was when I was used to do hits, kills, and also bodyguarding and hostage extraction. I had a great number of alter personalities that had specialised training and had different modes to do different things."
Why was the training kept separate for different alters? "Part of it was so I wouldn't recall too much at any one time - if I did start to remember," she said. "And also because they hand-pick each part out for a certain type of situation. If you had a part coming out that was very loyal to people that that part was bodyguarding, you don't want that part going off and killing somebody. And you don't want a part that's specifically programmed to kill coming out and feeling sorry for the target. So you have to keep the emotions and the motives separate as well. And so that's why they had to have different parts."
Sullivan's description of Theta programming seems to correlate with the development and use of so-called extrasensory powers and extraphysical abilities.
"Theta was where they used - I don't like the word 'psychic' because I think it's been so misused - thought energy," she said. "I just knew it as magnetic-type energy from the individual to do a number of different things that they were experimenting with, including long-distance mind connection with other people - even in other countries. I guess you would call it 'remote viewing' - where I could see what a person was doing in another state in a room or something like that.
"It was both actual programming and experimentation. Because what they did - they kept it encapsulated in several parts of me, several altered states. It was a lot of training, a lot of experimentation."
Theta programming also implies the use of thought energy to kill someone at a distance.
"A lot of times I ran across other victims with Theta programming," Sullivan said in a recent CKLN radio interview. "One of the movie and book themes they used extensively was "Dune", by Frank Herbert. It won't be too hard to figure because what they taught us was that we could cause things to happen to other people. It was to build up rage inside. It would come out in a form of pure energy that would hit them... They had talked about people imploding internally in their digestive organs. I don't know because I can't see what goes on inside another body, but I do know that it does work."
The calculated admixture of doing good and evil seems to be a hallmark of the Illuminati methodology. It's as if they recognise, at a spiritual level, that all the horrible karma they create can be balanced by generous philanthropic gestures; for example, giving a billion dollars to the United Nations, or other feats of extraordinary compassion.
"Also, they tried to use me for hands-on healing because I had a grandmother who was a healer from Sweden," said Sullivan. "So they were trying - that was me and several other survivors I talked to since - to use them in that mode also. And hands-on healing means that you would focus electromagnetic energy into the other person's body."
What caught Robert's attention was the Greek alphabetical naming of the brain states described in the book, the same as the names ascribed to the levels of sound frequency. As he put the book down, he looked up at the TV, which was turned on with the sound down. This was one of Robert's favorite things to do: watch TV with the sound down, while another sound source was playing in the background. It helped him to make Jungian associations that he would not be able to make on his own.
On the TV, there was an ad for a TV show on the USA Network, based upon the premise of a female assassin who works for the CIA. Robert smiled.
He thought the actress was very attractive, and intended to try and watch the show when he could find the time.
Suddenly, Robert could tell that someone was at his front door, making noise. He thought at first that it may have been Narcissus, but when he saw his lazy cat reclined on the floor next to his feet, he decided to check out the peephole.
He saw the mailman walking away from his front porch.
Robert opened the door, wisps of pot smoke flowing out freely. He grabbed the mail and sorted it. Most of it was junk, and there was one utility bill in the mix.
He saw a letter addressed to him from one "J. Drawers". He opened it excitedly.
The letter was dated July 30th, 1998, and it read:
Dear Robert,
Man, how long has it been?
I'm doing real good. Life on the road is hectic sometimes but so worth it. My current job as a road manager has me booking gigs, hotel rooms for the talent, and handling per diem money. I meet a lot of people and have a gang of stories to tell you. One day it's all getting written down. Speaking of which, this is the first thing I've had time to write in a long time. I haven't given up on being a novelist, but with all the money I'm making and al the jobs I have going on right now, there just isn't enough time.
I talked with Kelly Paper not too long ago, and she told me you are working in radio. When I heard this, I decided to write you a letter, because you seem to have changed your phone number in the years since we last spoke.
Basically, I have a job offer for you, and if you are working with audio it will be right up your alley. We need an engineer for part of the current tour I'm on with N-Supply. The regular engineer is going to be taking a vacation soon, and we want to have a back-up on hand.
I have taken the liberty of express mailing this to you, and if you can do the job for me I promise the pay will be worth any time you have to take off of work. We won't be hitting the road until August, so you have plenty of time to contact me and tell me what your decision is. But even if you cannot take me up on this job offer, I hope you and I can at least get together and talk and hang out. It's been too long, old friend, and I haven't forgotten you.
Call me when you can,
Fabian Rourke (aka "Jimmy Drawers")
A phone number was listed at the bottom of the stationary.
What do you fuckin' know? Robert thought to himself. Fabian Rourke is back on the scene. And he's been talking with Kelly...
Kelly was Robert's "fuck-buddy" shortly after his breakup with Rachel. When he discovered that Rachel had run off with his friend Brian, Robert felt that it was only fair that he fuck one of Rachel's friends. Of course, the relationship went nowhere, and although he and Kelly left on good terms, he was ambivalent about seeing or hearing from her again.
Robert decided to sleep on it, and call Fabian in the morning. It made him feel good that Fabian had made it out of Wholesome and had not forgotten about the people who were his friends back when he was a nobody.
Robert didn't have any dreams that night. Whenever he smoked pot, he could not remember his dreams the next morning, for the life of him.
CHAPTER THREE COMES THIS FRIDAY...
*= Excerpt from Mind Control Slavery and the New World Order by Uri Dowbenko, 1998
Thursday, March 24, 2005
THE FROG AND THE SCORPION
I am learning about Narcissism.
The Narcissism List has shown me an enormous resource archive of information related to Narcissism.
It is a serious personality disorder, as serious as histrionic or bi-polar disorder. However, I have to be careful-- I don't want to deny that I have Narcissistic tendencies, and I also don't want to embrace symptoms that I do not possess.
For example, my Narcissism is mainly passive. I think it is referred to as Inverted Narcissism, but it explains why the Internet has been such an instrument for my unbridled rage. The Internet is the ideal locale for Narcissists, because it involves the formation of a False Self. Narcissists invent False Selves in their pursuit of attention, or "narcissistic supply".
Also, I have a tendency to seek out other Narcissists, which qualifies me as not only an Inverted Narcissist but a Codependent Narcissist. This was the most amazing revelation, because I have never really pondered the notion that the people I make friends with are the same as me. Narcissists tend to see themselves as unique, but if they seek out other Narcissists, it reinforces a sense of being "right"-- if I have a problem with someone, I have other Narcissists around me to indulge me in supply. Likewise, they also seek me out because I supply them with the same attention, but in the exchange both Narcissists equally feel that they have gotten something out of the other, and not the other way around.
I was loathe to think that I surround myself with likeminded Narcissists, but that's because, in the List, they warn that Narcissists tend to blame others for their shortcomings and project their flaws onto others constantly. I want to know more about this disorder but I don't want to misdiagnose myself.
It explains, though, why I have such difficulty cultivating long-term love relationships: I tend to gravitate towards female Narcissists. We spend our time together bumping heads over who is more special. Amy Coates was the most extreme example-- she could not possibly fathom that she had met someone just as vain as her, if not more. Eve is another Narcissist, who has expressed her disbelief time and time again over my self-absorption and lack of empathy.
I don't mean to blame them, because I am just like them. Rather, I simply recognize that I actively pursue relationships with fellow Narcissists... perhaps to make myself feel better about myself and my awareness of the problem?
Finally, my father was (and still is) a Grade-A Counterdependent Narcissist. This has rubbed off not only on me but on my younger brother. My father is the type of person who, when prompted to recall what you just said to him, will probably not be able to quote you. That's because he was busy thinking of the next thing he was going to say, as opposed to truly listening.
I think that growing up with such a pronounced Narcissistic influence in my life has actually helped me to be more aware of my own condition. I strive to not be like him, and I find that most of my personal frustrations stem from my acting in a manner not unlike my father's childish, self-centered demands.
It's not curable, by the way. Narcissists don't change, because it's the base of their identity, their personality's make-up. There's that old anecdote about the Scorpion riding on the Frog's back to cross the lake: the Frog is reluctant but reasons that, if stung by the Scorpion, the both of them will drown, and the Scorpion, wanting to preserve himself, would not dare to sting the Frog. So the Frog gives the Scorpion a ride... and he stings him anyway.
As they both sink into the water, the Frog asks the Scorpion why he stung him, and the Scorpion replies, "Because I'm a fucking Scorpion, you dumb motherfucker... that's what I do!"
On the plus side: the Narcissism List acknowledges that Narcissists can contribute positively to society, even if their personalities are, at the root, anti-social. If their energies can be channeled into helping civilization make progress, then their efforts are welcomed and warranted... provided, of course, that the narcissistic supply is kept flowing.
I thought I knew everything there was to know about it, and I find that I don't know anything. This feeds my ego in some perverse way. It is just the way that I am.
Tomorrow, I will post my second chapter in my weekly online novel. Have a nice evening, all.
The Narcissism List has shown me an enormous resource archive of information related to Narcissism.
It is a serious personality disorder, as serious as histrionic or bi-polar disorder. However, I have to be careful-- I don't want to deny that I have Narcissistic tendencies, and I also don't want to embrace symptoms that I do not possess.
For example, my Narcissism is mainly passive. I think it is referred to as Inverted Narcissism, but it explains why the Internet has been such an instrument for my unbridled rage. The Internet is the ideal locale for Narcissists, because it involves the formation of a False Self. Narcissists invent False Selves in their pursuit of attention, or "narcissistic supply".
Also, I have a tendency to seek out other Narcissists, which qualifies me as not only an Inverted Narcissist but a Codependent Narcissist. This was the most amazing revelation, because I have never really pondered the notion that the people I make friends with are the same as me. Narcissists tend to see themselves as unique, but if they seek out other Narcissists, it reinforces a sense of being "right"-- if I have a problem with someone, I have other Narcissists around me to indulge me in supply. Likewise, they also seek me out because I supply them with the same attention, but in the exchange both Narcissists equally feel that they have gotten something out of the other, and not the other way around.
I was loathe to think that I surround myself with likeminded Narcissists, but that's because, in the List, they warn that Narcissists tend to blame others for their shortcomings and project their flaws onto others constantly. I want to know more about this disorder but I don't want to misdiagnose myself.
It explains, though, why I have such difficulty cultivating long-term love relationships: I tend to gravitate towards female Narcissists. We spend our time together bumping heads over who is more special. Amy Coates was the most extreme example-- she could not possibly fathom that she had met someone just as vain as her, if not more. Eve is another Narcissist, who has expressed her disbelief time and time again over my self-absorption and lack of empathy.
I don't mean to blame them, because I am just like them. Rather, I simply recognize that I actively pursue relationships with fellow Narcissists... perhaps to make myself feel better about myself and my awareness of the problem?
Finally, my father was (and still is) a Grade-A Counterdependent Narcissist. This has rubbed off not only on me but on my younger brother. My father is the type of person who, when prompted to recall what you just said to him, will probably not be able to quote you. That's because he was busy thinking of the next thing he was going to say, as opposed to truly listening.
I think that growing up with such a pronounced Narcissistic influence in my life has actually helped me to be more aware of my own condition. I strive to not be like him, and I find that most of my personal frustrations stem from my acting in a manner not unlike my father's childish, self-centered demands.
It's not curable, by the way. Narcissists don't change, because it's the base of their identity, their personality's make-up. There's that old anecdote about the Scorpion riding on the Frog's back to cross the lake: the Frog is reluctant but reasons that, if stung by the Scorpion, the both of them will drown, and the Scorpion, wanting to preserve himself, would not dare to sting the Frog. So the Frog gives the Scorpion a ride... and he stings him anyway.
As they both sink into the water, the Frog asks the Scorpion why he stung him, and the Scorpion replies, "Because I'm a fucking Scorpion, you dumb motherfucker... that's what I do!"
On the plus side: the Narcissism List acknowledges that Narcissists can contribute positively to society, even if their personalities are, at the root, anti-social. If their energies can be channeled into helping civilization make progress, then their efforts are welcomed and warranted... provided, of course, that the narcissistic supply is kept flowing.
I thought I knew everything there was to know about it, and I find that I don't know anything. This feeds my ego in some perverse way. It is just the way that I am.
Tomorrow, I will post my second chapter in my weekly online novel. Have a nice evening, all.
ON THE HEAD
Eve asked me, months ago, why I love to be hated. She had noticed aloud that a lot of people hate me for no reason, and she also noticed that I laughed when she mentioned that fact.
I recall that I came up with some flippant remark as an answer. But the question popped into my mind as I was having a cigarette on my break..
Why do you love to be hated?
I came back inside and went online, typing "pathological need to be hated" into a search engine. Many things came up, but this was the first one I clicked on, and reading it was scary-- I almost wondered if I had authored it a long time ago and maybe someone had reappropriated it online...
Such is the way of the Narcissist. (scroll down after you click)
He really hit it on the head. A bit over the top, but right on the head.
I recall that I came up with some flippant remark as an answer. But the question popped into my mind as I was having a cigarette on my break..
Why do you love to be hated?
I came back inside and went online, typing "pathological need to be hated" into a search engine. Many things came up, but this was the first one I clicked on, and reading it was scary-- I almost wondered if I had authored it a long time ago and maybe someone had reappropriated it online...
Such is the way of the Narcissist. (scroll down after you click)
He really hit it on the head. A bit over the top, but right on the head.
EYES
She came into my office with pictures of her two kids. She wanted to see what I thought, she wanted to see the look on my face as I browsed through minor details of her life, the small trivia that composes the bulk of our existences.
Her oldest daughter, all of ten years old, is the spitting image of her, a miniature version, the face, the oblong eyes, the blissful Mona Lisa expression, a serene variation on the Faraway Look In The Eye...
The younger girl, a toddler, giggles with dimpled babyface cheeks and shares the eyes, the almond-shaped, seemingly all-knowing stare, and when I point this out she blushes and laughs, for it seems like she longs to share this with others but cannot find anyone who will pay even the remotest amount of attention.
She told me she wanted to set up a game that we could play, when she is bored and done with her duties but forced to stick around while she waits for her carpool to finish up. She sits in my office and watches me move the mouse and cut and paste and burn and click and drop.
I am good at conversation, I treat it like the finest of arts, and I can do my chores while asking her questions, expressing interest, picking her brain and trying to find out more, treating her like an enigmatic puzzle that I am compelled to solve, prying politely and making small punctuation points in my speech...
She has a longing in her eyes, an ache to be understood, appreciated, heard... it is the longing of all women, to be loved and also admired, to be needed and considered, to have a reason for hanging out way too long, a purpose for the heavy sighs and the deep breaths...
Girls like me because I listen. They like me because I will not try to solve their problems for them. I let them vent, I cast no judgement, because I know that even if I offer my advice, my opinion, they'd rather have someone hear them out than have someone fix their flaws. I offer up a pure love, one rooted in compassion and sympathy, not desire or lust or even a sense of entitlement...
I only want to help. How can I help?
By being me, by being concerned with what someone else needs as opposed to what I want.
Today the weather is grey, and the temperature is cool, but there is blinding sunshine inside my mind, to temper the sorrow that overlooks tomorrow's horizon, from sunrise to sunset...
Her oldest daughter, all of ten years old, is the spitting image of her, a miniature version, the face, the oblong eyes, the blissful Mona Lisa expression, a serene variation on the Faraway Look In The Eye...
The younger girl, a toddler, giggles with dimpled babyface cheeks and shares the eyes, the almond-shaped, seemingly all-knowing stare, and when I point this out she blushes and laughs, for it seems like she longs to share this with others but cannot find anyone who will pay even the remotest amount of attention.
She told me she wanted to set up a game that we could play, when she is bored and done with her duties but forced to stick around while she waits for her carpool to finish up. She sits in my office and watches me move the mouse and cut and paste and burn and click and drop.
I am good at conversation, I treat it like the finest of arts, and I can do my chores while asking her questions, expressing interest, picking her brain and trying to find out more, treating her like an enigmatic puzzle that I am compelled to solve, prying politely and making small punctuation points in my speech...
She has a longing in her eyes, an ache to be understood, appreciated, heard... it is the longing of all women, to be loved and also admired, to be needed and considered, to have a reason for hanging out way too long, a purpose for the heavy sighs and the deep breaths...
Girls like me because I listen. They like me because I will not try to solve their problems for them. I let them vent, I cast no judgement, because I know that even if I offer my advice, my opinion, they'd rather have someone hear them out than have someone fix their flaws. I offer up a pure love, one rooted in compassion and sympathy, not desire or lust or even a sense of entitlement...
I only want to help. How can I help?
By being me, by being concerned with what someone else needs as opposed to what I want.
Today the weather is grey, and the temperature is cool, but there is blinding sunshine inside my mind, to temper the sorrow that overlooks tomorrow's horizon, from sunrise to sunset...
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
DARK EASTER
The news and current events and recent incidents in my life have me in a peaceful state of soul but macabre state of mind.
Is that even possible, to be at peace in spirit and also to be wallowing in the black recesses of the brain?
Yes, say I.
I'm not thrashing about in the back of my psyche-- I'm content to let my mind wander into awful, horrific possibilities. I'm not in any pain-- rather, I'm numb.
I keep hearing about this Terri Schiavo, and how a bunch of people who don't even know her want to prop her up and parade her around, like it was the third movie in the highly lucrative Weekend At Bernie's franchise. And I'm totally shocked that, given the simpering glad-handedness that this country seems to be embracing, the courts haven't given in, despite President George W. Nixon trying his darnedest to interfere with the very sanctimonies that he has earlier tried to defend.
I hate to say it, but I hope they let her husband, who has suffered through all of this, smother her with a pillow, like The Chief did to MacMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Not because I'm a cold-hearted sadist, but because she has been dead all of this time and nothing will bring her back.
If these idiots who are protesting and duct-taping their mouths with the word LIFE scrawled across it are so fucking fond of this poor vegetable, then why don't they pool their church-tithing money together and erect some sort of statue? It'll last longer, and maybe they can capture the dazed, soulless stare on Shiavo's face in bronze, for all posterity... that is, if they really give a fuck about her in the first place.
On a darker note...
Every time I hear about school shootings, I end up sympathizing (at first) with the shooter. Yes, it sucks, it's sick, and it's wrong. But the reason why I identify with the shooters, and not the victims, is because I was this close to being a school shooter myself. The only things that spared my fate were (1) not having the balls to get a gun, and (2) the fact that some girls thought I was cute.
However, I loathed myself enough to wish death and mayhem upon my classmates at one time.
It was relatively easy for me to get access to a gun when I was a kid. I grew up in the 'hood, where obtaining weapons was easier than getting liquor or drugs. Thankfully, I never went down that route.
Reading up on the details of the shootings in Minnesota, I thought of (uh-oh, say those who feel it coming) some song lyrics.
There's a song by a band whose names rhymes with Dove, recorded in the '60's, and the lyrics never made much sense to me, despite my fondness for the tune in question. It's called "Live And Let Live" and the person who wrote the song explained the lyrics like this:
"We were in the studio. I passed out, slobbered on my pants, and woke up. It had crystallized. I wrote about it."
That's all he offered in the way of a dissertation.
The lyrics go like this (please bear with me):
Oh the snot has caked against my pants
It has turned into crystal
There's a bluebird sitting on a branch
I guess I'll take my pistol
I've got it in my hand
Because he's on my land
And so the story ended
Do you know it oh so well
But should you need, I'll tell you
The end end end end end end end end
And...
So far, nothing relevant to the topic I've chosen, right? Read on:
Yes I see you sitting on the couch
I recognize your artillery
I have seen you many times before
Once when I was an Indian
And I was on my land
Why can't you understand?
The shooter was a Native-American, and the shootings were on a reservation. I imagined that the shooter, after killing his policeman grandfather and taking the car and the guns, was thinking these types of things in his mind.
I guess I'll take my pistol
I've got it in my hand
Because he's on my land
Why can't you understand?
The shooter admired Nazism, but he also was proud of being a Native-American. The kid was plain confused. Just look at his picture in the papers-- does that look like the face of a killer?
Evidently, yes.
Of course, my initial sympathy turns to contempt, as I realize that not everyone in this kid's position has to do what he did. The title of the song "Live And Let Live" should've been this kid's motto, but instead he chose to embrace destruction.
He made a choice, and even if he was deemed too young to make choices, he made one anyway. It was a really really bad choice.
More lyrics from that song:
Served my time
Served it well
You made my soul
a cell
Write the rules
In the sky
Then ask your leaders
Why?
No good in asking our leaders "why", because they have no answers. They'd rather start wars and try to pass legislation to let drooling invalids linger on. They'd rather tell gay couples what they can or cannot do with their lives while insisting that states have the rights to pass the laws they want to pass.
They write the rules in the sky, while they stand on someone else's land, and they wonder why a young Indian boy with his soul in a cell has taken his pistol in hand, with snot caked on his pants as he wakes from a delirious dream...
Yes, it's a stretch, connecting Bummer Of Love sentiments with mass murder, but I am only following my guts here.
I cannot divorce myself from my bleak impulses. Yesterday, after "taking out the trash", I went to a friend's blog and read someone's comment that was directed to me. It was in reference to a movie about the Old West starring the heartthrob star of Pirates Of The Carribbean. The commenter called me out by name and ranted about how they hated movies about Indians calling the Western settlers by a certain epithet.
Notice the Native-American connotations...
Of course, I responded in an evil manner... then I tried to post again and apologize for my sentiments. My apology sounded less than sincere. I was suspecting that the poster was none other than my "pal", the one whose picture is posted on the old blog URL.
I try and I try, but the evil is inside of me. It's inside of all of us, to varying degrees. It was inside the mind of a teenage boy who acted upon it. It is in the minds of the world leaders who appoint people like Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. And the millions who support our leaders as they bomb women and children into oblivion? They support evil indirectly. The blood is not on their hands, because if it were then maybe they'd think twice about blowing the cradle of civilization back to Kingdom Come.
No, those who voted for President George W. Nixon can sleep at nights, knowing that they don't have to witness the horror of military occupation, children being mowed down by transportation vehicles who cannot afford to stop lest they discover that the child running towards their truck is carrying a bomb, homes being raided in a search for "weapons of mass destruction" that have never turned up...
I grew up in a city where the cops wouldn't come into the housing projects because the gangsters who lived there would shoot out the lights and snipe the pigs one by one-- they had to send the CRASH unit into the Pacoima projects instead.
I grew up in a town where I saw people beaten to a pulp almost weekly in front of the bar next to my grandfather's house; where girls gave up the pussy for crack and junkies aching for a fix went up in flames in the backseat of a car; where my uncle died of a stab wound in front of his own house, after the paramedics took an hour and a half to get to him...
I feel like I grew up in a war zone. It has tainted me.
I have come to conclude that this nation is the real weapon of mass destruction. We are the destroyers, the "stupid fucking white men" (among other colors) who rape and pillage the earth time and time again.
This will all pass, to be sure, but it leaves me with little hope.
Luckily, I believe in hope. Luckily, I'm a naive dreamer who sees the silver lining in the dark cloud. In fact, that aphoristic cloud is symbolic of my very nature: darkness surrounded by a sheen of light. They co-exist, and they resemble a sort-of Marxist contradiction where two opposites cannot thrive without the other.
The temptation to give into negativity wouldn't be such a burden if it weren't for the fact that, sometimes, we humans get satisfaction out of being cruel, mean, and hostile. One minute I can be loving and giving, and the next minute I want to make someone pay for perceived slights.
All that must change. In the past, I used humor to balance my hate and anger, but I guess I haven't been very humorous lately. Fortunately, my old friend J, whom I love more than life and who has known me since we were both toothless second-graders, told me to watch Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back for some perspective on my recent blog woes. There was one scene in particular that she wanted me to watch, and sure enough it made me burst into uncontrollable laughter, the kind of laughter that I often employ in self-defense, against the horrors of The Modern Age.
All I got to say is: "ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE GONNA PAY! YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE THE BALL-LICKERS!!"
Thanks, J. That movie made me chuckle. I'm gonna watch it again tonight.
Maybe Easter won't be so dark after all. Hell, maybe I'll even rent The Passion Of The Christ and take some of Bill's Window Pane acid to pass the time.
Is that even possible, to be at peace in spirit and also to be wallowing in the black recesses of the brain?
Yes, say I.
I'm not thrashing about in the back of my psyche-- I'm content to let my mind wander into awful, horrific possibilities. I'm not in any pain-- rather, I'm numb.
I keep hearing about this Terri Schiavo, and how a bunch of people who don't even know her want to prop her up and parade her around, like it was the third movie in the highly lucrative Weekend At Bernie's franchise. And I'm totally shocked that, given the simpering glad-handedness that this country seems to be embracing, the courts haven't given in, despite President George W. Nixon trying his darnedest to interfere with the very sanctimonies that he has earlier tried to defend.
I hate to say it, but I hope they let her husband, who has suffered through all of this, smother her with a pillow, like The Chief did to MacMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Not because I'm a cold-hearted sadist, but because she has been dead all of this time and nothing will bring her back.
If these idiots who are protesting and duct-taping their mouths with the word LIFE scrawled across it are so fucking fond of this poor vegetable, then why don't they pool their church-tithing money together and erect some sort of statue? It'll last longer, and maybe they can capture the dazed, soulless stare on Shiavo's face in bronze, for all posterity... that is, if they really give a fuck about her in the first place.
On a darker note...
Every time I hear about school shootings, I end up sympathizing (at first) with the shooter. Yes, it sucks, it's sick, and it's wrong. But the reason why I identify with the shooters, and not the victims, is because I was this close to being a school shooter myself. The only things that spared my fate were (1) not having the balls to get a gun, and (2) the fact that some girls thought I was cute.
However, I loathed myself enough to wish death and mayhem upon my classmates at one time.
It was relatively easy for me to get access to a gun when I was a kid. I grew up in the 'hood, where obtaining weapons was easier than getting liquor or drugs. Thankfully, I never went down that route.
Reading up on the details of the shootings in Minnesota, I thought of (uh-oh, say those who feel it coming) some song lyrics.
There's a song by a band whose names rhymes with Dove, recorded in the '60's, and the lyrics never made much sense to me, despite my fondness for the tune in question. It's called "Live And Let Live" and the person who wrote the song explained the lyrics like this:
"We were in the studio. I passed out, slobbered on my pants, and woke up. It had crystallized. I wrote about it."
That's all he offered in the way of a dissertation.
The lyrics go like this (please bear with me):
Oh the snot has caked against my pants
It has turned into crystal
There's a bluebird sitting on a branch
I guess I'll take my pistol
I've got it in my hand
Because he's on my land
And so the story ended
Do you know it oh so well
But should you need, I'll tell you
The end end end end end end end end
And...
So far, nothing relevant to the topic I've chosen, right? Read on:
Yes I see you sitting on the couch
I recognize your artillery
I have seen you many times before
Once when I was an Indian
And I was on my land
Why can't you understand?
The shooter was a Native-American, and the shootings were on a reservation. I imagined that the shooter, after killing his policeman grandfather and taking the car and the guns, was thinking these types of things in his mind.
I guess I'll take my pistol
I've got it in my hand
Because he's on my land
Why can't you understand?
The shooter admired Nazism, but he also was proud of being a Native-American. The kid was plain confused. Just look at his picture in the papers-- does that look like the face of a killer?
Evidently, yes.
Of course, my initial sympathy turns to contempt, as I realize that not everyone in this kid's position has to do what he did. The title of the song "Live And Let Live" should've been this kid's motto, but instead he chose to embrace destruction.
He made a choice, and even if he was deemed too young to make choices, he made one anyway. It was a really really bad choice.
More lyrics from that song:
Served my time
Served it well
You made my soul
a cell
Write the rules
In the sky
Then ask your leaders
Why?
No good in asking our leaders "why", because they have no answers. They'd rather start wars and try to pass legislation to let drooling invalids linger on. They'd rather tell gay couples what they can or cannot do with their lives while insisting that states have the rights to pass the laws they want to pass.
They write the rules in the sky, while they stand on someone else's land, and they wonder why a young Indian boy with his soul in a cell has taken his pistol in hand, with snot caked on his pants as he wakes from a delirious dream...
Yes, it's a stretch, connecting Bummer Of Love sentiments with mass murder, but I am only following my guts here.
I cannot divorce myself from my bleak impulses. Yesterday, after "taking out the trash", I went to a friend's blog and read someone's comment that was directed to me. It was in reference to a movie about the Old West starring the heartthrob star of Pirates Of The Carribbean. The commenter called me out by name and ranted about how they hated movies about Indians calling the Western settlers by a certain epithet.
Notice the Native-American connotations...
Of course, I responded in an evil manner... then I tried to post again and apologize for my sentiments. My apology sounded less than sincere. I was suspecting that the poster was none other than my "pal", the one whose picture is posted on the old blog URL.
I try and I try, but the evil is inside of me. It's inside of all of us, to varying degrees. It was inside the mind of a teenage boy who acted upon it. It is in the minds of the world leaders who appoint people like Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. And the millions who support our leaders as they bomb women and children into oblivion? They support evil indirectly. The blood is not on their hands, because if it were then maybe they'd think twice about blowing the cradle of civilization back to Kingdom Come.
No, those who voted for President George W. Nixon can sleep at nights, knowing that they don't have to witness the horror of military occupation, children being mowed down by transportation vehicles who cannot afford to stop lest they discover that the child running towards their truck is carrying a bomb, homes being raided in a search for "weapons of mass destruction" that have never turned up...
I grew up in a city where the cops wouldn't come into the housing projects because the gangsters who lived there would shoot out the lights and snipe the pigs one by one-- they had to send the CRASH unit into the Pacoima projects instead.
I grew up in a town where I saw people beaten to a pulp almost weekly in front of the bar next to my grandfather's house; where girls gave up the pussy for crack and junkies aching for a fix went up in flames in the backseat of a car; where my uncle died of a stab wound in front of his own house, after the paramedics took an hour and a half to get to him...
I feel like I grew up in a war zone. It has tainted me.
I have come to conclude that this nation is the real weapon of mass destruction. We are the destroyers, the "stupid fucking white men" (among other colors) who rape and pillage the earth time and time again.
This will all pass, to be sure, but it leaves me with little hope.
Luckily, I believe in hope. Luckily, I'm a naive dreamer who sees the silver lining in the dark cloud. In fact, that aphoristic cloud is symbolic of my very nature: darkness surrounded by a sheen of light. They co-exist, and they resemble a sort-of Marxist contradiction where two opposites cannot thrive without the other.
The temptation to give into negativity wouldn't be such a burden if it weren't for the fact that, sometimes, we humans get satisfaction out of being cruel, mean, and hostile. One minute I can be loving and giving, and the next minute I want to make someone pay for perceived slights.
All that must change. In the past, I used humor to balance my hate and anger, but I guess I haven't been very humorous lately. Fortunately, my old friend J, whom I love more than life and who has known me since we were both toothless second-graders, told me to watch Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back for some perspective on my recent blog woes. There was one scene in particular that she wanted me to watch, and sure enough it made me burst into uncontrollable laughter, the kind of laughter that I often employ in self-defense, against the horrors of The Modern Age.
All I got to say is: "ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE GONNA PAY! YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE THE BALL-LICKERS!!"
Thanks, J. That movie made me chuckle. I'm gonna watch it again tonight.
Maybe Easter won't be so dark after all. Hell, maybe I'll even rent The Passion Of The Christ and take some of Bill's Window Pane acid to pass the time.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
WITH THE FIRST OF SPRING...
...there comes renewal.
So, what have I learned?
First of all, I have learned that karma is a bitch. The irony that I had an abusive stalker on my hands is not lost on me; I know that I've been a pest to many people online in the past, and it was my turn to feel the heat. Most likely, this asshole won't give up, and will keep looking for me. But for now, things are quite chill.
Second of all, I've learned that I just have too much time on my hands here at work. They like me here, and lately I've been stepping up and doing some actual work. It makes the time go by faster. And, it makes me less inclined to start fights online with strangers.
Third of all, I've come to see that a lot of my anger and rage is misdirected. When I started blogging at the end of 2002, I was about to be laid-off and my prospects were lookng dim. Writing was a way for me to navigate through the horror of being jobless and homeless. I was at the library every day, spending half an hour on job hunting and a full hour on blogging.
The name of my blog back then was the name of this blog right now. I changed it to the name you've all come to know and, er, love shortly afterwards. I guess I've come full circle, no?
I had to make some changes, to prevent The Dickhead from trying to Google or find this blog. I will spend much time going back into the Archives and changing things around, so as not to come up in a search. I think I've been pretty thorough, but we'll see. If the Comments start filling up at an unnatural rate, I'll know that it's time to split once again.
I got over the whole notion of "running away" from this challenge long ago. I should run away more often, actually-- it's better for my health. Not that I am afraid of anything-- rather, I should be afraid of things more, because I am constantly teetering between bravery and stupidity. I tread that fine line and then I wonder why I get into the situations that I do.
I am mellowing out, and life is good. Yesterday was a reminder that I started this beef, and I had to end it once and for all. Some may take issue with what I've left on the old blog, but as much as I want to make a clean break, I also cannot deny my need for dramatic closure.
It's like The Karate Kid: When Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel LaRusso that he did his best in the climactic tournament, Daniel tells Mr. Miyagi that he will never find balance if he knows that he didn't at least try to comeback from his injury at the hands of the dreaded Cobra Kai karate troupe. "Every time I see those guys, I'm going to know that they got the best of me," he said, as Mr. Miyagi slapped his hands together and started rubbing...
I know I don't need to fight or prove anything, but at the same time I cannot back down from certain challenges. It's very male of me, I know, but then again... I am a man.
Besides, it's not like this whole deal was going to go the distance. Dude was just as much at fault as I was, but he just wouldn't let it go. However, he doesn't want to meet me face-to-face, and I know this. So, this is just how it's going to have to be from now on.
So, what have I learned?
I've learned that I have a lot to learn.
I'm sorry if y'all saw the ugly side, but it could always be uglier, and I'm stopping it right here before it gets to that phase.
Anyway, I gotta tend to the duties. I might blog later, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow, when I have a real opportunity to start with a "clean slate".
PEACE
So, what have I learned?
First of all, I have learned that karma is a bitch. The irony that I had an abusive stalker on my hands is not lost on me; I know that I've been a pest to many people online in the past, and it was my turn to feel the heat. Most likely, this asshole won't give up, and will keep looking for me. But for now, things are quite chill.
Second of all, I've learned that I just have too much time on my hands here at work. They like me here, and lately I've been stepping up and doing some actual work. It makes the time go by faster. And, it makes me less inclined to start fights online with strangers.
Third of all, I've come to see that a lot of my anger and rage is misdirected. When I started blogging at the end of 2002, I was about to be laid-off and my prospects were lookng dim. Writing was a way for me to navigate through the horror of being jobless and homeless. I was at the library every day, spending half an hour on job hunting and a full hour on blogging.
The name of my blog back then was the name of this blog right now. I changed it to the name you've all come to know and, er, love shortly afterwards. I guess I've come full circle, no?
I had to make some changes, to prevent The Dickhead from trying to Google or find this blog. I will spend much time going back into the Archives and changing things around, so as not to come up in a search. I think I've been pretty thorough, but we'll see. If the Comments start filling up at an unnatural rate, I'll know that it's time to split once again.
I got over the whole notion of "running away" from this challenge long ago. I should run away more often, actually-- it's better for my health. Not that I am afraid of anything-- rather, I should be afraid of things more, because I am constantly teetering between bravery and stupidity. I tread that fine line and then I wonder why I get into the situations that I do.
I am mellowing out, and life is good. Yesterday was a reminder that I started this beef, and I had to end it once and for all. Some may take issue with what I've left on the old blog, but as much as I want to make a clean break, I also cannot deny my need for dramatic closure.
It's like The Karate Kid: When Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel LaRusso that he did his best in the climactic tournament, Daniel tells Mr. Miyagi that he will never find balance if he knows that he didn't at least try to comeback from his injury at the hands of the dreaded Cobra Kai karate troupe. "Every time I see those guys, I'm going to know that they got the best of me," he said, as Mr. Miyagi slapped his hands together and started rubbing...
I know I don't need to fight or prove anything, but at the same time I cannot back down from certain challenges. It's very male of me, I know, but then again... I am a man.
Besides, it's not like this whole deal was going to go the distance. Dude was just as much at fault as I was, but he just wouldn't let it go. However, he doesn't want to meet me face-to-face, and I know this. So, this is just how it's going to have to be from now on.
So, what have I learned?
I've learned that I have a lot to learn.
I'm sorry if y'all saw the ugly side, but it could always be uglier, and I'm stopping it right here before it gets to that phase.
Anyway, I gotta tend to the duties. I might blog later, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow, when I have a real opportunity to start with a "clean slate".
PEACE
Monday, March 21, 2005
DAMAGE CONTROL
Okay, enough is enough!
I can't believe I actually have to take time out of my busy schedule to sift throguh all of this BS!
Tyrone-- while I admire your efforts to defend me, you're not helping any by egging this loser on. I don't want to end up like you, without a job. I'm changing the password and revoking your blog priveleges for a spell. Thanks for calling me, though-- I wouldn't have found out about it until it was too late.
L-- same to you, kid. This loser is a waste of time. I haven't done anything to him and he keeps coming back at me. I hope you and Ty don't decide to take this into your own hands, because it's not worth it.
G______-- I sent an e-mail to my bosses, warning them of your plans. But I have to wonder aloud, since I have the opportunity to do so: what is your major malfunction?
You claim to make all this money and have such a great life. Why, then, are you attempting to go after someone like me? Sounds to me like you are just a broke loser with too much time on his hands.
You say the photo that Ty posted is not you. If it's not you, then why get upset? Besides, Ty tells me he found the photo online-- that means it's already been in the public domain for years. Just like when I posted your info online on CL last year: if it's not your real information then what do you care? This leads me to believe that you ARE named S____ E_______, and you DO look like a redheaded stepchild.
Sorry, I just had to add that one, considering how much effort you put into slandering me.
Doesn't it ever dawn on you that you are spending all this time on a total stranger? Doesn't it dawn on you that you make yourself look like an idiot every time you post? The people who like my blog only post comments every once in a while-- you post like 20 in one hour! Get a life, dude...
Speaking of which: I'm leaving the comments up, because I want my bosses to see that it's YOU, and not me, who's starting beef this time. I haven't been to CL in all the this time, and what I post on my blog when I'm elsewhere is of no concern to my bosses, who think you are unstable and potentially dangerous. Once they see that picture of you, though, they will realize (like me) that you are a redheaded clown.
I can't tell Ty and L what to do, so if they are planning on going to CL to rake your name through the mud, you have no one to blame but yourself, S____. You said it yourself on this blog a few weeks back: "Don't f*** with strangers"... well, if you're messsing with Tyrone and L., then you messed with the wrong strangers. I can't call them off if they decide to go ahead with something. I don't approve of what they did here, but then again you haven't exactly let it go either.
I mean, how much of an inferiority complex do you have? I gave up on you a long time ago, S____, but you keep on coming with it. Why? What are you going to 'win' in this battle? Is there some kind of King Of The Internet title that I never heard of? For a guy who writes reviews of Star Wars books, maybe that's the best thing you can hope for-- to "win" a battle online, where everyone is making up stuff.
Finally, I hope you learn something valuable from this, S____ E_______. I hope you learn that everything has consequences. For me, the consequence was that I put my co-workers in danger by battling with a orange-haired glasses-wearing nerd like you on the 'Net. And for you, the consequences are that you pissed off my friends and family, and as much as I tell them to refrain from their schemes, they don't listen to me. And now that they have that photo of you, I wish you the best of luck.
I'm washing my hands of this as of right now. And just to show that I'm a good sport, I'll take down that ugly ass picture of you that Tyrone posted.
I can't believe I actually have to take time out of my busy schedule to sift throguh all of this BS!
Tyrone-- while I admire your efforts to defend me, you're not helping any by egging this loser on. I don't want to end up like you, without a job. I'm changing the password and revoking your blog priveleges for a spell. Thanks for calling me, though-- I wouldn't have found out about it until it was too late.
L-- same to you, kid. This loser is a waste of time. I haven't done anything to him and he keeps coming back at me. I hope you and Ty don't decide to take this into your own hands, because it's not worth it.
G______-- I sent an e-mail to my bosses, warning them of your plans. But I have to wonder aloud, since I have the opportunity to do so: what is your major malfunction?
You claim to make all this money and have such a great life. Why, then, are you attempting to go after someone like me? Sounds to me like you are just a broke loser with too much time on his hands.
You say the photo that Ty posted is not you. If it's not you, then why get upset? Besides, Ty tells me he found the photo online-- that means it's already been in the public domain for years. Just like when I posted your info online on CL last year: if it's not your real information then what do you care? This leads me to believe that you ARE named S____ E_______, and you DO look like a redheaded stepchild.
Sorry, I just had to add that one, considering how much effort you put into slandering me.
Doesn't it ever dawn on you that you are spending all this time on a total stranger? Doesn't it dawn on you that you make yourself look like an idiot every time you post? The people who like my blog only post comments every once in a while-- you post like 20 in one hour! Get a life, dude...
Speaking of which: I'm leaving the comments up, because I want my bosses to see that it's YOU, and not me, who's starting beef this time. I haven't been to CL in all the this time, and what I post on my blog when I'm elsewhere is of no concern to my bosses, who think you are unstable and potentially dangerous. Once they see that picture of you, though, they will realize (like me) that you are a redheaded clown.
I can't tell Ty and L what to do, so if they are planning on going to CL to rake your name through the mud, you have no one to blame but yourself, S____. You said it yourself on this blog a few weeks back: "Don't f*** with strangers"... well, if you're messsing with Tyrone and L., then you messed with the wrong strangers. I can't call them off if they decide to go ahead with something. I don't approve of what they did here, but then again you haven't exactly let it go either.
I mean, how much of an inferiority complex do you have? I gave up on you a long time ago, S____, but you keep on coming with it. Why? What are you going to 'win' in this battle? Is there some kind of King Of The Internet title that I never heard of? For a guy who writes reviews of Star Wars books, maybe that's the best thing you can hope for-- to "win" a battle online, where everyone is making up stuff.
Finally, I hope you learn something valuable from this, S____ E_______. I hope you learn that everything has consequences. For me, the consequence was that I put my co-workers in danger by battling with a orange-haired glasses-wearing nerd like you on the 'Net. And for you, the consequences are that you pissed off my friends and family, and as much as I tell them to refrain from their schemes, they don't listen to me. And now that they have that photo of you, I wish you the best of luck.
I'm washing my hands of this as of right now. And just to show that I'm a good sport, I'll take down that ugly ass picture of you that Tyrone posted.
A CONVERSATION WITH THE DARK SIDE OF MY SOUL
This weekend, I took some time out to thank God.
Say what?
You heard me.
James, you're not... you're not a Christian, are you?
Fuck no.
Then, why are you thanking God?
Because who else can I thank? My family? They all believe in God, way more than I ever will. They go to church every Sunday, read the Bible once a week, and pray before every meal. Any thanks I give to my family goes to God by proxy.
Wait a minute, back up here-- why are you thanking God in the first place?
I woke up Sunday morning and realized that, all throughout my life, I have been placed in harm's way by many factors (myself, the actions of others, bureaucracy, etc) and every time I have managed to come out of it with something I can use, something that helped me later on down the line. And lately, things have been good for me: getting the car, working on creative projects, enjoying my work, living in this quiet part of the city... I also have my health, my friends, and my family supporting me and making me feel welcome. And who do I have to thank for that? Me? No way, I'm my own worst enemy.
So you are thanking God? That's pathetic.
Why not? I spend more time cursing God than thanking God. I figure it this way: I owe God some thanks, for all the times I told God that he/she/it doesn't exist, for all the moments when I turned my back on what God wanted me to do, for all the occasions where I was sure that there is no God...
You sound like a fool.
I am. What else is new? I was a fool when I told God to shove it, and I'm a fool to thank God for everything I have. No matter what I do, I'm a fool, and I'm happy to be a fool, if it means being me and not you.
What do you have against me, James?
I don't have anything against you. You are my darkest impulses, you represent all that is bleak and hopeless... and yet I know that is the role you must play. I don't begrudge you for doing your job. But don't you see how little it matters what you think of me? If I cared about looking foolish, I would give up on art and settle for a good-paying, soul-sucking job that left me feeling empty and vacant by day's end. But do you realize how happy I've been ever since I got laid off from the old company? I mean, the first five months were an all-time low, but I rebounded, and it all got better because I refused to lay down and let it all wash over me. And now, I'm very happy.
But that happiness will not last. And why are you thanking God anyway? You should be thanking yourself.
Because I always thank myself. I have no problem giving myself credit for things I've done. Shit, I give myself credit for things I haven't done. I'm a narcissist, this is my nature. I figure, this time I'll give someone or something else the credit for the bliss I have achieved. Granted, my life isn't perfect, but it is managable and tolerable and I am not upset with my station in the world.
So, why thank God? Why not Allah, or Buddha, or Satan? Why not Zeus? Why God?
God is all of those things. God is everything we humans were never meant to figure out. John Lennon once sang, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Alfred Jarry once said, "God is the tangential point between zero and infinity." Whatever we theorize about God-- that he exists, that he does not exist, that he is dead, that he is a sadist, that he is a monster, that we can or cannot know his ways, that he is a man or a woman, that he is asexual, that God is perfect --we are far from the mark always. It's a useless preoccupation to ponder the secrets of God.
If it's useless to ponder God's secrets, then what are you doing with this blog?
Participating in a useless exercise. Not everything we do in our lives must be riddled with meaning.
So, you consider giving praise to God meaningless?
Yes.
Yes?
Yes.
I don't understand you at all, James.
Don't try. You and your prejudices against religion will only make you go nuts over it. I have said before that I am not religious, because religion has nothing to do with our relationship to what is known as God. I also said before that I am not irreligious either, because I see zealotry and bias in the agnostic/atheistic community that rivals and sometimes surpasses the hate that so-called Christian groups espouse.
So where do you stand?
I stand wherever my feet happen to be planted at the time. And right now, my feet are standing on the ground that God created. And when things in my life change, so does the ground beneath me. And right now, the ground beneath me is fine and sturdy. And all I'm doing is realizing that, in the past when my life has been this stable, I never ever say to God, "Thank you."
When's the last time you blasphemed against God?
Last month, during the heavy rains. Read my last entry for En Mass titled EVERYONE'S WORST NIGHTMAREto find out what caused me to curse God.
And the last time you thanked him?
At the end of last year, when I was hanging out with Eve and Bro Man. I had a good feeling, and it compelled me to thank God for re-establishing my ties with Eve.
It would really make you feel good to know that God really exists, wouldn't it?
Well, yeah... think about it. If there is a God, then he'd be the coolest thing ever. He could make anything happen. He could create or destroy something with the snap of his fingers. He could perform the best magic tricks ever. But the problem is, everyone is afraid of him. And I can't understand that. The rest of the world hates and fears him. Even the ones who claim they follow him do so out of fear of retribution. Luckily, I got over all of that years ago. Now, I see my relationship with God as something that only he and I are in on. I can say whatever I want to him, and he can do whatever he wants to do to me.
So you have no fears of being struck down by lightning?
Take a look at the Bible sometime. Look at the people God was friends with: King David, a man who sent his friend Uriah out to the front lines of battle so that he could fuck his wife Bathsheba; Moses, a dude who grew up thinking he was Egyptian, only to go on to lead the tribe of Israel our of slavery... and to be denied entrance into the Promised Land because he lost his cool one day in the desert; Paul, formerly known as Saul The Christian-hating Roman, who was blinded and converted to Christianity and spent the rest of his days writing angry letters to any church that would read them...
Your point is?
These people are NOT saints. Some of them were pure scum, to be sure. Therefore, God doesn't seem to be a picky entity. He doesn't love me or hate me-- he has to respect the fact that I don't kiss his ass, but he also wishes that I'd give him a little credit just once in a while.
Do you talk to God?
All the time.
What do you say to God?
I usually tell him the latest jokes that I've heard.
And what does he tell you?
He doesn't "tell" me anything. Instead, he inspires me. He will reveal a beautiful sunny day to me as I'm driving, or he'll illuminate one note in a song that I like, or he'll cast the light on a woman in such a way that I see into her soul and discover what it is that she feels.
You're crazy.
What else is new? Tell me something I don't already know.
I hate to rain on your parade, James, but there is no God. He is an invention of men, used to control other men, and religion is outdated-- it has no relevance.
I agree with you.
You're just saying that to spite me.
Yes, that's true. That's why I'm agreeing with you-- to spite you.
That's not very Christan of you.
And it's not very un-Christian of you to be telling me how to live my life, is it? And as for being Christian.. fuck being a Christian! What about being who I am?
(noticeable silence)
I thought so. Do me a favor, Dark Side of the Soul: next time you want to make me feel bad for feeling good, come prepared with some ammo. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go outside and smoke a cigarette and lust after nubile young ladies with my sinful eyes... and God is going to know what I'm doing, and I'm the one who will deal with the repercussions, if there are any. Got it?
Got it.
I knew you'd understand. Care to join me?
I thought you'd never ask.
Say what?
You heard me.
James, you're not... you're not a Christian, are you?
Fuck no.
Then, why are you thanking God?
Because who else can I thank? My family? They all believe in God, way more than I ever will. They go to church every Sunday, read the Bible once a week, and pray before every meal. Any thanks I give to my family goes to God by proxy.
Wait a minute, back up here-- why are you thanking God in the first place?
I woke up Sunday morning and realized that, all throughout my life, I have been placed in harm's way by many factors (myself, the actions of others, bureaucracy, etc) and every time I have managed to come out of it with something I can use, something that helped me later on down the line. And lately, things have been good for me: getting the car, working on creative projects, enjoying my work, living in this quiet part of the city... I also have my health, my friends, and my family supporting me and making me feel welcome. And who do I have to thank for that? Me? No way, I'm my own worst enemy.
So you are thanking God? That's pathetic.
Why not? I spend more time cursing God than thanking God. I figure it this way: I owe God some thanks, for all the times I told God that he/she/it doesn't exist, for all the moments when I turned my back on what God wanted me to do, for all the occasions where I was sure that there is no God...
You sound like a fool.
I am. What else is new? I was a fool when I told God to shove it, and I'm a fool to thank God for everything I have. No matter what I do, I'm a fool, and I'm happy to be a fool, if it means being me and not you.
What do you have against me, James?
I don't have anything against you. You are my darkest impulses, you represent all that is bleak and hopeless... and yet I know that is the role you must play. I don't begrudge you for doing your job. But don't you see how little it matters what you think of me? If I cared about looking foolish, I would give up on art and settle for a good-paying, soul-sucking job that left me feeling empty and vacant by day's end. But do you realize how happy I've been ever since I got laid off from the old company? I mean, the first five months were an all-time low, but I rebounded, and it all got better because I refused to lay down and let it all wash over me. And now, I'm very happy.
But that happiness will not last. And why are you thanking God anyway? You should be thanking yourself.
Because I always thank myself. I have no problem giving myself credit for things I've done. Shit, I give myself credit for things I haven't done. I'm a narcissist, this is my nature. I figure, this time I'll give someone or something else the credit for the bliss I have achieved. Granted, my life isn't perfect, but it is managable and tolerable and I am not upset with my station in the world.
So, why thank God? Why not Allah, or Buddha, or Satan? Why not Zeus? Why God?
God is all of those things. God is everything we humans were never meant to figure out. John Lennon once sang, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Alfred Jarry once said, "God is the tangential point between zero and infinity." Whatever we theorize about God-- that he exists, that he does not exist, that he is dead, that he is a sadist, that he is a monster, that we can or cannot know his ways, that he is a man or a woman, that he is asexual, that God is perfect --we are far from the mark always. It's a useless preoccupation to ponder the secrets of God.
If it's useless to ponder God's secrets, then what are you doing with this blog?
Participating in a useless exercise. Not everything we do in our lives must be riddled with meaning.
So, you consider giving praise to God meaningless?
Yes.
Yes?
Yes.
I don't understand you at all, James.
Don't try. You and your prejudices against religion will only make you go nuts over it. I have said before that I am not religious, because religion has nothing to do with our relationship to what is known as God. I also said before that I am not irreligious either, because I see zealotry and bias in the agnostic/atheistic community that rivals and sometimes surpasses the hate that so-called Christian groups espouse.
So where do you stand?
I stand wherever my feet happen to be planted at the time. And right now, my feet are standing on the ground that God created. And when things in my life change, so does the ground beneath me. And right now, the ground beneath me is fine and sturdy. And all I'm doing is realizing that, in the past when my life has been this stable, I never ever say to God, "Thank you."
When's the last time you blasphemed against God?
Last month, during the heavy rains. Read my last entry for En Mass titled EVERYONE'S WORST NIGHTMAREto find out what caused me to curse God.
And the last time you thanked him?
At the end of last year, when I was hanging out with Eve and Bro Man. I had a good feeling, and it compelled me to thank God for re-establishing my ties with Eve.
It would really make you feel good to know that God really exists, wouldn't it?
Well, yeah... think about it. If there is a God, then he'd be the coolest thing ever. He could make anything happen. He could create or destroy something with the snap of his fingers. He could perform the best magic tricks ever. But the problem is, everyone is afraid of him. And I can't understand that. The rest of the world hates and fears him. Even the ones who claim they follow him do so out of fear of retribution. Luckily, I got over all of that years ago. Now, I see my relationship with God as something that only he and I are in on. I can say whatever I want to him, and he can do whatever he wants to do to me.
So you have no fears of being struck down by lightning?
Take a look at the Bible sometime. Look at the people God was friends with: King David, a man who sent his friend Uriah out to the front lines of battle so that he could fuck his wife Bathsheba; Moses, a dude who grew up thinking he was Egyptian, only to go on to lead the tribe of Israel our of slavery... and to be denied entrance into the Promised Land because he lost his cool one day in the desert; Paul, formerly known as Saul The Christian-hating Roman, who was blinded and converted to Christianity and spent the rest of his days writing angry letters to any church that would read them...
Your point is?
These people are NOT saints. Some of them were pure scum, to be sure. Therefore, God doesn't seem to be a picky entity. He doesn't love me or hate me-- he has to respect the fact that I don't kiss his ass, but he also wishes that I'd give him a little credit just once in a while.
Do you talk to God?
All the time.
What do you say to God?
I usually tell him the latest jokes that I've heard.
And what does he tell you?
He doesn't "tell" me anything. Instead, he inspires me. He will reveal a beautiful sunny day to me as I'm driving, or he'll illuminate one note in a song that I like, or he'll cast the light on a woman in such a way that I see into her soul and discover what it is that she feels.
You're crazy.
What else is new? Tell me something I don't already know.
I hate to rain on your parade, James, but there is no God. He is an invention of men, used to control other men, and religion is outdated-- it has no relevance.
I agree with you.
You're just saying that to spite me.
Yes, that's true. That's why I'm agreeing with you-- to spite you.
That's not very Christan of you.
And it's not very un-Christian of you to be telling me how to live my life, is it? And as for being Christian.. fuck being a Christian! What about being who I am?
(noticeable silence)
I thought so. Do me a favor, Dark Side of the Soul: next time you want to make me feel bad for feeling good, come prepared with some ammo. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go outside and smoke a cigarette and lust after nubile young ladies with my sinful eyes... and God is going to know what I'm doing, and I'm the one who will deal with the repercussions, if there are any. Got it?
Got it.
I knew you'd understand. Care to join me?
I thought you'd never ask.
Friday, March 18, 2005
"THE BOARDWALK BARKER" (chapter one, work in progress)
I'M STARTING AN ONLINE NOVEL. THIS IS CHAPTER ONE, "The Boardwalk Barker". THE NOVEL IS UNTITLED AS OF YET, AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS GOING.
Robert River sat down on his couch after a long but eventful day at work. As a sound engineer, he often needed at least one solid hour to "shake the audio out of his hair", as he liked to put it.
It wasn't so much the content that bothered him, the right-wing conservative lip service paid by every radio host who has a reputation and an agenda; no, it was more a matter of the actual frequencies each sound occupied in his inner ear after eight hours of multiple audio feeds being routed every which way. Even for a seasoned pro as himself, Robert sometimes got lost amid the channels, all of them turned on with volumes set at specific levels so that all the programming blended into one frenzied slushball of sonic sludge.
This week there was a guest host filling in for the usual right-wing political personality that Robert had come to kind of admire, in a sick and non-partisan way. Mark Rayburn knew that his chief engineer was "an unwashed pinko liberal Commie sympathizer"-- that was Rayburn's favorite way of teasing Robert whenever they had meetings concerning the show --but he respected Robert's work ethic, his knowledge of the studio craft, and his ability to keep cool under pressure. In live radio, things go terribly wrong at the turn of a moment, and Robert had passed the trial-by-fire phase with flying colors.
There was the time the ISDN unit dropped in the middle of a remote feed. Robert was back at the studio, monitoring the show from the control booth, while another, less-experienced engineer was at the remote site. Even when separated by a distance of 50 miles, Robert was able to tell the apprentice engineer, over the telephone, how to reconnect the ISDN to the receiving line. Luckily, the line had dropped during a commercial break, and by the time the break was done, the show was back up on the air, and no one in the audience knew any better.
That didn't stop Mark Rayburn from acknowledging Robert's technical prowess over the air. "I'd like to thank my engineer Robert River, who just saved us from pure embarrassment during the break. We owe you big, kid. Thanks again!"
So Robert took a liking to Rayburn, simply based on the man's mutual respect for him. And when Robert's friends scoffed at him for working for such a pillar of the Republican community, Robert took it with a grain of salt, adding:
"Hey, man, it's only entertainment!"
This week in particular, Rayburn was on vacation, and the guest host was none other than Daniel Lazarus, a former counsel to the Black Panther Party and self-described "card-carrying liberal" who changed horses midstream sometime in the '80's, embracing the conservative right and its ethos. Lazarus now spent his every waking moment trying to puncture the same political apparatus that he'd once had a hand in constructing.
Robert was less enamored of the guest host, because he couldn't invoke his motto of "just entertainment" to explain a man like Daniel Lazarus. The man seemed friendly enough, but there was an off-putting quality to Lazarus that Robert couldn't put his finger on for the life of him. Whereas Rayburn was self-effacing and blunt, Lazarus came off as glib, smug, the type of person who only cares about being on the winning side, regardless of principles.
All through the week, Lazarus was kind and polite to Robert, but it didn't make Robert feel any better. Whereas Rayburn was at least a human being beneath his rabid bulldog on-air veneer, Lazarus left him cold, almost inhuman. Robert didn't like it, and every day after work that week he felt like he was dirty, soiled by the bigotry and biases of someone who realized they didn't fit in with their chosen crowd and decided to see how the other half lived.
The other half seemed to be doing fine. Daniel Lazarus was married to a trophy wife, wrote books and toured the lecture circuit. He was well-respected amongst the right-wing politicos and talking media heads. Among the religious right, people saw Lazarus in the same way they view a recent convert: the story leading up to the "redemption and salvation" was more important than the values of a man who only admits he is wrong once so that he can continue thinking himself "right" in the future.
In Robert's mind, Mark Rayburn stood for something; Daniel Lazarus only stood for himself.
The final blow was when the show had ended on Friday. Lazarus' wife, dutiful and passive, stood waiting as he gathered his affects. Robert went to shake Lazarus' hand and wish him well.
"It was nice working with you, Mr. Lazarus," Robert said.
"Thanks, kid." That's what everyone called Robert: "kid". He looked like he was barely 18. It burned Robert up inside every time he heard it from someone.
Daniel Lazarus decided to ask the "kid" a question.
"Robert, would you like a copy of my latest book?"
"Excuse me?" Robert didn't quite grasp what Lazarus had asked him.
"I'm giving away promotional copies of my latest book, My Former Life As A Godless Heathen. Do you want one?"
"Sure, why not?"
Robert read books like crazy. It was well-known around the radio network that the twenty-something Robert was a "gutter intellectual", a low-rent version of Matt Damon's character in the movie Good Will Hunting: didn't go to college, didn't have a degree in engineering, and yet knew more about the world and current events than anyone else.
Robert often took offense to this view of him, because he surmised it for what it really was-- a convenient label to slap on him for those who judge other people based upon their resumes. Robert's teeth would grit together whenever he overheard someone say, "My, that Robert... so smart, for someone who didn't go to college... had he gone to graduate school he could be running this company by now... what a pity..."
However, he sometimes enjoyed being an underpaid employee who knew everything about his job (and everyone else's, for that matter). There was an underdog currency to his position. He was the one that tended to be underestimated by his superiors, with their degrees framed on the walls of their offices, meaningless pieces of textured paper that signified nothing except the willingness to jump through flaming hoops on cue.
Not everyone who went to college was incompetent, in Robert's mind, but he also knew that a certificate stating that someone completed four years of college did not mean that the person was especially smart or knowledgable about anything outside of the normal realms of experience. He stopped counting the number of times he'd saved his bosses hides for mistakes that not even the rawest rookie would make.
Because of his sober dedication to a job well-done, Robert's reputation for being a reader enhanced his overall standing in the company. And his reputation often foreshadowed him-- people knew him first and foremost as a serious intellect, unafraid to pad his opinions with tasty facts gleaned from the news.
In fact, it was his bold and argumentative style that landed him the Rayburn gig in the first place. The whole thing was a lark-- the regular engineer at the time needed a back-up, and Robert was easy to train. He learned the mixing board and the method of operations within one week. But no one was sure if putting outspoken Robert "Lefty" River in the same room with GOP stalwart Mark Rayburn would be a good idea.
As predicted, the two started to clash immediately, arguing back and forth over then-President Clinton's policies. But, a strange thing happened during the exchange: Robert and Mark found common ground, in regards to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
"Yeah, I voted for Clinton in 1992," Robert said to Mark, while cueing up a pretaped promo on the reel-to-reel. "But I voted Green this last time, because if you ask me Clinton is not that far away from your own political stance, Mr. Rayburn."
"You can call me Mark," Rayburn said, which stunned his producer and her assistant. It took them six months each to get on a first-name basis with Mark Rayburn.
"Okay, Mark," Robert continued. "The reason why I say that is because the fallout from the Telecommunications Act, much like the fallout from the repealing of the Fairness Doctrine--"
"How old are you again, Robert?" Mark interjected.
"25, sir."
"My God-- A young man your age, so up to date with what's going on... I bet you if I asked any other person your age about things like the Fairness Doctrine and the Telecommunications Act, they'd draw a blank. Hell, my own son is almost your age, and he has no interest in any of that stuff, try as hard as I might to get him to look into it."
Robert snickered. He knew Rayburn's son personally. They would occassionally party at Robert's apartment in Sherman Oaks. If Rayburn only knew how much he and his son had in common.
"Well," Robert replied, "radio has always been a passion in my life. A minor passion, true, but it pays the bills. I like the work. And when I like the work, I do the math and the research."
After landing the engineering gig permanently, after the regular guy left the post to pursue another career, Robert's stock went up. People took notice. Maybe this diamond in the rough was ready to play ball after all, or so went the reasoning of the company heads.
So Robert found himself agreeing to accept a book from Daniel Lazarus reluctantly. It wasn't like Robert wouldn't read the book-- on the contrary, Robert would probably ingest it in a heartbeat. He liked reading up on what "the other side" had to say-- he called it "boning up on your enemies". And Robert was known to go through the box of books that Rayburn received almost daily, from fans of the show and maybe some haters who wanted to blow Rayburn's mind somehow.
Anything that Rayburn or his staff didn't have time to go through was thrown in the box. A sign above the box read "FREE BOOKS-- TAKE 'EM!" and as far as anyone knew, Robert was the only person in the entire company to take them up on the offer on a weekly basis. He had so many books from the Rayburn show's offices that he had to buy another bookcase at home to accomodate them.
As Daniel handed Robert a copy of his book, he asked Robert, "Would you like it autographed?"
Robert bristled at the chutzpah, but kept composed. "That would be nice," he said.
The inscription read:
To Robert,
Keep on fighting the good fight.
Freedom must be preserved at all costs.
Yours Truly,
Daniel Lazarus
Robert shook his head and headed home. But before he got home, he witnessed something very peculiar on the street outside of the radio network's offices.
As he walked out onto the busy boulevard, he saw a van parked in front of the adjacent bank. The van's side door was opened, and a disheveled-looking man with glasses sat down on the curb, blaring a portable AM radio. He was busy scrawling words onto a whiteboard that was mounted to the interior of the van door. Strewn on the outisde of the van were pieces of white cardboard taped together lengthwise and covered with handwritten messages.
The slogans were printed big and bold enough to read without effort:
ALL PRESIDENTS ARE CROOKS
THE POLITICAL CRIME FAMILY
WHO REALLY RUNS THE UNITED STATES?
Underneath each slogan was a continuous paragraph of text, fleshing out the theses in more detail.
Robrt laughed at the display. It reminded him of the booths in Venice Beach, where the crazies and wackos would say anything to get your attention. He stopped to watch what this guy was doing, hoping that maybe the disheveled man would put on some sort of show, not unlike the boardwalk barkers in Venice.
Then, he noticed something, with those finely-tuned ears of his. He noticed something familiar about the audio emanating from the man's AM radio. It sounded like he was listening to the voice of... Mark Rayburn.
This jarred him for two reasons. One, Robert momentarily forgot about the fact that, after the live portion of the show was done, a re-feed of a past show was pumped out to fill in the time slot. Since Rayburn was on vacation all week and Lazarus had been in the host's chair, Robert lost his bearings for an instant.
Two, if this disheveled man was listening to Mark Rayburn's show and making a public spectacle of himself by disparaging politicans on the street, then that meant he was targeting Rayburn for something.
As much as he could understand the man's desire to speak out against what he believed was wrong, Robert also felt that, as the engineer on the show, he should do something about this before it turns into an ugly incident. If this man was after Rayburn, for whatever reason, it could extend to him personally... and Robert wasn't going to be having any of that.
Robert opted to talk to the man first, to measure if there was a threat or not.
"Hey, man... what's with the colorful signs?"
"Nice to meet you, sir," the man said, extending a hand to Robert. "The name's Kennedy. John Kennedy."
Robert almost laughed in the man's face, but instead turned it into a wry joke. "Funny, you don't sound like you have a Boston accent..."
"Yeah, and I'm pretty healthy-looking, for a corpse, eh?" Kennedy guffawed, and then said, "I get it all the time. But my name really is John Kennedy. John H. Kennedy."
"No relation to the famous Kennedys?"
"Not by a long shot, bro."
"Well, judging by your signs, maybe it's not that long of a shot."
"If you knew what I knew about the Kennedys, kid, you might not think that they are too long of a shot from the Mark Rayburns of the world."
"What have you got against Mark Rayburn?"
"I tried to call into his show once, and the prick just yelled at me and hung up on me. He doesn't fight fair. He just yells at people and tells them to shut up, and then he hangs up on them. That's not civil discourse. That's just being an unfair asshole. So here I am, bringing it to him. I know he broadcasts out of this building."
"You realize that his people might call the cops on you if they know you're out here?"
"Let 'em call," Kennedy said, fire in his eyes. "I don't care. Anything to bring attention to what these freaks are doing to this country. If it makes the news, then a night in jail is worth it. I live in this van-- a night in County is like a room at the Ramada Inn for me."
"Are you a Democrat, Mr. Kennedy?"
"Hell no, they're just as bad," Kennedy said. "I haven't voted in decades. You can't change the agenda that these-- these elitists have by voting. It's a meaningless ritual now. Do you know that almost every significant election in the 20th Century has been rigged in one way or another?"
"Is that a fact?"
"Read up on it, kid. I ain't lying."
"I'm not saying you're lying. But is it possible that you're mistaken?"
Kennedy stopped and looked at Robert. Then he smiled, showing that his yellow teeth had been weathered and almost grinded down to nothing. "If I'm mistaken, kid, then it wouldn't be the first time. But... if I'm right, then this world is fucked. Hell in a hand basket, you know? I hope, for your sake and mine, that I'm dead wrong."
Then, as if Robert had never been there in the first place, John H. Kennedy began to rant and rave in front of the small crowd that was by now gathering in front of his van, parked outside of the bank. Kennedy was going on about political and global conspiracies, the kinds of things that Robert liked to read about because they were so far-fetched and improbable.
The names were there: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Haig, Kissinger, Greenpsan, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Vanderbilt, Hearst, Hunt, Heinz, all the stock characters whose valuable family surnames pop up incessantly in the netherworld of conspiracy fiction.
Robert checked it out for a while, then he became bored and grabbed the first bus out of there.
He got home, sat on his couch, shook the audio out of his hair, and tried to unwind. But he felt like he would turn on the news and discover that John H. Kennedy went on a rampage and killed a bunch of people with a semi-automatic rifle and if only they had known he was there they could have stopped the carnage...
He thought Kennedy was harmless and cool, but he didn't want anything on his conscience. He wasn't a radical teenager anymore-- he was an adult, with bills to pay and a job to do.
Robert picked up the phone and called his work.
"Sandy? Hi, it's Robert. I'm just calling to let you know-- when I left work today, I saw a guy outside of the building who was demonstrating, I guess, against Mark Rayburn. Well, he didn't say he was going to do anything... he was a caller on the show, and Mark hung up on him. Yeah, I know, tell me about it. Anyway, I don't think he would hurt a fly, but you might wanna... oh, okay, well... man, that was fast. So it's already taken care of? Okay. Well, hey, no problem, anytime. See ya Monday. Bye."
The police had already asked Mr. Kennedy to move his van away from the location, according to Sandra, the producer for Mark Rayburn's radio show. If Robert had stayed around for 15 minutes longer, he coud've seen it all go down himself.
Robert turned on the TV and opened up the book that Daniel Lazarus had given him. He had no plans for the evening, so he decided to start reading. He had other books in his bag that he'd taken from the box at work, so if Lazarus' prose was anything like his personality, at least Robert had other things to capture his attention.
CHAPTER TWO COMES NEXT FRIDAY! HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, FOLKS!!
Robert River sat down on his couch after a long but eventful day at work. As a sound engineer, he often needed at least one solid hour to "shake the audio out of his hair", as he liked to put it.
It wasn't so much the content that bothered him, the right-wing conservative lip service paid by every radio host who has a reputation and an agenda; no, it was more a matter of the actual frequencies each sound occupied in his inner ear after eight hours of multiple audio feeds being routed every which way. Even for a seasoned pro as himself, Robert sometimes got lost amid the channels, all of them turned on with volumes set at specific levels so that all the programming blended into one frenzied slushball of sonic sludge.
This week there was a guest host filling in for the usual right-wing political personality that Robert had come to kind of admire, in a sick and non-partisan way. Mark Rayburn knew that his chief engineer was "an unwashed pinko liberal Commie sympathizer"-- that was Rayburn's favorite way of teasing Robert whenever they had meetings concerning the show --but he respected Robert's work ethic, his knowledge of the studio craft, and his ability to keep cool under pressure. In live radio, things go terribly wrong at the turn of a moment, and Robert had passed the trial-by-fire phase with flying colors.
There was the time the ISDN unit dropped in the middle of a remote feed. Robert was back at the studio, monitoring the show from the control booth, while another, less-experienced engineer was at the remote site. Even when separated by a distance of 50 miles, Robert was able to tell the apprentice engineer, over the telephone, how to reconnect the ISDN to the receiving line. Luckily, the line had dropped during a commercial break, and by the time the break was done, the show was back up on the air, and no one in the audience knew any better.
That didn't stop Mark Rayburn from acknowledging Robert's technical prowess over the air. "I'd like to thank my engineer Robert River, who just saved us from pure embarrassment during the break. We owe you big, kid. Thanks again!"
So Robert took a liking to Rayburn, simply based on the man's mutual respect for him. And when Robert's friends scoffed at him for working for such a pillar of the Republican community, Robert took it with a grain of salt, adding:
"Hey, man, it's only entertainment!"
This week in particular, Rayburn was on vacation, and the guest host was none other than Daniel Lazarus, a former counsel to the Black Panther Party and self-described "card-carrying liberal" who changed horses midstream sometime in the '80's, embracing the conservative right and its ethos. Lazarus now spent his every waking moment trying to puncture the same political apparatus that he'd once had a hand in constructing.
Robert was less enamored of the guest host, because he couldn't invoke his motto of "just entertainment" to explain a man like Daniel Lazarus. The man seemed friendly enough, but there was an off-putting quality to Lazarus that Robert couldn't put his finger on for the life of him. Whereas Rayburn was self-effacing and blunt, Lazarus came off as glib, smug, the type of person who only cares about being on the winning side, regardless of principles.
All through the week, Lazarus was kind and polite to Robert, but it didn't make Robert feel any better. Whereas Rayburn was at least a human being beneath his rabid bulldog on-air veneer, Lazarus left him cold, almost inhuman. Robert didn't like it, and every day after work that week he felt like he was dirty, soiled by the bigotry and biases of someone who realized they didn't fit in with their chosen crowd and decided to see how the other half lived.
The other half seemed to be doing fine. Daniel Lazarus was married to a trophy wife, wrote books and toured the lecture circuit. He was well-respected amongst the right-wing politicos and talking media heads. Among the religious right, people saw Lazarus in the same way they view a recent convert: the story leading up to the "redemption and salvation" was more important than the values of a man who only admits he is wrong once so that he can continue thinking himself "right" in the future.
In Robert's mind, Mark Rayburn stood for something; Daniel Lazarus only stood for himself.
The final blow was when the show had ended on Friday. Lazarus' wife, dutiful and passive, stood waiting as he gathered his affects. Robert went to shake Lazarus' hand and wish him well.
"It was nice working with you, Mr. Lazarus," Robert said.
"Thanks, kid." That's what everyone called Robert: "kid". He looked like he was barely 18. It burned Robert up inside every time he heard it from someone.
Daniel Lazarus decided to ask the "kid" a question.
"Robert, would you like a copy of my latest book?"
"Excuse me?" Robert didn't quite grasp what Lazarus had asked him.
"I'm giving away promotional copies of my latest book, My Former Life As A Godless Heathen. Do you want one?"
"Sure, why not?"
Robert read books like crazy. It was well-known around the radio network that the twenty-something Robert was a "gutter intellectual", a low-rent version of Matt Damon's character in the movie Good Will Hunting: didn't go to college, didn't have a degree in engineering, and yet knew more about the world and current events than anyone else.
Robert often took offense to this view of him, because he surmised it for what it really was-- a convenient label to slap on him for those who judge other people based upon their resumes. Robert's teeth would grit together whenever he overheard someone say, "My, that Robert... so smart, for someone who didn't go to college... had he gone to graduate school he could be running this company by now... what a pity..."
However, he sometimes enjoyed being an underpaid employee who knew everything about his job (and everyone else's, for that matter). There was an underdog currency to his position. He was the one that tended to be underestimated by his superiors, with their degrees framed on the walls of their offices, meaningless pieces of textured paper that signified nothing except the willingness to jump through flaming hoops on cue.
Not everyone who went to college was incompetent, in Robert's mind, but he also knew that a certificate stating that someone completed four years of college did not mean that the person was especially smart or knowledgable about anything outside of the normal realms of experience. He stopped counting the number of times he'd saved his bosses hides for mistakes that not even the rawest rookie would make.
Because of his sober dedication to a job well-done, Robert's reputation for being a reader enhanced his overall standing in the company. And his reputation often foreshadowed him-- people knew him first and foremost as a serious intellect, unafraid to pad his opinions with tasty facts gleaned from the news.
In fact, it was his bold and argumentative style that landed him the Rayburn gig in the first place. The whole thing was a lark-- the regular engineer at the time needed a back-up, and Robert was easy to train. He learned the mixing board and the method of operations within one week. But no one was sure if putting outspoken Robert "Lefty" River in the same room with GOP stalwart Mark Rayburn would be a good idea.
As predicted, the two started to clash immediately, arguing back and forth over then-President Clinton's policies. But, a strange thing happened during the exchange: Robert and Mark found common ground, in regards to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
"Yeah, I voted for Clinton in 1992," Robert said to Mark, while cueing up a pretaped promo on the reel-to-reel. "But I voted Green this last time, because if you ask me Clinton is not that far away from your own political stance, Mr. Rayburn."
"You can call me Mark," Rayburn said, which stunned his producer and her assistant. It took them six months each to get on a first-name basis with Mark Rayburn.
"Okay, Mark," Robert continued. "The reason why I say that is because the fallout from the Telecommunications Act, much like the fallout from the repealing of the Fairness Doctrine--"
"How old are you again, Robert?" Mark interjected.
"25, sir."
"My God-- A young man your age, so up to date with what's going on... I bet you if I asked any other person your age about things like the Fairness Doctrine and the Telecommunications Act, they'd draw a blank. Hell, my own son is almost your age, and he has no interest in any of that stuff, try as hard as I might to get him to look into it."
Robert snickered. He knew Rayburn's son personally. They would occassionally party at Robert's apartment in Sherman Oaks. If Rayburn only knew how much he and his son had in common.
"Well," Robert replied, "radio has always been a passion in my life. A minor passion, true, but it pays the bills. I like the work. And when I like the work, I do the math and the research."
After landing the engineering gig permanently, after the regular guy left the post to pursue another career, Robert's stock went up. People took notice. Maybe this diamond in the rough was ready to play ball after all, or so went the reasoning of the company heads.
So Robert found himself agreeing to accept a book from Daniel Lazarus reluctantly. It wasn't like Robert wouldn't read the book-- on the contrary, Robert would probably ingest it in a heartbeat. He liked reading up on what "the other side" had to say-- he called it "boning up on your enemies". And Robert was known to go through the box of books that Rayburn received almost daily, from fans of the show and maybe some haters who wanted to blow Rayburn's mind somehow.
Anything that Rayburn or his staff didn't have time to go through was thrown in the box. A sign above the box read "FREE BOOKS-- TAKE 'EM!" and as far as anyone knew, Robert was the only person in the entire company to take them up on the offer on a weekly basis. He had so many books from the Rayburn show's offices that he had to buy another bookcase at home to accomodate them.
As Daniel handed Robert a copy of his book, he asked Robert, "Would you like it autographed?"
Robert bristled at the chutzpah, but kept composed. "That would be nice," he said.
The inscription read:
To Robert,
Keep on fighting the good fight.
Freedom must be preserved at all costs.
Yours Truly,
Daniel Lazarus
Robert shook his head and headed home. But before he got home, he witnessed something very peculiar on the street outside of the radio network's offices.
As he walked out onto the busy boulevard, he saw a van parked in front of the adjacent bank. The van's side door was opened, and a disheveled-looking man with glasses sat down on the curb, blaring a portable AM radio. He was busy scrawling words onto a whiteboard that was mounted to the interior of the van door. Strewn on the outisde of the van were pieces of white cardboard taped together lengthwise and covered with handwritten messages.
The slogans were printed big and bold enough to read without effort:
ALL PRESIDENTS ARE CROOKS
THE POLITICAL CRIME FAMILY
WHO REALLY RUNS THE UNITED STATES?
Underneath each slogan was a continuous paragraph of text, fleshing out the theses in more detail.
Robrt laughed at the display. It reminded him of the booths in Venice Beach, where the crazies and wackos would say anything to get your attention. He stopped to watch what this guy was doing, hoping that maybe the disheveled man would put on some sort of show, not unlike the boardwalk barkers in Venice.
Then, he noticed something, with those finely-tuned ears of his. He noticed something familiar about the audio emanating from the man's AM radio. It sounded like he was listening to the voice of... Mark Rayburn.
This jarred him for two reasons. One, Robert momentarily forgot about the fact that, after the live portion of the show was done, a re-feed of a past show was pumped out to fill in the time slot. Since Rayburn was on vacation all week and Lazarus had been in the host's chair, Robert lost his bearings for an instant.
Two, if this disheveled man was listening to Mark Rayburn's show and making a public spectacle of himself by disparaging politicans on the street, then that meant he was targeting Rayburn for something.
As much as he could understand the man's desire to speak out against what he believed was wrong, Robert also felt that, as the engineer on the show, he should do something about this before it turns into an ugly incident. If this man was after Rayburn, for whatever reason, it could extend to him personally... and Robert wasn't going to be having any of that.
Robert opted to talk to the man first, to measure if there was a threat or not.
"Hey, man... what's with the colorful signs?"
"Nice to meet you, sir," the man said, extending a hand to Robert. "The name's Kennedy. John Kennedy."
Robert almost laughed in the man's face, but instead turned it into a wry joke. "Funny, you don't sound like you have a Boston accent..."
"Yeah, and I'm pretty healthy-looking, for a corpse, eh?" Kennedy guffawed, and then said, "I get it all the time. But my name really is John Kennedy. John H. Kennedy."
"No relation to the famous Kennedys?"
"Not by a long shot, bro."
"Well, judging by your signs, maybe it's not that long of a shot."
"If you knew what I knew about the Kennedys, kid, you might not think that they are too long of a shot from the Mark Rayburns of the world."
"What have you got against Mark Rayburn?"
"I tried to call into his show once, and the prick just yelled at me and hung up on me. He doesn't fight fair. He just yells at people and tells them to shut up, and then he hangs up on them. That's not civil discourse. That's just being an unfair asshole. So here I am, bringing it to him. I know he broadcasts out of this building."
"You realize that his people might call the cops on you if they know you're out here?"
"Let 'em call," Kennedy said, fire in his eyes. "I don't care. Anything to bring attention to what these freaks are doing to this country. If it makes the news, then a night in jail is worth it. I live in this van-- a night in County is like a room at the Ramada Inn for me."
"Are you a Democrat, Mr. Kennedy?"
"Hell no, they're just as bad," Kennedy said. "I haven't voted in decades. You can't change the agenda that these-- these elitists have by voting. It's a meaningless ritual now. Do you know that almost every significant election in the 20th Century has been rigged in one way or another?"
"Is that a fact?"
"Read up on it, kid. I ain't lying."
"I'm not saying you're lying. But is it possible that you're mistaken?"
Kennedy stopped and looked at Robert. Then he smiled, showing that his yellow teeth had been weathered and almost grinded down to nothing. "If I'm mistaken, kid, then it wouldn't be the first time. But... if I'm right, then this world is fucked. Hell in a hand basket, you know? I hope, for your sake and mine, that I'm dead wrong."
Then, as if Robert had never been there in the first place, John H. Kennedy began to rant and rave in front of the small crowd that was by now gathering in front of his van, parked outside of the bank. Kennedy was going on about political and global conspiracies, the kinds of things that Robert liked to read about because they were so far-fetched and improbable.
The names were there: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Haig, Kissinger, Greenpsan, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Vanderbilt, Hearst, Hunt, Heinz, all the stock characters whose valuable family surnames pop up incessantly in the netherworld of conspiracy fiction.
Robert checked it out for a while, then he became bored and grabbed the first bus out of there.
He got home, sat on his couch, shook the audio out of his hair, and tried to unwind. But he felt like he would turn on the news and discover that John H. Kennedy went on a rampage and killed a bunch of people with a semi-automatic rifle and if only they had known he was there they could have stopped the carnage...
He thought Kennedy was harmless and cool, but he didn't want anything on his conscience. He wasn't a radical teenager anymore-- he was an adult, with bills to pay and a job to do.
Robert picked up the phone and called his work.
"Sandy? Hi, it's Robert. I'm just calling to let you know-- when I left work today, I saw a guy outside of the building who was demonstrating, I guess, against Mark Rayburn. Well, he didn't say he was going to do anything... he was a caller on the show, and Mark hung up on him. Yeah, I know, tell me about it. Anyway, I don't think he would hurt a fly, but you might wanna... oh, okay, well... man, that was fast. So it's already taken care of? Okay. Well, hey, no problem, anytime. See ya Monday. Bye."
The police had already asked Mr. Kennedy to move his van away from the location, according to Sandra, the producer for Mark Rayburn's radio show. If Robert had stayed around for 15 minutes longer, he coud've seen it all go down himself.
Robert turned on the TV and opened up the book that Daniel Lazarus had given him. He had no plans for the evening, so he decided to start reading. He had other books in his bag that he'd taken from the box at work, so if Lazarus' prose was anything like his personality, at least Robert had other things to capture his attention.
CHAPTER TWO COMES NEXT FRIDAY! HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, FOLKS!!
Thursday, March 17, 2005
NAVEL-GAZING
I am confessing a secret: I have been slacking off in my animation duties. Only two nights this week have been devoted to some serious Photoshop work. The other nights have been spent sitting on my couch, reneging on my pot reduction, and trying to somehow vent my emotions without getting into some sort of irrational state.
I woke up this morning, refreshed, well-rested. I think I've gotten the grief out of me.
My grandmother is fine. She left the hospital Monday, but I never shed a single tear over it. I opted instead to force my grief out of me through other avenues. It took longer than if I just cried, but I feel better for it.
*/*
I received a copy of SPIN magazine in the mail... and in an interview, 50 Cent claimed that he didn't smoke weed... ever.
If this is true (which it most definitely isn't) then that would make 50 the shrewdest gangsta rapper in the history of hip-hop. I think 50 knows that this would entitle him to the All-Time Rap Shrewdness crown, so I think that's why he said it.
As our current President has demonstrated time and time again, you can say anything to the press. They'll only take you to task if they don't like you... or, if your father used to run the CIA and operates his business interests the way the Corleones did in The Godfather...
I hope 50 is telling the truth about his weed habit, because if he is, then I will quit cold turkey. The notion of the man who wrote "High All The Time" never taking a puff of the ganja is subversive as hell, and it would inspire me to stop toking. I mean, I've been making great strides to cut down, but I like it too much.
Here's to hoping 50 is straight and sober.
*/*
I am feeling attractive, despite not being involved with anyone in particular.
Lately I've been noticing women staring at me or whispering to their friends as I walk by. These are women I am not acquainted with, and for all I know they are laughing at me because I have a booger hanging out of my nose.
Or, maybe I'm finally seeing what people have been telling me all of my life: I am not bad-looking.
I'm not Brad Pitt, and of course I'm not everyone's cup of tea... but the girls who like me are showing me that they like me, and that feels cool.
I'm too hard on myself. Now is a good time to lighten up and realize that I won't be able to make every girl fall in love with me. But just the fact that they like being around me is enough.
There's a girl in this office who has a crush on me. I'm not going to assume that she loves me-- I'm just going to bask in the attention I receive from her for a while. She is cute, and I know that the reason she has a crush on me is because I am nice to her and I don't hit on her.
She feels secure around me.
Do I like her back? No, but she is cute. She is sweet. She is likable. She is also very young, and she will find out on her own that I'm not The One. But it will be nice to have that attention, for a little while.
I think the reason why I obsess about women so much is because, for all my talk of being able to do it all on my own, I need them. I really do need them, every last one of them. I think the girls who put up with me know this, and let me have my little delusion of being independent and self-sufficient because they know I'll be back, asking them to show me a little love.
I'm like an alley cat, and all these women feed me and pet me and treat me real nice, and then I'm off down the alley again, getting fleas and digging in trash cans, meowing all night...
*/*
My life is at a peculiar balance right now. As we get ready to go into Mercury's retrograde, I am steady and ready and stable. I am prepared to take the next step and start painting. My mind has been rehearsing the moment when I would know what to do, and last night I saw a sign in the sky, an epiphany, and I realized that I can start painting now. The inspiration is inside of me.
I have three colors of paint, some brushes, some blank canvases, and my easel. I'm ready.
I wrote a song about Holly Golightly the other night. It just poured out of me. Usually I write the words first, then the music... but this one was a piece of music I'd had kicking around for ten years. I gave it to Katie, and she came up with some lyrics for it... but my lyrics are way better.
I also have the Plaster of Paris that Paulie gave me-- maybe this weekend will be a creative one, coinciding with the arriving of Spring sometime soon.
Yes, let's make it symbolic.
Let's tie it in with rebirth and renewal and the myth of Christ rising from the dead and the return of Dionysis and the end of The Waste Land and the healing of the Fisher King and the birthdate of The Messiah being on the last and first day of the Zodiac calendar, making him the Alpha, The Omega, the beginning, the end, the snake that bit its own tail and held on, until it rolled itself into a circle and spiraled out of control, inventing the Cosmos in its wake...
Yes, let's.
I woke up this morning, refreshed, well-rested. I think I've gotten the grief out of me.
My grandmother is fine. She left the hospital Monday, but I never shed a single tear over it. I opted instead to force my grief out of me through other avenues. It took longer than if I just cried, but I feel better for it.
*/*
I received a copy of SPIN magazine in the mail... and in an interview, 50 Cent claimed that he didn't smoke weed... ever.
If this is true (which it most definitely isn't) then that would make 50 the shrewdest gangsta rapper in the history of hip-hop. I think 50 knows that this would entitle him to the All-Time Rap Shrewdness crown, so I think that's why he said it.
As our current President has demonstrated time and time again, you can say anything to the press. They'll only take you to task if they don't like you... or, if your father used to run the CIA and operates his business interests the way the Corleones did in The Godfather...
I hope 50 is telling the truth about his weed habit, because if he is, then I will quit cold turkey. The notion of the man who wrote "High All The Time" never taking a puff of the ganja is subversive as hell, and it would inspire me to stop toking. I mean, I've been making great strides to cut down, but I like it too much.
Here's to hoping 50 is straight and sober.
*/*
I am feeling attractive, despite not being involved with anyone in particular.
Lately I've been noticing women staring at me or whispering to their friends as I walk by. These are women I am not acquainted with, and for all I know they are laughing at me because I have a booger hanging out of my nose.
Or, maybe I'm finally seeing what people have been telling me all of my life: I am not bad-looking.
I'm not Brad Pitt, and of course I'm not everyone's cup of tea... but the girls who like me are showing me that they like me, and that feels cool.
I'm too hard on myself. Now is a good time to lighten up and realize that I won't be able to make every girl fall in love with me. But just the fact that they like being around me is enough.
There's a girl in this office who has a crush on me. I'm not going to assume that she loves me-- I'm just going to bask in the attention I receive from her for a while. She is cute, and I know that the reason she has a crush on me is because I am nice to her and I don't hit on her.
She feels secure around me.
Do I like her back? No, but she is cute. She is sweet. She is likable. She is also very young, and she will find out on her own that I'm not The One. But it will be nice to have that attention, for a little while.
I think the reason why I obsess about women so much is because, for all my talk of being able to do it all on my own, I need them. I really do need them, every last one of them. I think the girls who put up with me know this, and let me have my little delusion of being independent and self-sufficient because they know I'll be back, asking them to show me a little love.
I'm like an alley cat, and all these women feed me and pet me and treat me real nice, and then I'm off down the alley again, getting fleas and digging in trash cans, meowing all night...
*/*
My life is at a peculiar balance right now. As we get ready to go into Mercury's retrograde, I am steady and ready and stable. I am prepared to take the next step and start painting. My mind has been rehearsing the moment when I would know what to do, and last night I saw a sign in the sky, an epiphany, and I realized that I can start painting now. The inspiration is inside of me.
I have three colors of paint, some brushes, some blank canvases, and my easel. I'm ready.
I wrote a song about Holly Golightly the other night. It just poured out of me. Usually I write the words first, then the music... but this one was a piece of music I'd had kicking around for ten years. I gave it to Katie, and she came up with some lyrics for it... but my lyrics are way better.
I also have the Plaster of Paris that Paulie gave me-- maybe this weekend will be a creative one, coinciding with the arriving of Spring sometime soon.
Yes, let's make it symbolic.
Let's tie it in with rebirth and renewal and the myth of Christ rising from the dead and the return of Dionysis and the end of The Waste Land and the healing of the Fisher King and the birthdate of The Messiah being on the last and first day of the Zodiac calendar, making him the Alpha, The Omega, the beginning, the end, the snake that bit its own tail and held on, until it rolled itself into a circle and spiraled out of control, inventing the Cosmos in its wake...
Yes, let's.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
FUNNY ONION HEADLINES
Two days ago, I was regaling patrons of Paulie's Garage with a fanciful conspiracy theory of mine.
As a hobby, I come up with my own crackpot theories, so as to keep from dying of Boredom, which happens to be The Biggest Conspiracy On The Planet. I don't fear the Masons, the CIA, the Rosicrucians or the Bilderburgers-- I fear the people who think John Tesh and Kenny G should go on tour together forever.
Anyway, my wacko theory, formulated over a decade ago in my mind, is that Michael Jackson died during the ill-fated making of that Pepsi Commercial in the '80's, the one that burned his hair and started the ball rolling on his weirdness.
I figured that the Jackson family had so many relatives and siblings that there had to be one Jackson brother who wasn't talented enough to make the cut, entertainment-wise. And when the world's biggest pop attraction died on a sound stage in the mid-80's, the remaining Jacksons wanted to keep the cash cow mooing along, and they picked some unknown member of the Jackson clan to take Michael's place.
Of course, nowadays a dead pop star generates more revenue than if they were alive, but no one knew that back then, just like how Michael didn't realize that (if he had waited for the technology to improve) he could've had the best plastic surgery done once and ONLY ONCE, with no return visits to the chair save for some retouching.
The brother or cousin who took MJ's place had more plastic surgery done to hide his true identity. And he was taught how to imitate MJ's moves and voice, just like any number of impersonators have done over the years.
Then, he started releasing crappy albumns like Bad and Dangerous...
Big Block Rick, one of Paulie's friends (and also the protagonist of our animation), is a firm believer that Jacko is innocent, and he didn't like my jokes at all. But I prefaced it all with, "It's just a crackpot theory of mine..."
Well, that crackpot theory is now the front page headline of the latest issue of The Onion...
Didn't I mention something yesterday about being a visionary? And isn't it true that The Onion updates their "news" on Wednesdays?
The question now is: When is the rest of the world going to catch up to me?
As a hobby, I come up with my own crackpot theories, so as to keep from dying of Boredom, which happens to be The Biggest Conspiracy On The Planet. I don't fear the Masons, the CIA, the Rosicrucians or the Bilderburgers-- I fear the people who think John Tesh and Kenny G should go on tour together forever.
Anyway, my wacko theory, formulated over a decade ago in my mind, is that Michael Jackson died during the ill-fated making of that Pepsi Commercial in the '80's, the one that burned his hair and started the ball rolling on his weirdness.
I figured that the Jackson family had so many relatives and siblings that there had to be one Jackson brother who wasn't talented enough to make the cut, entertainment-wise. And when the world's biggest pop attraction died on a sound stage in the mid-80's, the remaining Jacksons wanted to keep the cash cow mooing along, and they picked some unknown member of the Jackson clan to take Michael's place.
Of course, nowadays a dead pop star generates more revenue than if they were alive, but no one knew that back then, just like how Michael didn't realize that (if he had waited for the technology to improve) he could've had the best plastic surgery done once and ONLY ONCE, with no return visits to the chair save for some retouching.
The brother or cousin who took MJ's place had more plastic surgery done to hide his true identity. And he was taught how to imitate MJ's moves and voice, just like any number of impersonators have done over the years.
Then, he started releasing crappy albumns like Bad and Dangerous...
Big Block Rick, one of Paulie's friends (and also the protagonist of our animation), is a firm believer that Jacko is innocent, and he didn't like my jokes at all. But I prefaced it all with, "It's just a crackpot theory of mine..."
Well, that crackpot theory is now the front page headline of the latest issue of The Onion...
Didn't I mention something yesterday about being a visionary? And isn't it true that The Onion updates their "news" on Wednesdays?
The question now is: When is the rest of the world going to catch up to me?
"NEWS FLASH: YET ANOTHER HIP-HOP SLANG WORD GETS ABSORBED INTO THE MATRIX!!"
I saw this on an infomercial late last night, and I just had to find a link online.
The infomercial was a delicate balance of soft-core porn and cheesy night-owl capitalism. It was not subtle in its sex/fitness propaganda. And, I think it's safe to say that the word "booty" has officially been co-opted by mainstream America. There were many times in the past when I thought the word was taken hostage, only to be returned to its rightful owners. But now, it is no longer a hip slang word. It took longer than "fa shizzle my nizzle" to get to this point, but if you ever happen to come across the TV ad late at night, try counting the number of times the product's name is mentioned... it'll make your head swim.
Fuck what the election results told you: even in the Red States, as we speak, there's some God-fearing, liberal-hating, gay-bashing hick sitting on a stump, abusing the word "booty" with impunity...
That's all for now...
The infomercial was a delicate balance of soft-core porn and cheesy night-owl capitalism. It was not subtle in its sex/fitness propaganda. And, I think it's safe to say that the word "booty" has officially been co-opted by mainstream America. There were many times in the past when I thought the word was taken hostage, only to be returned to its rightful owners. But now, it is no longer a hip slang word. It took longer than "fa shizzle my nizzle" to get to this point, but if you ever happen to come across the TV ad late at night, try counting the number of times the product's name is mentioned... it'll make your head swim.
Fuck what the election results told you: even in the Red States, as we speak, there's some God-fearing, liberal-hating, gay-bashing hick sitting on a stump, abusing the word "booty" with impunity...
That's all for now...
EXPERIENCE
The following post is inspired by someone's recent blog. This blogger and I used to play in bands together, and we love to trade banter back and forth concerning the sorry state of music today.
Here's a list of all of the CDs in my carry-all bag, in no particular order:
Pixies- Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim*
Pixies- Trompe Le Monde*
Husker Du- Zen Arcade*
RZA as Bobby Digital- Digital Bullet*
50 Cent- Guess Who's Back?
N.W.A.- Straight Outta Compton (currently playing in my ride)
Love- Forever Changes
Dead Milkmen- Beelzebubba
Morrissey- Vauxhall And I
White Stripes- Destijl*
Ramones first album*
Outkast- Speakerboxx/The Love Below*
Men At Work- Brazil (live album)*
All the titles with asterisks are burned copies.
There are also two mix CDs, three animation-related burns, and one CD-RW of some music I've been recording.
In my car, I have seven mix CDs on hand, with various bands in random order.
This catalogue is not meant to display my eclectic-ness and variety. On the contrary, when you get past the issue of diversity, there's a strong conservative bent to my selections.
1. Out of all of the CDs in my immediate possession, the most recent release is the Outkast double CD set. The oldest release is from 1967. Out of all of the store-bought CDs (non-burns), the one I've had the longest is Beelzebubba. I bought that in junior high, at the end of the '90's. I don't count the N.W.A. disc because that particular copy is a recent addition-- my original cassette copy was stolen years ago.
2. None of these bands are Britney Spears, of which I own nothing, nor are any of them Radiohead, of which I have plenty at home. Some of them are relatively big-- Morrissey is experiencing a comeback, 50 Cent has a new album out, The Pixies reunited last year, The White Stripes probably have something new coming out soon, and The Ramones' documentary End Of The Century has been released on DVD. Even the bands that are no more like Husker Du and N.W.A. have left enduring legacies that last to this day. However, none of the titles I listed above are current releases.
3. About half of the artists mentioned before are groups or performers that I got into after they peaked or broke up, with the exception of the rap stuff-- I get wind of that shit as soon as it's hot off the streets. But I became a fan of The Pixies when Trompe Le Monde was released, which was when they broke up. Same with The Smiths and The Ramones-- their glory days were over with once I jumped on board their trains. I'd never paid Husker Du any mind until three years ago, well after they disbanded. And Love... they've been broken up since the end of the '60's, and ironically Arthur Lee is still touring under the name!
4. The inclusion of Men At Work and Love may seem like catering to some sort of kitsch factor, but in the case of the boys from Down Under, my older brother had their first two albums when they came out. He played them non-stop. I started to like it. I'm a genuine fan as a result. And Love came from my backwards time-traveling into classic rock, when I discovered that Love was Jim Morrison's favorite rock group. Otherwise, all the other titles seem like they are trying to stress some type of street cred or cool taste, like "Look at me! I'm still cool, even though I'm over 30!"
5. 8 of the 13 CDs are burned copies, 9 if you count Outkast twice. Of the store-bought CDs, two of them were either freebies or gifts from friends, possibly one of them is even a CD that I jacked from someone else. For all of my love of music and bands, I don't support them very well financially. But then again, it's the retailers-- not the bands themselves-- who are gouging the prices. Thank God Napster and Kazaa scared the record retailers into dropping their pants on at least a good portion of the available product out there.
As you can see, I make no claims to being avant-garde or cutting-edge. My tastes are pretty much set in stone, and new bands are hard for me to fathom or absorb quickly. But this has always been the case for me. When everyone was into punk and new wave, I was listening to Motown and R&B. When everyone was into college rock, I was discovering classic rock. When the trend winds changed direction and landed on hair metal, I was investigating thrash and speed metal. Then things went "grunge", and I took that time to go back and bone up on all the punk, new wave, college rock and hair metal that I'd missed the first time around.
The whole entire time, I only kept my finger on the pulse of rap, because it was entirely new and fresh. Even when they started sampling, it coincided with my time-traveling, crate-digging, neurotic-music-fan tendencies. Rap is the only music genre that I can safely claim to have been in on since its inception.
But as I get older, I look back and wonder what the point of all of it was. So many people were into "scenes" and specific kinds of music. They were very disciplined, very strict and narrow concerning the definitions of good music. Before Nirvana, kids in my 'hood didn't listen to rock unless they had some crazy whiteboy friends. Now, when I roll through Pacoima to visit my younger cousins, I can hear them riffing away on not only Nirvana but Sublime, Bad Brains and Black Sabbath in the garage as I approach the curb.
These are bands that were around when my cousins were sucking their thumbs. I know, because I saw them grow up before my eyes. I jam with these kids now, hoping to stay young, and I appreciate when they know songs that I grew up playing also... but I'm also smart enough to know that it's a young person's market.
I try to keep an open ear to what's the newest thing, but since I've always gone against the grain and kept my ears open to only particular types of music, I still come off as an old fogie, trying to stay hip.
The reason? All I can say is, when I was young I didn't trust any adults. They were all rats, in my opinion. No matter how "cool" they came off as, they were The Enemy, and I had more respect for those who acted their age than the ones who tried to get on "my level", like I was some kitten that needs to be acclimated with his environment in the first two weeks of life.
So now, as an old man, I look at the kids today and say to myself, They hate you. No matter how hip you think you are, they unconditionally hate you. They don't want to be you, even if they end up being exactly like you... Don't try to reason with them. Just be who you've always been...
I think it's more important to think young than to try to act young anyway. I prefer jamming with people my own age, with people interested in playing at a certain level, who are not just experiencing the rush of freedom as they play but are also traveling down a path that they've paved for themselves through years and years of rehearsing and jamming and playing in bands.
They have Experience, as Jimi might've said once...
*/*
Last week I was on The Who's tip, reliving past memories while driving and bumping their CDs. There's that classic line from Pete Townshend: "I hope I die before I get old..." rendered absurd by the fact that it was sung decades before I was even a tadpole in my dad's crotchbags.
I was singing that (and believing that) when I was 16, unaware of the irony of going to see a bunch of 40-somethings play ancient songs in an overpacked venue. My friend Mike and I were by far the youngest people in attendance out of our own volition and not dragged there by their parents.
Now I'm old. And I didn't die. I was hoping that I would, but it didn't happen. Good thing, too, because adulthood is turning out to be better than adolescence in so many ways.
Maybe, when I was younger, getting old was the same as dying. Maybe that's what The Who's "My Generation" was talking about: I hope I'm dead before I get boring and settled. Of course, there's no limits on when we have to settle down. Even a man like my grandfather, who has been married for over a half a century, still comes off as a young man with a lust for life. I don't think he ever had a midlife crisis, or even a quarter-century crisis. I think that kind of thinking is pure bullshit to a man like my grandfather, who can drink me under the table and outsmokes me by two complete packs.
Maybe that's why old people get a bad rap for not liking anything new and cutting-edge: because they've seen so many things come and go, and they can sniff out the bullshit immediately. And let's face it-- even good bands come equipped with a fair amount of hype and bullshit, thanks to their PRs and agents, thanks to the media machine, thanks to ratings and dollars and greed...
Greed...
*/*
The kids always accuse the adults of selling out, of getting soft, losing their edge. But really, it's when they get greedy that the kids revolt. When they have it all, and still want more... that's when you see the kids talking about ousting the existing order and turning everything upside-down.
When the hippies became yuppies, people screamed, "Sellout!" but this is what they should've been screaming: "What, you're not rich enough?"
Nowadays, there are kids who are greedy, and want to be rich, for sure. There always has been. They are tempered by the ones who notice a lack of care and quality control when the paychecks get bigger. I was once one of the latter category of kids, and now I'm one of those adults who is caught between the pressures of aging and the urge to throw caution to the wind...
When U2 did Achtung Baby, I didn't know what to make of it. Years later, I accepted that it was a good album, but I still wanted to cry "Sellout!" I realize, now, that I was on my guard, hoping that U2 wouldn't get too greedy. They did, of course-- who really needed a giant lemon as part of the Pop Tour, even if it was supposed to be ironic? But it backfired, and now they've settled somewhere in the middle, like rock and roll grandpappies who still like to kick out the jams every now and then.
Now they are inductees into the Hall of Fame, where so many others have been passed by. Bono could possibly become the World Bank director, and he can learn all the secret handshakes, his fingers cupped over the hands of the beneficary...
He's had Experience. He paid his dues.
*/*
One last thing: I taught Language Arts at a Pasadena middle school about five years ago. It was a short-lived stint, to say the least, but Clay's post reminded me of when I was asked, by a girl in the class, if Jay-Z really lived in the 'hood.
I said, "Jay-Z makes a lot of money. I don't think he'd want his mama living in the projects while he's got all this cash."
"But he said in that one song that he still keeps it real..."
"That's what he said. It's art. It's for fun. It seems real, but it's not. He's not a fake, per se, but he stopped doing the stuff he says he does in his raps a long time ago..."
"But he almost got busted for stabbing that one dude in a club in New York..."
These kids had read up on things. I was with it. "Yeah, and they didn't have a case against him."
"How do you know so much about rap, Mr. L______?" one kid asked.
I was tempted to school the kid, but after a while I just relented and said:
"You'll understand what I mean when you get to be my age..."
...rather than going the easy route and saying:
"When I was your age..."
...because I don't want to turn my back on the new stuff. I don't want to seem like I'm clutching on to the past.
Plus, those kids would've thought I was a joke if I tried to be "down" with them. I think they ended up liking me better knowing that there was a possibility that I listened to rap music. I was an adult who didn't want to wear it on my sleeve, and I remember when I was their age thinking that adults like that were cool, because they were "down" with the new shit but didn't want to let on as much.
They knew how embarrassing it would be if I acted like I was still a teenager. So did I.
And I answered their questions to their satisfaction. They opened up to me a bit more, because I didn't hit them over the head with it.
In their eyes, I had Experience.
I was 26 at the time, and it was the first time that I felt really old... and I liked it.
Here's a list of all of the CDs in my carry-all bag, in no particular order:
Pixies- Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim*
Pixies- Trompe Le Monde*
Husker Du- Zen Arcade*
RZA as Bobby Digital- Digital Bullet*
50 Cent- Guess Who's Back?
N.W.A.- Straight Outta Compton (currently playing in my ride)
Love- Forever Changes
Dead Milkmen- Beelzebubba
Morrissey- Vauxhall And I
White Stripes- Destijl*
Ramones first album*
Outkast- Speakerboxx/The Love Below*
Men At Work- Brazil (live album)*
All the titles with asterisks are burned copies.
There are also two mix CDs, three animation-related burns, and one CD-RW of some music I've been recording.
In my car, I have seven mix CDs on hand, with various bands in random order.
This catalogue is not meant to display my eclectic-ness and variety. On the contrary, when you get past the issue of diversity, there's a strong conservative bent to my selections.
1. Out of all of the CDs in my immediate possession, the most recent release is the Outkast double CD set. The oldest release is from 1967. Out of all of the store-bought CDs (non-burns), the one I've had the longest is Beelzebubba. I bought that in junior high, at the end of the '90's. I don't count the N.W.A. disc because that particular copy is a recent addition-- my original cassette copy was stolen years ago.
2. None of these bands are Britney Spears, of which I own nothing, nor are any of them Radiohead, of which I have plenty at home. Some of them are relatively big-- Morrissey is experiencing a comeback, 50 Cent has a new album out, The Pixies reunited last year, The White Stripes probably have something new coming out soon, and The Ramones' documentary End Of The Century has been released on DVD. Even the bands that are no more like Husker Du and N.W.A. have left enduring legacies that last to this day. However, none of the titles I listed above are current releases.
3. About half of the artists mentioned before are groups or performers that I got into after they peaked or broke up, with the exception of the rap stuff-- I get wind of that shit as soon as it's hot off the streets. But I became a fan of The Pixies when Trompe Le Monde was released, which was when they broke up. Same with The Smiths and The Ramones-- their glory days were over with once I jumped on board their trains. I'd never paid Husker Du any mind until three years ago, well after they disbanded. And Love... they've been broken up since the end of the '60's, and ironically Arthur Lee is still touring under the name!
4. The inclusion of Men At Work and Love may seem like catering to some sort of kitsch factor, but in the case of the boys from Down Under, my older brother had their first two albums when they came out. He played them non-stop. I started to like it. I'm a genuine fan as a result. And Love came from my backwards time-traveling into classic rock, when I discovered that Love was Jim Morrison's favorite rock group. Otherwise, all the other titles seem like they are trying to stress some type of street cred or cool taste, like "Look at me! I'm still cool, even though I'm over 30!"
5. 8 of the 13 CDs are burned copies, 9 if you count Outkast twice. Of the store-bought CDs, two of them were either freebies or gifts from friends, possibly one of them is even a CD that I jacked from someone else. For all of my love of music and bands, I don't support them very well financially. But then again, it's the retailers-- not the bands themselves-- who are gouging the prices. Thank God Napster and Kazaa scared the record retailers into dropping their pants on at least a good portion of the available product out there.
As you can see, I make no claims to being avant-garde or cutting-edge. My tastes are pretty much set in stone, and new bands are hard for me to fathom or absorb quickly. But this has always been the case for me. When everyone was into punk and new wave, I was listening to Motown and R&B. When everyone was into college rock, I was discovering classic rock. When the trend winds changed direction and landed on hair metal, I was investigating thrash and speed metal. Then things went "grunge", and I took that time to go back and bone up on all the punk, new wave, college rock and hair metal that I'd missed the first time around.
The whole entire time, I only kept my finger on the pulse of rap, because it was entirely new and fresh. Even when they started sampling, it coincided with my time-traveling, crate-digging, neurotic-music-fan tendencies. Rap is the only music genre that I can safely claim to have been in on since its inception.
But as I get older, I look back and wonder what the point of all of it was. So many people were into "scenes" and specific kinds of music. They were very disciplined, very strict and narrow concerning the definitions of good music. Before Nirvana, kids in my 'hood didn't listen to rock unless they had some crazy whiteboy friends. Now, when I roll through Pacoima to visit my younger cousins, I can hear them riffing away on not only Nirvana but Sublime, Bad Brains and Black Sabbath in the garage as I approach the curb.
These are bands that were around when my cousins were sucking their thumbs. I know, because I saw them grow up before my eyes. I jam with these kids now, hoping to stay young, and I appreciate when they know songs that I grew up playing also... but I'm also smart enough to know that it's a young person's market.
I try to keep an open ear to what's the newest thing, but since I've always gone against the grain and kept my ears open to only particular types of music, I still come off as an old fogie, trying to stay hip.
The reason? All I can say is, when I was young I didn't trust any adults. They were all rats, in my opinion. No matter how "cool" they came off as, they were The Enemy, and I had more respect for those who acted their age than the ones who tried to get on "my level", like I was some kitten that needs to be acclimated with his environment in the first two weeks of life.
So now, as an old man, I look at the kids today and say to myself, They hate you. No matter how hip you think you are, they unconditionally hate you. They don't want to be you, even if they end up being exactly like you... Don't try to reason with them. Just be who you've always been...
I think it's more important to think young than to try to act young anyway. I prefer jamming with people my own age, with people interested in playing at a certain level, who are not just experiencing the rush of freedom as they play but are also traveling down a path that they've paved for themselves through years and years of rehearsing and jamming and playing in bands.
They have Experience, as Jimi might've said once...
*/*
Last week I was on The Who's tip, reliving past memories while driving and bumping their CDs. There's that classic line from Pete Townshend: "I hope I die before I get old..." rendered absurd by the fact that it was sung decades before I was even a tadpole in my dad's crotchbags.
I was singing that (and believing that) when I was 16, unaware of the irony of going to see a bunch of 40-somethings play ancient songs in an overpacked venue. My friend Mike and I were by far the youngest people in attendance out of our own volition and not dragged there by their parents.
Now I'm old. And I didn't die. I was hoping that I would, but it didn't happen. Good thing, too, because adulthood is turning out to be better than adolescence in so many ways.
Maybe, when I was younger, getting old was the same as dying. Maybe that's what The Who's "My Generation" was talking about: I hope I'm dead before I get boring and settled. Of course, there's no limits on when we have to settle down. Even a man like my grandfather, who has been married for over a half a century, still comes off as a young man with a lust for life. I don't think he ever had a midlife crisis, or even a quarter-century crisis. I think that kind of thinking is pure bullshit to a man like my grandfather, who can drink me under the table and outsmokes me by two complete packs.
Maybe that's why old people get a bad rap for not liking anything new and cutting-edge: because they've seen so many things come and go, and they can sniff out the bullshit immediately. And let's face it-- even good bands come equipped with a fair amount of hype and bullshit, thanks to their PRs and agents, thanks to the media machine, thanks to ratings and dollars and greed...
Greed...
*/*
The kids always accuse the adults of selling out, of getting soft, losing their edge. But really, it's when they get greedy that the kids revolt. When they have it all, and still want more... that's when you see the kids talking about ousting the existing order and turning everything upside-down.
When the hippies became yuppies, people screamed, "Sellout!" but this is what they should've been screaming: "What, you're not rich enough?"
Nowadays, there are kids who are greedy, and want to be rich, for sure. There always has been. They are tempered by the ones who notice a lack of care and quality control when the paychecks get bigger. I was once one of the latter category of kids, and now I'm one of those adults who is caught between the pressures of aging and the urge to throw caution to the wind...
When U2 did Achtung Baby, I didn't know what to make of it. Years later, I accepted that it was a good album, but I still wanted to cry "Sellout!" I realize, now, that I was on my guard, hoping that U2 wouldn't get too greedy. They did, of course-- who really needed a giant lemon as part of the Pop Tour, even if it was supposed to be ironic? But it backfired, and now they've settled somewhere in the middle, like rock and roll grandpappies who still like to kick out the jams every now and then.
Now they are inductees into the Hall of Fame, where so many others have been passed by. Bono could possibly become the World Bank director, and he can learn all the secret handshakes, his fingers cupped over the hands of the beneficary...
He's had Experience. He paid his dues.
*/*
One last thing: I taught Language Arts at a Pasadena middle school about five years ago. It was a short-lived stint, to say the least, but Clay's post reminded me of when I was asked, by a girl in the class, if Jay-Z really lived in the 'hood.
I said, "Jay-Z makes a lot of money. I don't think he'd want his mama living in the projects while he's got all this cash."
"But he said in that one song that he still keeps it real..."
"That's what he said. It's art. It's for fun. It seems real, but it's not. He's not a fake, per se, but he stopped doing the stuff he says he does in his raps a long time ago..."
"But he almost got busted for stabbing that one dude in a club in New York..."
These kids had read up on things. I was with it. "Yeah, and they didn't have a case against him."
"How do you know so much about rap, Mr. L______?" one kid asked.
I was tempted to school the kid, but after a while I just relented and said:
"You'll understand what I mean when you get to be my age..."
...rather than going the easy route and saying:
"When I was your age..."
...because I don't want to turn my back on the new stuff. I don't want to seem like I'm clutching on to the past.
Plus, those kids would've thought I was a joke if I tried to be "down" with them. I think they ended up liking me better knowing that there was a possibility that I listened to rap music. I was an adult who didn't want to wear it on my sleeve, and I remember when I was their age thinking that adults like that were cool, because they were "down" with the new shit but didn't want to let on as much.
They knew how embarrassing it would be if I acted like I was still a teenager. So did I.
And I answered their questions to their satisfaction. They opened up to me a bit more, because I didn't hit them over the head with it.
In their eyes, I had Experience.
I was 26 at the time, and it was the first time that I felt really old... and I liked it.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
VISION
I received my paycheck today, via direct deposit. I was astounded to see that I received the same amount as I always do.
As you may or may not know, I was recently suspended from work for two days... and I thought it was without pay.
Either someone in payroll messed up, or my suspension was with pay. That amounts to something more like a vacation, really.
Meanwhile, I haven't been to Craig's List since the G______ slayings, and most likely he's still there, accusing other posters of being me.
And, if he's still visiting my blog, he cannot comment. So...
Kiss My Ass, Bitch...
I hope you're having fun editing a catalog of pulp novels from the old days. Such an established writer as yourself no doubt sees it as a great honor to work on other people's material for practically no money. I am green with envy, because a "failed writer" such as myself can only aspire to such an esteemed position as the one you bragged about in my Comments column some weeks back.
As a writer, it's always been my personal vision to carry out someone else's hack work. I bet you feel like you've "arrived", don't you?
*/*
Speaking of writers, the animation guys and I met with this one dude we met through the trades. He is a stand-up comic and an animator, and he is promoting his own animation pilot. He wants to write for us, because he likes what we have on our hands. I want him to write for us because he used to make a living acting as Groucho Marx at Universal Studios years ago.
Groucho Marx is a personal hero of mine. Quick-witted, droll, gleefully anarchic, the Marx Brothers still are as funny now as they were back then. Groucho was the King Of The One-Liners, the kind of guy who you just couldn't fade. He was too sharp, too fast. His insults are grand because of their deadly accuracy, and his quips consistently fill out the pages of Bartlett's year after year.
A guy who likes Groucho can't be bad at all. In fact, I am instantly suspicious of anyone who doesn't like the Marx Brothers. I can think of nothing more unpatriotic and diabolical as someone who doesn't consider Duck Soup one of the finest comedies ever made.
Groucho's Best Line:
"This is so clear a 4 year old can understand it... go get me a 4 year old, I can't make head or tail of it."
It helps that this writer also knows his way around animation/photography programs and can write jokes for us in a visual manner. It helps us to give the sight gags more power. We vibed with him and paid for his lunch over the weekend, and we even brainstormed an idea with him to put in the next script.
Here's to writing jokes and making people laugh...
*/*
When last I spoke of Mary Jane, I'd found a poem that I'd written about her and posted it here.
No, this is not metaphorical Mary Jane, a stand-in for the chronic. Mary Jane is the fake name of a real girl whom I've been pursuing on-and-off for some time now. It's been a year since I last saw her in the flesh. I was still in the band with Holly Golightly; I hadn't run into Eve and I hadn't even begun the animation with Paulie and Peter. I'd just moved into my new pad, and I was feeling optimistic about the year 2004.
Last year turned out to be as good as I expected, given that I was at an all-time low in years previous. I love looking back at the past 365 days every now and then, to see my progress. When you see how far you've come, especially if it is positive progress, then it's a good feeling to have.
And hearing Mary Jane's voice on my voice mail last night made me smile. Man, she is a cutie, and I'm thinking that, this time around, I'm going to do what I should've done a long time ago: I'm going to tell her that she makes me crazy with her smile, her eyes, her laugh...
Maybe I'll write her a poem, like the one I linked above, but not as vague and artsy. Maybe I'll just write her a straight-out romantic love ode. I mean, I haven't seen her in a year, and who knows what she's doing now or if she's seeing anyone or if she's changed for the worse... but if she's still the same old girl that I had lots of fun with, then I guess I'm going to have to put it all on the line and just tell her that I think she's a hot mamma-jamma.
She should know by now how I feel about her. I'm not in love with her. I'm in lust. But it helps that she and I get along very well, and that we are close enough to consider each other "friends" but not so close that she feels like I'm her brother.
This will be very interesting indeed. I hope she calls me back soon.
*/*
I dropped some bass tracks for Elle last Friday night. Yesterday morning I came into the studio, before work, to finish punching in some bass notes here and there.
Elle's former flame, Bart, the guy who I had a falling-out with, turns out to be quite a producer. He knows his shit. He layed down live drum tracks under Elle's songs, which makes a huge difference. As the bassist, the drums are of the most paramount importance. What I do with my patterns and notes depends squarely upon what the drummer is doing. Bart is good at drums, and he and I got along fine.
There was no personal animosity between us. He admired my ability to cut a bass track in no time at all, taking a maximum of two takes per track. He works with Pro Tools, which makes it all easy, but he's from the old-school of engineers-- he knows analog recorders, he knows how to splice two-inch tape seamlessly, he knows what goes into making a song sound professional.
It's good that we could put aside our differences and work on something outside of the both of us. His studio space is enormous and I felt humble in the recording room. But I rose to the occasion, as I always do, and laid it out as quickly and neatly as possible.
It would've all been done Friday night, but for some reason we thought the bass was going out of tune. We discovered, Monday morning, that it wasn't that the bass was out of tune-- the scratch guitar track was out of tune! Luckily, it's a scratch guitar track, so I played my bass parts, in tune, trying to mentally drown out the dissonance between my bass and the flat chords of the guitar track.
I apologize to Anna, who was visiting me over the weekend and who sat in on my Friday night bass session. She was very patient with me despite the technical difficulties, but I feel bad because the night was almost completely wasted thanks to mine and Bart's lack of sleep and our inability to accurately pinpoint the source of our musical dischord.
Oh well, in the future I will remember to consider such things.
*/*
Excuse the randomness of today's posts. I am all over the place right now. I was at my parents' place over the weekend, helping out with a surprise party that we threw for my stepdad. He has been having trouble adjusting to civilian life after being out in Iraq for a year with the Reserves. We all told him we loved him and partied on until it got late. There was a nice turnout of friends and family. He really appreciated it.
I also have been reading William Blake. I never got too into him, but I was introduced to his writing thanks to his profound influence on The Doors' singer Jim Morrison. I was a big Doors fan as a teen, and I ended up knowing of Blake without having really investigated him.
Later on in life, references to Blake in the works of Aldous Huxley (The Doors Of Perception), Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man) and Thomas Harris (Red Dragon, which I finally finished reading) have intrigued me enough to bone up on his poetry and artwork.
The man was a visionary, way ahead of his time.
That's all I want to be. A visionary. Too lofty an aspiration? Well, if you ask me, expecting to live past another day is just as lofty as wanting to be a visionary. Why should we expect our lives to go on definitely? There is no guarantee of this. There is no contract, no binding agreement that any of us alive on this planet should not go before our time.
To expect that these things will continue to happen, that our days will go on and that they are not numbered so tightly, is akin to hubris. Some would say that expecting to live another day or to become a visionary is like taking one's life for granted.
I say, there's nothing wrong with demanding from life the same energy that you put into it.
Therefore, not only do I expect to wake up the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, but I also expect to live my life as a visionary, and to become a visionary, and to reveal my visions to the world at large.
And I also expect someone to give me the money to do that. And I also expect that some people will find that arrogant and presumptive. And I also expect that there is no way to predict whether any of this will ever occur or not.
I expect a lot of things.
I hope my expectations are met.
BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH... and have a nice day!
As you may or may not know, I was recently suspended from work for two days... and I thought it was without pay.
Either someone in payroll messed up, or my suspension was with pay. That amounts to something more like a vacation, really.
Meanwhile, I haven't been to Craig's List since the G______ slayings, and most likely he's still there, accusing other posters of being me.
And, if he's still visiting my blog, he cannot comment. So...
Kiss My Ass, Bitch...
I hope you're having fun editing a catalog of pulp novels from the old days. Such an established writer as yourself no doubt sees it as a great honor to work on other people's material for practically no money. I am green with envy, because a "failed writer" such as myself can only aspire to such an esteemed position as the one you bragged about in my Comments column some weeks back.
As a writer, it's always been my personal vision to carry out someone else's hack work. I bet you feel like you've "arrived", don't you?
*/*
Speaking of writers, the animation guys and I met with this one dude we met through the trades. He is a stand-up comic and an animator, and he is promoting his own animation pilot. He wants to write for us, because he likes what we have on our hands. I want him to write for us because he used to make a living acting as Groucho Marx at Universal Studios years ago.
Groucho Marx is a personal hero of mine. Quick-witted, droll, gleefully anarchic, the Marx Brothers still are as funny now as they were back then. Groucho was the King Of The One-Liners, the kind of guy who you just couldn't fade. He was too sharp, too fast. His insults are grand because of their deadly accuracy, and his quips consistently fill out the pages of Bartlett's year after year.
A guy who likes Groucho can't be bad at all. In fact, I am instantly suspicious of anyone who doesn't like the Marx Brothers. I can think of nothing more unpatriotic and diabolical as someone who doesn't consider Duck Soup one of the finest comedies ever made.
Groucho's Best Line:
"This is so clear a 4 year old can understand it... go get me a 4 year old, I can't make head or tail of it."
It helps that this writer also knows his way around animation/photography programs and can write jokes for us in a visual manner. It helps us to give the sight gags more power. We vibed with him and paid for his lunch over the weekend, and we even brainstormed an idea with him to put in the next script.
Here's to writing jokes and making people laugh...
*/*
When last I spoke of Mary Jane, I'd found a poem that I'd written about her and posted it here.
No, this is not metaphorical Mary Jane, a stand-in for the chronic. Mary Jane is the fake name of a real girl whom I've been pursuing on-and-off for some time now. It's been a year since I last saw her in the flesh. I was still in the band with Holly Golightly; I hadn't run into Eve and I hadn't even begun the animation with Paulie and Peter. I'd just moved into my new pad, and I was feeling optimistic about the year 2004.
Last year turned out to be as good as I expected, given that I was at an all-time low in years previous. I love looking back at the past 365 days every now and then, to see my progress. When you see how far you've come, especially if it is positive progress, then it's a good feeling to have.
And hearing Mary Jane's voice on my voice mail last night made me smile. Man, she is a cutie, and I'm thinking that, this time around, I'm going to do what I should've done a long time ago: I'm going to tell her that she makes me crazy with her smile, her eyes, her laugh...
Maybe I'll write her a poem, like the one I linked above, but not as vague and artsy. Maybe I'll just write her a straight-out romantic love ode. I mean, I haven't seen her in a year, and who knows what she's doing now or if she's seeing anyone or if she's changed for the worse... but if she's still the same old girl that I had lots of fun with, then I guess I'm going to have to put it all on the line and just tell her that I think she's a hot mamma-jamma.
She should know by now how I feel about her. I'm not in love with her. I'm in lust. But it helps that she and I get along very well, and that we are close enough to consider each other "friends" but not so close that she feels like I'm her brother.
This will be very interesting indeed. I hope she calls me back soon.
*/*
I dropped some bass tracks for Elle last Friday night. Yesterday morning I came into the studio, before work, to finish punching in some bass notes here and there.
Elle's former flame, Bart, the guy who I had a falling-out with, turns out to be quite a producer. He knows his shit. He layed down live drum tracks under Elle's songs, which makes a huge difference. As the bassist, the drums are of the most paramount importance. What I do with my patterns and notes depends squarely upon what the drummer is doing. Bart is good at drums, and he and I got along fine.
There was no personal animosity between us. He admired my ability to cut a bass track in no time at all, taking a maximum of two takes per track. He works with Pro Tools, which makes it all easy, but he's from the old-school of engineers-- he knows analog recorders, he knows how to splice two-inch tape seamlessly, he knows what goes into making a song sound professional.
It's good that we could put aside our differences and work on something outside of the both of us. His studio space is enormous and I felt humble in the recording room. But I rose to the occasion, as I always do, and laid it out as quickly and neatly as possible.
It would've all been done Friday night, but for some reason we thought the bass was going out of tune. We discovered, Monday morning, that it wasn't that the bass was out of tune-- the scratch guitar track was out of tune! Luckily, it's a scratch guitar track, so I played my bass parts, in tune, trying to mentally drown out the dissonance between my bass and the flat chords of the guitar track.
I apologize to Anna, who was visiting me over the weekend and who sat in on my Friday night bass session. She was very patient with me despite the technical difficulties, but I feel bad because the night was almost completely wasted thanks to mine and Bart's lack of sleep and our inability to accurately pinpoint the source of our musical dischord.
Oh well, in the future I will remember to consider such things.
*/*
Excuse the randomness of today's posts. I am all over the place right now. I was at my parents' place over the weekend, helping out with a surprise party that we threw for my stepdad. He has been having trouble adjusting to civilian life after being out in Iraq for a year with the Reserves. We all told him we loved him and partied on until it got late. There was a nice turnout of friends and family. He really appreciated it.
I also have been reading William Blake. I never got too into him, but I was introduced to his writing thanks to his profound influence on The Doors' singer Jim Morrison. I was a big Doors fan as a teen, and I ended up knowing of Blake without having really investigated him.
Later on in life, references to Blake in the works of Aldous Huxley (The Doors Of Perception), Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man) and Thomas Harris (Red Dragon, which I finally finished reading) have intrigued me enough to bone up on his poetry and artwork.
The man was a visionary, way ahead of his time.
That's all I want to be. A visionary. Too lofty an aspiration? Well, if you ask me, expecting to live past another day is just as lofty as wanting to be a visionary. Why should we expect our lives to go on definitely? There is no guarantee of this. There is no contract, no binding agreement that any of us alive on this planet should not go before our time.
To expect that these things will continue to happen, that our days will go on and that they are not numbered so tightly, is akin to hubris. Some would say that expecting to live another day or to become a visionary is like taking one's life for granted.
I say, there's nothing wrong with demanding from life the same energy that you put into it.
Therefore, not only do I expect to wake up the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, but I also expect to live my life as a visionary, and to become a visionary, and to reveal my visions to the world at large.
And I also expect someone to give me the money to do that. And I also expect that some people will find that arrogant and presumptive. And I also expect that there is no way to predict whether any of this will ever occur or not.
I expect a lot of things.
I hope my expectations are met.
BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH... and have a nice day!
Monday, March 14, 2005
COMPOSURE
This weekend, instead of feeling alienated from myself for my inability to feel or display the proper emotions at the appropriate times, I embraced my detachment and realized that emotional engagement isn't always the best position to take at all times.
There are moments when one must be detached. I admit, most of the time I am more detached than engaged, and I get a lot of shit for it. But those moments when detachment is needed? I am ready for them, and I get a lot of praise for my lack of emotion.
My feelings are in writing, drawn by hand, sung with a melody behind it... I prefer it that way. My mind is still playing catch-up with emotions I should've vented eons ago, and so the queue gets longer and I don't have time to feel everything I'm supposed to feel.
I'm sorry if I can't be human enough for any of you. Emotions can be so overrated sometimes.
There are moments when one must be detached. I admit, most of the time I am more detached than engaged, and I get a lot of shit for it. But those moments when detachment is needed? I am ready for them, and I get a lot of praise for my lack of emotion.
My feelings are in writing, drawn by hand, sung with a melody behind it... I prefer it that way. My mind is still playing catch-up with emotions I should've vented eons ago, and so the queue gets longer and I don't have time to feel everything I'm supposed to feel.
I'm sorry if I can't be human enough for any of you. Emotions can be so overrated sometimes.
Friday, March 11, 2005
NOISE
“In Tommy’s mind, everything is incredible, meaningless beauty.”
--Pete Townshend, Rolling Stone interview, July 12, 1969
Let me tell you what The Who means to me.
1988: I was 14 years old, in the 8th grade, and my parents were breaking up. I was making the rounds of classic rock bands: The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd... I was catching up on all the greats, much in the same way I started reading classic literature the following year-- I wanted to know a little bit about all of the masters so I could figure out which ones spoke to my heart.
The Doors spoke to my dark side; Floyd spoke to my cerebral interest in sound design; Zep appealed to my horny teen wanderlust; Sabbath was the forbidden zone, thanks to my religious upbringing and my need to rebel; CCR made me think about less being more and led me to post-punk and The Velvet Underground; The Beatles were The Beatles...
Later on I got into The Velvets, The Stones, and countless other groups, but the one group that actually spoke to my heart and soul was The Who.
Blame it on Pete Townshend, one of rock's most poignant songwriters. He has this ability to make you want to scream and cry at the same time, with his melodies, with his guitar playing, with his lyrics.
Blame it on his band, more a gang of blue-collar thugs than a collection of art-school students like Pete: Roger Daltrey, handsome and charismatic, whose looks belied a mean temperament and a whale of a voice; John Entwistle, perhaps the loudest bass player in the world and also The Who's most accomplished musician (his bass lines were more like leads, and dude played the trumpet as well!); and, of course, Keith "The Loon" Moon, poor on technique but brimming with unparalled mad genius behind the skins.
In Junior High, I was depressed, but not for the same reasons as everyone else. Yes, everyone felt like a loser trying to fit in, but I felt like I was alone. I didn't care about fitting in-- I was lost in my own world, and no one was going to get me to open up.
No one.
My schoolmates and I were talking about Pink Floyd's The Wall when someone on the school bus told me about Tommy. They said it was the first rock opera. They said it wasn't as good as The Wall but that it was just as important. All I knew about The Who at that time was that they had a song called "I Can See For Miles" that used to get played constantly on the classic rock station KLSX, which is now a talk radio station thanks to the success of Howard Stern in the '90's.
My friend Mike Kelly and I were on some sort of crusade to hear every single important rock album ever made before we were born, and so he and I embarked on a mission: find a copy of Tommy and listen to it.
Mike's dad had seen The Who perform Tommy in its entirety in 1969, but he only owned the soundtrack to the movie adaptation by Ken Russell. I found a copy of the opera performed by the London Symphony which featured guest appearances by various rock stars.
One night, I asked my mom if she could take me to the local Wherehouse to buy an album with money I had saved. She drove me to the store, and it only took me five minutes to find Tommy on cassette. My mother marveled at the speed and singularity with which I was able to make my selection.
I put it in the car stereo as we drove home. Usually my mother couldn't stand the "noise" I listened to, and I was fully expecting Tommy to be a loud, boisterous, blistering rock experience. But after the "Overture", it devolved into a quiet, acoustic tune about the birth of a baby boy. My mother looked at me like I was sick-- she was used to me blaring "acid rock", the kind she avoided as a young girl in favor of the early Beatles, Motown and girl groups.
When we got home, I listened to the album four times before I started to figure out the story. By the next day, I concluded that Tommy was about me: a young boy traumatized and made deaf, dumb, and blind by a tragic family incident, who found salvation and redemption through the healing power of music.
I was a fan of The Who from that point on. I bought every album I could find, and back then The Who's stock was a little low; thus, all of their albums were discount marked.
Then, the news came: The Who were reuniting and going back on tour. It was as if Pete Townshend heard of my interest in the group and resurrected them solely for the purpose of entertaining me.
I read up on the mythology of The Who: they started off as Mods, rode the wave of the British Invasion, made it big with Tommy (and inadvertantly started the rock opera craze that groups like The Kinks, Pink Floyd and Yes strip-mined for a full decade), became The World's Greatest Rock Band at one point, helped usher in punk, and survived the death of Keith Moon at the end of the '70's, only to limp to an undignified end at the onset of the '80's.
People told me it was a waste of time to go see The Who, now that they were old, now that Moon was long gone, now that their relevance seemed questionable. I didn't care-- Mike and I bought tickets for the 1989 Reunion Tour, and (given the somewhat recent death of bassist John Entwistle) I am glad that I did. Now I can brag that I saw The Who live when there were three original members in the band!
To bone up on the concert, Mike and I went hog-wild and bought all the albums we could, trying to cram them all into our consciousness before the show date. I especially fell for Who's Next, considered by many to be The Who's best studio album, and which contained the legendary "Baba O'Riley", also known to us as "Teenage Wasteland".
My life was a teenage wasteland at the time, and then when I heard Quadrophenia for the first time, I was blown away. How could a band be so fucking good? How could one group capture all of the unease and doubt of the adolescent years so faithfully? How could one songwriter pen such authentic lyrics, encapsulating the self-loathing and angst of not only his own generation but mine as well?
The concert was my first major rock event, and it changed my life 100%. I'd entertained being a doctor or a lawyer before that concert; I thought that I would end up like everyone else in my Magnet class, on the path to wealth and suburban bliss, with the house and the car and the two-car garage and the 2.5 kids and the family dog...
After seeing The Who rock the L.A. Colliseum in 1989, I gave The Finger to all of my business aspirations and decided that I was born to be a dreamer. Fuck college, fuck getting an ulcer and going bald, fuck trying to do homework and getting into Harvard... I wanted to rock.
The ensuing years haven't been that kind to The Who. Moon and Entwistle, aka "The Ox", are dead. Pete was busted on some child-porn charges, which forced him to disclose a fact that I'd suspected all along-- that he himself had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child, via his mentally ill aunt. How else can someone write a song like "Fiddle About" or "The Acid Queen" and not be speaking from experience?
Bands like The Stones carry the banner of being The Greatest, by virtue of the fact that they have most of the original band intact and had more hit singles than The Who (it's a fact that The Who never had a Number One single in the States). But there was something truly great about The Who that a band like The Stones cannot match.
Mick Jagger and company thrived off of rock and roll excess and notoriety, but they were relatively safe compared to the menace of The Who. It took the combined efforts of Mick, Keith Richards and Brian Jones to build up the aura of darkness behind The Stones, but all it took for The Who was the antics of Keith Moon.
There are so many Keith Moon stories out there, most of them apocryphal, all of them hilarious. My favorite story about Keith also exemplifies what I feel about anything I've ever been a creative party to, in my own life.
Legend has it that Keith was entering a hotel lobby (he was infamous for turning the destruction of a hotel room into an art form) blaring a Who rehearsal tape from a portable tape player. The hotel concierge, not knowing who he was dealing with, told Moon to "turn off that noise". Surprisingly, to the shock of everyone else, Moon complied.
But that wasn't the end of it.
He returned to his room, and took out his trusty bag of explosives, which he used on tour occasionally to liven up the proceedings. He rigged the hinges on the front door of his suite with some detonators. Then, he phoned the concierge and asked him to come up to his suite to help out with a "problem".
The concierge showed up at the door and knocked. On cue, Keith Moon blew the hinges off of the door. It fell over, smoke emanating from the room. Keith calmly walked out of the room, stepping on the door, tape player in hand. He took a long, hard look at the astonished hotel concierge.
Keith pointed to the door and said, "That was noise." Then he pointed at the tape player, still blaring, and said, "THIS is the fucking Who!"
You gotta love it.
The image of John Entwistle in the movie The Kids Are Alright, skeet-shooting gold records from the front lawn of his estate? You gotta love it.
Pete Townshend knocking a man off the stage of a Who concert with his guitar, and finding out later that the man was an undercover cop trying to alert concertgoers of a structure fire in the adjacent building? You gotta love it.
Live At Leeds, the reissue? You gotta love it.
The Who at Woodstock, which they considered their worst performance ever? You still gotta love it.
The 1979 Ohio concert that resulted in the stampede deaths of 11 fans trying to get into the show? Sorry, I can't show that any love.
Roger Daltrey's swinging microphone gymnastics? Gotta love it. His acting career in the aftermath of The Who? You don't have to love it, but I do.
The last two Who albums featuring Kenney Jones on drums? They're hard to love, but I can find it in my heart.
John Entwistle's death in a Las Vegas hotel room, with a table full of cocaine and two prostitutes at his side? You GOTTA love it.
I still have the concert T-Shirt. On the front is a famous picture of The Who, feigning sleep and draped in the Union Jack. It still fits, although it's a bit torn. And I love it.
I leave you with song lyrics-- notice how I put them last, because I know that not everyone who reads this wants to read lyrics to songs they probably haven't heard.
This is my all-time favorite Who song, off an album of rarities entitled Odds & Sods. It was supposed to be a part of the album that eventually morphed into Who's Next: a concept album tentatively titled Lifehouse, which has since been released in its entirety.
The concept of the album centered around The Note, a stand-in for God or The Force or The Universal Mind or whatever you want to call the dynamic binding energy of the cosmos. Since Pete Townshend was a follower of Meher Baba and Eastern religions, its symbolism is apparent and intentional.
The song is called "Pure And Easy" and it makes me laugh and cry every time I hear it. Its melody is stunningly beautiful, like the face of a woman who inspires more passion inside of me than I can bear. It represents not only everything I feel about The Who and the music that saved my soul, but also about life in general.
If you ever get a chance to hear it, then you will probably come closer than anything else to understanding what my heart is all about.
Have a nice weekend, folks...
There once was a Note, pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
The Note is eternal, I hear it, it sees me,
Forever we blend it, forever we die.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
As people assemble,
Civilization is trying to find a new way to die,
But killing is really merely scene changer,
All men are bored with other men's lies.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
Gas on the hillside, oil in the teacup,
Watch all the chords of life lose their joy,
Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness,
The Note that began all can also destroy.
We all know success when we all find our own dreams,
And our love is enough to knock down any walls,
And the future's been seen as men try to realize,
The simple secret of The Note in us all.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
There once was a Note, pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
--Pete Townshend, Rolling Stone interview, July 12, 1969
Let me tell you what The Who means to me.
1988: I was 14 years old, in the 8th grade, and my parents were breaking up. I was making the rounds of classic rock bands: The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd... I was catching up on all the greats, much in the same way I started reading classic literature the following year-- I wanted to know a little bit about all of the masters so I could figure out which ones spoke to my heart.
The Doors spoke to my dark side; Floyd spoke to my cerebral interest in sound design; Zep appealed to my horny teen wanderlust; Sabbath was the forbidden zone, thanks to my religious upbringing and my need to rebel; CCR made me think about less being more and led me to post-punk and The Velvet Underground; The Beatles were The Beatles...
Later on I got into The Velvets, The Stones, and countless other groups, but the one group that actually spoke to my heart and soul was The Who.
Blame it on Pete Townshend, one of rock's most poignant songwriters. He has this ability to make you want to scream and cry at the same time, with his melodies, with his guitar playing, with his lyrics.
Blame it on his band, more a gang of blue-collar thugs than a collection of art-school students like Pete: Roger Daltrey, handsome and charismatic, whose looks belied a mean temperament and a whale of a voice; John Entwistle, perhaps the loudest bass player in the world and also The Who's most accomplished musician (his bass lines were more like leads, and dude played the trumpet as well!); and, of course, Keith "The Loon" Moon, poor on technique but brimming with unparalled mad genius behind the skins.
In Junior High, I was depressed, but not for the same reasons as everyone else. Yes, everyone felt like a loser trying to fit in, but I felt like I was alone. I didn't care about fitting in-- I was lost in my own world, and no one was going to get me to open up.
No one.
My schoolmates and I were talking about Pink Floyd's The Wall when someone on the school bus told me about Tommy. They said it was the first rock opera. They said it wasn't as good as The Wall but that it was just as important. All I knew about The Who at that time was that they had a song called "I Can See For Miles" that used to get played constantly on the classic rock station KLSX, which is now a talk radio station thanks to the success of Howard Stern in the '90's.
My friend Mike Kelly and I were on some sort of crusade to hear every single important rock album ever made before we were born, and so he and I embarked on a mission: find a copy of Tommy and listen to it.
Mike's dad had seen The Who perform Tommy in its entirety in 1969, but he only owned the soundtrack to the movie adaptation by Ken Russell. I found a copy of the opera performed by the London Symphony which featured guest appearances by various rock stars.
One night, I asked my mom if she could take me to the local Wherehouse to buy an album with money I had saved. She drove me to the store, and it only took me five minutes to find Tommy on cassette. My mother marveled at the speed and singularity with which I was able to make my selection.
I put it in the car stereo as we drove home. Usually my mother couldn't stand the "noise" I listened to, and I was fully expecting Tommy to be a loud, boisterous, blistering rock experience. But after the "Overture", it devolved into a quiet, acoustic tune about the birth of a baby boy. My mother looked at me like I was sick-- she was used to me blaring "acid rock", the kind she avoided as a young girl in favor of the early Beatles, Motown and girl groups.
When we got home, I listened to the album four times before I started to figure out the story. By the next day, I concluded that Tommy was about me: a young boy traumatized and made deaf, dumb, and blind by a tragic family incident, who found salvation and redemption through the healing power of music.
I was a fan of The Who from that point on. I bought every album I could find, and back then The Who's stock was a little low; thus, all of their albums were discount marked.
Then, the news came: The Who were reuniting and going back on tour. It was as if Pete Townshend heard of my interest in the group and resurrected them solely for the purpose of entertaining me.
I read up on the mythology of The Who: they started off as Mods, rode the wave of the British Invasion, made it big with Tommy (and inadvertantly started the rock opera craze that groups like The Kinks, Pink Floyd and Yes strip-mined for a full decade), became The World's Greatest Rock Band at one point, helped usher in punk, and survived the death of Keith Moon at the end of the '70's, only to limp to an undignified end at the onset of the '80's.
People told me it was a waste of time to go see The Who, now that they were old, now that Moon was long gone, now that their relevance seemed questionable. I didn't care-- Mike and I bought tickets for the 1989 Reunion Tour, and (given the somewhat recent death of bassist John Entwistle) I am glad that I did. Now I can brag that I saw The Who live when there were three original members in the band!
To bone up on the concert, Mike and I went hog-wild and bought all the albums we could, trying to cram them all into our consciousness before the show date. I especially fell for Who's Next, considered by many to be The Who's best studio album, and which contained the legendary "Baba O'Riley", also known to us as "Teenage Wasteland".
My life was a teenage wasteland at the time, and then when I heard Quadrophenia for the first time, I was blown away. How could a band be so fucking good? How could one group capture all of the unease and doubt of the adolescent years so faithfully? How could one songwriter pen such authentic lyrics, encapsulating the self-loathing and angst of not only his own generation but mine as well?
The concert was my first major rock event, and it changed my life 100%. I'd entertained being a doctor or a lawyer before that concert; I thought that I would end up like everyone else in my Magnet class, on the path to wealth and suburban bliss, with the house and the car and the two-car garage and the 2.5 kids and the family dog...
After seeing The Who rock the L.A. Colliseum in 1989, I gave The Finger to all of my business aspirations and decided that I was born to be a dreamer. Fuck college, fuck getting an ulcer and going bald, fuck trying to do homework and getting into Harvard... I wanted to rock.
The ensuing years haven't been that kind to The Who. Moon and Entwistle, aka "The Ox", are dead. Pete was busted on some child-porn charges, which forced him to disclose a fact that I'd suspected all along-- that he himself had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child, via his mentally ill aunt. How else can someone write a song like "Fiddle About" or "The Acid Queen" and not be speaking from experience?
Bands like The Stones carry the banner of being The Greatest, by virtue of the fact that they have most of the original band intact and had more hit singles than The Who (it's a fact that The Who never had a Number One single in the States). But there was something truly great about The Who that a band like The Stones cannot match.
Mick Jagger and company thrived off of rock and roll excess and notoriety, but they were relatively safe compared to the menace of The Who. It took the combined efforts of Mick, Keith Richards and Brian Jones to build up the aura of darkness behind The Stones, but all it took for The Who was the antics of Keith Moon.
There are so many Keith Moon stories out there, most of them apocryphal, all of them hilarious. My favorite story about Keith also exemplifies what I feel about anything I've ever been a creative party to, in my own life.
Legend has it that Keith was entering a hotel lobby (he was infamous for turning the destruction of a hotel room into an art form) blaring a Who rehearsal tape from a portable tape player. The hotel concierge, not knowing who he was dealing with, told Moon to "turn off that noise". Surprisingly, to the shock of everyone else, Moon complied.
But that wasn't the end of it.
He returned to his room, and took out his trusty bag of explosives, which he used on tour occasionally to liven up the proceedings. He rigged the hinges on the front door of his suite with some detonators. Then, he phoned the concierge and asked him to come up to his suite to help out with a "problem".
The concierge showed up at the door and knocked. On cue, Keith Moon blew the hinges off of the door. It fell over, smoke emanating from the room. Keith calmly walked out of the room, stepping on the door, tape player in hand. He took a long, hard look at the astonished hotel concierge.
Keith pointed to the door and said, "That was noise." Then he pointed at the tape player, still blaring, and said, "THIS is the fucking Who!"
You gotta love it.
The image of John Entwistle in the movie The Kids Are Alright, skeet-shooting gold records from the front lawn of his estate? You gotta love it.
Pete Townshend knocking a man off the stage of a Who concert with his guitar, and finding out later that the man was an undercover cop trying to alert concertgoers of a structure fire in the adjacent building? You gotta love it.
Live At Leeds, the reissue? You gotta love it.
The Who at Woodstock, which they considered their worst performance ever? You still gotta love it.
The 1979 Ohio concert that resulted in the stampede deaths of 11 fans trying to get into the show? Sorry, I can't show that any love.
Roger Daltrey's swinging microphone gymnastics? Gotta love it. His acting career in the aftermath of The Who? You don't have to love it, but I do.
The last two Who albums featuring Kenney Jones on drums? They're hard to love, but I can find it in my heart.
John Entwistle's death in a Las Vegas hotel room, with a table full of cocaine and two prostitutes at his side? You GOTTA love it.
I still have the concert T-Shirt. On the front is a famous picture of The Who, feigning sleep and draped in the Union Jack. It still fits, although it's a bit torn. And I love it.
I leave you with song lyrics-- notice how I put them last, because I know that not everyone who reads this wants to read lyrics to songs they probably haven't heard.
This is my all-time favorite Who song, off an album of rarities entitled Odds & Sods. It was supposed to be a part of the album that eventually morphed into Who's Next: a concept album tentatively titled Lifehouse, which has since been released in its entirety.
The concept of the album centered around The Note, a stand-in for God or The Force or The Universal Mind or whatever you want to call the dynamic binding energy of the cosmos. Since Pete Townshend was a follower of Meher Baba and Eastern religions, its symbolism is apparent and intentional.
The song is called "Pure And Easy" and it makes me laugh and cry every time I hear it. Its melody is stunningly beautiful, like the face of a woman who inspires more passion inside of me than I can bear. It represents not only everything I feel about The Who and the music that saved my soul, but also about life in general.
If you ever get a chance to hear it, then you will probably come closer than anything else to understanding what my heart is all about.
Have a nice weekend, folks...
There once was a Note, pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
The Note is eternal, I hear it, it sees me,
Forever we blend it, forever we die.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
As people assemble,
Civilization is trying to find a new way to die,
But killing is really merely scene changer,
All men are bored with other men's lies.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
Gas on the hillside, oil in the teacup,
Watch all the chords of life lose their joy,
Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness,
The Note that began all can also destroy.
We all know success when we all find our own dreams,
And our love is enough to knock down any walls,
And the future's been seen as men try to realize,
The simple secret of The Note in us all.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
There once was a Note, pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
CIVILITY
I received a call from my sister last night.
My grandmother had gone into a diabetic coma, and was in the hospital recovering.
Immediately after work, I went over to the Emergency Ward in Sun Valley. She was doing much better by the time I got there, but she put such a scare into all of us.
I only mention this because of my Valentine's Day entry regarding my grandparents.
I am not worried for her necessarily. She is strong, she is resilient, she was trying to leave her hospital bed last night because she thought she was feeling fine. This is a good sign.
No, I'm worried about the rest of my family, and what effect her death would have on them. It would destroy my grandfather. It would cause grief to so many of their children and grandchildren.
I would be incredibly sad.
My Spanish isn't that great, but last night, when she recognized me as I entered the room, we didn't need words to communicate. She couldn't speak anyway, and her hearing is a bit off. Also, her eyesight is failing.
But she knew it was me. And I kissed her on her forehead and patted her gray hair.
I saw her this morning, surrounded by unruly grandkids and other relations. She was calm and quiet, looking healthier. She has always been calm and quiet, so it all seemed normal to me.
I know that my grandparents won't live forever, but I hope she makes it through the next two weeks. We have a huge celebration planned for my grandfather's 80th birthday, and it wouldn't be the same if she were not around.
On a positive note: she called my grandfather this morning and asked him when he was coming by the visit her.
I almost lost it right there. I am very good at holding in my emotions, and yet I almost gave in to it upon hearing that.
I wish I were able to let my emotions go, but it takes time for me. I suppress it, and eventually it comes out, when I'm by myself, much later on.
In the meantime, I keep myself composed because that's the only way I know how to deal with grief.
A lot of it has to with my family. I watched my uncle Francisco, standing there, holding my grandmother's hand. Francisco has been through a lot of shit: gangs, drug addiction, near-fatal stabbings and shootings... His mother, my grandmother, never gave up on him through those trying times.
When he was in and out of jail, she was always there for him, and now there he was-- speaking softly into her ear, in gentle Spanish, whispering soothing psalms. His burly forearms are tatted up and down, and he still dresses like the fierce gangbanger he used to be, but in this instance I saw the civility underneath what used to be a feral beast, a civility that only a mother's love can imbue in an individual.
He was giving the love back.
And he didn't shed a tear.
And neither will I. I need to save them for the times when I will need them the most.
My grandmother had gone into a diabetic coma, and was in the hospital recovering.
Immediately after work, I went over to the Emergency Ward in Sun Valley. She was doing much better by the time I got there, but she put such a scare into all of us.
I only mention this because of my Valentine's Day entry regarding my grandparents.
I am not worried for her necessarily. She is strong, she is resilient, she was trying to leave her hospital bed last night because she thought she was feeling fine. This is a good sign.
No, I'm worried about the rest of my family, and what effect her death would have on them. It would destroy my grandfather. It would cause grief to so many of their children and grandchildren.
I would be incredibly sad.
My Spanish isn't that great, but last night, when she recognized me as I entered the room, we didn't need words to communicate. She couldn't speak anyway, and her hearing is a bit off. Also, her eyesight is failing.
But she knew it was me. And I kissed her on her forehead and patted her gray hair.
I saw her this morning, surrounded by unruly grandkids and other relations. She was calm and quiet, looking healthier. She has always been calm and quiet, so it all seemed normal to me.
I know that my grandparents won't live forever, but I hope she makes it through the next two weeks. We have a huge celebration planned for my grandfather's 80th birthday, and it wouldn't be the same if she were not around.
On a positive note: she called my grandfather this morning and asked him when he was coming by the visit her.
I almost lost it right there. I am very good at holding in my emotions, and yet I almost gave in to it upon hearing that.
I wish I were able to let my emotions go, but it takes time for me. I suppress it, and eventually it comes out, when I'm by myself, much later on.
In the meantime, I keep myself composed because that's the only way I know how to deal with grief.
A lot of it has to with my family. I watched my uncle Francisco, standing there, holding my grandmother's hand. Francisco has been through a lot of shit: gangs, drug addiction, near-fatal stabbings and shootings... His mother, my grandmother, never gave up on him through those trying times.
When he was in and out of jail, she was always there for him, and now there he was-- speaking softly into her ear, in gentle Spanish, whispering soothing psalms. His burly forearms are tatted up and down, and he still dresses like the fierce gangbanger he used to be, but in this instance I saw the civility underneath what used to be a feral beast, a civility that only a mother's love can imbue in an individual.
He was giving the love back.
And he didn't shed a tear.
And neither will I. I need to save them for the times when I will need them the most.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
STONE COLD
Anybody know anything about the stock market?
Or, more accurately, anyone know anything about the fake stock market?
I Googled this blog because lately I've been finding people who actually saved pages from my Old Archives, and I've been tripping on what I wrote back in the day.
Anyway, I came across this site while I was searching for my stuff. IT's a virtual stock market for blogs.
I've heard about these kinds of sites, for movies and for other things, but I was a bit surprised to find that I was a part of this. I am assuming that I am now a part of it because of my links to other blogs. I certainly never did this on my own, and I'm not sure how I should read the stats that are posted.
So, someone out there, tell me-- what does it all mean?
E-mail me-- no comments until my stalker gets over himself...
*/*
I was watching Oliver Stone's Nixon last night-- man, what an underrated movie!
I think it's funny that, when I did some Googling to find reviews of the film, most of the critics who hated it were not movie critics. They were Op-Ed columnists and that ilk.
They chided Oliver Stone for his attempts at being scholarly, mostly in the form of attacking his extensive footnotes and the annotated libretto he submitted in the movie's press junkets.
I think it's amusing because since when did a movie need political editorialsts to criticize it? Isn't a review on a show like Ebert & Roeper enough?
Same thing happened with JFK: instead of hearing Gene Shalit rave on about it, we get partisan hacks doing commentary on a movie. Don't these idiots realize that they are giving Stone exactly what he wants?
I like Oliver Stone, and I will probably rent Alexander on DVD... and I will probably like it, despite what all the buzzers tried to say about it. I like Oliver Stone because he is a shameless propagandist. He uses movies to promote his ideas, the same way that Michael Moore does but with more dramatic flair.
Critics of Stone say that he shouldn't rewrite history. They never give his movies props based on their technique-- they say that his politcal content overshadows the achievements he makes in filmmaking.
Oh yeah? On that same token, people need to stop giving props to D.W. Griffith's The Birth Of A Nation, another propanganda piece that revolutionized the way directors made movies.
Second only to Citizen Kane in terms of cinematic reverence, Nation is also one of the most blatantly racist, one-sided movies to ever be created by the Hollywood System. It was based on one part of a book trilogy that romanticized the rise of the KKK in post-Civil War America. The trilogy was written by an avowed bigot, and there are some horrifically brutal stereotypes of blacks in that movie. It was so racist that even the major black roles were played by white actors in blackface.
Yet, the one thing that cinephiles always mention is that it was "innovative". Having seen the film a long time ago, I can attest that, yes, in terms of Griffith's pioneering methods, it is innovative. But it's also racist.
Same as Nixon: very innovative, very one-sided.
And yet, it is not-- Stone makes us sympathetic to the character of Richard Nixon, played with superb grace by Sir Anthony Hopkins. It is no secret that Stone loathed Nixon (he is on the record saying that only George W. Bush is a worse specimen of the ultra-right-wing Establishment) and so I expected Stone to take the piss out of a man who radiated evil and corruption in his political career.
I think the reason why I like Nixon as a film is because Stone bucks all the obvious expectations. Yes, Nixon is portayed as being a little touched in the head, a bit of a wet blanket, and a deeply flawed individual... but he gives him a pass on many other facets. He doesn't implicate him in the JFK assassination, for example-- he paints Nixon as having found out the terrible truth behind Jack Kennedy's demise a little too late in the game. Stone instead opts to depict Nixon as a man who craved power and got it, only to find that he was actually a pawn in a much bigger game, with higher stakes than he could ever imagine.
Stone uses all of his tricks, the ones he's been plying since JFK and Natural Born Killers: multi-colored inserts, fast MTV edits, mixing different types of film stock, composite characters as stand-ins (to avoid libel suits from still-living persons involved in the history of his movie plots) and an interesting use of music to move the action along.
We should review his movies based on these merits, the same way that movie mavens defend The Birth Of A Nation on the exact same qualities.
I mean, it's entertainment, when all is said and done. If you don't like his message, fine. But don't commission an army of political writers to try and deconstruct, frame-by-frame, the action in a movie like Nixon. If anything, it has the reverse effect of reaffirming what Stone's fans already believe and what Stone's critics want to believe.
On antoher tangent, notice how Alexander was ravaged not for its politics (if there are any to espouse in a historical epic-- once again, please refer to The Birth Of A Nation) but for its "awfulness". If I watch the DVD and find that Stone did a half-ass job, you'd best believe that I would be the first to note that. However, I haven't seen the movie yet, and I refuse to jump on the bandwagon and bash a movie I haven't even seen yet...
...unless that movie is Titanic.
*/*
By the way: Did you know that Woody Harrelson's dad was a convicted hitman? Yes, you probably did hear that, if you read any interviews with the actor around the time he was filming Natural Born Killers with Oliver Stone...
But did you know that Charles V. Harrelson was fingered as one of the Three Tramps arrested shortly after JFK's assassination in Dallas on Novermber 22, 1963?
Woody's dad is believed to be the tall one on the left. Charles Harrelson denied it, but it sure looks like he's at least related to Woody.
Makes you wonder what motivated Stone's decision to cast the former Cheers star as a mass murderer, doesn't it?
Or, more accurately, anyone know anything about the fake stock market?
I Googled this blog because lately I've been finding people who actually saved pages from my Old Archives, and I've been tripping on what I wrote back in the day.
Anyway, I came across this site while I was searching for my stuff. IT's a virtual stock market for blogs.
I've heard about these kinds of sites, for movies and for other things, but I was a bit surprised to find that I was a part of this. I am assuming that I am now a part of it because of my links to other blogs. I certainly never did this on my own, and I'm not sure how I should read the stats that are posted.
So, someone out there, tell me-- what does it all mean?
E-mail me-- no comments until my stalker gets over himself...
*/*
I was watching Oliver Stone's Nixon last night-- man, what an underrated movie!
I think it's funny that, when I did some Googling to find reviews of the film, most of the critics who hated it were not movie critics. They were Op-Ed columnists and that ilk.
They chided Oliver Stone for his attempts at being scholarly, mostly in the form of attacking his extensive footnotes and the annotated libretto he submitted in the movie's press junkets.
I think it's amusing because since when did a movie need political editorialsts to criticize it? Isn't a review on a show like Ebert & Roeper enough?
Same thing happened with JFK: instead of hearing Gene Shalit rave on about it, we get partisan hacks doing commentary on a movie. Don't these idiots realize that they are giving Stone exactly what he wants?
I like Oliver Stone, and I will probably rent Alexander on DVD... and I will probably like it, despite what all the buzzers tried to say about it. I like Oliver Stone because he is a shameless propagandist. He uses movies to promote his ideas, the same way that Michael Moore does but with more dramatic flair.
Critics of Stone say that he shouldn't rewrite history. They never give his movies props based on their technique-- they say that his politcal content overshadows the achievements he makes in filmmaking.
Oh yeah? On that same token, people need to stop giving props to D.W. Griffith's The Birth Of A Nation, another propanganda piece that revolutionized the way directors made movies.
Second only to Citizen Kane in terms of cinematic reverence, Nation is also one of the most blatantly racist, one-sided movies to ever be created by the Hollywood System. It was based on one part of a book trilogy that romanticized the rise of the KKK in post-Civil War America. The trilogy was written by an avowed bigot, and there are some horrifically brutal stereotypes of blacks in that movie. It was so racist that even the major black roles were played by white actors in blackface.
Yet, the one thing that cinephiles always mention is that it was "innovative". Having seen the film a long time ago, I can attest that, yes, in terms of Griffith's pioneering methods, it is innovative. But it's also racist.
Same as Nixon: very innovative, very one-sided.
And yet, it is not-- Stone makes us sympathetic to the character of Richard Nixon, played with superb grace by Sir Anthony Hopkins. It is no secret that Stone loathed Nixon (he is on the record saying that only George W. Bush is a worse specimen of the ultra-right-wing Establishment) and so I expected Stone to take the piss out of a man who radiated evil and corruption in his political career.
I think the reason why I like Nixon as a film is because Stone bucks all the obvious expectations. Yes, Nixon is portayed as being a little touched in the head, a bit of a wet blanket, and a deeply flawed individual... but he gives him a pass on many other facets. He doesn't implicate him in the JFK assassination, for example-- he paints Nixon as having found out the terrible truth behind Jack Kennedy's demise a little too late in the game. Stone instead opts to depict Nixon as a man who craved power and got it, only to find that he was actually a pawn in a much bigger game, with higher stakes than he could ever imagine.
Stone uses all of his tricks, the ones he's been plying since JFK and Natural Born Killers: multi-colored inserts, fast MTV edits, mixing different types of film stock, composite characters as stand-ins (to avoid libel suits from still-living persons involved in the history of his movie plots) and an interesting use of music to move the action along.
We should review his movies based on these merits, the same way that movie mavens defend The Birth Of A Nation on the exact same qualities.
I mean, it's entertainment, when all is said and done. If you don't like his message, fine. But don't commission an army of political writers to try and deconstruct, frame-by-frame, the action in a movie like Nixon. If anything, it has the reverse effect of reaffirming what Stone's fans already believe and what Stone's critics want to believe.
On antoher tangent, notice how Alexander was ravaged not for its politics (if there are any to espouse in a historical epic-- once again, please refer to The Birth Of A Nation) but for its "awfulness". If I watch the DVD and find that Stone did a half-ass job, you'd best believe that I would be the first to note that. However, I haven't seen the movie yet, and I refuse to jump on the bandwagon and bash a movie I haven't even seen yet...
...unless that movie is Titanic.
*/*
By the way: Did you know that Woody Harrelson's dad was a convicted hitman? Yes, you probably did hear that, if you read any interviews with the actor around the time he was filming Natural Born Killers with Oliver Stone...
But did you know that Charles V. Harrelson was fingered as one of the Three Tramps arrested shortly after JFK's assassination in Dallas on Novermber 22, 1963?
Woody's dad is believed to be the tall one on the left. Charles Harrelson denied it, but it sure looks like he's at least related to Woody.
Makes you wonder what motivated Stone's decision to cast the former Cheers star as a mass murderer, doesn't it?
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
I KNOW THE M.O.
When I last wrote at length about Katie and Elle, the girls in one of my bands, this is what I had to say:
I'm sick of playing bass for other people. Now that I have the home studio computer set-up, there's nothing stopping me from just doing my own shit, and putting it up online for others to peruse. Fuck everybody else. I'll still help Elle and Katie, but once the first demo is done, I'm going to focus on my own songs. I'm tired of playing for people who lack a coherent vision. I'm sick of bending over backwards for people who have unrealistic dreams of fortune and fame. I'm disgusted with ego-driven divas and talentless hacks who can't get over their rock and roll fantasies of yore... I finally realized that there is a whole subsection of Los Angeles comprised of over-the-hill musicians who want that last stab at the brass ring.
When I last saw both Katie and Elle, it was after a long rehearsal session at Elle's place. Afterwards, we went to Mel's Diner for some late-night dinner. That was over two weeks ago.
The conversation turned to Holly Golightly, Elle's good friend and the singer for whom I played bass before Elle. Katie had only met Holly once, after the fight Holly had with Deborah, another female singer.
"I never knew what she wanted from me," I said to the ladies. "Holly would practically conspire to have me spend the night with her. But I never made any moves-- I don't hook up with girls I'm in bands with."
I knew what I was saying when I said it. This was two weeks ago, and I was getting tired of all the uncertainty and lack of vision.
"Holly stabbed me in the back so many times," Elle said. "She'd tell me that she gave my tape to producers, but then I'd talk to those same producers and they'd tell me that they never got a tape from her. Then, Holly would lie and say she didn't hook up with this guy or that guy, but then later on the truth would come out..."
Katie chimed in. "She sounds like she's got major issues. I only met her that one time, after she'd gotten into a fight..."
"Yeah," Elle said, "with her so-called best friend. Deborah had had enough, and Holly had a temper. She talked a lot of shit. I guess Deborah wasn't taking it anymore."
Katie said, "You guys, you're giving her a lot of power by talking about her like this."
"This is the first time Elle and I have comiserated about her," I said. I looked at Elle. "She and I have never talked about it to each other until now."
"She must've had some type of allure then, " Katie said.
"Of course she did.. But she didn't know what she wanted either," I said, as coldly as I could.
"It really sucks for me," Elle said, "because we were such good friends. She could be really funny-- she used to be a stand-up. I feel like I kind of got her into singing in the first place. But she always wanted to compete with me. If I had a band, she had to have a band. If I had written some songs, she'd go out and write some songs and tell me about it. I love her, but she could be such a pain..."
"I hate it when girls compete with each other," Katie said. "I'm so not like that..."
I didn't say anything. I knew what was coming, later down the road. There was that one night, watching the two of them flirt with Mark, the producer... I knew that someone was going to get hurt, and it wasn't going to be me.
I think Katie is hot, but she turned me off quite some time ago, thanks to her ego and her chronic need for attention. And so, when I declared for the ladies at Mel's Diner that I didn't fuck around with the girls in my bands, I was effectively telling them that any drama that took place from that moment on was squarely on their shoulders.
I didn't hear from either of them for a while.
*/*
I was supposed to go to Elle's birthday party the weekend of February 26th, but I was busy with the cartoon. It was also the night before I bought the car off of Down Low, so I was not entertaining the notion of taking the subway again, especially after what happened to me the last time I took it.
I felt bad for not attending but, according to what Elle told me last night when I stopped by her pad shortly to go over some notes, maybe it was a good thing that I didn't show up.
Elle told me about how Katie showed up with two guys she'd never met before except on My Space; how she didn't talk to a single female friend of Elle's, preferring to flirt with all the men; how she didn't even know the name of the hostess who threw the dinner for Elle; how she got drunk, smoked a little pot, and started being obnoxious, doing things like walking around the house playing her viola loudly whenever the center of attention focused on Elle the Birthday Girl; how Katie turned up the Poor Little Girl antics when Mark, the producer dude that Elle and Katie were after, gave Elle a bouquet of roses and a card for her birthday; how Katie climbed into the hostess' closet, curled in a fetal position, to get attention from the guys in general and Mark in particular; how Katie and Mark left the party, leaving Elle to call her friend Stacey to pick her up and take her home; how Katie fucked Mark, and then Mark had the nerve to call Elle the next day to apologize for Katie's behavior...
"Wow," I said, "sounds like I missed one hell of a party!"
Elle laughed. I continued with, "Remind me not to miss the next one..."
I felt really really bad for Elle after hearing that. It sounded like Holly Part Two, and I know that Elle is still reeling from her relationship with Holly. My sympathy for Elle grew last night, because she is super-mellow and Katie is so high-strung that I suspect she is on speed. She exhibits all of the signs, and I've had my share of tweaker girls-- I know the M.O.
I almost wanted to call Katie and tell her to apologize to Elle, but I probably won't. I think I was right to take a big step back from all of this drama. I think I'm getting better at sniffing out the skanks, in other words.
A decade ago, I would've been a part of this web, I would've been tied into it way more intricately than I am now. I would've been hurt hearing about how Katie went with Mark, and I would've felt even worse for Elle, figuring her to be the victim. But as long as girls like Elle hang out with girls like Katie, and as long as girls like Katie flock to girls like Elle in order to reassure themselves that they still "got it", these types of things will occur.
It's not my world-- I didn't invent any of this. I am just trying to navigate it as best as I can. And one of the best ways to navigate is to avoid crashing upon the rocks.
So far, I've been steering clear, and doing a fine job of it. It's a shame that all of the girls that I dig are nutcases, but like I said a while back: I love the crazy ones.
But, that doesn't mean I have to like them, especially when they are empty on the inside.
I'm sick of playing bass for other people. Now that I have the home studio computer set-up, there's nothing stopping me from just doing my own shit, and putting it up online for others to peruse. Fuck everybody else. I'll still help Elle and Katie, but once the first demo is done, I'm going to focus on my own songs. I'm tired of playing for people who lack a coherent vision. I'm sick of bending over backwards for people who have unrealistic dreams of fortune and fame. I'm disgusted with ego-driven divas and talentless hacks who can't get over their rock and roll fantasies of yore... I finally realized that there is a whole subsection of Los Angeles comprised of over-the-hill musicians who want that last stab at the brass ring.
When I last saw both Katie and Elle, it was after a long rehearsal session at Elle's place. Afterwards, we went to Mel's Diner for some late-night dinner. That was over two weeks ago.
The conversation turned to Holly Golightly, Elle's good friend and the singer for whom I played bass before Elle. Katie had only met Holly once, after the fight Holly had with Deborah, another female singer.
"I never knew what she wanted from me," I said to the ladies. "Holly would practically conspire to have me spend the night with her. But I never made any moves-- I don't hook up with girls I'm in bands with."
I knew what I was saying when I said it. This was two weeks ago, and I was getting tired of all the uncertainty and lack of vision.
"Holly stabbed me in the back so many times," Elle said. "She'd tell me that she gave my tape to producers, but then I'd talk to those same producers and they'd tell me that they never got a tape from her. Then, Holly would lie and say she didn't hook up with this guy or that guy, but then later on the truth would come out..."
Katie chimed in. "She sounds like she's got major issues. I only met her that one time, after she'd gotten into a fight..."
"Yeah," Elle said, "with her so-called best friend. Deborah had had enough, and Holly had a temper. She talked a lot of shit. I guess Deborah wasn't taking it anymore."
Katie said, "You guys, you're giving her a lot of power by talking about her like this."
"This is the first time Elle and I have comiserated about her," I said. I looked at Elle. "She and I have never talked about it to each other until now."
"She must've had some type of allure then, " Katie said.
"Of course she did.. But she didn't know what she wanted either," I said, as coldly as I could.
"It really sucks for me," Elle said, "because we were such good friends. She could be really funny-- she used to be a stand-up. I feel like I kind of got her into singing in the first place. But she always wanted to compete with me. If I had a band, she had to have a band. If I had written some songs, she'd go out and write some songs and tell me about it. I love her, but she could be such a pain..."
"I hate it when girls compete with each other," Katie said. "I'm so not like that..."
I didn't say anything. I knew what was coming, later down the road. There was that one night, watching the two of them flirt with Mark, the producer... I knew that someone was going to get hurt, and it wasn't going to be me.
I think Katie is hot, but she turned me off quite some time ago, thanks to her ego and her chronic need for attention. And so, when I declared for the ladies at Mel's Diner that I didn't fuck around with the girls in my bands, I was effectively telling them that any drama that took place from that moment on was squarely on their shoulders.
I didn't hear from either of them for a while.
*/*
I was supposed to go to Elle's birthday party the weekend of February 26th, but I was busy with the cartoon. It was also the night before I bought the car off of Down Low, so I was not entertaining the notion of taking the subway again, especially after what happened to me the last time I took it.
I felt bad for not attending but, according to what Elle told me last night when I stopped by her pad shortly to go over some notes, maybe it was a good thing that I didn't show up.
Elle told me about how Katie showed up with two guys she'd never met before except on My Space; how she didn't talk to a single female friend of Elle's, preferring to flirt with all the men; how she didn't even know the name of the hostess who threw the dinner for Elle; how she got drunk, smoked a little pot, and started being obnoxious, doing things like walking around the house playing her viola loudly whenever the center of attention focused on Elle the Birthday Girl; how Katie turned up the Poor Little Girl antics when Mark, the producer dude that Elle and Katie were after, gave Elle a bouquet of roses and a card for her birthday; how Katie climbed into the hostess' closet, curled in a fetal position, to get attention from the guys in general and Mark in particular; how Katie and Mark left the party, leaving Elle to call her friend Stacey to pick her up and take her home; how Katie fucked Mark, and then Mark had the nerve to call Elle the next day to apologize for Katie's behavior...
"Wow," I said, "sounds like I missed one hell of a party!"
Elle laughed. I continued with, "Remind me not to miss the next one..."
I felt really really bad for Elle after hearing that. It sounded like Holly Part Two, and I know that Elle is still reeling from her relationship with Holly. My sympathy for Elle grew last night, because she is super-mellow and Katie is so high-strung that I suspect she is on speed. She exhibits all of the signs, and I've had my share of tweaker girls-- I know the M.O.
I almost wanted to call Katie and tell her to apologize to Elle, but I probably won't. I think I was right to take a big step back from all of this drama. I think I'm getting better at sniffing out the skanks, in other words.
A decade ago, I would've been a part of this web, I would've been tied into it way more intricately than I am now. I would've been hurt hearing about how Katie went with Mark, and I would've felt even worse for Elle, figuring her to be the victim. But as long as girls like Elle hang out with girls like Katie, and as long as girls like Katie flock to girls like Elle in order to reassure themselves that they still "got it", these types of things will occur.
It's not my world-- I didn't invent any of this. I am just trying to navigate it as best as I can. And one of the best ways to navigate is to avoid crashing upon the rocks.
So far, I've been steering clear, and doing a fine job of it. It's a shame that all of the girls that I dig are nutcases, but like I said a while back: I love the crazy ones.
But, that doesn't mean I have to like them, especially when they are empty on the inside.
Monday, March 07, 2005
LIKE THIS
I know I said I wouldn't write about her anymore, but...
I saw her on Sunday, for the first time since our little blow-out. Peter and I drove over to her apartment, to show her the progress we've made on the animation, to possibly install a copy of Photoshop on her computer so she could begin retouching the documents we've completed thus far.
She opened the door. She looked good, healthy, but not happy. I made eye contact with her for a short minute, and for the rest of my visit I kept my eyes away.
I played it cool as always, but she was playing it ultra-cool. She laid down on her bed as we showed her the new footage, the additional features on the DVD, the things we needed to explain to her before she got to working on our project.
I spied a glance at her computer desk, and saw a copy of the screenplay of the TV pilot she is working on-- so this is what she has been writing.
At one point, I looked down at her as she was lying on the bed, and I couldn't look any further: she was beautiful, sad-faced, restrained. I wondered how I appeared to her-- gaunt-faced, unshaven, disheveled perhaps, as I always appear.
Peter couldn't install the program because Eve's computer is a POS-- a Piece Of Shit. Barely any RAM on it. I told her I would bring the other computer by, the one that I had demanded back almost two months ago. She told me to just bring the hard drive, she would rather use her own mouse and keyboard.
We left. We arrived back at my place, and there were messages from her on my phone. Turns out that Peter accidentally took her copy of Final Draft with him after we tried unsuccessfully to install Photoshop. She was working on a script, and was on a roll when we barged in and took things over for twenty minutes.
I called her back and told her I would return the program CD along with the computer. She said to me that she was sorry if she sounded "snippy" on the phone and in her messages. I told her it was okay, because it was our bad to begin with, and I was going to go over there anyway to drop off the hard drive...
Peter left, and I drove back over to Eve's. Along the way, I thought about how symptomatic this little incident was of our relationship: no matter how much good I intend, I only seem to cause chaos in a life that is already ridden with unpredictability and disorder.
Every time I want to do her a favor, it ends up backfiring somehow. It has taken me 13 years to finally realize my complicity to the crimes committed against her by this world.
Maybe we were never meant to be, as I always thought in my mind. Maybe our fate together is a cursed fate, one that takes its toll upon the both of us. Neither of us have the guts to admit it to ourselves, but despite our attraction and our chemistry, I think we are bad for each other.
I know, it was a simple mistake, and it was Peter's fault to boot. But, Peter wouldn't have gone over there by himself-- I was along for the ride, and I think I play a big role in the stress she has been dealing with, even though I am keeping a low profile and trying not to call her all the time.
I can imagine her initial reaction to not being able to find the Final Draft CD-- she must've been frustrated, as we all get, whether it's misplaced car keys or something we just had in our possession a moment ago. Then, she probably realized that we had it, and I bet you that she sighed and gripped her temples with her hands, and called me three times, angry that I (once again) invaded her life with my personal agendas, making everything else stop so that my ego could be sated, hindering her screenwriting progress simply because I want her to help me work on this cartoon.
And when I returned her call and apologized, she felt the need to apologize back, for getting upset with me, for coming off as "snippy", and of course I understand, I didn't fault her for being upset, I am the same way, I would feel the same things if I were in her place...
I know she still cares, but that's what makes it so much harder. I think that's why I sometimes wish my exes hated me-- I wouldn't pay anything any mind if that were the case. But I know she still cares, because she is still holding onto me in her life, albeit in a subdued form.
She needs to control the pace at which the both of us walk together, and I'm fine with that. But now I'm not so sure if I can be a good influence. I feel like I am an Accidental Destroyer, making a mess of her plans without a thought as to what she is involved in, without a care as to her own passions.
I showed up at her door with the computer and her program. This time, with the both of us alone with each other, I made no eye contact at all. I asked her where she wanted the computer, placed it on the floor, handed her the CD, said, "Sorry," and walked out the door, saying "Goodbye" as I closed the screen door behind me.
What a difference from three months ago, when she and I were inseparable, practically living with each other, making up for a decade of lost time, getting lost in a flurry of fleeting moments, holding each other tightly and drunkenly, hazy and stoned, in denial of the beastly world that raged outside of our windows...
How did it get like this?
*/*
I also saw Sharky again, for the first time this year. I saw him where I always manage to see him nowadays-- at Dr. Dos' lair in North Hollywood.
I stopped by to pay Dos some money that I borrowed from him a while back, and sure as the driven snow is white, there was Sharky, surprised to see me, trying to hold back his emotions. I don't know what to make of Sharky these days-- we play Phone Tag and leave each other messages on voice mails, sometimes sending e-mails here and there. But I don't think he wants to speak to me, because the last time we talked I told him about how Eve and I were talking again, sorting things out.
This probably made him feel like he would run into her again if he was hanging with me a lot. Therefore, he has pretty much dropped off the radar. But I see him every now and then, and I can tell that he is bitter about some things.
It's all so complicated. No matter how much I try to convince him that it wasn't the actual deed so much as the lying that accompanied it, I think he thinks that I'm going to lord it over him, gloat and dangle it above him like something he should be ashamed of, like a cardinal sin.
Actually, I really don't care-- it was Sharky who always cared about things like dating a friend's ex. I distinctly remember when I first met him, and how we all debated the finer points of dating or hooking up with someone's ex. His position was that it was not only wrong but unforgivable; my position was that, as long as it didn't happen when the couple was together, it was all game.
I remember making a mental note to myself, to never give Sharky the impression that I was after any of his girlfriends. Some of them have flirted openly with me over the years, and a few of them also came to me in the hopes that I could get Sharky to talk to them again. But Sharky only got paranoid and thought that I was conspiring to date them.
And then, to find out that he went after my ex, and lied about it when I confronted him over it...
I shake my head and think about all the positions my friends have taken on certain issues. I wonder just how full of shit they really are. I wonder if they were all just fronting, just putting me on, or just acting like they didn't give a fuck. I wonder if they see the inconsistencies, and if they do, I wonder how they justify it, how they live with it.
I don't need any payback against Sharky, because if you ask me, he has already been paid back. When he broke up with Nona and she ended up with Paulie, that was enough to teach him a lesson, I think. Paulie and Sharky were only marginal friends, but the fact that Paulie "stole" Nona from Sharky must've stuck in his craw all these years.
I didn't encourage this affair between Nona and Paulie, but over time I've seen their relationship bloom in positive ways. And that's why I've never had an issue with people dating their friends' exes-- because sometimes it's a good connection.
Hell, that's how my parents hooked up. My dad was dating a woman named Terry, my mom's best friend. One day, my mom was over at Terry's, and my dad showed up. There was electricity in the air. Soon, my dad had my mom knocked up, and they wed shortly before he was sent by the Army to Korea.
Their marriage almost lasted two decades before they split up.
Paulie and Nona never lied about their fling, but then again they never announced it either. They let everyone else make up their minds. Sharky was no longer friends with Paulie, and that's his loss.
Hanging with Sharky at Dos', I got real depressed. I thought the same thing that I felt with Eve earlier in the day:
How did it get like this?
I left Dos' place and drove out to rehearse with the one of the bands I'm in.
*/*
Saturday night, before the events I have just written about, I went out to La Poubelle to celebrate my friend Mauzner's birthday. Mauzner hangs with a young Hollywood crowd, and most of them are insufferable asses.
But Mauzner is still humble, still funny, still friendly with his old buddies. Bro Man and I showed up with The Gypsy, who hates Hollywood and only consented to show up if we came along.
There was some comedy, in the form of Marvin, another friend of Mauzner's from the high school days. Marvin is over six feet tall, African-American, and gay all the way. Very nice guy, but flaming gay-- you'd have to be blind and deaf to not know it once you talked to him.
Bro Man, Marvin and I were smoking cigarettes outside when suddenly a blue-eyed woman asked us for a smoke. Marvin obliged, and the woman complimented him on his shirt. Then, she sniffed his collar and complimented him on his scent.
I started laughing to myself. If she only knew...
She found out soon enough, and Marvin, embarrassed, excused himself. Then, she set her sights on Bro Man. Oh, I get it, I thought to myself, she likes brothers...
She mentioned she was there with her boyfriend, so I left Bro Man and his prey alone. I figured, boyfriend or no boyfriend, this was Bro Man's catch-- a cockblocker I am not.
I hung out with Mauzner for a spell. Out of everyone there, he was the only person who didn't rub me the wrong way. He hasn't changed much, and he stopped partying hard a few years back, because he wanted to get serious about his craft. It has been paying off, to keep his discipline in focus.
Bro Man didn't get that girl's number, but it was just as well. Still, his ego was stoked, and maybe one of these days he'll get his pimp game down and take a honey home on his own.
When Gypsy and Bro Man and I decided to leave, Drake Nimbus tagged along. Drake was unable to drive, due to much alcohol consumption.
Drake is also a friend from the old days, but he's never been a friend of mine. I just don't trust the guy. Never have, never will. He works as an editor for a big cable network, and he was trying to help Paulie and Peter pitch the cartoon. But his true colors surfaced, and now Paulie and Peter are through with him.
I didn't mind his involvement until he started asking for inane edits in the cartoon. I am all for rewriting, but only if the new scenes make sense. Drake's edits made no fucking sense at all, and I was vocal about it.
A little bit of background on Drake Nimbus: I always heard bad stories about him, and not from his enemies-- his own friends were the sources of these tales. Cruelty to animals, misogyny, psychotic episodes... Drake Nimbus is, to many people, The Devil Himself.
He has these crystal-blue eyes and arched eyebrows that make him seem menacing, and when coupled with his compulsive rudeness and volatility, he emits "bad vibes" from the moment you talk to him. I keep thinking of Ray Liotta's character in Something Wild, the sociopathic ex-boyfriend of Melanie Griffith. He's good-looking, charming, and completely calculating.
He and I have never come to any blows, mostly because we aren't done sizing each other up. He can never get a read on me, because I am Mr. Ice, and I won't get near him because I know what a snake he is underneath. The only thing that Drake has ever done that benefited me in any way was when he introduced me to Paulie, all those years ago.
Walking back to Gypsy's truck, Drake drunkenly said out loud, "Man, Paulie shoulda been here tonight. Lots of people here who could finance the cartoon..."
I wondered to myself, Then why didn't you introduce me to any of these people, if you're so concerned? I talked to plenty of people at the party, but they all seemed too phony to hit with a pitch.
I said, "You know Paulie-- he ain't into socializing."
Drake said, "Well, he's gonna have to get over that if he wants to sell the idea. My hands are tied, man, I'm doin' all I can do."
I recognized this tactic-- Divide & Conquer. Drake was upset that Peter and Paulie were excluding him from the action. He figured he could appeal to me and get me to side with him against them. This tells me that the idea is hot, and we need to act fast in order to start promoting it.
Drake went on and on, trying to make me feel like time was of the essence... which it is, in a way, but then again we're not trying to get rich quick, which is what Drake wants the most.
The dude drives a brand new PT Cruiser, owns a house, and works on shows with the guys from Jackass, but he gets no respect because he has no vision. Back in the day, Paulie and I helped Drake with some of his short movies, and they were all deadly dull yet competent-- the production values were sound but there was no substance to his work. The most lively bits were the music that Paulie and I scored for his short features.
Funny that a guy who has it all "going on" for him is afraid of not getting in on this from the bottom up. He ended up spending the rest of the evening telling Bro Man that, since he is "a happy Black man who is White-Friendly", he should start going on auditions.
"I can make money off you, Bro," Drake said, teetering in the night as I got into my car, ready to take Bro Man home. "You've got talent."
As we drove off, Bro Man and I laughed. We knew Drake was only thinking about himself-- he had no concern for Bro Man's career, except if it would benefit him somehow. And he didn't even realize how insulting he was being to Bro Man, by calling him the "happy Black man"... I mean, I see Drake's point, but he could phrase it in a way that doesn't make Bro Man feel like he needs to be a complete sell-out in order to make a name for himself.
Still, Bro Man and Drake go way back, so I didn't get in the middle of that one. I drove Bro Man home and made my way back to Burbank, wondering how it all got to this point in time, how some of these friendships have morphed and how some of them have remained static...
This is an odd time in the collective lives of everyone I know. Each of us is going through some sort of reckoning. It is more profound in others, but I think all of us are on the same wavelength-- we are concerned for not only ourselves but for the way of life we are all accustomed to living. The nightly news gives us no comfort, the word on the street give us no clue, the media culture and what it presents give us no clarity...
Instead of asking how it all got like this, I am now going to shift the weight of the question onto another foot and ask, "How do we make it better?"
How indeed...
I saw her on Sunday, for the first time since our little blow-out. Peter and I drove over to her apartment, to show her the progress we've made on the animation, to possibly install a copy of Photoshop on her computer so she could begin retouching the documents we've completed thus far.
She opened the door. She looked good, healthy, but not happy. I made eye contact with her for a short minute, and for the rest of my visit I kept my eyes away.
I played it cool as always, but she was playing it ultra-cool. She laid down on her bed as we showed her the new footage, the additional features on the DVD, the things we needed to explain to her before she got to working on our project.
I spied a glance at her computer desk, and saw a copy of the screenplay of the TV pilot she is working on-- so this is what she has been writing.
At one point, I looked down at her as she was lying on the bed, and I couldn't look any further: she was beautiful, sad-faced, restrained. I wondered how I appeared to her-- gaunt-faced, unshaven, disheveled perhaps, as I always appear.
Peter couldn't install the program because Eve's computer is a POS-- a Piece Of Shit. Barely any RAM on it. I told her I would bring the other computer by, the one that I had demanded back almost two months ago. She told me to just bring the hard drive, she would rather use her own mouse and keyboard.
We left. We arrived back at my place, and there were messages from her on my phone. Turns out that Peter accidentally took her copy of Final Draft with him after we tried unsuccessfully to install Photoshop. She was working on a script, and was on a roll when we barged in and took things over for twenty minutes.
I called her back and told her I would return the program CD along with the computer. She said to me that she was sorry if she sounded "snippy" on the phone and in her messages. I told her it was okay, because it was our bad to begin with, and I was going to go over there anyway to drop off the hard drive...
Peter left, and I drove back over to Eve's. Along the way, I thought about how symptomatic this little incident was of our relationship: no matter how much good I intend, I only seem to cause chaos in a life that is already ridden with unpredictability and disorder.
Every time I want to do her a favor, it ends up backfiring somehow. It has taken me 13 years to finally realize my complicity to the crimes committed against her by this world.
Maybe we were never meant to be, as I always thought in my mind. Maybe our fate together is a cursed fate, one that takes its toll upon the both of us. Neither of us have the guts to admit it to ourselves, but despite our attraction and our chemistry, I think we are bad for each other.
I know, it was a simple mistake, and it was Peter's fault to boot. But, Peter wouldn't have gone over there by himself-- I was along for the ride, and I think I play a big role in the stress she has been dealing with, even though I am keeping a low profile and trying not to call her all the time.
I can imagine her initial reaction to not being able to find the Final Draft CD-- she must've been frustrated, as we all get, whether it's misplaced car keys or something we just had in our possession a moment ago. Then, she probably realized that we had it, and I bet you that she sighed and gripped her temples with her hands, and called me three times, angry that I (once again) invaded her life with my personal agendas, making everything else stop so that my ego could be sated, hindering her screenwriting progress simply because I want her to help me work on this cartoon.
And when I returned her call and apologized, she felt the need to apologize back, for getting upset with me, for coming off as "snippy", and of course I understand, I didn't fault her for being upset, I am the same way, I would feel the same things if I were in her place...
I know she still cares, but that's what makes it so much harder. I think that's why I sometimes wish my exes hated me-- I wouldn't pay anything any mind if that were the case. But I know she still cares, because she is still holding onto me in her life, albeit in a subdued form.
She needs to control the pace at which the both of us walk together, and I'm fine with that. But now I'm not so sure if I can be a good influence. I feel like I am an Accidental Destroyer, making a mess of her plans without a thought as to what she is involved in, without a care as to her own passions.
I showed up at her door with the computer and her program. This time, with the both of us alone with each other, I made no eye contact at all. I asked her where she wanted the computer, placed it on the floor, handed her the CD, said, "Sorry," and walked out the door, saying "Goodbye" as I closed the screen door behind me.
What a difference from three months ago, when she and I were inseparable, practically living with each other, making up for a decade of lost time, getting lost in a flurry of fleeting moments, holding each other tightly and drunkenly, hazy and stoned, in denial of the beastly world that raged outside of our windows...
How did it get like this?
*/*
I also saw Sharky again, for the first time this year. I saw him where I always manage to see him nowadays-- at Dr. Dos' lair in North Hollywood.
I stopped by to pay Dos some money that I borrowed from him a while back, and sure as the driven snow is white, there was Sharky, surprised to see me, trying to hold back his emotions. I don't know what to make of Sharky these days-- we play Phone Tag and leave each other messages on voice mails, sometimes sending e-mails here and there. But I don't think he wants to speak to me, because the last time we talked I told him about how Eve and I were talking again, sorting things out.
This probably made him feel like he would run into her again if he was hanging with me a lot. Therefore, he has pretty much dropped off the radar. But I see him every now and then, and I can tell that he is bitter about some things.
It's all so complicated. No matter how much I try to convince him that it wasn't the actual deed so much as the lying that accompanied it, I think he thinks that I'm going to lord it over him, gloat and dangle it above him like something he should be ashamed of, like a cardinal sin.
Actually, I really don't care-- it was Sharky who always cared about things like dating a friend's ex. I distinctly remember when I first met him, and how we all debated the finer points of dating or hooking up with someone's ex. His position was that it was not only wrong but unforgivable; my position was that, as long as it didn't happen when the couple was together, it was all game.
I remember making a mental note to myself, to never give Sharky the impression that I was after any of his girlfriends. Some of them have flirted openly with me over the years, and a few of them also came to me in the hopes that I could get Sharky to talk to them again. But Sharky only got paranoid and thought that I was conspiring to date them.
And then, to find out that he went after my ex, and lied about it when I confronted him over it...
I shake my head and think about all the positions my friends have taken on certain issues. I wonder just how full of shit they really are. I wonder if they were all just fronting, just putting me on, or just acting like they didn't give a fuck. I wonder if they see the inconsistencies, and if they do, I wonder how they justify it, how they live with it.
I don't need any payback against Sharky, because if you ask me, he has already been paid back. When he broke up with Nona and she ended up with Paulie, that was enough to teach him a lesson, I think. Paulie and Sharky were only marginal friends, but the fact that Paulie "stole" Nona from Sharky must've stuck in his craw all these years.
I didn't encourage this affair between Nona and Paulie, but over time I've seen their relationship bloom in positive ways. And that's why I've never had an issue with people dating their friends' exes-- because sometimes it's a good connection.
Hell, that's how my parents hooked up. My dad was dating a woman named Terry, my mom's best friend. One day, my mom was over at Terry's, and my dad showed up. There was electricity in the air. Soon, my dad had my mom knocked up, and they wed shortly before he was sent by the Army to Korea.
Their marriage almost lasted two decades before they split up.
Paulie and Nona never lied about their fling, but then again they never announced it either. They let everyone else make up their minds. Sharky was no longer friends with Paulie, and that's his loss.
Hanging with Sharky at Dos', I got real depressed. I thought the same thing that I felt with Eve earlier in the day:
How did it get like this?
I left Dos' place and drove out to rehearse with the one of the bands I'm in.
*/*
Saturday night, before the events I have just written about, I went out to La Poubelle to celebrate my friend Mauzner's birthday. Mauzner hangs with a young Hollywood crowd, and most of them are insufferable asses.
But Mauzner is still humble, still funny, still friendly with his old buddies. Bro Man and I showed up with The Gypsy, who hates Hollywood and only consented to show up if we came along.
There was some comedy, in the form of Marvin, another friend of Mauzner's from the high school days. Marvin is over six feet tall, African-American, and gay all the way. Very nice guy, but flaming gay-- you'd have to be blind and deaf to not know it once you talked to him.
Bro Man, Marvin and I were smoking cigarettes outside when suddenly a blue-eyed woman asked us for a smoke. Marvin obliged, and the woman complimented him on his shirt. Then, she sniffed his collar and complimented him on his scent.
I started laughing to myself. If she only knew...
She found out soon enough, and Marvin, embarrassed, excused himself. Then, she set her sights on Bro Man. Oh, I get it, I thought to myself, she likes brothers...
She mentioned she was there with her boyfriend, so I left Bro Man and his prey alone. I figured, boyfriend or no boyfriend, this was Bro Man's catch-- a cockblocker I am not.
I hung out with Mauzner for a spell. Out of everyone there, he was the only person who didn't rub me the wrong way. He hasn't changed much, and he stopped partying hard a few years back, because he wanted to get serious about his craft. It has been paying off, to keep his discipline in focus.
Bro Man didn't get that girl's number, but it was just as well. Still, his ego was stoked, and maybe one of these days he'll get his pimp game down and take a honey home on his own.
When Gypsy and Bro Man and I decided to leave, Drake Nimbus tagged along. Drake was unable to drive, due to much alcohol consumption.
Drake is also a friend from the old days, but he's never been a friend of mine. I just don't trust the guy. Never have, never will. He works as an editor for a big cable network, and he was trying to help Paulie and Peter pitch the cartoon. But his true colors surfaced, and now Paulie and Peter are through with him.
I didn't mind his involvement until he started asking for inane edits in the cartoon. I am all for rewriting, but only if the new scenes make sense. Drake's edits made no fucking sense at all, and I was vocal about it.
A little bit of background on Drake Nimbus: I always heard bad stories about him, and not from his enemies-- his own friends were the sources of these tales. Cruelty to animals, misogyny, psychotic episodes... Drake Nimbus is, to many people, The Devil Himself.
He has these crystal-blue eyes and arched eyebrows that make him seem menacing, and when coupled with his compulsive rudeness and volatility, he emits "bad vibes" from the moment you talk to him. I keep thinking of Ray Liotta's character in Something Wild, the sociopathic ex-boyfriend of Melanie Griffith. He's good-looking, charming, and completely calculating.
He and I have never come to any blows, mostly because we aren't done sizing each other up. He can never get a read on me, because I am Mr. Ice, and I won't get near him because I know what a snake he is underneath. The only thing that Drake has ever done that benefited me in any way was when he introduced me to Paulie, all those years ago.
Walking back to Gypsy's truck, Drake drunkenly said out loud, "Man, Paulie shoulda been here tonight. Lots of people here who could finance the cartoon..."
I wondered to myself, Then why didn't you introduce me to any of these people, if you're so concerned? I talked to plenty of people at the party, but they all seemed too phony to hit with a pitch.
I said, "You know Paulie-- he ain't into socializing."
Drake said, "Well, he's gonna have to get over that if he wants to sell the idea. My hands are tied, man, I'm doin' all I can do."
I recognized this tactic-- Divide & Conquer. Drake was upset that Peter and Paulie were excluding him from the action. He figured he could appeal to me and get me to side with him against them. This tells me that the idea is hot, and we need to act fast in order to start promoting it.
Drake went on and on, trying to make me feel like time was of the essence... which it is, in a way, but then again we're not trying to get rich quick, which is what Drake wants the most.
The dude drives a brand new PT Cruiser, owns a house, and works on shows with the guys from Jackass, but he gets no respect because he has no vision. Back in the day, Paulie and I helped Drake with some of his short movies, and they were all deadly dull yet competent-- the production values were sound but there was no substance to his work. The most lively bits were the music that Paulie and I scored for his short features.
Funny that a guy who has it all "going on" for him is afraid of not getting in on this from the bottom up. He ended up spending the rest of the evening telling Bro Man that, since he is "a happy Black man who is White-Friendly", he should start going on auditions.
"I can make money off you, Bro," Drake said, teetering in the night as I got into my car, ready to take Bro Man home. "You've got talent."
As we drove off, Bro Man and I laughed. We knew Drake was only thinking about himself-- he had no concern for Bro Man's career, except if it would benefit him somehow. And he didn't even realize how insulting he was being to Bro Man, by calling him the "happy Black man"... I mean, I see Drake's point, but he could phrase it in a way that doesn't make Bro Man feel like he needs to be a complete sell-out in order to make a name for himself.
Still, Bro Man and Drake go way back, so I didn't get in the middle of that one. I drove Bro Man home and made my way back to Burbank, wondering how it all got to this point in time, how some of these friendships have morphed and how some of them have remained static...
This is an odd time in the collective lives of everyone I know. Each of us is going through some sort of reckoning. It is more profound in others, but I think all of us are on the same wavelength-- we are concerned for not only ourselves but for the way of life we are all accustomed to living. The nightly news gives us no comfort, the word on the street give us no clue, the media culture and what it presents give us no clarity...
Instead of asking how it all got like this, I am now going to shift the weight of the question onto another foot and ask, "How do we make it better?"
How indeed...
Friday, March 04, 2005
THE MARK OF CAIN
I have a strange outlook on the world around me.
There are times when I am full of tearful compassion for no good reason other than I feel I have born witness to another's pain, the turmoil etched on their face like a lithograph, the eyebrows bent downward with the corners pointing up, the furrowing of the brow as tribulation washes over them like baptismal waters, these things being evident in an old woman's walk, arms loaded with groceries; a child who is outcast from her peers by issues of weight or race or beauty, solitary in a corner of the bus, isolated mentally and physically; a man who works hard doing manual labor to support his family, a stupid man with a big heart who knows nothing except that he must continue to be exploited so that his loved ones can flourish in poverty's potting soil; a woman, alone, on her own, unable to accept kindness and love, prone only to cruelty and vice, blind to blessings and used to undressing herself, liking the squalor that she has had her face pushed into, thriving on the slime at the bottom of the riverbed...
And then there's the opposite of this, the times when I pass by people on the street, or drive by them in my car, or see them out of the corner of my eye, and I want to see them buried, the incompetent, the foolhardy, the blissfully dumb and the elegantly ignorant, pawns all of them, tools and losers, bringing about their own private miseries, victims of their own devices, far from redemption and graceless in defeat, the ones that I wish to see burn in hell, buring in front of me like the memory of that man who burned in the backseat of a car on my grandfather's street; I want to see them crushed like the skull of a baby duckling under the weight of a plastic wading pool; I want to put them out of their misery, exterminate them with extreme prejudice, draw the line and end their existences so that they burden no one any longer, so that I don't have to be in this pain of seeing them and wanting to cry or help them, so I don't have to feel compassion or mercy or any of those things that feed off of my blood and sink their incisors into my flesh...
This is what is wrong with me. This is my major malfunction.
It is also what separates me from the pack, and at the same time enables me to slip unnoticed through the crowds. There is a power in my eyes-- I've always known this, but sometimes I can disguise it, in order to get through a conversation without going from one extreme to the next...
This look in my eye acts as a defense mechanism. Like a porcupine's quills, it is a warning to other animals not to come near. Like a peacock's plumage, it can be an invitation to women, asking them to approach me even as I stand by myself against the wall, looking at nothing in particular.
It is the ability to see right through people, to size them up without any effort, to know what makes their hearts beat fast without having to ask many questions. To look at them as if they were vapor, intangible, immaterial... that is a blessing, and a curse.
Some have called me psychic, but really it is what Roger Waters referred to in Pink Floyd: The Wall as "amazing powers of observation"... Before you've laid your rap on me, I've already got your number, and everything after that is a sick form of foreplay for me, an exercise in smugness and arrogance, a way for me to feel superior to the likes of you, having to scramble for your words, trying vainly to appeal to my intellect, desperately wanting to make an impression on me, but I am not soft sand nor am I gentle snow-- I am compacted, solid, immovable, and nothing fazes me in person because I have mastered the art of the Internal Struggle, to the point where I can have a complete mental breakdown in your prescence and you would never even know it, you would never have any idea of how psychotic I truly am, of what kinds of thoughts race throughout my brain in just one millisecond of waking life...
I walk the halls of my work, and everyone seems to like me. Even my bosses, who only days ago were chewing me out, are coming up to me and shaking my hand, telling me that it's "business, not personal"... and I wonder about that look in my eye: does it scare them into being nice to me? Or does it appear differently to them? Does it appear as something benign? I have been told that I possess an "aura", a light around me, Buddha grace and all that, but when I look in the mirror I see only emptiness and devastation, scars from traumas that have gone unhealed, a petrified bird of prey flapping with bruised wings, a wounded predator with a taste for blood...
I am a monster.
Maybe that's why, as I read Red Dragon for the very first time, I find myself admiring the character of Hannibal Lecter. I picked up the book at the Goodwill the other day, when I had the day off, for a dollar. I'd seen the movie that Michael Mann filmed in the '80's, Manhunter, and I've seen the remake with Anthony Hopkins (Eve, incidentally, had a small role as a cop in that one) and of course I've seen Silence Of The Lambs and Hannibal, and even read both of those books... but I never got around to Red Dragon.
I though the book version of Hannibal was an incredible read, far better than the movie that was eventually released. Thomas Harris is a macabre writer, deliriously homicidal, and at the same time he is as detached from his content as his fictional Feds and cops are from their cases.
And Hannibal Lecter is such a heroic character.
He is heroic because his needs are pure, his ideas unclouded, his mania focused and rigid. Obviously he is not a hero in the Apollonian sense-- he possesses heroic virtues but the viciousness of his negative traits almost cancels out our sympathy for him.
And yet, we do end up sympathizing with him-- at least, I do.
In comparison with the ultra-violent antiheroes of recent comic-book series such as Spawn and Constantine, going back past The Punisher and Wolverine, Hannibal is no different: they are villains with a code of personal ethics, outlaws who have fashioned their own Hammurabi Codes from the personal wreckage of their lives, supermen with no tolerance for the decadent and debased factions of this present world.
I bring up the comic-book comparison because it is an adolescent view of the world, to perceive it as basically so evil and corrupt that even its heroes have been tainted with the Mark of Cain. But ever since I saw Mad Max as a kid, my heroes have always been the weary survivors of subjective Holocausts, the kind of heroes Frederick Nietzche might have scoffed at even as he extolled the qualities of the Ubermensch, those men who were made stronger by circumstances that did not kill them outright.
I know that there's something horribly wrong with me. That's why I write.
I don't write for money. I don't write for fame. I don't write for praise.
I write because it's all I can do to keep the demons at bay.
I write for survival.
And when lesser folk come after me, looking to disrupt my sanctuary, they get dealt with in the coldest fashion.
Last night, at The Garage, Captain Capsule was trying to make the others laugh. I never laugh at his jokes, even though he can sometimes be funny.
The reason why I never laugh is because he tries too hard to be funny. Everyone else is laughing anyway, so what does one more signify in the long run?
At one point Paulie asked Capsule to perform one of his sight gags for me, but Capsule hesitated.
"James is never impressed," he said.
I looked at him, unsmiling, and I said, "That's right."
I got a big laugh out of everyone. They all thought I was kidding.
I wasn't kidding.
And that's how it goes with me-- nervous laughter, people thinking that I'm witty when I'm dead serious, and vice versa...
Maybe they see the Mark, above my forehead. Maybe it's not in my eyes. Maybe it's right above them, some kind of designation from God that warns others not to take my life, lest they feel the wrath of The Lord.
God is saying, "Leave him alone-- he's mine to deal with..."
That is, if you believe in God...
I believe there is a God. I believe I have a lot to answer for when I reach the Pearly Gates. I believe that he has something waiting for me at the end of this ride, and it may not be good.
Do I care? No, I don't. God and I, we have this... arrangement, I guess you could call it.
In the meantime, while I'm waiting to die, I will do whatever I want to do.
And no one can stop me.
Luckily, all I want to do is have a good time before I die. So you don't have to worry about me.
Just stay out of my way when I'm pissed, and you'll live to be old, like me.
Time to take a break and read some more Red Dragon.
HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, FOLKS!!
There are times when I am full of tearful compassion for no good reason other than I feel I have born witness to another's pain, the turmoil etched on their face like a lithograph, the eyebrows bent downward with the corners pointing up, the furrowing of the brow as tribulation washes over them like baptismal waters, these things being evident in an old woman's walk, arms loaded with groceries; a child who is outcast from her peers by issues of weight or race or beauty, solitary in a corner of the bus, isolated mentally and physically; a man who works hard doing manual labor to support his family, a stupid man with a big heart who knows nothing except that he must continue to be exploited so that his loved ones can flourish in poverty's potting soil; a woman, alone, on her own, unable to accept kindness and love, prone only to cruelty and vice, blind to blessings and used to undressing herself, liking the squalor that she has had her face pushed into, thriving on the slime at the bottom of the riverbed...
And then there's the opposite of this, the times when I pass by people on the street, or drive by them in my car, or see them out of the corner of my eye, and I want to see them buried, the incompetent, the foolhardy, the blissfully dumb and the elegantly ignorant, pawns all of them, tools and losers, bringing about their own private miseries, victims of their own devices, far from redemption and graceless in defeat, the ones that I wish to see burn in hell, buring in front of me like the memory of that man who burned in the backseat of a car on my grandfather's street; I want to see them crushed like the skull of a baby duckling under the weight of a plastic wading pool; I want to put them out of their misery, exterminate them with extreme prejudice, draw the line and end their existences so that they burden no one any longer, so that I don't have to be in this pain of seeing them and wanting to cry or help them, so I don't have to feel compassion or mercy or any of those things that feed off of my blood and sink their incisors into my flesh...
This is what is wrong with me. This is my major malfunction.
It is also what separates me from the pack, and at the same time enables me to slip unnoticed through the crowds. There is a power in my eyes-- I've always known this, but sometimes I can disguise it, in order to get through a conversation without going from one extreme to the next...
This look in my eye acts as a defense mechanism. Like a porcupine's quills, it is a warning to other animals not to come near. Like a peacock's plumage, it can be an invitation to women, asking them to approach me even as I stand by myself against the wall, looking at nothing in particular.
It is the ability to see right through people, to size them up without any effort, to know what makes their hearts beat fast without having to ask many questions. To look at them as if they were vapor, intangible, immaterial... that is a blessing, and a curse.
Some have called me psychic, but really it is what Roger Waters referred to in Pink Floyd: The Wall as "amazing powers of observation"... Before you've laid your rap on me, I've already got your number, and everything after that is a sick form of foreplay for me, an exercise in smugness and arrogance, a way for me to feel superior to the likes of you, having to scramble for your words, trying vainly to appeal to my intellect, desperately wanting to make an impression on me, but I am not soft sand nor am I gentle snow-- I am compacted, solid, immovable, and nothing fazes me in person because I have mastered the art of the Internal Struggle, to the point where I can have a complete mental breakdown in your prescence and you would never even know it, you would never have any idea of how psychotic I truly am, of what kinds of thoughts race throughout my brain in just one millisecond of waking life...
I walk the halls of my work, and everyone seems to like me. Even my bosses, who only days ago were chewing me out, are coming up to me and shaking my hand, telling me that it's "business, not personal"... and I wonder about that look in my eye: does it scare them into being nice to me? Or does it appear differently to them? Does it appear as something benign? I have been told that I possess an "aura", a light around me, Buddha grace and all that, but when I look in the mirror I see only emptiness and devastation, scars from traumas that have gone unhealed, a petrified bird of prey flapping with bruised wings, a wounded predator with a taste for blood...
I am a monster.
Maybe that's why, as I read Red Dragon for the very first time, I find myself admiring the character of Hannibal Lecter. I picked up the book at the Goodwill the other day, when I had the day off, for a dollar. I'd seen the movie that Michael Mann filmed in the '80's, Manhunter, and I've seen the remake with Anthony Hopkins (Eve, incidentally, had a small role as a cop in that one) and of course I've seen Silence Of The Lambs and Hannibal, and even read both of those books... but I never got around to Red Dragon.
I though the book version of Hannibal was an incredible read, far better than the movie that was eventually released. Thomas Harris is a macabre writer, deliriously homicidal, and at the same time he is as detached from his content as his fictional Feds and cops are from their cases.
And Hannibal Lecter is such a heroic character.
He is heroic because his needs are pure, his ideas unclouded, his mania focused and rigid. Obviously he is not a hero in the Apollonian sense-- he possesses heroic virtues but the viciousness of his negative traits almost cancels out our sympathy for him.
And yet, we do end up sympathizing with him-- at least, I do.
In comparison with the ultra-violent antiheroes of recent comic-book series such as Spawn and Constantine, going back past The Punisher and Wolverine, Hannibal is no different: they are villains with a code of personal ethics, outlaws who have fashioned their own Hammurabi Codes from the personal wreckage of their lives, supermen with no tolerance for the decadent and debased factions of this present world.
I bring up the comic-book comparison because it is an adolescent view of the world, to perceive it as basically so evil and corrupt that even its heroes have been tainted with the Mark of Cain. But ever since I saw Mad Max as a kid, my heroes have always been the weary survivors of subjective Holocausts, the kind of heroes Frederick Nietzche might have scoffed at even as he extolled the qualities of the Ubermensch, those men who were made stronger by circumstances that did not kill them outright.
I know that there's something horribly wrong with me. That's why I write.
I don't write for money. I don't write for fame. I don't write for praise.
I write because it's all I can do to keep the demons at bay.
I write for survival.
And when lesser folk come after me, looking to disrupt my sanctuary, they get dealt with in the coldest fashion.
Last night, at The Garage, Captain Capsule was trying to make the others laugh. I never laugh at his jokes, even though he can sometimes be funny.
The reason why I never laugh is because he tries too hard to be funny. Everyone else is laughing anyway, so what does one more signify in the long run?
At one point Paulie asked Capsule to perform one of his sight gags for me, but Capsule hesitated.
"James is never impressed," he said.
I looked at him, unsmiling, and I said, "That's right."
I got a big laugh out of everyone. They all thought I was kidding.
I wasn't kidding.
And that's how it goes with me-- nervous laughter, people thinking that I'm witty when I'm dead serious, and vice versa...
Maybe they see the Mark, above my forehead. Maybe it's not in my eyes. Maybe it's right above them, some kind of designation from God that warns others not to take my life, lest they feel the wrath of The Lord.
God is saying, "Leave him alone-- he's mine to deal with..."
That is, if you believe in God...
I believe there is a God. I believe I have a lot to answer for when I reach the Pearly Gates. I believe that he has something waiting for me at the end of this ride, and it may not be good.
Do I care? No, I don't. God and I, we have this... arrangement, I guess you could call it.
In the meantime, while I'm waiting to die, I will do whatever I want to do.
And no one can stop me.
Luckily, all I want to do is have a good time before I die. So you don't have to worry about me.
Just stay out of my way when I'm pissed, and you'll live to be old, like me.
Time to take a break and read some more Red Dragon.
HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, FOLKS!!
Thursday, March 03, 2005
CYBER-RAGE
Aah, it's good to be back.
It wasn't too bad being off, though-- I just wish it was for better reasons. But that's how I've always done things: impulsively, with more attention paid to my instincts and intuition than anything else.
I spent Tuesday afternoon moving my computer desk into the living room. Now I have more space in the living room and more space in my bedroom. I'm going to throw out one of the couches real soon.
I worked on transcribing the session notes of our animation brainstorming session. Thanks to programs like Final Draft, writing scripts is easier than blogging. Now that programs can take away the chores of formatting, it's up to the writer and his/her own innate talents to fill in the rest.
Anyone with half a brain can use Final Draft, but it's hard to get decent scripts out of Hollywood. Just look at a movie like The Girl Next Door, which I saw on DVD last night-- not bad for a teen sex comedy, but I imagine the pitch was something like "It's Risky Business meets American Pie!"
This is the issue of originality. I was accused recently by a hack screenwriter for not being original in my notion of animating A Clockwork Orange. However, everyone I know who is a fan of both the book by Burgess and the movie by Kubrick thinks it's a great idea, because although it would be invariably compared to Kubrick's 1971 masterpiece, it would still be a different take on the original source material.
And, of course, no one got mad at Kubrick for adapting novels into movies, which is what he did with nearly every single movie he ever directed. Lolita? Full Metal Jacket? Barry Lyndon? 2001: A Space Odyssey? The Shining? Eyes Wide Shut? All novels that Kubrick read, all of them adapted into movies.
So, does that mean that Kubrick isn't original?
Of course not. Originality doesn't mean having an idea that no one else thought of, because history shows us that no idea is truly original-- everything has a precursor further down the line.
Originality is doing something that no one currently has the right mind to think up, and let me tell you-- no one is thinking about animating novels... because it hasn't been proven to be lucrative yet.
I intend to change that, but in a different way.
My idea to animate a novel didn't start with Clockwork. Years ago, my friend Mauzner and I discussed David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. The novel has long been noted as being "unfilmable" but we both felt Cronenberg did the best job he could by not trying to make a literal adaptation. Rather, he interweaved the themes of the novel with the back story of how Burroughs came to write that classic book.
Mauzner reasoned that the only way to do a literal adaptation of Naked Lunch was to have eye-popping special effects, of the CGI variety. That led to some funny riffs between us about how the effects would look during certain notorious scenes in Lunch.
Then, I said, "Or, you could make it a cartoon... anime style."
Mauzner and I gave each other a knowing look, but afterwards we thought nothing of it. Occasionally, ideas of how to do certain scenes have entered my mind over the years, but now that I'm fully immersed in painting and drawing, I am starting to sketch out little ideas here and there, for both Clockwork and Lunch.
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas could've been one of those "cartoon adaptations" that I had in mind, but Terry Gilliam pulled it off quite nicely. Still, can you imagine if Ralph Steadman, the man who did the original illustrations for Hunter S. Thompson's book, had animated it, with his patented smeared-ink style?
Man, I would've paid money to see that.
The world will catch up to me, as it always does. In five years, you'll see production companies hopping onto this idea. And when that happens, I'll have some good ideas, other than Clockwork or Lunch, already developed.
Speaking of Mauzner, his birthday is this weekend, and when I returned to work this morning I opened an e-mail from him in regards to this. It's ironic, because I haven't talked to him in some time, but I mentioned him in my last post... and now, here he is, calling on me to help celebrate his 30th birthday.
He's a Pisces, and they're somewhat psychic. He knew I had mentioned him somehow-- it was in the air.
I think I'll pitch the idea back to him, see what he thinks. After all, we go all the way back to high school, and moderate success hasn't changed him one bit...
*/*
Bro Man and I were intent upon seeing Mr. Lee and his band play at the club. Tuesday night was billed as the club's 10th anniversary.
10 years... I have been going to this club since its inception. I never realized this until it was brought up to me, but I turned 21 when this club first opened, and I'd always thought it had been around before me.
Nope. 10 years. I've grown up with it.
I saw Lee play at this very same club in 2002, shortly after he was released from jail. It was a surprise show, and my friend Dom clued me in on the action. He is also a fan, and his band actually has shared the stage with Baby Lemonade and Mr. Lee on many occasions.
According to Dom, Lee lives up to his reputation: feisty, moody, brilliant, tempermental. I've seen Lee a couple of times since that 2002 gig and he has always seemed like he is teetering on the edge of some elegant insanity. Whenever I think that life is unfair and that Lee should be better known than he is, I remind myself that Lee pretty much sabotaged his own career, and maybe he did it willfully.
His obscurity is his own concoction.
Anyway, when Bro Man and I got to the club and finally found parking off of the boulevard, Dom's band was in the middle of their set... and there was a notice on the door stating that Mr. Lee and his group had cancelled.
I laughed. Was it over money? Top billing? Maybe they weren't feeling so hot. Either way, it didn't surprise me a bit. We went inside, drank some beers, watched the rest of Dominic's set, paid our tributes, and left shortly after The Brian Jonestown Massacre started.
There were no incidents-- that is to say, no one gave me any shit, just as I expected.
Bro Man and I ended up at Rock and Roll Denny's in Hollywood, eating breakfast and trying to talk to these Mexican girls at a neighboring table. They were unaccompanied, but I think they were underage, judging from their vernacular. One of them was stunning to behold, but my guts kept telling me to move on, lest I end up being charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Bro Man was convinced that they were afraid of him because he's African-American, but I think maybe they were entertaining the notion of "going black".
*/*
Wednesday saw me getting the new ride tuned up and making some music. I had to rearrange the living room one last time, because I did not allow myself any access to the back panel of my PC. Bro Man, Down Low and I jammed out, with Low busting out his brand new 12-string Martine. I smoked way too much pot-- making up for the past month, where I've been cutting down on my intake.
I made a trip to Michael's, to purchase brushes. Eve and I were supposed to do this together, but she is still in self-imposed isolation. I did tell her, however, about a project that I am undertaking as my official painting debut: UCLA's Feminist Majority is holding an auction to raise funds for Casa Amiga, the only rape crisis center available in Chihuahua, Mexico.
I don't know if any of you know this, but over the passage of time in the Mexican city of Juarez, the bodies of hundreds of raped and mutilated women have been turning up. No one knows who is responsible for such carnage, and the local government is mum on the issue.
To protest the government's inaction, pink crosses are placed at the sites where the bodies are found. To date, there are over 400 pink crosses adorning the location where the majority of victims are discovered.
Social activists are asking for artists to create works with Juarez as its theme. These works will be auctioned off and the funds donated to Casa Amiga. These funds will also go towards assisting the victim's families. And, all of this goes towards further awareness of this sickening phenomenon, in the hopes that something will be done to bring justice on behalf of the murdered women.
So, on May 14, 2005, I will be donating an an artwork to represent an individual woman who has been victimized by rape, mutilation, torture, and murder in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. This will be my first painting, and I'm hoping that it opens doors for me as well as helping out a cause that, believe it or not, I've been following ever since the documentary Señorita Extraviada premiered a few years ago.
(Email fmla@ucla.edu for more information)
I was tempted to go to the library and post a blog about the cancelled Love show, but time flew by and before I knew it I was at Paulie's pad in Topanga Canyon, watching DVDs and discussing our work schedule for the next month. Right now we are in the process of hiring writers to add one-liners to our cartoon scripts.
Haven't heard from the girls, but this Saturday I am busy laying down bass for this demo they have been working on for a month.
Can't complain, really. Keeping busy, staying positive.
*/*
Sometimes, in our everyday lives we find ourselves engaging in petty activities to fritter the time away. And sometimes, we get caught up in these trivial matters because we think they deserve our attention. But really, they don't, and all it takes is a nice step back from the grind to realize this.
The last two days have been an objective step back from all of this Web drama, what I like to call "cyber-rage". People stuck on the computer all day long with nothing to do tend to get enraged at what's going on in cyberspace, and they start losing their grip on reality.
That's why I don't have Internet access at my pad. The last thing I need is to bring it all home with me. Home is where the art is, for me.
Driving around, running errands, I saw the hidden beauty of the suburbs-- quiet and clean, well-protected, serene and calm. I get a lot of things done in this environment. It's too nice to be mad out here. It's also boring as hell, but that's when I go out to the other parts of this sprawling city: Hollywood, Santa Monica, parts of the Valley, East L.A., Downtown...
I find that if I just keep on doing what I'm doing, the way I've been doing it, I'll be fine. I won't lose any sleep, I won't lose any hair, I won't develop an ulcer, and I'll keep getting the things that I want with little to no effort.
That's all it's about for me.
Thanks for the e-mails, faithful readers. Violet, you are right, but so is everyone else who had something to say to me over the past two days.
They say the best revenge is living well. Those are wise words to live by, and I'll be thinking along those lines when my weekend is upon me and I'm hanging with Mauzner and Cox, when I'm recording bass tracks in a pro studio, when I'm making up the money for two days of work that I lost out on, when I'm starting my work for the Casa Amiga auction in May...
Yes, it's good to be back, and it wasn't bad being off for two days, but I have a feeling that it's all going to get even better.
Mark my words.
It wasn't too bad being off, though-- I just wish it was for better reasons. But that's how I've always done things: impulsively, with more attention paid to my instincts and intuition than anything else.
I spent Tuesday afternoon moving my computer desk into the living room. Now I have more space in the living room and more space in my bedroom. I'm going to throw out one of the couches real soon.
I worked on transcribing the session notes of our animation brainstorming session. Thanks to programs like Final Draft, writing scripts is easier than blogging. Now that programs can take away the chores of formatting, it's up to the writer and his/her own innate talents to fill in the rest.
Anyone with half a brain can use Final Draft, but it's hard to get decent scripts out of Hollywood. Just look at a movie like The Girl Next Door, which I saw on DVD last night-- not bad for a teen sex comedy, but I imagine the pitch was something like "It's Risky Business meets American Pie!"
This is the issue of originality. I was accused recently by a hack screenwriter for not being original in my notion of animating A Clockwork Orange. However, everyone I know who is a fan of both the book by Burgess and the movie by Kubrick thinks it's a great idea, because although it would be invariably compared to Kubrick's 1971 masterpiece, it would still be a different take on the original source material.
And, of course, no one got mad at Kubrick for adapting novels into movies, which is what he did with nearly every single movie he ever directed. Lolita? Full Metal Jacket? Barry Lyndon? 2001: A Space Odyssey? The Shining? Eyes Wide Shut? All novels that Kubrick read, all of them adapted into movies.
So, does that mean that Kubrick isn't original?
Of course not. Originality doesn't mean having an idea that no one else thought of, because history shows us that no idea is truly original-- everything has a precursor further down the line.
Originality is doing something that no one currently has the right mind to think up, and let me tell you-- no one is thinking about animating novels... because it hasn't been proven to be lucrative yet.
I intend to change that, but in a different way.
My idea to animate a novel didn't start with Clockwork. Years ago, my friend Mauzner and I discussed David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. The novel has long been noted as being "unfilmable" but we both felt Cronenberg did the best job he could by not trying to make a literal adaptation. Rather, he interweaved the themes of the novel with the back story of how Burroughs came to write that classic book.
Mauzner reasoned that the only way to do a literal adaptation of Naked Lunch was to have eye-popping special effects, of the CGI variety. That led to some funny riffs between us about how the effects would look during certain notorious scenes in Lunch.
Then, I said, "Or, you could make it a cartoon... anime style."
Mauzner and I gave each other a knowing look, but afterwards we thought nothing of it. Occasionally, ideas of how to do certain scenes have entered my mind over the years, but now that I'm fully immersed in painting and drawing, I am starting to sketch out little ideas here and there, for both Clockwork and Lunch.
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas could've been one of those "cartoon adaptations" that I had in mind, but Terry Gilliam pulled it off quite nicely. Still, can you imagine if Ralph Steadman, the man who did the original illustrations for Hunter S. Thompson's book, had animated it, with his patented smeared-ink style?
Man, I would've paid money to see that.
The world will catch up to me, as it always does. In five years, you'll see production companies hopping onto this idea. And when that happens, I'll have some good ideas, other than Clockwork or Lunch, already developed.
Speaking of Mauzner, his birthday is this weekend, and when I returned to work this morning I opened an e-mail from him in regards to this. It's ironic, because I haven't talked to him in some time, but I mentioned him in my last post... and now, here he is, calling on me to help celebrate his 30th birthday.
He's a Pisces, and they're somewhat psychic. He knew I had mentioned him somehow-- it was in the air.
I think I'll pitch the idea back to him, see what he thinks. After all, we go all the way back to high school, and moderate success hasn't changed him one bit...
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Bro Man and I were intent upon seeing Mr. Lee and his band play at the club. Tuesday night was billed as the club's 10th anniversary.
10 years... I have been going to this club since its inception. I never realized this until it was brought up to me, but I turned 21 when this club first opened, and I'd always thought it had been around before me.
Nope. 10 years. I've grown up with it.
I saw Lee play at this very same club in 2002, shortly after he was released from jail. It was a surprise show, and my friend Dom clued me in on the action. He is also a fan, and his band actually has shared the stage with Baby Lemonade and Mr. Lee on many occasions.
According to Dom, Lee lives up to his reputation: feisty, moody, brilliant, tempermental. I've seen Lee a couple of times since that 2002 gig and he has always seemed like he is teetering on the edge of some elegant insanity. Whenever I think that life is unfair and that Lee should be better known than he is, I remind myself that Lee pretty much sabotaged his own career, and maybe he did it willfully.
His obscurity is his own concoction.
Anyway, when Bro Man and I got to the club and finally found parking off of the boulevard, Dom's band was in the middle of their set... and there was a notice on the door stating that Mr. Lee and his group had cancelled.
I laughed. Was it over money? Top billing? Maybe they weren't feeling so hot. Either way, it didn't surprise me a bit. We went inside, drank some beers, watched the rest of Dominic's set, paid our tributes, and left shortly after The Brian Jonestown Massacre started.
There were no incidents-- that is to say, no one gave me any shit, just as I expected.
Bro Man and I ended up at Rock and Roll Denny's in Hollywood, eating breakfast and trying to talk to these Mexican girls at a neighboring table. They were unaccompanied, but I think they were underage, judging from their vernacular. One of them was stunning to behold, but my guts kept telling me to move on, lest I end up being charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Bro Man was convinced that they were afraid of him because he's African-American, but I think maybe they were entertaining the notion of "going black".
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Wednesday saw me getting the new ride tuned up and making some music. I had to rearrange the living room one last time, because I did not allow myself any access to the back panel of my PC. Bro Man, Down Low and I jammed out, with Low busting out his brand new 12-string Martine. I smoked way too much pot-- making up for the past month, where I've been cutting down on my intake.
I made a trip to Michael's, to purchase brushes. Eve and I were supposed to do this together, but she is still in self-imposed isolation. I did tell her, however, about a project that I am undertaking as my official painting debut: UCLA's Feminist Majority is holding an auction to raise funds for Casa Amiga, the only rape crisis center available in Chihuahua, Mexico.
I don't know if any of you know this, but over the passage of time in the Mexican city of Juarez, the bodies of hundreds of raped and mutilated women have been turning up. No one knows who is responsible for such carnage, and the local government is mum on the issue.
To protest the government's inaction, pink crosses are placed at the sites where the bodies are found. To date, there are over 400 pink crosses adorning the location where the majority of victims are discovered.
Social activists are asking for artists to create works with Juarez as its theme. These works will be auctioned off and the funds donated to Casa Amiga. These funds will also go towards assisting the victim's families. And, all of this goes towards further awareness of this sickening phenomenon, in the hopes that something will be done to bring justice on behalf of the murdered women.
So, on May 14, 2005, I will be donating an an artwork to represent an individual woman who has been victimized by rape, mutilation, torture, and murder in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. This will be my first painting, and I'm hoping that it opens doors for me as well as helping out a cause that, believe it or not, I've been following ever since the documentary Señorita Extraviada premiered a few years ago.
(Email fmla@ucla.edu for more information)
I was tempted to go to the library and post a blog about the cancelled Love show, but time flew by and before I knew it I was at Paulie's pad in Topanga Canyon, watching DVDs and discussing our work schedule for the next month. Right now we are in the process of hiring writers to add one-liners to our cartoon scripts.
Haven't heard from the girls, but this Saturday I am busy laying down bass for this demo they have been working on for a month.
Can't complain, really. Keeping busy, staying positive.
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Sometimes, in our everyday lives we find ourselves engaging in petty activities to fritter the time away. And sometimes, we get caught up in these trivial matters because we think they deserve our attention. But really, they don't, and all it takes is a nice step back from the grind to realize this.
The last two days have been an objective step back from all of this Web drama, what I like to call "cyber-rage". People stuck on the computer all day long with nothing to do tend to get enraged at what's going on in cyberspace, and they start losing their grip on reality.
That's why I don't have Internet access at my pad. The last thing I need is to bring it all home with me. Home is where the art is, for me.
Driving around, running errands, I saw the hidden beauty of the suburbs-- quiet and clean, well-protected, serene and calm. I get a lot of things done in this environment. It's too nice to be mad out here. It's also boring as hell, but that's when I go out to the other parts of this sprawling city: Hollywood, Santa Monica, parts of the Valley, East L.A., Downtown...
I find that if I just keep on doing what I'm doing, the way I've been doing it, I'll be fine. I won't lose any sleep, I won't lose any hair, I won't develop an ulcer, and I'll keep getting the things that I want with little to no effort.
That's all it's about for me.
Thanks for the e-mails, faithful readers. Violet, you are right, but so is everyone else who had something to say to me over the past two days.
They say the best revenge is living well. Those are wise words to live by, and I'll be thinking along those lines when my weekend is upon me and I'm hanging with Mauzner and Cox, when I'm recording bass tracks in a pro studio, when I'm making up the money for two days of work that I lost out on, when I'm starting my work for the Casa Amiga auction in May...
Yes, it's good to be back, and it wasn't bad being off for two days, but I have a feeling that it's all going to get even better.
Mark my words.
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