It's 100 degrees in Bricktown on this late October evening. 100 degrees, I promise. Sure there's a cool breeze blowing in off the water but there's always a cool breeze blowing in off the water. It's October and it turns out the weather is haunted. We had 247 feet of snow down here last winter (a new record as it was recently proven the 253 feet of snow from the winter of 1959 were all due to Dr. Laurelton's weather machine which promptly disqualified '59 from the record books) but now here it is on the cusp of another grizzled old Halloween and I'm questioning my logic in having taken my air conditioner out.
So it's warm for October (Hotober?) but it still sort of autumn-y out. I'm flaking out on seeing Back to the Future in the theater as we speak which should feel like more of a shameful failure on my part but the thought of leaving the house right now just feels like an exhausting waste of time. Not that writing about it isn't a waste of time, just not exhausting.
and man is it easy to keep the bullshit coming when you're pissed off and not really in any mood to try and claw yourself out of the mundane miseries of everyday 30's-dom.
There's a real a sense that the days of the great wide open are closing up fast and I'm too old and fat and slow to squeeze under the door before it slams shut. And fuck all that. I don't subscribe to little hints about bowing to certain aspects of getting older. Not that there isn't some truth to it but I reject the idea that it's just crankiness or the aforementioned exhaustion that slows you down and takes you off the field chasing weird nights. I'm still up for a good night of ending up on a hammock a stranger's back yard in Elmwood Park at 4 a.m. while a house filled with half eaten orange and black cake and fading masking tape holding up streamers and decorations hung with good intentions for a night that blasted apart hours ago and lead everyone involved into a hollowed-out, bleary-eyed state, sleeping in any dark quiet corner of the house hoping they wake up early enough to sneak out before someone asks them what the hell happened the night before, or worse asks them for help cleaning up.
Anyway....and enough about all that shit. I've spent far too many paragraphs waxing about romantic drunk evenings and all the hollow feelings and headaches that pop up afterwards. No, I'm done fuck it. Occasionally you hit an evening that just ends up being a lot of weird devilish fun, and sometimes you don't realize it until later. So good luck in your quest trying to catch one should you in fact be chasing one.
Onto other business: I'm writing a book. I've been writing a book for about a year. Somehow it seems to be a little sci-fi-y which I guess was kind of inevitable. I guess it's kind of Back to the Future-y (shit have I mentioned Back to the Future twice in this thing? That's bad writing. Of course this is just a blog, not some polished piece of work I'm submitting to the Paris Review) in that it's not really about science but it plays a part in it. And it does go back in time. And it goes back to the 80's but but but but there's not a lot of "HEY WHERE CAN I PLUG MY CELL PHONE IN.....OH YEAH IT"S THE 80's" kind of shit. It's really more about isolation and displacement and happy stuff like that. So I'm almost done with the second draft (I've been saying this for about 4 months by the way) which is painfully slow because I'm starting to genuinely hate it. Once that happens I'm going to send it out to a few savvy friends and find out of if there are any gaping holes in the plot which I'm fairly sure there probably will be, and I may start posting it in chunks either here or some NEW AND IMPROVED BLOG sorta site.
Yes it's time to get this money machine moving. I'm either poor or disinterested in most other endeavors in this life so I figure it's time to try to get myself in some kind of position to have more than a few kind souls read whatever bullshit falls out of my head at late hours. So I don't know there may be some kind of new blog and possible even ranting podcast that might take the place of posts like this, coming in the future. Actually there will probably always be posts like this no matter how ill-advised they might be.
I'm starting to think this version of "Dead Man's Party" is a cover. The music is spot on but the voice is a little non-Elfman. That drives me nuts. Fucking Blip. Always has what you're looking for until you click on it and realize it's some creep turning on their web cam so they can play you THEIR amazing acoustic version of Tears in Heaven or whatever. My favorite are the ones who sing over the song while it's playing through their computer speakers while they stare all glass eyed right at the camera. I usually watch those to see if they end with a pistol in the mouth. They usually don't. I don't understand the end game on those: I can ALMOST get the guitar ones because sometimes they're instructional. FINE. It's annoying but I kind of get it. But what the fuck is the point of singing over a song and posting the video? What are you hoping someone stops you in the hall before Botany class the next day and says "Yo Phyllis, I saw you singing that Cindy Lauper song on You Tube last night. It was amazing, you're really good"? Ugh. Go watch Glee and hang yourself. I should start re-writing my own versions of famous books and selling them online for free (we'll call them Book Covers!!!!!! Actually fuck it I might just do that anyway) Anyway enough on that. Sorry for yelling. I don't really hope anyone watches Glee and hangs them self.
Of course I suppose it's no worse than writing a self important blog.
I kind of like that Book Covers idea.
And in closing let's get to another pet peeve shall we? People who block a letter out of a bad words on Facebook. F*ck. Sh*t. That's usually it. It's usually when people are angry about something like traffic, or the weather or something that happened on Grey's Anatomy. They're so angry but they just can't in good conscience let that vowel slip in there and have that whole bad word staring back at you. Drives me nuts. If you're angry enough to convey the sentiment then write it.....oh what do I care really? In fact the more I think about it the I think I hate the Facebook Status about cancer that pretty much calls you a pussy if you don't repost it as your status. Those people are weird. Like Tea Party weird.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Further Down
It's damp and cold and dark and all the things I start worrying about the great hereafter being like start creeping into my head. It's not quiet. This is worrisome. What if there's just as many distractions when you're dead? Of course you can't really do anything about them then can you? And what is this little cycle of thoughts about? Sounds like bad high school poetry. I start fiddling for my flash light because I hear that high-pitched whail bellowing. The one that sounds like Thom Yorke on "How to Disappear Completely" a quick shitty copy of which is jammed into my walkman. I fear that I left it playing and that the batteries will eventually die. But no, the tape's not playing and I realize it's just one of the rotten sounds that permeates out of this place. They have CD's for these things. Women screaming and men howling, sounds of random violence. Ghosts and goblins and black cats. All that shit.
It's dark down here. They actually dug holes this year. Right into the ground. It's OCtober and it's freezing. It feels like it hasn't stopped raining in two weeks. It's cold but not winter cold. Just the kind that tackles you out of your illusion of warm summer nights. October is cold and weird. It's weirder in an artificial graveyard. It's important to drink enough to make all the weird and scary things look level.
They bring groups through and it's fun for a few seconds: the guide brings them up to the exit and gives them a speech about this being a haunted graveyard. I actually no the whole speech because I've heard it at least 50 times already this evening. And there's been a lot these kind of evenings over the past 4 Octobers. I pull myself out of the hole, through the flaps of turf that make it look like an open grave. I crawl slowly at the people and then I quickly claw at them and hiss and pull myself upright. This isn't always the best strategy as a girl freaked last week and gave me a reflex kick right in the head. But I think it looks kind of cool, and it usually scares people a little bit. Which is much better than having them just stare at you while you wait for the guide to take them out. Then I go back to the hole or if it sounds quiet I sift through the black plastic tarp mazes and head to the dining room where some pseudo pagan ceremony is usually going on.
Ryan and BLumes are there doing their act and I hang behind one of the tarps and get behind the line and when they notice me they jump a little bit. Ryan and Blumes and I do a little banter, full of inside jokes that no one really gets but no one is really listening anyway. They just see a man caked in blood and makeup carrying a big metal post that he repeatedly slams into the table. Eventually they scatter out and we talk about groups that went through or what we're going to do later.
And the girl is gone. She took off with a bottle of vodka and later I find her passed out behind my tombstone looking like a dead angel. I sigh a disgusted sigh and throw a jacket over her. She'll disappear back to whatever movie she came from in a few days and in the end all I'll remember about her are strange little scenes like this.
It's the last night. Halloween. Busy with fratboys trying to prove that no one working here is really a zombie and girls who don't stop screaming from the second the lights go down. There's parties going on and bars with costume contests but we'll probably just go to a diner and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes until 7am like we do every weekend this month. It's easier that way. The last night, last chance for all this nonsense. It's like going to high school in a nightmare. An acid-trip down memory lane. But it's over.
It's dark down here. They actually dug holes this year. Right into the ground. It's OCtober and it's freezing. It feels like it hasn't stopped raining in two weeks. It's cold but not winter cold. Just the kind that tackles you out of your illusion of warm summer nights. October is cold and weird. It's weirder in an artificial graveyard. It's important to drink enough to make all the weird and scary things look level.
They bring groups through and it's fun for a few seconds: the guide brings them up to the exit and gives them a speech about this being a haunted graveyard. I actually no the whole speech because I've heard it at least 50 times already this evening. And there's been a lot these kind of evenings over the past 4 Octobers. I pull myself out of the hole, through the flaps of turf that make it look like an open grave. I crawl slowly at the people and then I quickly claw at them and hiss and pull myself upright. This isn't always the best strategy as a girl freaked last week and gave me a reflex kick right in the head. But I think it looks kind of cool, and it usually scares people a little bit. Which is much better than having them just stare at you while you wait for the guide to take them out. Then I go back to the hole or if it sounds quiet I sift through the black plastic tarp mazes and head to the dining room where some pseudo pagan ceremony is usually going on.
Ryan and BLumes are there doing their act and I hang behind one of the tarps and get behind the line and when they notice me they jump a little bit. Ryan and Blumes and I do a little banter, full of inside jokes that no one really gets but no one is really listening anyway. They just see a man caked in blood and makeup carrying a big metal post that he repeatedly slams into the table. Eventually they scatter out and we talk about groups that went through or what we're going to do later.
And the girl is gone. She took off with a bottle of vodka and later I find her passed out behind my tombstone looking like a dead angel. I sigh a disgusted sigh and throw a jacket over her. She'll disappear back to whatever movie she came from in a few days and in the end all I'll remember about her are strange little scenes like this.
It's the last night. Halloween. Busy with fratboys trying to prove that no one working here is really a zombie and girls who don't stop screaming from the second the lights go down. There's parties going on and bars with costume contests but we'll probably just go to a diner and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes until 7am like we do every weekend this month. It's easier that way. The last night, last chance for all this nonsense. It's like going to high school in a nightmare. An acid-trip down memory lane. But it's over.
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