The Evan Toth Fireside Chat

Mark Rizzo Live at Mexicali

Bush Administration: 2001-2009 Mission accomplished George Bush

Bush Administration: 2001-2009 Mission accomplished George Bush

Enemies Unite to Fight the Real Forces of Evil; the um, Economy

Enemies Unite to Fight the Real Forces of Evil; the um, Economy

maybe just thursdays

three giant steps back. I'm 21 whenever I'm around those people. Can't stop drinking, can't handle a buzz, uncomfortable and neurotic, sick and and embarrassed, drunk and talkative, confessing everything in slurring broken sentences.
No more Friday or Saturday nights for me please, too much riding on them with the gun barrell of Sunday morning waiting, with a hangover and blurry flashes of all the nonsense of the night before.

craig hates blogs

there's a commercial on lately, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's getting a lot of play, one of those 'concepty' type of ads where you have people of all races and ages and genders and walks of life, finishing off each others sentences, about all the fantastic things humans, Americans, have done and how things are now changing again, so this, you know, gets my attention, what have we done now? Apparently there has been some kind of amazing breakthrough in technology or medicine, maybe martians have landed. nope. McDonalds is now offering chicken sandwiches for breakfast. Breakfast you say? Chicken? I know, I know, but it was this same kind of thinking that allowed scientists a way into space and the moon, that allowed Einstein to split the atom,(Einstein did that right?), that gave Martin Luther King the courage to march through the streets of Montgomery, the hope that change, revolutionary change, be it in science, aerospace travel, race relations, or breakfast, was possible. Now me, I'm weird, I'll have pizza for breakfast if I wake up late enough, but having said that, chicken is not usually the first thing I'll think of, so before I gave McDonald's a shot, I figured I'd conduct my own experiment in the breakfast arts, I let a whole chicken breast roast in my oven, overnight, so that the next morning I'd have a hot freshly prepared meal.
The chicken was delicious but, didn't quite sit well,not that early in the morning, not for breakfast, sorry McDonald's, while I appreciate your moxie I'm afraid this sandwich is just not for me.
Hold on, what if I told you that this sandwich wasn't roasted, no, it was fried, and it was served on a light, fluffy, buttermilk bun? I bet you'd change your tune real quick. I know I did.
So in the spirit of Einstein or Oppenheimer or any of the nameless, faceless scientists at NASA, or King and Kennedy or anyone who's ever caught a bullet with their head in the spirit of radical change in America, I endorse the new McDonald's Breakfast Chicken Sandwich.

you're tired

It’s too bright in this damn room for clear thoughts, but who am I kidding those aren’t coming anyway. Another Saturday night of waiting for that bastard phone to light up with some kind of message, some digital little blinks that hold the potential of immediate happiness. 7:44 never seemed late to me, I like to procrastinate, but where could she be? Will she even call? Does she know that I’ve been squashing my own insane impulses to dial her up and tell her that all I’ve been thinking about during the week is seeing her tonight?
Of course I would never say that to her, no time for romantics in this era of crazies and cold steel realists. Everything else feels like a bruise with a thumb pressing down on it. I don’t want to talk about the future or about a career or money or anything anymore. I want to be in love without being sabotaged by my own head, I want to stop thinking that doom is right around the corner, I want to stop hearing that little taunt that, sooner or later, this is all going to crash and that there is no way anyone is ever going to be interested in you. Be on your guard, summon all the manic energy you can to stay interesting enough for them not to forget you, because ultimately, being forgotten is the saddest thing you can be isn’t it?
Distraction is my friend, distraction will make all these seconds ticking by seem like nothing, but I can’t shake this mercury feeling in my spine that this is where it all goes south, that there will be no happy ending here, that I was fooling myself when I started to think “finally” and all those things that people in the movies think when they find someone they click with. Oh you horrible fool.
And here comes the morbid black thoughts of a man going out of his wits, fantasizing about everything he can do to destroy himself and wondering how people will talk about him when he’s gone. No widow, no kids, just a lot of mad scribblings in notebooks and unfinished word files. Full heads of steam that started off with the promise of pages and pages, three acts, maybe some twist endings, maybe redemption, but none of them ever finished really.
Oh well. The time ticks by and nothing, nothing to pull me away from this wordy rant, to leave it unfinished with all the rest of them. Tonight I’m leaning towards drinking whiskey with the windows open and listening to Doors vinyl while the newborn spring breezes creep into my head. Thoughts of driving up to Paterson and sipping drinks with Evan Toth or running out Haledon and talking over the crowd buzz with Tyler at the Sheppard and the Knucklehead rush to mind. Things that make you feel better about everything for a while.
Tales of old Jack Kerouac holed up in his New Jersey home writing in long scrolls about what probably seemed like jibberish on paper but made sense to him gives me a kind of vague hope that maybe I’m not nuts. Or that maybe if I am at least I’m not the only one.
8:00 now. Prime time. No show yet. Oh what to do when that carnival noise starts.