MOre Snow For Your Brain

And over and over again, the worst of it's past now. The internet said.
But it still looks pretty bad.
We're out of candles and matches.
Waiting for the roof to leak.
Holy shit I'm tired.
Hypochondria is exhausting.
All the symptoms of bleary eyes and numb limbs.
Resolutions down the drain.
Too many zeros in your future.
You're on the clock.
And digging out is the immediate future.
I'm not trying to do anything here.
I'm just a man indoors and underslept during the 57th snow storm of the season.
Pretty soon we'll be equipped for this kind of living.
Like in Minnesota or Canada where they don't even use roads anymore.
No, they're all Fifth Element'd out up there in the North.
FLying burrito stands and hover-cars.
They only see the ground in July and that's usually just to pick up anything they may have dropped throughout the year.
Then it's back to North American Hover-Living.
The air is a little cleaner.
And it's quieter.
Everyone's a Stranger.
and everyone is sort of okay with that.

and when you get through that

Another cup of cold coffee out of the World's Greatest Grandma mug that's been in out of these cupboards for the last 30 years.
I am not the World's Greatest Grandma but I use the mug anyway. It holds just the right amount of coffee.
One day we'll look back at all this and laugh.
But for now lose another layer of stomach lining driving yourself nuts during the quiet hours.
the small hours.
I need quiet. I need quiet and I need to be pissed off.
Or upset.
Or paranoid.
Don't get up, I'm not staying.
Eventually you realize you have to keep killing the same demons over and over again.
They don't die.
Their heads grow back.
You're still a big pile of insecure nerves.
You've never been anywhere.
You've never done anything.
And it never goes away.

Richard Nixon never got over being made fun of by rich kids.
Someone should write that book.
Richard Nixon, after resigning from office, becomes principle at a prep school and gives detention to the rich kids everyday. But one of their father's is a distant Kennedy cousin and he gets Richard fired and he ends up teaching US History at Public School #48 in the Bronx with a terrible pension and no dental plan.

And of course Nicolas Cage plays Nixon.
Nicson.

When you can't seem to get over the fact that the world never opened up it's arms and took you to it's bosom the best life raft is a giant heap of nonsense. It's all nonsense anyway, might as well make it your own.

A Little Song For New Years

So yeah. Here we are as in olden days.
What a fucking year.
Death Fear.
Love and sickness.
I feel a million pounds with lead and blood in my chest.
Wine Veins.
I'm in love with my girl and sometimes I get all Jim Morrison about it.
Yeah Jim Morrison about it, like I say things like "love my girl" and "yeah my girl is looking good". Stuff like that.
Of course that whole thing has paralyzed my ability to write moody, alcohol drivel about longing and wanting girls and being nervous and paranoid and lonely and depressed about girls who were too busy with whatever.
That's quite alright.
All that shit was boring anyway.
I mean I'm still nervous and paranoid and occasionally depressed.
But not about that shit.
No no no that column is checked off.
Now I get to work on the internal shit.
It's weird.
It's perspective and I'm new to it.
Nicolas Cage is pulling people out of a burning plane on tv.
And I'm wine drunk.
Sort of.
Sort of sick sort of drunk.
A new stack of books waiting to be read.
A new blue idea in my head I want to spill out one night in pages and pages of frantic electric nonsense.
I want it all down.
I have no idea how to exploit any of this.
I try.
Sort of.
But it's okay for now.
I don't have to worry bout things
In the new year.
We'll all be better off.
We'll all get around to it.
We'll all figure out where we went wrong.

Manic on Election Night; Set Adrift in the Red Sea.

Oh Lord another Election Night.
Election Night always reminds me of Hunter Thompson. I blame him for getting addicted to politics. Books and books of articles on Nixon and eventually Bush and Clinton and Baby Bush before the big brain blast to the head after we green lit 4 more years for W.
People like Thompson and George Carlin had been through the brutal years of the late 60's and early 70's and watched the hippies become yuppies and Reagan Democrats and realized the whole thing was a joke or at best a sport. It's hard not to wonder what ol' HST would have had to say about Katrina, or the financial meltdown, or Obama, or the Tea Party. There are some fine writers (Matt Taibbi in particular) doing great work but it's not the same. It's not through the same prism of weirdness that gave you a little wink into how ridiculous it all was. Even if the bastards won you felt like it was a fluke and that we all knew it and sooner or later sanity would be restored, eventually. But apparently eventually has come and gone.

It was a weird feeling the night Obama won two years ago.
It seems like a hundred years ago and people on both sides, in retrospect seemed to have made too much of it. Sure there was the historic relevance of a minority holding the most powerful office in the world, but Obama was held up to be such a super hero to the people who supported him that there was bound to be a letdown no matter how much he achieved. No matter who ran on the Blue ticket in '08 they were likely to end up in office if for no other reason than the great collective sigh of relief that the Bush reign of terror was over. I think where some of us were mistaken, or at least where I was mistaken, was that we were flipping the script over and that the dominoes of the last 30 years of Right Wing Christian businessmen looting the economy and spouting their morals had finally all fallen down.
But this is a monster that grows it's head back no matter how many times you cut it off and often that head is something more hideous than the one before it.
Nixon became Reagan became Bush Jr. became the Tea Party.

The results aren't in yet. The Republicans already have the House, and supposedly, (according to CNN.com so it could have just been one of their i-Reporters texting it in) the Democrats who have managed to win or retain have gone directly against Obama. The Senate is close 47-43 for the Dems last I checked. I don't really feel like checking again.

I'm getting a cold. I had a horrendous cold a decade ago and didn't make it to the polls but I managed to stay up until 3 or 4 a.m. wrapped in a quilt slugging from a sticky bottle of NyQuil when the news couldn't decide on a winner in the mess that was the 2000 election. I was so convinced that Gore would win, if for no other reason that it seemed so obvious Bush was caricature. Of course we didn't find out until weeks later that it was official George Bush was our President. I was at a Diner with Evan Toth, (the Empress I believe) when the court finally announced there would be no more recounts in Florida. I was a little dumbfounded waiting for some kind of 11th hour miracle that never came.

I was at Toth's house in 2004 for the election results; a complete set up of maps, multiple televisions and an ample supply of victory booze, but was again caught off guard when Bush repeated in stunning fashion. Deep down you knew the dirty tricks and fear-mongering were going to pay off, and they did, though W. as with most twice-elected Presidents had a rocky 2nd term and it almost seemed like John McCain was served up in 2008 because Republicans knew they had no shot at winning and why waste a viable candidate when they could offer up an old lion to take his turn in the spotlight and go down swinging against the fresh new face of the Democratic Party.

Most reasonable people would probably agree it's easier to tear things down than it is to build them back up, literally, metaphorically, whatever. Obama had a short honeymoon, but he went after a lot of what he wanted in his first two years. How he was supposed to fix the mess he was left with in such a short time while trying to build bridges with an opposition that questioned everything from his religion to his status as a citizen, while supported tepidly by his own party, some of whom though he wasn't Progressive enough, is beyond me. It's amazing he got anything done at all.

There are plenty of things Obama has done wrong, the worst of which is keeping the war in Afghanistan going but at least it felt like, for a little while, the boat was getting steered in a different direction, but now the Tea Party has mutated from the psychotic-fringe to legitimate players. How a movement comprised of "average Americans" in what's left of the middle class can consistently bark mantras and back candidates who support the interests of billionaires is fucking mind numbing. But this is their moment. Eventually the balance will snap back the other way and every time it does things get uglier and more contentious.

I can't help but thinking back to 2000; being immersed in the debacle of that election and listening to Kid A on a loop. That set the general tone of the early part of the 00's. Paranoia and uncertainty. No happy endings. The 00's eventually ended and here we are again staring at a fresh decade that looks like it's going to get driven until the wheels come off. Right is Center and they dress it up and call it the Left so they can pull it further Right.

Toth asked me "Who's even watching?" when I told him I was disgusted Rand Paul won. Two hours later he texted me to remember that "38% of the people voted for Carl Paladino". He can't help it, this stuff is addictive.

The Rocktober Post: The Depths of Self Important Mental Health and Whatever Else May Come Up

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.

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.

Alright, Nobody Freak Out Or Anything

The jitters.
I have the jitters. I'm jittery.
I feel like some kind of fire breathing alien is about to uncoil itself in my chest.
Not literally.
I'd go to a doctor if it was that bad.
I'm anxious and it appears the older I get the worse I am equipped to deal with it.
I'm awake in a dark bedroom.
It looks like a hotel.
There's a little bit of blue morning light peaking in.
The sheets are cold and the air conditioner is humming.
My head hurts.
I'm a little confused.
I'm kind of hoping I'm in New Orleans.
That I can slide out of this bed, throw something on and crawl into any bar and it will be roaring like it's just after midnight.
The drunks don't go to sleep in New Orleans, they just take cigarette breaks.
At least that's kind of how I remember it.
The scenesters are tourists and treated as such.
Everyone who talks to you eventually wants to borrow a few bucks.
Yeah I hope I'm in New Orleans.
Nope. I'm not in New Orleans.
I wake up again. It's cold.
The windows are open.
I hope it's winter.
I hope it's snowing out and it's Sunday.
I hope there's nowhere to go and watch tv all day.
I want to make the conscious decision to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, or go Star Wars happy or even plow through the entire series of Deadwood again just because I know there's too much weather outside to do anything besides maybe scrape a shovel against the pavement.
It's not winter, and it's not snowing.
I wake up again.
There's some sun screaming in from the shades.
I hope I'm in California and still stoned with no particular agenda.
I want to start noticing all the little things and wondering if I can deal with them. I want to take little mental pictures of the skylines and remember them every time things go to shit that I can fantasize about some sunny Eden that I can slip off to and be a new slick and silver version of myself.
And then I wake up and it's 1968 and there is vinyl spinning and crackling on some old player.
Outside in the gazebo. In Paterson.
Winedrunk.
It's October. It's autumn and the night is haunted.
There's people hiding behind the trees.
And fake plastic goblins streaming up and down the sidewalks.
The sky is red and someone drew black trees on it with crayon.
Breathe in a thousand pounds of smoke and gasoline and fog.
And then I'm in Manhattan in some decrepit staccato building vines crawling up the side. Bass thumping through the walls of some piss smelling bathroom. "how the fuck'd I get here?/ This is awesome" fight for prominence in my head.
And then I'm awake in a dark bedroom.
Just the blur of a television glow.
Tense and death obsessed.
Not that it's really that deep.