Blogsploids

I've never bothered posting what would be a traditional blog on here. A blog of olden days. A personal screed that just lays out there limply as a confession of what I'm feeling. No one, no one, no one, can get in the way of what I'm feeling, though. Overwhelming depression is what I'm feeling. Am I a hack as a writer? All my life I have thought of myself as a writer. I have a degree as a screenwriter of all things. I am almost 31. Well, in May I will be. It's not that far off. When I got my degree I figured I would dick around for a year, pop out a screenplay, fire it off to some agencies, get some interviews with agents, hire one and be off on the lifetrack to the middle class. I dreamed long and hard about walking out of an office job one day a little bit early to take a meeting at some out-of-my-league dining establishment and go to sleep that night knowing it was my choice as to whether I ever needed to walk in the door of the old office again in my lifetime. It is perhaps a generational affect that I judge my success or failure on my level of celebrity attained. I don't necessarily mean that I should be a household name but I'd always (from age 4-29, at least) that by the time I'd reached 30 years on the planet, I'd have an impressive title that could wow some girls at the bar. Instead I am 30 and can't even begin to pay back the student loans I took out to pay for my second-rate commuter college education, let alone afford to spend the night out carousing and flirting and whatever else (business connections?) it is that all my friends have accomplished in the bars over the years. I sell fish for a living. And I am effectively an intern in a marketing department that might never receive any real oxygen from the higher-ups at a company that wants to grow beyond it's $100-mil a year borders. I live a filthy, seedy, boring, rat-trap existence and I am only maintaining it by smoke and mirrors.

Digression: I decided to write a journal, blog-o-riffic entry tonight because I am wondering if it is time for me to throw in the towel and forget that I ever wanted to be a writer. My dad thought he was a writer up until he got married and had kids (he was a month past 30 on his wedding day) and he lived a more-or-less fulfilling life. I think. I guess. He died before I'd really ever pressed him on the issue. He was a mathematician in practice, in civil service to the Navy, designing ships, and procreating like mad to the tune of 10 kids. I will probably never be as Catholic as my dad. I don't plan on it. I plan against it, in fact. But the question to myself (and on the outside chance that someone reads this, to you, gentle reader) is this: at what point can I cut my losses? I've written screenplays that are apparently terrible. I've read screenplays before. I've read a lot of them spread out over a long time. Even the "great" ones that I have read are dull and lifeless to me. So it is not a sad occasion to say that I can't figure out what makes a good script. It is, however, distressing to me that I can't even write a decent enough query letter to draw some sniffs from agents and the like. I've spent my whole adult life in sales and I started daydreaming of a Nobel in Literature when I was twelve. It would follow reason in my head that I have the background to at least fake it well enough to get some interest. But I have a manuscript to a novel (about 300-pages) drying and cracking on the vine. I have ascript that got a vicious beatdown by an intern at UTA. I have other scripts that are fading away as figments on a hard drive. I've got piles of rejection letters. And I've got a cracked sense of hope. Aren't all the friendly "keep at it"s and "you're really good"s end up meaning less when you can't even get anyone to read what you've written? Ah, nuts. I'm writing myself into a circle here. Who cares? It is beginning to look a lot like a hobby. See you on the streets!

P.S. - anyone know a good place to live that has free rent and a hot tub?

HeisMANIA! (+ other stuff)

Clever, right? 'Cause everyone's going nutso trying to wait for the Tostitos Heisman Tophy presentation presented by Preparation H and underwritten by a grant from Prudential with a see-through dress by Victoria's Secret. That's what we're all here for. I'm a big supporter of Michael Crabtree (WR, Texas Tech) as has been previously noted. I really believe he'll make a fine NFL receiver in the far off, distant future when the redshirt freshman makes that leap. Others I'd like to see win are Chris Long (DE, UVa) or Glenn Dorsey (DT, LSU). I'd also love to see DJ Hall (WR, Alabama) as a finalist. I've never watched Chase Daniel (QB, Missouri) and thought, "Wow, this is the best player in the country." Which should now be a prerequisite. Because every player in the country makes their way to some channel you have access to at some point in every season. There won't be another Andre Ware anytime soon (lost in the pseudo-debate about system QB's on the WWL is the fact that Ware did something really cool that nobody had done before and he beat out Anthony Thompson, who went on to be a notably terrible NFL player his damn self. Also, Ware actually comes across as a decent guy and he did follow up a player whose eye-gouging staistical season, Barry Sanders, has stood up pretty well over time) winning the Trophy while not playing on TV. More side note: Jack Pardee might come back and coach Houston again? Why is that being discussed? At least Houston wouldn't have a problem scheduling their 12th game (an idea I hate, by the way) as long as he's there. Every old SWC team would line up for their chance to try and hang 100 on Pardee. In other words, long live the Run N' Shoot! That didn't make sense in context? Well, neither does your mom, dickhead! (Oh, dear...) But really, it's hard for a player to not be on TV. Once the SWC was broken up all we're left with is the SEC for massive recruiting violations. And they self-report pretty quickly (you can look it up. Believe me 'Bama hasn't done anything the Golden Dome hasn't done. Except for going 3-9, of course) thus ruining the chances for a true Death Penalty. But you know who has been on TV a lot? And most of the time has made me think at leas once every game, "Wow, I've never seen that before"? Or, more to the point, "Wow, he's the best player in the country... with a shot a Heisman. Easily the second-best player on Florida this year." Yep, Tim Tebow (QB, Florida). Percy Harvin (WR, Florida) can't win it because he misses too much time. But Tebow is almost as awesome to watch. Why do people hate him and not Colt Brennan (QB, Hawaii)? Because nobody hates Hawaii football. Why should they? It still seems quaint that there even is a Hawaii football team. Go Rainbow Warriors! From, Everybody. Really, Brennan is the definition of a Career Contender. His last game was great. But he's missed a high percentage of snaps and doesn't actually lead the country in anything this season. He's just broken some career records. And mostly kept his hands to himself. Good show, Colt. No, really, it was a good show. He's a good college player and I don't have a problem with his candidacy. But it is for show, not reality. Kevin Smith (RB, UCF) just makes me sad. He's going to break Barry Sanders season record for rushing. But with 3 extra games to do it. And with half the TDs. Why did the NCAA decide to allow bowl games to count for season totals but not go back and tack on bowl games to the season totals of the past? If they had Sanders would be pretty much safe as the king. I like that a player from UCF is somewhere near the dartboard (in my day we had a QB named Daunte Culpepper from UCF. He was pretty good. And he can throw one hell of a sex-boat party when he feels inclined to do it! ) but I also feel like, secretly, Kevin Smith is 32 years old. I can't explain that notion but it makes him less qualifyee to me. Mostly he just makes me miss the first time I actually followed the race to the Heisman. Shouldn't Smith's numbers put him over Darren McFadden (RB, Arkansas)? Anyone who has actually watched McFadden can tell you unequivocally that he looks pretty good. Depending on the game he looks really awesome. Sometimes he even looks better than Felix Jones (RB, Arkansas). I can't be the only one that thinks McFadden is Thurman Thomas to Jones' Barry Sanders. It will surprise 3 people in the country if Felix Jones goes over 2,000 yards and 30 TDs next season. So, as I blend that up let me remind you of my rigorous analysis and well-structured open essay on the subject, before I hit you with this: Just give the fucking thing to Tebow already. He's a legitimate superstar, not some crappy Gino Torretta-type (remember, this is a Miami fan here) player who wins it but leaves people wondering if they could just not give out the award at all if this is the best we can do. Tebow is better than McFadden. And I'm predicting that McFadden will not be anywhere near as good in the pros as Adrian Peterson. Or even his own younger backfield mate.

How has this blog turned into sports-sputterings? I'm lazy and write about things that are easy. Pick the low-lying fruit as it were. Trying to catch people's attention and get some page views. But that won't happen, so let me just say this anyway (????): Poor Sean Taylor. Why did he have to be put on trial for getting killed? Does it really matter at that point if he lead a reckless lifestyle as a 22-year old millionaire? Does it make it better for his family and friends if "He had it coming?" Does anybody else get the same sick feeling when ESPN writes another story about how the streets of Miami came back to bite hime? Jesus Christ, be human about the thing. He got killed for nothing. Or, more along the lines I'm trying to lay down here, he got killed. This is not a "Leave Britney alone!" type rant but I do feel that the coverage of Sean Taylor's murder has been abysmal and that ESPN should be even more ashamed than usual.

Quick thoughts that can't be supported, substantiated or elaborated: Dennis Kucinich is a dick but the LA Weekly is populated by horrible writers and even worse people. CineFamily (cinefmaily.org) is one of the awesomest things that has ever come up in L.A. and I love this city. This is BEOWULLLLLLFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF! Cultural politics are a sham that is making all us sheep worker-bots let ourselves slip farther and farther into wage slavery until we are all replaced by robots and that day is not nearly as far off as you probably think it is. So get some intellectual property, learn to farm, and drop out now if you really hate your existence as much as I'm willing to bet you do. Obama-Edwards '08! Please God let their be a labor resurgence. I don't want to be in a studio apartment when I'm 63 unless I got there by way of some horrible personal tragedy rather than a long series of sheepish actions and a lifetime of having no money. Goodbye, good luck and be safe!

Mid-Afternoon in the Garden of Good and Evil

Gregg Easterbrook is an imbecile. His article about Good vs. Evil in the guise of the Colts-Patriots game is one of the stupidest things he's written so far. Even taking into account that book The Progress Paradox. He takes interesting subjects and mangles them. The Patriots are evil because they tried to steal the Jets signals. The Colts are good because the Patriots tried to steal the Jets signals. Everybody loves Peyton Manning, right? Whatever, the good/evil only interests me so far as this: Tony Dungy and his Christian marauding actually could conveivably threaten my daily comfort levels. I have always been a fan of Dungy as a coach. I was thrilled when he turned the Bucs around, particularly because the center-pieces of that turnaround were some of my favorite football players of all time: Warren Sapp, Ronde Barber, Derrick Brooks and Warrick Dunn. But then he had to come out with the prayer at the Super Bowl. And the book about God. And I'm no longer such a huge Tony Dungy fan. But I didn't sit down to blog about football again so that I could discuss Gregg Easterbrook's and Tony Dungy's flawed personas. I came to actually make a prediction before the game starts. Colts will win because the Patriots will turn the ball over for the first time this year. The Colts have a much more versatile offense than the Patriots, they have a great running game and they can certainly keep up with the Pats in a high-scoring game. Patriots might be able to run but I haven't seen it. And if you are using last week's game as a measure of how good the defense is you might want to look at the Redskins a little closer. I am probably wrong, but my gut (the only organ that matters) tells me Colts 38-Patriots 26. And I will conceded that the Patriots are going to gain more yardage for the game. But they will also turn it over. Marlin Jackson will get 2 INT's and Bob Sanders will get all the press for a fumble recovery. That is all for my prognostication.

In other news, I'm going to go make some pancakes slathered in honey and wait for the Jaguars and Titans to playe each other in the AFC tital game. That's gonna be sweet.

College Football and Salted Fish

This is not any kind of excuse to be literary. I really just wanted to write about college football and I'm reading Salt by Mark Kurlansky right now. So the title makes sense. Why college football? Because I like it. Why Salt? Because a friend gave it to me to read and it's fucking fascinating. Why am I writing right now instead of running or working (which would be writing too, I suppose) on something larger, like getting my book published or finishing a screenplay that has dragged on for two years of writing or working on a treatment that I set a deadline of today to write? Um, my ankle is broken or something. I haven't actually gone to the doctor but it's swollen and turned a bluish-purple color. Also it hurts to walk. Which makes writing something more profound or money-worthy damned near impossible. Doesn't matter. I'm also writing because after ten months of posting absolutley nothing on this site I've been getting traffic the last three weeks. I'm intrigued by the idea of people looking over and over again at the nothing that this site is. So I'm giving something to those 17 readers who have been here. Hope you read this.

College football: I will give you some totally biased un-expert and un-examined game picks at the end of this article. But my impetus for writing about college football is my new favorite player. As per usual with me I have never seen this guy play. For all I know he is rather unspectacular to watch. But I happened upon the leaders in receiving yards for the year and my jaw actually fell off of my face, but it was inside of my skin so it just slid down to my chest area. the skin was too tight down there for it to go any further so it stopped and got lodged in there. that's annoying so I knocked it out of that position but it was so tight that my chest just exploded and a torrent of blood went all over my keyboard. Anyone want to give me a new computer? I've had this PC since 2002. And it wasn't that great when I bought it. Now it is virus consumed and horrid. More of an albatross than an ally. In short, looking at the stats was a bloody fucking mess. Has anybody else noticed this guy Michael Crabtree? He's a freshman on pace for a 2,000 yard season with close to 30 touchdowns. I can't say it's entirely unprecedented becasue he's a redshirt freshman and I think Randy Moss had similar numbers his first year of college football (he was technically a sophomore but he wasn't allowed to play as a freshman because he smoked pot and punched some girl in the face. Yeah, I know, they were separate incidents.) But who the fuck is this guy? I've heard about his QB putting up nuts numbers but every QB at Texas Tech for the last ten years has done that. Why can't the receiver putting up sort of historical numbers (ah, sports history...) get his name in the Heisman ballots on ESPN? Other than the fact that everybody that makes a decision as to what gets on the air at ESPN is some bozo looking for a human interest angle on everything (note to all the networks that show sporting events, pay huge money to show sporting events, and make massive investments in the broadcast of said sporting events: You are not selling to your core audience. It has gotten to the point where I feel relief when I miss a sunday of NFL games. I am completely drawn in out of habit and then get angry listening to bad impressions of a horrible sportscaster who is more popular as the title of a video game, which is truly awesome, than he has been as an NFL announcer for the past 12 years. Nobody watches football for the half-time show, the pre-game show or the fucking lame-ass local highlight shows. Nobody watches ESPN because they like the personalities of the broadcasters. These things were hugely successful in the first place because of attention to things that sociologically tend to interest a large percentage of men: team sports, violence, speed, and statistics. If you want to throw in cheerleaders fine. Everything else is just uncomfortable and intrinsically unprofessional. Nobody on the planet will ever make me feel like I know less than the brainless ex-jocks on TV in their ugly but expensive suits and ugly but expensive haircuts about anything especially, ironically, the sports they played. They come across to me as walking billboards for why the NFL needs to seriously reform their concussion policies. No joke, ex-athletes who have suffered severe brain trauma are a threat to the communities they live in. Please, ESPN, Fox, CBS, ABC, whoever the fuck else shows sporting programs, please for the love of God stop trying to pander to a wider audience. You are killing your core audience and not, absolutely not, bringing in new viewers. Watch a soccer broadcast - they show you nothing but the game. They don't even break for commercials just build them into the flow of the game. Women watch sports mainly because men watch sports. Now back to the regularly scheduled blawgghe:) Michael Crabtree is putting up stupid numbers. Seven games into his college career he has: 78 catches for 1244 yards and 17 TD's. WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? I mean, seriously, what the fuck yo? He has 400 more yards than any other receiver in the country. He's a freshman. If a WR at Ohio State University (goddamit why do they have to lose to Michigan? Michigan is even more unsufferable than The Ohio State University but I can not stomach the thought of another Big 10 team wasting our time pretending to be on the same level with any other conference in the country and so I comfort myself with the thought that Wolverines! will beat the school with no legitimate national titles in a looooooong time. Seriously, the fucking Hurricanes won that game.) he would have been elected Jesus by now. I know what you're thinking: Ohio State hasn't thrown for that many yards in the last sixteen seasons combined. In fact they didn't even gain that many yards as a team in six of those years. To you I say: That's why I have tape on my nose. Michael Crabtree should be elected Jesus. Until I actually watch him play. When I will probably surmise that he isn't that great. But that's the same feeling I have for Matt Ryan and his numbers aren't even all that great. He's getting Heisman hype. Until his team loses to Virginia Tech. Who really isn't a great team. Have I mentioned how much I hate every sports team from Boston? Go Indians. And you're weird red face-painted, wittingly or unwittingly, racist jerk fans. God bless Cleveland for being the low-life place that it is. Baltimore without the glamour. Tape on the fucking nose.

I'm sick of this. Here are some football picks. Sorry if the games already started. You weren't reading this site and going out to place bets based on anything I say anyway:

OCTOBER 20th (and 21st? Why is that shitty game being played tomorrow?)
Blue team wins. I picked half of them by random guess, one third of them by who I want to win and the rest I actually have any opinion on. Guess which ones are which!)

#23 Cincinnati at Pittsburgh
Army at Georgia Tech
Penn State at Indiana
North Dakota State at Minnesota
Miami (OH) at Temple
Central Michigan at Clemson
Iowa at Purdue
Northern Illinois at Wisconsin
#5 Oklahoma at Iowa State
Vanderbilt at #6 South Carolina
#21 Tennessee at Alabama
#22 Texas at Baylor
Wake Forest at Navy
Arkansas at Mississippi
Western Kentucky at Indiana State
Wyoming at Air Force
Ball State at Western Michigan
Texas A&M at Nebraska
Memphis at Rice
Nevada at Utah State
Michigan State at #1 Ohio State
#15 Florida at #7 Kentucky
Mississippi State at #9 West Virginia
#12 California at UCLA
#14 USC at Notre Dame
#24 Texas Tech at #16 Missouri - Michael “Christ Reincarnated” Crabtree will catch 13 passes for 244 yds and 6 TDs
Miami (FL) at Florida State
Arkansas State at Middle Tennessee
North Texas at Troy
Buffalo at Syracuse
Tulsa at UCF
Bowling Green at Kent State
North Carolina State at East Carolina
San Jose State at Fresno State
Florida Atlantic at Louisiana-Lafayette - GAME OF THE WEEK
#13 Kansas at Colorado
Eastern Washington at Brigham Young
Houston at UAB
Boise State at Louisiana Tech
Florida International at Louisiana-Monroe
Ohio at Toledo
Kansas State at Oklahoma State
Stanford at Arizona
#10 Oregon at Washington
#19 Virginia at Maryland - OK, I'll give it up on this one. I actually think UMD will win, but I'm rooting for the Hoos so fuck off. I like both teams anyway.
#25 Michigan at Illinois
Idaho at New Mexico State
Tulane at Southern Methodist
New Mexico at San Diego State
#17 Auburn at #4 LSU
Colorado State at UNLV

Southern Miss at Marshall – but really, both teams lose. Why is this game being played on Sunday? These kids would all be better off if they got to have their normal leisurely Sunday morning gay orgies or whatever it is college football players are doing when they aren’t at practice or playing in a game.

So there it is. That LSU-Auburn game is really fucking tough. I know some of these games are probably already half-over and wrong. Oh, well. I had some difficulty getting the formats right. If I knew anything about HTML I could probably keep the highlighting plan I originally attempted. But I'm not that smart or motivated by such things. I like food. And I like to rub one off every now and again. That's most of it.

novel, interrupted

Get in line punk. I am not giving up on this. But it's about 5th in queue right now.

The Setup

Just before it started raining Los Angeles was full of lifers and homebody types that didn’t think of a world outside California, smug pricks intent on turning L.A. into a ‘real city’, homeless people, cars, and out-of-town money who hated the city. Well, I loved the city.

When it started raining it wasn’t out of the ordinary. Sure, it was a little heavier than usual, but it wasn’t unprecedented. It was still the same purple sky at night, the same sort of misty rain that people from the tropics laugh about. It rained for a long time but that was the way some years went. If it went forty days and forty nights, it wasn’t because of the Bible or even GLOBAL WARMING. It was just an active El Nińo. Or La Nińa. Some weather pattern or another.

After the forty day mark had passed, the city started to be a little more on edge. Rich neighborhoods in Orange County started to empty out. A few houses here and there fell off a cliff or had their roof collapse. It is beyond my level of clear to explain what Scientologists believe, but this wasn’t acceptable to that belief system. Christians wanted to build giant boats, but there still wasn’t a good supply of water to make a boat move.

The Scientologists had always thought I’d make a good mark. They sent me mail. Asked me about my crimes. Asked me to watch movies with them. I was thrilled to find out we finally had the technology available to achieve spiritual freedom, but I still couldn’t afford that technology. And I like drugs. Even when I’m not using them. Still, those people were persistent. I guess it doesn’t matter if you can afford it, they’ll take your money anyway. Which is probably the argument they used to get recognition from the Feds as a proper religion. I understand that took a while.

I had spent the last several years in a hipster neighborhood going corporate. I was not a part of the original hipsterization and I fancied I wasn’t much with the corporate side, either. I was just glomming onto the haircuts to say I was one of them. I was (and am) pretty corporate. I wasn’t dirty enough, in a band enough, or around during the day enough to be one of them. I also didn’t have any money because I had made the mistake of not having rich parents who hated me by paying my rent. Assholes.

In my neighborhood there was not a lot of incentive for people to leave. They threw parties and went to shows and sold paintings that looked bad and similar. The houses were not crumbling any more than usual. There were fewer problems with skunks and coyotes. Less celebrity sightings, to be sure, but they were still out there. Starlets in white t-shirts with no bras. Men with tattoos. Men with white t-shirts and no bras. Eating expensive re-imaginings of proletariat dishes.

At the time I was seeing a girl. She had a rich father. He did not live in, nor did he approve of, Los Angeles. This was from just a little before the rain. She came from the New York area and he thought New Jersey was the right and proper place for her. But he gave her money even when she rebelled. I still don’t know what constitutes a good allowance, but I know that whatever scraps he was giving her far out-weighed any amount I had seen to that point. She decided to start a restaurant. I had met her online. I think me, meeting me online, and starting the restaurant and putting me in charge were all part of her rebellious stage. Maybe a little ridiculous of her to still act out as the rebellious daughter after graduating college and moving 4,000 some miles away. She pushed on with it, though, and it helped me immensely. It still helps me.

When I met her I had the idea it would be easy sex. She led me through everything. She talked and didn’t ask me to. She wanted to go places and do things without asking me what I thought. She even made the first few moves on me to make sex happen. When it finally did all over her shirt she was even cordial about that. Not excited, though. She must have been seeing other guys at that point. I couldn’t get her on the phone very often but I was always there for her call. Then and now my phones don’t see a lot of action. And I’ve always gotten too focused on things when I want them.

Los Angeles was for almost a century the center of the entertainment universe. People still plan on what will happen when “things get back to normal.” I liked it when someone went on television to espouse the theory that the rains were actually the rebirth and revenge of the L.A. River. Somehow Chinatown was the sacred text this knowledge drew from. Ha! That movie was stupid. I hate sheep and I hate Jack Nicholson. I don’t think the entertainers are coming back from Australia.

I was married to the girl[1] for a good long while. She had a mean streak long enough to live my life through it. I got a career, a house, a child, a car and in-laws who hated me. It was all great story fodder and made me feel important. I don’t feel important anymore but I did once. I suppose I owe a life that I lived to her. Great. If I were religious I would now start praying.

I am not a chef. I am not trained as a chef. I am not a numbers man. I never did any more mathematics than was required of me in order to graduate from college. It’s highly debatable that I have any facility to manage people or even remain friendly and/or professional with them. Well, maybe that stretches credulity to say it’s highly debatable. There is not a lot of debate on the side of the argument that says I am those things. Forgive my sportscasteristic use of language. I am a sot and at times a bully and I don’t do well to keep friends or business acquaintances. That wasn’t so hard.

I point out my traits in white shadow in order to set up what I am, or rather, what I was. I ran a rather successful restaurant where I was in charge of hiring and firing people, setting a menu, ordering stock, balancing schedules. It is nuts to think I pulled that off of my own volition. If it had been up to me when I was 29 I would have spent the last several decades doing the same thing I am doing[2] right this instant. It was all because of my wife. In spite of what you know about me to this point, fractious and self-loathing information I am putting forth, I feel it is important to note that I do not feel particularly thankful to my ex-wife for all the wonderful opportunities and travel destinations she afforded me. Affords me. I feel resentful towards her is all. Everything, every sham, every day she spent with me was motivated out of revenge. And I know, I knew, that she didn’t ever like me. Our sex life was awful and I took it because I like having bad sex more than I like only being able to masturbate. And that’s an important line of demarcation. I really prefer masturbation to intercourse, but I like to have my options open. I am a bad person. But that doesn’t make her a better person and it doesn’t mean I’m wrong to hate her. Me me me I me. There, I said it.

When it had been raining for a few months people started selling their cars and moving. It took a lot longer for a mass migration than one would imagine. People dig in and hold on. After years of hearing about property values it would be foolish not to take advantage while those values were low. Even if it was a crapshoot the foundation could withstand any more rainy days. Surprising, really, how many places outlasted their owners. In a manner of thought.

There have been technological breakthroughs that amounted to nothing. The idea of a paradigm shift is a joke. People are apes that like to kill things. That doesn’t set us apart from other apes. Neither does talking about how we feel, or even the fact that we do feel. You can’t “used-to-be” what you are now and always have been. We are apes, evolution be damned. And we still can’t stop it from raining.

Transportation in Los Angeles finally straightened out once the people left. The river came back (not long after the jackass explained the “Ethereal River”) and swamped a bunch of poor people. It isn’t prettier now because it is full and the sides aren’t made out of concrete. We still don’t have any monkeys or lilies on the river, so it is useless. There are new-age gondolas we called Aqua Taxis until they were just taxis. There are very angry and muscular looking helicopters that don’t pollute much but kill people with the same frequency as a light civil war. Almost every day, but not in droves. I am not horrified anymore. Not at the decapitations on the helicopter platforms, not at the loneliness in the world, not at starvation or drowning. Surprise is dead and so is my city.

It’s good now to see the beliefs that were prevalent among the religious and the secular are so ridiculous in hindsight and it has only been a few years. From Socrates to Constantine to David Koresh, in between from the Scopes trial and backwards, there is one universal truth that all God-fearing savages should relate to: Never trust a religious man even when he is agreeing with you. The shape of the world, the consistency of matter, the effects of global warming, the creation of the universe (twice), entertainment at home and at orgies, the infallibility of Allan Greenspan: all of these things have washed out in Los Angeles in a mere forty years. Other places, too, but I don’t go to other places enough to care what they have.

---

[1] See above (ppg 2-3).

[2] Playing with myself with one hand while typing with the other.

badly written story

Yeah, the headline is right. I don't like this. And I can't get my picture into my profile because my brain is wearing prophylactics. I'm not very fat. I'm not sure this story elucidates it's plotline or it's details very clearly.

The Most Boring Girl In The World

I didn’t wake up to the phone ringing. I really only heard it ring one time. I knew it had been ringing when I got out of the shower, but I didn’t touch it. I assumed it was my brother calling. He must have made it back to Los Angeles with every intention of re-casting our loving crack home from a few years earlier. I couldn’t understand the message that was left on my machine, it just said “Collect call walla walla jail.”

I can’t remember the name of the girl I was going to see. She had told me something in her email. I knew it then, but it’s gone. She’d posted something on craigslist about meeting up for lunch. She had never tried some local favorite that she had always meant to try and that I had never tried even though I meant to. I sent her a picture. She sent me a picture. It was all very agreeable.

I had just broken up with a long term (2+ years) girlfriend and wanted something to do. Needed to make some announcement to myself that the end had indeed been met. We’d broken up at least a dozen times and gotten back together within a week every time. Well, it had been more than a week this time. And we hadn’t spoken. Not even e-mailed. It was over.

It never seems like a good idea to me to show up too early for anything. Especially if that anything involves a girl. I’m so obviously desperate there’s no reason to play it up. Unfortunately, after I’d parked my car I still had 15 minutes to kill. I went and sat down at a bus stop and watched people go by. I saw a brown-haired girl and avoided eye contact because she looked cute. I’m a winner like that. The thought flashed in my mind that it might be the girl I was meeting, but (even though her picture didn’t have these features) I had expected a moustache or, at least, a hair lip.

After a couple of minutes I decided it was better to be early and desperate than to be on time and sweating, so I got out of the sun and trudged the block over. There was a little bit of a line but the brown-haired girl from earlier was at the counter with an empty seat. She saw me, looked me over and I realized this was, after all, my date for lunch. I introduced myself, “Is you’re name…?”

She told me her name and the universe seemed loving and giving. She had the kind of name no one could forget once they hear it. She didn’t write it down in her email to me because everyone mispronounced it and besides, she had given me her nickname, at the very least. Oh, well, of course I understood. You wouldn’t want awkward introductions.

Have you seen the menu? Do you know what you’re ordering? We had both studied the menu intensely because, well, we didn’t have anything to say to each other just yet. Neither one of us was trying very hard but I wasn’t worried.

She ordered something and I ordered something. Neither one of us was thrilled with the other’s plate. Just as well, she announced. She had just gotten over mono. I wasn’t thrilled with that either but let it go. Good story? No, she didn’t want to tell.

We ate and dawdled. Talked easily. Conversation good enough to keep going but not opening too many doors. I told her I was a writer. A fallen film student and hope-to-be novelist. This brightened her up. She told me about how she had just gone to Europe to study… something. And she had stayed somewhere old. It might even be famous. I thought this would be a door to adventure. I pursued this line.

While she was in Europe, the first two weeks it rained so she didn’t get to do much. Then, one night she went to a club with her friend! They didn’t meet anyone, nobody bought them drinks, and they left. The next day she had a cold. She felt bad but kept about her studies. That was the reason she was there. But she was tired the whole time. She slept most of four weeks. Before she came back to America she went to a doctor. The doctor told her she had mono.

This is a general outline of the story. It went on much longer than this, filled in with colorful details of not doing anything. Which was a really great conversation. By the end I had my face in my hand and wasn’t saying anything. Poor girl. She could taste the disappointment. When we got up to pay, I got the whole check and reached out warmly to shake her hand. Yeah, we should totally do something again and stuff. Great.

I walked away, got in my car, and promptly forgot her name. She’s pretty, she’ll be okay, I guess. I will never call her again but someone will. About an hour after I got home my phone rang. My ex-girlfriend calling. No apologies, no re-ups accepted! I resolved to myself to stand strong before answering.

“You are the worst person in the world!” It turned out it was her calling from jail. She’d gotten a DUI the night before and thought I’d be the one to bail her out. I guess from her side of the phone they kept telling her I was rejecting the charges. So that’s what happens when the collect call meets the voicemail. Fascinating. Ah, well, certainly no reconciliations now. She had finally broken down and called her mother. If I remember correctly she threatened to send someone over to beat my ass. The final nail in the coffin was placed by the cops and hammered home by the most boring girl in the world. I took a nap and then went to a friend’s house to watch football.

altar boy post

I don't have any intention of keeping this title. But it is what it is for now. The names are not their real names. Any and all comments would be welcome.

The Story of My Religion

I was born under the most Catholic of circumstances. I am the youngest child in a family of ten. The seventh son dimension plays more to gypsy magic than anything I’ve ever heard in the lore of the world’s largest religion but I was born in a Catholic hospital. My mother is descended from conquistadors (though maybe not the most ambitious of that ilk) and my father from Irish folks. I went to Catholic schools from the time I started to the day I graduated high school. I am confirmed.

When I was in grade school I was an altar boy. I tell the joke now that I felt a lot of peer pressure to have sex because my friends all started so young but I don’t have any memories of anything bad happening to me in that time. I remember being sort of creeped out by the priests (and the nuns) at my school but I’m not sure that isn’t an ordinary function of growing up. Being creeped out by adults/authority figures, I mean. I also distrusted any peer of mine who put too much effort into school or church.

My brothers put it into my head early that anything wrong you could get away with would probably be fun. We had a hidden bottle of whiskey somewhere. We shoplifted candy. I stole a tape for my brother’s birthday once so I could take the money to spend on some other long since forgotten treasure. Probably football cards. I got into a fight once so that I could show off to my brothers as we walked home from school. Well, I punched a kid anyway. He was older than me and sort of a bully so I felt good about it.

I dreaded being an altar boy. I knew I was stuck with it as soon as third grade started. I hated school and I hated church and altar service somehow seemed to combine the two. I had to get up even earlier on weekdays and go to church up to 5 times a week.

There was a meeting to indoctrinate the newbies. I found out who among my classmates had crazy, religious parents. It was a fraternity of shame to my way of thinking. Kids grew my esteem by appearing none to eager to be in the church that night. It occurred to me, also, that the same kids who I saw at abortion protests were here with me. It amazes me now how zealous you can appear as a child without really believing anything. We got smocks and learned to tie ropes around them. We learned how to light candles and turn pages in the Bible. They told us how to walk solemnly and wash the priest’s hands after Blessed Sacrament. We were shown around the sacristy, where the wine was, where the priests hung out before going onstage, etc. It felt like doom walking out of the building. A new school year was starting next week and this was coming right along with it.

I wasn’t mistaken in the notion that being an altar boy was going to be a horror show. I really did hate it. I hated opening the book. I hated waking up early. I hated having any responsibility at all. And I still hated church. My brothers showed me early on that it was easy to steal wine before bringing it out. It didn’t taste bad to me. I didn’t get loaded on it but there were stories of kids that did. Looking back it’s probable that the priests were complicit in this scheme. Culpable, even.

There are two priests, Father Andrew and Father Richards, that tower over the rest of my recollections from altar service. Father Andrew was the young, hipster priest. He brought candy to church and gave it to kids. He took the altar boys to King’s Dominion in the summer. He had once set a Guinness World Record for riding a roller coaster the most consecutive times without going crazy and jumping off. Father Richards was the pastor. He was stern and angry. As far as anyone could tell he didn’t like kids at all. His red hair and orange eyebrows must have been a physical representation of the fire and brimstone that churned in his imagination. He scared people. He scared me. He still does.

When I first started being an altar boy, I wasn’t too sure about the idea of stealing wine or communion wafers. Not that it seemed like a bad idea to have those commodities, god knows why, but because it seemed like the priests were eternally hovering around the room with the refrigerator. It would be suicidal. It’s impossible (isn’t it?) that the priests would be allowed to spank children, pull down their pants and spank their bare asses, when some of these kids belonged to lawyers and politicians. But I’m pretty sure that was one of the things I feared. I don’t know what else it could have been. Cops? Grounding?

Whenever it was that I figured out it was okay to sip from the cheap wine (was the blood of Christ made from the urine of a wine-o whose preferences ran towards rubbing alcohol?), I took to it quickly. I got used to drinking from the bottle that wasn’t going to be used. I even added water once in a while to keep the level the same. The network of altar boys had stories of friends who had been drunk and gotten away, boys that had been drunk and been caught, goodie-goodie no-account jerks that were secretly sauced half the time they served. There was discussion among the lot of us as to whether or not any of the priests were the wiser for our shenanigans. Whether or not the priests could do anything if they knew. If getting caught might not be a bad way to have your parents stop sending you to altar service or even, please god let us all hope, have you transferred to another school. There were discussions about Saturday morning cartoons. I have no recollection of any conversation ever condemning the use of alcohol in the changing rooms. Maybe a joke here and there about sinning and burning in hell, but no piety.

I didn’t have any friends from other schools as a child. I barely had any friends in school. I don’t think I developed any particular self-esteem issues until later in life, I just didn’t socialize that much. Still, it was a secret goal my whole life, even well into high school, to transfer schools. Something seemed so exotic and fresh and open about another school. Likely I could not have had a worse situation for myself than to transfer schools. But I dreamed it all the same. Different kids to hang out with. Different, prettier girls. Maybe it would even be a public school with no nuns.

Sometimes in your life you do something that sticks with you. You encounter some presence that doesn’t imprint itself immediately with a “why” but which somehow, nonetheless, becomes important. Either as an image or as a feeling.

We were sent into the church two by two. Every mass during the week required two altar boys and on Sunday there would be three of us. We had a schedule posted each month that told us what days we would be serving. Some of the boys were notorious for not showing up. Some of the boys were obnoxious jerks that really believed in religion. Some of them were just regular dorks that you could get along with. Some were a combination of traits.

I had gauged the current schedule properly. It was a Saturday morning and my partner had not shown. I was going to be serving alone. It was fine by me. I would stumble through it with Father Richards. He would sneer at me. He would look disdainful. I wouldn’t care and then I would walk home.

Everything went according to plan. He sneered. I turned my head down to look serious. I went into the sacristy and took off my robe, laughed to myself (I’ve always secretly and not-so-secretly enjoyed it when I mess something up), and noticed the wine left out. I looked into the priest room and saw robes flying about and could hear the movement of Father Richards. I had some time to get in a swig or two of briny, dry, spit-lubricated wine. I pulled the stopper out and drank of it. Mmmm, blessed wine. I was taking a full slug when I heard feet moving over the marble flooring. I put the bottle down as fast as I could and closed it, but he was in the room by the time I was done. Here I would confront face to face what seemed like some sort of certain death. I looked back saucer-eyed. I didn’t say a word, tried to act normal. He surprised me by smiling.

“Why don’t you finish it off? There isn’t that much left?”

I smiled. I declined the offer and he walked back into his quarters. I had gotten off with no repercussions. I walked out of the church and walked home. I was made of Teflon.

Later that day I related my peril and salvation to my brothers. They were a little stunned the same way I was. It was good news. A few weeks later, the story must have gotten around; two boys were punished in some unknown way that made them cry when they openly swilled from the crystal containing Christ’s essence. The boys came out crying. Father Richards was not, contrary to my first-hand knowledge, a very nice guy. He really let them have it. My faculty for language might not have had the question posed as such but I wondered about the duplicity of the man. How had it been alright for me and not those two older boys? Did he just think they were pricks and I was an okay guy?

This story was never something I considered pivotal in my life. It did not send me into a spiral of questioning. I was at that point, if anything, well on my way to a life of smugly assured atheism. If God and Jesus and all those angels existed they were going to have to convince me on my day of reckoning that there was any reason for We-The-People-On-Earth to understand or even wonder over their plans for us. Still, I had this scene in the back of my head for a long time of Father Richards just kind of smiling at me. I hadn’t attached a particular significance to it, just held onto it.

One day a few years ago, when the stories about Catholic priests fondling and molesting boys en masse (no pun intended) were all over the front pages, I wondered aloud to my brother Tom whether or not any of our friends and brothers had been molested. He told me that it was more likely than not. He told me about the ex-model priest who committed suicide. There were lots of arrests of priests we had known.

I asked about Father Andrew. It always seemed to me that the “cool” priest was more likely to molest kids than any of the others. He hadn’t been arrested but he had been on the news for having visions of Mary. Father Richards got arrested, though. He had been a major pedophile. After he left our church he went somewhere not to far away and molested a bunch of altar boys.

I don’t trust grand pronouncements. I have trouble planning one day to the next, let alone budgeting for bills, and don’t even consider longer term ramifications. Still, it would take a catastrophic change in the chemistry of my mind to ever consider supporting the church. I have left God, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Church and all the clergy far behind me in my systems of thought. I will likely not die under the same circumstances of Catholicism under which I came into the world.