Posts tagged writing

     I don’t understand you people. Coffee is terrible. I don’t drink the stuff normally but I woke up for work after not sleeping very much the night before and needed something to keep me from riding the train in a circle all morning. I know its probably my fault for only eating a fist full of pita chips before leaving the house, but all the coffee did was make me super jittery and far too aware of my eyeballs than I am comfortable with.  Is this a thing coffee people deal with all the time? No thank you.

     Its why I could never get into drugs and stuff.  I don’t like change and not being in full command of my corporeal form.  I have enough trouble with kinesthesia, always swing my arms into chairs and around corners. Its a bit like my attitudes towards driving. When I am behind the wheel I can pull dick moves and do something dumb and I don’t break a sweat, but when I’m in the passenger seat every little thing makes me think the car will flip over a cliff. 

     I won’t begrudge you drug dummies your god given right to put anything he placed on this earth into your orifices, it’s just not my cup of tea (seriously, how great is tea though, friends).  I’m already pretty weird and have a very active imagination and enjoy animated television without the need of assistance.  Keep coffee away from me though, its not good for the civets who have to shit it out.  

     Dudes dying sucks! There are a couple of things that truly freak me out, that’s drowning and the thought of what happens when you die. The first is mostly because I swallowed a bunch of water once as a kid when attempting the deep end in a pool and now don’t want to touch the stuff, the other is more of a deep contemplation 1000 yard stare kind of thing.  

    I like to tell this anecdote to people now and then.  I have moments in that weird window between being truly awake and fully asleep where I have strange random thoughts. Sometimes it drifts into what the powers of the universe truly are or just simply if this strange sensation of being a floating thought bubble  is the feeling you get at the end. Is death a stage blackout on life you sense or more like a drunk blackout for all eternity where you never know about it?  Is Jesus and Krishna waiting for me with a list of my deeds?  Do I get to come back as a falcon or am I a person again and have to deal with all this shit over again? Someone stop me I’m doing it again!

     I’m not much of a church person but I don’t knock anyone for finding something in it for themselves.  I have a sense of the universe being run by actions and reactions that we just don’t see around us. You can call that quantum physics, call that god or the big G. I just know in the grand scheme of things we are tiny bits floating around surrounded by powers we can’t perceive, and freaks me the math out.  My brain tells me its all just electricity that goes out when we die, my heart desperately wants it to be so much more (and my body, my body is telling me yes. I don’t see nothin’ wrong, with a little bump and grind. Sorry 90’s PTSD), or at least give me a chance to insert one more coin and start again.  Its the mystery and the never knowing till its happening that keeps me half awake at night.   

     You know who loves McDonald’s? Drunk middle class white people at 2 in the morning.  I’ve studied the habits of the DMCWP up close and personal like a nature documentarian and as sometimes befalls the naturist I became a part of the story.

     Now let me explain, I only found myself in this McD’s because it was in fact 2 am and I knew it would be the only thing open on my way back home and damn if I was going to eat only 2½ meals that day.  So I shuffle inside and already knew I was in for a treat when one of the females in the party in front of me ordered a happy meal and after the fact was happily surprised that she was going to get a toy with it, only remembering when she bumped into the display of which ones they had that commercial season (as an aside: a party is the correct term for a group of DMCWP, like Party of Five or “How many in your party?” or “look at that bachelorette party passing dildos around during Zoo Lights”). 

     I go up order my chicky sams and a burger for the homeless dude at the bus stop (thank you I am a special soul).  I wait for my three things, which is taking longer than usual because, and even I can testify, ordering two Big Macs and all the fries they have ready seems like a sound plan when you are good drunk, so that happens about seven times before I order.  While standing back the second party of DMCWP in the joint engages me, I have compromised their natural habitat and now must leave as little mark as possible, so I humor them. One guy remarks on the Ninja Turtles shirt I was wearing and THE QUESTION: “Which is your favorite?” comes up.  I pick Donatello because I am currently writing about all this in a blog post, so that kind of explains a lot. This guy picks Leonardo, but his choice is based solely on weapons, rookie mistake hombre, everyone knows who the brains of the outfit really is

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     Last Friday was turning out be a shit day so I skipped town and decided to watch The Dark Knight Rises in the middle of the day. I’ll probably see it 20 times on screen, dvd and tv in the end so what was one time by myself really going to matter? This isn’t a review of TDKR. Everyone is going to see it eventually and being the third one made by Nolan’s best friends you should know already if you are going to like it or not (of course you are).

    No. This is a post to the guy who walked into the theater smelling like a Jamaican spare room. The guy who decided to either get super baked before the showtime or just had weed in all of his pockets. First off, thank you for sitting a few seats away from me in the same row so that I could smell good times I wasn’t having every ten minutes or so. Second, get in touch with me and get me some of that shit because it was skunk as shit and must have been the stickiest of all ickys to cling to a person for a whole three hour film, plus whenever you actually sparked up.  Did all the theater employees just take one whiff of you and give you that slow assuring nod you see in movies?  How fast did your popcorn last, cuz I can barely get through all the trailers before most of it is gone, you must have hit bottom when the lights went out.

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     What a terrible title for a blog post but I’m sticking with it anyway. Its become pretty obvious that this is pretty much supposed to be adult life now.  Signing into Facebook these days is a tidal wave of wedding photos, engagement announcements, and statuses about vacations to shitty places like Vegas and bike trail country. If I get asked for I.D. to drink anywhere its only because the place is too legit and actually follows the law and doesn’t wink at underage drinkers.  I check my bank account like all the damn time now.  I can count on my hands the number of people I can still ask how school is going, and without the protective bosom of a school its just the harsh dried up teat of the real world out there.

    I know I reached the age of adult for a while now, hell in another age I could have been the legal king of France while still holding my carriage learner’s permit, but I don’t think I’ll ever be “Adult”. I can never be a super serious, business oriented, family raising, housing association member that is life as an American Adult. The Earth pretty much wants to kill us and finding a job these days sucks ass but I’m still all “Whatever, dude. What’s on Cartoon Network?”. I have no sense of activism despite all time civil discord. My view of politics is that most people in it are shite Type A personalities who sold their humanity to appeal to jugheads and anyone I actually might like turns way crazy and hangs out with Alaskans or ends up on T.V . for not being crazy enough (we miss you Gen. Wesley Clark). In short, no thanks. 

    I’m not clamoring for marriage and children are stupid and ugly (especially yours, boom roasted). Kids cost money, they get in your way and they break your shit (I had that Power Ranger that flips its head around for years and it took you a month to break it you little demon). I don’t care for gambling and steaks taste just as good outside of the desert so the only reason I’d really want to go to Vegas is to pull a Fear and Loathing and trash the place before I high-tail it back to L.A. none the wiser.  I watch cartoons with DC characters in them, I still like playing with sharp blades, I bought suspenders just because I thought it would be fun not out of any fashion sense.  How do you tell your mother she’s being put in a home because she can’t stay in your extra room with the army men sets (“Where is the Battle of Shiloh supposed to go then mom”)?

    Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to arrest my development, give it 30 to life, and turn my post about Japanese Iron Chef into some kind of stand-up routine.

(White people be all like “I’m going to turn those radishes into a chilled soup”, while Japanese people be all like “FISH PASTE!”).

      There are three moments in Pulp Fiction that I love the most. In order of time length: When Marsellus Wallace hears about Butch disappearing (“If Butch goes to Indochina, I want a nigger waiting in a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his ass”), the whole story about the watch as told by Christopher Walken (“He’d be damned if any slopes gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass”), and then the scene at Jack Rabbit Slim’s.

      Pulp Fiction is like an old childhood friend to me, we had it in the house back when VHS tapes were the only way to watch movies, you might remember those things as the bricks you make hipster bookshelves out of. I’m pretty sure I didn’t really like the movie the first time I saw it because I was too young to understand any of the things they were talking about or what a gimp was. But there was always something cool about this retro restaurant with the cool name I liked so much. Retro diners should be lame and only for rubes but I love ‘em. It could be because all we ever listened to in the family van was the Oldies station. Perhaps I always like movie trivia and liked finding out about the dead movie stars on the wall.  Or maybe I just like to eat cheeseburgers in a convertible parked indoors.  Whatever the case count me in Mrs. Mia Wallace.

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    For some god awful reason I thought taking all the sarcasm and bitter humor I save for facebook updates and tumblr captions should be brought to the public so I wasn’t the only one laughing at them. Thus my goal of making my way into Open Mic nights here in Chicago.  I wrote a few things down I thought were clever, looked up some places and went out into the world. Which is how I ended up at Shambles on a Monday night. I was in no rush to make a fool of myself in front of people so my search for open mics usually had the following criteria: can I get there without getting mugged and would I rather eat chicken wings at home than drag my ass out the door that night. I foolishly ate a subway sandwich for dinner making the second part obsolete and I had been to Shambles before to get blasted like a normal person should have been doing.

    My limited experience with open mics so far taught me at least one thing, sign up early or tell jokes to the bartender. So when it said 7:30 sign-up I was there on the dot. Well more like 7:33, a drastic oversight as the list was up to 15 people already. They say stand-ups are a tight-knit group and they are not shittin’ you. Helen Keller could have spotted the group of regulars at this show, piled into the corner of the bar patio making themselves laugh. I made friendly with a couple of other newbies from the ‘burbs who looked like Nick Frost and Bob Ross. we joked around to ease the nervousness and I downed a pint to loosen up.

    In a neighborhood where people ride skinny bikes wearing even skinnier jeans it was no surprise I was in for the Hipster Comedy Tour. Four people talked about being at SXSW, the hipster hajj to hipster Mecca.

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      First of all let me answer a question I know you must be burning to ask. I only just recently watched “Hanna: because I have 5 friends and 3 of those are imaginary. We spend a lot of time fighting the Jabberwocky and can’t make it to a lot of movies when they hit theaters. Curiosity sated, lets get on with it. “Hanna”. This movie is just the right amount of bonkers for me. You take a plot about a teenage girl who can kill ten grown men easily and you have to make it somewhat insane or else we just cry fake.  People are murdered left and right and Germans be their weird selves all over this piece.  Below be spoilers of a movie already on HBO, deal with it.

    The movie already just throws you into it like this is all perfectly fine. Saoirse Ronan as Hanna, a name I could begin to pronounce but my eyes would roll back and I would somehow have snakes in my hand, looks like Tilda Swinton and Ziggy Stardust created life on Mars. She is an ivory elfing from the stars She traipses through the woods of Finland all end of civilization style and kills a deer with an arrow and a headshot. I am in “Hanna” no need to sell the sizzle I want the steak. Eric Bana shows up to murder our darling star child, but its all okay because it was just the father-daughter dance at the caribou ball.  Hanna goes to the Academy of Encyclopedias and Killology. Then Bana lets her loose one day to be captured by “the Man” and leaves the woods wearing a suit and a backpack. Efficient, as a suit gets you anywhere but deer hides only work on Casual Fridays. Hanna murders some soldiers for the hell of it and gets captured quietly. The saucy minx Cate Blanchett mentally kicks a few guys in the nads before watching Hanna kill her poor foolish double. Never go into the room with the super-child.

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     Yes boys and girls it is true, the real life Hong Kong Phooey is an equal opportunity racist.  There has been no race of man that Jackie Chan has not beaten up or humiliated in his movies. I was recently watching some of Mr. Chan’s more vintage films over the weeks and realized a few things. The first being that all women in a classic Jackie Chan film are the epitome of broad-dom, the second is that years of communism have rendered Chinese humor to the lowest form. The third is that Jackie Chan will kick the shit out everyone he sees, as long he stumbles blindly into a scenario in which they are somehow trying to get rich quick and he just wants to stop them, ‘cuz you know communism does that to you.

       I’ve seen Jackie Chan beat up all kinds of nationalities, from the Dutch, Africans, Muslims, I assume some Jews, Koreans, Germans, Russians, and assloads of Americans (including Indians). I almost sure he’s beaten up some Mongols and Japanese, just being all Chinese like but if its two races he loves to beat up on its the British and surprisingly other Chinamen. Its hard to tell who Jackie likes beating up more, but I’ll be willing to bet the farm that if given a choice he’d jump kick the Queen and not the emperor. This guy’s beaten up so many Brits I’m surprised he’s not a Nazi. I understand beating up Brits in Hong Kong, they don’t belong there, but this guy had the balls to go to Britain to kick even more of their asses, but what a surprise he also beat up other Chinese people while he was there. He’s even beat up South Africans showing his disdain for British descendants as well.

       Don’t let the bumbling attitude fool you, Jackie Chan wouldn’t think twice to beat up you or your children, usually with your own dining chair as he is known to do, no matter what race or creed you are.  The guy beat up Berber Muslims for god sakes, and those guys take crap from nobody.

     This weekend I went to a showing of the Nutcracker (in hopes of someone getting a crack at my nuts, double wink “saucy”). After Black Swan I thought it was cool to enjoy ballet productions now that everyone knows how completely insane the dancers are and that the men are in it to make women sleep with them to “get into character”. Only thing gay about ballet is Oscar-winning lesbianism. So I planned a night at the ballet and had no regrets about it.

     Everyone knows the or is kind of familiar with the Nutcracker. No need for a review of a local production. I always loved Fantasia and orchestral music in general to begin with so it was cool to here the familiar tunes, even when the racially insensitive Disney mushrooms were replaced with racially insensitive dance costumes. Once the first half of children being dicks and mice running around being dicks was over, with a cannon rolling out and blasting those filthy mice, the rest of the Nutcracker was one Fantasia sequence after the other. Different ethnics showing off their moves like it was You Got Served: Back When They Were Actual Servants.  

     The adult performers in this show were pretty good, as good as someone who only knows ballet from television screens can judge, but that’s not what warmed my soul and grew my heart 3 sizes larger.  The company employed its amateur child members to fill out the kid roles instead of using tiny elfin women like I always assumed. I’ll be the first to say that little children annoy the hell out of me and almost everything they do is stupid. However these were little kids who had patience and determination to perform with adults who took their shit serious.  These kids were taking part in something that was centuries old and didn’t involve them “making it clap”. They were exposed to and I hope in many cases enjoyed music that had nothing to do with Justin Beiber or stepping dubs.  I saw parents and children in the audience gleeful at some Russian dude’s drugged fueled idea of Christmas. And for 40 minutes all was right with the world and I forgot what a terrible future the other billions of young people had in store for us.