Lower Level 30

I Think . . .

2011-09-29T08:22:00.002-05:00

. . . my last posting was about having to pay another year's internet dues to keep this URL .

Then I never really posted again.

I got an email telling me I've been billed for another year of domain service, so once again we're at the place where I'll feel the need to use this rather than throw money away.

So . . . what's new?

Getting married in two weeks. It'll be a western-themed affair in a Chinese restaurant.

A few pages from a script I wrote (and posted here) were shot and will hopefully interest someone into helping finance the rest. You can check out the trailer at: www.bloodontheplain.com

The Fiancee (formerly The Girlfriend) and I bought a place and are now nestled in lovely southern banks of Edgewater.

We're honeymooning through the Southern US territory so if anyone has some suggestions about towns to see, I'm all eyes. (Birmingham? Is there anything going on in Birmingham?)

Hope You're Well,

A.v.E

So There I Was . . .

2011-01-04T09:16:00.002-06:00

. . . smoking a cigarette in between tacos and beer at a south loop bar. To the left was a storefront window into the Xtreme Sport Fitness Center where New Year's resolutions were being honored. To the right, another window. This one displaying rows of people in sweats jumping ropes and stretching before their boxing fitness class began.

I went back inside and ordered another round.

The car battery was still charging and it would be at least an hour before I could go test it and see if I could drive home.

Otherwise, it would be the train and the hope that my car isn't ticketed or worse for being left overnight in the garage.

Follow me on Twitter . . .

2011-01-04T09:07:00.003-06:00

uptownsinclair.

2011-01-04T09:07:00.001-06:00

After the clerk looked at the things I'd brought to the counter he asked if I ever think about how my life didn't turn out the way I thought it would and if that made me sad.

Ever realize . . .

2010-10-15T08:59:00.001-05:00

. . . that you've been giving the same response to the same question for so long that even you don't realize when it becomes a complete lie. I've always said that I keep things healthy by only smoking one pack a week. When I found the carton I bought two weeks ago was empty, I realized this is wrong.

When people ask how long I've lived in Chicago, I say a couple years. According to the plaque hung in my cube, I've been here for at least six.

Just kidding. There is no plaque.

Warm-Up . . .

2010-10-13T11:52:00.002-05:00

. . . twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet floor.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet floor.

I'm still working on Blood on the Plain, but am starting to tire of it. Normally, I'd put it away and come back when the mood strikes me, but I gave my word to someone that it'd be complete by the end of the month. Someone wants to make the fucking thing so I'm left watching a kid I'm in no way able to care for.

I'm trying to nail the art of the long sentence. As a warm-up and to stave off the feelings of neglect for this blog, I'm going to work on expadning one passage here before you.

James Dodge enters one hovel and is met with a knife dug into his forearm. He stares at the hilt dangling from out his arm then takes in his attacker whose wife crouches in the corner, sobbing as she clutches their child. Three shots are heard.

James Dodge tears through and past the burlap covering into the single-bulb lit shack where a woman's sob is heard before the Mexican swings a long blade which is caught between the divining bones of wrist and forearm and pushed through like an arrowshot until the chipped blade tears out the underside of skin and the hilt presses full against the surface of arm which Dodge lifts to examine as if adjusting for a meniscus or some parallax perspective before dismissing the findings as inconclusive and raising his sidearm and firing into the chest of his attacker sending the screams of both the mother and the child she's carrying into a roar of agony and fear which is silenced by another pull of the trigger before finally a third.

I fucking love long sentences.

Last Week . . .

2010-10-06T08:52:00.002-05:00

. . . I came up with two of the greatest cobbler jokes, ever.

The first was born of the realization that cobbler is very similar to clobber and the wonder if ever there was a funny mishap from the similarity. "Hey, I wanted to get these loafers resoled- AHHHHHHHH!"

I told this joke to The Girlfriend who quickly changed the subject. I then repeated it and she merely sighed.

The following day, my friend asks me if I ever get my boots worked on and who I'd suggest. I tell him about my cobbler on Van Buren and to make certain he doesn't go to the clobberer next door. There was s chuckle.

Cut to Friday! I'm telling a friend about an Apple Festival I'll be attending in Kendallville, IN. She tells me she's going to one in Queens. And that hers in Queens will be a better Apple Fest, as the world's largest cobbler will be on display. I ask, "So this giant will be fixing everyone's shoes?"

Killed.

Yeah, this blog is now devolving into unfunny jokes I told.

Enjoy that.

Today . . .

2010-09-30T10:36:00.001-05:00

. . . is the office potluck.

Everyone brought store pie.

Time to Re-Up . . .

2010-09-29T10:09:00.002-05:00

The web host tells me it's time to pay for another year of lowerlevel30.com

I figure if I'm paying for something, it's best to might as well use it.

Last week, I returned home from an after work function with a sack of dbl dhzbrgs and a pretty decent buzz. I'm shoving these things into my vile maw when The Girlfriend tells me that the next door apartment, the one that was recently vacated by its former tenants, is unlocked. I immediately give a smile, revealing teeth behind the half chewed burger. I see what she wants. Finally, some Last Tango action.

We'll lay naked and awkward on the cold floorboards. The streetlight casting a dim glow in the streaks and long shapes through the blinds and across the walls of the outer dark. Every sound our bodies make will create an echo that resonates through the empty space like a concert hall at full-tilt. We'll be exposed and nervous. Concerned but excited. Decency will wain in this place that belongs to no one and is subject to the rules of no other. What we do in here will defy even the perimeters of our our own bond and of our own agreements. To the other. And unto ourselves.

Or so I thought.

Instead, we compared their kitchen to ours and debated which is the most efficient in terms of space and if that efficiency is at the sake of convenience. Which, I think it is. Which is why we're staying.

When I returned, my dbl chzbrgs had grown cold. And delicious.

"This Suitcase Contains . . . "

2010-08-09T12:22:00.005-05:00

This weekend, The Girlfriend and I embarked on another project from our list of things we've talked about without ever making definite plans: A Yard Sale.

I brought a spacious one-bedroom's worth of things when I moved in, most of which went directly into our storage unit or remained littered about the dining room, bedroom, and car until this weekend. We slapped price tags on these unwanted goods, set out two camping chairs and sat in the perfect Saturday morning, drinking, smoking and reading as strangers went through our things.

Being people who would list their yard sale knowledge at expert, we knew those pitfalls to avoid with a sale.

The first is to keep yourself behind the fence. People don't like coming onto private property. Even on first dates and shit, it's always weird to cross that threshold of where the public belongs and where the residents keep. So ours was right off the path and visible from the bustling traffic a block away.

The next was to come-up with makeshift tables to keep out wares off the ground. Nothing is more of a detriment to sales than people having to squat or bend down to look at those goods piled atop a sleeping bag. I'd found chairs and boards which I laid, one atop the other, to provide a waist high suspension for our wares. There was no awkward squatting, our customers deserve better than that.

I think the most crucial component was our seller's composure. We kept our noses buried in our books, looking up only at to take a drink or pull a drag off our cigarette. Nothing is worse than being watched as you silently judge a person based on those belongings to help get rid off. Or when you touch an item only to hear the owner tell you how they acquired the item and why they're selling it.

Actually that's wrong. The Girlfriend manned-up and made some forty brownies for the sale. One free with purchase.

Our low-key approach worked wonders as a good half of our items were gone by mid-morning. Of special note was the cumbersome furniture that I would have rather set afire to than have to relocate. When we set up shop, we noticed a yellow moving truck parked in front of the building. We worried that it belonged to a comer-or-goer who would be moving stuff directly through our sales floor. Turns out that the truck had been emptied out the night before and even better - this new addition to our apartment bought all of our furniture as we were setting it out.

It's so hard not to look at someone as they stop before an item. What of yours could the be interested in? You guess at what they see and are almost bummed when they put it back. Stupid rejection.

My CD collection drew the most conversation from patrons, as those in my age group had the exact same albums and bought them wistfully remarking on their first year of college - or the record store they once worked out. One stated that there wasn't a single album here that he didn't have in high school. Another girl who passed through later in the evening screeched with delight as she picked up every Vagrant records release from the labels peak (a two-week period in 2002).

My VHS collection was probably the hardest to part with. Most of the movies I'd already re-purchased in DVD and downloaded those not worth the investment - but it's the trailers that make watching a VHS fun. More often there from movies you don't even remember being released and they're sloppily chopped together with generic action music from the studio library and the sound and video quality have deteriorated to the point that they're the cinematic equivalent to the animatronic greeter at Showbiz Pizza. After laserdisc, it's the second closest format to watching a movie on vinyl. Make that third. There were those weird videodiscs that came in a plastic platter so you could never touch the disc surface. So yeah, third.

Turns out, nobody has a VCR anymore. Some guy bought my copy of The Wrong Guy (a terribly overlooked comedy written by Dave Foley). And I overheard someone remark that the movie collection was "good," but I was saddened that nobody wanted the thing that was hardest to part with. Right at close, a local staple in the Chicago horror community peddled up to see what we had. I'd recognized the guy from countless horror-movie screenings throughout Chicago, as well, The Girlfriend and I had seen him on the IFC series Film School a few months earlier. SO here he is going through my VHS collection and the attention he paid to the titles and bought eight of them was sort of the best compliment of the day.

Those titles that didn't sell, I though about holding onto - or giving them to a friend who I knew would appreciate them. But in the end, I knew I was done with them and threw them in the back of the car where they were donated at the Brown Elephant.

As the top photo illustrates, I got rid of the box of pr0n. Every guy has one. Mine had grown obsolete, what with the internetz and all. So I drew up that sign and set it out. Anytime anyone walked near it, the corners of my eyes would turn and I could feel The Girlfriend's doing the same. An older woman who bought a copy of Yahtzee! (we had six) mentioned that she was curious and made a head nod towards the case, throwing us off as we looked to wear she nodded and saw only the porn and thought that couldn't be right. But know - she was interested - just a tad too scared.

I went inside to get some more stuff I forgot to put out and when I returned the box was gone. She was smiling at me. Some older guy had been scouting the table and read the suitcase. Asked if it was real. Then took said, "I'm happy to help," and walked off into the sunset. Truth is, the porn in that case would have been deemed shitty by a fifteen-year-old.

One of the things with a yard sale is that you have to deal with your neighborhood crazies. Two ladies just came and hung out with us. Like they weren't shopping, they just sat around and kept asking questions in fractured English and all we could do was nod and start talking about something near to where they were. After they left, one returned an hour later to ask for the recipe to the brownies.

There seemed to be the career yard sale-ists who seemed to know one another from the other sales. Their routine is like this: They wake-up. Check the Craig's List postings and embark - out to hit up the sales. Their wardrobes are all ill-fitting garments which were most likely acquired at like sales. They buy books and media in bulk and I can only assume their walls are lined with such. Yet - they're normal and they're nice. The woman who bought several of my books and scoured through the clothes before finding a top that wouldn't fit around her thigh - she was genial. But she wore a pair of khaki shorts that wouldn't button yet still wore them around with a four-inch gap like a man returned from a steakhouse. There were a few free items I had laid out for the taking. Most of them were loose CDs, burnt DVDs, and empty cases. People spent twenty and thirty minutes going through these stacks and stacks of discs. A Chinese woman came and simply took all of them. Eh. It was late in the sale and I would have had to toss them out had she not taken them. Then she offered a dime on a 25 cent coin purse. Then kept picking something up before asking us why we are selling it. Fucking neighborhood crazies. God bless them.

And that was the yard sale.

Jack Be Nimble Jack Be Quick . . .

2010-08-09T11:34:00.007-05:00

. . . take a ride on the West Coast kick.

This Friday after work marks the beginning of a road trip The Girlfriend and I have talked about since we started dating, but in a way - almost felt it might be one of those things that never fully pans out. Like dropping those ten pounds, seeing Paris, or taking all that junk to Goodwill.

We envisioned a long drive set at pace determined by our own interest - with stops located at those towns we either love or always wanted to see or knew people we loved. This is that route:

Notice that it's a giant dong? Intentional.

We leave for work proceeding west towards Manitou Springs, Colorado with our endurance calling our town and time of rest. We'll stay there until Wednesday the 18th of August where we have a two-night stay in Vegas. After we amass our fortune and reputation, it's off to San Francisco where we'll stay until we tire of the town and head north for Portland and it's surrounding locales. I'm anxious to check out Powell's books and am almost certain that an entire day could be spent there before heading out to Seattle and possibly to points further north. Our only obligation is a hotel room waiting for us in Deadwood, South Dakota on the 26th of August. We hope to make it for the lighting of Mount Rushmore and to toss dice against the hoopleheads.

We've been more than fortunate to finds friends in these cities eager to have us, ans well as being eerily lucky that we have a friend who will be in Chicago during our trip who will stay at our place and take care over our cat, plants, and make sure that family of opossums don't make there way in. (If you're reading this Lee, more than four opossums and we have a problem.)

So if you, dear readers, can suggest any places of interest along or of this route - we would be more thank happy to hear it.

Sincerely,
The Managment

"If It's Not Fun to Make . . .

2010-08-09T08:46:00.003-05:00

. . . it's not fun to play."

There was a meeting several weeks ago concerning the video game. Here's what had happened:

The game was written on a certain software platform - and it was decided to change it for a platform supposedly superior. What happens is that the game is transferred to this new system where it's small problems becomes disasters. Minor glitches now take an entire day to fix. Considering that this is a project that the group has been working on for over a year - it seemed to be the last straw. People stopped showing up on Friday to work on it. When someone did decide to find the time for it, they'd find their levels were unplayable and give up out of frustration. Add to that - most of the designers were apparently talented and three have contracts with Disney which prevents them for working any longer on the game.

And so it was that vote was taken and in that vote it was decided that work on the game would be stopped. Everyone would walk away having learned something and everyone would walk away having an award-winning game under their belt. That is, everyone except the writer whose work was to be displayed in the now never to be released extended version.

This is why you don't work with nerds.

Sometime this week, I'll post the cut-screens that were developed to test the time and pace of the intro and outro.

I'm not too upset about this. Obvious, it sucks that I won't be able to see what would have happened had the game gone "out there." It's also weird still being in the office while people I've worked with are now working at a major studio, granted we're not in the same field, but still - people pursing their desires is an insult to me. It offends me.

Luckily, there's been recent interest in a short screenplay I previously posted here, The Shaft. It seems that it's showing signs of life.

More. To. Come.

A Few Weeks Back . . .

2010-07-02T09:04:00.003-05:00

. . . The Girlfriend and I went to a friend's birthday party.

This friend is of the sort who will determine the viability of a place based on whether or not they have a dance floor. Don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with dancing. It's just that by 22. 23. Most women have figured out that club dancing is just something designed by men which allows us to grind our erections on you because that's what you find sexy, no? It's the socially permissible variant of a puppy on a leg. So we're at this place in the southwest 'burbs when some song comes on suggesting the listener to "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy."

What a stupid fucking song. Especially when such a phrase can be used for good instead of bad. It could promote a level of social consciousness and awareness.

Save a tall bike, ride an ironic hipster.

Save a Prius, ride someone who doesn't get it.

Save a Smart Car, ride someone who will be killed in a mild fender-bender.

Save a motorcycle, ride a man trying to over compensate.

Save a Bonneville, ride 20-mexicans.

Save a bus, ride a black guy.

Blood on the Plain . . .

2010-06-14T09:30:00.012-05:00

Updated 6/16 - It started going somewhere I didn't like and will hopefully change if this thing makes it to a second draft, but then there's a dark light at the end of the tunnel.

Updated 6/15 - At this point I'd like to remind you, dear reader, that this is a rough first draft that's more of a free-writing exercise. There are going to be some really rough patches. Thanks. - The Management

This is what happens when I set out to write a full-length screen play in one week with no outline, notes, or idea as to what's to come.

Oh, Yeah . . .

2010-06-11T08:29:00.007-05:00

. . . I forgot I had this blog.

Quite a bit has happened in the past several weeks. Some of which I started to write about before, but was soon interrupted and left unfinished.

The last few days I've been out of the office. I've written before of my eye issues, where swelling and rock hard glands have become the norm every few months. I'm not pointing any fingers at the cause of this malady . . . cough . . . the cat . . . cough. . . but it's become an aggravating recurrence that leaves me being rude to my co-workers, pissed-off at anything that so much looks at me, and eats away at my vacation days like a yellow cartoon pie chart noshing away at tiny pellets. (I fucking hate the word nosh. Why did I just use it?)

The only pro of this ailment is that I get to wear novelty eye coverings. Last time was an eye patch that illicited fear from anyone in the same room as me. Today, it's the giant aviator sunglasses whose pitch-black frames resemble those of a champion poker-player rather than a lackey of the tax industry. Thus far in my sole office-hour, I've been standing up at random intervals and breathing heavily - like a man whose existence is tied to the face of the next card.

And with that, I've adopted the style and manner of a drunken Scotty Nguyen:

I sent this video to my friend, David. He replied with a story that Scotty Nguyen told to a table.

When he was fleeing Vietnam in his youth, he and his brother were on a boat for 22 days with a group of refugees. They survived off condensation, but without food they were slowly starving to death. Nguyen's little brother had gotten sick and it was assumed there'd be no recovery. The group had decided that they'd eat the sick child the next day. When Nguyen was told of the plan, he replied, "Yeah, baby, let's eat my brother."

I Know It's Been . . .

2010-05-19T09:55:00.004-05:00

. . . quiet around here.

But I've got something brewing. Something big. Brewing.

In the meantime, here's a bunch of Facebook status (long u, indicating plural). Again, no new content.

"I was at the Starbucks Loyola, waiting on the restroom, when a teenage couple exited in tandem. I entered and was immediately scared to touch anything. My only consolation being the hope that at some point, that girl's self-respect kicked in and she said, "If we're doing this, you're not sitting there."

"This Cinco de Mayo, as you marinate shallots and fire up the VHS copy of American Me, don't lose track of what it is you're celebrating: On this day, 10,000 years ago, the Spanish settlers found the the image of the Jesus who, while perched atop a cactus, held a snake in his foot and ate of it. This is how the Spaniard...s knew where to build Mexico (present day Delaware)."

"Killing time at a Wal-Mart in Ford City, I filled out an electronic job app at the kiosk near the mens room. I now have an interview at 11."

"Do you know they're laughing at you over in Evergreen Park? They are laughing at you. You want to know why? Because cosmetics is bleeding. Yeah, you might have given electronics a nudge in the right direction when you put the spic movies behind glass, but how do you expect to maximize a turn when you got $12 eyeliner ...pens in the corner next to the formula? When I was walking in here I saw Diet Dr. Pepper cubes on an endcap. Nobody that shops here drinks Diet Dr. anything. You take those cubes, put them where they belong in Home and Garden, and you make The Thunder work for you." Are you scared? Good, you should be! I will drag you and this whole goddamn store, kicking and screaming into the modern world!"

"To the person who hit my car before speeding off into the night: You couldn't hit the side that was already dented? And how do you hit someone on Winnemac, west of Ashland!? If this were east, I'd not only understand, but I'd be thankful you didn't set my car afire. To do what you did, would require drifting more than Woody Guthrie!"

"Tomorrow is Dark Lord Day. The Girlfriend is excited to pick-up the highly coveted Dark Lord Ale. I'm excited because I found a Godfather's Pizza located 26-miles away in Merrillville, IN. And to think, everyone laughed at me for saving all those buffet coupons from the DCHS newspaper."

"It's a goddamn Godfather's Express!!! What is this, the end of a Twilight Zone episode!?"

"I'm not sure who was officitaing, but listening to it this morning, it was obvious to me The Devil was completely robbed. There's no way Johnny outplayed him!"

"Remember: Lock the restroom door behind you. As that sad patron at The Edgewater learned, I don't care if there's only room for one. I will join you. And I will be talkative."

"No not negotitation, Angel. I think you misread the e-mail. This is the salary negation meeting."

"A conference call without me is a waste of everyone's time."

2009 in Movies . . . Part Two

2010-05-11T09:17:00.011-05:00

This is the continuation of a list (found here) I threw together in January. I'd meant to get around to in but was soon distracted by something. I can't remember what it was. Probably something shiny. I decided to post it today rather than generate new content. . . . ENJOY!

Away We Go

I don't like Sam Mendes. Upon its release, I got sucked into the American Beauty hype, then later realized it's a pretty bullshit remake of Big that relies on a pot-smoking dad playing the role of the rebel child. Jarhead is the most latently homoerotic depiction of the military, yet it's still not interesting. I wanted everyone to die in Revolutionary Road. So with this smaller-scale flick following on the tails of an Academy Award contender, Away We Go seemed like a politician putting on a Carharrt and ordering a sandwich from a truck to show the little people he's still one of them. Which is why I was so shocked to find myself enjoying it as much as I did.

As I've gotten older and been close to friends who have children, I've realized that parenting seems to be a never-ending series of concessions. Every expectant parent has this value system that will work in tandem with a series of ideas and traits they're certain they'll pass onto their child. "Our child will never watch anything Disney." "Our child will never drink soda." "Our child will not touch the ground for the first three years." And you listen to this with a straight face meanwhile knowing that in two years (if they haven't left it at a fire station ) this terrible monster will be clad in mickey ears and a pink gown while using a rusty knife to puncture the side of an Ecto Cooler. (Do they still make those?)

I wonder about the kind of father I'll be. When the subject has come up with my friends, it seems most men would have taken from the givings and mis of their own fathers to shape the dad they want to be. The goal being to better relate to their own child than their father did relate to them. Take notice of where their passions and strengths may lay and do what we can to foster those. Then reality kicks in and I start to realize I might be a really shitty dad. What if my attempt to relate to my child end up, "So, do you kids still skateboard?" Getting frustrated that my kid knows what a tool his dad is. And that I spend Saturday night sitting quietly in the kitchen while my child entertains company in the living room. Entering occasionally to see if anybody wants me to make more popcorn. The Girlfriend? Off in the Bahamas with my child's Step-Man that she met at the singles Yoga class she said had a better instructor. What am I talking about, oh yeah . . . Away We Go.

It's sugary sweet. Yes. John Krasinski rides the border of being charming to being irritable and unbelievable. Maya Rudolph's face has always kind of bugged me. But Away We Go really got to me. It takes these soon to be parents and places them on a road-trip where they see the types of parents their friends have grown into. The results scare the shit out of them. Dave Eggers wrote the screenplay for this and I think that's what really separates it from Mendes' other movies. Where the couple in Revolutionary Road are naive to such an unbearable degree to the point you can't stand them on the screen. (Everyone says 'they're supposed to be irritating' which I think is such a cop-out defense. You can make a character ugly or undesirable and still be able to relate to them. For that dramatic pull to exist, you really have to care about a character.) With Away Eggers makes a similar couple with similar wants much more human and with whom I really make an effort to understand. And it's charming. And it's ultimately sincere.

Julie and Julia

It was strange that people attacked Meryl Streep for playing Julia Child as a caricature. Have these people ever seen the real Julia Child? She's the closest thing to a real-life walking, talking Muppet this world will ever know. It was in watching a re-run of her cooking with that small Frenchman that I turned off the TV and told The Girlfriend we had to go watch this movie now. Watching Meryl work brought a smile to my face. This smile was quickly wiped away by Amy Adams. It's not that Amy Adams is a bad actress or that she tries to market an okay face. It's that her character of Julie (based on the blogger whose stunt is the basis of this movie)is one of the most atrocious monsters in the history of le cinema. She represents that privilege and that demand of being seen and being recognized as important so as to get a pat on the head (by the way, you people need to start commenting more) that I can't fucking stand such entitlement for a minute. This movie just came out on DVD, watch Meryl. Watch the first scene with Amy Adams (just so you know what's there) then fast skip forward scan past the rest of her. Oh, and you'll get hungry watching this. Bring a fine cheese.

Zombieland

Zombie movies are like Diet Coke. With the latter, you can indulge yourself and never take in a single calorie. With zombie movies, you can see the human form subjected to the most violent deaths imaginable and laugh without feeling any type of guilt. They allow you to enjoy something seemingly indulgent, with no recourse. It's when that fluff becomes the core of your being that a problem presents itself. I've seen too many kids with a camera work to produce something that's intentionally derivative of this most stale of genres. They don't want to make a movie, they want to have fun and drench the audience in fake blood. So that's why I've had a particular contempt for the reemergence of the zombie in popular culture.

Zombieland was the last in a triple feature The Girlfriend and I took in at the Brew and View. I wasn't even certain if we'd hang around for it, as we were there to check out the second title playing. In the end, Zombieland was the most enjoyable of the three and one of the funnest times I've had since Inglorious Basterds. Granted, four hours of drinking preceded it, but I'm certain the sober mind would feel the same way.

The movie plays out like a cross between a video game and a TV game show. And that's not a slight, it drops the pretension of trying to be a serious movie in favor of embracing it's Diet Cola-ness. With that it drops the cliches. As The Girlfriend pointed out, there isn't that moment when a comrade is bitten and must be killed at the moment of conversion to the living dead. The characters that are formulaic seem in on the joke and have fun with it. Added to that, the movie has one of the best (most well-kept) cameo appearances since In the Army Now.

Inglorious Basterds

There's that video for Bjork's Bachelorette. Where she writes a book which is turned into a play where she writes a book which is turned into a play where she writes a book which is turned into a play. The construct of the cast becoming the audience watching an audience who have become the cast was pretty brilliant and that same device is put to use in Tarantino's 7th movie - Inglorious Basterds. Much like Zombieland, Inglorious unleashes its most vile fantasy on the other socially acceptable beast of burden: The Nazi. However, the tables turn . . . not on the allied forces, but on you the viewer.

With each new entry, Tarantino displays a new strength. In Inglorious, he shows us his ability to just wring the fucking tension out of a scene. Part of this is due to the director, but another part is greatly due to Christoph Waltz who is at once so slimy, yet so intelligent and so imposing whenever he's in frame. (I'm pretty sure he'll never have a role this good again.)

Inglorious Basterds isn't a war movie. It's a war movie for movie buffs. One of the irritating things about Kevin Smith is that he writes these characters who speak the way he wishes the world would speak. Where even the most ancillary of characters knows the entire roster of the Justice League. But what he does is a sin committed by every screenwriter. The world they create is the one they'd like to believe exists. What Tarantino does is borrow from movie buffs who meet people from other lands. We immediately dive into our only global point of reference and ask how movies from their countries were received in their place of origin. I've seen Man Bites Dog and know what the overall American consensus of Man Bites Dog was, but do you guys in France like it or do you consider it exploitative garbage. For all I know, that could be your Saw. So in Nazi occupied France, it's Pabst and Riefenstahl and King Kong who bring everyone together. It's the movies that unite the cultural divide.

Where the Wild Things Are

It's kind of bad when the trailer is better than the movie. I was really looking forward to this one since hearing that Spike Jonze was deep in the Narnia shooting a script written by Dave Eggers. When that trailer came out set to the music of Arcade Fire, I was scouring the web for a release date. Held off on seeing it so I could experience it with my nieces and nephew. They saw it without me and gave it a pretty unenthusiastic "meh." Finally watched it last night.

It's eight slacker roommates in fur who decide to build a skate ramp in their backyard at the behest of a kid whose mom really needs to put her son on Adderall. The movie doesn't do well enough a job of establishing why Max creates this world. Nor does it do a well enough job of creating anything. Blah.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Eh. Wes Anderson is a guy who really uses style to tell the story. There's nothing wrong with that. I think Anderson inspired and introduced an appreciation for the visual aesthetic that had long been absent until Rushmore, and fully realized in Royal Tenenbaums then attacking its creator in Life Aquatic. I think that the events on screen end up being incidental to the style which surrounds them. Some enjoy this and I can understand that. I've said that The Royal Tenenbaums feels more like a book than it does a movie. And that could easily be attributed to the strong use of setting and structure instead of the conventional dialogue-driven. This wouldn't be so much of an issue, if his movies weren't touted as being so goddamn important.

I liked Fantastic Mr. Fox in that it does away with the pretense of being that important movie and can fully regale in being a masturbatory exercise in fashion aimed at kids but not really. Taking your kids to this movie is like buying your kids the toy you always wanted. I can't imagine a child's interest being kept by this movie. (My brother says his daughter was pretty bored by it.) On a technical level, I really appreciated the craft that went into making this and found Anderson's style to be perfectly suited for the piece.

District 9

Come on, it wasn't that good. Just because it's mainstream R-Rated sci-fi doesn't mean you have to dote over it.

An Education

It actually ends with a Rocky training montage! And Alfred Molina, grow a fucking pair!

A Serious Man

I liked it. But I think I would have loved it had I been Jewish. Not a dig. I'm sure there's a Jewish person out there that doesn't fully grasp American Me. I think this movie necessitates the lifelong struggle, guilt, and burden inherent with being Jewish. The Coens are reverting back to their Ladykiller/Intolerable Cruelty streak. Please, boys, take some time before projects.

The Road - The Watchmen

Here's the bitch about adaptation: If you remain faithful to the source material, you have done nothing more than transcribed. If you deviate and introduce an element that might not have been in the source, you'll be crucified for your blasphemy.

It was pretty ridiculous to read through the criticism of Zack Snyder's Watchmen. I mean, the guy translates a work of fiction that even Terry Gilliam said was 'unfilmable.' He fights to release a theatrical version that runs 2 hours and 40 minutes (4 hours on DVD)-ultimately reducing the movie to box-office diminishing two-showings a night (whereas something like Iron Man could squeeze in four-screenings per screen) and he still catches shit from the likes of those who suddenly consider the graphic novel to be on par with the bible and are pissed off that The Comedian fights back in the opening scene. If they'd stop squabbling in some attempt to show how they understand (thus love) The Watchmen more than you, they'd see it's a pretty damn good realization of a far-fetched, over-reaching comic book.

The Road ran a little differently. Most people who read Cormac McCarthy's book wondered how they'd make The Road into a movie. The book is made up almost entirely of one man's inner thoughts as he and his son traverse a path hoping to reach a place away from the unexplained destruction. Turns out the movie was pretty much that. But without any voice-over narration (thank god) we fill in the blank as the man and boy schlep a shopping cart along. While the actions and few events which occur in the movie remain faithful to the book, the only possible deviation would be in what the father is thinking about. Since we're not given that information, we leave the theater thinking, "yeah, I guess that was the book."

I'm a big fan of McCarthy. Would call him one of my favorite authors. The Road is probably my least favorite of his books. This book is more Hemmingway and it's good for what it is but it's pretty far removed from what he normally writes. Extremely descriptive while still often succinct passages. Flowery language the likes of which even a Harvard scholar would have to look up. He drops in words that unless you were a rustler at the turn of the century, you'd have no clue as to the meaning.

What I'm saying is you should skip all these movies and read Blood Meridian or, The Evening Redness in the West.

2010-05-10T10:29:00.003-05:00

Kirby,

Hope this e-mail finds you well. I'm hoping a bit more comfort comes with the warmer weather and that the knee is giving you as little trouble as possible.

Well, last Friday we had an incident in the 'ole workspace. M. came in at the tail end of one of her benders. Before, it's been an amazing coincidence that she always pulls this on the same days our boss ends up out of the office. On this occasion, dear reader, her timing was poor. She'd been a zombie for the better part of the week. She was front desk and had only shown up two days. Friday she comes in and is pretty ugly. Our boss' boss even notices it first thing and asks me about her deal. I shrug and say it's probably the medications. Now here's what I'm not sure about. If boss called her into her office or if she went in on her own accord. What we do know is that the [rep from out new managing firm]was conferenced in and the decision was made to send her home. We assumed this meant she was fired. But Hugo Boss then goes around the office and tells us each that we're not to tell her she's been fired. She'll be informed when she arrives on Monday morning. Isn't that fucked, you're going to make someone dress up and come all the way downtown to tell them they're fired.

She didn't call or try to come back.

This morning CORPORATE was here. They waited on M. who never showed. As I started to write this all down, Big Baby (her suitor's moniker) came in. He spoke with Boss Cavarici and told her that M. had been hospitalized over the weekend. She was at Northwestern but has since been transferred to Weiss. How she arrived there and for what reasons are the subject of pure speculation.

What this all comes down to, in my opinion, is that he could never fire someone. I don't think he has it in him. He's like a dealer who can't fire a pistol. As was stated in our interviews with the new managing entity, the rep had never seen an office with a 0% turnover. Since then, we've lost: You. G-Man. J-Balls. S-Girl(she was let go for just being a pain in the ass. At a work party after the merger, she got drunk and started talking shit on everything - including the new management within earshot. A few weeks later someone noticed something odd on our check stubs -our hours worked are listed a little weird but it's due to a difference in accounting between the two firm. S-Girl would not let this go and started calling and hounding them about her wages. They had enough of it and came in to clear out her desk for her. L-town was officially released last week, she'd been here on a week-to-week basis all this time.) So it seems Buggle Boss Boy has finally been able to find someone to wash the sheets.

Enough about all this. How is the market treating you? I see on the news of the stagnation in unemployment. That we've held steady on jobs and are starting to show signs of improvement. Are you seeing any of this? Have you been able to put your tax brain to use to your own benefit? Everyone here keeps asking if I've heard from you.

I'd like to say I have. And that he's doing well.

Your friend,
A.v.E

This Weekend . . .

2010-05-03T09:19:00.004-05:00

. . . marked the first days of shooting for that short script I cleaned up earlier this month.

Through the means of the director and his access, a ridiculous amount of "things" were available. I arrived to the location Saturday afternoon; a sprawling one-story on the edge of a golf course just near the Milwaukee border. Three RV trailers filled the dirt driveway leading to a roundabout in front of the home. I assumed the owners were avid travelers who have collected these in their age. Then I saw production stickers on the doors. "Make-up: Actors Only." "Cast Trailer: Actors Only" I met with the director of photography who was standing in the yard. I shook his hand. "Trailers, huh?" We continued shaking. "Yup." Still shaking. "That's so . . . unnecessary." Shaking. "Isn't it!?"

Don't get me wrong, I still think the thing is a train wreck and there's no way anyone who reads it has any idea what it's about. So it's hard knowing that then going onto set and being introduced as the writer of this thing. (The other writer and person responsible for the brunt of it all was nowhere to be found. Smart, I tell you. Smart.) So as I'm introduced to the cast and crew as the writer, I have to correct, "Script doctor." I met the cast and was introduced to a woman with a little boy clad in pajamas.

In the script, I wrote a kid in for what would amount to all of 30-seconds screen time. It was weird to find they actually cast the little bastard. Not just asked someone with a six-year old to swing by. They went through head-shots, had them audition, then put the mother and child in a trailer for most of the day. It was terrible to see. There's a sadness in trying to secure acting gigs for your kid. But putting him in shitty student films is an altogether new kind of abuse.

Working with the kid is difficult. After 30 takes they just start crying and you have to yell at them for an hour to start working again.

Seriously, it was hard to know that a kid is spending a sunny Saturday in a trailer with his mom because you thought having him run across a kitchen would be a nice touch. And I really doubt he'll see any of the hundred bucks he's earning for the day. It wasn't worth it and I felt like a pornographer.

They say a writer doesn't belong on-set. I can agree with that. But it's not because you don't want some emotional prick whining about his work being ruined, it's because all the writer can do is just stand around. All the production roles were filled so a lot of my day was just walking around. Occasionally, the director would ask how the actor should play a scene and my response was usually, "He was smiling in the last scene. Let's have him frown here."

Shooting resumes next weekend and the director asked me to be there for it as he'd like to keep me close by as a sort of consultant. I've seen my boss do the same thing. He's preparing to balance out the blame if things go bad.

I Always Dread . . .

2010-04-29T08:46:00.003-05:00

. . . the story meetings with the video game team.

I try to push them off for as long as possible and never get much done until the hours before.

Last week I wrote of a lost drive. I ran out of steam and couldn't even jerk generic dialogue onto the page. Luckily, that feeling subsided and I've been back on track. So when I arrived last night, I handed over 20-pages of banter to be heard as the player plays. (Players gotta play. Haters gotta hate. Sorry, had to put that out there.)

This right here is why I try to push these things off for as long as possible. It's one thing to put content out for others to read; it's another (and for me, fucking unbearable) to sit in the same room as someone who is reading something you wrote. I can only liken it to a job interview where it seems like the interviewer is reading your resume for the first time.

Then it happens. The laugh. Then a current beings where you hear the laugh from another. Then another. As the writer you know where they are. It's like that first drop in the roller coaster. That hurdle you needed to get past to kick this thing off. Now you have an idea of where they are and what's next. So you start tracing through in your head. The child has passed the chamber beneath the trap floor. Now they've maneuvered through the "soul binder" so here the overhead voice should be telling the child that he will lead the brigade of the catamite.

"What's catamite," asks one.

I answer, "It's a weird kind of slave."

"Oh, cool."

I leave with their praise ringing in my head. The drive home, I'm jubilant and decide to celebrate the best way I know how.

"Yes, thank you. I'll have three chicken and three double cheese."

"Sir, how many people are in the car?"

"Just one."

"You sicken me."

"..."

"Please pull around."

As I Approach the Stage . . .

2010-04-27T09:00:00.004-05:00

. . . the announcer's voice can be heard in the auditorium as the theme music plays from the pit. "This marks the third time that A.v.E's car was involved in a hit-and-run accident while he was blocks away."

Here's how it started.

The Girlfriend and I returned from Indiana to find that "supergroup" Angel's & Airwaves enthusiasts were already lined up outside the Aragon - a former 1920's ballroom that now operates as a live music venue. The place is several blocks from us, but the traffic it brings can be felt well beyond our neighborhood as parking becomes a murderfuck of aggravation known only to those who refuse to admit that a spot didn't just open up while circling the block.

I'd double-parked in front of our building to unload the freight we brought from the Hoosier State: Fancy beer, pizza from a chain I didn't know still existed, and mid-century furniture.

The unloading took the better part of a half-hour. When we first stationed, I heard the rattle of an off timing belt. Though a block away the rattle bounced off the cars and filled the street. Behind its wheel was a girl, cell phone to ear scanning in each direction for a gap between vehicles. Just like the other cars that we'd seen creeping through at a snail's pace.

When the last of the goods were secured in the apartment, I set out to park the car legally. I heard the sound of the timing belt. She'd been circling this entire time. I learned from her and decided to cross the nearest major street which was two blocks east of us. Major traffic ways, under/over passes and train tracks are natural barriers. People use these as dividers and as the borders which separate the here from the there.

So I crossed Ashland Avenue and immediately found a spot cross the alley from a small hospital. The road was wide in and removed from all but one residential complex - a vinyl sided two flat. I was comfortable leaving the car there. It was less than a five minute walk home so I felt myself ahead of the game. The sound of the timing belt still rang on my return.

The car remained at the spot until the following evening. We decided on indian from Hema's - one of the best restaurants along the international district of Devon that is Little India. We walked to the car and I noticed that the mirror was folded in, facing the window. This wasn't unusual as cyclists tend to clip them as they pass by. And my mirror is able to collapse in for safer parking on narrow streets. But the turn signal mounted beneath the neck of the mirror was hanging from its nylon harness like an eye dangling out from a socket. I cursed whatever prankster did this before looking down to see that the entire driver's side door was crashed in. And the first thing I wondered was if the person who hit my car then did this to the mirror to distract me or give himself a head start. (I'm assuming it's a him. Who else could it have been. A woman? There's no way. Their dainty hands could never grip a steering wheel.)

The rational person, upon seeing the damage or destruction of some personal property, will immediately begin calculating the total cost to replace/repair that tangible good. In his book Danse Macarbe, Stephen King explains why The Amityville Horror was a hit with older audiences and a dud with younger crowd. Blood dripping down the walls and into the floor is pretty tame to the seasoned teenager, but anyone who owns a home immediately equates this to the nightmare that is water damage. So the horror of the haunted house is that of a structure as an investment suddenly becoming a money pit. (I'd levy the same reasoning for thrill of the action movie where the $80,000 Aston Martin is driven right into a fucking wall. Fuck the poor!)

$2,400. That's what I keep repeating to myself as we're driving to the restaurant. Where did I get that number from? How could I possibly quantify such a cost? I don't know. It was a gut number and it felt right so I accepted it as so.

The next morning I take it to a garage. I tell the mechanic that someone hit the car then drove off. He follows me to the trailblazer (Hydra II) and gives his diagnosis. "That door is fucked." As we walk back in he asks who I'm insured through. I tell him I wanted to see if this could be done without going through the insurance company. He nods and retreats to his office where I hear him making several phone calls.

He returns with the numbers now crunched. He can get a used door for about $800, then with labor and paint, we'd be looking at $1,200 to make things right.

$1,200 is less than $2,400. I'm relieved.

It's telling when only having to pay $1,200 dollars to fix something makes it a good day.

I leave with the assurance that he'll check around to find the cheapest door he can.

I go back to the site of accident. I hope that he cracked a headlight or cracked his oil pan as he sped off.

Across the alley stands the hospital. I walk the perimeter of the building staring at it's roof. On a corner I see mounted three metal enclosures pointing in separate directions.

Inside, the front receptionist asks how she can help.

"This is an unusual question. My car was parked on the north side of your building over the weekend and was hit by someone who drove off. Now I noticed you have cameras watching this street and . . ."

"You'll need to take the hallway down to the end. Command center is on your right," she said.

I follow the hall down to a Puerto Rican woman in a guard's uniform. She has a rose tattooed on her wrist that looks like it was done with hot pen. I tell her about what happened and she leads me to a room where four monitors are split into four screen, each detailing a different view of the building.

Only one camera is near where I'm stationed. It stops short a few dozen feet from my bumper. I scan through the footage, looking for that moment where a white car enters the frame, then crosses back with a red streak across it's front.

The car never appears. The Puerto Rican tries to console me. "We've been meaning to upgrade those."

I return home and make a PB&J.

Last week, The Girlfriend found this antique kitchen cabinet on craigslist. The thing was cumbersome as all hell to pick up but when we finally got it in place, I was amazed at what it added to the kitchen.

Most furniture I've acquired in my life has been with the understanding that it's temporary. When I leave, most of it would end up on the sidewalk. There was nothing that couldn't be left behind. When I moved in with The Girlfriend it was different. She had furniture that she cared about and takes great pains to keep in good condition. But that was all hers. This cabinet is the first thing we brought through that door together. And in just looking at it you can feel it's weight. Like the monolith in 2001. Wherever we end up, this thing will come along. This is the base sum by which all else will be added to.

We have a home together. And with that, how bad can anything ever be?

In Junior High . . .

2010-04-21T00:14:00.004-05:00

. . . I watched a Q&A with Stephen King on C-SPAN's Book TV.

The question was asked by a girl who was younger than me at the time.

What scares you?

King described the writing process as going to the well and lowering a bucket. His fear, is that one day that bucket comes back empty. (Somewould argue that it did, but it really hasn't stopped him.) The idea of inspiration being a depletable resource is one that was great enough to embed itself in my pre-teen mind.

This blog serves a few purposes. Originally it was to keep in touch with friends and let them know how I'm doing, whenever it was convenient for them to check-in. Then it become my morning jog. That exercise that kept the mind from atrophying under the weight of municipal tax code and payment interfaces. There was probably a solid year where this thing only had one or two readers a week, and it never bothered me. This forum was the most readily accessible of moleskin binders.

But it's by no means creative. It's the literary equivalent of three middle age guys in the basement of a one-story ranch job murdering Bad Religion covers while the kids are at soccer. The "real stuff" was worked on immediately following the morning's post. After the fingers were revved up from the trial run.

Lately, the spark that fuels that which bears my actual name has been dull. There hasn't been that drive. And even with deadlines looming over me like the shadow of someone walking behind you, I still can't find my release: That desire to get the work done. And it terrifies me.

I've found that nearly everything I've written is a blend of two separate ideas. Be it a scene or a situation that suddenly recalls another and the marriage of the two results in the work. Downside is, I'm finding that gap between the synapse to grow longer and longer each time. Soon, it'll be years for the two to coalesce. That won't really work out for me if I ever plan on making this more than a way to kill time before lunch.

You're probably thinking what I'm thinking: Movie tie-in novelizations under a pseudonym.

Maybe this won't be so bad after all.

Part of My Job . . .

2010-04-16T12:41:00.004-05:00

. . . involves going out to to offices across the City. And since I don't really have a supervisor, it's usually on me to coordinate with whomever I'm to be meeting with. The thing is, I'm sort of lazy and I don't like planning. Given that these are all sites belonging to the Department of Revenue, my lack of foresight can make the simplest of tasks utter murder. At the same time, it's part of the fun.

I have the worst sense of direction. Most people from rural communities do. They say you can spot someone from out of the way, by how they guide. People from more developed areas - major cities or urban areas with a more complex roadway system - will speak in north, south, east and west. Those of us who come from Real America, where the smell of industry fills the air, we speak in landmarks. Things are pointed out by way of number of turns after the water tower. So when you see us in your bustling downtown with our maps outstretched, we appreciate you helping us out - but please, keep it simple. Tell us if we need to go right or left when we hit the Sbarro.

Where was this going - oh yeah, lack of planning. So I never take a map anywhere and I have a horrible sense of direction. So even if I did have said ghost map, or even if I did stop to ask for directions, it would all be for naught (nougat). I'm lost. And eventually I'll unlost myself. That's the fun. I get to find those places off the beaten path. And since I've driven to so many major cities, I've been lost in some of the most obscure neighborhoods. This proves fruitful when I meet someone from one of those places, and I ask if they've ever had the chicken fingers in that gas station in Memphis, you know. The one seven miles away from the nearest interstate to Graceland. (My God, those chicken fingers were yum-azing!)

For the last however many years, I've been doing this at my job. Showing up at high-security city offices and having to figure out a way to get in. You'd be surprised and maybe scared by what works.

The first and foremost thing that will get you past any line or into any office, restaurant, club or even concert. What you need is a cell phone. As you enter the building, hold the cellphone to your ear and give the occasional "Yeah," or "uh-huh." As you approach the threshold guardian, tip the receiver away from your mouth, while keeping the speaker to your ear. Open your mouth like you're about to say something but then only give a nod. Then speak into the receiver, "Yeah, after he re-scheduled." The trick is to have the utmost confidence. Don't hesitate for a second. (This has worked at bank lockbox rooms, auto pounds, the Signature Lounge and Conan O' Brien when he did his week-long stint at the Chicago Theater.)

Another is one I call, the Sad Clueless Man. For those places that incorporate a phone system where you have to page the person to gain you admittance. What I often find is that the person who is supposed to let me in, or whose name I read from the e-mail, is out to lunch or on leave. I'm too important to wait. Immediately make a sad face at the phone and hold the receiver to your side as you push the same button over and over again. Make a whiny sound when you hear someone coming. That passing person will stop. And they will feel sorry for you as you must be here on some type of work/assisted-living program. "Oh, I'm supposeda do some work on a compooter, misses." Even if they don't let you in, they'll find someone who will.

The You Don't Even Know What You've Just Done. This one worked at the Daley Center and the three months I couldn't find the keys to my apartment and didn't want to pay for another fob. (Turns out, they were on the key rack!) With intercom systems that buzz you in, it's the value of that pound key being depressed on that network which trips the circuit and lets you in. The phone number associated with my old apartment was wrong for the entirety of my stay. My guests took to calling me as they were nearing the building and I would meet them at the lobby and then the door people eventually knew who was there to see me. (Though, they don't know when I didn't want that person to be there. As was the case when a friend and I returned home to find an ex I'd just broken things off with in my place collecting the things she'd left behind. Weird. I couldn't be mad as it was ME who left my apartment door unlocked and slightly ajar for about four years. I also blame that on being from a rural community.) Where was I, oh yes. Entering the building. So the intercom rang some old lady on the west side of town. For the period I was without my key, there were a few times when the door person was gone and I was without means to enter. So I rang my own apartment which called the lady on the west side and flat out told her, "Hi, this is (a.v.e). I'm the person people are always asking for when they call you. Sorry about that. Look, could you be a doll and press the pound key on your phone."

*buzz*

"Thank you."

Man . . .

2010-04-14T14:37:00.002-05:00

. . . today has been a day wherein everything I ate was purchased on the street. Keep in mind, Chicago has a strict ordinance prohibiting the sale of prepared foods on the streets and sidewalks. But that didn't stop me from buying some the greasiest al pastor I've ever had.

I was driving down 47th street towards the expressway. The vendor stood idle at a corner when the breeze brought the scent of spit pork and hot maize . I slammed the break and pulled onto the curb. Fell out the car as I opened the door, and crawled those first few steps to the puzzled vendedora.

He took the tortilla from out a steam box and ran it through the pan beneath the marinated spit of skirted pork. His calloused fingers, immune to the hot of the oil. I didn't know he was going to do that, but when I figured it out - I didn't stop him.

To be honest, it wasn't that great. The flavor wasn't there and with no cilantro or onion to add texture it came across as bland.

But when I found the lady selling peanut butter cookies at 95th and Jeffery, I knew I hit the jackpot! She sold them at a dollar-forty per three. A weird pricing structure, but I'm sure she had her reasoning. However, the cookies lacked some of the peanut-butter blast I've come to expect in such a delicacy. Still, the worst peanut butter cookie is better than the world's best snickerdoodle.

What I'm saying is that I have nothing to say and this is me saying it.

What Do You Call . . .

2010-04-12T11:36:00.002-05:00

. . . a really good boyfriend who trades in pelts?

A trapper keeper.

Across the Street . . .

2010-04-08T08:30:00.006-05:00

. . . is a two-flat. For the past few months, when The Girlfriend and I leave for work, we've seen someone working on the place. Either installing new windows. Painting the overhang. Mending the wood board of the porch. Lacquering the columns on either side of the door.

A For Rent sign appeared last week and we figured it wouldn't hurt to see about the space.

We currently live in a spacious one bedroom on the border of Uptown and Andersonville. At least it was spacious for her and The Cat until I moved in. Then I brought stuff. Not that I packed the joint full. I was able to take my one bedroom apartment and reduce it to things that could be moved in four carloads. Still, the union of two people's live does hell on a place. Moving into someone's home, you feel like a guest for those first few months. Worried that whatever you're putting anywhere is in the way of something else. And though there's a particular joy in having your rent cut in half, there's also the understanding that you'll never be alone again, ever.

She's the first woman I've ever loved enough to want to live with. I felt like moving in was a new stage in my life. A putting away of childish things. A standing up straight. Our generation is one that clings to its youth like none before. Telling ourselves that by still liking the things we did in our youth, we're still not that far removed from those years that were in reality decades ago. So there was something strong in me saying, I'm going on to the next chapter.

Turns out I was completely wrong. Moving in with your girlfriend doesn't make you wiser or more mature. In fact, I devolved by moving in with my girlfriend. I've already forgotten stuff I knew how to do. I've done my own laundry for the past ten years. My laundry was two machines. Towels, jeans, socks in one. Everything else in the other. A cap of Tide in each. Done! Now my laundry is mixed in with things that I'm not even allowed to look at. And I feel like a dick sorting out my clothes to wash while leaving hers in the basket, so I just leave the house when I see she's starting the laundry. I go hang out in a neighboring town. Far enough from the shame. But close enough that it's not too long a drive home.

When I lived on my own, masturbation was something enjoyed at my own time, pace, and leisure. Now, if The Girlfriend so much as leaves the room for longer than a minute - it becomes go time. I've gone back to my junior high self, sweating into a JC Penny catalog, having to fathom some reason why I'm suddenly sweaty and out of breath when she returns with her glass of water.

I sat in the McDonald's parking lot, eating my four double cheeseburgers, listening to the NPR. Chewing each bite slowly. Only to return home and have a light dinner. It's not that she prohibits the consumption of those things marketed as food. It's that there's a shame in eating it. No intelligent person eats fast food. I know it. Even the people that subsist on the dollar menu know that each bite is shaving minutes off their life. When I lived alone, the only person there to pass silent judgment was the door guy. And fuck that guy. He was a dick that never let my friends in the building and made me put on a shirt to come down and meet them. But now it's the person I care the most about. I care what she thinks. So in the parking lot it is. Listening to some folk duo talk about their tour of Tunisia while people walking past stare at me. Slowly chewing.

When I had that allergic reaction last week. She only found peace in being in the same room as me. With her there, I felt safe. I think about a world where we didn't meet. Or one where phone calls went ignored after the first date and I still lived up the street and her apartment was in tact. I can't imagine how miserable it would all be without her. Not just this. Everything. I sit up and give her a hug. She doesn't know why. She looks at me. Confused. Almost worried. I lay back down. She thinks I'm weird. And she's right.

She finally got hold of the guy from across the street. The apartment sounds pretty awesome but it's almost twice what we currently pay. Though that's still less than we were paying when we were on our own.

from AVE to The Girlfriend:

That place does sound awesome. And I like the idea of having the side yard area as well as so much extra room. But even though we were already living in places that cost more separately, I worry that (only speaking for me here) the additional would sort of take away that security/fun monies.

Is there anyway I could continue to pay 400 and you could pay the difference?

She said no. She can also be a total dick, sometimes.

If you want . . .

2010-04-07T17:17:00.004-05:00

. . . people to feel equal parts scared and saddened by your presence; invest in an eye patch.

I fucking destroyed every meeting I was in today.

It's almost worth the three cars I hit backing into my spot.

Don't Get High . . .

2010-04-05T09:11:00.004-05:00

. . . off your own supply.

Saturday we hosted our second movie night. This time, we gave our guests a choice on which movie to watch:

It's time for another round of movie night at (redacted).

I'm going to put it out there - nothing will top The Room. Nothing. In trying to figure out a movie that could ween us off the Wiseau, I narrowed it down to two before my brain went all Eric Roberts on me.

So you get the choice of what you want to watch. Read through the brief synopses and if you think you can join us, post your preference. Majority rules, unless we decide otherwise.

As always, drinks will be cold. Prizes will be raffled. Snacks will be had.

Battle Royale (2000)

Based on the novel of the same name, Battle Royale is set in a world where the Japanese government is on the brink of collapse. To maintain order over the youth, a seventh grade class is armed with random weaponry, thrown onto an island, then forced to kill one another. If you've just read this last sentence, then you know why this movie was never released in the US. At once, it's an intense allegory for the competitive job market while also being one of the most comically-violent teen movies ever. (Its influence on Kill Bill is obvious. Right down to the casting of Chiaki Kuriyama, best recognized as The Chick with the Mace.) Director Kinji Fukasaku went to his grave knowing that his movie deserved as much international acclaim as that same year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And to be honest, he was right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwK1MjIkDUQ&feature=related

121 min., starts at 9:00PM

Wizard People, Dear Reader (2004)

"We were at a bar and were getting a good laugh at a guy who was playing pool all by himself while wearing a hoody over his hat, sunglasses under that and headphones on the outside of all of it. So we started riffing on "What could he possibly be listening to?" Someone who I don't think was me said he was listening to a book on tape of Harry Potter. And out came the Wizard People narrator. I joked that night that I was going to rush home and record an entire misinformed book on tape of The Sorcerer's Stone, due to the fact that I had not and have not ever read any Harry Potter books."

What underground cartoonist Brad Neely did was record an entire audio track synchronized to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Read in the hoarse voice of a coarse narrator, Wizard People, Dear Reader was circulated online and quickly developed a cult following as a sort of non-musical equivalent to Dark Side of the Moon. Even if your official stance on Harry Potter is like mine ("Fuck that noise.") there's enough in Wizard People to bring Muggles and whatever Potter fans call themselves together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yViphVO-WnI&feature=related

152 min. plus intermission, starts at 8:30PM

As usual, we overstocked on booze and Easter candy, leaving a spread which mirrored that of a Tri-Delt rush.

I really enjoy hosting these gatherings for a couple of reasons. Movie snobs, like music snobs get off on introducing people to something new. It's like setting up friends on a date. There's a pleasure in being involved in someone's first viewing of The Room, or the amazing animated short Rejected which prefaced Saturday's screening. To us, it's about getting out fingerprint in your brain somehow.

We had two winners. Battle Royale and Jameson.

Spread across two rooms, The Girlfriend and I watched with guests in the living room while the others watched on the projector in the once dining room - converted into movie room shortly after I put my name on her lease. Someone in the living room had the brilliant foresight to turn Battle Royale into a drinking game. Everytime a kid is killed with a headshot, we took a shot. Only he and I played. There were 41 kids in the class.

By the second reel, I had to excuse myself to step outside a few times. Pulling out my cigarettes to feign a smoke break, in reality I was throwing up behind the building. I could hear everyone laughing and cheering at the screen as the back patio was lined with the bright puke made up almost entirely of pastel colored candy. I felt like a girl at prom in a bathroom stall - dabbing away at the menstrual blood caked to her dress while her peers dance, unaware she's missing. When I returned the third time, I dropped the charade and went straight to the bathroom where I passed out on the top sheet. The sounds from the other rooms drifted in through the walls. With the exception of birthdays - there's a certain shame in passing out at your own party. A show of irresponsibility. If anyone here should be sober, it should be you - the host. You're one of two people who knows where everything is and is the only person who knows how you connected this shanty town of a cineplex.

Worse, The Girlfriend was now in charge of hosting the remainder of the event. With the last of my sober mechanics, I made sure to properly tear off the raffle tickets and leave them in the cowboy hat from the night's draw. The prizes were:

1) A bottle of Dragon's Milk - in theme with Wizard People
2) A bottle of Sake, in theme with Battle Royale
3) A copy of The Room soundtrack - in theme with amazingness.
4) One jar of Baconaise Lite - for obvious reasons.

I think I woke a few times to the sound of laughter before tasting the vomit clung to my teeth then fading back to black.

In the morning, The Girlfriend filled me in on the night's events and how everything went smoothly in my absence. She even stayed up after the guests left to clean. So I wake to a sparkling apartment, a bitter taste in my mouth and the need to drink a gallon of water. It was like the night before was a fever dream.

I realize that the only way to save face for the next screening is drink even more and show everyone that I can still maintain.

This is how legends are born.

Live Blogging . .

2010-04-01T08:46:00.004-05:00

From Louis A Weiss memorial hospital. Exam room 7.

Here's how it starts. You start developing a recurring ocular cellulitis - a puffiness in the eyelid. You keep going back to the ophthalmologist who prescribes the same treatment each time. Medicated eye drops and three doses of the antibiotic cephahexlin. So when the problem recently felt like it was going to arise, I took he same treatment. Applying the eye drops and antibiotic from the last bout.

This was at 745am. This morning. I tell The girlfriend I'm feeling a little itchy as we walk to the car. In circling the block, the skin of my face feels taut. I glance in the mirror and see my face is red. I hope the girlfriend won't notice. "oh my god why is your face red" ok. She noticed. I tell her I'm going to drop her off at the station and go back home. She insists I go to the hospital. I don't put up a fight. She wants to come with but I know this going to get uglier and i don't want her to see it. I leave her at argyle and broadway.

Here's where we are, dear reader. Driving down Wilson with a shirt half ripped apart using a student ID to scrape off the top layer of skin. A series of small bumps rise up after. Everything is red. Everything itches. My face is one massive swollen hive. The eyelids are inflated and hold a piqued interest. I study every line in my face, every pore wondering if that was there before. My slacks are undone and I claw away at my junk. Giving no regard to the busy pedestrian traffic walking directly in front of me staring in disgust at the shirtless red man who looks like he's jacking off. This is why im glad the girlfriend is not here. People would think she condones this sort of thing.

I get to the hospital only to find it's no longer a hospital but an office complex.

I get back in my car. There's a shortness of breath. I tell myself it's the anxiety and to calm down. it'll go away. But then the image of my airway constricting makes me panic. I feel my heart pound and the shortness resumes. I do this for the entire drive. Logic at some point suggests I take a cab the remainder of the way. The thought of having to interact with people puts the kabbosh on that one. I arrive at Louis Weiss. I circle the place trying to find an er lot. No dice. I park on the garage and climb down three levels all the while thinking about that stressed airway.

I bypass security and go to the front desk. I find that I can only speak in short bursts of words. Imhavinganallergicreaction . . . tocephahexlinandeverything. . . itches.

They got me In right away and stripped me. The curtain was open but I didnt care. I disrobe as the nurse rushed to close the curtain. I just need to get out of these clothes. I want to stop their rubbing against the skin and I want to see the extent of the damage. It was bad. Great blotches of red everywhere. The skin rose in hives from my toes to my neck. What looked like blisters filled with blood lined my arms and chest. I lie down. With the skin exposed, i just want to scratch everything. I cross my arms tightly. Hoping that I can will the urge away. The swelling in my eyelid is now visible to me.

To keep my mind off the urge, I get out my phone and start writing these words. It keep my hands busy.

Now I'm home. Wrapping this story up in the past tense.

The Girlfriend is doing her work in the adjoining office/study while I lay on the couch watching an SVU Marathon courtesy of PS3 Netflix Instant Streaming. She's mad at herself for not forcing herself to come with me to the hospital. Again, all she would have been able to do was worry sick over how I was turning, and tell me to stop scratching my dick in public.

I think I was attended to by the world's worst doctor. He asks what happened. I tell him I self-prescribed myself two capsules of a months old anti-biotic. That I recall a similar "itchy" feeling when I took it before. And that I had uncles who died as children after being given penicillin, leading my dad to always be sure to note that to doctors when we where younger. The doc shakes his head I don't think that's it. I'm taken back by that. Nothing else has changed, I say. The only thing i've eaten in the last 48-hours is a steamable. No colognes. No new soaps -I haven't had the chance to shower in three days. I even wore these same clothes earlier this week. He can't believe that a medicine I took before would now do this. (I think this is the same doctor that told my friend it's impossible to be allergic to fish.)

After 20 minutes, the medications kicked in. The swelling and blisters went down. My face felt less taut. There's still some soreness, but before, it felt like I had botox injected into every pore of my face.

I was discharged after an hour or supervision. I still feel a little off. And my skin is sensitive - a product of all the scratching. The girlfriend says I look pale and I'm sure I do. I should take a shower to get this stink of the ER off of me.

But there is so much more Law and Order: SVU to watch. This is the only Law and Order spin-off I like. The rest, garbage.

The First Hour . . .

2010-03-31T12:17:00.002-05:00

. . . of my day is spent trying to figure out a way to get my company to pay for my parking.

After that's figured out, I then spend the rest of the morning thinking up good put-downs and insults. A good put-down is hard, as we've become a generation so callus as to be zing-proof. We're making fun of eachother's faces in kindergarten. Mothers by third grade. Dick and bust in junior high. Life choices from there on out. But today, I got it. The greatest insult, dunk, snap in the history of insults, dunks, and snaps. It's neither gender nor race specific. It bites everyone aged 21-60, equally. So commit this one to memory. Save it in your moleskin and only use it when you absolutely have to:

You'll never look as good as you did five years ago.

Later this week, my theory on why this works so well.

I've Always . . .

2010-03-26T12:58:00.006-05:00

. . . entertained the notion of doing an open-mic at some point in my life.

Something about standing on a stage with only a mic and the echo of one's own voice has a dangerous appeal. I look at this as my equivalent to a roller coaster. I've never tried to write material but instead have a monologue that bounces around in my head.

"I've been single for a few years now. I still date. I go out. But nothing ever crosses that month long threshold. Being in your 20's and trying to find love - it's sort of a cocksuck. Cause you're still so young and you think you've got so much just waiting for you. There's only one other thing in life that I can compare that search to: Internet Porn.

Most people think internet porn is easy. That you pull up a site, take off a sock, and boom, you're done. 1998. '99. That might have been the case. Not today. Now there's so much out there, everyone can be a connoisseur. Ladies in the house, think about the most disgusting man you've ever met. He was probably some heavy breather with scales and a blood rash covering most of his visible skin and he always wore a knife on his hip. He was always wet. He'd stand so close to you you could feel his breath. And you spent the summer in fear of him when you worked your first job at the IGA. Yeah, if that guy found you naked on the internet - I can guarantee he probably wouldn't jerk off to you; that's how selective the internet porn consumer can be. I've lost jobs. Plural. Jobs - because that quick fix before work ended up lasting hours.

What happens is you start looking, and within the first few minutes, you find something that works for you, so you start - but you stop not too long after as you want to make sure there's not someone you know on the next page. And that next page takes you to another and another, then to a different site. Jpegs have given way to mpegs which give way to full movie downloads and mobile content. And the further you get, the more insane the shit you find becomes. You start telling yourself so many things so as to not do complete damage to your psyche. "This actress is good. It feels like she's crying for real." "As long as a chick is present alongside the tranny, it's not gay." "She only looks like my sister.

So night has fallen and your hungry and you've got no more spit. Enough. So you just want to go back to that first clip you found. But that was hours ago. Now you're on some Norse server. Not only does the text on these sites no longer resemble english: it no longer resembles words. It's an entire language written on wing dings and drawings of engorged rams. You even try to go back to where you started, but so much new stuff has pushed what you wanted out to sea. So you have to accept it's lost and you find something that sort of reminds you of what you remembered from that first clip, and you masturbate to it, begrudgingly. Sighing when you finish. Then button up and start the second shift at Game Stop.

And that's the search for love."

I'd met with . . .

2010-03-26T12:41:00.003-05:00

. . . my friend who is filming a 12-page script next month. The thing was a fucking disaster and to get in good with the production team, I put an hour of work into it as I was drunkenly sprawled across the floor on a friend's unfurnished apartment in St. Louis.

I didn't like the story and I still don't. I just punched up the dialogue, re-wrote the action so it made sense and wrote in a scene featuring Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman - my trademark.

He just wanted to go over a couple of changes he made. Mainly things they couldn't afford to shoot and a name change to include a friend and financial backer.

The touchy subject of the writing credit was then brought up. I'd been trying to figure out a way to kindly refuse credit for my work. Seem humble as opposed to embarrassed. "Give the first guy writing credit and put my initials down as Script Consultant." No good. "You saved our ass and I want you to get credit." Again, I need to work with them so I can't flat out say that for my name to appear on the credits I'd have to commit seppuku to wipe the slate clean. "Fine, give me co-writing credit. But all I did was type."

He calls me a couple days later - hey can I get your info so I can register this with the WGA.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkkkkkkkk.

My Work . . .

2010-03-22T09:11:00.007-05:00

. . takes me behind the closed doors of various government offices across the city.

I was at 400 W. Superior waiting on my contact. 400 West is an unusual place. At once it's an office of the department of revenue, a traffic court, the courts leg of the administrative oversight unit, and a payment facility where people spend hours waiting to pay (literally) thousands to get their car out of impound.

If ever you get pulled over and arrested for possessing some kind of substance (something this blog has no need to worry about), or for blaring your radio, or even so much as the cop thinks your car smells suspicious - you're immediately told to step out of the vehicle where it's then taken to any of the five auto pounds. (The owner gets to spend the night playing the fun game of trying to figure out which one.) Even if you're not arrested, it'll be weeks before you have a trial where you can contest the charges being brought against you. You can wait until that trial to fight the charges, but your car is sitting in a lot somewhere, running up storage and tow fees. If you're cleared, they give you back your car. If you lose, you have to pay for the tow fees, as well as thirty-five bucks for each day it was in. Out of necessity, most will pay to get their cars out the day after it was taken in - and hope that they'll be returned their money at the hearing (which is rarely the case.

The worst is when it's the boyfriend or girlfriend. They borrowed the car. Messed up. Now the person whose name appears on the title has to take off work to clear their own name and get their car back.

They were a young spanish couple. She was in the black slacks and dirty polo of a waitress. He had jeans matched with a double xl that swallowed his frame whole. He held a cell phone to his ear the entire time they were in line, but never spoke a word. She stood with the silent sad frustration of someone who lacks that component which allows them to lash out. They reached the head of the line. The girl offered her title and state ID. The cashier responded with a total due reaching just north of $1,400. The man asked the cashier to repeat that amount. He nodded and stepped away. I didn't see him again. The young girl had a hundred in wrinkled bills no larger than a ten. She spread the remaining balance out across three cards. "I bought that car three weeks ago. Everyone that gets in it says it smell that way. That's what the cop smelled. The car always smell like that. He wasn't doing nothing in it." The cashier pulled out her calculator to divide the balance by three.

I watched her staring at the cards as they were each swiped. And here I thought I was a terrible boyfriend. I could and should be doing much worse.

Later, in the morning I had to run a report from a computer located in the cashier's station. I hate having to do this, as the people in line now assume I'm a cashier and/or that I have some sort of idea what happens here. Someone will always approach me and start in with how this is all some kind of misunderstanding. I nod politely then slide down in my chair and hide under the desk until they leave.

The cashier next to me called the next in line. Two guys, mid-twenties. The cashier eyes them for a minute. "Weren't y'all here getting your car out yesterday?"

The taller of the two. "Yeah. Police took it again last night. It's like they out looking for me . . ."

His friend says, "This nigga gets pulled over, tells the lady he bangin' louder than her and turns his radio up!"

They laugh at themselves. I wish these guys were my friends.

You're Only As Good . . .

2010-03-15T09:56:00.006-05:00

. . . as your worst credit.

I exist on the fringe. In everything I do. I'm on the outer outskirts. Every apartment I've had in Chicago has been on the boundary of where the action is. With my last place, when leaving the el-station, all the young, handsome people would go left. I was the only person that would go right.

In the last year, I've sort of gotten some attention from my writing. There are rumors of some guy from the school of economics who comes in the night and revises treatments. I've been recruited for jobs based solely on my work. Which is awesome, and even as much as I might clown on the projects, it is pretty cool to see posters and advertisements for something I'm working on.

During the few screenwriting classes I took at DePaul, I got something of a reputation for being a good script doctor. Let me preface this with something. If you wrote a novel, you'd probably only give it to a few people to read because it's understood not very many people will take to reading your several hundred page, unedited manuscript. But with screenplays, they can be anywhere from a few pages to about 120, max. Plus, a majority of that space is blank - so there doesn't seem to be that much of a burden in asking someone to read it. Josh Olson (screenwriter best known for A History of Violence) wrote an entire essay about this. In it, He asks, "How long can two pages take? Weeks, is the answer."

And it's true. It's not just going through with a red pen and correcting the typos and writing questions marks next that which doesn't make sense. You can do that, but it's cheating someone out of the help they need. What few can do is understand why something doesn't work and be able to say, "Have you tried this?" There are even fewer who can do that and do that well.

A 12-page script was e-mailed to me last week with a plea for help. It was on draft 17 and it was a fucking mess. After I finished reading it, I was upset that I'd read it. However, the Director of Photography on it is someone I hoped to use on a project this spring. So I had to get in good with this team. The downside was that it couldn't be fixed. It was like a femur shattered into a million little James Frey-type pieces. You can try taping it together but nothing is really going to hold it. What I did was make a new femur in one of those Starship Trooper vats of liquid things. I kept putting it off until a few days ago when I re-wrote their first five pages. About as much as I could stomach. I e-mailed it back saying it's a work in progress and that I'd try to get the rest done this week. As Olson notes in that essay, all you'll get back for the misery is a simple 'thanks.' In this case, the director who sent it to me went on-and-on with a steadfast appreciation of the revision and . . . this is what I was dreading: offered a writing credit. Reducing the original scribe's efforts to 'story by'. Story by has a hint of failure to it. Like this person came up with this idea and wrote it all down, then it was taken from him and put in the hands of someone else. Someone competent. Where it was then improved. (I'm sure there's a ton of examples where 'story by' means that their work was ravaged by some fuckface, and I'm sure the original writer would call me that fuckface.) But the irony is, I don't want to be associated with the project. I thought it was stupid, violent, and without purpose. Which it still is. Only now the people don't sound like porn actors. I just needed to get in the good graces of this production team so as to pillage their human capital. And I like the original writer, he's a nice guy. Just not that great a writer. Add to that, he wrote 17 drafts. That's like a guy doting over a girl, doing everything he can think to win her over, then finding out she let some dude fingerbang her in front of all your friends. (Why do so many of my analogies revert to a girl I like being fingerbanged to the point of spectacle?)

So now I have to figure out a way to back away from the credit and in a nice way say, "Yeah, I don't want to be associated with your work. Say, can you give me a hand on this?"

This can only go well.

They Like the Cat Idea . . .

2010-03-10T14:31:00.003-06:00

In a previous meeting with the game developers, they said they wanted something unusual in the game. They spouted off a few examples from games I never heard of, so what they meant was lost on me.

(Imagine asking your parents to find the start menu.)

So I went home, and started coming up with ideas of things that could be deemed "weird."

I chuckled at one, finding it funny in that stupid way and scrawled it onto the margins of a sheet of loose leaf.

The next week I ran through my ideas, most of which were about breaking the fourth wall and making fun of the gamer for playing a game.

There were some piqued eyebrows but nothing that really stopped the show. So I threw out the jokey suggestion I remembered from the handwritten note.

"So at the end of the third level, the villain gives you chance to exit the game, warning that it gets worse from here on out. If the player chooses to quit, the villain chortles and says, (booming voice) "Perhaps you'd be better suited for videos of cats playing.' The player goes back to the main menu, and sure enough - there's now a link, 'Videos of cats playing'."

Even the hard-asses liked it and the next hour was spent developing the manner in how this would work and building a mini-game around it.

I sat there watching all this. Thinking to myself, over-and-over: You've got to be fucking kidding me.

The Drive to Work . . .

2010-03-10T09:06:00.002-06:00

. . . was occupied by The Girlfriend and I trying to sort out the Cories so as to properly mourn the exanimate.

"Okay, let's try this again. Was he the one who testified in the last Jackson trial, or the one who fronted The Truth Movement?"

"That was the same goddamned Corey! The band was even called Corey Feldman and the Truth Movement."

"And that's the same Corey who took his grandpa's car in 'License to Drive'?"

"Are you being serious?"

". . ."

These Were . . .

2010-03-09T08:21:00.001-06:00

. . . the theme foods served at our Oscar party: pineapple upside down cake, fishsticks with avatar-tar sauce, a serious manicotti, an education in horseradish, preciousciutto: based on the food ham by sapphire, and inglorious taco salad.*

*There was no Oscar party.

Did You Know . . .

2010-03-08T08:34:00.002-06:00

. . . there isn't a single photo of T-Pain holding a cartoon sandwich to be found anywhere on the internet?

This had to change.

(This is what happens when I put photoshop on my work computer.)

Via Facebook . . .

2010-03-03T15:56:00.003-06:00

. . . I got into an argument with a friend concerning who would win in a fight. Bigfoot or a Hydra.

Curious, I googled BIGFOOT + FIGHTS + BATTLES + HYDRA + DRAGON.

No results.

I swear, without me - nothing gets done.

Through the E-mail . . .

2010-02-25T09:50:00.004-06:00

. . . a friend and I have been developing a new style of feature: Juggalo Noir. It started as a joke that kept going. I'll give you the log line: For Detective John Hardwicke to catch a juggalo, he must become a juggalo. The story is based loosely on the Caylee Anthony case.

This is how Detective John Hardwicke infiltrates The Family.

EXT. PLACE WHERE JUGGALOS AND MAGGOTS HANG OUT EN MASSE (A VACANT BRICK AND MORTAR PARKING LOT?) - NIGHT

A dozen soundsystems blare a dozen soundtracks over the night's throng. The jaunty waltzes filling the cold air. From above, we pan over one thralling mass. Their clothes, dark. Their faces are filled in with the blacks and whites of cheap shoe polish. A fat sweaty Betty stands on the hood of a car, calling out to her fellow Juggalos. Rallying them in an exalted frenzy she lifts her shirt, exposing two large, pale breasts which hang past her curdled stomach. They lunge themselves into one another. Embracing in the moment their bodies crash.

A midway exists.Metal cars with squared edges and faded paint jobs roll through slowly. Juggalos keep to one side, yelling and threatening those on the other.

Where there stand The Maggots. Their music is faster. Their music is violent. Though the night is cold and each breath is visible, many are without shirts. They are tattooed in meaningless tribal markings. Their faces carry the largest gauge steel piercings. Their noses are bloodied. They kick and punch at their own.

Donned in a black ill-fitting Tunnel of Love tee, Detective John Hardwicke approaches five maggots centered around a lowered tailgate. Wait and Bleed pours out from the cab.

Det. John Hardwicke: I'm gonna need one of you faggots to blow me. (pointing to Maggot 5) Preferably you.

Maggot 1: What the fuck'd you say to us, Clown Pussy?

Det. John Hardwicke: Maybe you couldn't hear me over that shitty 17-piece band. I said I need one of you faggots . . .

A crack to his jaw from Maggot 2. Det. John Hardwicke lunges forth. Tackles one to the ground, and is pummeled by the rest. He bites the face of the maggot in his control. A kick to the neck turns him on his back. Exposing him to the vultures.

Juggalo (off-screen): Whoop Whoop!

A figure, shirtless and spry, dives out from the shadows. Feet first, he catches a maggot squarely in the chest. More emerge. They trounce on the maggots. Whipping them with chains as they hoot and laugh. The Woman in the clan spikes a 3-liter of Faygo onto the stomach of a fallen.

When it's over, the five lay bloody and broken, writhing on the pavement. The Juggalos take Detective John Hardwicke in arms. They distribute his weight amongst them. They carry him away.

Fix the typos, that's page eight!

I Met With . . .

2010-02-24T09:09:00.004-06:00

. . . the game developers to go over a story outline I'd sent late last week.

Anything I've written in the past has been to my own consideration. I've sought the advice of a trusted few, and received feedback from a writing class (which most will tell you is pretty worthless) but anything they offered was more of an alternate path the material could take, if I wanted to.

This is my first time writing for a committee. Though I'm given free creative reign, I'm still a hired hand. So at the end of the day, my yield is turned in to the drover.

If nothing else, this project has given me the opportunity to sit at a table and hear the cliched things you thought were the product of a stressed writer's exaggeration.

"We want something big, but keep it small."

"One of the things I love about your writing is the vagueness. Everything can be interpreted so many ways." Followed moments later by: "Yeah, I just love how specific it is. Keep it that way."

"Has anyone here played Fallout 3?" Everybody raises their hands except me. "There's one scene where you're told, 'there will be cake' and then later there's cake. Let's have that in there."

"Are you taking notes?"

It was decided that we'll meet every Monday night. Expect more to come.

. . . and no. There will not be cake.

Shutter Island . . .

2010-02-23T22:52:00.005-06:00

I originally drafted a long, laborious write-up of Shutter Island and my relationship with Scorsese over the past 20 years. But I think I can explain my disdain more economically.

Have you ever been in a place where you can tell everyone is keeping something from you? Either you've walked in on what's going to be a prank. Or the rest of the staff doesn't want to tell you that the order came from the DM: You'll never work in a Blockbuster Video in this state again, no way - no how. Or nobody wants to be the one to tell you your dad just died.

Shutter Island feels that way throughout it's entirety. And at nearly two and a half hours you just want someone to come out and say what you've been expecting that entire time.

I'd still suggest you watch it as A) It's better to see it before someone flat out tells you what happens and B) It's Martin Scorsese - the man gave us some of the best American movies of all-time. You're not paying to see Shutter Island. You're paying to say 'thank you' for your contribution to the humanities.

If you can't do that at least send PBS ten bucks.

Dogma 95 . . .

2010-02-23T12:41:00.002-06:00

. . . is a style of movie making where the director chooses to use only the resources naturally available to tell their story. No artificial lighting, constructed sets, or tripods are allowed. This is to lend to a completely organic experience. With these stringent requirements, it's almost impossible to adhere to each demand so upon completion of a movie, the director has to write a letter and explain why their movie broke the rules.

It's with this I segue into the point of this post:

Saturday night, I ate four sausages. Three perogis. Three slices of bread. Some boiled potatoes. Sauerkraut. The richest yellow cake with chocolate fudge icing. And later that night, two Gatsby cocktails. (They had cucumber in them. How was I to resist?)

It was The Girlfriend's dad''s Birthday and I like the guy, so how could I not show up? It would also be rude to turn down a plate. To show how good the dinner was, I had no choice but to get a second helping of everything. Come on, cake?

Luckily, it didn't throw things off like I thought it would. There were no particularly strong cravings carrying on into the next day. And there wasn't any substantial weight gain. Sure it went up for a day, but I'm already back on course. So it's okay to fuck up. Just pick your occasion and pick wisely. If you keep coming up with an excuse to indulge, you're only undoing that which is a product of your own work.

213 as of this morning. See you at the pool in your t-shirt, fatty.

216 lbs. . .

2010-02-19T08:50:00.003-06:00

I'm tired, but I can't fall asleep at night.

It's always cold. Wherever I am. Whatever I wear.

But damn if these jeans aren't loose on me!

*high five*

Shaun White . . .

2010-02-18T11:37:00.001-06:00

. . . works because he's Spicolli's fantasy fully-realized in our own world.

8 lbs Down . . .

2010-02-18T08:54:00.003-06:00

. . . at least sixteen to go.

Though it's premature to consider any loss now as a substantial gain. I'm sure through the body's own biochemistry, I'll be fluctuating between pounds as this continues.

Still, there's a solemn victory in the once taut slacks that now fit flat against the front. No discernible ponch seen. (Though the muffin ass remains . . . for now.)

As I mentioned before, I'd made some prior attempts to lose weight. The reason for their failure came in me being too lazy to work out and hoping a diet of all meats would do the work for me. But I was also too lazy to even cook real food so I relied on frozen incarnations of steak and hamburger patties. All of which were loaded in a plethora of sugar and nitrates - adding to the weight they were intended to diminish.

It was about two months ago that The Girlfriend and I went to her parent's home in the southwest burbs. They were going to order us lunch and I was in the swing of this faux-no carb diet above. It's a little emasculating to be a man who asks for no bun or tomato on everything. Or to go down to the corner bar and order a diet coke and whiskey. Something about it emanates a certain type of effort. As well as a certain type of failure. Like having to take a remedial English class. Like having to go about something differently from the others. This is why I made mention that you should keep this to yourself. When The Girlfriend's mom asked what I might be in the mood for, I offered that I wasn't particularly hungry and that their decision should be of their own. The Girlfriend tells her mom that I'm not eating carbs. "Oh," her mother says looking at me before turning to a menu she holds in her hands. "Well . . . this place has chicken?" I try to tell them that my diet shouldn't factor into where they're ordering from. Her Father enters the room and asks if we've made a decision, "Not yet. (A.v.E) can't eat carbs." Oh, Jesus. Everyone stop. Her father does the same glance over at me before turning to the menu "Is there anyplace that has chicken?" Then the sisters enter and this entire thing repeats itself.

The entire meal was had over the subject of diets. The next Friday The Girlfriend and I went to an all you can eat fish fry and that was the last of that.

Last night the scene repeated itself when I went to pick up The Girlfriend from her book club. Their discussion on Wallace and infinity veered towards diets and my name was mentioned. Within minutes of arriving my ear is being talked off by a kinesiologist who won't shut up about the detriment I'm imposing on my health. After ten minutes of this, she steps outside to have a cigarette.

This is why you've got to keep it secret. Wait for someone to notice on their own that you look particularly gaunt, not shove it in their face with constant requests for microwaved vegetables or handfuls of corned flakes. Why? Because people are haters by nature and they will try to destroy you. Right now, you're Ayn Rand's protagonist. Your brilliance (in abstaining from sustaining foods and pushing your body to dangerous boundaries) is a threat to them.

As I was walked to my office, I noticed it in my step.

It was back.

My swagger.

Ba Le . . .

2010-02-17T13:40:00.003-06:00

. . . is one of my favorite restaurants in the neighborhood. Located at Broadway and Argyle, it's a French bakery that trades in the most amazing of Vietnamese Sandwiches (notice how I capitalize that? that's out of respect) to be found in all of Little Saigon or the city. They're expanding their storefront, from a small carry out spot with only a few tables - to a building twice it's current size next door. Furnished in glass, steel, and an almost modern European decor it's easy to see that they're bumping up their game.

As much as I'm glad to see a small business grow to such stature, I'm a little apprehensive. It's the same feeling as when that band you like is poised to make the jump to the mainstream.

Please, Ba Le. I don't need another Dashboard Confessional.

My Stomach . . .

2010-02-17T13:26:00.001-06:00

. . . feels the way a pulled pork sandwich looks.

Each sip of the cherry diet cola feels like battery acid being poured into an open wound.

But I'm already down to 219.

Christ, I'm Fat . . .

2010-02-16T09:02:00.008-06:00

"You're not supposed to be your age, plus 200 pounds." - Louis C.K.

I checked out my myspace page for the first time this year. I think myspace can officially be considered a yearbook that encompasses 2005 to 2008. Few have changed their profile picture in ages. Their watermark on the internet remains that same photo from three summers ago. Their status reads single, even though they're married. Their skin is rosy and pink though now it's sunken and gray. For me, I was struck by how thin I was.

You never realize how great of shape you were in, until you're no longer in it. As much as I noticed my gut more and more, it was never alarming to me. The Girlfriend has a bathroom scale. I noticed that my weight was around the same as when I first moved to Chicago. Being broke, needing to re-invent myself, and living a block away from the lakefront jogging trail dropped me to the healthiest I'd ever been. (That's not saying much. Before I left for Chicago, while still living in Lawrence, I had a set weekday dinner routine that lasted for years. Mon: 2-for-1 Burger Night at Henry T's. Tues: Taco Tuesday at Taco Johns. Wednesday: 3-5-7 Day at Rudy's Pizzeria. Thursday: Yello-Sub (gratis per staff). By the time I left, I was around 240 lbs. Within six months here, I was bordering the 190lb mark.

The downside is I have a 6'2 frame that distributes the weight across my entire body. So the gain is gradual enough where even I don't notice until it's far too late. I liken it to drinking while you're sitting down. It's only when you get up that you realize how fucked you are.

And so begins the new series in Lower Level 30: The Days of the Crash Diet.

As of yesterday, I've begun my own regiment. I know from my previous (see: failed) attempts what I need to do. No gimmick. No fad. No rationality. The rest will be written with the assumption you'll be joining me. If you are going to try this out, thanks for fighting the fight. It will get ugly.

We start with breakfast.

One bowl of corn flakes, fat free milk. No special K. No health cereal that makes claims of an incentive over other cereals. You get several boxes of the cheapest flaked corn cereal you can. And you eat only one bowl. I'd couple this with a daily vitamin, as you will be sorely lacking the constructs that make a healthy meal. This will keep the hair and teeth from falling out.

Lunch.

If you're like me, you have a job and are at the mercy of the lunch hour and those restaurants within close proximity. Don't worry. Your lunch will consist of one bowl of corn flakes - dry.

This may not be enough to satisfy the appetite of a working person. That's why you should have a can of warm diet cola around 2. I go with Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper. Warm so that it isn't too enjoyable - preventing the development of a dependency.

Dinner is always the hard part. To find something that offers nourishment, while not being excessive. Something easy on carbs, low on calories, but with substance. I found it yesterday in my grocer's freezer: Steam'ables. (They were on sale for $2.50 each.) I found the chicken and summer vegetables to do the trick, and at 180 calories per bag.

It's microwavable, so you can prepare it quickly and easily following your workout.

Oh yeah, the workout.

Right now I'm forgoing all weight training. The name of the game during this phase is to drop as much weight as quickly as possible. So if you're in the gym, every minute should be focused on cardio.

I'm so out of shape that hauling my gym bag downtown was a struggle worthy of a Woody Guthrie song. It's been over a year since I jogged a complete mile without collapsing or stopping for a cheeseburger. That's why the elliptical is my current machine. It's low impact and helps build up endurance which I can then use on the treadmill and later when we enter the weights training phase (by the way, you'll need to start seeking out empty kegs for the weights training). More so, I can go for a hell of a long time on the elliptical. I suggest you go to the point you're shirt is soaked in sweat. For me, it was about two a half cycles of the machine's 'Weight Loss' program. This was about an hour and a half.

Once you're done on the elliptical, it's time for the sit-ups/push ups. I said earlier that I'm refraining from weight training, but it's still important to develop some strength during this phase. I do about 300 sit-ups using different techniques.

The first is the standard crunch, with back flat against the mat and legs elevated at the knee so your body forms a z (except keep your thighs perfectly horizontal). Do 100. Break it up into sets if you need to. I do two sets of fifty. By the end of each rep - your stomach should be on fire.

Next you'll do the same positioning, but this time twisting your abdomen so that your elbow touches the opposite knee. Your legs will kick in and out like riding a phantom cycle. These go easier since you're changing up the strain. Feel free to do more for as long as your stomach can handle.

Next, I lay with my lower back on that stupid gym ball thingy. I feel like such a dickwad using this, but it works. Your feet will be planted firmly on the ground. Your body, from the knee to the tip of your head should be flat. Raise yourself up at the stomach, as far up as you can. Then return to the starting position. That's one. Only 99 more.

As for the push-ups: So many as you can handle. The final goal will be 100 per day. Yesterday, in my emaciated state, I was able to pull off twenty. And I can still feel it in my arms and chest. It's important to start getting comfortable with your own strength, so that you can handle the weight to come later.

During the various lulls between sets and stations, head over to the pull-up bar located in the dank corner of every gym. Just try to lift yourself up. During your first week, you might get one. Maybe a few more. By the third or forth week, I'm sure we can get in ten, easily. This is more a means to see the product of your work than it is for any health benefit. You'll be amazed at how much of a boost it gives you.

What we're doing here is unhealthy. It might even be dangerous for some. While others will read this as stupid. But this is the first phase of an operation that will undo the products of a year lived happily and in the arms of someone who would love me even if I was three times this size. Granted, she never put those five double cheeseburgers in my mouth or force me to chew.

By the way - don't be a dick about your diet. In fact, don't tell anyone you're doing this. Make it a non-issue. When you mention it to someone, it becomes the subject of focus and discussion. You don't need that. Keep the pressure off so that if you stumble, the only person who knows about it is you and the damage is contained.

You can still go out and enjoy the life of a civilized person. Just abstain from beer and drink diet cola with vodka. If you go to dinner, I'm pretty damn sure wherever you're going has a salad on the menu. Just be sure to keep it dry. No lite Italian. No vinaigrette. No croutons. No bacon. Just a missionary salad. Anything else, and you stand the risk of awakening that beast within that demands the taste of something sweet and something salty.

Once we get to a point where we're comfortable with our weight, we can re-join the normal society.

Until then, I'll see you at the gym.

The Party Planning Committee . . .

2010-02-11T09:17:00.005-06:00

From A.v.E

To:(The Girlfriend)

I'm trying to write a reminder e-mail for the party on Saturday. Can you take a look at these and tell me which one I should send?

Version One.

Subject: Heads-Up.

People,

It turns out Tommy Wiseau will be hosting a screening of The Room at the Music Box on Friday. This means Tommy Wiseau will most likely be in Chicago throughout the weekend. Please, I urge all of you; if you see Tommy Wiseau prior to Saturday - do not tell him we're screening his movie. He would probably show up and it would get really weird and something tells me Tommy Wiseau doesn't smell very good.

En serio, it would be like talking about someone only to realize they were listening the entire time and now they're trying to pretend they didn't hear what you said but you know they did and now it's just this weird little mind game. Do you want that? Really!? Do you!?

Signed,
Man in Yellow Hat

Version Two:

The Room - This Saturday.

Dear Guests (confirmed and otherwise),

Having talked it over with The Girlfriend, it's been decided that a six-foot Subway Seafood Sensation just wouldn't be a good idea.

Please plan accordingly.

Signed,
The Management

Version Three:

The Room - This Saturday

Some of you may have learned that Tommy Wiseau is screening The Room the night before us. Here are several reasons why our screening will be better than Tommy Wiseau's.

1.Tommy Wiseau will not be raffling off prizes.

2. We live within walking distance from many of you.

3. Not only is Tommy Wiseau not raffling off prizes -he's not raffling off anything.

4. Tommy Wiseau did not make a trip to RadioShack to make multiple-room Room viewing a reality.

5. If this screening is a success, the next one will feature Popeye's Chicken and Thunderbird.

6. If this screening isn't a success, the next one will feature Thunderbird.

7. Seriously, RadioShack.

8. Have you been in there lately?

9. It's pretty fucking bleak.

10. And it was at nine-o-clock in the loop. Do that many people the in south loop need lamp cord at that hour?

Hope to see you there.

Signed,
Runaway Train Never Coming Back

From: (The Girlfriend
To: A.v.E

I'm really busy. Is it possible for you to figure out one thing without having to ask?

From: A.v.E
To: (The Girlfriend)

. . .

From: (The Girlfriend)
To: A.v.E

The second one.

From: A.v.E
To: (The Girlfriend)

Really? That one?

From (The Girlfriend)
To: A.v.E

Ugh! Just send them all.

"I Don't Write For Felt . . ."

2010-02-10T08:58:00.002-06:00

This is what was said in the Saturday Night Live writing room when someone had to come-up with material for Jim Henson's earlier, oddly psychedelic Muppets. If you didn't know, during the first season of SNL, Jim Henson's creatures were featured in these really long, really boring sketches. Most were chock-full of borscht-belt jokes that didn't really match the characters and the audience's silence is deafening. This is why they're usually excised from the repeats.

Writing for a concept that you're not really interested in, or one you don't understand is like writing a term paper due the next day. And that's what my initial fear was.

Several weeks ago, the professor for whose class I wrote The Shaft and Antediluvian sent me an e-mail telling me that he passed my writing along to another professor who is fostering a group of students who have been developing a video game. The game has gotten a great deal of attention in the gaming community and they're looking to expand it. To do this, they realized they needed a story. They got in touch with my professor and that's how I got involved.

The team is led by two students who have taken to overseeing the production and design process. I met with them in the commons to discuss what my involvement could be.

It was a cross between an OKCupid meeting, and a drug buy as I walked through the rows of tables -hunched over with neck stretched out, head lolling about as it scanned the room looking for two guys who seemed like game developers.

Let me preface this next thing by saying, I'm not much of a, to borrow the Gerard Butler parlance, "gamer." I can sit through four movies backtobacktoback and see no waste in that, but after playing a video game for half an hour, I feel the need to jog. There seems to be something so wasteful about gaming. Maybe it's because I knew people who dropped/flunked out of college after growing to involved with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and that I knew of no one who dropped out because they got swept up in the work of Jean-Pierre Melville. It could also be that I think video games have shattered people's drive and ruined relationships. I would rather listen to someone talk on the phone for half-an-hour than watch someone play a video game. At least with the phone conversation, I know at least two people are active. If you've ever played a video game for more than thirty minutes while your boyfriend/girlfriend is in the room - you've just given them permission to have guiltless motel fuck-in-one bed/sleep-in-the-other sex with one of your friends, per violation. Now let me put on a heavy sweater and offer the grand kids some Werther's Originals.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was going to show you what a whore I am.

So I'm meeting with these guys about writing their video game. They're not the nerds I pictured but are instead two kids in form fitting flannels pulled out of the crowd from a Tent Party show at the Pitchfork second stage. We shake heads and begin "the interview."

"So I don't know much about the game, but I'm assuming that it's a first person shooter and you need me to write cool things for the guy to say before he sets fire to a Ukranian prison."

"No. The game isn't that it's . . . "

I pull a sheet of office paper from out my back pocket and begin to unfold it.

"While the character is walking around he can say 'I want to shoot something so bad, my dick is hard.' I think that's pretty good."

". . ."

"As the character is running up on an unsuspecting enemy, right before he shoots him in the back of his fucking head, he can scream 'You broke up Pantera!' though some may say it's too soon. (If you ask me, it's not soon enough.)"

"Are you talking to us in parenthesis?"

"(Is that a problem?)"

The meeting ended up begin structured like an interview. Asking my opinions on video games and how important story is to them. I said that if we're talking about how important story is to video games, and assigning a numeric value with ten being the highest, one being the lowest . . . I'd have to say a ten."

They shook my hand and went into detail about the plot they've conceived.

Out of professional respect for the project and the team, I won't divulge any of the storyline or the surprise twist ending I added that you'll never, ever see coming.

One of the things I've got to give these guys credit for is their diligence. They meet at least three times a week. And per the continuing skype discussions, these guys put the project before everything else.

Yesterday I found out that one of the guys in the project died suddenly in his apartment. I couldn't remember his face, so I checked to see if we were contacts on Skype. We were.

In the first Skype meeting, he was the first to send me a contact request. Then messaged me to say that he'd read through the pages I submitted and that he was really excited about what I was doing.

I was really appreciative of this. Of his going out of his way to welcome me and speak well of my work. It stood out because nobody does that. Nobody goes out of their way to extend a hand to a stranger. And so few go out of their way to say I like what you're doing.

You were kind. You're considered by all to have been brilliant. You would have turned 22 yesterday.

And though we met so briefly, I'm certain that I'll get to know you in the stories I'll hear. About all the things you did. And in that part of ourselves we leave everywhere we go.

During the Transition . . .

2010-02-05T08:40:00.008-06:00

. . . the new managing entity asked that we all fill out a job application - after we'd been hired on. The thing was your typical job app stretched across nine pages. On the third was the box to check if you'd ever been convicted or charged with a crime.

Checking that box is something that the accused probably considers the moment the cuffs start cutting into their wrists. No matter where you go. Or what industry you're in. This question will come up. You're only given five inches to then explain the details and events of what happened. That's barely enough room for, "Kids. Christmas. Rent. Shoved. Grabbed. Ran. Sorry."

I know what it is to carry a particular dread with them all day, fearing that at any moment their greatest weakness and regret will be exposed.

For me, it's sports.

Like so many of my adult deficiencies, I blame not being into sports on growing up in a rural community. I've also blamed the following on my Kansas upbringing.

Driving without a shirt (during rush hour).

Eating any part of the animal. (Maybe not. For 2010, The Girlfriend and I want to go through all 200+ dishes at this Vietnamese place in our neighborhood. I find out that they have cow penis on the menu. I've already eaten fried calf testicles, but for some reason, I can't see myself going north of that. Cow dick is where I draw the line. A man must have standards.)

Shooting things.

The Cowboy Dance I perform at parties.

Watching TV with my bare ass on the sofa.

Scoffing when The Girlfriend tells me to take my bare ass off her sofa.

Considering Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman' to be the greatest song ever recorded.

Waiting until my late 20's to pursue college.

Finding Wal-Mart to be soothing.

Reserving Pizza Hut as a special occasion food.

Being so far removed from any major sporting outfit and growing up in a home where sports was never a consideration -athletic competition was just lost on me. I can understand the talent and work that goes into professional competition, but it still does nothing to keep my interest. I can best sum it up this way: I see the NFL, NBA, MLBA, and NHL the same way you see Nascar.

A lot of my friends back home are of the same ilk. At the most, the local rivalry between K-State and KU, two schools about five hours away, drew the most half-hearted contention amongst those in southwest Kansas. Even then, most people didn't give a shit about the game. It was a conflict of ideals between the bleeding heart liberal-arts school, KU. And the Ag-tech Christ-centric small town representation of K-State. So sports never came up within my circle.

Then I move to Chicago where there's no way to be apathetic towards any sport - even lacrosse. When I started at DePaul, I found that even the loners who sat by themselves and smelled of soup had a bookie's analysis of the Monday night game. Making that guy more in the know than I.

The Girlfriend also puts me to shame. She'll settle in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon with a fancy beer and some work spread out before her, taking in the Bears v. Packers (do they even play? I don't know!) while I go and watch the BBC feed in the bedroom.

So it's Superbowl weekend. The Girlfriend and I have been invited to watch the game with some friends. Most of the night will be spent by me either A) trying to comment on the game but instead embarrassing myself. "How do they expect to win with so many . . . assists?" or the more likely B) Making fun of every man woman and child in the room.

Pointing out the faults in others is still my trusty standby. My Ole' Faithful.

Have a good Superbowl weekend, you stupid jerkfaces.

On the 13th . . .

2010-02-03T10:23:00.004-06:00

. . . The Girlfriend and I will be hosting some friends for a screening of The Room. If you haven't seen it, or don't know what it is - get some friends together and watch it. If you don't enjoy yourselves, contact me and I'll send you a check for your time.

The following is the invitation that was sent out:

What happened to the guy with glasses?

What is wrong with that man's face?

Isn't she in the Magic Bullet Express infomercial?

Where did that guy come from? And why is he in this scene?

Breast cancer?

These questions and more just like them will be answered Saturday February 13th during our screening of The Room.

The phrase "so bad it's good" is thrown around in nearly every write-up of Tommy Wiseau's mysteriously-financed opus The Room. This is wrong. Completely wrong. The Room is so bad, it's profound.

You'll leave questioning all empirical truths as you wonder how something like this can exist in our universe. Leading you to realize that man's science is nothing but terms the self-appointed scholars coined while they masturbated one another to help comfort the understanding that we exist within a place without purpose. Without meaning. Where it's dark. And where it's vacuous. There is no cause. There is no such thing as being. We simply are. So you'll turn your back on the things that make for a learned society. You'll lose all sense of your fellow man. You'll live the life of a typical Kansan. Rising each morning with the eastern sun. To tend to the only things you can believe in: your ever faithful alpacas.

But I don't want to hype it up too much.

We're located at xxxx x xxx Street, Apt Xx (one block east of X and X) in sunny X-town.

We're hoping to crack the bottles around eight and start the show at nine. We'll also be raffling off prizes!

Feel free to bring a friend, but please, no companions.

This is what happens when you write up a party invitation after reading too much Cormac McCarthy.

Anyone out there want to talk about Blood Meridian?

Anyone?

The New Hires . . .

2010-02-02T17:08:00.002-06:00

. . . started yesterday.

One of them already quit.

Knowing that we exist in one of the worst economic downturns that we'll experience in our lifetimes, and that someone would still wade in those waters than work your job - I'll be honest, it's a little disheartening.

It's like finding out that yours is the house that smells like soup.

There's a new girl that sits where Kirby once sat. All day I hear her complaining about the workstation. "Why is this keyboard sticking? Ew. There's food in here."

Earlier I helped get her phone set up. Everything he didn't take home was thrown out last week. But when I stepped foot within his cube walls, the smell came back like he was standing over my shoulder. Peering over to see what I was doing. The buttons on the phone and keyboard are all crunchy to the touch. A decent amount of force is needed to depress anything. Everything is smeared with something. Any notions I had of giving him a ring and checking out his place - passing the late afternoon with a beer and whatever anime he'd most likely throw on - out the window. If he kept his workspace like this, I can only imagine his home.

Not to say that we all don't miss him. I spend twenty-minutes of my day talking to someone who found out he was let go. I'm like his Puff Daddy. Singing my songs and collecting his tribute.

But seriously, the new girl they hired is completely worthless. I give her a month.

The Academy Award Announcements . . .

2010-02-02T08:57:00.005-06:00

. . . I think I really need to hurry and catch Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire now available in paperback through Bantam Publishing Group, or electronically through the Nook Store at barnes&noble.com. Now at Barnes & Noble, Complimentary Wi-Fi. No Fees. No Charges. Just Log On. At least while it's still at the IMAX.

A Quick History . . .

2010-02-01T10:16:00.004-06:00

This blog was started a couple of years ago for a couple of reasons. One was to best a group of friends who had started their own blog. Theirs was left in the night, outside a fire station in the badlands of North Dakota some months later, while mine has kept going.

The second reason is that in the five years I've been working here, I've maintained a string of pretty intense e-mail correspondence with friends near and far. The kind where your workday is punctuated by so-and-so's response to your month long exchange over things as mundane as dry toast. The relationships seemed to follow a pattern.

"Hey do you still use this e-mail address?"

"What have you been up to? I'm working this lame desk job."

"Me too! What do you think about salt-water taffy?"

The stream would last anywhere from a few months to a year. Then something would happen.

They'd move to a new state. They'd get a new job. Or get promoted to a position where they actually held some sort of responsibility. The kind that prohibits a days long dissection of last night's Apprentice. Or if the girl at the party intentionally/accidentally brushed her hand across my junk.

So they'd leave and I'd still be here. With an empty inbox and a stupid story to tell.

So that's the truth behind Lower Level 30.

I don't think I've given more than ten people the link to this site. And I keep things fairly anonymous to protect the guilty. But in the last several weeks, I've had a readership in the hundreds. Most of them are brought here by that link that reads next blog. But it seems like quite a few have stuck around to read through the archives. Some have even left some pretty nice compliments. To you, I've got to say, thanks. For letting me know I'm not playing to an empty house.

It means more than you know.

I Won?

2010-01-29T16:47:00.014-06:00

So for the last several days, I've been playing the most irritating game with HR.

I send a request asking for some type of documentation that states that my company is re-structuring, and due to this I will be transitioning to the employ of a new managing entity.

Then I get back a response that has nothing to do with what I asked. Forcing me to re-ask the same question - with smaller words and keeping the case lowered to ease any confusion.

can you give me something that says that you stopped running the office and that i work for the new company thats running the same office plz?

I'm not kidding. I got a response asking, "What do you want the letter to say?"

She finally tosses me to her supervisor. This whole time they're trying to get me to call them to handle this over the phone. No dice. Everyone in this will be accountable for their words.

The HR head asks what I want, as apparently she hasn't read any of the e-mails that stated this in retardedly painful detail. So I tell her, and even add that this letter would be strictly for my own records in the event that I ever need to show that there was never a break in my employment and that I was transitioned to the new firm. (This is really in case the new regime realizes I'm a worthless blogger and gets rid of me within the first months. Also, there are rumors that this is just a first wave of people being laid off and that more heads are to roll in April.) She then e-mails my boss and asks if this is true. My boss replies back and says it isn't, as the wording I used might infer that I was laid-off (which I was), while he sees it as we're all leaving to work for someone new. So I reply back asking for a re-worded letter or e-mail that at least notes that my current position with the company won't exist in February. And that I will now be under the employ of the new company. (I can't wait for this whole thing to end so I can stop using the word 'employ' in every other sentence.)

Then I don't hear back from anyone.

My boss calls me into his office and asks for my resignation letter. I tell him I'm not writing one until I get something in writing that outlines what's happened here. He shakes his head. "You guys are really getting me pissed off about these letters." He holds one up, "I told Michael to write 'in lieu of termination'. He wrote 'in Lou of termination,' . . . who is Lou?" That he can be mad at his staff goes beyond insulting to degrading.

"This entire thing could have handled much better. You swing by our desks as you're leaving, tell us we need to write a letter of resignation. We all say no. Or ask why. You go on vacation the next day and come back a week later and don't mention a word about the resignation letters until this morning, when you send out an e-mail and say you need those by the end of the day. You've never once told us why we need to write these letters and who they're going to. And when someone does ask, you act insulted that we'd even question the company."

He takes of his glasses and rub his temples. "Look. I know it's a bad time around here, but you don't want to burn any bridges."

"Why? We've already been laid off by this company. We're being screwed out of a severance by the way this transition was structured. If my company is going to ask me to write a letter of resignation, it's only fair that I get something that states this transition is even occurring."

"You can print out all these e-mails that you've gotten from HR."

"No, I can't. They're all worded as to be intentionally vague. Some of them read like a Marx brothers routine. In not a single e-mail since the meeting have we gotten anything that says the new company is taking this office over and that some employees are transferring while others are being laid off. Nothing has said that. If they did, then it could be seen that we're being forced out and a severance would have to be paid out."

"So is that what you want. A severance? You're not going . . ."

"I don't care about the severance. What I do care about is that if the new company lays me off in a few months, the company where I worked for five years won't hold up this letter and say 'Sorry, (A.v.E) walked out the door on his own'."

He touches his face again. This time pinching the bridge of his nose. He's buying realty. Waiting for the next thing to say to come to him.

"I understand that. That's a real concern." And for the first time since this all began, he regained a sense of humanity. He agrees that what they're doing is bullshit. That he hates having to ask for these letters, which even he and his boss aren't certain of the full purpose. I seem him struggling to phrase each following sentence.

"You know, you could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if you'd just said this in the first place. All the people on the floor want to know is that they have a boss who understands them and can sympathize with them. We want to know we work for someone who will go the mattresses for us."

I help him word another e-mail to the HR supervisor in New York. I walked out of his office. And that's the last I heard on the subject.

As he was leaving, my boss comes over to my desk and asks with a pissed grin, "are you happy now?" I check my e-mail and see that the HR supervisor has replied stating explicitly that she will change our "former employee category" (like I'm supposed to know they had categories) to one where the company will not contest any draw for unemployment. I ask, "Wait, so that means we were in a category where they would have fought to have to pay out."

Tina overhears and asks what we're talking about. The Boss turns and addresses the staff who are now looking at us.

"HR was trying to put you all in a category where they'd refuse unemployment. But I sent them an e-mail and made sure that wouldn't happen."

The son of a bitch really thinks he did this. Even though he was going around forcing everyone to shoot themselves in the foot by drafting a resignation letter, he thinks he's helped us all.

And that's the worst about people like him. Those who can be so destructive yet see only the righteousness they've convinced themselves is there. It's an amazing skill. One I hope I won't develop with time.

He'll spend the rest of our days here recalling to us how he fought for his staff. I'll let him have that idea of a victory. What would I do with it?

The Uglies . . . .

2010-01-28T10:45:00.002-06:00

It was after we were hired on by the new managing firm. As our boss was leaving, he swung by each of our desks and asked us for a letter of resignation. We all said that was bullshit and he left us alone. This morning we get an e-mail from him asking us for those resignation letters by the end of the day.

I know what the company is doing. They're making us leave of our own volition so as to avoid having to pay out a severance. When I posed the question to my boss about the ethics behind such a request, he looked offended. Taking the stance that the company has done so much for us, that it's blasphemous to question its actions. I noted that there isn't any way that the recent events could be arranged to show the company not forcing us out. And that those of us who were qualified enough to be hired on by the new firm are being penalized for their service. He scoffed and walked off. Such a fucking company man.

After the e-mail went out, Tina, the woman who squeals with delight when Clippy appears on her word doc, went into his office. Per someone sitting near the door, the following was heard. "You're trying to screw us!" "I am not trying to screw you!" then the door was shut. Twenty-minutes later she emerges, crying. She sat at her desk and put her hand on the mouse. Not moving. Just staring at the screen in the position she's sat for the last five years.

I replied with a request for some type of documentation that outlines the events taking place in this office, and how this department is being released. Adding that were the new company to rescind their offer, or if I for some reason am unable to work under their employ such a resignation letter would work to restrict me of drawing any unemployment or assistance. He bounces me to an HR lady in New York. She's passed along my request to someone who'll get back to me.

I'm not writing anything up until my company can provide me some written account of the company's restructuring. If it doesn't arrive by day's end - it might get bloody over here.

I Didn't Think . . .

2010-01-27T15:10:00.002-06:00

. . . the "Sent from iPhone" signature could be anymore pretentious. That is, until I read it in French.

I Tried to RSVP Out . . .

2010-01-27T08:49:00.008-06:00

. . . of the meet-and-greet with the new managing company, but my refusal went refused.

For those of you who don't know how my job works, it goes like this.

I work in a city office for the department of revenue. To reduce the costs of staffing city employees, the city began experimenting with privatizing certain departments. Hiring private companies to staff certain offices. Five years ago, I was hired by one of those companies. Due to a re-structuring in the contract, the company I work for was forced to sub-contract out my office to a firm that met the new requirements. We were all laid off and had to re-interview to keep our jobs under the new company. The rest has been written about previously.

The five of us who were taken on received an e-mail invitation to a cocktail mixer in the managing company's office in the CBS Broadcast Office. I regretfully declined but was told I had to be there. In short, this wasn't the friendly meet and greet. This was a way to hold the new employee orientation cheaply. It would be more cost-effective to ply us with food and drink after-hours, as opposed to holding an orientation during business-hours that would grind productivity to a halt.

It's a situation you all know. The immediate bond that develops between a drinker, and the person buying their rounds. Those of you from Dodge know exactly who I'm talking about. In the Queen of the Cowtowns we had a man whose sense of self was so ridiculously inflated that it drew awe. In his mind, he produced the greatest hip-hop album of all-time, that he never needed to rap. He felt he could defeat anyone in a battle, that he never had to fight. That his car changed color in the evening sun was his sole laurel. He entered every room to a wave of acclaim, even though it was never there. During the holiday weekends when everyone would return home, he would arrive at the local saloon with his motley band of social barnacles. He would put a stack of money on the bar and tell everyone the drinks were on him. He raised his glass and toasted to his vehicle whose car could sit idle while the blue chrome rims would continued to revolve and revolve. And for those few hours, we'd pat him on the back. Ask what he was up to. Then order more gin and coke.

I now work for that guy.

Not that the CEO isn't a nice guy. He's simply successful enough that his lame jokes never go without a laugh. And there we sat at a dark oak table with leather placements bearing the company insignia before us, the five remaining employees and a few of the new hires. The first-date silence reared about often. It would be broken with his commentary on the grand view from the 14th floor. During another lull, he pointed to a flat-screen television in the corner. The local news aired. "We're on the leading edge of technology. Before we came in, people were using projectors during a meeting. We thought that was so clumsy. Bringing in a projector. We were the first company to use a flat-screen for our meetings. People were blown away. We have a fifty-inch plasma! We own it!" He then turned in his leather chair and looked at the set he was talking about. He sat for a moment and then turned back.

I later asked if it was connected through a wireless router to a nearby PC. "Nah, it's just hooked up with rabbit-ears."

I left early. Welcoming the new hires and stopping to take a leak. One of the retained was in the facility. He was nervous that the place was wired for sound so he only spoke in Spanish. Thinking that the CEO would be unable to crack our Navajo code talk.

And that was the company meet and greet.

2009 in Movies . . . Part One

2010-01-22T10:04:00.004-06:00

Over the three-day MLK weekend (MLK!MLK! How many kids did you kill today?!)The Girlfriend and I watched nearly every movie of worth we'd missed in 2009 (as well as some of not so much worth cough*Jennifer's Body*cough).

I tried writing this at the end of '09 but was unprepared. After this weekend's marathon, I'm finally comfortable in giving a rundown of what i watched in 2009.

The following . . .

. . . as told to me by a friend of a friend of a nurse.

Woman comes into the emergency room. She complains of a sharp pain and a milky discharge from her stoma (the abdominal opening used for her colostomy bag). The Doctor takes a look and determines it's a simple infection. Prescribes antibiotics. Sends her on her way.

The Woman returns weeks later with the same symptoms. The Doctor administers the same treatment and has her return; the infection cleared.

On her third visit with the recurred malady, The Woman is held for observation. The Doctor inquires into her occupation. She's candid in her admission of work as a lot lizard. Offering her company to the fleet of truck drivers who lodge at the rest areas along her stretch of highway. The Doctor suggests closing the stoma and using a different appliance, given that this lifestyle may not be the most suited for the current pouch.

The Woman says, "You can't close the hole. That's how I make my money."

For me, 2008 was that makeshift fuckhole.

Which is why I'm glad to report 2009 was better. Not great. It was still a rebuilding year. But it was far from 2008 which was the year not of movies I wanted to see, but of movies I guess I'll watch since you're not really giving me any options here. Though as much as I wanted to see many of this year's releases, a packed schedule occupied my time and took me out of movie going commission for the past few months. I've been running across this city in a mad dash to catch those that I missed while they're still showing. Some I was forced to download (something I honestly never do) and will be sending their production company a check for nine dollars. How they choose to distribute it is completely up to them.

So this is as comprehensive a best/worst of 2009 list as I can complete here in today's office lull.

The Carter/Tyson

In driving from Chicago to Kansas City, you can take 55-South to 80-West through Iowa over to 35-South down into KC. Or you can simply ride 55-South to 70-West into town. The difference between the two is half-an-hour. The scenery is different, but in the end, you arrive to the same place.

With Tyson, James Toback put a camera before Iron Mike and let him go. You would think allowing Mike Tyson to speak for 90-minutes without restraint would amount to a theatrical YouTube clip. And I'm sure most people were expecting exactly that. (This is the man responsible for introducing "I'm going to fuck you 'til you love me faggot," into our lexicon.) So to give this man a soapbox seems an almost cruel show. Instead, Tyson explains the actions and events in his life with such a candid honesty, you can help but appreciate his earnestness. It's a pretty ballsy move and it pays off. The insight Tyson gives is almost unusual in the amount of resolve it provides for one of the most fascinating athletes of the past 30-years. The most fascinating (see: Hilarious) is his account of the Trevor Berbick fight for the WBC Championship. At twenty, Tyson had already mastered the art of intimidation. Any boxing fan can tell you Tyson won most fights before they began. His ability to stare down an (obviously nervous) opponent is legendary. In the Berbick fight, Tyson sweats and paces in his corner. As the footage plays out, Tyson explains that he was burning up from the gonorrhea. He had to drop Berbick and get help as soon as possible. It's these anecdotes that remind us, Tyson isn't the violent maniac on the cover of the tabloid. Tyson is the hunger artist whose cage is off on the edge of the fair. This is him telling us that he never found a food he liked.

As Tina Fey's Liz Lemon tells Jenna Maroney of Tracey Jordan biting Dakota Fanning's face, "When you hear his version, she was kind of asking for it."

The Carter takes a different path. The opening title card informs us that Lil' Wayne allowed the crew into his world right as The Carter III is about to release, or to use the industry parlance -drop. However, he refused to address the crew and would not take questions from them. Following the completion of shooting, Lil' Wayne disowned the project.

Here's the thing about artists. The more gifted a person is in whatever medium (art, sports, the sciences) the more they're removed from "our world." Look up an interview with DeNiro, Paul Erdos, John Frusciante, Slash, Bjork, Tyson (above) LeBron James, or anyone who is considered the master at what they do and you'll see one of the most stunted, uninteresting interviews ever. Whatever is it that pushed these people to their respective fields is exactly what pushed them away from the conventional life. (Einstein would lecture his 8-year old nephew for hours on advanced physics. He also owned seven of the same suit so as to not have to think about what to wear.) So it's for the benefit to the documentary that we see Lil Wayne's world from the vantage point of a fly on the wall. Hell, it seems that his closest friends haven't even cracked the guy.

The risk with this format is that the subject is even boring to observe. This is what saddled Radiohead's Meeting People is Easy, Wilco's I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, and even The Kids in the Hall's Same Guys, New Dresses. As great as those artists may be, their documentaries were pretty damned boring to get through. Fortunately, this isn't the case. The Carter provides a glimpse into the life of a man as equally tortured as he is brilliant. It's closest comparison would be DA Pennebekers glimpse into the life of a frustrated Dylan Don't Look Back. (In fact, it would seem that Dylan and Lil' Wayne would understand one another, fabulously.) In one moment, Wayne writhes on stage before a packed house. In the next, he's nervously looking up from his phone to see if a reporter he asked to be removed is gone. It's fascinating to sit up front with a man at once so strong, then so vulnerable. He doesn't care about the number or records he sells. Or what's happening in the music industry. He wants nothing more than to record his music, then listen to said music ad nasuem. Watch ESPN. Drink some cristal with cough syrup. And collect a few cars. There are moments where Lil Wayne runs absurd. As he clumsily lays down a guitar and drum track, you can feel his entourage nodding in agreement. They say, "Sounds great," while they think of who they're really going to call in for these tracks and if Wayne will even notice.

Observe and Report

What a miserable fucking movie. I can't think of a single movie I've ever gotten less out of. What's surprising is that this movie was written and directed by Jody Hill, the man responsible for Eastbound and Down -a show that I not only think is great, but made me appreciate Danny McBride. With Eastbound and in Observe and Report, Hill's love of 1970's cinema shines bright. The first season of Eastbound borrows an ending straight from Five Easy Pieces, and Observe is a heavy-distortion cover of Taxi Driver. Problem is, all of those movies offer us some particularly dark, complex character that forces the audience to think on their own and figure them out. Jody Hill is able to do this pretty well in Eastbound, but in O&R not only does he miss the target, he takes out some kid's eye and finds it hilarious.

It Might Get Loud

I'll tell you what it doesn't get . . . good.*

*I didn't watch this.

Up

I'll start this off by saying that I'm not really a fan of Pixar. The technical dazzle erodes pretty quickly for me and I'm left bored as the plot grows further and further convoluted. Up took me by surprise. Here we have a kid's movie that deals with happiness, love, sex, infertility, death, and isolation within the first ten minutes! Not only does it tread on such sensitive ground, it does so in such a tasteful manner as to be nuanced enough for the children, while sill being wholly understood to adult audiences. Throughout the entire first act of this movie, the stammered sobs of the parental guardians filled the house. So when we meet the pudgy boyscout, or the dogs who speak without contractions we laugh with such exalted relief. The harsh reality of the world we know can subside to the escapist fantasy that we, along with the characters are looking for. Reality is the ultimate villain in this movie. When it comes crashing back in, be it in the shape of a failed dream or a strained relationship we have to step out of the water and stand in the cold air before going back in.

My parents really enjoy movies. Thing is, they don't have cable, rarely go to the theater and the video store in Dodge is pretty lackluster. Last Christmas I signed them up for Netflix. They don't use the internet, so I manage their account -keeping qued the movies I think they'll enjoy. In a way, it's almost like I'm saying something to them in the movies I want them to see. The first movie I had sent was El Norte, one of the most brutal, yet honest portrayals of immigrants starting anew in America. I hoped that in my appreciation of the movie, they'd see my appreciation for them and everything they went through to make a better life for their children. When I asked my dad if he liked Wall-E, he told me it was a kid's movie and that he got through all of fifteen minutes. So it was with hesitation that I added Up to the manifest.

As we sat in my sister's home this Christmas, watching his grandchildren wrestle on the ground, he turned and said, "That Up was pretty good," a pause then, "we watched that thing again after it was over."

To me that speaks more about how fucking great this movie is than anything I've said here.

Taken

If Liam Neeson doesn't revive the role of John R. Taken in at least four sequels (including one in which he takes out several hundred street youth for no reason other than being outside), then Hollywood is ruined. My friend Brandon *lifts pocky to sky* pointed out the fatal error in this movie. Nobody is excited to go to a U2 concert. And this is the first action flick I can think of where the hero states that he has the required skill sets to handle the situation. Consultants and middle managers across the world perked up at hearing that line.

Something I've Made an Effort . . .

2010-01-21T11:34:00.004-06:00

. . . to not mention when talking with my co-workers who were laid off is money.

Everyone being laid off is comfortable that they can draw unemployment, be given a severance and not have to come back to this windowless basement office ever again. As much as the uncertainty of what lay ahead is, they seem to be excisted to be out of here. It's weird, but I do my best to say "Yeah, you're going to find something better than this."

Those of us being retained got a raise. Which to me feels like blood money. I've been lucky to avoid having this come up in any conversation, but one of the other quiet ones told about the increased pay which quickly spread across the office.

I'm writing this from under my desk.

Send help.

Palpable . . .

2010-01-19T09:28:00.007-06:00

That's how I'd best describe the tension in this room. Nobody is sure who all is being retained and who is out. The office has become mystery dinner theater. I'm figuring that those who are the most quiet are the ones who'll be here in February. Those who didn't show up and those who can be heard are the ones that were told of budget constraints and a change in direction.

I'm one of the quiet ones.

Saturday I got word via text that Kirby is out.

Kirby has been the one thing that makes my day go a little faster. We carry on in conversations over the partition wall about what was Roy Schneider's best role (I say Sorcerer. He says Blue Thunder). We tilt our monitors towards one another to show whatever photo drew a laugh. He keeps a cheat sheet of rates and figures taped across his walls that I constantly reference in my day. The man has never thrown anything away, and can pull up any document you could ever recall. This world is just him and me. If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

The following is a short script I'd written, always intending to give him a copy wrapped around a bottle of brandy. I never had the gall to show it to him. Or to tell tell him that he's given me a gift by sharing in the monotony of the work day for the past five years. That I don't know how I can do the work without him. And that he's inspired me in his own unusual way.

Argh!!!!

2010-01-15T10:37:00.004-06:00

So I'm home sick today. I figure that no matter what happens, I won't be employed with my current company by the end of the month (if I retain my job, then it'll be with the new managing entity) so it's a mad scramble to use up all those sick days before they spoil.

When I lived alone in the giant E, a sick day was spent watching movies in the bedroom furnished with a DLP projector and 1,000 watt 7.1 surround system. Being an avid movie fan, I always have a pile of DVDs that I'm excited to get through. The day was spent knocking out those that seemed to fit that days mood. Now, I live with The Girlfriend. One of the great things about her (and after being in relationships where this wasn't the case, I so gratefully appreciate it) is that she's as eager to watch most everything I'm excited to see. Be it a documentary about men having sex with animals (total letdown) or a silent movie being screened to room full of septuagenarians who reek of aged fabrics and the Vapor-rub (again, letdownsville - population: us), The Girlfriend piques her brow and says, "That sounds good," to my suggestions.

With that, I can't watch anything alone. For example, on the dresser next to me are Moon, The Late Show, Antichrist, Bad Lieutenant 2: Bad Harder, Dexter, five seasons of Lost, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Jennifer's Body should be in the mailbox. I watched three minutes of Moon before I had to stop. It felt like I was cheating on her to experience a movie I know she'll like without her here. The same goes for all these movies. Hell, even the 500 movies I own and have already watched, I can't bring myself to watch because who knows -maybe she's never seen this one and would have wanted to watch it.

I can't enjoy the experience of watching a movie unless she's around.

I don't think there's much I enjoy anymore, unless she's around.

The Greatest Thing . . .

2010-01-15T09:44:00.002-06:00

. . . about George W. Bush's time in office was that you could listen to Bill Hicks, and forget he was dead. On the timeline, we were ten years down the road from when Hicks recorded most of his material. But to listen to it, you can't imagine that Hick's take on the conflict in Iraq, wasn't recorded that same week.

And it's happened again with the late night talk show wars taking place between Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno. You know the story. You know the full spectrum of Leno's dickishness. Here's what Bill Hicks said about the man.

The Woman Sitting . . .

2010-01-14T13:59:00.003-06:00

. . . across from us bit into the cold peach.

The fruit's nectar bled out from the corners of her mouth, creating a thin drizzle that slid down to her chin and ran along the slope of her neck. Her lips smacking as she chewed.

"Eating a good peach is like eating pussy," she offered before taking another bite of the peach.

I looked at her, my eyes mildly disturbed at this image. "So what you're saying is that these peaches are gonna make my face itch?"

The Idiot Hipster . . .

2010-01-14T09:01:00.002-06:00

. . . on the train made a concerted effort to turn over the cassette tape on his Sony Walkman. Drawing out the process long enough for everyone to know his format of preference.

I toggled through my iPhone, shaking my head at this fucking idiot hipster.

He had the last laugh, though. As he proceeded to wrap his Sony Walkman in four-hundred dollars.

The Shaft

2010-01-13T12:03:00.018-06:00

This was a short screenplay I wrote for a class during the fall quarter. It went well received by the class, but to me, it lacks a certain substance. There's something I was trying to pin down and I didn't get it. Feel free to chime in with any ideas.

(Copyright held by author for all works appearing on this site.)

And So the Question Was Asked . . .

2010-01-13T11:34:00.003-06:00

. . . by the Russian in the tight suit. His tie hung lose and what thinning hair remained was coiffed and slick. "Who has the power to audit the [Federal Reserve]?"

The question was one more suited for a class in money or banking, not a class focusing on the economics of a socialist state. The Professor thought quietly aloud. Raising his voice to stammer for a moment, only to recede back to its original pitch. He answered that the question would be as difficult as determining who oversaw the Bank of England.

In his thick accent, the Russian replied with a detailed explanation of the tiered regulatory agency who oversaw the Bank of England, and added that all nationally controlled financial institutions are subject to strict oversight from the government. And that since the Federal Reserve is a private institution, governed by its member banks, there is no one with the authority to audit one of the most integral components of the American economy. He continued, constantly asserting his foreign identity with the hard "YOUR," underlining that this is a problem our American value system has created.

I laughed to myself as he went on. Having to hold hand over mouth. Even if I had the guts to blurt out what I was thinking, this room wouldn't get it.

"In Soviet Russia, bank audits you."

It Took . . .

2010-01-12T09:52:00.004-06:00

. . . me nearly losing this job to appreciate the things I was able to accomplish here. Not in the office, but at this desk. It was during my first stint here, on a temporary assignment, that I typed out my first full-length screenplay. I think it was about bears VS. dragons or some shit like that. Either way, I lost the rights to it when I rolled boxcars in my standing dice game outside the White Hen. Nearly everything of worth that I've written was created here in the basement office located at Lower Level 30. It's an environment that's at once imprisoning (I've been working for five years in a windowless room with a band of fucktards who have taken over the ship)and inspiring. Writing provides that needed escape from these walls. Outside this place, that need doesn't exist. When I write at home, it feels forced. Like I'm writing for the sake of writing -making everything read back as fraudulent to me.

This summer I was asked to animate a music video for a band out of New Mexico. The work started out exciting, and it slowly started to lose steam. The hours didn't allow for me to do it here at the office and when I took it home, it died. The schedule has freed itself up here, and I'm hoping to resume production. But without this desk and the flat gray of the cube wall, I don't know how it'll get done.

And I looked looked back at this blog. To those days of wine and roses, where the posts were frequent and the comments stood ignored, outright. I forgot how much I enjoyed coming in each morning and, for lack of a better word, free-writing.

So Lower Level 30 is my Zelda, my Anais and my Sharona.

Never gonna stop. Give it up. Such a dirty mind.

I've Never Lost a Job in the Interview . . .

2010-01-11T16:08:00.003-06:00

"So what do you consider your strengths?"

She scrawls the laundry list of adjectives I'm spitting out, struggling to keep even a few of the keywords from each accompanying anecdote. I give her time to catch up.

"Oh, yeah . . . I'm the only person within our entire department who manages the financials for the payment centers and who can generate reports at the request of the Director. And she does request those reports. Furthermore, I'm the only person in the City who maintains inventory for the hardware currently in use at those same centers. Last I checked, that's over three millions dollars worth of equipment. If you lose me, you lose that.

How many vacation days will I be getting?"

Definitely a Ten . . .

2010-01-11T09:34:00.007-06:00

I interview for my job at 3:00.

I didn't leave the apartment all weekend. Saturday we hosted company and Sunday was just too fucking cold to do anything. I romanced the thought of walking some videos back to the store. A two-hour nap ended up defeating that notion.

Two in the morning and I'm tossing about and turning in the sheets. I don't know if I'm unable to sleep for the nap, or is it the interview tomorrow afternoon? The one I'll arrive at baggy-eyed and sluggish from the lack of sleep. My boss has told me personally not to worry, and I know who I'm up against: The rouge's gallery of crumb-bums I've been writing about for the past several years on these pages. But the recent economic downturn has put a lot a good people on the streets, looking for anything that guarantees a paycheck on the first and fifteenth -even if only for a few weeks. It's the things you can't see that really fuck you up.

I keep telling myself, "You've never lost a job in the interview. If you can get in face-to-face you're fine."

I moved to Hays in the winter of 2002 for no real reason at all. My friends in Lawrence were rounding out the third year of just hanging out, and I knew that there was something I should be doing, I just didn't know what. So like anyone in their late-teens/early-twenties who just has to break free of the apathy they see looming over them, I packed up the car to a place that held no real history or consequence but was populated by a few friends.

Hays rests on the western outskirts of Kansas. Located off I-70, it serves as the last junction before Colby, a town whose billboards promote it as an Oasis on the Plains. It's the typical small college town in the middle of nowhere. Peter Bogdonavich filmed Paper Moon in this town two decades earlier. The people of Hays still talk about it.

A friend put me in touch with a landlord who rented me an apartment that could be used in Pictionary to define the word dank. The rent was $150 a month. To cover the stay and base expenses I needed to find a job. Having worked data entry for the Department of Education the prior year, I wanted a job where -at the end of the day - I could hold in my hands the product of my work. Such manufacturing jobs didn't exist in Hays (or anywhere for that matter). So I decided on a job that required craft, patience, and offered the reward of that tangible good: Baking.

Of the two in town, one called me in for an interview.

I arrived at the Golden Coral Buffet eager to get behind the desert station and start whipping up some fucking cakes. The interviewer was a nice guy, but also kind of a tool. He graduated from Fort Hays State with a degree in Psychology. I mention that I planned on focusing my studies in the same (I wasn't),when I enrolled at Fort Hays (which I wasn't going to do). The conference proceeded swimmingly. He pulled from his file folder a scantron sheet and a number two pencil.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being 'Not At All' and 10 being 'Always,' would you say that you are organized?"

If he hadn't pulled out the scantron sheet I would have been modest and given myself mostly eight and nines. The occasional ten. Maybe a seven. But that scantron sheet meant this interview was being recorded and a score would be calculated. They needed above a certain percentage to hire me on. Anything below that and they'll give me a call when something opens up.

"Organized? Oh, most definitely a ten. In fact, let me tell you how organized I am. It's actually quite comical . . ."

"Punctual? I'm gonna have to give myself another ten on this . . ."

"Some would say I'm diligent to fault, so I'll say ten. . . "

For fifty questions, I gave myself a ten along with some anecdote I made up on the spot. At the conclusion of the interview he scanned the sheet, "I've never seen this before."

I was offered and accepted the job on the spot. A friend who worked the steak buffet came up to me as I was leaving. Seeing my apron and training manual in hand he asked if I was hired. When I told him I was he gasped. "Man, nobody has ever been hired in the interview. We all had to wait two weeks."

I became the winged horse of Golden Corral lore. The man hired in the interview. They say he transferred in from one of the Kansas City locations. That he ate three steaks during the interview. Some even said he was never once seen washing his hands or wearing the required gloves.

The desert station ended up not offering the vocational prestige I thought it would. Everything was some chalky box-mix that I added water to before baking. The icing was a sugary coagulate that arrived in paint buckets. It never spread well and tasted like something made in an elementary school. The girl that worked the station with me was a complete and total bitch (she wouldn't sleep with me) and worst of all; it was a stupid fucking job that was beneath me and I sucked at it. And that's the worst. The Red Velvets looked like they were iced by Dick Clark. The German Chocolate cake would go out with the baking sheet still between the layers. Nothing would be labeled properly so when the diabetic lady during the lunch rush asked if the blueberry pie was in fact sugar-free, I would hesitate. Stammer a few seconds. Then offer a high-pitched, "maybe?"

I worked the Golden Corral desert bar for two weeks. Maybe three. I was supposed to cover a Saturday shift for someone when a friend swung by and invited me to go shooting in the field. How could I say no? I returned home that night with ringing ears. The voice mails on my phone followed the obvious pattern.

"Just reminding you that you're scheduled to come in at noon."

"Where are you? It's three? Give us a call and let us know what's going on."

"click."

"click."

"You'll need to come in tomorrow. We need to talk."

I lived in Hays for a little over two months. The earnings from that job left me comfortably well off during the stay. In December, I planned on moving back to Lawrence. As I drove to town I felt like I was driving to a job I hated. I turned around and headed for Dodge. There I made a phone call and booked a one-way ticket on the Amtrak. Destination, Chicago.

Is That All There Is to a Fire . . . .

2010-01-06T06:53:00.006-06:00

. . . something about waking up before six AM that does a number on my stomach. Like I interrupted my body's workflow so as my comeuppance, I'm forced to endure a feeling akin to stage fright through to the midday.

A meeting was scheduled weeks in advance through an Outlook invite that read like a neighborhood assault. It will be early. You will be here. So this morning I woke early and dressed by the light reflecting in from the window. I could only make out the bright colors of my wardrobe and the sleeping shape of The Girlfriend who had pulled away the covers in the night and lay curled against her side of the bed. There's such a tranquility to watching someone you love sleep. To see that source of so much laying idle. You have to fight the compulsion to not lay aside them.

The meeting was held in the smallest of conference rooms. Two women never before seen sat in the corner. The pads jutted from the shoulders of their power suits. Their hair hung wet and stringy. I figured they flew in last night, woke up early this morning, and dried their hair as best as a hotel room dryer could. Before they were even announced, I knew they from HR.

It's the scene that everyone remembers. Alec Baldwin plays the man sent in from downtown. In one of the greatest inspirational speeches of all-time, he effectively fires the gang of rag-tag salesman and tells them they have 30-days to get their jobs back. In the Lower Level 30 version, the department is being outsourced to a new firm that meets the City's requirements. Luckily, the new managing entity will allow us to interview for our old jobs. The meeting ended with no questions. There was really nothing to say. Tina taps me on the shoulder and with pride says, "I'm used to this. This is my 5th time being laid off."

I'll interview for my job on Monday. If all goes well, the transition should be seamless. Only I'll come in one day with a lower salary, 5 vacation days and 5 sicks days.

I've never lost a job in the interview. Add to the fact that I've made myself necessary in this office (Seriously, I have. What do you think I do when I'm not blogging?) I should be a pretty damned viable candidate. Still, the new regime might decide on a complete overhaul, leaving me out of work and Lower Level 30 an outdated url.

Stay tuned. This might get bloody . . .

Where Do I Level in the Low 30s . . . .

2009-10-21T13:53:00.004-05:00

. . . this is one of the most strangely dead-on while still being completely off search terms that has brought someone to this blog. I mean, if any website were to tell you where you level in the low 30s, it should definitely be Lower Level 30 dot com. Unfortunately, I don't know where you level. Or, what you're talking about, you strange person from Boulder.

Here are some other search terms that brought people here.

Could the lady of a castle in medieval times go shooting for entertainment.

Car sputtered gas start.

Now make me a mahtini you fat fuckin retahd.

You must present your credit card to the driver at the time pizza hut delivers your order.

Where to level at level 30. (This was a hit from Turkey, and strangely enough, they've been following since.)

Best place for level 30's to level.

I don't know what a level 30 is. If you found this blog by a google search of such terminology, could you do me solid and tell me what a level thirtier is and how do I become one, like you?

Thanks, you're the best!

The Green Knight . . .

2009-09-11T11:16:00.006-05:00

. . . was a pussy who was felled by the first round.

"She really wants to go to Medieval Times for her birthday."

I learned a long time ago that anytime I answered a phone call from Lindsey, a terrible evening lay ahead. After a few months of dodging her, I figure I'm due to answer one. The "she" Lindsey was referencing was our mutual friend, Michelle. Along with her boyfriend Brandon, they'd moved to Chicago some time ago. "She's been really wanting to go for a long time and told me this is what she wanted to do for her birthday." Michelle and Brandon are great people so there really wasn't anyway to squirm out of this. After I agree to go Lindsey adds, "By the way, can you cover their tickets, and they'll get you back when we get to the castle?" Yeah, I'm never answering a phone call from her again.

Later in the day I call Brandon to tell him I got the tickets. "You what!?"

Apparently Michelle did say she wanted to go to Medieval Times, until they went on-line and saw that tickets were eighty-bucks apiece. Then the idea was dismissed outright. Lindsey didn't mention that. Then I remembered that for the past several years, Lindsey has been bugging us, her friends, to go to Medieval Times. This was all her show.

Even after I called Medieval Times and told them the person whose birthday we're celebrating was killed in the most fiery of auto crashes, they still refused to refund the tickets. I was told to get there two hours before the show time.

We showed up fifteen minutes prior to gates opening. The only reason one would want to show up two-hours prior to showtime is to be trapped in a lobby with only a bar serving 14-dollar Bud Light to pass the time.

Seated and pissed off, the show began.

The production starts off with the King welcoming you to his court, and then reads off a welcome list of people there for whatever function.

"We'd like to welcome Bethany Community College's Quiz Bowl Team." A crowd across the dirt stage squeals in nerdy delight.

"The King would like to bid a welcome to the following who are here celebrating a birthday ..." The list he read went on for fifteen minutes. At it's conclusion, I noticed that Michelle's name was absent. Brandon leans into me, "It cost an extra forty bucks."

The dinner was a measly imitation of Chicken Planet. (Notice how I capitalize Chicken Planet, that's because I respect it!) The side was a charred potato served alongside warm pepsi. (Notice how I don't capitalize pepsi, that's because I have no respect for it!)

As we ate, the white knight rode on his horse. Galloping sideways. To the left. Then to the right. Then back to the left. This "routine" went on for ten minutes. At some point in the display, a pre-teen boy five rows down stood up and yelled, "Okay, we get it!"

The whole fucking thing went on for several hours. Hours too boring to regurgitate here. We left the castle and decided to get drunk at a bar back in the city called Exit Chicago. I'd seen ads for this place which tout it as Chicago's "last punk rock bar."

You know that rebel who's too coiffed to be taken seriously? The one you look at and are amazed at how calculated and planned "not caring" must have been for that person. The Hot Topic shirt, matched with the eBay belt buckle and accouterments found at a local upscale boutique. That person developed a foundation, four walls, and a diamond plate interior to become this bar.

I sat in silence for most of the night, sitting at a corner of the bar, watching a z-flick play out on a black and white tv while The Misfits blared through the loud speaker. I looked at the patrons. Make-up. Chains. And all. These people are playing out a fantasy no different than the people at Medieval Times. It's this idea of making a world that doesn't exist, part of your own reality - if only for a few hours. Back at the castle, people put on a paper crown and cheered for a knight whose color matched their seating area. Here, they put on leather vests, don eyeliner and become part of the mythos that comes with the apparel, all before going home to wash it off.

No. These two places aren't different in any way. In fact, they're the same.

How Could I Have Forgotten You . . .

2009-08-19T11:27:00.002-05:00

. . . the not on facebook readers? (Which I think is about three of the five of you.)

I took an editing class last semester. Above all, I learned that I hated editing other people's footage. For the first two projects we had to create a narrative piece from existing footage, and a movie trailer from a public domain title. Sifting through shot footage to find two worthwhile seconds is daunting and arduous. As much as I was interested in learning how to use the editing software, I didn't get any sort of spark from piecing together the work of someone else.

For the third project, we had to make a music video and were given no perimeters. This means people who had footage they'd shot, or could shoot, would be able to submit that as their assignment. Having no back catalog of work, or access to camera equipment, I used a cheap point-and-shoot, my iPod, and the time (and supplies) in my office to create what follows.

(The uploaded video on blogger is pretty bad, so I'm posting this link instead.)

The Trouble With Love

A band out of Albuquerque, New Mexico saw this and asked if I could do something similar for them. I'm prepping myself for what will most likely be the worst case of Prisoner's Wrist, ever.

The Red Line . . .

2009-08-13T09:07:00.003-05:00

. . . was especially crowded.

I was riding northbound when the man in a baggy coat stepped into the car. His hair was disheveled. He carried a pile of newspapers under his arm. Taking an empty seat he pulled a single page from the papers, and begun folding it.

It was a late night in October. The delayed train and the cold-air resulted in this bunch of commuters sitting in silence, our faces bitter and red from the cold. Still, at this hour of night, most people on any public transit line just want to be left in peace as they go home. To catch a few hours of sleep before returning to repeat the same rush in the morning. With the exception of Loyola kids heading up to Rogers Park, the northbound commute on the elevated Red Line is usually solemn. Whenever anyone disrupts this flow, you can sense the hate radiating from the fellow commuters. And hear the sigh of relief with the depart of the obnoxious.

The man in the baggy coat handed a folded sheet of newspaper to the old man who sat next to him. Without a word, the old man put up his hand, refusing the gift. The man in the baggy coat continued his offering, shoving it into the raised palm until the old man stubbornly accepted it, placing it on his lap. The man in the baggy coat took another folded news sheet and pulled at it, revealing a paper hat. He put it on and motioned the man next to him to do the same. The old man didn't.

Have you ever stood in a large crowd? Something about being so close to so many triggers the defensive in us. You check to see your wallet is safe. Stand in stance with arms folded. Living in a city this big isn't too different. You create a bubble to further develop your sense of personal space. It better defines when someone is encroaching it, and when you should be aware. The train, the bus, the various lines we stand in on any given day force us into a close proximity. To touch shoulders with a stranger we'd prefer not to.

The people immediately surrounding the man in the baggy coat all held their newspaper hats in hand. The man in the baggy coat pointed at the hats, then pointed at their heads. He then poked at his own, to further drive home his intention. "Wear yours, like I wear mine. Please."

I was in line at an airport, under no particular rush. Ahead of me, talking to the ticket clerk, a man with white hair was asking question after question about the boarding and flight process. He had to be in his sixties, and this would be his first flight. With each question, I found myself growing more and more annoyed. "For the love of God, will you just sit down, man!? You'll figure it out!" I was surprised at my internal flare. Here was a man asking someone for help with something that was foreign and possibly frightening for him, and he found someone who took the time to help. And I was pissed by this scene because I was inconvenienced. I don't think I would have had such a reaction had I never lived in Chicago. When you spend at least eight hours in your office, and the commute is an hour each way, you're left with five hours in a day that are yours. When someone or something cuts into that time, it feels like someone else is wasting your life away for you. This explains why that commute home at the end of the night can be particularly stressful. It's the home stretch. The only thing keeping your home from your office is this train ride.

It was two women, sitting together, who were the first to put on their paper hats. This made the man in the baggy coat smile. He began folding more and more, even faster than before. Soon, the paper hats made their way to me sitting at the far end of the train. And that's how it started. Trickling out from the two women, the hats began drifting onto heads. As the middle compartment filled out, both ends of the car also followed suit. As did the old man next to him.

It was the summer after I first moved to Chicago. It was the late afternoon and I was heading to a place of no particular importance. The riders were sparse, and most of the seats empty, but I found myself next to a very talkative woman who I couldn't peg as being friendly or crazy. Out of nowhere she asked if I went to the Madonna concert. Madonna was on the third night of a three concert stint at the united center. I told her I hadn't made it to any of the shows. "Well, that Madonna. She's something I tell you." Another woman, this one young and hip sitting a few rows away, turned to say that she'd gone the previous night and that it was an amazing concert. A black guy in a workman's shirt added that he'd been trying to see if his boy could get tickets to it, and asked the hip girl how much she'd paid for hers. The crazy lady next to me remarked that it was impressive that a woman her age could still hold an audience like that. "How old do you figure Madonna is?" she asked. Through a difficult accent, the Korean lady at the far end of the car offered, "She is forty-eight. Forty-eight years old." I was amazed that a woman with such a shaky grasp of the language knew precisely how old an aging pop diva was, but more than that - this car was a mixed bag of the peoples found in this city - and for a few minutes, they all found a mutual connection thanks to Madonna. It's the absurd that brings us together.

On the red line, the normally silent car was brimming with conversation and laughter. The people near debated who this person was, and what were his intentions. People that got on the train were immediately puzzled as to the game being run here. Blank in stare, they'd be handed a hat, and put it on without question. This continued until the Wilson stop, were the man in the baggy coat stood up to approach the doors. Without a word or explanation, he stepped onto the platform and took the stairs down to the street. We kept our hats on, and the moment continued after him.

When I arrived at the Berwyn stop, I was the only person stepping out onto the street with a paper hat. It might have brought me in common to the people in the train, but on the street, I was the odd man out. After catching a few stares, I took the hat off, folding it into my breast pocket. The train took off, and I could see the car of paper hats trailing north.

Years later, I'd be on the same car as the man in the baggy coat. I recognized him the moment he stepped on. The ritual was the same, only I made it a point to grab a hat from him as soon as he started folding paper, to help speed up the process. This time, when he stepped off at Wilson, I started clapping. And so did the rest of the car.

Another Week, Another Drive-Thru . . .

2009-07-21T09:52:00.003-05:00

We were three cars from the window. The cherry-red Celica in front of us turned out from the row and stationed at a spot. We pulled forward.

"Now we're going to get their order," I sighed.

Family entertainment would be great, if it wasn't for those damn kids.

The Girlfriend and I were coming back from a screening of Muppets Take Manhattan on the lake front. It was a pretty good time. The movie was projected onto an inflatable screen, the likes of which one can purchase via Skymall, if price and taste aren't a consideration.

Along with The Girlfriend's friends, we put back a few bottles of wine. I hadn't seen this movie since I was eight. And back then, it aired on constant rotation. So I remembered certain images, and seeing those images expanded and with context felt like remembering where you recognize someone from. At the same time, I can see myself as a child watching this, in a t-shirt one size to small with baggy pants handed down from my brother. Kids this age ran across the grounds, seemingly oblivious to the thirty-foot frog crooning for them.

For as comforting as nostalgia can be, it's also something of a burden. A song, book, or movie from your youth can flood the memories like a box of photos tucked away under the bed. Something about being in the presence of that thing you valued so much. Not only do you remember how it made you laugh, cry, etc., you remember where you were and what was happening. Be it good or bad, it's behind you. And no matter what you do, it will always stay there.

We needed something to soak up the wine. We're back in the drive-thru.

The car that pulled into the spot stopped the engine. A guy in the backseat gets out and goes into the restaurant.

"Back when I first got my license, I'd pull up to a drive-thru, put in an order than go park in the lot and wait to see all the chaos that would ensue. Once, I had a friend in the car so I brought him along to see what it is I do to entertain myself. We put in a pretty big order. I waited at a spot right across from the window. When the car behind me pulled up I started rubbing my hands in delight. Then I see the lady in the car refuse the bag and point to me. I yelped like a little girl, then slammed the car into drive, going over an embankment as I sped off."

The Girlfriend stared at me. While she was dabbling in drugs, paganism, and group sex - her boyfriend was several states over, shaking with joy at someone saying, "No, that's not my food."

"By the way," I say to break the silence, "your fries came out to two-dollars."

I'll . . . Have . . . A . . .

2009-07-10T10:10:00.003-05:00

"So that's a sausage egg and cheese croissanwich. Medium hashbrown. And a medium Diet Coke. Anything else?"

"Wait, do you serve your regular menu during breakfast hours?"

"Yes."

"In that case, can I get a double whopper?"

"You want a double whopper instead of the breakfast meal?"

"No. I still want the breakfast meal."

". . ."

". . ."

"Please pull around."

No Better Way To Celebrate the Fourth . . .

2009-07-07T13:49:00.004-05:00

. . . but with a small controlled fire.

I was at a Wal-Mart on the north boundary of the city when I took a text from The Girlfriend. She was rushing The Cat to an animal ER. For the past few days, we'd been finding drops of urine dried to the kitchen linoleum. Today, she'd come home to find puddles throughout the house. I didn't even know they had emergency rooms for animals.

I arrived at the ER a couple hours later. (Conflicted, I stuck around to finish shopping. I felt bad about it, though. That's what counts.) I walked in on the vet explaining that the blockage in the Cat's stream could be owed to a number of things. They'd keep The Cat until Thursday, at least. The id reminded me that we were due in Kansas Thursday to kick off the various Fourth of July celebrations that awaited us. If we even got Cat back on Thursday, we'd be responsible for medicines and treatments. I could see The Girlfriend hanging on every word that came out the vet's mouth. The way she nodded. Understanding. It was no question that Kansas would have to wait. We were offered the chance to say goodbye to The Cat.

We were taken beyond the front desk, through the dead of late-night lobby, into the swinging doors that revealed an Emergency Room at work. A streak of blue scrub rushed past with a cat strapped to a gurney. A vet consoled a crying couple who shook over a lump mass that hid under a sheet. A monitor beeped as five attendants stood watch over a surgeon cutting away into an animal.

We left with an empty carrier. Over vindaloo and beer, I acknowledged that I was lost in this world of pet care, admitting that I didn't even know emergency animal clinics existed.

"Didn't you ever have a pet," she asked.

"When I was a kid we had a cocker spaniel puppy. Then the vet said he needed his teeth cleaned, so we had to put him down."

The Cat was retrieved Thursday. He'd shown improvement, and each vet, assistant, attendant never made fail to mention that The Cat is a complete asshole. When The Girlfriend would call to check on his status, the receptionist would punctuate each conversation with a mention of how much The Cat has hated everyone who has tried to care for it. As if we didn't know this.

It all made me start to like The Cat.

The holiday weekend was set to be several days of places to be. Since we were left with no choice but to stay in Chicago, we decided to indulge in indulgence. We were buzzed off black ale by eleven each morning. We ate in new restaurants and left our plates clean. Meals were taken in bed. Breakfast was cheddar and caramel popcorn, and we found a bagel shop in the west burbs that churns it's own cream cheese and was open at two in the morning.

Rain hampered the fourth, leaving us to grill on the fifth. Following dinner that evening, I emptied the ash and cinder that remained into the dumpster in front of our building. The Girlfriend left for her standing date with friends. I opted to shower in preparation for a return to the civilized world that following morning.

We dressed and set out for the morning commute, travel containers of dark coffee in hand. As we rounded the building, the dumpster that usually sits recessed in the front gate's opening was now blocking the sidewalk. It's contents which filled to the brim the previous night were now ash - charred to the inner walls. The black molded plastic that operates as the lid was torn out in the middle. The edges around the void were pulled black taffy, frozen in warp. Like a drinking straw set aflame.

I thought back to the ashes being dumped and the quick flash of ember I thought I glimpsed. Then to the smell of incense that seemed to pour in from outside as I lay for bed.

The Girlfriend said nothing as we stepped around the container. However, I think she was suspect. Anytime anything seemingly stupid or juvenile happens near us, it's assumed that I'm to blame.

I confessed to her via e-mail later in the morning. That I may be up to 80% responsible for the charred mess that was most likely being examined by police as I wrote. We've agreed to blame it on the neighbor's child, or the Filipino kid from up the street who I've created entirely from imagination.

I think that strange boy will be up to a lot of hi-jinks in the near future.

"I Didn't Think She Was Interested . . .

2009-06-26T15:10:00.007-05:00

. . . the first words out of her mouth on our first date were, 'I have to work early tomorrow.' I figured she saw me and wanted it to end, quickly."

BMX John laughs at this.

From the backseat The Girlfriend corrects me.

"That's not true. I said 'hi' first."

For My Birthday . . .

2009-06-25T11:32:00.003-05:00

. . . The Girlfriend got me the complete Wire on DVD. We began watching it this week. I'd already seen the entire series, but forgot how much I loved it. So much so, that I started drinking in celebration.

Backstory: I've taken wheat and sugar out of my diet, just for the hell of it. And have begun reducing my carb intake. The only drink available to this diet was vodka and diet coke. By my third, the cola was only for color.

(The following may read like it's being written by Jame Frey. Management apologizes.)

I remember going into the bathroom after the second episode. I didn't feel like I was going to throw up, but I laid down anyway. The cold of the tile floor felt like a goodbye hug. A filthy towel was bunched into a pillow for my head. I lay there for a few minutes before The Girl entered. Her efforts to help me were met with accusations and punches. The following morning, she'd tell me that I slept on that floor for two hours.

Naked. Draped in a Star Wars sheet she didn't know we had.

I woke up earlier than usual, refreshed. My advances for relations were refused. Seeing your boyfriend covered in a child's sheet as he lays bare-ass on the stained tile of your bathroom doesn't get the juices going down there.

Now I'm sitting in my office. I've a creeping hangover. The type that only reveals itself as you're on-and-about your day. It brings a break to the stride and a cloud to the brain and stomach. Even the thought of my lunchtime Chicken Planet infuriates me.

And I forgot my gym towel.

Luckily, BMX John will be arriving tonight. So the day can only get better.

Right, right?

Do You Ever . . .

2009-06-08T09:54:00.008-05:00

. . . get bored at work and decide to rummage through the several hundred pages of e-mails archived in your inbox? It takes a particular mix of boredom and the desire to self-loathe to begin stirring up the sediment, but once you do, those e-mails take on the form of a gallery showing your last however-many years. It's the closest thing we as humans have to that poem about Footprints. I think it was called "The Road Taken Less Often Than That Other Road. You Know The One That I'm Talking About. It's The Road That's Always Taken. Over There. It's Path Is All Trodden. Because People Are Always Taking It."

"I think that it would take a lot for me to go out with someone that I know so well. I am so glad that we are friends now. I appreciate you and everything that you do for me. I love spending time with you. You are one of the greatest guys that I know. I just don't think that go back out with you now or sometime in the near future is what I want or need. I think that would still hold somethings against you."

A.v.E,

Her number is 842-6928. You need this.

Your closest friend,
A.v.E

It says your not online....but you are aren't you? Oh well, talk to you soon

Okay, so if this email makes no sense, know that i've been going on about two hours of sleep, i barely have a voice, so i am really getting to the incoherent point. But i was talking to one of my sisters who is from dodge city....and she like knows who you are! well, she didn't like you very much, but i thought i'd see if you knew her...I love the girl to death...her name is [redacted] [no, wait, fuck it . . .] Lauren Schaefer. She's neat...okay well I just thought i'd drop you a line....give me a call sometime...although i might not make any sense...it would be easy to crack jokes....lol....i'm super slow right now and i walk aroudn in a daze....

see ya

There's more but I've just snapped out of it.

You Might Have . . .

2009-05-27T09:24:00.002-05:00

. . . noticed the lengthy departure since the last postings, and that even those were becoming random in frequency. You'd imagine that having moved in with The Girlfriend, I'd be chock full of Bill Engvall-like anecdotes about the situated life. Instead, silence.

What it comes down to is that I've lost the need to recount events and their interpretations here. Now, I have someone to tell them to. And instead of a community of silent readers lurking in the shadows of the interweb, I can actually SEE & HEAR The Girlfriend not laughing. Having someone to talk to at the end of the day is I luxury I'd gone without for far too long, and was probably the sole reason I even started this infernal blarg.

You would think that moving in with someone would be a major step into accepting your place in adulthood; a place you tried to avoid with every teenage girlfriend, and insurance policy waived in favor a flat-screen television. It would seem a person moving in with a boyfriend/girlfriend is passing the threshold into a new dawn.

Wrong!

Instead, I've taken several steps back as a responsible adult. Not only am I not maturing, I'm devolving. For example, several weeks ago I didn't want to go to my night class. I didn't want to have to explain to The Girlfriend why I was home so early. So I went several stops past our own, and drank coffee in a strange neighborhood for three hours. You might remember doing this exact same thing . . . in High School! You cut class but couldn't go home 'cause your parents or the neighbors might spot you, so you ended up driving around or hanging out at McDonald's. How old were you? 16? 17? I'm turning 28 in a few days. (if you haven't already, don't forget to RSVP on evite.)

Likewise, I always feared the point I'd move in with someone because I'd have to put an end to the weird shit I would do when home, alone. How would my id find it's release if someone were always a few feet away. Turns out, nothing changed. I still break out into song for no reason, often changing the lyrics to popular contemporary songs with lyrics describing what I happen to be doing at that moment. "Take Me Home Tonight" becomes, "Makin' a sandwich right," followed by, "I hope that the mustard and the mayo aren't lite." I'll look over and see The Girlfriend staring at me with the coldest of faces. Each song is a realization that not only does she live with a bull in a china shop - but later, this oaf of a bull will be asking about sex.

Oh, and The Cat is still around . . . for now.

With The Recent . . .

2009-04-30T14:05:00.004-05:00

. . . outbreak of swine-flu, a number of facebook status updates have been focused on the spread of information concerning the pandemic.

One post was about the various steps each person can take to ensure they're strong against any strain of flu.

his guy posted some long ass article about how to avoid the flu, in general. The first tip is:

Avoid Sugar and Processed Foods. Sugar decreases the function of your immune system almost immediately, and as you likely know, a strong immune system is key to fighting off viruses and other illness. Be aware that sugar is present in foods you may not suspect, like ketchup and fruit juice.

I was mid-chew of my stockpiled Easter candy when I read that.

Then there is:

Get Enough Rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily tasks done if you"re tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be harder for it to fight the flu. Be sure to check out my article Guide to a Good Night"s Sleep for some great tips to help you get quality rest.

Okay, I'm 0 for 2.

Have Effective Tools to Address Stress . We all face some stress every day, but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight off the flu and other illness.

Is a blowjob an effective tool to address stress? Even if it is, I'm (going to be) 0 for 3.

Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of finding an illness before it spreads. You can review my exercise guidelines for some great tips on how to get started.

Next!

Take a good source of animal based omega-3 fats like Krill Oil. Increase your intake of healthy and essential fats like the omega-3 found in krill oil, which is crucial for maintaining health. It is also vitally important to avoid damaged omega-6 oils that are trans fats and in processed foods as it will seriously damage your immune response.

How many Omega-3's are there in grape soda? By the way, my chest hurts.

Wash Your Hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don"t use antibacterial soap for this -- antibacterial soaps are completely unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.

The day I start washing my hands is the day the flu germs win.

Eat Garlic Regularly. Garlic works like a broad-spectrum antibiotic against bacteria, virus, and protozoa in the body. And unlike with antibiotics, no resistance can be built up so it is an absolutely safe product to use. However, if you are allergic or don"t enjoy garlic it would be best to avoid as it will likely cause more harm than good.

Okay, this one I can do. I eat so much garlic that I sweat the same oils that Italian hair produces.

Avoid Hospitals and Vaccines In this particular case, I"d also recommend you stay away from hospitals unless you"re having an emergency, as hospitals are prime breeding grounds for infections of all kinds, and could be one of the likeliest places you could be exposed to this new bug. Vaccines will not be available for six months at the minimum but when available they will be ineffective and can lead to crippling paralysis like Guillain-Barré Syndrome just as it did in the 70s.

But that's the best place to take in Eastern European girls who have been beaten mercilessly by their smugglers/pimps. Why don't you just bar me from cruising the Yahoo personals while you're at it?

No, but seriously, stay healthy.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx

My Favorite . . .

2009-04-10T11:01:00.004-05:00

. . . lunch spot is a dive place called Chicken Planet (which The Girlfriend says sounds like the title to a really bad B-movie). The seating is cafeteria style, with patrons often taking seat next to strangers. I shared a bench with two office Cathies. One sat chewing while the other kept a continuous stream of dialogue going as she poked at her lunch, never stopping to eat.

" . . . Oh, so my sister called to say that her husband's nephew killed himself this morning. With a dog collar. He was 12."

Her audience doesn't stop chewing.

"Did you know that there aren't any Joe's Crab Shacks in Chicago?"

And she was right. There are no Joe's Crab Shacks in the whole of this city.

On My . . .

2009-04-03T12:20:00.001-05:00

. . . walk to the el this morning, I saw three martini glasses sitting in a planter.

I thought to myself, "They sure are coming in good this year."

Here's what I think happened . .

2009-04-02T14:31:00.003-05:00

"So we've got all these jet engines laying around."

"Yeah, there's about a million of these things."

"What should we do with 'em?"

(Shrugs)

"Maybe we can mount them on walls and use them as hand dryers?"

"Wouldn't they be so loud to use, as to be annoying?"

"I dunno. Not our problem."

"How does the Xlerator sound to you?"

"Perfect!"

The Girlfriend . . .

2009-04-01T09:45:00.006-05:00

. . . had spent the last two days scrubbing out the grime that accumulated in the kitchen cabinets over the four years of living in this apartment. Though I did all the heavy lifting, there's no doubt she worked ten times harder than I did. Though I haven't lived there in the past month, this would officially be the last day it was attached to my name.

In the end, the apartment was spotless. It was as pristine as when it was first shown.

When I arrived in Chicago (in the winter of 2005, maybe), I spent my days looking for jobs, and riding the el across the city. It was my attempt to get a feel for the neighborhoods of this town. The Red Line was my preferred route, as the Blue Line felt grimy, like dirt caked to the outside of a window. The apartment at 5200 North Sheridan Road was the first and only place I looked at. I found this area by studying the people who got on-and-off at the various stops. The Fullerton stop seemed to be composed of people my age, but with much more money. Turns out, that was Lincoln Park, so I kept on North. I'd see a stop bustling with a murder of douchebags. This was Wrigleyville. The stop I found most comfortable was Berwyn, in the Edgewater/Uptown district. It was a diverse cross of working types, casually dressed youths, and people from lands I couldn't find on a map.

The apartment was two blocks down from the el-stop. A banner stretched across the facade read, "Studio and One Bedrooms Available!" I asked the woman showing me the property two questions. "What's the etiquette at a revolving door. Do I let the lady go through first, cause then she has to push the door to get it started, or do I go first and get it spinning so all she has to do is walk through? The latter is less effort for her, but it seems rude - cutting her off like that." When she had no response , I asked, "Do the ice cube trays come with the apartment?" That night, she left a voice mail. "I looked into it, A.v.E, and the ice cube trays come with the apartment. And everyone in the office thinks you're the sweetest man, ever."

Looking now, at the empty apartment, it felt so small. After that initial showing, I still couldn't grasp the layout. The apartment seemed so large, and it's arrangement perplexing. Now, I can't understand how I was so captivated with this place. It felt like my first time back in my parent's house after I moved away. I stood in the kitchen for fifteen minutes trying to figure out what changed, as the entire house seemed minuscule. I felt I could extend my arms and touch both sides of the home.

I didn't have furniture for the first several months. Instead, there were stacks of phone books I used as make shift chairs. I'd stay awake through the night, smoking cigarettes while staring out the window into the night sky. The radio would be tuned to the AM classical station. Mahler would blare as I sat, squinting out at the lights in the horizon. I'd watch the vehicles passing on Lake Shore Drive, hoping that someday, like them, I'd have some place to go in this city.

A jug of cheap wine would sit empty at my feet.

The light of dawn would crest over Lake Michigan. Unlike the last five years in Kansas, here each day would offer something new.

As the Professor . . .

2009-03-17T12:56:00.006-05:00

. . . handed out the midterm, she explained that on this test, and the final, each question will be worth four points. If a student is able to answer a question in a remarkably educated manner - she would give that student six points.

When I got the midterm back, I found that I either got zero points, or six points on all the questions. I looked at the questions that she gave six points to, and realized that she gave me six points on the questions I answered "with a smile." For example, when asked if bread is a non-rival good in consumption, I stated that it wasn't. "If there's a loaf of bread between you and me, each bite I consume is a bite that you can't. And you don't want the bread I didn't eat. I've licked it all."

So for the final, I did my damnedest to answer every question with that same tone.

One I was particularly proud of on yesterday's final is as follows.

In words and graph, explain Excess Burden.

Excess Burden (aka Deadweight Loss) is a term used to refer to those displaced due to the implementation or increase of a tax. The Deadweight Loss can give us insight into the equity of a tax and help determine if the tax if efficient in its structure.

To better illustrate this, we'll use the Window Tax of Great Britain as an example. (Note: This was never brought up in class. I vaguely remember reading of such a thing in some dumb book of trivia.) The tax was imposed on each window in a household. Those families too poor to absorb the tax were forced to forgo windows.

Below we have a typical supply and demand curve. Price is set at equilibrium (where P1 and Q1 intersect).

The tax imposed tax now increases the price of the good to P2, causing a leftward shift in demand from Q1 to Q2 - a product of the increased cost.

The Excess Burden of the tax are those people who board up windows to avert the tax. They, the deadweight loss, are represented in the triangle now formed between Q1 to Q2.

And that is Excess Burden.

(If this doesn't get me six points, I quit.)

An Open Letter . . .

2009-03-04T09:13:00.006-06:00

. . . to World Wrestling Entertainment.

Dear WWE,

It's a common principle in any business activity to strike while the iron is hot. In the event of any resurgence in fame or popularity, an industry needs to be able to satisfy the demand of the general public.

With the recent success of the major motion picture The Wrestler, it would seem that people were willing to re-visit the fucking spectacle that is professional wrestling. And what did the federation of professional wrestling offer to these potential enthusiasts? Nothing. No enhanced advertisements, no viral marketing campaign, no anything at all. For shame. How could a sport that prides itself on shameless promotion not seize the opportunity.

It's not too late. I predict Mickey Rourke will be found dead within six months, bringing attention back to his final performance and with it -the eyes of the nation.

So what I propose is this: A new cast of characters that will force people to sit down and get excited again. What follows are such characters . . .

The Candidate.

With the recent political fervor in these United States, every American now has an opinion. From the disenfranchised voter to those who are apolitical, everybody now thinks something. It's these people (see; everyone) who are the constituents of The Candidate!

Hailing from Washington D.C., The Candidate weighs in at an impressive 300 lbs! Dawned in black speedo shorts, a black necktie, and a black eye mask (don't ask me why, it just looks good) The Candidate hurls his opponent into the ropes. As the opponent is flung back towards our recently elected heel, The Candidate extends a handshake, clutching his opponents palm, and begins to squeeze while shaking vigorously. The opponent is brought to his knees, screaming for mercy as The Candidate continues to shake and shake.

As the opponent lays on the canvas, writhing in pain, The Candidate paces the mat, speaking to himself while gesticulating in a way reminiscent of Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations" speech. He then lifts his opponent by his hair, and tucks the felled man's head between his legs. He hoists the man from his torso and holds him mid-air. The opponent's legs flail. The Candidate is nodding his head to the cheering crowd. Oh no! Can it be? Yes! Yes! It's, The Polarizer!

And like that the match is over. . . wait! No, The Candidates' corner man, Gerry Mandering, is calling our hero over. They're both nodding in agreement. The Candidate is now standing over his opponent. He's pointing at him as he speaks. What's he saying? "You're no Jack Kennedy." The crowd screams in delight. He's grabbing the opponent by his left arm and leg. He's spinning, lifting the opponent higher and higher. Yes, he's got him in a Swift Boat! And he releases the opponent who soars into the air, reaches out, and touches the face of God!

This match is over, America. Your Candidate is the winner!

What do you think? I've got plenty more where that came from.

Sincerely,
A.v.E

A New Series . . .

2009-03-03T08:16:00.007-06:00

. . . Death of a Ladies' Man.

I'm leaving the giant E-shaped building and heading a few blocks southwest, to live with The Girlfriend. (Some of you may take issue with the title of this new series, saying, "A.v.E, you were never a ladies' man." To such remarks I say, "Let me just have this, please?")

I have my apartment through to the end of March. Rather than do the typical 48-hour move, I've began slowly moving my stuff over to her place. As I was taking out some boxes, stationed steady atop a wheeled office-chair, I met the guy that just moved in across the hall. I told him my plan of slowly moving out, and how I'm starting to prefer this over the whole renting a truck and begging friends to help. He'd just done the same thing and hated it. I can't understand how. He goes on to explain that he moved to our building from Hyde Park, over the span of several weeks, via BUS! For those of you not in Chicago, that probably doesn't mean that much to you. Those of you in The White City know that moving from Hyde Park to Uptown via bus is completely batshit insane! (Imagine moving all your possessions from Dodge to Garden using only a Ford Focus. Think of how many trips that would take, and how frustrating that would become after a while.) Luckily, the guy is interested in taking some furniture off my hands. So I can't fault him to terribly. I feel bad enough that this man will soon be eating and sleeping on the secretions of the most vile sex. Secretions which I'm surprised didn't burn through eight floors dripping into the basement. I can barely look him in the eyes when he speaks.

There's a scene in the Gregory Nava movie Mi Familia, where swinging latino-bachelor (and crossword puzzle staple) Esai Morales has settled down. We see him looking at a wall. There is a poster of an Aztec warrior carrying a buxom woman to the top of a temple under the night sky. We pan back to Esai, then pan back to the wall. The poster has been replaced by a large portrait of Julio Iglesias.

As I sat with The Girlfriend in what is to become Our Movie Room, we watched her cat (named simply, Cat) chase his tail atop my bookshelves. I am now, partially, a cat-owner.

Living with Cat is like living with the Indian guy from Predator. He seems fine and all, but at any moment, without any provocation, he'll lash out at you, knife in hand. The Cat is such a cocksucker, too. Aside from the shallow breaths, red eyes, and itchy face that comes with being allergic to cats, he hides outside of entryways, so when you step into the room, he'll pounce at your feet. He's technically proficient with his claws, able to always slice right into the webbing of my toes. And when I try to spray him with a water bottle, he begins to talk. Honest to Jehovah. If you pull out the water bottle, he'll duck under a chair and begin to replicate the same sounds of an infant forming his words into, "I love you." It's impossible to reprimand him when he does this. Cat was a gift to The Girlfriend from her ex. If i ever meet that man, I will lay him out in one punch.

Then stand over him until he comes to, only to do it again.

My fear with Cat is of something far greater than any scratch. As I got sucked into watching him chase his tail atop those bookcases, I began to see how someone can enjoy having something alive pacing in the background of their home. How his fur-ball antics are, at times, laughable. How soon, I'll see photos of cats doing things on the internet and being ROFLing with delight as my Cat does the same thing. Maybe The Girlfriend and I will begin putting things on him, or placing him in the sink to see if he shows up on the web. Sending out Christmas cards with him on the cover.

Even Hercules was undone by a sweater.

The Great Thing About Charity . . .

2009-02-26T13:04:00.006-06:00

. . . is that it allows you to be an asshole.

Don't You Hate It . . .

2009-02-25T10:13:00.001-06:00

. . . when you get a girl's number and wait the 2-3 days to give her a call, only to find out it's the number to a car dealership?

And it's always the same dealership, too!

Fourth Week of March . . .

2009-02-23T11:33:00.005-06:00

. . . The Girlfriend and I will be flying out to Manitou Springs, Colorado and points of surrounding interest.

In doing so, I have to ask off for vacation.

My Boss isn't a difficult man to work with. But, like most bosses, he likes to exert authority in the most annoying fashion.

I submit a report or some document. He'll return it with a retarded suggestion for a revision. I won't make the change and send it back explaining why that's not necessary. He'll stand firm. I confront him face-to-face, and it's no longer a problem. Through all this time and energy, it would have been easier to simply have made the change in the first place.

He also does this on vacation requests. No matter what the date, if you ask for time off, he'll put up a front making it seem as if that day(s) would be inopportune for you to take off. I think he just wants his staff to grovel. What follows took about a year to figure out.

>>> A.v.E 2/23/2009 10:28 AM >>>
(Boss),

I'd like to request the use of vacation time for the 18th (Wed.),19th (Thurs.), and 20th (Friday) of March 2009.

Attached is my revised Vacation Template.

Thanks,
A.v.E.

>>> (Boss) 2/23/2009 10:43 AM >>>
On the 18th and 19th, I already have someone on vacation. I will accept the 20th. Please look for an alternative.

(Boss)

>>> A.v.E 2/23/2009 10:48 AM >>>
Oh, wait. I forgot that I'd written the wrong dates on my desk calender.

I'm asking for the 25th, 26th, and 27th of March.

Sorry for the confusion and attached is a revised calender.

Revisingly,
A.v.E

>>> (Boss)2/23/2009 10:52 AM >>>
Approved.

This is the equivalent of placing my junk on his desk.

How Bad Is It . . .

2009-02-05T12:14:00.003-06:00

. . . that I'm devising ways to get on Tina's computer to delete Clippy, her beloved Word document cartoon assistant?

Fuck, I need some other pleasure in life.

This Is Only Relevant . . .

2009-02-05T12:08:00.002-06:00

. . . to Dodge Citians.

The last time I was back in our hometown, I went to Dillons. While there, I noticed the Video Department was no longer there. I asked the kid working check-out for how long it'd been gone.

"We used to rent videos?"

Some months back . . .

2009-02-04T13:31:00.002-06:00

. . . my boss proposed this weird task and asked me to be at the helm. I quickly put this new project aside and returned to staring at a wall.

This morning he e-mails me as to the status. My first thought is, "..." So I go into his office, close the door behind me, and go on about how I got fucked on this assignment and with so little support, there's no way this can be done. (Keep in mind, I don't recall what exactly the project was, only that I didn't do it.)

He tells me that I can make this project a priority, and forgo my other responsibilities. Thanking him for his understanding, I leave the office with the promise of taking down this monster by next Friday.

I'm now sitting in a basement pizzeria near City Hall, trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. It's one-thirty. I've been here since noon.

Kirby's PC . . .

2009-02-03T15:19:00.003-06:00

. . . can't access the shared drives. I hear him troubling a supervisor about it, so I walk over to his PC to take a look and save the day. Kirby calls out from three rows down, "What's the diagnosis?"

"Your keyboard is disgusting and there's now way I'm touching it. Seriously, it's covered in crumbs and chocolate! What do you do over there!? And your mouse smells like shit. If it were up to me, we'd launch your whole fucking workspace into the sun."

I spent the entire morning working on my income taxes. I've taken so many liberties with it, the ACLU should be listed as a paid preparer.

I spent the entire morning working on my income taxes. My deductions are so creative, that MC Escher should be listed as a paid preparer.

I spent the entire morning working on my income taxes. My adjusted gross income was so low, you'd think I hired a bigshot Jew accountant.

Defying convention, I'm wearing pin-striped pants with a (faintly) pin-striped shirt. Dead Prez wrote songs about men like me. . .

Okay, I was going to embed a video of Dead Prez' Hell Yeah. But all the videos on YouTube are embedded proof. (You can watch the video here.)

So let me re-state that.

Woody Guthrie wrote songs about men like me . . .

Performance Self-Evaluation Time!!!

2009-01-30T09:19:00.001-06:00

On a scale of one to five . . .