When people introduce me to people especially if there's a sizeable age or income gap, they say, "This is Brendan, he's a writer."

And my standard joke is, "Sorry, that's a typo, I'm a waiter."

Last week I went to watch my mom preach at a new church and afterwards my parents had to explain to the people why they have a full grown child with them who doesn't have an employable haircut. "You a student?" five separate people asked.

"No, I'm currently in the bartending industry," I make jobs up.

One woman did her best not to say, Oh, really SINNER? cause all she could say was, "Oh, and you like that?"

Like John Kerry, I come armed with cheap material: "Love it. It's alot like being a priest. People tell you their problems, you serve drinks, but you can't tell everyone when to be silent."

BURN IN HELL YOU--, "Well, that's nice."

But for the rest of the week, my only job is to review the KRS-ONE concert in New Haven so I'll suspend my superstitious tendencies and just let say, Yes, currently I'm a writer.

Inadvertent Asshole

When you run out on your entire life at once, you're pretty much screwed for the next clothing season. I'm visiting my parents this week and the only warm jacket I have is a three-button sport coat. My mother lent me her car for the week while she's in school.

I just ran to the liquor store and ran into a guy I used to work on the farm with. He had the smell of fresh dirt on him. Real dirt, not just grossness. "Hey, Brendan, how you been?" He looks me up and down while I'm dressed like an associate professor.

"Hey." Was all I could say. "Hey."

He walked me out to mom's car, which I had locked meaning I had to use the remote (woop-woop) and get in.

I didn't even remember to congratulate him for getting out of prison.

They're right. They're all right. The old fucks at school, the tweed professors in college movies, the playwrights who dent the fourth wall. Nothing can take away the all-over, warm-in-your-pants, my-oft-crap-life-is-okay feeling of a first draft.

Let me read you a bedtime story.

Highlight the text below (on a mac) Click on whatever's next to the file menu (for me it's "Safari"), go to "services," "speech," and "Start Speaking Text."

Dad says everyone didn’t used to go to Bomb Day when we were real young. Before the new people moved to town. It was one of those years where everyone gets tired. When overtime is hard to find, people work hard to find it. Then they just go home and fall asleep in front of the TV.
Conor swears her can remember this night, but I don’t really buy it. Dad says that they had just strapped down the last Patriot Missile and painted “100,001” on the side. We just went to war with some country and everyone couldn’t wait for the hours to pick up. They tried to make a big deal out of this bomb. One hundred thousand and one. One to grow on. One more for the ditches. Whatever. So everyone stayed after their shift to watch it get sent to the shore along with the others.
They got it ready on a truck that said “Bank One” on the side. Dad’s finest hour.
Hundreds of rental cars came up from New York and down from Boston. Some guy Dad went to high school with had made a big scene about the loss of the American soul in the city and invited all these big shots up to see his plans for our town. Development plans. Conor says everyone used to call him Trout.
They came with certified checks and loan guarantees, but the way some people tell it they stormed into town in convertibles filled with burlap sacks with dollar signs painted on the front. Trout said they could check out the town and see a scale model of the new neighborhood. And if they wanted to, they could pick out the model they wanted and put money down on it now and come back in nine months when they finished building it.
Everyone met at the town hall to wait for Trout’s mini-neighborhood to arrive by truck.
At the factory, Dad and his friends aimed the missile south on route ten.
Trout made a phone call to find out where the hell his model neighborhood landed. The New Yorkers got restless. They had dry cleaning to pick up when they got back. They had baby sitters to get back to. Most of them were double-parked.
All of these new kids have pretty testy parents, and sometimes I wonder what they were like when their kids couldn’t talk back. Rumors circulated in New York that Trout—they called him Mr. Trout—didn’t know what he had, real estate wise. He just wanted to make back the money he should have made on tobacco, and then buy a new truck. They wanted to put the money down that night. Because as soon as those houses go up, the new families will wage a bidding war and Trout’ll learn how much they should cost.
I’ve lived among them for most of my life and I’ll never get over how cheap rich people get.
Bigger rumors circulated the crowd when Trout left to find his truck. The old Smith/Yale train line used to run through town`. Some people said Trout had bought the rights to the whole line and that he had secret plans to build a bullet train to New York City. New York! We’re saved! Honestly, not even Hartford people want to work in Hartford. Did you hear about the bullet train? They’re developing it right now down at the missile factory. They wanted to get back to The Simple Life everyday as fast as possible.
A factory! How quaint! Industry! Hard work! That’s what our children need to learn from!
Do you think Mr. Trout will let us into the bullet factory to see the new Missile Train?
And if these people could spread word this fast and this inaccurately, they were made for our town.
“May I have your attention please,” Trout raise his hand from the door. Half his forearm came out the sleeve of his cheap suit. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry for the delay, but I’ve just received word that the truck has just come over the mountain and it shall be here forthwith,” he said. No one moved. “In two minutes, that is. So if you don’t mind waiting until my staff can bring the models in we can—” the whole crowd funneled out the door.
A few dozen workers waited for the parade across the street. Husbands, wives, kids, the whole deal. Some of them waved little flags. One kid made a sign: We’re Number (100,000 and)1! Jay Riley kept the gas station open late and pulled the town’s economy out of the recession after he sold out of Doritoes and individual beer cans. The people who lived along Bombway Avenue walked onto their porches during a commercial break to see the missile come through.
I hope this really happened some other way. It’s a bit dramatic for me.
The New Yorkers and the other morons spotted black trucks coming down the both sides of the street.
That one! Someone yelled and everyone rush in front of it.
No, no, no! That one! Someone else yelled. It’s sponsored by the realtor’s bank! Everyone else ran into the middle of the other lane. Dad’s friend Donovan sat behind the wheel, but sometimes people say Dad drove it. Whenever I ask him about it, he runs into the bathroom to puke.
The two trucks swerved to avoid the fighting crowds, and then swerved back and then back again. Conor always tells it like they were just being polite. You know when you run into someone in the hall and you both move to the right and then you both move to the left, and you say, Gee, sorry, and then you both move to the right again? Gee, whoops. And then you both move left again.
Only Donovan snapped into a flashback of some war—whenever the last time he carried a single missile this big—shouted something racist—it changes every time there’s a different war, jammed on the gas and slammed into Trout’s Truck at five miles per hour. He died of fright on impact.
Everyone from town ran for their bomb shelters. Everyone not from town ran into the truck to save their homes from the trailer.
“People,” Trout shouted. “Jesus fuck people, there are plenty of homes for everyone.” Someone ran into him and the note cards for his speech fluttered everywhere.
Trout cursed himself, realizing that he could have saved so much in labor cost if he just let the New Yorkers pull the model out of the truck. His hired help stood back and helped themselves to the canned beers left in the abandoned coolers from the parade.
Dad ran out of the factory and tried to give Donovan mouth-to-mouth.
“Aww Christ,” someone snarled. “The town isn’t even built yet and already those people are moving in.
The company medic ran out with a stethoscope dangling from his back pocket.
The company engineer ran to the back of the truck with a stethoscope in his right hand. “Trout, you gotta get these people out of here,” he said. “Until I find out why this bomb didn’t go off.”
“Lookee here, Kitten,” Trout planted a finger in the black man’s chest. “If your little penis-rocket blows up my models or my clients, you better hope that you are right in front of it.”
Kaapahck!!
They dropped the town model into the street with a crash that made the engineer jump. Miniature trees uprooted themselves. Trout had the entire town planned out. Bombway Avenue looked straighter than anyone had ever seen. And they misspelled it. Bombay Ave. The gas station had a big name sign written on it, and he had the old pumps reinstalled. He made a new old town. But he didn’t bother putting up the factory or the library, just the new neighborhoods. Hundred of houses, each the size of a bootbox, each with their address written on the roof.
“Well, now, people, we will begin the bidding soon, if you would please take a pencil and write down the addressed you’re interested in—” Again he was talking to no one. They knocked into him on the way by, spilling his entire box of Trout Brook Mini Golf pencils and stepping on his fake monocle. They tore into the model, claiming houses by pulling them from their wooden foundations, running down the mini-streets like Godzillas.
They cradled the models like the children they left in the city.
“Mr. Trout, how much you want for five-sixty-six Lincoln Lane?” A man in sunglasses held up a plastic flowerbed. “We absolutely adore it. Will the garden be in bloom by the spring?”
“I’ll give you twice what he will!”
“Triple!”
Come to think of it, I like this story better with the burlap money bags.
“We were here first!” another man shouted. “This one has no address, so I want a discount.”
“Strange,” Trout looked it over.
“That’s my house,” Dad said.
“Well I didn’t see your name on it,” the man said.
“No,” Dad conceded. “It doesn’t have my name on it, but it’s a model of my house.”
“Well, maybe if you spent less time kissing your boyfriend and more time selecting a property it could be yours.” He straightened his tie with his free hand. “Mr. Trout, will you tell this man to step back a foot and a half?”
“Look, Pat, I’m doing business here and I’d appreciate it…you know, if you would just…”
“Look, that’s the house I live in. Me, the wife—a woman, my boys. It’s a model of the neighborhood. I mean, you can’t buy it. I live there.”
“Mr. Trout, I’m prepared to double this man’s offer,” he said. “After my discount, of course.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me right,” Dad said. “It’s not for sale, it’s not being built. The house exists right now, and I exist inside of it.”
“Triple,” he snarled. “But that’s my final offer.’
“Look, I don’t even know why I’m bothering with this. Did you see a mini-For-Sale-sign in front of this house?”
“Quit hogging Mr. Trout!” someone shouted from the back of the line. Grown men played tug-of-war with luxury homes.
Some pelted each other with plastic bushes.
Some filled shopping bags with models
Some stacked them three-tall and carried them on their backs like bookcases.
“Trout, for the last time,” Dad repeated himself. “Get your people out of here before they find out what’s in the other truck.”
“Did you hear that?” a man with a fanny-pack full of little trees smiled. “Mr. Trout has more in the other truck!”
“In the truck! More houses in the other truck!”
Stacks of houses fell to the street, cast off.
Everyone who didn’t have a house in their hands wrestled with the back doors of the truck. From the side! Someone shouted. It opens from the side!
A man with three houses slapped the fat man on the back with his free hand, “Mr. Trout you’ve outdone yourself today.”
They burst the latches on the side. Up! It folds up! Like a garage door!
They pretended to know how a garage door worked.
“Goddam New Yorkers,” Trout muttered. Everyone on the ground with models in their hands tested the mini three car garages.
The Bank One panels folded as the side door slid up along the track.
For the first time all night, the whole crowd shut up.
They saw themselves reflected in the eight-foot wall of the bomb.
Everyone in their designer pants, nursing broken mini-chimneys.
They held onto their toy homes and stared at the steel monster on the truck bed.
1
0
0
0
0
1
Written from tip to base.
MADE IN THE USA.
The whole crowd dressed in black. Bits of mini-lawns stuck to their sportcoats.
No one wanted to speak first. And maybe for the first time since they left the city they stood still. Not circling the room at the town hall reception. Not getting used to driving a car again. Not learning how to pump their own gas. Not tightening or loosening their ties. Not adjusting their panty hose.
Just watching as the sun fell behind King Phillips Cave.
Mr. Kitten beat his fists against the metal casing of the bomb, bawling.
But no one paid attention to him.
“The train!” someone shouted. “Mr. Trout has the Missile Train engine!”
“My gosh!”
When mom would tell us the story, they said things like “Golly gee!” But when Conor tells it, all anyone can say is;
“Fuck! Holy fuck, Mr. Trout!” and they scrambled to get a better view.
Fucking shit, this changes everything!
I could keep my job and do the drive everyday until the missile train is up and running.
Wait’ll the Japanese get wind of this.
Mr. Trout!
Mr. Trout, I will double my double offer if you can get this train running on the double!
Mr. Trout! When will the train be finished?
Can we ride it back to New York?
One woman scaled to the top of the mini-mountain and peered into the truck bed. She found Mr. Kitten punching the U in MADE IN THE USA. He sobbed against the hull of the bomb with his stethoscope crushed inside his fist.
“It’s a dud,” he blubbered, all wussy-like.
A dud?
Hundreds of voices repeated the words. A dud?
It’s a dud?
A dud?
It’s a dud?
A dud? A dud?
“The one-hundred-thousandth-and-one bomb to come out of Simsbury, Connecticut is a dud. Nothing. No click, no clack, no boom-boom. Not even any radiation poisoning. You people should all be dead right now,” he spat when he talked. “And if you’re not dead your children should have strange diseases for life and their children should grow up knock-kneed with three dicks.”
No one from the old town has missed a parade since.

Cute place, but I was scared that if I stuck around to long they'd subscribe me to Poets & Writers Magazine.

I’m not a fan of the dramatic in novels usually, but I think that I try and make my dramatic sometimes so that I’ll never be able to credibly write about it. When I moved to Brooklyn I quit smoking a gave up my loose grip on calling myself a vegan.

Whenever I bum cigarettes from strangers I pretend to offer to buy them but they always just give them to me. Really, who’s going to take eighteen cent in pennies and nickels. The girl who just gave me one said I could have it free and clear because she got her pack on a two-for-one special.

“This is a good one,” I said. “You know how sometimes you get a bad one? It’s like all the chemicals they put in them come out in one cigarette sometimes.”

“Right, that’s why I don’t smoke Parliaments.” I hate talking about smoking when I’m smoking, but I do owe this lonely girl eighteen cents of friendship.

“Yeah, whenever I have a Parliament I just think they belong in their blue box. There’s just something blue about them.”

“Oh god yes. And their ads are all blue, except for the menthols which always have two women in white bikinis on a blue beach. But in the menthols everything is green. I mean, who smokes menthols anyway?” For some reason, when you do something gross like smoking, it’s not cool to make them something more natural to consume by making them menthol.

“Everyone’s gramma, I guess.”

“Right! Ohmygod, eww.” I'd like to go back to pretending to write. But I can't just decide that I've given her my eighteen cents worth and ignore her.

"I'm working on this interpretive dance where everything's spelled out. I'm using a poem written by [someone who I should probably know about] and it's like "and" is one move and "the" is another, but then she says "we" and I can't just make "we." You know? I mean it's like--"

Thank god her cell phone rang.

Someday soon I'll either give up writing or I'll give up being superstitious. Either way I'll be able to:

1) enjoy Shakespeare's Botanic Garden in Brooklyn Botanical Park.
2) Drink wine from The Novelist Winery.
3) Buy postcards from the Mark Twain House.
4) Sit in Hemingway's chair in front of his typewriter the next time I'm inside of his boat inside of a bait and tackle store.
5) Apply for an internship at Esquire.
6) Read Poets & Writer's Magazine.

Until then, I will continue running away from these things when I find them.

What if I just didn't work again until after I finished editting? I've done sixty pages since I left Chicago. Sixty brand-new page. I didn't even do one in Chicago.

Labels: Chicago

For various boring reasons I haven't seen fall in New England in five years. Now that's some bullshit. And just think. If I hadn't fucked up at work, I'd be starting fall in the midwest.

Normally when I find something I wrote when I was seventeen I want to burn it so no one, including me, will know how hard I worked at being a complete loser. It could be worse. I could be almost twenty-three and have a personalized license plate that says HENDRX.

Even so, I wrote this letter to Toyota when I was seventeen, hoping that instead of taking my piece of shit car across the country, that a large multi-national corporation would just give me a car and then have me tell them how it rides.

The weird part is that now, five years later, I'm editting the final few hundred pages of a fiction project based on the trip. And, without knowing it or without having ever left Connecticut (except for Massachussetts, noted below) I summed up the whole thing in this letter, which, to my own embarassment, is unaltered:

Dear Toyota,

I have read with great interest over the past year the upcoming release of the first mass-produced hybrid engine. I have been a lifelong Toyota fan and I currently drive a 1989 Corolla. After graduation this spring, I am taking my blue machine from coast to coast to coast with a friend of mine.

We are going to start by dipping the back tires into the Long Island sound via boat launch, and we are heading West from there, with the intentions of dipping our front tires into the Pacific ocean. On the way we will stop in New York, Ohio, Michigan, Chicago, the Mississippi River, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, possibly Montana, Washington, Oregon and California. On the way home we want to see Las Vegas, parts of the south, and Graceland. A large focus of our trip will be the different rock climbing spots, including all of the major national parks. This will include Yosemite, Yellowstone, Garden of the Gods, the Grand Canyon, and countless others.

Our major goal of this trip is economy. We would like to spend as little as possible on food and gas. In fact, to ensure this, we bought stoves for the trip that can run on unleaded gasoline. Any routine car maintenance such as oil, lights, plugs, and minor parts will be taken care of by the two of us. Our diet will consist of the basics, Ramen noodles, Spaghetti-Os, peanut butter, and Oatmeal. Every couple of stops we will lay back in a restaurant and talk with the locals, and see what we can learn from each other. On our last trip, we made a new friend at the campsite next to us. His name is Sean and together we talked about the strangest things: The Beat Generation, the Ex-patriots of the 1920's, Salvador Dali, Thoreau, Emerson, Niche, and what he calls the "Rainbow Colonies" which we would call "hippie communes". There are a lot of truly interesting people out there whom you would never meet if your did not leave Connecticut, and we are setting out to meet all of them.

On our way home from that last trip we saw a hybrid car in front of us in the toll booth line on the Mass Pike near I-84. People in the lines next to her were rolling down the windows with questions and she was glad to answer them. It got me wondering: could Toyota be interested in a lengthy test drive of her newest brainchild? Wouldn't she be interested to know how it handles in the Salt flats of Utah after the hilly terrain of Colorado? What would the people of Montana have to say about the new car in town? What kind of questions would they have for us in Mississippi? What would other earth conscious young people like myself think of the car when it pulled up to Yosemite?

And so my question for you is: would you be interested in being the featured car of our trip and finding out how it does is all different parts of our great country?

Please let me know,

Thank you for your time

Brendan Sullivan

Labels: Chicago

Actual write up for an upcoming film:

The heroine, Amanda (Marlee Matlin), becomes a sort of Alice in Wonderland when her life literally begins to unravel.

I'm going to go see this film, and if her life is not wrapped around a spool, nor woven into a sweater, I'm going to roll up my English degree, drive to hollywood, and smack the director on the nose with it, literally.

I love Brooklyn.

When you don't work, you get to write all you want. From my new rewrites:

It takes just over three months to make a set of Patriot Missiles. They start as chemicals and shells all over and sixty different trucks with sixty different components come through town once a week to the plant across the street from us. And it’s Dad’s job to make sure that everyone who comes off the trucks doesn’t leave the plant with any parts. Most days he waits for the truck, waits for them to unload it, and the goes into the back with a flashlight to make sure no one jacked any six-hundred-pound rudder-caps. But if one spring is missing, he has to X-ray the whole shipping staff to prove that someone else up the road messed up.
At least once a month he comes home and puts his lunch back in the fridge. And I know not to ask. Either he had a busy day, or at ten AM they lost a steering chip and he had to strip-search some fat fuck trucker.
But every three months on the twenty first of March, June, September, and December we celebrate Bomb Day. All the other factory families line the street to watch the gleaming missiles on the back of truck beds as they come through town. You might see ‘em on TV later, but the Army doesn’t know how to handle them like we do. Missiles leave the factory gleaming, with a fresh coat of gloss on the stainless steel. Every year some kids in my school gets a passing grade in photo for turning in a print of the parade reflected in the side of the bomb.
They do one lap around town and then the factory puts tractor-trailer caps over the bombs and they ship to the army bases in McDonalds or Stop & Shop trucks.
They used to put them in unmarked trailers, but then Dad came up with the idea of selling advertising space on the side. Now our national defense network drives through the country in top-secret routes and telling the world: McDonalds: It’s Buuuurgerific!
And that’s pretty much how he got the promotion in the first place.

I almost wish Annie would break up with me just so I could enjoy this song more than I already do.

"Misread"
Kings of Convenience

If you wanna be my friend
You want us to get along
Please do not expect me to
Wrap it up and keep it there
The observation I am doing could
Easily be understood
As cynical demeanour
But one of us misread...
And what do you know
It happened again

A friend is not a means
You utilize to get somewhere
Somehow I didn't notice
friendship is an end
What do you know
It happened again

|How come no-one told me
|All throughout history
|The loneliest people
|Were the ones who always spoke the truth
|The ones who made a difference
|By withstanding the indifference
|I guess it's up to me now
|Should I take that risk or just smile?

What do you know
It happened again
What do you know

You try hard to be a good person. You try to mature each day. You open doors. You give change to homeless people. You vote. You pay your bills on time.

And then you move to Brooklyn and a fifty-year-old retard crossing guard lives in your building with her thirty year old son.

Imagine living above the "They're all gonna laugh at you" woman from the Adam Sandler sketch. How can you not laugh every time you hear her voice? How can you not giggle just thinking about her?

Screaming out the window: "Who put all this trash in the street, honey, what's with all the trash? There's bird poop everywhere now. It's getting all over the trash."

Thirty-year-old son across the street: "Yeah yeah."

"Ooooh, PMS..." she doesn't have any teeth, so she had the funniest lisp. Oooh, PLEA-EM-ESH

"Fuck you!" he walks away.

"No," she says. "Fuck you. Someone punch the birthday boy. Give him thirty-two socks on the head for swearing at his mother. Lazy fuck."

Now he's a block away: "I heard that."

"I hope you did."

Dick Cheney Found Me Out

From today's Yahoonews.Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

And yet some people think he's out of touch:

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch" he and President Bush (news - web sites) are with the economy.

"If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said in a statement.

Do you work in the design department for a neo-romance novel publishing house? Is the author of Le Divorce finishing up Living in Sin? Is she looking for a cover photo? I'll sell you this for thirty dollars.

It took me forever to get foodstamps this time. Unlike last time. Part of me feels bad, not for the government beause, well, damn the man, but for getting foodstamps in the first place. I have resources, I have a college degree, I have a laptop. I just don't have any money. Now that I'm in New York, I could probably get some sell-out office job filing or typing or whatever. It would just mean giving up every dream I've ever had.

"What's this?" After five hours waiting in line, finishing Fight Club they give me an interview.

"It's my Chicago ID."

"Ain'tchew got a New York license?"

"No, I just moved here. Friday. I lost my job and I was on my way here for a visit and I was supposed to move out of my apartment..." In the staged version of my life, this would be the awkward openning scene exposition to explain why I'm in Brooklyn.

"Do you have a lease to prove this is your address?"

"No, I don't have an apartment."

"Pay stub?"

"I don't have a job."

"What are you living off of? Savings? Do you have proof of savings?" Finally, something I've brought with me. I hand her the receipt from the ATM this morning. "Three hundred and seventy-nine dollars? Honey, you can't move anywhere with just three hundred and seventy-nine dollars." When an agent from the welfare office in downtown Brooklyn tells you you're in trouble, you're in trouble. She gets up from the desk and signs all of my forms. An hour later I'm in line at a different office with different screaming kids waiting to get on Emergency Releif.

Labels: Chicago

The single reason that the American sociopath can fester from city to city is states rights. Every state has the right to organize themselves however they wish. So when you have a suspended license at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Connecticut, you're free to apply for a new one at the Secretary of State in Illinois. You have to do something really really bad to get caught in another state.

Right now I'm getting foodstamps in Chicago and New York City, only because Health and Human Services Illinois has nothing to do with Housing and Foodstamps of Brooklyn.

Labels: Chicago

Three Things That, Embarassingly Enough, Involve the Novel Fight Club

1) I haven't had labor day off once since I started working. When I was fifteen I picked corn. When I was sixteen I folded little sweaters at Baby Gap. When I was seventeen I delivered pizza. When I was eighteen I made coffee. When I was nineteen I made lattes. When I was twenty I work a button down and had a voice mailbox in a newspaper office. When I was twenty-one I got my first wine key and started my new fancy job. In that whole time I haven't had a vacation without being unemployed. It's nice.

2) Before I start doing new revisions, I want to read five page-turners. You know, books that should be movie treatments, but instead they have inner monologue. So far I've picked up a cheap 1961 man-romance novel "Lusting Women" about a guy has trouble meeting women who don't want to have sex with him. My dad once told me that his dad had a whole shoebox of James Bond novels hidden in his closet shelf (Catholics aren't supposed to have these things, you see), and I like to think of my grandpa sneaking away with these silly man-porn novels, reading them in the living room when the kids have gone off to bed. I also have Fight Club, which I feel compelled to read, and Don't Point That Thing At Me which is supposed to be a British Cult Classic from the sixties.

That leaves two more, any suggestions?

3) I've moved in with Annie in Brooklyn and the only situation that I could imagine being more fun is if I commanded a small army from this abandoned barber shop up the street from us. I don't necessarily want to sleep there, but if I had an old-ass building to sit in while I read trashy novels and write, well then I might just explode. Except:

a) It's surprisingly easy to squat a building. Any company will let you put bills in your name even if you have no papers in your name. It's astonishing the things people are willing to overlook for twenty-five dollars.
b) I hate having to carry a backpack everywhere, and that's definatly what you have to do if you live in someone elses house.
c) I'm almost done ready that pulp novel and I'm looking forward to finishing it today, mostly because the musty old pages make me sneeze. What would an abandoned heroin-den do to my allergies?

This Labor Day is crucial for the election, and a crucial time to put an end to the indentured servitude of street models (that is, people on the street who are asked to be models, like this guy). Watch the video, then email neighborhoodies.com and ask them to send Caleb his sweatshirt.

Written by Ben andRaizin, featuring me.

Now I'm in Brooklyn with Annie.

Everytime she walks in the door and finds me typing or editting at her kitchen table, I half expect her to squint and stop for a second, "Oh, fuck, Br--, Bra--, Brian? No. Oh, I give up, what was your name again?"

I worry that soon she'll have a long day and walk in screaming at the stranger in her kitchen.

"Shhh! Shhh! It's me, it's Brendan. We met almost four weeks ago! Remember?"

Come to think of it, that would be a great premise for a shitty movie.

The nice thing about living in New York, and getting up the fire escape and seeing this view, is that you know, somewhere deep inside, that you may have lost your job(s), your apartment, all of you books and about half your records, but deep down inside you need to hold on to the fact that 90% of the world assumes you're cooler than they are just because you can ride a train.

What actually happened.

Message one, from The Job I Just Quit "Look, Brendan, you know what? If you haven't left yet, don't even bother coming in, okay? Just forget it." I was on my way to New York to see Ben and Dave's show at Bard and to help Annie move in to Brooklyn. I've also been horribly depressed trying to imagine my winter without the three of them. TJIJQ had me scheduled until 8 PM, after which I thought I'd go to New York (asixteen hour drive).

I got my car fixed: new oil, new gas, new air filter. I even bought iPod speakers so I'd have something to listen to on my way.

At two, I drove to The Job I Still Thought I Had to see when I would have to come back from my trip. I was hoping Saturday (today) at least Friday. If I didn't have to work until at least friday then I could see Ben, Dave, and Annie.

Everyone acts like I should wait around for the manager to come in. "Nah, it's alright. I'll just call in later."

"No, no, he'll be busy then. Just wait."

When he arrives, I'm getting great tips on how to be a bigger asshole from Vice Magazine. "Why don't we go downstairs?" He points to the guy cleaning the floors. "Let Jorge get his work done." It seems kind of dramatic to me, so I assume I've done something wrong. I assume that it's another stupid mistake so I can pretend to be sorry and come back and still be everyone's favorite.

"Do you remember the annoying old people who sat in 205 two weeks ago?"

"Yeah, they weren't annoying. They were just old."

"Well, one of them called in yesterday saying that he checked his receipt and thought his bottle of wine was too expensive. And so we looked it up and he was right. The bottle on the check was the San Fluer and you brought them the Triennes Fluer. And you in effect charged them $48 for a $34 bottle of wine. We've refunded them the money. And..."

"I'm really sorry," I said. I'm really good at appologizing and making you think it was your fault in the end. It comes from being a little brother. "Here." I pulled out the cash left in my pocket. I didn't have exact change.

"No, keep it." He said.

"No, look, I made a mistake, I embarassed the restaurant, and I cost you money," you would have no idea--if you could only judge by my delivery--that I don't give a shit about any of that.

"It's not that, Brendan. I can't keep you here anymore. I mean, I know you just quit your other job to be here, but this is your second mistake and we can't keep you on like this anymore."

There's no reason to make this easy on someone who's singlehandedly ruining your life. "Well, yeah, except all my roommates moved out, my girlfriend moved out, and now I have to find a new apartment with no job. Plus, I mean, you guys are my fucking family."

What actually Happened: Five people in line behind me to punch in their orders at the computer. Busy night. I have a table of five sixty year olds from the suburbs. Cruely, someone awarded them a $250 gift certificate. They didn't want to eat anything raw, two of them said they didn't like fish.

"Christine, the computer's all yours if you can tell me which button is for the Triennes. Is it the SAN FLUER or the FLUER FLUER." Our computer was state of the art in 1995.

"SAN FLUER!" She points to it with her finger, I punch the button. The barback runs upstairs to get the bottle for me, when he comes back he has something else entirely. I run upstairs with the bottle and exchange it at the bar for the Triennes Fluer.

"Look, you're not losing anything but your job, okay?" He gets on a real soft voice, like he's worried I'm gonna freak out in a second. I have brief vignettes in my head of the entire restaurant staff walking into the bar where I DJ, fanning themselves with cash. Cut to me in the corner, pouring abandoned drinks and cough syrup into a pint glass looking for a buzz. "I'd be happy to write you a fantastic recommendation."

"Yeah, except the only place hiring is Small Bar," that's not even a made-up, weblog-redacted name, it's the bar openning up across the street. It's owned by the owner's boyfriend.

"I know a guy who's gonna bartend there., he'll put in a good word for you." He didn't get he joke.

I'll probably wonder about this for a couple of years, but so far I can't see a big difference. If I had to go home and pack my shit would I still have left Chicago? If I didn't already have the heavy stuff--turntables, computer, etc--in the trunk anyway, would I have left? If I hadn't gotten an oil change that day, I would have made it to TJIJQ and today I would arrive back in Chicago a week later and find out that I have no job, an apartment I can't afford.

Labels: Chicago

Chicago vs Hartford

The West End of Hartford really really wants to be Wicker Park sometimes. They have farmers markets, Thai food, and, you know, a coffee shop. Former Ghetto, movin' on up and all that. But sometimes when you walk through it, you get the feeling that maybe y--

"Eh!" Six gentlemen look of from their 40s as we pass their stoop. "Eh! Boy, what the matter? They didn't have any tighter pants at the store?" I look down at pants I'm wearing and remember thinking that they weren't actually tight enough, but no, they did not have any tighter pants in the store, nor did they have a tighter shirt like the one I had on--grey polo with a rainbow strip on the chest, if anyone cares.

They high-five to celebrate the genius of his statement. Tight pants! But could they have gotten tighter? No! (chuckle chuckle chuckle). We laugh too because, come on, white people love to be persecuted now and then. It's funny, and strange because you think that if--

"Jesus, fuck, man," an unrelated guy walks up to me and the stops to ridicule me as Robb and I pass. "Walkin' with your rainbow-ass shit on, faggot."

Labels: Chicago

Here's the kind of car I drive: The stereo got stolen and so instead of paying for the damages, the insurance company totalled the car. It's as if the cable went out and they condemned my building.