As a child growing up in wholesome America I can remember trotting down the street to get an egg for my mother from one of my neighbors who probably knew my first name and my teacher's name and what grade I was in. Once while visiting my grandparents I had to walk a full mile down the road to the nearest neighbors just to get a goddam egg.

I need and egg right now and I really hope that craigslist will come through for me.

Ideas I've struck down for my next writing project

1. The Telemarkiad
- A narrative about a son left behind in war, searching for meaning in life who finds work as a telemarketer. Based on the first four book of the Oddysey, known as the Telemachiad.

2. War Prophets
- The story of a contractor who wakes up in a military hospital thinking he's Jesus. This would have been so fun to write. The voice would have been that of a slightly demented working-class New Englander who just wants to help the world understand how he's pretty sure he remembers creating it and why. He would keep this a secret until he could talk to the only other person who was in the same accident with him. This person would in turn wake up thinking he's a different kind of Jesus. One who would say things like "Agh! Oh it hurts! Remember when I said, Whatsoever you do unto the least of my brothers you also do to me? Agh! I sense someone is committing Sodomy and it's killing me!"

3. Davinci's Cold
- One woman's love affair with Davinci's corpse.

4. The Devil Wears Men's Warehouse
- What it's like working in restaurants for morons who have degrees in hospitality but are shocked to learn, among other things, that Valentine's day is named after a Saint (actual quote: "I wonder who was Mr. Valentine?"); that the English do not use the English measurement system; and that every French word cannnot be pronounced mearly by avoiding the final syllable.

5. I'm Oprah, You're Dr. Phil: Now Fuck Off.
- My brother taught me this mantra when I told him about this new guy at work that really bugs me. He said to repeat it to yourself everytime they look at this new go-getter like he's chairman of the bar. It really belongs on self-help shelves. Just because you're new and full of spunk and great ideas, doesn't mean anyone should care. (see also my follow up: Hey, Oprah, Dr. Phil's Not Going Anywhere: Now Fuck Off. which is actually what I would have written when I first started working there.

Somewhere on the otherwise worthless internet I found a review trashing this song:

Wolfmother- Woman (Avalanches Millstream Remix)

Only the review didn't say anything that I didn't want to hear. It was as if I had a great friend who had a sister that I didn't know about and the original friend said, Who her? Oh, god. Yeah. Whatever, be friends with her, but she just--I don't know--listens too well. And she always wants to fucking pick you up at the airport and pick up the check at dinner. And that's not the most annoying part: she remembers your birthday like it's a paid holiday.

On Monday I split a rather cosmic brownie with friends, drank at Coney Island all day* and got home at 4 in the morning. There's only so many more days I can have like this and still pretend it's research for another novel.

*Slurpee Cup of Beer+Go Carts=Plot Solution

Labels: Novel

When I showed up for my cross examination, the lawyers informed me that I had gone from a supporting witness to the only witness not intimidated or deported.

Nine months ago I testified that I knew that the managers of a shitty steakhouse were stealing from the tip pool. Everyone else who testified was so underprepared it made me wonder how much they weren't getting paid.

It was easier this time to face the lawyers because all I had to do was look the opposing lawyers in the eye and think, Your parents worked hard so that you could go to law school. Unless you were gypsy born they probably taught you to always do the right thing and you've taken that power and chosen to defend giant multi-million dollar corporations, which you know to be guilty.

I went in like Atticus, knowing that even if something wrong is going on, you need something on paper or some word. People can steal all day long, but unless they admit it out loud, you have nothing. But they admited it to me and curiously I was fired soon after.

They tried to discredit me. "Are you aware that there were two back-to-back complaints against you by customers?"

b: "I was only aware of one."

"Well there were two."

b: "May I ask a question?"

"No."

Judge: "The witness is allowed to clarify. But not propose. Overuled."

b: "You said there were two complaints back to back. What do you mean by back to back?"

"Two in a row with nothing in between."

b: "And what could be in between?"

"....Anything else."

b: "You mean, good complaints? More complaints?"

"...er, nothing else."

b: "So what you mean to say is that there are only two complaints against me. Do you have any kind of paper work about that?"

When he said No, the court reporter smiled into her keypad, looked up, and winked at me.

It's been a rough couple of weeks so if you have any bad news about anything, please send it to me via Stingray the all-Elvis singing telegram service.

A couple of weeks ago I was mixing drinks and smoking pall malls with Kurt Vonnegut on a pier in working-class cape cod. We were laughing and drinking and using words like "vortex" and "vagina" in the same sentence. (Von has a very infectious personality, not unlike Snoop Dogg.) I told him I could make a daiqueri just like Hemingway liked his (half grapefruit half lime juice plus marichino liqueuer). And that got him going about The Old Man and the Sea.

Just then an actual old man came in from the sea and thought we were talking about him. "Fuck you, you New York nancy boys. Try not to get your penises stuck in eachother on your way to NAMBLA this week."

Kurt Vonnegut then skillfully and slowly brought this man back in time with his words so that the fisherman understood that we were discussing vaginas and cigarettes because we preferred them.

I poured the man a strong grog and put the shaker back into the cooler.

Kurt Vonnegut then told the fisherman that we were discussing a story by Ernest Hemingway about an old fisherman who caught a giant Marlin in Cuba. The fisherman was old and poor and hungry and needed the fish to survive. It was too big to fit into his boat so he lashed it to the side. But the blood attracted a shark who ate away at the fish. When the old man got to Havana he was left with only a skeleton.

"Bullshit," the pirate eyed sailor crumbled his empty plastic cup and spit out the brandied cherry from inside. "Any good fisherman would know to carve off as much of the good meat he could and ditch the rest or else he would come home with neither."

What he said shook me deep. I left the cooler on the dock next to Kurt Vonnegut. We had been almost to the end of our nightly drinking contest, but I felt sobered at the seamans words. I walked home to Brooklyn and got a text from Vonnegut. "WHR RU? EVRTHING OK? 2 WASTED 2 GO 4 BURRITOS?"

"HAD 2 GO. I KNOW HOW 2 SAVE MY MANUSCRIPT NOW," I texted Kurt Vonnegut back. "PS. DJ'ING AT BEAUTY BAR TOMORROW. U THERE?"

Labels: Vonnegut

This is hopefully the last of too many mornings spent getting up and not writing. There's this terrible pressure in my mind to bang out something new. And I know that's not good for me. I should have all the time in the world to waste my life away.

The only hurry is to make me feel better about the project or get a shitty book deal--neither of which have anything to do with writing a great story. But right now I'm more than a little nervous about doing or not doing either. It's either developing gradiose plot lines (yesterday I dropped an outline of the Oddysse into a spreadsheet to see if it would fit, today I bought Shakespeare's Richard III to try and find inspiration/a plot to hijack).

The bottom line is that right now I'm caring too much about what other people think. That and I think one of my neighbors has the dog-whistle, can't be heard by teachers ringtone.

Quick Survey: What do you put on your corn?

It is nothing short of selfish and shameful that no one has leaked the new Killers album. This band means alot to me only because I know that they will become our Beatles. When we finally have flying cars the kids in movies about the early 21st century will probably go straight from their tech support jobs to their fight clubs in gasoline powered cars blaring "Mr. Brightside" whether appropriate or not.

I also like the band because they were really bad when they first came out. I like that they barely sold the first pressing as of the end of 2004. And I like that I'm pretty sure I've never listed to the entire album all the way through, even though I'm the asshole with the Japanese import version (bonus tracks=master's scraps). But two sources have told me that the second album will be even better.

Music is terrible right now, but the summer is going to have this:

Razorlight | In the Morning
Outkast | Mighty 'O'
Adam Greene | Nat King Cole <-!
Lily Allen | LDN
Da Sign and The Opposite | Sunshine

This is the intro to Pitchfork's review of the new James Figurine record, which is the beat master of the Postal Service and Erland Øye of Kings of Convenience.

TamborellBro (8:39:03 PM): hey ben, when are we making
another postal service record??

SweatyQT (8:39:48 PM): um, sorry jimmy, things are pretty busy with my other band right now...

TamborellBro (8:40:52 PM): :( but I thought the freckles
in our eyes were mirror images and...

Auto response from SweatyQT: sorry i'm not
around, guess i have other "Plans", lol

TamborellBro (8:41:49 PM): ohno, now where will i find a
sensitive indie vocalist to soften my icy electronic
landscapes :?

Sk8RBØye (8:42:30 PM): Hey guys, a/s/l?

This might have been the album cover for the hottest American band of 2001.

In fully anticipating the forthcoming explosion of Baile Funk around the world--wherein Miami-bassy beats are spliced around hard rock tape loops while a group of singers scream obscenities--my friends and I imploded onto the Boston Favela scene for one long night in a recording studio four years ago.

In the truest sense of the word zeitgeist--since we were perfectly mimicing something we had never even heard--we recorded one song with lyrics we wrote on the chalkboards of a sound engineering classroom. The album was dubbed onto one limited edition 12 pack of of tapes. The band never recorded again. And the six of us have never been in the same room since.

I was invited back to Boston to record another track, but I had just discovered the value in having sex with women and was disinterested at the time. Like Arthur Killer Kane I will spend the rest of my life in obscurity hoping that Morrisey will call me up for a reunion show.

Oh, and also I don't know anyone who still has a tape deck.

Thanks to the exhaustive efforts of our only fan the single is now available on myspace. Download, share, and remix with care.

The Buff Knux- "Hey Shorty"

This day already has the poor signs of another wasted day off. Getting home at 4:30 in the morning on a sunday night and waking up at eleven to a grocery starved house and a girlfriend who is out of town means I will likely spend most of my day thinking of weblog* posts and rereading magazines. There's another novel in my head and I think it's going to be fantastic.

But the thought of it maybe not being full-on fantastic keeps lassoing the dialogue and the characters further into my head, duct taping their mouths shut and blaring house music from cell phone speakers in a sweaty room where they'll hope for release but wish they had shaved that day so that it won't hurt when the duct tape comes off.

*The official blogger spellcheck does not recognize the word "weblog."

Labels: Novel

This is the shelf where I keep all my failed manuscripts. Each one deals with the same ideas, but they have different character names and plot lines.

Tonight I got a rejection letter so bad that I don't know if this shelf will get any more full. It was from a woman who used to want to be my agent. While that fact hasn't changed, she did decide that this isn't the novel that she wants to represent.

I loved that novel and I love those characters. Like loving a girl with a broken nose or like a single soul inhabiting two bodies or whatever else was in my Valentines day eVites. This novel came to me as something natural, irrational, and fundamental--not unlike the number pi.

And yet--like a break up I've been dreading--I completely agree with every one of her reasons.

Labels: Novel