Man, I'm DJ'ing at a new bar tonight and there's this whole table of drunk idiots who love crappy hard pop-rock as much as I do. About an hour ago I wondered if I might be able to leave early on my first night. But no, they've assured me, they would walk 500 miles to fall down on this floor.
Plan ahead: I'm DJ'ing on New Years in the Lower East Side. Conrad's working, Jackie's Go-Go dancing. I've challanged myself to skip my usual Tuesday songs and just stick to hard rock. It's probably going to look exactly like this.
Last night I went back to my old hometown for a drink with some friends. I was so happy because my life is in great order; I was still reeling from reading Laia's review. But then I became convinced that since I've maybe never been this happy in my life that I would die right now. I would never finish the novel. And even what I had could never amount to Billy Budd, Sailor
It was a dingy little post industrial bar that totally reminds me of a novel I wrote one time. In fact, if you read my novel or Laia's great review: it is the place where Liam breaks down to the bartender.
Scott Hampshire’s infinite persuasion skills talked me into getting a drink with him at the Fuse Box. Normally under these conditions I would abstain. I have this rare disease that pops up only when I drink. My tongue flares up as soon as I taste the alcohol and it won’t stop until I’ve called several ex girlfriends and told them how I feel about them. My phone has names organized to prevent this. Ex friends and girlfriends get listed as, for example, “X.Sherry Leworski.” This disease causes just enough mental disconfiguration to keep me from remembering where I hid the numbers. I also learned to keep my work friends and bosses hidden as in “W. Jane ala Accounting” so that I don’t call Jane from accounting at three in the morning just to thank her for giving me a ride that one time or ask her what she’s wearing. Many of these people confront my disease with tough love as though I needed to be quarantined until it passed over, like I’ve got scarlet fever or something. Truly a shame. Sometimes the only ex-relationships that work are those where the girl catches the disease from me. We’ll both go to the phone at the same time and while it’s ringing we’ll find someone on the other line. When in a committed relationship I find it handy to change that girls name to, for example, “+Sherry+” that way she sits on top of your phone list. That way when I have an attack late at night I don’t call someone else and do something stupid, thus changing a happy “+” into an pissed off “X.” This disease makes it impossible for me to keep friends named “Aaron” unless Aaron has the opposite reaction to alcohol and passes out in the front seat of his car. Anyway. The Fuse Box is a total man-hole. I can’t believe anyone has every met a girl there and fostered a happy relationship where the can even make it to “+” status. It looks like how a twelve year old boy would design the perfect basement. TVs on every wall play the local games, the big games, and classic games from days gone by. Wall to wall Astroturf carpeting, with the 50 yard line at the door and the end zone in the bathroom line. Three video games. In one you have two giant orange rifles and you can go head to head against other dudes in a game where you honestly hunt deer as they hop through a forest. You lose points for shooting a doe. In the second one you put in money to win hypothetical money playing video poker. There’s no jackpot, but on the final level you can play strip poker against pictures of strippers wearing paper doll clothes. One time Conor got thrown out for playing back. In the third game you drive a car through video recreations of various cities, with the goal in mind of racing through downtowns across the country. You can drive all sorts of things: school busses, hummers, race cars, Italian sportsters, etc. I’ll have to alert the Nobel Prize committee about the geniuses who put a game in a bar that tests if you’re okay to drive. You would never know that this American dream of a town has room for a place like this. And it doesn’t. You’ll find it hidden in the back parking lot of the post-fascist Italo-storefront of the giant Antonio’s Pizzaria, where an a-frame “A” marks the spot. In back the furtive vans of every moving company, plumber and landscaper roost for the night sometimes. I can’t imagine how many guys have gotten canned because they drove a work truck they shouldn’tve or left one back there overnight. The walls and the Astroturf smell like twenty years of missed passes. Automatic cat food machines sit on the edges of the bar, full of chex mix, waiting for gravity to refill the bowl as the next drunken hand swoops in for a pretzel. “I always go for the top,” Hampshire says as he lifts the lid and reaches in. “Fewer gross hands, but you don’t really get many peanuts this way.” I just think of Conor. His local. He must have spent every Friday/paycheck at this bar with his buddies. Everyone is Conor’s friend inside the bar. Young dudes, old guys, married couples who for some reason can’t buy their Amstel Lights in the grocery store. They go on an on with each other until Conor walks over and then they probably exchanged aphorisms about the nature of work and relationships. The kind of things you might learn if you went to a bait shop and studied all the bumperstickers. Even though they all agree that work sucks they have pride in their employment and regale each other with thrilling tales of roofing and three hundred square foot tarps and nail gun injuries. Conor has never built anything that works, but you will find him in the middle of them all discussing building codes and the high price of PVC pipe right along with them. He has that superpower that comes from drinking Rumplemintz and Budlights. Dad really started to put himself back together once Conor turned twenty-one. The two of them, on the barstools. Conor with the bottle and Dad next to him, pounding Sharp’s Non-Alcoholics. And Conor there with his parishioners joking that his Dad starts NA tomorrow. Non-alcoholics anonymous. “You can buy me a Heineken and a tequilla and I’ll forgive you for leaving me to die in an Idaho drive-in,” Hampshire smirks at his joke/the TV with subtitles. “Look, you’re not the one who had to deal with the bad stove all summer.” I still have some money left over from being offended by test advertising. I was saving up for a condo or an education or a new car or a big romantic vacation. But it’s been so long I forgot I was waiting. Some girl with nutrasweet-blonde hair and Lee Press-on Claws looks over to me and gives me the silent “one second wink” of busy bartenders and strippers. “Watch out for that girl, man. She swallows.” “I keep hearing that’s a good thing.” “No I mean she swallows men whole and spits them out. Charlene Cunningham. Those six guys at the bar are probably drinking away the pain from what she did to—Hi, Charlene! What’s going on, girl? I haven’t seen you in forever.” Hampshire does the two-faced about-face that I’ve never seen a grown man master before. “Liam!” Charlene screams past him and holds her claws over her mouth in disbelief. “Liam Boycott I haven’t seen you in years, remember me? Charlene from the Christian Science Preschool? What brings you back to town?” Hampshire leans over, “His brother is missing in Iraq.” Okay, as soon as I figure out something better to say, I’m going to have to make sure to spread it around. Charlene looks like she’s about to cry. And then she does. “When did this happen? Have you heard anything?” She really just collapses right there. And if they didn’t have five sports games going and another bartender on I wonder if anyone would notice. Through her teary mouth she shouts, “My cousin’s in the Navy and we’ll get those guys and make them pay!” Since it’s the thought that counts, I won’t worry about what aircraft carrier she thinks he’ll plow up to Baghdad. “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.” “He was just such a good guy. Why’d it have to be someone like him, you know?” She shouts over the jukebox. “Always coming in here, smiling. Nice to everyone. Good tipper. Always full of stories and jokes.” It hits me, maybe for the first time right then. Conor might never come home. I didn’t even get to say goodbye when he left for Iraq. Now I may never know what happened to him. Ever. With Charlene crying it just all makes sense to me too fast. And before I know it tears start running down my chin. “I miss him so much,” I say to Charlene. “I can’t believe it sometimes. I mean, Why? Why did it have to be my brother?” She leans over the bar to give me a big soggy hug. And thank God, because my face is red and I don’t know these people well enough to sob. I hide my tears in the blonde mane that still smells like shampoos. Everyone at the bar freezes with their lips halfway to the bottleneck, staring. Of course it doesn’t help that Charlene’s blue thong triangle sticks halfway out of her pants when she leans over. “Let’s think positive, Liam! They’re going to find him and bring him home. Cheer up. Lemme buy you and your friend a drink, okay? What’ll it be?” “I’ll have a Heineken and a shot of Patron,” Hampshire swoops in on Conor’s wake as if he were just waiting in line. “You?” “Uhm, an Anchor Steam and a Bulleit Bourbon—no!” I stop her as she leans over the beer fridge. “No, I want to drink to my brother. Give me a Bud light and a shot of Rumplemintz.” She pulls three glasses out of some green colored water in the tepid sink and lines them up on the rail. Charlene grabs the one closest to her and raises it with us. “Okay boys, this one’s for Peter,” she turns to the boys on the bar. “Raise it up! This one’s for Peter!” She presses her lips to the glass and leaves a lipstick remark behind as she slams it down on the bar, upside down. “Woo!” I let it go because she definitely suffers some kind of cirrhosis of the brain. But Hampshire, journalist of record, leans right in and edits her sentence before he even gives the shot glass back. “It’s Conor,” Hampshire points a lazy finger at Charlene. “Nice to meet you, Conor,” Charlene shakes his outstretched pointer finger. “Charlene.” “No, I mean his brother’s name is Conor.” “Then why have we always called him Liam?” “No, Liam’s brother’s name is Conor. No Peter.” Charlene turns to me as if I might have anything to add. “You’re Peter Boycott’s older brother, right?” “No, sorry. I’m Conor Boycott’s younger brother. Peter Boycott is just some kid we went to Sunday school with. No relation. Same Irish last name. What are the odds, huh?” “So Peter’s okay? He’s alive?” “As far as I know.” “Oh, thank god,” Charlene does that lower eyelid-squeegee thing to protect her makeup. “I just saw him, like, yesterday.”
Anyway last night I got a text from Brandon Flowers "Sorry about the Melville thing. Meet me at St. J's l8r and we'll chat." I knew he went shopping today and he wanted me to stand in the goddam bathroom at the bar with him while he tried on his new outfits. Queen. But he did mention earlier that he found me the perfect Christmas gift. Which is nice, for a Mormon.
So I go to the bar and I meet up with Laia and the first things she says is "You've got mail." Which I know to mean that she emailed her review of the first 15 chapters of my novel. I freaked out! I couldn't wait to read it! I ran out the door, skipped out on my tab and bumped into Brandon on his way in. Like, really bumped into him. He was juggling a huge garment bag and a red-wrapped package fell from his hands. It hit the sidewalk with a loud, loud shatter.
Right as I'm about to mutter and apology--knowing that as an artist/asshole he understands how exciting it is to read about yourself--he just shouts. "Great! Fucken great! I brought this all the way from Paris for you! Merry fucking Chistmas!"
All I could think to say was: "Your Christmas song is great. I'm really honestly into it. I can't talk now. I'm sorry."
He looked like he was going to cry. And he did. His eyes welled up, "D-do you really mean it?"
It may have been a perfect day to read, kinda grey, kinda gloomy and a little bit rainy, (ok, maybe MY idea of a perfect day to read) but I got into it right away. (I'm gonna try to write this objectively and not say things that'll make me sound like a goddam idiot and will make you think that I'm just saying good things because you're my friend or whatever, because i wouldn't..) (did I mention Im stoned whilst writing this?) Anyways, so I got into it right away. I was really excited that your Liam reminded me of my Liam very little, so I could root for him. What can I say, kid, I really loved it. It's funny in the way that real life is funny when you think about it all the time. It's got a really nice beat, the way it changes from perspective, and his subconscious and the present and the past and everything else. It's smart. It made me smile and laugh and say OMG!,but the true measure of "reader response" (see how I'm making this objective and professional?) was the part where Liam's at the bar and breaks down to the bartender. I mean, in the span of like three paragraphs I went from tears welling up in my eyes to fucking laughing heartily about what happened right after. How often does that happen? The answer is almost never. I loved your way of describing thesuburban semi-bleakness that surrounded him (not that it was bleak before, but now it is, and you get what I mean). So I guess that in terms of creating this environment and the characters, you nailed it and I can totally imagine the kinds of people that inhabit this Connecticut of yours.
As for the plot, I really wanted to find out a bit more about Conor, and his relationship with Liam. I also thought that Hampshire was going to totally be the key to unlock mysteries (not in a, "Well, he'll surely know where the brother is! And he'll use his journalist skills to find the mom after all these years! Then they'll go on Oprah! They'll get a car!" cause I'm not expecting it to have a(n) entirely) happy ending where all the problems get solved and everyone lives happily ever after because that's not the way that real life is, and even though there's a slightly fantastic side to it, I think it's about real life. I'd be hella disappointed if everyone had babies at the end and ate a big thanksgiving turkey together) but it seemed like he was gonna have some information to help Liam put two and two together or something. And of course I wanted to know more about Naomi and Liam together, because their coming together was so organic in a way, that you just know they'd get along great and something very compelling would come out of it, like one of those "Top 5 Breakup" scenes in High Fidelity but not the same at all, also because it wouldn't be about breakups. (Ew, was that an insensitive thing to do? Bring up another book or something? Anyways, I only saw the movie, never read the book, so if you want you can dismiss my previous statement) but in any case, you should know what I meant, which would make the previous parentheses party completely moot. The Cara character was cool even if their interactions were a little confusing and I see them as just constantly bickering with each other, but you know at the end its not that bad (which is probably why I LOVED the last chapter you sent me, because it had everything I was left wanting after finishing it the first time). The sexy scene was great, not cheesy or porn-y just cool and sensual and intimate and like the memorable times in real life. (Does it bother you that I keep saying real life? It's just the best way to describe it, not real life in a humdrum kind of way, just, R E A L.) I loved the bit about their code, and the whole "why-you-say-someone else's-name-when-they're-right-there-thing." It made me smile and sigh and think of lovers past, which was nice. (kind of sort of)
Furthermore, inspired by that section of the Best American Non-Required Reading book that was all about the best first lines of a book or whatever, I took some time to look at the first line as its own entity and you know what? It's a great first line. I'd definitely be curious about the story if I was handed just that as a teaser. The first sentence tells a little story and also gives a hint of who Liam is, away; I mean, who'd say something like that? I immediately knew that I would like him upon reading it.
And now a bunch of random thoughts: 1) I really like the name Sherry Leworski. I can imagine her as that perfect girl in high school, but not like a Heather. Sometimes I hear Steve Perry in the background singing "Oh Sherrie" when she comes in, but that's a good thing too, I think (and not at all your fault). 2) We never found out what the crap Alan wanted with Liam (Although when I read it the second time, I thought that maybe whatever that thing Alan said when Liam opened the door to which Liam responded "sorry your band broke up" or whatever, was actually something Iraq related that had to do with Conor? which would be freaking awesome.) 3) The Andes don't reach Brazil, (they're on the Western part of South America) so they can't have that kind of wood at the coffee shop (unless you're saying it making fun of it, like "Look at these retards and their Andean wood that isn't even fucking real in which case you might want to make that a bit more clear). 4) Not that I need Liam and "Her's" entire relationship retold, but a bit more background about that would be awesome. 5) Professional Demographic? FUCKING LOVE THAT CONCEPT!
In general, you have a really really good shell to build on. I mean, it's not even finished, but I fell a bit in love with it nonetheless. I don't know if you've been writing this in order or if you just have the basic plot line laid out and fill in the blanks when you feel like it, but it seems like there's a lot of great possible developments that don't end up er.. developing. There were tons of memorable lines that I won't list here or anything, but that I did underline and mark in there with a green Prismacolor pencil but not a red pen. But I can show you my (haha, yes, MY copy) copy of the manuscript if you want to see what all that little stuff was. (And also, fucking LOVED the binding/cover!)
It really is great Brendan, I want to read the rest and know what happens to everyone and if today is any indication, all the kids in it, stayed in my mind with me and I started thinking about them outside of the book situation, which could be a little weird, I guess, but it was just oddly comfortable.
Also, you already know that I have a problem with prepositions but I also have a problem with run-on sentences, I'm too shizo for regular ones and I like the way the run-on ones sound better. I hope this didn't drive you totally crazy. It was an honor to have you let me read it, thank you.
For reading this far--and to apologize to Brandon and also to make nice with Techno music now that I'm floored and full of Christmas cheer--here is a fantastic remix that nicely complements the song, one which a DJ might actually prefer fading across to.
News Year's is a very difficult and underwhelming night for me because I'm always willing to get wasted on the day before a holiday, make out with strangers, piss between cars and pretend that, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be a better person.
Originally I planned on posting your review as encouragement to get you to finish it during the week. However, since you finished reading the entire 180 pages in the first day I can assume that you need no encouragement.
Given the convoluted nature of the language that we share and the amount of innuendo that gets thrown around, computers have a difficult time keeping up. For example, these are the Google ads that came up with the last email I sent you.--> Charitably I would assume that it was in reference to something in your spank bank. But who knows?
So, in order to give you immediate feedback on your immediate feedback, I will also post the google text ads that show up with it.
Because after all, Laia: Pump top means no spilling,
Sincerely,
VH1
p.s. does anyone know what "Pre-seed Lubricant" is?
1 Gallon of fresh, local apple cider 2 scoops of fresh, herbal chai (not black tea) 1 T Clove 1 T Allspice 1 Stick of Kentuckey sasafras 4 oz of New England Maple Syrup
Strain and serve with 1 oz of Bourbon and a cinnamon stick.
My regular saturday night dance party had to be cancelled last night. Conrad works the door at a bar downtown and when we went on his first night the place was empty and the bored barback kept fiddling with his iPod. It just so happens that his playlists perfectly matched the music we dance to everywhere else.
Violent Femmes, KISS, Golden Earring. This kid was unstoppable. We came back every saturday after that to get wasted on $2 beers and hang out. Conrad drinks right along with us, sometimes two-fisting, but he still gets paid.
Last night I had a hard day at work. Saturdays are the day where the bar's iPod only plays trance music, including my five least favorite Moby songs.
The bar was packed and we all thought it was probably because we invented cool, and will continue to. But no. Not there for us.
They hired a fucking house music DJ. Some tool with a laptop full of bullshit and a hundred dipshit friends with slightly askew hats. The girls were all gorgeous.
He played his fucking crap music and had the audacity to play the remix of "You Gotta Fight (For Your Right to Party!)", which at no point contains a complete verse. I left throbbing blue-balls for an actual song lyric. Like music junkies we stood outside smoking, twitching and singing "Kiss Off" by Violent Femmes to each other.
Today you will become the first person to read my new novel. In fact, I haven't even read it yet. I've written it once. But I haven't even spell checked it.
You have until Christmas eve to send me your cadid evaluation of this early draft. Of course we understand that there are characters who will disappear for no reason. There are plot lines that I've given up on or may continue with later. There are probably more than one person who start off being called "Rick" and end up as "Steve."
There are two sexy-ish scenes which I think are less successful than the sexy scenes in my last novel. But they can't all be winners.
Your evaluation will be posted here Christmas morning.
A middle aged guy walks into a bar, my bar, every week with a different skanky, nasty old woman. He dresses like I assume my father would if my mother divorced him today and he went out on the prowl. To all appearances, his dry cleaner presses his collars flat, pre-popped. All of these women are well into their 40s, but dress like aging drag-queens.
On the one day he's ever come in alone, I decide to make fun of him to his face. And I said, "Doood, how can I be like you when I grow up?"
Expecting nothing, maybe a smile, I watch as he quickly swallows his drink so that he can impart this knowledge onto another generation. "First of all you gotta stay in shape, you gotta dress cool and you can't be poor."
"Apparently it works, because I see you in here everyday with a different beautiful woman."
"Oh, I'm a slave to the pussy," he smiles through his grey eyebrows. "Most guys get old, they stop dressing cool, they get out of shape. Usually they're married and they get no pussy. Slave to it, bro. I love it. All kinds all the time. I can't get enough."
Since I didn't have any material prepared for this answer I started to move away and go put ice or alcohol into something. But he kept going.
"Here's my best advice. When you get to be sixty. My age. There will be something you can do that none of the other guys your age are willing to do." He actually looked like late 40s. For him, nailing 45 year old women is some studly moves. "And so I got to thinking about ten years ago: Look, I wanna bang 20 year old girls--and some of them have some fucked-up I'm-looking-for-a-father thing"--but anyway. I asked myself, What are 20 year old guys doing that I'm not doing? And then I figured it out. There's something simple that I can do that women can see and they know you do it for them."
The boys all came over on Sunday for our usual business. Mark Twain was visiting from Hartford and he hadn't met Kurt Vonnegut before, but we all knew Herman Melville was coming too. Usually we make dinner and then I line up my collection of bourbons and taste all twenty of them and talk about writing and pussy.
Guy stuff.
The problem was the Brandon Flowers came over to borrow some of my clothes for his show at the Garden. Brandon and I have a tough relationship in general, what with me being a really successful, famous novelist and able to use to word "pussy" in mixed company.
I kind of wanted to shuffle him out the door as soon as I could, since he doesn't really drink or smoke anymore. But Brandon Flowers insisted on meeting Vonnegut. "It's a real honor, you know. I love your work and I'm amazed at your output. I mean, it had taken me so many years just to put out two records and I wonder if there'll be a third."
"That's simple, my boy," Vonneget said. "I'm what you call a fucking genius. Ha!" he let out this real Rip-Taylor kind of hoot and coughed until he could light up a pall mall.
"It helps to be a little crazy," said Mark Twain as he slipped some weed into his pipe of vanilla tobacco.
"Crazy doesn't enter into it," Herman Melville said from his lonely perch in the corner. "There's nothing crazy about hard work and determination. That's all you need."
Mark Twain did the "jerk off" hand motion while Melville was busy making sure that all the whiskey glasses were evenly spaced. "I disagree," Twain said. "I've always felt like we should consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now."
I felt kind of weird for a second, because I realized I was the only one without a mustache. No one really wanted to say anything after that, but Vonnegut started searching through his pockets in silence. Everyone's eyes lit up because this is New York City. When you're at a boring party someone usually turns it around with a bag of something.
Vonnegut catches onto this immediately. "You fucken blow-heads. I'm just trying to find where I put my goddam phone."
Brandon Flowers smooths down his mustache and says, "If you guys want I could, uhm...well, I think I have enough."
In about five seconds I'm doing a bump off of Herman Melville's skeleton keys. I don't know how he fits the damn things in his pockets, but this isn't the time to ask. We all hit enough of the white whale to be content sniffing the insides of our nostrils for a few minutes.
"This is good shit, Brendan," Mark Twain says.
"It's actually pronounced Brandon for me."
"Oh whatever," Herman Melville says. "It took us forever to learn to call him Brendan. I'm not switching back."
"You know what, Melville? That's your problem right there. And you should have known it for years. You wrote a cautionary tale about why no one should ever end up like you. Like Ahab you are too focussed on your goal that you don't care if it destroys you," Mark Twain says. "Here Brendan brings his nice gay friend in here from Vegas with some killer snow and you can't even get his name right?"
"(This has nothing to do with you)," I whisper to Brandon Flowers. "(This is a long time coming. I'm sorry you had to be there. You wanna leave?)" He says everythings cool, but you know he just wants to run with the bull whales for a while.
Vonnegut, with his smooth Pall Mall twang, interrupts: "You know the predominant theory of extra terrestrial intelligence is that any society that could develop radio and satellite technology would destroy itself before it ever reached us."
"That's what I'm tryna tell him!" Mark Twain shouts. "The poor boy's burned himself out before he could reach anyone else. Melville, you will never get anywhere in the world if you can't learn to be your biggest fan. I mean, you worked for what, ten years? What are you gonna do with the rest of your life? Are you gonna work like we did or just give up, like you say the elder male whales do?"
Melville licks the blow off of his mustache and sniffs twice. He looks like he's gonna cry and instead he just screams, "I'm Herman Fucking Melville, okay? I wrote Moby Dick in one year, okay? People didn't even know there were cannibals until I wrote Typee. What've you done, you fucken one-hit-wonder?"
"I had 'Somebody Told Me' and 'Mr. Brightside' going at the same time. How is that one hit?"
"Fuck off Brendan," Melville shouted. "I'm talking about Huck Fucking Finn over here."
"There you go again, hurting the people you care about because you really want to destroy yourself." Mark Twain says.
"Actually it's Brandon. He meant Brandon could fuck off," I said. "But I still agree."
It's a real shame to see your close friends so fucked up sometimes. I think they have some deep seated emotional issues that just won't go away. Next week we'll skip the coke and whiskey and just, like, drink green tea and go on bike rides. I think Hawthorne will be in town.
While we're on the subject I just have to say that I've had this conversation about 200 times since moving to New York:
Loud bar, awkward meeting, two friends who have two friends meet, alternet friend is forced to say something to me, lest it become more awkward.
Friend of a friend: So, [mutual acquaintance] tells me you DJ.
Me: Yeah, on 14th St. For almost 14 years now.
FOF: What do you spin?
Me: I play Rock and Soul.
FOF: That's awesome. I DJ a little bit too.
Mutual Acquaintance: (enters from left, whispers in my ear) (Glad you met FOF. Actually we're kind of dating right now. I wanted you to meet him and approve, though.)
Me: You guys should come by next week and bring some records. What do you play?
FOF: I play Deep House, man. I mean really, really deep house.
Me: Will you guys excuse me? I just threw up in my pint glass.
House music once a-fucking-gain made my stupid jerk list.
We all know that there are various great exceptions and one amazing Chicago musician excused from the Buddy Holly-caust I so often feel like having for the genre. Is this some kind of joke?
If so that's hilarious. Does writing techno just give you license to let you write a mediocre dance track without any of the lyrical genius of the original track? Take out the music and the vocals and keep the name? Great. Is the point to change the time signature just enough so that no DJ can even use them together? Great. You should hear my new remix of The Rolling Stone's Satisfaction.
I'd like to say that I'm kidding about being mad. But I'm going to be 20 mins late for work just because I had to get that out.
Why the fuck is everyone so concerned with deja vu when jamais vu is so much cooler? I need to remind myself of that when I write characters. For the same reason that we only read our own horoscopes--even though they all, equally, have nothing to do with us--we'd rather imagine a situation that we kind of remember having--just in case it has something to do with us--than to not recognize something which we actually should know. Further more, if Ben would fucking call me back I wouldn't be dicking around on wikipedia trying to find out what a seizure feels like. Anyway it's still better than having presque vu.
Thanks for the call! I'm up! I'm writing! I'm 70% done for the day! Now I remember why I love this! Writing distracts me from the crushing pain of my worthless existence! Now leave me alone! Or I'll give my main character an STD!
Today I made a deal with myself that I could sleep in a little if I promised that writing would be the first thing I do all day. This slightly goes against the promise I made with myself earlier, when I set the alarm for 8:30. It goes even further against the deal I made with a friend to call me every morning at 7:30 when she wakes up so that I won't forget to write.
Years ago in Chicago I had this nice girl from Texas call me everymorning and tell me to get writing. What ever happened to her?
Long story short I got up at almost three in the afternoon and I have little more than an hour and a half before the sun sets, at which time I will be drinking and DJ'ing.
Right now Liam (main character) is stuck in the same Doctor's office that I put him in almost three weeks ago. The only way I think that I can wrap up this scene and get him to progress with the other characters is if Liam has a seizure right now. But Ben isn't picking up his phone and when we were in high school, Ben almost had a stroke at a blood drive.
That's what it's like being my friend. I'll remind you about all the terrible things that happened to you, and then I'll bother you at work for the details.
My new novel is too good for me. And in a way I find myself wondering what it's doing with me in the first place. Right now I'm wondering if this whole project will wake up one morning and wonder what it's doing in my apartment.
It is possible that we are meant for each other, but I can't help questioning it.
Earlier today I got a completely unsolicited email from a lingerie designer who just wanted to tell me that she read the one published chapter and loved it. She said she thought it was funny in a clever and subtle way and that she :actually laughed out loud more than once." I would just like to say that her comments made me very happy, and that her lingerie line is radically classic. Her detail work is amazing and if I only had breasts of my own I would wear nothing but these garments. They do not make me laugh out loud.
Liam, the narrator, has a very similar insecurity. I still don't know if it's from his mother running out on the family when he was 11 or from his first bad break up. Neither does he:
Even when I left to find mom I thought I'd come back. I thought I would drive home like a champion hunter with my mother bound at the wrist and ankles, tied to the hood of the car.
I would move to this little college town in Massachusetts where the love of my young life would let her brain re-incubate for four years of Pre-Lawyer classes and I would occasionally visit my loving family, forty-five minutes away in Connecticut. But then—and I still don’t know how this happened—somehow this little over-achiever decided that she should go off to college all by herself. My little heart wrapped itself into the world’s smallest ball of twine. That was also the day that I learned that when girls say they need some “alone time” they might forget to add “with someone else.”
Anyway, that’s one pizza I wish I hadn’t delivered.
Young, blossoming, hundred-and-ten-percenter Sherry Leworski. Beautiful, sweet, polite girl. The kind who introduces herself on every phone call. A girl who baked cookies for all of her teachers’ birthdays. Who wrote her college entrance essay about why her best friend is the best. That girl. That girl right there. In the corner of some parents-out-of-town party, giving some other guy a hundred-and-ten-percent.
Oh, Sherry. Three pizza places in town and your over-achieving, college-sweatshirt wearing resume-conscious friends had to call mine. I don’t blame you. By the looks of what I saw, you were far too busy to even know they even ordered pizza.
Like a child’s balloon at the carnival, I was let go. By Sherry first, but by everyone else stood by. Maybe it was an accident, but there’s only so long you can hold on to something tugging at your wrist. And for the first few seconds maybe someone tried to catch me, swiping at my string. People standing by could only watch as I floated above their heads, one foot out of reach. Someone could have saved me. For one full minute everyone stared at my slow, gracious flight. Grey sky, red balloon. Total strangers caught sight of it leaving and paused just to watch me go. Even Alan, the twenty-one year old junior class drop-out stopped strangling kittens for a moment to watch. Because off in the sky, programmed only to fly, it could be any one of us. Sherry, the child who let me go in the first place, wailed as if this logical thing wouldn’t happen if she didn’t want it to. But I floated up and away. And the total strangers warned each other not to mess with balloon strings. As I shrank into the sky and blew out west with a seabreeze, they went back to their melting ice cream cones and dialing new cell phones.
Me? I soared higher and higher, until the people in the carnival looked like one big spreading disease. A cool wind took me and—if you could find the right song—my red balloon would’ve made a great coke commercial. But as I neared the pacific the pressure got to me. My thin skin leaked and I landed in the ocean, where I clogged the blow-hole of some near-extinct whale. It beached itself and tried to exhale me. But with its near-extinct lungs it could only sit there in front of bewildered tourists and people who love the Discovery Channel, not blowing me out but sounding more like a child imitating an elephant. And the local authorities could think of no solution but dynamite—I’m not making this up. Ask the Internet. As its lungs exploded I was shot out with a whoopee-cushion’s zeal, onto the beach at the edge of a desert.
Oh, Sherry Leworski. Tie the next one around your wrist.
As for the plot, I really wanted to find out a bit more about Conor, and his relationship with Liam. I also thought that Hampshire was going to totally be the key to unlock mysteries (not in a, "Well, he'll surely know where the brother is! And he'll use his journalist skills to find the mom after all these years! Then they'll go on Oprah! They'll get a car!" cause I'm not expecting it to have a(n)