Stanislavsky all up in this piece.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon with my head painted green, watching a non-existent television and giving my pretend buddy hell about a fake phone call he got during a football game that wasn't actually happening.

Despite not being an actor*, I get called on to act every now and then. And so, I found myself being directed by my friend Chiken as he called the shots on a commercial he was shooting for an upcoming contest. I'm a writer and always will be, but it's cool to sit in and watch the process of a film happening. For 30 seconds of total footage, we overtook a house, had four cast members and twice as many crew, with everyone working for around five hours, not to mention all the advance work that Chiken had done. The sense of collaboration was palpable, even when things got bogged down. I work best in that kind of atmosphere or bouncing ideas off someone else. If it's just me and a blank screen, eventually I'm just going to go read Li'l Abner comics on the internerd somewhere.

I also may have made some inroads for more screenwriting down the line, so it was a successful afternoon all around. If you've been keeping up with things around here, the horse movie is still happening, but we've hit a few delays. It should be shooting in the May/June timeframe. On the plus side, I've finished the sequel and outlined part Three. And Four. I can be ambitious when need be.

*By any, any, any stretch of the imagination. Kirk Douglas. THAT'S an actor.



Also, this is either the best or worst cat ever.

And here it is, Merry Christmas

So, here's a couple of things on Christmas. First, Ron.

Ron had a happy little Christmas
Ate a waffle and he put away the dishes
Ron read the paper and he went for a run
No one can say that he doesn't know fun

Ron called his mom and his sister
Called his Aunt Jane but he missed her
Ron doesn't go to church these days
Now that he's older and set in his ways

Ron chopped wood and he stacked it up
Poured a little whiskey in his favorite cup
Ron built a fire as the sun went down
King of his world with a royal crown

It's ain't exactly "Yes, Virginia," but it's what I got.

And the Muppets + the Hold Steady = a reason to smile



Have a good day, whoever you are and whatever you're into. Cheers.

Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. IV

Part the Final

(Note: Cary did another write up of what it feels like to be in that shark cage. I highly suggest you click here and read it.

I wake up after possibly the most sound night's sleep ever. Takes me a minute to adjust to where I am or even who I am. Then it hits me that I slept in a bed that folds out of from the wall, the kind that Jack Tripper would have gotten a full half hour out of. I shower and everybody else starts to get up. We have breakfast at the condo and get ready to go.

We’re taking a tour of wine country today, having a limo cart us around. I’ve only been in a limo once before, for a strange, brief ride across my hometown last Christmas. We all pile in and start the drive. The driver, Robert, is a cool guy who knows a lot about the area and the wines made here. I keep an eye on the countryside since I’ve never been in this part of California, but it’s all a bit of a blur.

Here’s the thing about me and wine: I know dick-all about it. I know I like red ones, but not the white ones so much. We hit six or seven wineries over the course of the day. I tried several I liked, but there’s no way I could distinguish them from each other if you put them in front of me. This is the third time I’ve spent a day touring wineries, and I’m none the smarter for it. The fact that I’m usually pretty buzzed at the end of these tours negates any educational benefit that I may get from them. C’est la vie.

The day is a lot of fun though, and it’s cool to check out the architecture of the wineries. The first one we visit is meant to simulate the inside of a wine bottle in form and structure. Fortunately, everybody else in the group knows a little about wine and is able to ask some intelligent questions while I stumble around behind them like Otis, the town drunk from the Andy Griffith Show. I think even Cary’s five-year old daughter was able to ask about ripening schedules by the end of the day while I was grunting about “pour more of that last one. No, not that piece of shit, the other one.”

It’s a pretty great, low-key way to spend the last full day here. We spend several hours touring the wineries, getting back to the condo mid-afternoon. We all crash for a little while, then take a side-trip to the casino just down the road. I hit the penny slots and actually manage to come out slightly ahead by the time we leave. It makes me want to go back to Vegas soon. Honestly, who doesn’t have a bunch of extra money lying around these days to chuck out the window?

Back to the house afterwards, where we stay in and cook for the last night. It’s the perfect way to wind things down. We have a long drive in the morning to get me to the airport before Cary and crew make their long drive home, so we all call it a night fairly early.

Up before dawn the next morning. We’re on our way pretty quickly, since it’s going to be about three hours to the airport. As we pass through San Francisco, I ride over the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time, though it is shrouded in a thick fog. The time goes pretty quickly, and before I know it, we’re at the airport. It sucks to have to say goodbye to everybody when it feels like we just started this vacation. The airport is eerily deserted, t the point that I wonder if there’s been some kind of national disaster that I missed. It turns out just be a sleepy Saturday the San Francisco airport. I breeze through security and grab breakfast, getting a bloody Mary to ease into the day.

My flight to Salt Lake City is over in a blink, mostly because I’m out cold for most of it. We land and I’ve got a three hour layover. I end up hanging out at the Wasatch brewpub that Cary told me about, where I discover the wonders of their Polygamy Porter. I talk to an Army drill sergeant for most of the time, and I’m please to find out that management bureaucracy is just as thick and screwed up in the military as it is in the private sector. A sandwich and a couple more beers later and I’m on my way.

On my flights back, I read Sputnik Sweetheart, by Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite writers. It’s the story of a woman who vanishes, and the man who had an unrequited love for her who joins the search. Towards the end of the book, when she still hasn’t turned up, I read a passage that hits me so hard I literally have to get up and go splash water on my face in the bathroom. Here it is:

“I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her more than anything in the world. And I couldn’t just shelve those feelings, for there was nothing to take their place.”

Goddammit.

I think Murakami knew he was onto something here, because he set those two sentences apart as their own paragraph. I finish the book and sit there thinking for the rest of the flight. Where I’ve been. What I’ve done. What I haven’t done. I’m back in Atlanta before I know it, and safely back home. I let a couple of people know that I had not become shark bait, and the adventure is over. I turn out the light and go to sleep.

Requiescat in pace.

Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. III

Part the Third

(Pre-story note: Cary already did a great write up of the shark day here. Consider mine supplemental.)

I wake up about 10 minutes ahead of the alarm, about 4:15. Jump in the shower to get myself moving, hitting myself with a blast of cold water at the end to make sure I’m awake. I get my bags and meet Cary and Kelly in the hotel lobby. We check out and head to the marina, which only about 10 minutes from the hotel. In the car I reflect on that last words that most of my friends said to me before I left, most of which were variations on “you are so going to die.” I also think about my sister, who I’ve listed as my emergency contact. My parents have no idea about this trip, and if things go badly, it’s up to her to tell them how I went out.

There are a group of guys standing down by the docks who point us towards our boat, the Superfish. I’m mildly disappointed that the boat doesn’t have a big cape, but I get over it pretty quickly. The cage that will act as our observatory/watery tomb is hooked to the back of the boat. James, the lead guide for the day, is already on board and tells us to come on up. We’re the first to arrive, the first to line up to be a hot lunch as Hooper put it. The other divers and observers arrive, and we get under way just after six. It’s an interesting mix of people, some in their 20’s, some in their 30’s, and a few really old, decrepit people, like Cary. Along with Captain Mick and Sean the Deckhand, we’ve got a pretty full boat.

It’s a three-hour ride out to the Farallones and we head out as the sun is starting to come up. It’s a pretty great way to take in a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. This will easily be the longest amount of time I’ve spent on a boat in one day. I’ve never been prone to motion sickness, so I’m hopeful that holds true today.

The three hours flies by. I spend a good amount of time just holding onto a rail and taking in the sight of the endless ocean. Along the way, nature puts on a little show for us as porpoises and whales burst forth from the waves. The only time I got a little freaked out about the trip was about a week earlier. I was drifting off to sleep at home when it occurred to me that the creatures we’d be seeing were out there RIGHT NOW. Whatever I would see underwater was already out there, living its life simultaneously to mine.

It was just a weird feeling. These weren’t creatures contained in aquariums. They had total freedom to go anywhere, and on that day, nothing but random chance would bring them into contact with me. I’d be throwing myself into an environment totally alien not just to me, but to my entire damned species. I had strange dreams that night.

Everybody aboard is cool, so we have a good ride out to the islands. Before I know it, Cary tells me they’re starting to come into view. The Devil’s Teeth, as they’re known, are becoming clear in the distance. No more than nine members of the forestry service ever live here at a time, and it’s been declared a wildlife sanctuary for the sea lions and birds that call it home. For three months every year, great whites congregate here. Then people like us pay to get in the middle of all that. I tell myself it’s cheaper than a cocaine habit.

We arrive a little after nine, and the first group suits up to go in the cage. Because the sharks that make this their home base are mature sharks, there’s no point in chumming. They’re attracted to mammal blood. Instead, the team uses sea lion decoys. I think about asking if they ever consider stopping by a butcher shop and getting cow blood. Then I can’t decide if this is a stupid question or not, so I just keep my mouth shut.

The first group goes into the water. After they’re in, the crew asks who wants to go next. We step up, and go get our wetsuits on. This takes something like 50 hours. I finally get set in my wetsuit, and the first group comes back up. We get fitted with our ankle weights, then the chest weights just before we slide into the cage from the back of the boat. Cary goes first, then I’m up, with Kelly to follow.

Whew. This is it. James tells me to take a few breaths to get used to breathing through the regulator, since I’ve never been diving before. I slide to the cage, turn around, and begin to slide down. There’s an initial moment of panic when I think I can’t breathe. I realize I can, and calm down. It’s incredibly disorienting to be underwater at first, but I make my way to my side of the cage. I stand there for a minute, and Cary gets my attention and motions for me to crouch the way he is.

I finally start to orient myself to the cage. The sensation of the tide is amazing. Even with the cage just hanging from the back of the boat, if you lean forward it feels like you’re flying. Kelly makes her way into the cage, and the three of us start to look around. We spot a giant jellyfish, an incredible thing to see at first. By the end of the day, we’ve seen 60 of the bastards and they’re old hat. Visibility changes by the moment, sometimes as much as 30 feet, other times it’s nearly impossible to see your hand in front of your face. You’re also taking in plankton by the faceful, which is unsettling.

Did I mention the water was goddamned freezing? Well, it was. The dive company recommended a 7m suit for all divers. Mine was 3, but I also had a vest with my hood attached, so my core was protected with 6mm. That would usually take care of the temperature problem, but normally you’d be swimming and generating heat. We were locked into the cage and not moving much, so I spent much of the day freezing my ass off.

We ended up going into the cage three times total over the course of the day. Seasickness kept knocking out different divers, so there was more opportunity for us to spend a lot of time in the cage. I flew across the country for this, I wasn’t going to miss out on anything. The Superfish was equipped with a hot tub filled with seawater, so between dives you’d jump in there and reheat your body. Reheating your soul is up to you.

It’s weird what goes through your mind in such a foreign situation. Here I am, as far away from my everyday life as possible, literally thousands of miles away from almost everyone I know and submerged in the ocean. Speech communication with any other human being is impossible, so it’s pretty much just you and your thoughts. My thoughts and I aren’t always on speaking terms, so it can be kind of tough to be stuck with no one but your inner monologue to talk to. My mind drifts around from a laser focus for sharks to wondering what I could have/should have done differently in life and back about a thousand times every time I’m in the cage. It was kind of therapeutic and certainly more helpful than going to an actual therapist was. I may still be a disaster as a human being, but at least now I have an insane story to tell.

Cary and I made our final trip into the cage. We’ve been down about 10 minutes when he taps me on the shoulder, pointing below. About 15 feet down, the definite outline of a shark swimming past. It looks to be maybe 12 to 15 feet. We lose site of it, then it circles back around to my side of the cage and continues back under the boat. Cary surfaced to tell the crew we’d seen a shark (the first of the day). We catch one more glimpse of her, but that’s it. Even with our brief encounter, you get a sense of the sheer power of these things.

I came back up for the last time and jumped back into the hot tub. Cary, who shall be known as Namor from here on out, stayed in the water for nearly half the time we were out there as more and more divers were felled by the water temperature and seasickness. The ride back into San Francisco gave us another show from the whales and plentiful beer for us to tell our stories over. Cary and I already started making plans for either another shark trip or something a little more…crypto zoological.

We got back to the docks and said our goodbyes. I called my sister and told her I had indeed survived. We stopped at an In-N-Out Burger, where all three of us inhaled burgers and shakes. I was out like a light as soon as I climbed back in the car, and Cary drove us to the condo his hid parents had rented so we could meet back up with his family. We still had another full day ahead of us, though.

Jokes

Instant Messenger is a tool that has helped the world communicate instantaneously. It is also the dumbass development that leads to stuff like this, the result of the mighty Justin Waddell and me abusing our free time. The dental jokes are his, the orthodontia jokes are mine.

From "Will and Justin on the Road: The Dental Joke Tour: 2009: Across the Nation, This Ain't No Vacation Tour: The Gum Health and Gum Chew Express: Cavity Cavalcade: Once in a Lifetime (the channel) Tour*”

*Brought to you by Simonize Car Wax.

“My dentist is excellent. Just the best. Treats me like royalty. Yeah...he keeps giving me crowns.”

”My orthodontist said he was going to do an impression of my teeth. I told him to get a white jacket and 31 friends.”

“Sigh, my teeth are so messed up. Every time I go for a check up, my dentist says..."You know the drill.”

“I thought my orthodontist wanted to join my fantasy football league. He said he was going to give me some new brackets.”

“My dentist gave me this sound warning: You need to brush more. So now I brush once every other Saturday.”

“My orthodontist is a big basketball fan. His favorite team is the Indiana Spacers.”

Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. II

Part the Second.

I’m still on Eastern time internally, so I wake up fairly early. First things first: coffee. There’s no coffee maker in the room, so I throw on some clothes and walk down the block to Café Trieste. The coffee’s not bad, but not necessarily great either. It’ll do.

I decide to do some more walking around before the city fully gets going. Again, I’m struck by the fact that although there are people headed to work and going about their business, the city doesn’t seem rushed. It has room to breathe. I like it.

I walk over to Chinatown, which is eerie when it’s deserted. I walk past an alley that looks exactly like the one in Big Trouble in Little China, then realize that it might well be. The grocery stands are setting out their fruits and vegetables for the day and the junk stores are setting out their cheap souvenirs. I don’t need any of it, but I take in the cheeseball atmosphere and kind of enjoy it.

I walk around taking a few pictures, something I didn’t do yesterday so as not to be too touristy in the middle of the afternoon. I get some pics of Kerouac Alley, which is a really nice little space between Vesuvio and City Lights with poetry quotes on the ground and some incredible murals on the walls. I do some more walking around, getting a couple of pictures of the cityscape. Heading down by Washington Square Park, I see a lot of older Asian women doing tai chi. It’s pretty fascinating to watch. I briefly consider standing with them and doing the robot. Then I think about how many other wiseasses have already pulled this joke, and I decide to skip it.

Running has been a big part of my life for the last few years, and I’m quietly thankful for Atlanta’s relative flatness while I’m walking around. If I’d taken up the hobby (can’t make myself call it a sport) in the middle of these hills, I don’t know if I would have stuck with it. Looking at the cars parked on the streets, I realize that these surroundings are exactly why emergency brakes were invented.

The original plan was for me to take the train over to Berkley mid-day to meet up with Cary and his family. He calls me and tells me they’re going to head straight into San Francisco, which will make things that much easier. I grab breakfast at a little café next to Hotel Boheme and then go back to the hotel to get ready for the day and check out. The hotel would be a little expensive to stay at for more than a couple of days, but I’m glad I had a night here, and I know that I’ll be back.

Cary and Karen pick me up, and we head down to meet their daughter, his parents, and his sister at Fisherman’s Wharf. I only get to hang out with Cary and Karen a couple of times a year at most, but given that he and I email throughout most workdays, it usually feels like no time has passed, and today is no different. I went through some pretty grim times over the last year and Cary was one of the people I leaned (still lean) on pretty heavily.

Fisherman’s Wharf is giant tourist spot. I have mixed feelings on this kind of place. Totally artificial vacation spots (Disney, I’m looking at you.) make me feel pretty disconnected from the people around me and from myself, and I wonder where mankind went so very wrong. It just seems so completely separated from any kind of real, natural experience.

I’m well aware that overthinking stuff like this is why people usually end up rolling their eyes at some point when they talk to me, by the way.

But Fisherman’s Wharf has one foot in reality, with the gathering of sea lions and WWII ship and submarine docked there, so I’m able to stop with the pretentious thinking and enjoy myself. We grab lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea lions sunning themselves, and I annihilate clam chowder in a sourdough bowl. Our waitress is totally cute and has a Russian accent. Cary is able to convince me that it might be a little early to propose to her.

We walk around for a bit, stopping long enough for me to grab some sunblock. When I go out in the sun, Geiger counters start to tick and explode if I don’t cover myself, and a sunburned scalp is the ongoing nightmare of the bald man. Once I’ve procured what I need from Panama Jack, I grab a couple of souvenirs for my niece and nephew.

Our group splits eventually, with Cary’s parents and his sister going on a bay cruise while Cary, Karen, Lily and I go for a tour of the Jeremiah O’Brien, a Liberty ship permanently docked at Pier 39. I get my biggest laugh of the trip when Cary explains to his daughter that he lived on a similar ship when he was in the Navy, and then has to clarify that no, it wasn’t exactly like being a slave.

Touring the ship is pretty interesting, and I try to imagine how shit-scared I would have been leaving on a ship like this in WWII. In the days immediately following 9/11, I more or less assumed that things might get bad enough that the draft would go back into effect, mostly because I was as panicked and confused as anyone. I wondered how I would handle military life. I might be able to get used to it, I guess. It would be just like McHale’s Navy, right?

After the ship, we head over to what turns out to be my favorite part of the afternoon. There’s an old penny arcade, with all these great wooden automations from the early part of the 20th century. Several of them have little scenes that animate when you put a quarter in, like The Opium Den that has skeletons jump out from the sides into a den scene, or old movieola machines marked “Adults Only” that show women from the ‘20s in their bloomers. I love this kind of stuff. There’s also another machine that terrifies me to my very core. Please see picture for explanation.

From there, we head out to Berkley. Cary, his sister Kelly and I will be staying here before our dive tomorrow, while the rest of his family heads on back to the condo they’re staying in. As we get to Berkley, I’m very happy that I chose to stay in San Francisco the night before. Berkley seems nice enough, but there’s not much happening in the area where we’re staying. It doesn’t really matter, since we’ll pretty much just be sleeping here and then leaving very early in the morning.

We all get checked in, and Cary and I head back over to San Francisco to meet up with a friend of his that he worked with at DIMP. Mike turns out to be a great guy who schedules his own 24-hour horror movie festival every year. The three of us have a few drinks back at Vesuvio, get an insanely good Italian meal across the street (calamari pasta for me) and grab one more beer at a dive bar before calling it a night.

Back at the hotel, I go through my equipment for tomorrow. I haven’t worn a diving mask since I was a kid, so I sit around wearing it for a while getting used to breathing through my mouth.

Yeah, it looked as ridiculous as you’re thinking.

I check my email, get everything set for the morning, and hit the light. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.

The Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. 1

Part the First

The day starts blearily enough as I stumble out of bed when the alarm rings at five. Shower. Shave. Throw the last few things in the bag. I’ve already decided on the music for the car on the way to the airport—Warren Zevon’s Life’ll Kill Ya. The music you listen to at the start of the trip is essential—choose poorly, and you could find yourself surrounded by wild pygmy natives, ready to take your head. LKY’s title track, with its “requiescat in pace, that’s all she wrote” refrain, seems appropriate.

Airport. Zip right through security, head to find myself some breakfast. Omelets make me believe that there may indeed be a higher power behind this planet. Strong coffee. Good. The day is starting out well.

Flight is for the most part uneventful. I have my requisite aisle seat, with one guy sitting to my right. He needs to get up at one point and I move to get out of the way, but he says “I can step over.” Before I can protest, this guy is stepping over me and essentially giving me a three-second lapdance.

Horrific.

I read Susan Casey’s The Devil’s Teeth on the plane. It’s all about the place I’m headed,the Farallon Islands and their annual shark congregation. The place has a fascinating history that includes egg mafias, mysterious skeletons and ghostly apparitions, along with thousands upon thousands of great white sharks, sea lions and birds. Great book, but by the end of it, you’re pretty sure that Casey would be an endlessly annoying person to be around. She becomes hopelessly involved with her story, to the detriment of everyone involved.

I eventually play the in-flight trivia game. I don’t do so well the first round, but my second round, not only do I win, I get the highest score of anyone on the plane of any round. Advantage: me.

Plane lands in San Francisco and I find my luggage before heading for BART. I take the train to the closest stop to my hotel and promptly walk four blocks in the wrong direction. I catch my mistake and turn around. The upside of this detour is that I’m 99 percent sure I walked by Mike Nesmith. There’s a lot of construction as I make my way along Columbus, meaning there’s a lot of crossing back and forth along the street. I’m trying not to stop and stare too much along the way, but I’m taken with the city pretty quickly.

It’s a big city that doesn’t feel clogged, something that’s become all too apparent about Atlanta lately. It feels like there’s room to breathe here. Even walking around the financial district in the middle of a weekday, the vibe doesn’t feel crunched or dirty. It feels livable.

I find where I’m staying, Hotel Boheme, without much trouble. My room’s not ready yet, but I leave my bag and ask Charles, the front desk guy, where I can find some lunch. The area where I’m staying straddles the line between Little Italy and Chinatown. He recommends a place called House, an Asian fusion restaurant. Charles is right on the money, as I have some wasabi noodles with roast pork that are just what I need. I walk around the neighborhood a bit. Lots of Chinese restaurants and strip clubs. I’m home?

Head back to the hotel to check in. Charles tells me the room I’m in was where Allen Ginsberg used to like to stay. I spend about 10 minutes trying to think of a “starving, hysterical, naked” joke, and decide the hell with it. Hotel Boheme is a really cool, old school hotel with only 15 rooms. I’m given a key to my room and to the front door of the hotel, actual metal keys, which is nicely reassuring in an age of plastic keycards. Every evening from 6-10 they set out sherry in the lobby for an evening cordial. It’s a pretty wonderful place to stay, and I’m glad I shelled out the extra 50 bucks for the night.

At the same time, there’s a little bit of a creepiness behind it. The history here is palpable, almost so much that it feels trapped in time a bit. I fully expect to see a ghost floating down the hall at some point. I read an interview with Billy Bob Thornton once where he described having a phobia about antique furniture. I’m starting to understand what he meant, I think. But the idea that we’re all so used to bland experiences that we’re petrified of something real is horrifying, so I put the weight of the hotel out of my head and appreciate it for what it is.

I get into my room and doze for a bit. I’ve got Doug Sahm’s (look him up) San Francisco songs playing in my head as I drift off. After my nap, I change clothes and head out for a bit. I’m staying just down the street from the City Lights bookstore, where the Beat movement had its genesis. Incredibly cool to wander around inside and soak up some of the history. I pick up a couple of books, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolanto which is a staff pick and fits in nicely with my efforts to read more authors who aren’t American or British, and The Yage Letters Redux, by Burroughs and Ginsberg.

I step next door to Vesuvio. About three seconds after I walk in, I know that this would be my regular bar if I lived in San Francisco. Long bar, cool art up on the walls, absinthe(!) behind the bar, and friendly people. Also, they open at 6 am. I grab a seat at the bar and watch baseball for a while, talking with a couple of the regulars. The bartender gives me a couple of dinner suggestions, and tells me I really can’t go wrong in the neighborhood.

I don’t know what it is about certain bars. I’m never as comfortable as I am sitting on a barstool in a dark room. The “third place” (look it up) is where I’ve always gravitated, where I’m in my element. When you're in the right bar, you pick up slices of everyone’s life, you’re a part of a communion or a nameless sacrament. Traveling alone carries with it a pretty natural feeling of alienation (or maybe I just carry that natural feeling of alienation), but it’s something that melts away however briefly between those walls. I fall in love with waitresses and bartendresses pretty easily, and I think it's part of the sense of belonging I feel when I walk into a bar (with a priest and a rabbi), even one I’ve never been to before.

The bartender’s right about the neighborhood, as it turns out. I end up sticking my head into a no-name Italian place and grab a slice of pizza, which tastes like a little bit of heaven. I wander for a bit into a couple of seedy blocks, realize I probably have “tourist” written across my face and head towards The Beat Museum. I’m a little unsold at first, as the first room you enter is the gift shop. But it’s only $5 to go into the museum proper, so I take my shot. I’m glad I did. It’s a thorough re-telling of the movement, with some way cool artifacts, including Neal Cassady’s shirt and Ginsberg’s old pipe organ (slang). There’s even an exhibit that addresses the lack of women in the movement, something that some females I know have quite understandably said kept them at arm’s length from the Beats. I settle into the movie room at the end of the tour for a bit, then grab a copy of Howl and head out on my way.

I’ve been back and forth on the Beats as an influence on my own writing. I took to Kerouac and Bukowski pretty easily, but Burroughs and Ginsberg took me longer to wrap my head around. Ginsberg was pretty easily explainable, since I’ve always had a little bit of a block when it comes to poetry. For Burroughs, it took a while to get myself into the fractured mindset that his stuff requires. Maybe I wasn’t broken enough to appreciate it before, but it feels like I am now. One thing I’ve discovered is that their works tend to be malleable enough to still feel fresh and current, rather than purely being reflections of the time. There’s a trick to being of your time and place while also being of any time and place. I need to figure out what that is.

I stop by my hotel, intending to drop off a couple of books and go back out, maybe to the Condor, the city’s oldest strip club, purely for historical purposes of course. But I lie down for a minute and everything gets dark for the night.

A play I just wrote

Whiny Blog: A short play by Will Mason, Esq.

(The day is Saturday. Our Hero, a bald, pale man, is feeling more bummed out than usual. It's been an excruciating year for him. He's sad, and he's mad at himself for being sad when the rational part of himself is screaming at him to knock it off.)

Our Hero: Sigh.

(Our Hero spends some time with his family, including his niece and nephew. This cheers him up, but then he realizes someday that they're going to go through some kind of emotional pain and they're going to realize life isn't all goofing around and fun.Then he gets sad again. He goes home, eats a couple of cookies his mom made for him, and calls it a day.)

(Our Hero rises on Sunday, ready to see if he can't be a little more cheerful today. He decides to go run 5 miles, as he'd done several times earlier this week to see if he can't get back in shape for a half-marathon on Thanksgiving. 1.5 miles into his run, Our Hero trips and fully kisses the pavement, collapsing in a rising cloud of skin that used to be attached to him and dust.)

Our Hero: Fuck!

(Several people are standing on different parts of the same intersection. Several of them look at Our Hero, who is now covered in grime and blood. Then they all go about their business, none asking if he's okay. Our Hero takes stock: left elbow: destroyed. Left Hip: ripped to shit. Right knee: beyond the valley of the superfucked. He's also pretty sure he bruised a rib or two.)

(Our Hero shuffles the 1.5 miles home, after using his shirt to stop the geyser of blood coming out of his knee. He notes that when you're in kind of a nice neighborhood, people tend to walk a little faster to avoid the bleeding man. He finally makes it home and clean his wounds the best he can. He is currently terrified at the thought of getting in the shower, because he knows that's going to hurt like a bastard.)

(Our Hero had originally planned to go volunteer at a voter registration drive today. Now, he's thinking that he's going to sit on the couch for a bit and wait for the bars to open. At least Our Hero doesn't have any vacation plans coming up in the next week and a half where an open wound might be a liability---OH WAIT.




What do you think, folks? Am I the knew Tom Stoppard or what?

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I had an essay about my creative process here, but...

...wait for it...

I'm having trouble with it.

I'm going to try to get it done this week. Until then, please enjoy this cute/terrifying picture of Timer.

The Andy Williams Depression Special

“Hi, everyone. Welcome to another Andy Williams Depression Special. I’m so glad all of you could join us again this year. Well, those of you who didn’t kill yourselves since last year’s special. Those of you know who were friends with someone that did are probably even more depressed, and that’s what the spirit of Depression is all about isn’t it? Making ourselves miserable all year round, never allowing the light in.

“We’ve got a humdinger of a special for you this year. We’re gathered around a fire that will hopefully suffocate us all thanks to poor ventilation, and we have some great guests coming by. The Vienna Boys Choir will be singing some of those Depression carols we all love so much, Mary Anne Mobley will be stopping by to make some gingerdead men, and Kerri Strug, everybody’s angel from the 1996 Olympics, will be doing a gymnastics demonstration for some reason.

“Why don’t we get started by going to visit Mary Anne Mobley over in our special Depression kitchen? It features a gas stove and grey walls with peeling wallpaper. I can smell the ginger goodness from all the way over here. Mary Anne, as you may know, is a former Miss America and took over Dixie Carter’s role on the final season of Diff’rent Strokes when the show moved to ABC*.”

(Andy strolls into the kitchen.)

“Hello there, Mary Anne! It smells wonderful in---oh, my.”

(Mary Anne’s body swings gently to and fro from the overhead light fixture from which she’s hung herself.)

“Goddammit. We lost Shelley Long the same way last year. Okay! Let’s move on to check in with Kerri Strug, who’s going to jump around the room like a spastic monkey. We’ll just go over to the good ol’ Depression mat…Hi there, Kerri! How’ve you been? How’s life treated you since ’96? Ready to show us some of your famous moves?”

(Kerri is dressed in her same leotard from the Olympics, only it doesn’t fit so well now and has coffee stains on it. She looks sullenly at the camera for a moment. She looks at Andy. Then back at the camera. A tear rolls down her face. She does a series of backflips to the window and leaps to her doom.)

“We’re thirty fucking stories up---Jesus! Every year! Fine. Just cut to the damned Boys Choir.”

(Here we see a bunch of kids in choir robes, all with emo haircuts. They’re about as happy as you used to be when you had to wear choir robes. They begin to sing to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”)

Shoot myself

Shoot myself

In the fucking face

I just wanna shoot myself

And stop this endless pain.

(The kids all smoke. You can hear one in the background say he hates his father.)

“You know what? Fuck this. This is Andy Williams, and I just can’t take it anymore.”

(Andy douses himself in gasoline as we cut to closing credits.)

*Author’s note: Look how fucked up the opening credits were during the show’s final season. I have no memory of that, although the “Sam gets kidnapped” multi-parter is seared into my brain.

The Takei Wedding

As you may have read, George "Mr. Sulu" Takei got married recently, thanks to California's recent legal approval of gay marriage. I'm not going to get political here*, but my good friend Justin and I were fortunate enough to overhear a few things said at the wedding. Also, it gave us this, quite possibly the funniest wedding photo of all time:


Anyway, here are a few things said at the wedding:

1. "He's no longer flying sulu."

2. "Will you takei this man's hand in marriage?"

3. "I now pronounce you man and worf."

4. "I think the gift for the one-year anniversary is dilithium crystal."

5. "Right now, they're in their honeymoon phaser."

6. "I liked when they fed each other wedding kirk."

7. "I hope they didn't get too caught up in the wedding planning details. Sometimes you can't see Deforest for the trees."

8. "I think the wedding starts at noonian."

9. "Takei looks nice. I think the vanity koenig was a bit much, though."

10. "I doohan."


*Jesus Christ, are people really opposed to gay marriage? Don't gay people have the right to be just as miserable as the rest of us? Let 'em get married. Do you have any idea how much fun gay wedding receptions are going to be? Great food, danceable music. If the idea of gay people getting married sticks in your craw, you really don't have enough going on in your life. Also, you're probably secretly gay.

I did an interesting (to me, at least) writing exercise this afternoon. It was a conversation between me and depression. In my head, depression’s voice sounded a lot like Orson Welles. I liked the way it turned out, and it helped me work on my dialogue skills a little bit. I’m not putting the whole thing here, because…well, most of it is really personal and a little emo-y. I did like this little exchange though:

“How do you pop up so easily? Last weekend, I had a great time, spent the afternoon having fun with my friends, then almost jerked the car into the median on purpose on the way home. What was that about?”

“I’m sneaky. And I’m always there.”

”Like the Venom symbiote.”

“Jokes like that aren’t helping the situation.”

So, the writer nerd part of my life is progressing nicely. As for the music nerd stuff, please note that Ella Guru, the best record store in the world, has moved into the 280 Elizabeth St. complex, where Dad’s Garage is. So, go buy some records and see some fun theater. I bought the I Believe to My Soul compilation from Don this weekend and it sounds so, so fine.

Ch-ch-change.

Memo to the dude who lived in my apartment before me:

Attention, Michael H:

I found $2.00 in change jammed inside the washer. Four quarters, nine damned dimes, a nickel, and five pennies. Homeslice, how did you not notice this? Did you not hear the incessant jingle every time you took a load out?* Anyway, thanks for the free two bucks. Also, you really need to update the gas company as to your present whereabouts.

Coming soon: utter failures in short story publishing.


*This sounds like filthy slang for something.