The Daily Apocalypse

New Brilliant Idea!: Palin-drones

2008-09-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

Word: Palindrone: noun: a person whose unflinching support of the Republican party causes them to blindly celebrate Sarah Palin as John McCain's vice-presidential nomination, regardless of her lack of qualifications for the position.

"If you keep on believing these things they tell you, you'll be one step away from becoming a Palindrone."

New Rant!: Failing Analogy 101.

2008-09-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

You've seen the videos of Obama saying "you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig." And you've seen the outrage, the claims from McCain's camp calling him a sexist. And the media stoking the flames for ratings.

Well, here's the problem with all the outrage--you don't know what the hell you're talking about. The analogy is that Palin is the lipstick and the McCain/Bush politics are the pig.

Thanks for playing, though. Now please go back to voting for American Idol and leave this politics shit to people who can formulate a coherent thought. (Or this guy, who is leagues ahead of any other Fox News watcher I've met.)

(Oh, by the way, McCain used the same analogy when discussing Hillary Clinton. Of course the Librul Media was equally outraged by this blatant sexism, too...)

New Band!: (cli)Che Geuvara

2008-08-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

(cli)Ché Geuvara is preparing for our first national tour! Our band attire will be Castro hats and Commie-green jackets with black boots and blah green military fatigues adorned with left-leaning political buttons. We will sing our folk-rock anthems with background Buddhist love chanting. Our fiddles and violins will be in drop D tuning* and on tour we will stick to fucking only pseudo-intellectual hippie chicks. We will tour the county singing for art fags and retirees in bourgeois cafes and old folks homes. Our albums will be sold online for whatever price you're willing to pay (+ $5.99 shipping and handling) and our songs will bring joy and unity to breadlines across the nation.

Keep an eye out for us in a town square near you!

(* Now accepting applications for tandem tamborinists and a classically trained, acid jazz-influenced harmonica player. Please see our official website for details.)

New Rant!: Middle America's Guide to Being Patriotic

2008-08-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

Middle America's Guide to Being a Patriot

Step 1: Surround yourself with American flags. On your clothes, on your envelopes, on your toilet paper. Doesn't matter, just whatever you do, do it more than anyone else and make sure everyone knows it.

Step 2: Be related to people who were or are currently in the military. (Note: It it not necessary for you yourself to have ever served. Military service by proxy is good enough.)

Step 3: Be white, Christian, Republican, poor, and willfully ignorant. It also helps to be third generation American or better.

Step 4: Forward Anti-Obama spam messages quickly, often and with zero regard for who you or are forwarding them to.

And there you have it, the four easy steps to being a true patriot and a good American.

New Stuff!: 40 Things All Drunks Must Do Before They Die

2008-06-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

See the original article by Modern Drunkard magazine HERE.

#2: My most memorable bender was the 1st Annual chuckpalahniuk.net Cult Meetup in back-country Indiana, June 2005. 6 hours of sleep in 5 days, nonstop alcohol consumption, and my first ever migraine on the flight back home. It's proven tough to outdo, but I'm still working at it.

#3: Done this plenty of times, normally with Jagermeister, sometimes with cheap vodka, rum or whiskey.

#8: Reaching back to my college days here, but we used to sit around the apartment, get boozed up, convince our Mormon roommate to drive, and we'd take off for the night or weekend. We were an hour from Vegas, so that was our normal destination. Or, we'd grab our sleeping bags and go disappear in the mountains for the weekend.

#9: Got thrown out of a bar in Atlanta after some chick I bought a drink for convinced the bartender that all her friends Jager bombs were on me, and I got stuck with a $200 tab. In a fit of rage I ripped down the 6' mirror in the bathroom. Once out on the curb, we saw a bunch of black dudes beating the shit out of some guy who kept quoting Dave Chapelle all night. Also, some southerners calling a couple drunk frat boys from Vermont "Goddamn Yankees". All in all, a damn memorable night.

#14: Nothing too fancy, but it was a bar with a barstool and multiple bottles of liquor and beer, so it counts.

#19: College again. In St. George, UT there's a big rock formation overlooking the town called Dixie Rock. We used to go up there after hours, me, my roommate,and a couple girls we were seeing, and we'd bring a couple blankets and a few bottles of booze and sit until the sun came out, then hit up McDonalds, go take showers and head to class. Memories...

#21: Manhattan, KS in late summer 2001 on a pitstop on my roadtrip with my dog on our way to New Orleans, I stayed with a friend from high school, who showed me around Aggieville, the single greatest barhopping experience I've ever had. The only place that is in the same universe is downtown Austin, but we didn't hit up nearly the amount of bars I went to in a single night in Kansas.

#24: I work in the entertainment industry. If we're not drunk or stoned, we're worthless.

#26: Same trip to Atlanta, I was just about broke (borrowing money from my buddy because I showed up broke right before they took off), I got wasted and started on how money was the root of evil and all this shiat, and after unsuccessfully trying to give the money to the cabby so he could help put his kid through college, I gave it to a bum outside the hotel. It probably would've been better if it'd been my money in the first place, but its the idea that counts, right?

#30: We'd do this our senior year in high school, on those weeks between the end of one sport and the beginning of the next.

#33: This was a weekly occurrence back in college. Double points: Stealing from the grocery store I worked at.

#35: I consider my drunk-writing to be among my best, and all of it has an autobiographical feel to it.

#36: Cult Meet-up again. Thanks, Nate!

So, 13 down, 27 to go. Unfortunately, I've got to wait for Tom Waits to die before I can accomplish #6, and I'm still waiting for Netflix to get Barfly on DVD.

New Travelog!: World66 Maps

2008-06-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across an interesting site called World66. Here's a map of the US state's I've visited. I'll update this as soon as I get back on the road. Which, hopefully, will be around August or so.

And here's the map of the countries I've been to:

Not much to brag about, obviously, but hopefully there'll be more red splashed around in the nearish future.

New Film Review!: Dear Wendy

2008-05-17T05:14:00.000-07:00

DEAR WENDY is directed by Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, who helmed of one of my favorite films, THE CELEBRATION. It is an American Western in its broadest sense. Written by DOGMA 95 creator Lars Von Trier, it is a love story between a pacifist and his gun, and a critique of the love affair Americans have with firearms, as viewed by a couple of non-Americans. It is about social outcasts who band together with a common interest to form a group called The Dandies. They love firearms for the power and the sense of confidence the weapons bring them. Each member of the group names their gun, and they vow never to brandish them in public or in daylight, for doing so would awaken the guns to their true nature, which is to do harm. Instead, the group meets weekly in the basement of an abandoned mining facility which has been made over into a temple. The group plays dress up and have shooting practice, but they also study. They learn about their weapons, and about the damage they can cause. They also learn about the code of the Samurai and their fighting habits. They clear their minds to create psychic links to their guns. And when this link is created, they take it a step further and marry their weapons.

If you're a sensitive person who can't take some good-natured ribbing from foreigners about America, you'll probably be somewhat offended by this film. In it, everyone in this no name town full of hardworking, blue collared folk seem to carry guns, and when people are shot dead in the street the crowd reacts with little to no fanfare. Also, the main character is named Dick, which seems to be how the filmmakers might view gun-totting Americans. Also, the band The Zombies plays heavily into the story, as the filmmakers use the name of the band to reflect their views of this seemingly American-exclusive culture.

In many ways, DEAR WENDY reminds me of two of my favorite films. DOWN IN THE VALLEY, starring Edward Norton and also released in 2005, was a movie which began as one thing before taking a left turn to become something else entirely different. In both that film and this, the end result was to become an unorthodox Western. I can understand why people who don't admire the craft of filmmaking would be turned off by this structure, because it is so different than what they've become accustomed to seeing.

The second film, FIGHT CLUB (also starring Edward Norton, and also one of my favorite films), is similar to DEAR WENDY in a quite a few ways, including how both received mostly less-than-favorable reviews by professional critics who seem to have missed something in the storytelling. Perhaps they were so focused on they style of the films that they forgot to pay attention to the substance.

One of Roger Ebert's criticisms is the use of Sebastian, who is black, and who inadvertently introduces violence into the Dandies' world of respect and order. There are countless films where white Americans strike out to "fix" people of different races and nationalities, and Dick is no different as he sets out to try and change how Sebastian views guns. Ebert claims it is beyond racist, it's stupid. But that's missing the point - is it racist? Sure, but it's far from stupid. DEAR WENDY is a fable, and the filmmakers are attempting to show us a reflection of ourselves. It seems as though every week a new movie enters theaters across the country where millions of Americans can see stereotypical young black males behaving badly, brandishing firearms and acting wildly inappropriate and dangerous. Although Sebastian does this, he is more than just a simple cliche, cut from the same cloth as dozens of similar characters. And Vinterberg and Von Triers aren't stupid. They're aware of the cliche but they're not above using such a device to demonstrate how we tend to view a black man holding a gun verses white people holding guns.

Another of Ebert's criticisms is that the film doesn't follow the rules of the DOGMA95 movement. Apparently he isn't aware that this is not a DOGMA film, and it was never intended to be lumped in with that movement. In fact, in many ways, this film is as anti-DOGMA as they get, as it breaks just about every rule they set for themselves.

Other similarities shared with FIGHT CLUB include social outcasts creating a support group to help them deal with their issues, to inspire confidence in the characters, and this support group soon evolves into something approaching religion or cult status.

The genesis of the Dandies has shades of Edward Norton's Narrator changing his life after meeting Tyler Durden, as Stevie steps into Dick's life. The destruction of the central characters' ideal image of their creation comes about by introducing a character who sees through all the bullshit they've created. In FIGHT CLUB it was Marla Singer, in DEAR WENDY it is Sebastian.

In both films, a bizarre love triangle breaks up the group. In FIGHT CLUB, the Narrator is in love with Marlene, who is fucking Tyler Durden who is actually the Narrator, although the Narrator isn't aware of this little fact. In DEAR WENDY, Dick marries his gun, Wendy, but their relationship spoils when Sebastian borrows her for shooting practice. This is actually a very tender sequence, although the description comes across as hokey.

Another similarity is both these movies are cautionary tales about how easily people can be corrupted by material objects. In FIGHT CLUB, the Narrator rails against his life as a consumer, whereas in DEAR WENDY, the characters try to justify the natural urge to shoot the shit out of things, even as that completely contradicts their pacifistic nature.

A few more minor similarities include protagonists with obvious daddy issues and the need for branding and scarification. In FIGHT CLUB, fight club members scar themselves before they can join Project Mayhem; in DEAR WENDY, the Dandies cut themselves before they're allowed to fire their guns in public. Also, both protagonists are uptight and out of touch with the rest of their group.

Even the some of the sets have similar feels to them - the Temple in DEAR WENDY feels very much like 420 Paper Street. Both films use violence as a way to get a message across, and on and on. Hell, both titles even have 2 words with a total of 9 letters -- the mind, it boggles...

The climactic shootout between the Dandies and the law, led by Sheriff Krugsby, played a little over the top by Bill Pullman, reminded me of some of the best shootouts in films such as YOUNG GUNS and TOMBSTONE. It was the OK Corral, set in a contemporary American mining town.

I haven't said a word yet on the style of the film. It's beautifully shot and the set pieces are amazing, filled with wonderful details. It is paced well and it there is clever editing reminiscent of David O. Russell's 3 KINGS, and for the most part the acting was spot on. Some people have complained about the dialogue, saying it was stiff and unrealistic, but that was intentional - the goal of the movie isn't realism, but escapism, and what we say and how we speak in real life conversation is never the same as how we imagine those same conversation in our heads.

New Rant!: Jazzercising.

2008-05-16T23:46:00.001-07:00

The game just ended, so I might come across more bitter now than I might otherwise, but I'd like to say, first off, a pox on that bag of douche in Memphis who gave the Lakers Pao Gasol, and another on the referees - the officiating in this series was the most disgustingly awful I've sat through in recent memory. Phantom fouls and obvious non-calls helped ensure the Jazz wouldn't be able to overtake the Lakers in Game 5 in LA, and down the stretch two key bad calls gave the Lakers free foul shots to keep the game just out of reach. Obviously I don't blame the refs for the Jazz being down 19 at halftime - LA did a great job of jumping on the Jazz early and keeping them down for most of the game - but when it's that close at the end of the game (as was the case in all 6 games of the series), the outcome shouldn't be decided by bad calls. The blocking foul on Paul Millsap should have instead been a charge on Gasol, and that Kobe/Williams run in should have been a non-call at worst, or at best an offensive foul on Kobe swinging his elbow at Williams' face. Instead of closing the gap, that's 4 critical points that went to the Lakers.

Anyhow, now that Utah's season is over I have a few thoughts on what they should do to prepare their team for the future, before they sit ideally by and let the Lakers and Hornets run rampant for the next few years.

Here goes:

Elton Brand is an unrestricted free agent. The Jazz should buy him up and make a trade offer to Dallas - Carlos Boozer and someone like C.J. Miles or Ronnie Price, and a draft pick for Dirk Nowitzki.

Boozer's good but he's also inconsistent during the playoffs. And, in reality, he's only an All Star because he has Deron Williams helming the team. After Boozer shrunk during key stretches of the playoffs last year, he only had one really good game in the playoffs this year after being a constant 20/10 guy all year long, which tells me it's time Jazz fans and management realize that, although when all is said and done Williams may be regarded as highly as John Stockton one day, Boozer isn't the second coming of Karl Malone. Boozer is capable of being great when he's the team's second option, but the Jazz will never win a championship in this crowded western conference if they have to rely on him to have big games night in and night out.

With Elton Brand they would have a consistent 15/10 guy, someone who can play tough defense and grab rebounds, and with Nowitzki they'd have someone who not only can create shots from anywhere on the floor, but is a veteran who is hungry for a championship, and who would fit in perfectly with Deron Williams, who is the only untouchable player on the team, although unless an unbelievable deal was put on the table, I'd not surrender Kirilenko, Millsap, Brewer, Harpring, or Korver.

Salary cap aside, if a trade for Nowitzki goes through, then Okur could be shipped out, maybe to somewhere like New Jersey for Richard Jefferson or Detroit for Rasheed Wallace or the Pacers for Jermaine O'Neal, if they could pick up his expiring contract and convince him to take a salary cut to be on a contending team.

With a lineup of William (PG), Brewer (SG), Kirilenko (SF), O'Neal (PF) and Nowitzki (C), the Jazz would be one of the top three title contenders in the league.

New Someone Else's Idea!: On Socialized Healthcare

2008-04-16T04:31:00.000-07:00

Stolen from a conversation on Fark.com: An eloquent response to a dumbass response to this article about health insurance providers:

ScubaDude1960: Insurance companies have to take in at least as much as they pay out. There is no free lunch, and medical costs are going up. If you don't like your policy, cancel it.

/has spent over $300,000 on medical bills.

*

Cagey B: Priceless. The person who had three hundred grand to shell out on medical bills telling us about "no free lunch".

We in the United States live in a system where we have no problem letting the government police our cities, fight our fires, keep our planes from falling out of the sky, build our gigantic freeways, prosecute our wars, and countless other things that profoundly affect our day-to-day lives and, you know, keep us from dying.

But when it comes to medical care? We seriously believe that you judge a person's right to treatment for serious illnesses based on their bank account. We have no problem with the premise of "No money? Well then you can die."

How fortunate for you that you could shell out that sum on needed medical services (unless it was cosmetic surgery, in which case you can go DIAF right now). If you hadn't that sum of money, by your very own admission, you wouldn't be allowed access to those services. Hopefully someone would come and tell you "no free lunch" as your tumor grows.

You understand that there are vital services in this country that are done by the government because either there is no way to turn a profit and do a satisfactory job, or because profit should not be the main motivating factor in providing services, right? Unless you're truly one of those assholes who thinks the police should privatized, you understand that you are part of a larger society, right?

So, unless you want what is in effect a system where the poor can go die because of the fact they are poor, there must be at the very least some sort of government intervention here. Perhaps preventing someone in the insurance industry from effectively not serving the people who are in actual need of the services that they have agreed to pay for every month, perhaps that would be a good start.

You may very well want a system in which poor people die simply by dint of the fact that they weren't rich enough. And before anyone else chimes in on this one, medical services, especially to people who, you know, get sick, are not some frivolous consumer good that can be done without. No one is saying that everyone gets to drive a Mercedes, or gets to have a 50" television. But the right to not suffer and die simply because of class should be one that we recognize. If you are one of those people, I'm done talking to you. You will not be reached, and refuse to live up to any of the responsibilities (and yes, as a member and beneficiary of society you do have them) to your State. Go move to Somalia, rugged individual.

For the rest of the conservative types, surely you recognize that there are at least some essential government services, necessary to life and limb. Medical care is one of those things that we need to have if our lives aren't to be cut shorter in the face of the resources to do otherwise.

If you're concerned about government intrusion, as this administration has shown you to rightly be, why not do something about it? Instead of being intractably against it, why not be a part of the planning process?

Are you concerned about cost overruns? You should be, taxpayer resources are vitally important and should be treated with respect. There are ways to make financial workings transparent, with proper oversight, to make sure waste and fraud don't occur. I can think of many Republicans who would be very good at functioning within a health care system and ensuring that money goes where it should.

Are you concerned about the quality of care? Again, get involved. Set standards. Hold doctors and administrators accountable. Keep up the oversight. Make sure that patients get the quality of care they deserve. It can be done. There are areas for compromise here. There are ways to harness the power of existing companies within an existing framework, even.

But man. What is currently going on, and the growing number of people's lives who are negatively affected and ruined by this situation, it is not acceptable by any standards. ANYONE'S standards. I sincerely hope that in time, our Republican and conservative friends can see this.

New List!: Best Modern Westerns

2008-04-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

For no reason other than I like making random lists of unimportant shit, and in no particular order, here is a list of some of my favorite Westerns of the new millennium:

- Seraphim Falls
- The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
- The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
- 3:10 to Yuma
- Brokeback Mountain
- Down in the Valley*
- Dear Wendy**
- The Proposition
- No Country For Old Men

* Desert landscapes, horses, guns, shootouts with law enforcement and a cowboy. Can't think of any other qualifiers.
**A western-ish mining town, guns, cowboy-ish folk in a shootout reminiscent of the OK Coral. Close enough, right?

New Brilliant Idea!: Lawyerderby!

2008-03-02T00:59:00.001-08:00

Brought to you by the creative forces behind The People's Court and The New American Gladiators, Lawyerderby: "Justice May Be Blind, but She Ain't No Pussy!"

Tuesdays on NBC immediately following Dateline.

New Movie Review!: Sunshine

2008-02-22T13:17:00.000-08:00

Great visuals - it felt absolutely believable that we were floating along in space, unlike in the Fountain - which this movie will be compared to - where space flight didn't need to make sense in the grander scheme of the movie.
In Sunshine, it was necessary to believe that they were flying through space with a nuke the size of Manhattan to crash into the sun. They have an escape plan, how they're going to make it back to earth when they're done, but it's apparent pretty early on that no one is going to make it out alive.

They're aboard a ship named Icarus II. Icarus I was sent on the same mission seven years prior - to set off the nuke to reignite the sun so all of humanity doesn't freeze to death. The crew of Icarus II discover a distress signal as they near the sun and, of course, they decide its best to go off course in order to see if anyone is alive on that ship, and to steal the original Stellar bomb in case something goes awry with their payload.

Some stuff happens. People die. We only start out with 8 scientists, even though realistically you would think they could and should have had many more people, if only to keep their sanity for the 16 months or so they're in space.

Freddy Krugger shows up about 2/3 the way through the movie like some crazy Mormon on their interstellar doorstep trying to sell them god and all the sudden this almost-brilliant movie about people trapped in a space ship flying dead on into the heart of the sun becomes a slasher movie - a very good, visually amazing slasher film, but a slasher film none the less.

One by one the crew is picked off until at the end we're left with the hero (Cilian Murphey) and his girlfriend (the always lovely Rose Byrne), who unfortunately disappears for a large chunk of the climax, only to return unecessarily when the hero sacrifices himself to save all of humanity. The sun turns back on, and back on earth the endless winter is over. End of story.

I mentioned the Fountain earlier because these two movies are similar in a lot of ways, mostly visual style, some minor plot points, but they're different in one major way - while Sunshine was an entertaining film with some heavy philosophical moments, the Fountain was something else entirely, something transcendental, something with substance and meaning beyond the typical movie. So if you're going to see Sunshine expecting it to be a big summer blockbuster like I did, you're going to get more than you bargained for; if you're going to the movie for some metaphysical mind-altering experience like some people I know did, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

New Someone Else's Idea!: On Evolution

2008-02-04T01:04:00.001-08:00

Someone else wrote this response to the argument of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, but it's worth reposting, as it's far more articulate than anything I can come up with:

I haven't read this thread, but I stopped getting worked up about this issue a long time ago. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that large numbers of Americans disbelieve in evolution is completely insignificant, except for the fact that this will be another eventual historical "black eye" on our nation, not unlike our treatment of Native Americans and the institution of slavery. So Clem and Billie Jo from down by the railroad tracks believe that the Universe was created in its present form 6,000 years ago. So what?

I've said this before, but scientific theories rise and fall on the basis of how well-supported they are by the evidence. They do not rise and fall on the basis of public opinion. If a poll were taken today that indicated that the majority of Americans no longer believed in gravity, the planets would not spiral drunkenly into the interstellar void, freed from billions of years of Newtonian imprisonment by a disbelieving public. Science just doesn't work that way.

Scientific advancement in several key fields may have stagnated in America, but let's not pretend that we were on the top of the heap anymore anyway. The advancement of science and of the knowledge of mankind will continue unabated, and if America is no longer able or willing to carry the torch, somebody else will. Internally, I can say that my own children will be given lots of exposure to math and the sciences -- if not by their teachers, then by myself -- and there's nothing that the self-appointed "guardians of morality" can do about it. If you want your children to end up as ditch-diggers, then more power to you; we need them, even in this day and age.

All of that having been said, I do consider religious fundamentalism to be anti-American and, in general, a threat to the American way of life. The lessons of the Cold War taught us that a real commitment to science and technology can produce a generation that would end up winning that war for us. And now that we face a threat that many would consider more grave than the Soviet Union, that lesson has been forgotten by many Americans, who are now descending into a frenzied pit of religious fanaticism, not unlike their fundamentalist brethren on the other side of the globe -- the same people they claim we're at war with. It's lunacy. And we may have to endure some proof of its lunacy before we set America back on the right track again.

God, it's frightening to think of where this country is going to be ten, twenty or fifty years down the line.

New Rant!: I Tipped My 40 For Good Ol' Gordie

2008-02-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

Last week Mormon church president Gordon B. Hinckley passed away at the ripe old age of 98, and Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. orders flags to be flown at half-staff. And I'm not talking about that ho-hum Utah State flag, but Ol' Glory herself, the flag of the US of A.

Can someone please tell me how this doesn't offend every single member of our Armed Forces? Everyday our soldiers are risking their lives for this country. Whether or not you agree with the war or Bush's foreign policies shouldn't take away from the fact that this guy never served in the military, never held any major office and was by no means a prominent politician, and yet the Governor of the state is honoring his service to our country more than their sacrifices.

Separation of church and state has been a myth for quite a while, this is just a big slap in the face to remind us of that.

New Stuff!: Yahoo Answers

2008-02-03T02:07:00.000-08:00

Here is a small list of some of the things I did to amuse myself at Yahoo! Answers before I was banned:

*

Question: Would my girlfriend want me to wear a condom if she has done it with other guys in the future without one on?
My Answer: I would definitely wear a condom if the girl I was sleeping with has had sex with people from the future.

Question: Any one know what has happened to bands such as Puddle of Mudd, Ra, Oleander, Stereomud, Adema, Alter Bridge, Tantric and many more.....I have been real busy and haven't caught local radio for a while, but some of these bands I thought we would have heard from again. Are there any other long lost bands that might have a new cd coming out soon...what about Candlebox and Seven Mary Three, I hear rumors every now and then and saw 7 M 3 at a concert about 6 years ago, thought they may be coming back. Any one also have a great band that you miss that you though might last for a while but never were heard from."
My Answer: What happened to them is what happens to all crap music: people either catch on to how bad they suck and move on to something better, or people find some other crap music to push into the Top 40 for a year before moving onto something else of equal or more suckitude.

Question: What does this mean?: “Women are irresponsible and unaccountable?" Several of the anti-feminist male posters have used this line in their answers as a stand-alone statement. I want to understand what is meant by this statement – can you give some specific examples please? To what issues does it apply? Do you really mean ALL women, or will you admit to over-generalizing?
My Answer: It means the person who posted that, his mother did not love him and because he frowns all the time he finds it hard to find dates on Friday nights. Although, to be honest, it's a pretty accurate statement.

My Question: Should I ask the Lord for something cool like a unicycle, or something "mature" like world peace?
Best Answer: Being a communist, I would ask for one of those three or four-seater bikes.

*

Question: Do You think Paris Hilton Will Make Any Films in Jail?
My Answer: Yes, she already has an 8 figure deal for "One Night in Paris in Alcatraz".

*

Question: What was the flute played in the Titanic?
My Answer: I believe Kate Winslet was playing the bone flute.
Yahoo's Response: Badboy! You banned!

So much for that...

New Nonfiction!: Our Efficient Government

2008-02-01T16:03:00.003-08:00

A bunch of months back I got a ticket for not yielding for pedestrians during a sting operation one of the most dangerous streets in LA (in my defense, there were no lights, no signs and the position of the crosswalk wasn't standard; also, I did stop--twice--but the cop didn't care, he was a dick). So I get the ticket and, being homeless and living in my van at the time, it was the least of my concerns so I forgot about it.

Later, I forget to pay the fine on time. Or I didn't pay it because I couldn't afford it. Either way, never paid.

Even laterer, after I get an apartment in Hollywood that has roaches and asshole landlords and a stink that never goes away, I get a notice warning me of my license being revoked if I don't take care of the ticket by such and such date.

Such and such date arrives, so I get up early (like 5:30 ish) and make my way to the courthouse. I park down the street at a meter and drop in a couple quarters. It's crowded with Mexicans and Black folk who aren't dressed like they're about to talk to a judge. They all look mean. I'm in line, outside this very bulky nine story building that has extravagantly used these neat little rocks to cover the entire outside, all the way around and up and waiting in line for so many hours I wondered just how many mountains were killed for this building to be dressed in a nice coat like that. Then I thought that there should be an environmental organization that works like PETA, but I realized that could never work because they couldn't get Pamela Anderson to show up on billboards wearing only rocks.

So I finally get inside and I talk to a clerk at a window and that woman asks me if I'm here to pay and I says to her, No, I'm pleading not guilty. So she sets up a date for me to arrive in court--8/30 at 8:30--easy enough to remember. So then I leave and discover the meter was up and I'm given a $45 ticket.

Skip ahead two months. I wake up early (this time, 5:45) and I go to court. I get lost because this time I don't have the address. Also, I don't have my paperwork. Turns out, I didn't need the paperwork nearly as much as the address. I arrive at the building around 7:20 and decide to pay the $7 to park in the underground parking facility. The line is nowhere near as long as it was before, which gives me hope that people are finally learning their lesson about driving like assholes. I doubt this is true, but for the sake of argument, let's just pretend. Unfortunately, as I later discover, less people means stiffer fines for those who're still there. So I stand in line again, and around 8:30 they let us into the building. I go to the 4th floor, to room #63 as per instructions. I stand in line at the sign that says, "Line Starts Here." I'm thinking, yey, I'm first in line. Smiling to myself and thinking that my day is going well so far, I hear this woman bark from across the hallway where she sits on a bench--obviously not where the sign is marking--and she says, "I'm first." She's black and I'm white, so obviously I'm either going to be a racist or she's going to shoot me, so I says to her, fine. Then, about three or so more people arrive and stand in line. She warns them all that she's first in line. I step out of the line to go down the hall to use the restroom (#1), and when I get back, there's like 40 people all materialized out of nowhere to take my place in line. I say fuck it, I don't want to argue. Turns out, I don't need to. We get inside the room, finally, and we take a seat, then after another bout of sitting around doing nothing, they call names. I'm like #4, well ahead of the girl who was first in line. So I win. Ha.

So we wait and wait and wait. Finally, a temporary judge (not the real thing, apparently, because the real thing was on vacation) comes out and we give our pleas. I tell him not guilty. The ticket was supposed to be $140, plus the fine for not showing up to court, which was another $200, but that should be waived if I win my trial. This wasn't trial, this was arraignment, so he says go talk to the clerk about bail. I'm thinking, wow, bail--I must really be a criminal now!

So another line (I thought I was the fourth person, now I'm back in a long line again, somehow) and finally the clerk, and the clerk tells me bail is $340. I'm like, that's sure a steep fine for a $100 ticket. They tell me that if I can't pay it (I can't, I'm as broke as I've ever been) then I have to come back in exactly seven days to tell the judge that I can't pay it. I ask why they can't just make a note to tell the judge later that I can't pay it so I don't have to go through all this trouble. She looks at me like her brain is about to esplode, so I decide to leave. I go home and think about taking a nap, but I probably just jerked off and ate a pizza. I don't remember, but that sounds pretty much like my everyday existance, so it's probably what I did. I do remember though that I certainly did not take a nap.

Skip ahead another week. My van is falling apart. I wake up around 6:15, shower and eat a cup of boysenberry yogurt. It wasn't the best yogurt I've had recently, but it wasn't bad--not like the raspberry/cranberry juice that I bought the same trip, which I had to return because it was fermented; they asked, with attitude, why I was bringing it back and I told them I came to buy juice, not wine. So I ate the yogurt, brushed the teeth and headed out the door. I found the courthouse without as much hassle as the first time, although I did drive around for about 10 minutes trying to locate the street (Hill street--I didn't know that last time, which is why it took me so long. I thought it was on Figueroa) and I find a great parking spot at a meter across the street--only 2 hours, though, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a ticket again.

I wait in line but it seems to go faster this time. Also, I feel like I recognize a lot of the people in line, and all the sudden I'm feeling like I'm in the Truman Show. I'm not, of course, but I had that weird feeling. So I get inside and remembering the last two times, I decided to buy a newspaper. I thought it might pass the time by reading about the hurricane and the ineptitude of the BushCo, but they don't have the USA today, which I like. I don't like the LA times, which they had. So I bought an iced tea in a can and went up to the fourth floor.

Again, I was pretty far up in line. No one bitched about their spots. We went in and sat down. I sat and sat and sat, then sat some more. People's names we called, they were lined up; more people came in and they were lined up. I was the fourth person in line and I was goddamn moved to the back of the goddamn bus. Pissed me off. Then the judge--a real one!--came out. He was a dick. One woman, the second person in line, gave him lip and instead of being hit with a $120 ticket, she was given over $4,000 in bail! I was like, holy shitfuck.

The line progresses quickly because the judge was efficient, but he was also a dick. I knew I was there just to tell the judge that I couldn't afford $340 bail on a $120 ticket I didn't deserve, so I figured I was going to be okay. When he asked what I'm going to plead--guilty, not guilty or no contest--I told him I plead not guilty last week. He says, "Okay, $600 bail and come back in a week." I'm like, "Huh? I came back to tell you today that I can't pay the $300 bail." He's like, "I'm not giving you any leniency--you didn't show up to court when you were supposed to." I said, "I'm not looking for leniency, I'm here to tell you I can't afford this three hundred bucks and I'm going to argue not guilty." He's looking at me like why the fuck am I still in his line. I said, "I'm following the orders, I was told to come back today. So why am I getting my fine doubled?" He tells me to get out of his line and start listening. I yell back, "I am listening, that's why I'm here today instead of at home, sleeping." He waits, unrelenting. I'm confused and furious. Finally, I'm told to leave the podium. I tell him I want to change my plea then. He says good, notates the paperwork and tells me to move on.

I leave to the clerk's place and stand in line again. It's a huge line and takes an hour to get to the window. The woman says I owe $269. I ask her to break it down for me. She does. I tell her I can't pay it. She says I've got three months. I leave and find out that, although my meter had expired at hour ago, they didn't give me a ticket. I drive home. An hour later, my boss calls and asks if I can come into work. I say sure--I'm fucking broke, I've got bills due and I don't have any money for gas or food. Although I was tired, I think I definitely needed to be here.

So that's one ticket that should've been really easy to take care of, but for whatever fucking reason it just wasn't. Here's the other ticket. I got this while coming home from work. My taillight was out and apparently I ran a stop sign that I never saw. Still don't think it was there, but they didn't ticket me for the stop sign, so I don't care. What they ticketed me for was no registration and a busted taillight.

So I ignore the ticket and go back to filming my movie. In one scene, the main character taps the window with a gun. I ask my actor to do this. He does, and it splinters my windshield. Over the next several weeks, this splinter grows until my window is divided in half and is nearly impossible to drive (although I tough it out and do it anyway).

So I take the van to the DMV to get it registered. I pay them $217 in back fees and whatnot, and they tell me that they can't register it until the window gets fixed. Then I go to the Beverly Hills court house to show them the temporary registration and they tell me they can't take temporary registration, and they tell me that as soon as I get my taillight fixed, I have to get it inspected by the sheriffs department downstairs. They give me two months to get everything worked out.

Then, the next week, several weeks ago, both my jobs end and I wait six weeks with no money, waiting for unemployment to unfuck themselves long enough to send me my checks. They finally come, the same week both my jobs start again.

Skip ahead several weeks. To yesterday, actually. Columbus Day. What the fuck kind of holiday is Columbus day? There should be three holidays and three holidays only--St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, New Years/New Years Eve. That's it, everything else is bullshit.

So I stay up late Sunday night schooling some friends in poker. I've been on a losing streak ever since the cult meet-up, but I finally get back in a grove. I only won $50, but at least it's something. So I get home and go to bed around 3 or so. The next morning at 8, I get a call from the guys who're supposed to come by around noon to fix my van's window. They're early. I roll off the couch and head outside. They say it'll be an hour to fix it. I say to call me when they're done and I'm going to take a nap. 30 minutes later, they wake me up again. It's done and it'll cost me $275.00. So cool, they're efficient, but fuck I'm tired. They say don't drive for at least an hour, so around 10:30 I take it up the street to these Armenian auto shop guys who say they can fix the light. I've already done what I can (check the fuse, change the bulb, etc) but it's still not working. They say it'll be a couple hours, so I walk home and go to bed. They call a couple hours later, saying it's done and it'll be $60. Not a big deal.

So I drive to the DMV to get the window inspected and get my registration, but they're fucking closed because of goddamn Columbus day. So that means I've got to go to work and not get home until 3 in the morning and then have to get up early in order to take care of all this at the very last minute (seriously legitimately not my fault, since I had no money because of the Unemployment Department). So I get up this morning and go to the DMV. I get there at 10:15. I wait in line until 10:40. The lady gives me a number and tells me to take a seat after I explain that I'm only there to get inspected, that I've already paid for everything. So I sit, and I sit and I sit, and finally at 11:35 I get called to window 17. The woman is about to leave for lunch, but she explains that I should've taken my van to the inspection station out back. I tell her that the other woman should've told me this, it would've saved me an hour. She says she agrees and tells me it's time for her to leave for lunch. I tell her I didn't see a parking area and she says it's really small and hard to spot because it doesn't have any markers. I leave and move my van around and finally find where she's talking about.

I wait another 30 minutes until I can park my van in one of the two inspection spots. The inspector checks everything out and okays it and gives me a piece of paper. I go inside, skipping all the people in line who're frowning at me and tell the clerk that she should've told me to go there first. She gives me a number and I sit down. I wait about 15 minutes until I'm called to window 12. I get my plates and I'm out of there.

The drive to Beverly Hills sucks. Traffic sucks. Most of Southern California sucks, but Santa Monica blvd. sucks the hardest. So I get there and I park as close to the courthouse/sheriffs department as I can. I go inside and go through the metal detector. One of the guys compliments my shirt.

I walk to the sheriffs department and tell her I'm here to have my taillight inspected. She tells me to move my car out back. So I leave and walk half a mile to my car and move it to where I need it, then walk back inside. Another of the security guards sees me, and jokes about my passing through the metal detectors a second time. I go to the sheriffs department and hand her my paperwork again. Once more she looks it over, then tells me she needs mt to go upstairs and get a copy of my ticket. I wonder why she didn't tell me that earlier.

I go upstairs to the DMV and wait and wait and wait in line for a clerk to put down her fucking donut and newspaper and start paying attention to the line. It's also hot because they don't pay for AC. So tell her I need my ticket. She complies. I go downstairs and give it to the sheriff's clerk. She tells me I need to go back upstairs and pay it. I tell her that I need to get the taillight ok'd before I can pay it. She says there's no mention of a taillight on the ticket. I show her on the ticket where it says something like "B/O rear - to fix" or something and I says, I'm pretty sure that's what they're talking about. She says oh, yeah, that's right, but they don't inspect taillights here. I tell her that 2 months ago I was told to come here today to have it inspected. She says she doesn't know why. I say why is there an inspection station out back if they don't inspect things. She says they just don't inspect taillights. I say how hard would it be for you to look at my taillight to prove it works. She says I need to go to some place where they do smog checks, they might also inspect taillights. I ask if she can be more specific. She says no. I tell her it's 3:30 and they close at 4:30 and I have to get this done today because yesterday I couldn't because it was Columbus fucking day and it's the last day I have on this extension. She says too damn bad. I leave the building, the decide to go talk to the DMV clerk one more time.

I pass the security guard who jokes that I just must love this stuff. I growl.

I go upstairs and tell the clerk who sent me downstairs that I just want to pay the ticket. She says I can't without getting it inspected. I tell her to look out the window and she can see my van and I'll run down stairs and tap the break lights. She says no. So I ask her if I can get an extension until tomorrow. She says no. She says I need to come back on November 8th to talk with a judge. I tell her I'm just doing what I've been told to do--go to the sheriffs department--and it's causing all this fucking headache. She says she doesn't give a flying shit. I reach over the counter and break her nose. Then I leave a comment on a card in the comment box telling them their inefficiency and incompetence is costing me money and having me run around in circles. So there.

I should point out that this fix it ticket is for THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS.

And now I'm at work and I just ate a really bad sammich.

****

UPDATE:

They do street cleanings on Wednesdays and Fridays, depending on the side of the street. I was parked on the Friday side and at 10:15 I went out to move my van. We're not allowed to park from 10 - noon, and when I got out there, the parking meter whore was on her way down the street, so I just barely escaped.

I move my van down the block after driving to a gas station to put some air in the rear right tire, which has a slow leak in it. Really slow. Then, I walk over and check my email a block away at this cafe that's really neat, and I walk back another couple blocks to my bank to transfer some funds. Then, I walk back over to my van as the street sweeper truck makes it's way down my road. By now, it's after 11, and since I've already witnessed them cleaning the street, I'm thinking it's safe to park. I get in my van and drive around the block and go inside and jerk off, then take a nap. I wake up, shower, get ready for my day and then head outside and there's a goddamn ticket on my window that's marked at 11:58--the bitch fucking watched me drive off earlier and came back to give me a ticket just before time expired, after the fucking truck already cleaned the street. What the fuck? And the number they have listed to contest the ticket doesn't have a number to press for "assfucked by the fascist street sweepers", nor do they actually have a real live person to complain to, just monotone computers.

So there goes another $45.

***

(Originally posted 10/11/2005 at www.chuckpalahniuk.net; reposted here for posterity.)

New Fundraiser!: THUMBING

2008-01-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

I am looking to collect $3,000 for the start-up costs to get my next feature film THUMBING underway. It is a simple but dynamic road-film about a middle-age truck driver and a young hitchhiker who meet one night in the California desert. Two of the three principle locations have been locked up and I am searching for a truck company interested in sponsoring the film.

We will be filming with a skeleton crew in Utah, Nevada and California, and I have access to two named talents for the principle roles (one a television icon, the other on many people's list as one of the best actors under the age of 30). I will contact them with the start-up funds have been reached.

If you would like to make a donation, please click on the following link:

THUMBING fundraiser

Everyone who donates will receive a special thank you in the closing credits of the movie. For all pledges of $20 or more you will receive a copy of the movie on DVD when finished. And for every $100 pledge you will receive one point on the back-end (out of 100) if the film is picked up for distribution. (Meaning, if the film is made for $20,000 and sells for $100,000 you will receive 1% of the $80,000 profit for every $100 you donated.)

If the $3,000 goal is not reached within 25 days, your pledge will be returned to you with no charges. If we surpass our goal, all funds will go directly toward the production of the film. As the writer/director, I won't be making a penny off the film until everyone else gets paid as well.

Thank you for your support, and please spread the word.

--alex

New Movie Review!: I Am Legend

2008-01-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of the Richard Matteson novel I Am Legend, but I wasn't very impressed by Omega Man, starring Charleston Heston as Robert Neville, the last man standing following a devastating plague. I was however intrigued to learn a major studio was going to remake this film and happy to hear Will Smith was cast in the lead role. Put Smith on screen with every A-lister out there and he'd be the actor most people are drawn to, so to me this was a no-brainer.
This version of the movie strayed from the book quite a bit but for the most part the changes worked. Making the film a boy-and- his-dog story was genius as it gave Smith a chance to shine as he scoured the city for supplies and searched for survivors and a cure for the deadly virus that wiped out much of the population, and those it didn't kill were turned into something resembling the pseudo-zombies of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. Will Smith gave the character a realism that I felt was lacking in Omega Man, an earnestness that Charleton Heston couldn't deliver. When Smith spends a portion of his day talking with dummies at a video store, it's heartbreaking where it might otherwise have been goofy or out-and-out embarrassing.

The flashbacks were wonderfully done, giving the audience just enough info to keep them abreast of the situation but not enough to overload them, and much was smartly left to the imagination. Some of the other positive changes were the use of cultural references to help tell the story, such as Bob Marley's Legend or the scene from Shrek (although this might hinder the movie in the future as it can strip away a sense of timelessness). I really dug the shots of the vacant city, now overrun by nature and wildlife, and how Neville (and in turn the audience) underestimated the intelligence of the creatures. And even as the story built toward its explosive climax, I was never able to predict how it was finally going to come down.

However, this was far from a perfect movie. The ending I couldn't predict left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. The birthday subplot and the use of the butterfly metaphor were trite and cliched, the product placement was obvious and annoying, and the CGI creatures were awful. If you want the audience to believe in the world you've created you need to surround the make-believe with as much realism as you possibly can but by having the creatures so blatantly unrealistic it constantly reminded me that this was just a movie. I was never able to get beyond that as has happened in similar films such as 28 Days Later or Batman Begins.

Another major change from the book I didn't care for was Neville was not only a brilliant scientist and a decorated soldier but he was also immune to the disease. I understand in a film you have a limited amount of time to convey a great deal of information but one of the things I loved about the book was that Neville had to become a scientist, which fit in the theme of adapting and evolving. Having him be a scientist from the get-go stripped away a layer of his character that was intriguing and realistic.

Although I didn't like the timing of the introduction of the two other characters in the film - Anna and Ethan - I loved the clever and subtle ways the characters are developed. When Neville throws his plate at the wall, the child steps back from the table, apparently in fear. As Neville leaves the room, he steps forward, revealing a knife in his hands - he may be just just a kid, but Ethan is as much a survivor as Neville. There were many little moments in this movie to make it shine, this being my favorite.

Using Bob Marley's Legend album could have been schlock had Smith dropped the ball, but his heartfelt monologue sold it, as did his delivery while quoting Shrek to his new house guests. Using that particular scene from the animated comedy also added to the overall story, rather than just being funny for the sake of amusement.

The climax of the movie came too suddenly. I would have liked another day or two of Neville reintroducing himself to society, even if that society consisted solely of a woman and a child. The way he rigged his home to be the last line of defense against an attack was fine, but I think the filmmakers dropped the ball by having the end come so soon after the arrival of Anna and Ethan. They could have mined some good tension out of their relationship, but feeling the need to wrap this film up quickly the filmmakers decided they'd had enough with the drama and turned this interesting film into just another (albeit intense) action flick.

Smith's total engrossment of the Neville character is, in my mind, worthy of an Oscar nomination. It's unfortunate this film will be looked at as a crowd pleasing popcorn flick rather than a rich character study - the same problem facing my favorite movie of '07, The Lookout - but he also had the bad luck of doing so well in a year of brilliant turns in more award-friendly fair by Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises), Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood), George Clooney (Michael Clayton), Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd) and Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah).

Overall I appreciate this film for staying true to the spirit of the book even at the cost of a word-for-word adaption, and Smith's understanding of the character allowed him to pull of something only a handful of actors could have, and that's make a believable action hero out of an ordinary man.

New Travelog!: Part 2: Tooele, UT

2008-01-30T11:21:00.000-08:00

It's Tuesday the 28th. After being snowed in in a mansion in Park City, I finally got a ride into Salt Lake. I ate some pretty good brunch at a Thai restaurant near downtown before getting a ride to a bus stop. A quick bus brought me to a transfer point that was supposed to get me on a second bus to take me out to Stansbury Park, but I waited 3 and a half hours in the cold and the wind. I talked with several operators on the phone and after very clearly letting them know my coordinates, each one told me I was waiting in the right spot and they were unsure why the bus hadn't arrived yet. Turns out, each of the six operators told me I was supposed to be on 2nd South, rather than the next street over, State Street. For their errors, I received two free bus tokens. Fucking sweet!

I was dropped off at the Old Firehouse and after struggling in the weather with my luggage, I was picked up by an older woman in a Cadilliac (thanks Mrs. Preston!???), and dropped off at my dad's house. I've been here ever since. I think today is Day 5, and it's been pretty uneventful.

The highlights:

Bumped into my Aunt Lynne at Wal-Mart. She was buying dog food and wondered why she never received an invite to Andrew's wedding.

I'm working part-time at my stepmother's office, filing 6 months worth of backed up paperwork.

I sent my script out to a producer I met at Sundance, and I'm spending my days systematically erasing all my posts from The Cult.

Bowled with my stepmom and my sister but I lost all four games. I'm blaming it on the lane being overly greased - I couldn't get my slider working to save my life. Apparently Lazer Bowling is the big teenage draw in this town.

My dad sold his pool table. We played a few rounds of chess. He bought tickets to the Jazz/Bulls game on the 9th.

Watched Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth today as well as a French coming-of-age movie from 1975 called A Very Young Girl. Tomorrow I'm going to give Dead Man another shot after finding a place to watch the Super Bowl.

I'm pretty much counting down the days until the 10th. This place makes me lethargic. I'm not sure where I'm going from here - probably either Portland to kill some time, Seattle to babysit my stepfather while my mother recovers from surgery, or Bellingham to visit some friends. I plan on visiting all three of these cities in the next month, but in what order I'm not sure. After that, if there is still no work in LA, I'm going to take a bus to southern California and move all my crap back to Desert Hot Springs and hang tight out there, fixing up the house until my brother's wedding.

New Travelog!: Part 1: Sundance '08

2008-01-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

Prologue: Due to the WGA strike I'm having no luck finding work in LA. I've been without a job since mid-December and I was turned down for unemployment because there was a mistake in the paperwork, and because so many people are out of work right now, it's even more difficult to get someone on the phone, which, in the best case scenario, is pretty damn tough. So my options are as such: Spend my last couple hundred bucks on one more months worth of rent and hope a job materializes or take my last couple hundred bucks and hit the road, travel around for a few months, and return when there are jobs to be had.

Travelog Pt. 1: Sundance '08

As I talk with my roommate about happiness and the future and what we can do to better ourselves as people and whatnot, I received a text from a friend from high school wondering if I'd be interested in flying out to Park City to volunteer at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Although I grew up in Utah, I vowed to never go to Sundance until I had something showing. But this felt different. The idea really stuck, and I mulled it over for a couple hours before deciding to go ahead and fly out.

I was working on a friend's film through the end of the weekend so I bought a ticket on Jetblue for Monday night. The flight was delayed two hours, and I spent $14 for a burger that was prepared wrong twice before finally understanding that I don't want onions and pickles. I'd forgotten my laptop charger, and I hardly had any cold weather clothes. When I left LA it was probably 60 degrees. In Salt Lake the temperature was in the single digits.

My dad picked me up from the airport and drove up the canyon to Park City. I had a bed in a condo that was shared between myself, my friend Heidi, and 7 of her friends. Out of habit and out of not wanting to crawl up a skeezy looking ladder when I arrived home at 2 am every night, I slept on the couch down stairs. After signing in at the Volunteer Villa, I was given a Sundance '08 jacket, scarf, beanie and vest. If it weren't for my shoes, I'd be all ready for winter and the -5 degree temperature that I walked home in that night.

I worked at the Holiday Theater tent, selling tickets to impatient tourists and imputing data into a computer. I was told I'd be on the morning shift which would allow me a chance to see more movies at night and possibly get into some of the parties, but instead I was moved to the night shift. Because of this, I wasn't able to see two of the films I really wanted to check out - Michael Haneke's Funny Games (the remake of his own Austrian film from 1997) and Gonzo, the documentary about nutjob journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

However, I did manage to get in a handful of movies while I was there, including The Wackness, the final movie showing on the final night of the festival. Starring Ben Kingsley as a drug using shrink, it was easily the best movie I've seen while here. It was the only movie that truly blew me away, and was just about as perfect a movie I've seen in a long time. It costarred an Olsen Twin, which made it even more unlikely that I'd enjoy it.

Other movies I enjoyed were the Spanish language film Sleep Dealers, a sci-fi flick about a kid from a small Mexican village who leaves home after the death of his father by a Corporate Army hired to keep aqua-terrorist from harming the company's water supply. Although it was a low budget movie (I can't imagine it had more than a million bucks), it was so well put together. I walked out of the movie thinking it was the best writing, best editing and best directing I've seen in a long time, and I haven't been this impressed with special effects in a film since the original Matrix. It won the best screenplay award at the festival, along with the sci-fi award.

I only caught two documentaries, although there were several I wanted to see. The first (and the better of the pair) was Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired. Very well put together, it was able to get into the reasons why he did what he did, although it (rightfully) doesn't excuse him from the crime he committed. It spent quite a bit of time focusing on the judge in the trial, and there was a lot of effort in showing various angles and points of view. Definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of Polanski, or if you love documentaries.

The other doc I caught was Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, which I'm torn about. I think the film is one that everyone needs to see but there is a lot I don't like about it. First, it's going to shoot itself in the foot during it's marketing campaign. I'm convinced it'll be presented to the 18-35 year old market as kind of a Dawg the Bountyhunter hunts down Osama bin Laden, which obviously pique a lot of interest, but the truth is the movie is less about Osama bin Laden and more about the way various peoples in the Middle East view Americans and American foreign policy.

Using bin Laden as the reason to visit various countries, Spurlock never intends to discover where the terrorist is hiding. Every mention of bin Laden bit could very well have been removed from the movie and it would have been more profound, although the audiences wouldn't turn out en masse, so I guess it's a trade off he wasn't willing to settle on. The other major turn off for the movie is the use of goofy cartoony videogame sequences to seque one scene to another, and the dumbest opening movie sequence I've seen in a long time. All of this is for one reason - to get young audiences into the theaters.

Again, I think it's a documentary that everyone should watch, but I think this is going to turn off a lot of people and I'm not convinced flashy CGI fight scenes between a 9 foot ninja bin Laden and Morgan Spurlock is necessarily going to resonate with today's youth.

Other noteworthy films were Frozen River, which I saw because I'd written a role for Mark Boone Jr. in my script A MILLION SHADES OF WHITE, and he had a small part in this as a French Canadian strip club owner cum human trafficker. It was good - deserving of it's audience award, for sure - but it will probably resonate with female audience members more than it will the guys. The acting was top notch, the directing was steady throughout, there were some great cinematic moments, and the entire situation seems plausible, which makes it even more heartbreaking.

One of the three movies I intended to see was Choke, written by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk and starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Houston. I was a bit frightened when I noticed the film was less than 90 minutes long, but it was funny (which is good 'cuz it's a comedy) and most of the cast did a great job (it won an award for best ensemble cast) although I thought both the leading females were the weak part of the film, along with some issues with the low budget. Mostly I would've liked better sets and more creative camera work. Also, the way the flashbacks transitioned in and out of the film was abrasive.

Script writer/director Clark Gregg (photo <----) did an outstanding job adapting the novel and he didn't flinch at some of the more perverse and obnoxious elements of the book. It's a testament to his script that I can't really think of anything that was missing from the book and I enjoyed the few things he added, such as the interview scene before the fake-rape. Funny, but probably not for everybody.

I'm a little disappointed at the amount of drinking I was able to accomplish, but we did have a party in our condo the second to last night, in celebration of one of the roommate's 27th birthday. He was kind of a douche, but his mother was nice. The party wound down around 3 am when he decided to go to bed and told us it was his party so he was allowed to tell us when it was over. I arrived late due to work, but it seems like everyone who came (probably around 30 people or so) brought a bottle of wine to go with our already pretty impressive alcohol collection. We had plenty left over the next night, although we did our best to finish it off before the festival ended.

As the festival was winding down we were hit with a major storm that closed off portions of the freeway and stranded us in Park City for an extra couple of days. My friend Heidi - who has been working at the festival since we graduated in '98 - has a friend whose father owned a house in the area, so we crashed there. And by house, I mean full blown mansion. There must've been a dozen rooms, each with their own bathrooms. A sauna (which I couldn't turn on), a gym, a wine room, a nifty hot tub - and a kitchen with 4 ice cream scoops, two microwaves and two stoves! Anyway, the first night it was just the three of us, and it was pretty tame. After they went to sleep, I explored the house and drank bourbon and Coke.

The second night started out a bit different. Four more of Heidi's friends showed up - all women - and we sat around drinking and playing Scattegories. As the ratio of guys:girls was 6:1, I knew I wouldn't be getting laid (with those odds, nobody's getting nothing). We drank a lot and one by one people left to go to bed until again I was left alone. I finished the bourbon and went to sleep.

The next morning, I caught a ride down the mountain with a couple of the girls from the night before, and now I'm here at my dad's place trying to figure out where to go next. My brother is getting married in April, so I figure that's a good time to return to LA. Until then, I'll keep moving and keep posting.

New List!: Favorite Movies of 2007

2008-01-11T05:35:00.001-08:00

2007 was a good movie year. There was a time around August/September where there were seven movies playing in theaters that interested me enough to fork out the money to check them out. Unfortunately, I was probably broke so I was only able to see a couple. Even though it was released in February or March, the film I most enjoyed this year was Frank Scott's brilliant directorial debut The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jeff Daniels. It bombed at the box office, mostly, I assume, because it was marketed as a thriller when in reality it was a drama about a kid with a head injury. To me, it was the perfect blend of Hollywood style and Indie heart.

Once, an Irish romantic musical directed by John Carney and starring Glen Hansard of the rock group The Frames was a really close second. I can't say with any certainty that I've ever truly enjoyed a musical or a romance before, and being equal amounts of both I was blown away by how much this movie affected me. I'm glad I caught it on a red-eye flight, if the rest of the passengers had been awake I might've embarrassed myself as I dabbed my eyes and grinned like a retard on helium.

My other favorites, in no particular order:

* There Will Be Blood
* Red Road
* No Country For Old Men
* Michael Clayton
* I Am Legend
* I'm Not There
* Eastern Promises
* Zodiac
* The Darleejing Limited

Movies I bet were really good but I didn't see:

* The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
* Gone Baby Gone
* Into the Wild
* Lust, Caution

New List!: Some Things LOST Can Do To Improve

2008-01-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if Lost is a great show or not. I know at the very least it is a really good show that has some great moments. But like everything else heeding my advice can make it better. So, as we stand at the eve of the new season here is a list of things Lost can do to improve:

- Unless they're vital to the outcome of the show in some sort of spirit animal/anime type way, stop it with the animals references. They were interesting for a while but they became a cliche somewhere in the middle of the second season. Kate's horse, Sawyer's boar, the Hurley bird, Sayid's cat, and so on and so on. Enough already.

- More cliches: Jin is only an asshole when its a Sun or Jin-centric episode. Either he's a dick or he's not, but be consistent. Also, Sawyer is cocky but he's bad at poker and he's bad at ping-pong. We get it, so make him either a bad ass or less cocky, but not both.

- Limit Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Locke to 1 Flashback per season apiece. There are a lot of characters out there who are far more interesting who can use the attention, and whose pasts can be mined.

- Kill kill kill! Eko was one of my favorite characters and although I was pissed when he died it re-solidified Lost as a show worth watching. The writers missed a golden opportunity at the end of Season 3 to knock off a few characters - Sawyer obviously isn't going to die, Jin will probably stay on through the end, but killing off Bernard would have gone a long way toward making Rose more interesting. Even if no one died you could've ramped up the suspense factor by having their lives hang in the balance until the beginning of this season. Killing Charlie was nice - props to the writers for offing a character I never liked while making me actually care about him. And c'mon, finish off Rousseau, please.

- Keep fucking with our heads. Desmond's de ja vu episode was the best of the season and one of the best of the entire series. The season 3 flash-forward finale was great. Congrats on having the balls to not stick to the structure. Keep it up and keep us on our toes.

- Let Jack Bender direct every episode.

- Not all of Hurley's episodes need to feel good. In fact, I'd love the next one to be a real fucking downer. On the same note, it's time for the resolution of Libby's storyline (and Bea Clugh's, too).

- No more well known special guests.

- During season 1 I bet my brother the show would jump the shark when there was either a birthday episode or a holiday episode. Lost went through Thanksgiving with only the briefest of mentions, but as season 4 is starting just before their Christmas Eve, I'm a little nervous.

- I have always felt the producers knew what the final outcome was to be, but they weren't entirely sure how they were going to get there. When ABC announced the series would end after the 6th season, I felt this was the best thing that can happen to the show. With a definitive ending in sight the creators can map out exactly how they want us to reach the destination. I know there are a lot of fairweather fans - probably as many as there are die-hard fans who claim the show is flawless - but I'm willing to stick out to the end to see what has been cooking up. I don't claim to know what's coming and I'm sure there's a good possibility I might not like how it ends, but knowing that it has an end makes it that much more intriguing. X-Files and Twin Peaks has nothing on Lost.

New Thing!: Jaywalking (Updated)

2008-01-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

I went to sleep around 3 in the morning and set my alarm for 11, but when I woke up at 7:30 I thought to myself, you know what, you're awake and you feel good, why don't you walk to the court and deal with that jaywalking ticket, you know, get it off your mind? Boy, am I retarded and once more I got fucked by the California legal system.

To recap: July 4th on my way to see a movie I was pulled over by a couple cops who said a woman reported I had jaywalked. They issued a ticket. I left for Washington to work on a film and when I returned I found that the fine was originally $250 and was now, with fees included, $977.

Today, I went before a judge and he asked how I wanted to plead. I told him not guilty, and, thinking because my driver's license had my address listed way the hell away, I asked for a change of venue. He pretty much told me I was an idiot and should learn what the hell I'm talking about. He told me that had I pleaded guilty for this infraction he would've let me walk out of the court room with a $50 fine (which probably wasn't true - everyone before me who had similar cases were given light fines for the infraction and still had to pay the hefty fees for not showing up to deal with their ticket in a timely manner). He said furthermore, he thinks I'm foolish because, obviously, I'm guilty of the crime, and he set my bail at $977, which I have a week to pay, then he set my court date for further on down the road. I asked if I could change my plea - something which many people before me had done - and he ignored me and told the next person to come take the stand. So, basically, I can pay the $977 bail and go in front of the trial judge and try to convince him that the cops had not seen me jaywalking and had given me the ticket out of heresay - and the cops will probably be there to tell him that's a lie - and I'll get nailed with paying the bail amount, or I can go to court again tomorrow and ask the same judge if I can change my plea, and either he's going to make me look like an idiot in front of everybody or he's going to say, I'm glad you learned your lesson, now here's how much you have to pay... (probably the full $977, or what I might've been able to walk out of court paying today, which would've been $50 for the ticket plused the assest fines, which will probably amount to about $350, plus another $30 because I won't be able to pay the fine when I leave the court). All this for a goddamn jaywalking ticket given to me by hearsay!

Fuck yeah, California!

New Fundraising!: Marvin's Lament's Film Festival Funds

2008-01-02T06:05:00.000-08:00

Hi all, I hope your new year is off to a good start.

My short film "Marvin's Lament" is nearly complete and is being prepped for a film festival run. I'm going to have an updated version of the film online later, hopefully by this time next week, but you can check out the rough cut here.

So, now is the time for me to shamelessly beg for money. Please visit this link to make a donation to the cause. I have 25 days to raise at least $500 which will pay the fees for about 10 festivals.

For anyone who makes a donation, you'll get a special thank you in the credit. If you make a donation of at least $20 I will send you a copy of the DVD as well as some nifty promo stuff when it's all ready.

Thanks, and feel free to spread the link around to anyone who might be interested in helping out.

--Alex

PS: Send me a message or leave a comment after you donate so I can make sure you get your copy of the film.

New List!: Favorite Foreign Films

2007-11-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

Some of my favorite foreign films, in no real particular order:

The Celebration (Danish; dir. Thomas Vinterberg)
Dog Days (German; dir. Ulrich Seidl)
Purple Butterfly (Chinese; dir. Ye Lou)
Red Road (Scottish; dir. Andrea Arnold)
The Dreamers (French; dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
Oldboy (Korean; dir. Chan Wook Park)
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (Austian; dir. Michael Haneke)
Time of the Wolf (French; dir. Michael Haneke)
Funny Games (German; dir. Michael Haneke)
Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon (Chinese; dir. Ang Lee)
Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish; dir. Guillermo Del Toro)
Babel (Mexican; dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
City of God (Brazilian; dir. Katia Lund)
Sex & Lucia (Spanish; dir. Julio Medem)
Kung Fu Hustle (Chinese; dir. Stephen Chow)
Sleep Dealer (Mexican; dir. Alex Rivera)

New List!: Coen Brothers Films

2007-11-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

The worst Coen Brothers film is better than most director's best work. Here's a list of their films, my favorites on down.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou?
No Country For Old Men
Big Lebowski
Barton Fink
Blood Simple
Fargo
Miller's Crossing
The Man Who Wasn't There
The Hudsucker Proxy
Raising Arizona
The Ladykillers
Intolerable Cruelty

New Brilliant Idea!: Jesus Christ (c) Butter

2007-11-09T22:51:00.000-08:00

"Try Jesus Christ (c) Butter and Praise the Lard."

New Someone Else's Idea!: Urine Testing

2007-11-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

I don't typically pass along other people's bulletins or posts, but a friend sent me this and I agree with it for the most part.

***

Like a lot of folks in this country, I have a job.
I work, they pay me.

I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as they see fit.

In order to get that paycheck some employers require employees to pass a random urine test, which I have no problem with.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.

Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check, because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet.

I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sit on their ass, and buy dope and booze with my hard earned money.

Could you imagine how much money the government would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?

New List!: Best Music of 2007

2007-11-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't paid much attention to albums released this year, but here's a really small and completely non-comprehensive list of some of the albums I've been listening to recently:

Best Posthumous Album: Elliott Smith - "New Moon"
Best Return to Alt. Country: Wilco - "Sky Blue Sky"
Best Album By Cute Lesbian Canadian Twin Sisters: Tegan & Sara - "The Con"
Best Good Job Doing Something Completely Different: Iron & Wine - "The Shepherd's Dog"
Best God How I Miss the '90s Album: Smashing Pumpkins - "Zeitgeist"

New List!: Stanley Kubrick Films

2007-11-01T19:51:00.001-07:00

My favorite on down the line:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Paths of Glory
Full Metal Jacket
Eyes Wide Shut

Lolita
The Shining
Sparticus
Barry Lyndon
The Killing
A Clockwork Orange
Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb

Killer's Kiss

I'm pretty sure I'd ad AI toward the top of this list if he'd stayed alive along enough to finish it.

New List!: Wes Anderson Films

2007-10-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

In order of bestness, top to bottom:

The Royal Tenenbaums
The Darjeeling Limited
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Rushmore
Bottle Rocket

New Brilliant Idea!: Home Alone 4: Home Alone - In Space

2007-10-26T15:48:00.000-07:00

As the first ever astronaut family begins their descent toward earth, they realize they've left Kevin behind yet again!. It's all space-fun and space-games for the 42 year old Macauly Culkin until
alien-Harry and alien-Marv show up expecting the joint to be empty....

New Goodies!: Bumperstickers

2007-10-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

Now with more colors!

New Brilliant Idea!: HolySpirit Laxatives (c)

2007-10-23T22:19:00.001-07:00

HolySpirit Laxatives (c) - "When you're stuck let the Spirit move you."

New Story Idea!: The Dick and Dyke Show

2007-10-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

Annoyingly fruity and cliched gay dude marries charming but abrasive hardcore manhating dyke in order to stop their families from asking too many questions. She's abusive and in the end gets arrested for a hate crime. Starring Hilary Swank as the She-Dude and David Hyde Pierce as the Man-Wife.

New Rant!: Eli Roth is an Idiot & His Movies Suck

2007-10-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

According to IMDb.com, "Filmmaker Eli Roth is furious his movie Hostel: Part II has become the most downloaded film of all time. The horror director claims that not only was it downloaded by millions of people, but in countries where piracy is particularly widespread, the film didn't even have a theatrical release. He says, "I'm furious. Here's the thing: It's real money. People say, 'Oh, you can't get mad at people downloading.' Well then, when are you supposed to get mad? If you don't speak out against it now, then when?" And Roth has pinpointed his target movie audience as being the very persons responsible for the majority of downloads. He adds, "The audience that's specifically doing (the downloading) is 17, 18, 19 - it's the college kids, and that's my audience. If the fans are going to get pissed (at me), they're going to get pissed. I don't want those fans.""

Here's the thing, Eli Roth makes really dumb movies. Really dumb, bad movies that are lucky to receive an R-rating*. They're really dumb, really bad and really, really not for kids. And they suck. And he admits his target audience isn't even legally old enough to watch the movies he's making and marketing to them. What the hell? Can't we bring up charges or something? Can't we throw him in jail for seducing minors into the theater to watch really bad, really dumb torture porn that sucks? I'm not sure about anyone else but let's throw him in jail so we don't have to sit through all the Hostel: Part 3 ads next summer. I say the next best thing would be let's all of us download his movies all the time until he decides he can't make enough money to continue making really bad, really dumb movies that suck which are intended to be seen by young, impressionable kids.

* On a side note I suspect the only reason Hostel: Part 2 recieved an R rather than an NC-17 is because the movie industry is desperate for a profit, so instead of making better, more interesting movies or cutting back on the price of tickets, sodas, parking, hot dogs or bottled water, they decided to lower their standards to allow this crap to reach the theaters. Not that I'm for censuring artist visions but c'mon, did you see this shit? If some dumbshit parents wanted to bring their 5 year old kid to the theater there isn't a law in place to stop them. T&A = Bad. Torture Porn? OK.

New Goodies!: Haiku Bumperstickers

2007-10-07T16:53:00.001-07:00

If you're interested in purchasing a nifty glossy bumpersticker they're $5.00 each or two for $8.00 plus shipping. Email randomstranger12@gmail.com for details.

New Goodies!: Bumperstickers

2007-10-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

New Rant!: Rush Has it Backwards.

2007-09-30T20:37:00.001-07:00

Someone should let Rush Limbaugh know he has it backwards - it's not phony troops in a real war, it's real troops in a real war being fought for phony reasons.

New Film Stuff!: Kung Fu Joe

2007-09-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Official Website!

Click here for more photos!

New Thing!: Jaywalking

2007-08-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering what type of slap on the wrist you would get for jaywalking in downtown Burbank, here it is: $977 bail + a hold placed on your driver's license.

To put this heinous crime in perspective, NFL Superdouche Lance Briggs of the Chicago Bears crashed his $350,000 car into a lamp post at 3:15 AM after doing god knows what, left the scene of the accident and reported the car stolen to the police. His fine? $1000.

New Rant!: Professional Performance Enhancers

2007-08-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing: I don't really care who puts what in their body to make themselves a better athlete. Sports aren't that important. Especially baseball. Baseball is (supposedly) entertaining, and its entertaining to see records broken. The same people who get pissed off because performance enhancers are destroying the "purity of the sport" are the people who are popping Viagra to enhance their own performance. Sports haven't been pure since the day they started paying people to play, so the way I see it we should do one of two things: either allow everyone to do whatever they can to make themselves better at their given sport to make the game more entertaining for the rest of us, or take away anything that enhances the natural performance (human growth hormone, steroids, Gatorade, Powerbars...), and make the game like it used to be, which is to say, probably as entertaining as soccer or golf. So long as all professional athletes have access to the same performance enhancing drugs, then it's all fair in my book.

New Fiction!: A Dark Cloud Over Pittsburgh

2007-07-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

This is my story from an in-progress anthology I'm working on with some friends. The collection is about a bunch of people waiting for a train one winter night in the fictional town of Whiteport, Pennsylvania. Hope you enjoy it.

A Dark Cloud Over Pittsburgh

A dead man stares at me from across the lobby. The janitor goes about his chores - I forget his name. Footsteps echo too loudly as a woman hurries passed. Looking at neither of us, she makes her way toward the floor to ceiling glass doors leading to the platform. The building hums.

I tell myself there are perks to retirement, but it’s daunting, waking up every morning. It didn’t used to be like this.

The hum of a vacuum drowns out a worried reporter in a parka speaking from a dozen flat screen televisions mounted to the wall opposite me, directly above the dead man. Closed Caption explains a clean up crew is nearly finished on a train that slipped its track somewhere in the Rockies, and the woman heading for the doors is left waiting in a station on the other side of the country. I guess that’s how things work nowadays.

The Whiteport station used to be nice. Cozy. A simple two-railer where people could stop for beer and conversation while watching the trains. Passengers never stayed for longer than it took to take a leak and grab a cup of coffee. It was dim and it was quiet. In this revamped architecturally modern building, every sound is amplified. Every footstep is a marching army. The reporter on the other side of the country is trying to talk over the payphone in the hallway. It rings endlessly, loud and consistent and abrasive.

Nobody could sleep through this commotion. That’s why I’m convinced the man is dead.
A crowd gathers, eating candy from a vending machine. Wrappers crunch. Lips smack. Even with no one talking this room is so loud.

They tore the pub down and built a bagel stand. Last week they ripped out the arcade to make way for a Starbucks – a Starbuck in a train station! I suppose another problem with old age is you just don’t get it anymore.

“Hey Pitt.”

It’s the janitor. I see his fogged breath before I see him standing there. His name badge hidden beneath a stained terry towel slung over his shoulder, he slides two bucks – two bucks! – into the pop machine. A can thunks in the retriever, dull and heavy as the bricks that used to make up these walls. Bricks mined from local soil.

He pops the top and the fizz hisses, mad and urgent. “Not a good night for train watching,” he says after a healthy gulp.

I suppose not, but nowadays it’s pretty much the same routine. He wipes his mouth with the towel and I see his badge says TIM. Why can’t I remember that? My son’s name was Tim.
I point at the televisions as a herd of folks meander in and sit beneath. “Lost one over near Steamboat Springs.”

“Where’s that?”

“Colorado.”

He stares at the TV. Sips his drink. “Six dead, so far. That sucks.”

My eyes flick over to the dead man. He hasn’t moved.

Tim shrugs. “I guess that happens, huh. Well Pitt, break time’s over.” He waves, dragging his mop and bucket behind him.

My name has been Pittsburgh since I was eight years old – the only thing I took with me from the orphanage I was shipped to after my dad was shot down over Korea. My mother couldn’t cope. My baby sister was taken in by one of my dad’s sisters but they couldn’t afford us both, not with little ones of their own to tend to. At eight, they figured I’d get along okay. I haven’t seen my sister since. I’ve never met my cousins.

The other kids called me Pittsburgh on account that’s where I’m from. Been all over since then, though. Allentown, Eerie, Uniontown. I haven’t been back to Pittsburgh but the name stuck.

The train station drifts in and out of stillness. A woman sneezes. A child complains of the cold. Someone talks aggressively to a cell phone. Then, a long stretch of silence. Or as close to it as this place knows anymore. Someone clears their throat and the volume pitches once again.

I watch them move. They’re restless. Tapping fingers, reading yesterday’s paper, plucking random pages from vacant seats. A man looks at his watch. The man next to him looks at his watch. It moves on down the line like the wave at Three Rivers. Or, whatever it is now.

The crowd, I could make up stories if I didn’t already know so much about them. They’ve all been through here before, hundreds of times in one form or another, the same faces only slightly varied, over and over again. Students, soldiers, tourists. Mourners, revelers, loners. Amish, Buddhist, Christian. All walks of life. Due to the weather this time of year, the vagrants aren’t kicked out unless they cause a ruckus or they’re too plainly drunk. There’s a lot more of them now since they added a bus stop out front. No one is on a first name basis anymore. It didn’t used to be like this.

A parade of quarters clunking into the pop machine draws my attention. A young man wearing fatigues and humping a duffle bag shoots me a look I can’t decipher – is he being smug or is it camaraderie? He probably thinks we can trade war stories.

“That place any good?”

He points to a poster for some Italian restaurant chain. I shrug as he drops the duffle bag on the Saltillo tile floor and takes a seat. He slurps his pop. Eyes the room like a combat zone. He can’t be twenty yet.

“You like trains?”

My first memory was of my dad deploying from the Pittsburgh station. It was a cold day like today, with the clouds so thick I thought I could reach up and grab a handful if my dad had held me up. As a teen I would sneak out and come here. I would sit in a corner that no longer exists and watch people move about, only here as a respite between where they’re coming from and where they’re going. That was back when this place was nice. Back before Starbucks and two dollar pops.

I didn’t say this to the guy. Instead, I grunted, “Yep.”

“I can’t stand them.” He continues to eye the crowd, the bundled up homeless, the single mothers, Tim buffing the hallway, the stench so strong my nose burns, the sound so loud the soldier nearly shouts at me. “I’m supposed to be flying to Newark. I’m deploying to Iraq in a couple days. Marines.” He has a knife in his hand, carving a symbol into the soft leather armrest. He holds it up for me to see clearly. “They wouldn’t let me board with this.”
I didn’t know what to say.

“They call is a weapon. I told them, every tool is a weapon. They teach you that.” The knife disappears. “Anyway, I think they got the message but I’d had enough of their disrespect so fuck them, right? I’m taking a train.” He shrugs. Sips his soda. The building goes back to humming.
“And look, now here I am, Buttfuck nowhere, late. Cold as shit. Anyway.”

He grabs his duffle bag and walks away as Rick, the night guard, gravitates to the vending machine. Drops in a handful of change.

“Heyya Pitt. Cold night, huh?” He taps my shoulder, conspiracy like. “Don’t look now but Shakes is back. Shakes the Clown.”

I look where he nods. An old man in a porkpie hat shuffles across the spotless floor.

“I call him that on account of his Parkinson’s.” He pops his soda tab. “Take it easy.”

Shakes – I’ve never known his real name – is a regular. He comes here everyday sometime after midnight to do his ancient Vaudeville act for people who couldn’t care less. Today, after making his rounds across the lobby, he zeroes in on a young woman a few seats down. I know his routine already so I stand to leave and my knees pop in revolt. I glance at the big digital clock on the wall, surprised at how quickly it’s gotten so late. The dead man hasn’t twitched.

The stench of the room is strong and bitter and my head feels cloudy. I head for the doors.
The chill air bites me. I pull my windbreaker close and stand in a corner to keep away from the wind and snow bursts. The woman from earlier sits on a bench with her luggage and stares at the tracks. The desperation in her gaze would break your heart if you let it. Above us, the old Plexiglas awning pitter-patters with sleet.

This platform is almost all that remains from the original station, though it’s scheduled to go when the snow clears. Everything else is remodeled, upgraded, and reconfigured. Everywhere else the homespun Pennsylvania steel is gone. The northeastern brick and mortar is gone. Now it’s all imported stone, smooth and flawless, completely without history or personality. Fluorescent lights everywhere, so bright and spaced just perfectly so there are no shadows anywhere. This used to be a place where you could sit alone in a corner and mind your business. Where you could burn away hours without any effort at all. But now there are no corners, and time has a slow lumbering gait. It didn’t used to be like this.

Inside, people stare at their laptops, their watches, the floor at their feet. Except the dead man, who stares at nothing. With nothing better to do, a few watch Shakes do his song and dance routine.

The doors open and an Amish kid steps out. He’s underdressed but doesn’t look cold. Without the beard I wouldn’t think he’s much older than 15. He joins me in the corner and pulls a joint from a pocket. He lights it with a match and smokes a bit before offering. I take it from his fingers. We say nothing for a while as we pass it back and forth.

“What are you two doing out here?”

The voice startles us, so sudden and unexpected. It’s Rick, the security guard.

The Amish kid smiles. “It smells like shit after Tim’s done buffing. Also, some crazy lady at the ticket counter keeps trying to sell God to me.”

He offers Rick last bit of the joint. Rick waves him off and pulls a pack of Camels from his pocket. “Sorry about that. I already warned her once.” He takes a long, grateful pull.

"Some woman found a bloody tampon jammed up in the toilet paper dispenser. Tim's in there disinfecting the entire room."

The Amish kid laughs as he sucks down the last toke. He flicks the butt across six brand new lanes of track. It used to be simple: one decision leads you to Pittsburgh. The other, Philadelphia. There’s no need for six lanes in Whiteport.

As they chat about the crash in Steamboat Springs, I peek inside. Shakes has moved along. The dead man is still dead. I’m tempted to wave my hand in front of his face, just to check.

I think, how would that be, to go waiting for a train?

Almost as soon as I settle in to my seat the noise peaks again. A monotone voice makes an announcement over the PA, waking me. A child screams, his mother threatens. A commercial for an energy drink demands attention. The mother takes her son by the hand and drags him from the room.

With that, silence again, except for the hum.

I used to bring my son here when he was that young. He loved the trains and the arcade, before it was a coffee shop. He would race up and down the platform as the trains arrived or departed, arms wide like he was about to lift off.

“Say Dottie! When I was on my way over here, I met a fella who said he hadn’t had a bite in weeks—“

Shakes is back, and he’s recruited a young girl as an accomplice.

“Did you bite him?” She asks, cutting in on cue. A few obligatory smiles from the crowd. Even the dead man seems to enjoy the show. I drop two bucks for a soda into his hat and walk away.
The only vacant spot in the room is just below the televisions. I don’t recall what was playing but I stare until my retinas burn, until my eyes are dried from the strain and the chill of the place. All the noise, everywhere. All the unnatural light. Everything drowns out – the movement of people, the dead man’s gaze, time passing. The noise peaks and drops. The hum is the only constant, a subtle vibration throughout this soulless building.

Then the room rattles – so minor a change that most everyone wouldn’t notice anything, but it’s enough to break the trance so I head for the door. A ground fog spreads over the old concrete platform as the rattle swells. A few regulars join me, tickets and luggage in hand as the building rumbles and quakes.

The platform fills with passengers stuck so long indoors. The rain is a slow and steady weeping. Snow spirals and the rails flicker. The air is crisp as it wraps around us, swirling, a harbinger bringing with it a chance for escape.

“Finally,” one of them says with a final, deliberate look at his watch.

I close my eyes as the platform convulses beneath my feet. My lungs shrivel and freeze, empty, burning, my breath stolen by the cold as the train squeals to a violent stop.

A child giggles rushing passed as I allow the push of air to rock me backwards.

The doors slush open. The crowd fights around me in a hurry to get out of the cold and on their way.

The doors close. The train lurches, screeching on the icy tracks.

Then, all is silent. Even the hum has lifted.

My face is warm. I’m allowed to catch my breath.

When I open my eyes the sunlight from the newborn day is blinding as it finds a hole in the cloud cover.

My eyes water, sensitive and unprepared.

The cold air freezes the moisture as it streams my cheeks.

Alone now, I turn toward the doors and notice the dead man is gone.

New Film Stuff!: IRAN on DVD!

2007-03-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

Hey all. After an excessive amount of time and energy, we're nearly finished printing our short film IRAN to DVD. Written and directed by Brett Johnson, it is the story of two US Army soldiers of the newly formed Immigrant Platoon - one Mexican, the other Iranian - who trek through the Iranian desert only to discover they're being used by their platoon leader as patsies to help him escape conviction of war crimes.

It's 25 minutes long, and has naughty language and a couple scenes of violence.

If you're not on the cast or crew and would like to get your hands on a copy, we're charging $10 per DVD (shipping included). Just click the Paypal Link on the right side bar, and post a response to this listing so I know to look for your name. I will try and have the first batch of DVDs in the mail by Monday.

If you're part of the cast and crew and you haven't received your nice, shiny new copy of the film yet, they should be in the mail in a couple of days. Sorry about the wait.

Thanks for everyone who helped on this project.

--alex

New Thing!: Best. Idea. Ever. #3

2007-03-10T20:44:00.000-08:00

Craig's List Marathon: Rent a truck and a trailer, drive around LA and pick up everything listed in the Free section. It doesn't matter what you get, only that you have it, and it was free.

Anyone interested in doing this, let me know. I've got a place to put everything, and we can always donate it to charity or ebay it or something if we get something we don't need. And we can split all the cool shit - today, some guy was giving away a nice pool table, and last week some one gave away a 25 foot boat he no longer needed.

If you do this on your own, I want to see pictures.

New Thing!: Best. Idea. Ever. #2

2007-03-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

Subway Strippers: Keep the LA subway trains running 24 hours a day, and during the normally boring off-hours, get a slew of wanna-be actresses to come down and strip on the hand rail polls.
As long as there's someone to make sure people pay their fares, this is guaranteed profits, my friends.

New Pictures!: Sunset in the Valley Stills

2007-02-24T22:31:00.000-08:00

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New Goodies!: Bumperstickers

2007-02-24T22:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a few more. The first one still needs a photo of Darth Vader choking the shit out of someone.

New Thing!: Best. Idea. Ever. #1

2007-02-24T02:44:00.000-08:00

The Soul Train Channel: a 24 live feed of people freakin to disco's greatest hits. Periodically flash the address on the screen so all the youngins and their frumpy, neurotic mothers know where the party's at. Great for the TiVO crowd!

New Fiction!: REUNION

2007-02-22T04:23:00.000-08:00

"Reunion" is the final chapter of a series of shorts titled Loose Ends that I wrote for a college course sometime between 2000 and 2002.

REUNION

All these miles traveled, all this time spent for nothing.

I stand alone, afloat in this sea of lonely. Empty, with nothing but this smoke and the fire everywhere, consuming everything.

Then, ghostlike, she appears—a solitary beacon dividing the gloom. More than a ghost, she is an angel in waiting.

From across the lawn and through the blown out windows my eyes find her as she’s holed up inside the room, weeping and screaming in vain. Her face is sunset-red from sweat and the effort.

She wears a once wedding-day-white but now dust-gray T adorned with tiny blue flowers, blue jeans shredded at the knees, and tennis shoes with no socks. Her hands are balled into fists at her side and her hair is wild - she is hardly the homecoming queen I remember.

A strap from her shirt has fallen from her shoulder to reveal the curve of her breast. Her eyes are green and wide and staring; frightened, yet bright and fierce, alive. Fighter’s eyes with an until-death gaze.

I see these eyes every time I close my own, haunting all my listless moments. The sun will never set in those eyes, but midnight is upon us and in my last moments I remember why I chose to be here, now.

Her skin is the smoothest of silk reflecting the colors of the fire like a master painter’s portrait, burning red and yellow, orange and gold; every hue imaginable and so many more.

Blazing teardrops mar each cheek. She is a goddess, just as I remember, stolen from my every dream.

Another lifetime since I’ve last dreamt.

My pain, once unbearable, is moot. Nothing matters now outside this moment. This perfect, painless moment.

I cry her name as I race onward. My breath is fire in my throat as I hurdle a toppled, smoldering mess. Through a burning rosebush. Over the railing. Onto the balcony. Into the flames.

Ignorant now, my hands bloodied from thorns, wire, shrapnel, whatever. Tripped up and stumbling I steady myself as I burst through the foyer doors and into the heart of this inferno.

My breath is heavy and forced and only fans the flames faster. I scream again, the same burning breath, but my voice fails as my lungs fill with fire.

I’m burning now, both inside and out.

Tears sting my skin as they clear a passage through the soot on my cheeks. The air is filled with the stench of singed hair. My stomach shudders and does back-flips. I'm nauseated and dizzy.

My skin reddens and blisters from the heat as another of those fucking rocks crackles past my ear and imbeds itself forever into the ground. Forever into our earth. Assaulting our home.

The wooden floor beneath my feet shakes and stops, shakes and stops; an amusement park ride but worse. An earthquake, but worse.

Once vibrant, alive and breathing but now lay dying, our world.
Asthmatic and unnatural, our world.

I feel that I now know what war and hell must be like, and how thankful I am that both are forever finished.

Not hell maybe, but who can do anything but wish in a time like this?

Like there’s ever been a time like this before.

Through the smoke I can see that her face is bruised and swollen. I can see clearly the grit beneath her fingernails, the scars that adorn her arms and legs. I realize that this is the last I will ever see her, and that she is perfect.

Always, forever perfect in my eyes.

She looks up, her eyes bewildered, scared behind the tears. There is no recognition in them of me. Deep inside I hear my heart tear open—a familiar sound, for it’s not the first time she’s done this to me.

That I’ve done this to myself.

Sometimes it’s harder to hold on than to just let go.

Then, blessedly, there’s dawning. Her eyes widen and she knows—oh god, she knows! I don’t have to say another word, even if I could.

The smoke thickens and smears everything charcoal-black, making the air impossible to breathe, making everything so abstract and so far away, but we don’t care. Not anymore.

There’s this fat-frying sizzling sound coming from all around as more of those stones come roaring into the landscape to spray debris everywhere as they end their eons of journeying through the emptiness of space and time and nothing, to land here, to die here in our soil.

All those miles of travel, all that time spent for nothing.

The heat, the smell of burning everything - these plants, this ground, the house. Me. Everything is fire everywhere. All of us ending together.

The distance closes and I can almost feel her, but time has stopped. It’s that dream where you’re being chased and you try to escape but you’re running in slow motion and you can‘t wake to save your life, but you still run because there is nothing else. It’s the only thing left for you to do, so you do.

It’s been years since I‘ve last laid eyes on her. It’s been eternity. But it hasn’t been more than a heartbeat as time doubles back on itself and suddenly we‘re at the site of our graduation party, drinking and laughing and crying together as friends within the warm glow of the bonfire, ready to take on the world and we’re scared shitless, but excited. We’re going somewhere. We are real life in motion. We‘re going to live forever. We are perpetual machines. Immortality is only found only in the young and naive. We’re going to be rich. We’re going to be famous. We are going to rule the world. We will employ drivers and own private jets. We will eat caviar with mother-of-pearl and sip the finest champagne. We will witness evolution from on high. People will wear our clothing and sing our songs and dance as we keep them in fits of laughter or in tears. Whatever we want, we will have. We know this as truth because they need leaders. Because they need saviors. Because everyone has to feel saved. We will soar through the stars and heavens. We will be immortal in the hearts and minds of our fans. Heroes for all ages.

But now we’re all the sudden everyone else—another log in the fire. In a time like this it’s easier to be more frightened of the unknown than of any tangible evil.

Like there’s ever been a time like this before.

The heat all around is unbearable but it doesn’t matter, then or now. We continue on. Life continues as it always has, even when it’s crashing down around your ears.

Somewhere, someone is living for the very first time. This time, it happens to be me.

The pad of our fingers touch and my dreams solidify.
Our hands meet, then clasp. Her slender artistic fingers wrap into my larger, more calloused ones—as perfect a fit as I've always imagined.

Her breath fans the flames. Her heart next to mine as our bodies collide. Our sweat and our essence mingle and I'm in love all over again. I am fourteen years old once again, always and forever now.

Our eyes connect and hold steady as I reveal that I love her.
Crying, she says she knows.

Our lips meet as the world is consumed by light - violet and brilliant and real.

New Nonfiction!: Given the Boot.

2007-02-17T04:19:00.000-08:00

October 24th, 2006

So a few months back I got a ticket for having a busted headlight on my van. I eventually fixed the light, but within days, before I could go to the highway patrol to have them verify this, my transmission blew out. A couple weeks later, my registration was due but I decided not to reregister because I'd be trashing my vehicle come the beginning of December. So, after a while I recieved a letter telling me my license would be revoked on October 15th because of an unpaid ticket (the headlight). The only way I could fight this is by proving my headlight has been fixed, which means driving to the CHP office, which means getting my transmission fixed ($1300), and then getting my car registered (another $100 or so, probably more because it's late). So, for a fucking $10 fix-it ticket, all the sudden I'm $1500 or more in the hole.

Skip ahead to last night. I get off work, thinking all day long that it was Tuesday although I know for a fact that there's Monday Night Football going on. I've got my company's van and I'm going to be staying at a hotel. I decide to move my van across the street, where I thought I wouldn't be getting a ticket because street cleaning happened earlier "today". Remember - I'm thoroughly convinced yesterday was Tuesday. So this morning, I go to drop some shit off in my van before heading to work (unpaid, volunteering my time today, by the way) and I see my van has been booted. I'd recently paid off most my parking tickets but because my registration was up and I was parked illegally (street sweeping on Tuesdays mornings, 8 - 10), they had to throw the boot on. So, if I'd only left my van where it was yesterday, I'd be fine.

Here's the issue -- in order to get the boot off my van, now I have to register the vehicle ($100, maybe more), get the transmission fixed ($1300), pay off the rest of the parking tickets ($300 - $400 after all applicable fines), and pay the boot fee ($140).

And all this stemmed from a $10 fine for a headlamp which I'd already fixed!

I'm probably going to get all my shit out of the van, put it in storage a block away ($120 per month for a 9 foot by 6 foot closet) and figure out how I'm going to get to work from now until the end of the month, and figure out where I'm going to sleep since my van will be towed away Friday morning.

On top of all this, I've got two great career opportunities coming up within the next 48 hours, but both of them involve finishing my script, which means I need the time and the place to write, which I have neither.

Thank god I don't get stressed out, because if I did I'd be a fucking wreck right now...

New Nonfiction!: Not Really a Crisis, More of a Resolution

2007-02-17T04:09:00.000-08:00

March 17, 2006

My toe - the bad one* that gets all bloody and pussy and infected, the one that makes me squirmish - has been getting really bad lately. I can't slip on my socks or shoes without wincing. I can't walk without a limp. I'm spending extraordinary amounts of money on bleach to keep my socks nice and white and clean, not pussy yellow and oozy brown. And I haven't done a whole lot of exercising since I moved to LA, in large part to me being lazy but in part to my foot hurting.

And then I get a call. It's a job in Anchorage where I'm going to be on my feet for 14 hours a day, and in the cold and wet snow, and the other night, while sitting at home watching a movie and drinking a beer, I'm picking at my toe and I rip out a portion of the ingrown toenail that's about the size of an M&M, and I'm amazed, because I know that's just the tip of the iceburg, so to speak.

So I figure I'll call a few podiatrists to see how much it's going to cost, and they all say the same thing - we won't know til we see it, and it'll cost roughly $75 to see it. I say, well, you know what? I'm moving back to Palm Springs temporarily, just long enough to save up my first months rent and my deposit for my share of a house I'm looking into with some friends of mine, so I don't have to worry about rent on the first, so $75 is cool.

I go to the office today, slip off my shoes and jump onto the doctor's chair thingy. The nurse comes in, looks at my toe, makes kind of a sickly face, and informs me the doctor will be in shortly.

She leaves.

The doctor comes in, makes friendly banter, and looks at my toe. I'm seeing the back of his head so I'm not sure what his reaction was, but it felt to me like stunned silence. He stares for too long a time to be good, then turns to me and says, "How longs it been like this, a couple weeks?" I laugh and tell him no, about a year and a half now. I was right - it was stunned silence. Now, somewhat self-conscious, I make a joke about being a procrastinator. He asks how I was referred to him. I say google. He says he's going to have a picture taken of my toe and post it on google under the headline "procrastination."

He tells me we should go about the fixing of my toe in two stage, and immediately I feel he's trying to screw me - two paychecks rather than one. The first step, he says, is to numb the toe, cut back the thick flap of skin that has slowly grown over about one-third of the nail, and then clip out the ingrown toe nail. Then, in a couple weeks, I'll come back and he'll cauterize the root of the portion that keeps growing wrong. I say this is cool, let's get to it.

He does this.

Long story shortish, when it's all done he shows me the size of the nail that he clipped out, that he been growing down into the skin, and its roughly the size of a nickel, and thick and gnarly looking. He says it's a record, easily.

He applies some crap to my toe and gives instructions on how to I should tend to it, and now I'm back at the office watching Candid Camera's Greatest Moments, and mentally preparing for my trip to Alaska.

(*: This is actually the better of the two. My right foot has been much worse for much longer)

New Nonfiction!: Desert Hot Springs - the Nexus of Suck (pt. 2)

2007-02-17T03:58:00.000-08:00

November 1st, 2005

Update: My brother went to the house on Saturday after work and talked with the neighbor, who's an ex-cop and a would-be actor, and he tells Drew (my brother, Andrew), that he caught someone trying to shoulder their way through my front door. He says he got in his truck and chased the kid down, cornered him and held him until the cops came and arrested him. He also mentioned how his own house was burglarized a few months before - his badge and gun taken, along with computers and whatnots - and just earlier in the week, someone had made off with his trailer and a large generator.

So, since I hadn't heard this from the cops (I assumed they would've contacted me, especially after just filing a report), they said they'd get me in contact with the officer who filed the initial report. I wonder what that had anything to do with the kid shouldering his way into my house, but I went along with it. Then, after a couple days of not hearing anything, I called again, and they said if I couldn't come up with the exact date and time the would-be burgler was caught, then they couldn't do anything for me. I said I'm only hearing this information through hearsay, from my brother who learned if from a guy who's lived there only a couple months and who I've only spoken to once, for about 3 minutes (who, as of Nov. 2006 no longer lives there).

Furthermore, I told them how difficult is it to look up my address, since I'd been burgled once and near burgled again, only days later. Further furthermore, the neighbor told my brother that the kid who was arrested had outstanding warrants and I just want to find out if he's the guy who robbed me the first time and, if so, where the fuck are my things?

I was bounced back and forth between some phone numbers, spent a good hour and a half on the line and what's been concluded is that they can't do anything until I get my neighbor's name, address and the exact date and time of the crime, something I can't do until I go to that house again, which I guess will be this weekend but even then I'm not guaranteed to actually talk with me neighbor since he doesn't ever seem to be home on the weekends ever.

So basically, more to come from this stupid fucking legal system here in the sunshiny state of California.

New Nonfiction!: Desert Hot Springs - the Nexus of Suck.

2007-02-17T03:53:00.000-08:00

October 21st, 2005

Hell House Update: Kathleen went to the house while I'm in LA to check my mail and see if it'd been re-burgled. It hasn't. However, it is flooded. The bathtub and toilet are overflowing, and the water is underneath all the floorboards in the hallway and my bedroom. The water, she says, is a brownish yellow color, and quite smelly. Her dad, a professional something or other, is coming down to check it out in the morning and will then call me with his opinion. I'll end up calling the water company and have them shut it off, mostlikely. So now the house, in which I still need to shoot portions of my movie, has been burglarized, robbed, struck by a tornado, shot up by a large caliber gun, and is now flooded.

On a funny* note, there was a helluva storm here last weekend and my brother and I, frustrated with the house and really, the whole city, said we hope that the rains continue and flood out everything, our own mini Katrina in the desert. The rains stopped, but the house flooded. Ironies rock!!

(*: Funny suck, not funny ha ha)

New Nonfiction!: The Van, My Friends, Is Dead.

2007-02-17T03:26:00.000-08:00

September 5th, 2006

I hadn't planned on returning to LA from the Coachella Valley until really early Tuesday, before all the traffic makes the commute impossibly slow and, because of my lack of air conditioning, unbearably - if I leave at 3 am and roll down the window, the air feels just fine - but my buddy Nate called asking about poker, which was intriguing, and now RKDaley's in town(ish) so I thought maybe I'll head out early and see what happens.

What happened was traffic, shuffling us fools between 85 and zero, and when I'm only about 10 miles out of LA I spot smoke puffing from the ass of the van. I go on for a few miles more until I find an exit that looks like there'd be a gas station, but I drove around for a bit anyhow, searching. Stopped, I checked under the hood to find my oil cap mssing, so I write the smoke off as an issue regarding a lack of oil, or something. I'm no mechanic, and, having no way to immediately resolve that situation, I get back on the freeway and continue heading to Hollywood, maybe 6 miles or so away at this point, and I get to the Pepboys auto place that I hate for its awful service but love for its convenient location.

On the road, my van is having a hard time shifting gears. I'm supposed to be heading to my editor's house to take a look at the footage from our latest film, but I know now that my van's not going to make it. In Pepboys I buy an oil cap. I let the van rest a few minutes to see if maybe its just overheated, but still it has trouble shifting into reverse and first gear. I buy transmition fluid and somehow manage to work my van a couple blocks down and into this parking garage off Hollywood that I sometimes find myself sleeping in. It's a great place -- a block from my friend Brett's house (he's the writer/director of said film), and three blocks away from my favorite bar (the Power House, the last real dive bar in LA). Three blocks in the other direction is this awesome coffeeshop I'm sitting at right now, with free wireless internet and hours until 3am. There's a drunk bus, the subway, great eateries and drunken whores within stumbling distance.

With a fantastic view of Hollywood and LA as the backdrop, I pop the hood and pour in some tranny fluid. I start the engine. More smoke billows out the back. The poker game is in an hour. I paid $8 for parking. I put the car into gear but its just not going to happen. I call Nate and he graciously picks me up. I lose the first game but win the second. Afterward, I go to the Baked Potato and meet up with Brett and his friends to see some bands. Many of the were excellent, but the Bud Lights were $5 and the bartender was a bitch. Also, there was nowhere to sit.

Brett and I walk back to Hollywood, from the valley, 4 or so miles up hill at 2 in the morning, drunk. My toes hurt but I feel good regardless. He goes home, and I crawl into my van and try to check my email. Sometimes I get lucky and tap into some kid's wireless, but not tonight. I consider a hotel room with the money I won earlier, but remind myself that I need to make sure I've got enough money to at least pretend to resolve this issue somehow, so I go to bed, instead.

10:00 am. It's hot already. I'm slightly hungover and my feet are killing me. I didn't have an opportunity to brush my teeth the night before so I've got that funky feeling in my mouth. I check the van to see if it works. It starts, it doesn't turn into a fiery ball of my demise when I turn the key, so that's a good sign. But it won't go into reverse. It won't even try. Beneath the van there's fluids everywhere, as though it had a wet dream, or, like one of those dogs that someone beats up and abandons so when it approaches you pitifully for a handout, when you reach down to pet it, it wets itself. That's my van, wetting itself all over the nice concrete of this nice parking garage, under a nice smog gray sky. I've got to piss like no one's business.

I grab my backpack and hoof it over to the coffee joint. I brush my teeth, wipe my ass (sweat, not poop), and I grab an iced coffee, which is something I've never really liked until recently. Coffee flavor is gross, but I'm turning that corner. My tastes are maturing, I suppose. I think I'm going to grow my first pubic hair soon. Dear god, please. Make it soon.

Today, I'm going to finish this thread and figure out how to get to Encino to pick up my paychecks and sort through my options. Then, I'm going to go see a movie(*).

1: Try to get my van out of the parking garage and over to Pepboys a mile down one of the busiest roads in the country, or I can leave it and look into purchasing a month long parking pass and use this as my base of operations while I figure out how to get to work and back, which is difficult because we typically work a week in one area and move to somewhere else entirely.

2: See how long they go without noticing my van sitting here, pissing on the rooftop with some crazy, smelling dirty guy sleeping inside.

Or 3: Call it quits, phone my friend Matt who just moved back to Palm Springs recently, and have him pick me up with my stuff in his truck and head back to Desert Hot Springs where I will be in the heat without a vehicle, in a house with sporatic plumbing - which is pretty much exactly the situation I'm in here, except my house is a little roomier than my van but I don't have wireless internet or a possible job.

New List!: Best Nonfiction Reading

2007-02-16T20:17:00.000-08:00

Here's some great nonfiction books I've read recently and recommend to just about anyone:

* "Into Thin Air", "Into the Wild" and "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer
* "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
* "Rebel Without A Crew" by Robert Rodriquez (for anyone who wants to break into filmmaking and do it on their own terms)
* "Rebels On the Backlot" by Sharon Waxman
* "A Walk Across America" by Peter Jenkins
* "Fast Food Nation" and "Reefer Madness" by Eric Schlosser
* "America: The Book" by John Stewart & the Daily Show staff
* "Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers

New Nonfiction!: Never Take Shit For Granted

2007-02-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

April 19th, 2006

I've learned a couple things this week. One is it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get sick. In fact, it took me no effort at all because I did it in my sleep. I'm not sure how many people die each year from spider bites - not many, probably - but because of the near-sadistic treatment I received from the medical staff at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, if I'd been, say, younger or 100 pounds lighter, I might've died. (Although, because it was Easter, I would've come back to life 3 days later. I think that's the way it works.)

I woke up Sunday morning to a pinching sensation in my abdomen. I thought maybe I'd rolled over onto a thorn or something. After a moment, there was a pain, almost like a metal rod slowly being pushed into my gut, toward my groin. I got up, walked around, checked my email, tried to figure out if this was my imagination or if I was really in pain. My lower back was starting to ache, and my chest was tightening. Breathing was difficult. I assumed it was a black widow, because I've been seeing more and more of them around the house lately, and they've looked hungry.

I've lived in this house on and off for nearly seven years, and yet I had to google the nearest hospital, because I've never been injured badly enough or sick enough to need to go. I don't think I've been to a hospital since I broke my wrist at a track meet my Junior year of high school.

Skipping ahead, I go to the hospital and because I'm unemployed and without health insurance, I'm treated like a junkie looking for a couple pills. The doctor tells me, before even looking at the bite, that he could tell from across the room that I wasn't bit by a black widow. He checks my vital signs, and even though I'm obviously in pain he says I'm fine. I tell him I'm having a hard time breathing. He tells me I'm breathing perfectly. I'm dismissed within two minutes, after waiting in the lobby of the emergency room for over an hour, where the only other injured persons was an 80 year old woman in a wheel chair with her son and a born again Christian who was actively recruiting. The entire time the pain is getting worse.

The doctor (who turned out to be only a physician's assistant, not even a goddamn physician), tells me that I'm probably suffering from anxiety or a panic attack. He tells me if I want, I can go home, or I can wait in the lobby to see if any other symptoms arise. I ask if I can lay down somewhere, and he says I can lay down in the lobby.

Skipping way ahead (I'm saving all the rest of the stuff for the lawyers), I did get a prescription for vicodin and valiume, and I spent the last couple days stashed away in my dirty, congested house, alternatingly sweating and shivering, full-body muscle spasming, with aches and pains in all my muscles and joints, trying to gulp down chicken broth and hold my hand steady enough to sip a glass of water. I slept a lot, but never for more than a couple hours at a time, and I never felt fully rested. The vicodin I was given would knock me out for two or three hours at a time, tops.

The vicodin also made me constipated.

I assume it was the pills, because that's listed as one of the side-effects. No where does WebMD list constipation as a side-effect of a black widow bite. So I stopped taking the pills after the end of the 1st day. I was still in an enormous amout of pain, but it was slowly making it's way towards my extremities, rather than being spread over all of me all at once. My wrist, the bad one that's broken, hurts a lot, but it's secondary to the throbbing in my ankles and feet. I felt like I know what pregnant women go through. But even with the pain, the thought of all this shit gathering inside my gut was enough to lay down the meds. I envisioned Elvis, an artist, a legend, dead on the toilet, 40 pounds of turd in his belly.

I've been drinking lots of water. I didn't have an appetite for the first couple days, but I tried to make myself eat. At the very least, I figured my liquid diet would produce some nasty diarrhea. No such luck. It took me well into Monday afternoon before I let out a single fart, and it was nothing more than expelled air--no discernable smell whatsoever. Normally, this wouldn't be considered a bad thing, but because it's so out of the norm, I thought it might be another side-effect.

Several unsuccessful attempts on the toilet left me shaken--literally and figuratively. I can't sit or stand or lay down in any position for more than a couple minutes before the muscle spasms start up again. And the knowledge that I had to shit but was unable to really was affecting my mental well-being. I was getting depressed.

Also, urinating is very hard when you're body is rockin' like San Fran in 19 aught 6. What is normally a simple thirty-second, second-nature activity would now take two to three minutes of extreme effort and concentration. And then, afterwards, was cleanup. At least Michael J. Fox has assistants.

My brother gave up his bed (which used to be my bed, but he moved back into the house first, so I've got the couch), so I've been off the couch for a couple days. Each day my health is getting a little better. I've got my very own Nurse Cratchet--big shout out to Kathleen--she brought over the chicken broth, even after I told her I wasn't the least bit hungry. Then, after seeing what all this has been doing to my toes (another blog altogether), she demanded we go to the grocery store and get some proper medication.

She made me buy prunes, but they didn't have dried prunes so I had to get jarred, with the pits still in them, and they're absolutely disgusting--they taste fine enough, not as bad as I assumed they'd be, but I absolutely hate gooey and mushy foods, and it was tough to keep them down after I swallowed.

She forced me to eat solid food again, and also brought over a thermometer even though I promised her I was feeling better. She checked my temperature anyhow. It was 101. That was last night, more than two full days since the bite.

So anyway, I'm pleased to announce that gradually there's been more of the normal aroma in my flatulance, and I'm pleased to announce that this morning, more than three whole days after my last bowel movement, I left a little somethin something in the bowl. So it's progress.

Also, I learned that spider bites don't get you super powers.

Today, the hurricane-force winds that have been battering my house for the last couple days were gone, and in their place was a gentle breeze. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky. It was sunny and warm. I did laundry and hung it out on the clothesline, and I made myself a tuna fish sandwich and it was delicious. I spent more than 10 minutes on the internet (not necessarily a good thing, but definitely a return to normalcy). When my brother went to school today, I rode into town with him and laid out on campus and got some sun while watching the cute Japanese girls giggling on the front steps of the Student Council building.

And I came home and took a nice, big dump.

Today was a beautiful day.

New Nonfiction!: I Never Dreamt of a Picket Fence

2007-02-15T08:14:00.000-08:00

(Or, “Confessions of a slack-jawed, mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger”)

September 10th, 2006.

I’m limping across the Gelson’s Market parking lot in the snobby side of Hollywood with a brown paper bag sweating grease from the bottom. A few steps ahead is a guy holding hands with his girlfriend. They’re heading home, I presume, or maybe to a party. In my other hand is a Bukowski biography I picked up five hours ago while wasting away time at Borders.

People are everywhere. Inside houses are gigantic TVs. Leather couches. The occupants sip cocktails, smiling and wearing clothing without visual stains. In my bag is a six-pack of Modelo especial and eight slices of bacon, smoking hot and greasy, bought from a liquor and wine shop across the street. My van is parked a block northeast. Both my large toes are bleeding and pussy. Five paces ahead, the girl’s shirt says, “Just what the doctor ordered”. All I need is a beer and a podiatrist. The bacon was $.75 for two pieces.

My friend Brett and I just a few hours ago received an extended deadline from the Sundance selection committee for a short film we shot a few months back, which we’re scrambling to edit, so I’m feeling pretty okay, but three months from now we’ll find out it wasn’t picked up, and I’ll be bombarded (rightfully so) by actors and crew members wondering where their copy of the movie is.

Today is the first day of the football season. The Bears beat the Packers 26-0. My toes hurt but after I open a beer and kick off my shoes I’ll be fine. I average around eight miles a day walking back and forth across Hollywood, but my shoes weren’t built for distance. Accidentally, they match my wardrobe – tan and Navy blue – but I’m not prone to buying things for looks. Three weeks from now I’ll cave in and buy some basketball shoes, but not before my feet – blistered and soar – revolt against my urge to walk.

As it turns out, the beer is a pop-top, not a twist off, and I don’t have a proper popper – this will become an issue one week and a day from this moment. Right now, I’m sitting at the side of the street, van side door open, relaxed, with people shooting me strange looks as they pass. Mostly good-looking girls with nice breasts beneath trendy t-shirts. They all look familiar, like I should know them from TV or something, but I haven’t owned a television in three years. Maybe God just ran out of faces is all. Anyway, I think they think I’m cool in a mysterious way but probably they just think I’m creepy.

I tell myself creepy is part of my charm.

Four hours from now I’ll be drunken slumbering, dreaming of being older, ten or so years older, sitting with my brother Andrew on a bench overlooking the ocean, reflecting on the past – currently the present. Kaiser is there and happy as he always was, although he's been dead now nearly two years (twelve in dream-years, fourteen in dog years). The sun is warm. Birds make casual, soothing bird sounds. Ten years from now I have a new set of problems. We are casual but guarded, and we don’t discuss any of the bad stuff from nowadays.

I’m not sure what my living condition is in this dream, but tomorrow I’ll be hoping it’s better than it is today, in the future.

*

Andrew carries a bottle top popper on his keychain. He turned 23 seven days ago but he’s wiser than me in many ways, the popper being one. Also, he’s a talented musician, and better looking – close to my height but 70 pounds lighter, slender and with dark, angular features and hair. He’s 120 miles east of here with his girlfriend – Mexican, and with large breasts. Friendly and funny, they’re a good couple but secretly sometimes I worry about their involvement – he’s too young to marry but he’s the youngest child and they’re prone to doing stupid shit.

I worry he’s one of those guys who marries because he’s afraid of being alone.

I suspect I’m one of those guys who’ll be alone because he never married.

And so it goes.

Six hours ago he was at work. Six hours from now, he’ll be working. They’ve got a condo in a gated community with air conditioning and running water, two bedrooms, a parking spot, a leather couch and a TV. A couple of Betas they keep in separate tanks. In three months the Betas will be gone but they’ll have an iguana and a roommate from Alaska. My bacon is fantastic and my van windows are steamed from my breath. I practice breathing through my nose – it doesn’t come naturally given my allergies and my drinking habits. Deep down, I’m hurt anytime anyone is called a mouth-breather. I’m also conscious of my bad posture. Otherwise, my only other fault is I’m way too humble.

The girls walking past are probably heading for the restaurant Birds, or the Bourgeois Pig, a pretentious, overpriced coffee shop where I go every morning to take a piss and to brush my teeth. The Barista is only friendly to me when I buy a drink. Usually I don’t. She makes sure to point this out to the buying patrons at the bar as I leave.

I pop my beer using the van’s open side door, scraping the paint. Probably the Egyptians first came up with the concept of leverage thousands of years ago. Maybe it was the Chinese. I remember reading how we came up with tin cans a decade before we came up with tin can openers. This was a century or more before Ford produced the Aerostar I’m living in. I’m not sure why I’m thinking this but the beer foams up and explodes and saturates my computer. I’ve only made one payment so far so I make sure to wipe it off quickly. I don’t take into account that my fingers are covered in bacon grease. Probably toe infection too, but I don’t like to think about that. They tell me the next step is gangrene but I’m confident I’ll go to the podiatrist before that happens. They tell me it’s worth paying to fix up. They tell me I’ll be better off for it.

I wonder if one can play basketball with only one big toe.

On my return trip to the podiatrist in a couple weeks, he tells me the toes are healing nicely, but I need to soak them in warm water and Epsom salt. I wonder what he’ll say during next week’s visit, three weeks as of this writing, six full months prior to its publishing, when I show up to his office with a huge chunk of one of my toes missing, then I remember I’m already planning on making an excuse to skip out on the return visit, again, just like I did back in March when I saw him for the same problem. Three months from today one toe will be fine, and the other, the nail is beginning to blacken, but the pain and the infection are gone.

*

My van is parked on this street because the transmission is dying and I don’t want to move it for fear of being stranded somewhere more unruly (less ruly?). It’s Sunday night – typically poker night – and the streets aren’t crowded, but I’ve been drunk or drunkish since noon, since just before the Bears game. I tend to write better when drunk. Or if not better, than at least more proliferate.

My waitress was Darleen. She wasn’t good but she was young and cute, so I couldn’t give her much grief - we all start somewhere, at some point. She brought a Bud Light when I ordered Blue Moon, and it took half an hour. Then, she brought the Blue Moon but it had an orange slice in it, which I asked she omit. By the time she got it right the game was virtually over – the Bears were up 10 – 0 and they were looking impressive. It was a promising start to the season that would end suckily at the Super Bowl ©.

Ten hours ago I was in Griffith Park duct taping aluminum foil to my windows. A dozen hours from now, I’ll be awaken by a phone call from my mother. I tell anyone who asks that the foil is to keep the sun and the heat out - which is true enough during the summer but really its so I can have some privacy while I read and type, or when I feel life masturbating. I’ve been meaning to get one of those sunshades for the front window, but in a couple months my van will be towed away, so the window shade would have been a waste of money.

With all the foil in place blotting out the light I can sleep until 10 or 11. It was tough in the summer, all sweaty and unbearable, but in autumn it’s nice. After the bars close it gets almost cold out. Right now it feels like 11 pm. The clock tells me it’s 8:14. I think it’s the crickets screwing me up – normally my internal clock is spot on.

(Warning: Mom, if you’re reading this, the next paragraph might be tough, but I love you and please don’t take it personally.)

My mom has a habit of calling early the mornings after I drink heavily. This goes way back to my freshman year of college. She calls asking for insight into the future, or at least into whatever present chaotic situation she’s created for herself. She believes in psychic premonitions and believes our family is in touch with whatever resource it is psychics tap into. In reality she’s just lonely and insecure, overworked and stressed out. My reservoir of patience I learned from dealing with her. Andrew puts up with her as well, to some extent. My other siblings aren’t as understanding, although I think they recognize that whatever’s eating at her is genetic. Or, they don’t. I can’t say for sure. My sister’s kids, they’re great, but I feel for what they’re going to have to deal with in the coming years.

With the exception of Andrew, I talk to my siblings only a handful of times a year. At least twice a month I feel like a dick for not calling them more, but I justify this by saying the phone works both ways. Stephanie used to call on occasion but it’s been several months. Chris, I get an occasional message on myspace. As far as I can tell, this set up works out well for all involved. Three months from now I’ll have just returned to the desert from Thanksgiving in Utah, a good time had by all. Definitely less bloodshed than the last trip home, anyway.

*

As I write, I wonder about who might read this, or where and when. I don’t feel I’ve ever finished writing anything, there’s always room for editing, for expansion or clarifying. I don’t write as much as I’d like, but probably more than the average nobody writer in LA; I’m very sporadic, impulsive rather than compulsive, and I never get around to sending anything anywhere. Five weeks from now, I’ll be editing this, trying to create some subtle through-line to help the reader along.

Three months on and it isn’t working.

*

This morning, before the Bears game, twenty-four hours before my mother called and interrupted my dream of the future, I awoke horny as all get out. I dreamed of intercoursing a girl I met at the bar – the Powerhouse – earlier in the week. She plays bass in a band and they’ve come to LA to record an album. I replaced sex long ago with masturbation, or by collecting music on my laptop. Instead of fantasizing about how I would ravage this girl should she return my phone call*, I maneuvered my van into Griffith Park and went to work on the windows. I fully expect to jerk off before going to bed. I’m already well into my third Modelo, so add to that the pitchers I downed during the football game and I might just pass out early instead. Also, there’s the off chance that Nate might call me about poker, so I’ll put off pulling it**.

(*: She didn’t but at least I tried.)
(**: I passed out.)

*

Two years and six months ago I had my quarter-life crisis – a tough three months. I rode to Pittsburgh and spent time at my friend Donnie’s place, sleeping on a couch in an apartment he shared with four of his frat buddies. Since then, he’s graduated medical school and moved to Virginia Beach, and just suffered through his first hurricane only a week ago. He said it wasn’t as exciting as he thought it might be. We don’t talk much, but we’ve got competing fantasy football teams, and we’re both obsessed with Lost. Occasionally he’ll email asking suggestions for movies to watch. Six months from now, as I give this one more pass-over before posting it to my blog, I’m days away from giving him a call on his birthday, which he shares with my mother and my favorite author.

I used to hate the feeling of rooting down, kicking up my feet, relaxing. The idea of stagnancy makes me uncomfortable. I get listless. I feel better moving in the wrong direction than not moving anywhere. But since I returned from Pittsburgh I feel what most people would probably describe as normal, as though I’m moving forward at ease, progressing at my own pace, evolving while maintaining the sensibilities that brought me to this city in the first place. But all around me, the people I know, they’re compromising their identities, mistaking loneliness for love, marrying the first person who has sex with them willingly and on a regular basis. So many people forget so quickly what they loved as a child, as a teen, what they swore they were going to become, what they envisioned themselves doing in ten, twenty, thirty years, and they give up before giving themselves a chance to accomplish anything.

Thirty years from now, I’m going to be doing what I said I would do forty years before.

After concluding my mid-twenties breakdown and flying back to California the last twenty-six or so months have been a breeze – working on films, in television. Working towards doing what I came here to do. I’ve made a few friends, done some writing. My screenplays are progressively improving and I’m anxious to meet an agent who’ll recognize my talent and respect my ambitions. But in the last few weeks a seed has been growing, gnawing inside, telling me it might be time for a change of scenery. I’ve never been to Virginia Beach, so maybe I might strike out that way and experience a hurricane of my own. Chicago might be good, too – not only is it the home of the Bears but there’s at least a dozen people I know who’ll let me shower and crash on their couch without it compromising our friendship. More than I can say about LA.

Turns out three months from now I’ll be back down in Palm Springs, working on my house during the day and pretending to write at night. Sometimes sleeping on my bed, sometimes sleeping on my brother’s living room floor. It’s cold there, but at least he has working indoor plumbing.

*

(Warning: Dad, see the above warning.)

Boredom hits often, and it hits hard. I remember being twelve, about to leave for Montana for a couple weeks in August with my dad’s dad, to return days before school starts. My dad was a drunk but not prone to violence. Selfish, but not unkind. Apathetic is the word that fits the man he was back then. A lover of music and the social lives of the bar and golf course. At this point I’d been living with him for a handful of years, but readying to leave on this trip was the first time I remember sharing a hug. I think we both felt awkward – I was struggling to become a teenager; he was struggling to be a father.

We stood in front of his office, he probably inebriated or within a hour of becoming such, me ready to strike out on my first adventure as an adolescent. In an hour my grandfather would be picking me up. With a few minutes to kill, my dad asked what I wanted to do with my life. In second grade I told everyone I wanted to be an ornithologist – mostly, I think, because it was an impressive word for a second grader. But that day, in front of his office, I told my father – a civilian telecommunication specialist working and living on a military proving ground – that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew I couldn’t handle a nine-to-five job. I was maybe 12 or 13 at the time, but that’s pretty close to verbatim.

I can’t handle a nine-to-five job.
I can’t handle a nine-to-five job.
I can’t handle a nine-to-five job.

A dozen years from now and I’ve probably hugged my dad half that many times since. He loves golf and I despise all it represents – elitism, class snobbery, destruction of open land, goofy wardrobe and so forth. We both love the Bears and music, and building things with power tools. We lay on the couch with a book or magazine resting on our laps in the identical way. He’s sober going on four years, since just about the time I really started hitting the bottle. I’m not sure what’s stopping me from calling and telling him I’m proud of his accomplishments - maybe it’s the same thing that stopped him from coming to my track meets or from congratulating me for any job well done. I’m not sure about ESP, but apathy definitely is a family trait. I might still be bitter, but I think he’s done a fine enough job at raising my sister Madison, twelve years my junior.

So: Dad, I’m proud of your work in AA.

At any rate it’s been over a decade since declaring I couldn’t handle a regular job and I’ve gone out of my way to prove that statement. Mostly I think I just hate mornings – one reason why the military was never an option. Waking up to an alarm blaring always puts me in a funk. Also, working in the entertainment industry allows me the opportunity of micro-relationships – six to eight week romances with co-workers that begin when the job begins and ends when the job ends. I’ve never been good at one-night stands – too much effort for such little payoff. (See also: buffalo wings; lobster.)

I’m drawn to this business because of the schedule – an inconsistent schedule equals insomnia, which I suffered through for my first two decades (although now I’m prone to oversleeping), and insomnia sparks my creative side. I long for nights of unrest. An inconsistent schedule keeps me from rusting. These days, I’m able to wake up when I feel like it and sleep when I please. It might not sound like much, but it goes a long way toward keeping boredom at bay, and my writing improves, even if it means I’m not the most pleasant person to be around. I didn’t come here to make friends, I came here to make movies.

*

Looking at old photos I realize I wasn’t as ugly as I thought. That doesn’t stop me from realizing how not ugly I am right now. I think half the reason I want to get in fights is so I have something to blame my face on.

*

I don’t get stressed out. I came to this realization as my van went up in a smoking disaster during rush hour, 85 miles an hour on the freeway, heading to LA, mistaken about what days I’m working this week. I’ve been living on and off inside my vehicle for the last two years (from November ’04 through January ’05, and from May through October ‘06). 56 hours ago I looked in my rearview mirror and saw smoke billowing out the back, and the first thing that popped into my head was, I’m not going to make it to poker tonight. It was a Monday game – pretty rare, but it was a holiday so everyone had the night off.

I’m sure for most people, having their transmission go out is a shitty experience. It was for me, for sure. Also, I don’t have insurance so that was doubly shitty. And since my van doubles as my home, I’ve got a shitload of shitiness going on all around me. But I managed to get it to a semi-safe area – that is to say, not burdened by gangs or high crime, and within close enough proximity to a subway station so as to not feel ill at ease by lack of transportation.

Tuesday, the day after my van blew its load on the freeway, I walked from the Getty Museum to the Nu-Art Theater in Culver City. This wasn’t my intent, to cause the blisters that make me limp today, that will barely begin healing when I chunk off my toe in a skeezy hotel room a week from now, but the bus system in the LA doesn’t have its shit together.

In two days I’m at a bar, feet blistered and numb from surgery, playing shuffleboard and listening to a 90-year-old woman singing beautifully to an enthusiastic crowd of two-dozen. I’m not aware that all the beer I’m drinking will do nothing to drown out the pain of the toes as they come back to life with large portions of the nail dug out, the soft tissue beneath exposed and stuffed with gauze.

*

It’s later. This last Sunday the Bears beat the Lions 34-0 and I’m sure they’ll be playing either Pittsburgh or Indianapolis in the Super Bow if Rex Grossman doesn’t get hurt. I’m staying the night at the cheap hotel off Hollywood & Cujenga, across the street from my favorite coffee shop. The hotel has HBO, ESPN and a porn channel. I’ve jerked off twice already – the first time in more than a week – and tomorrow I’ve got a flight to Kentucky where I’ll hang out with my anxiety-ridden mother and incontinent step-dad for a few days. Today is my first day off in a while and all I want to do is get drunk, but I’ve got to wake at 5:30 to get to the airport. So instead of hitting the Powerhouse I’ve finished off my bottle of vodka (Gran Legacy, the bottle says) and I’ve just now cracked the first beer – another 6 pack of especials. I also have a Fat Tire, which I intend to use to put me over the top. In three and a half hours I will wake with a hangover but I can sleep on the train to the airport and on the plane to Nashville. I will ride in the back of a rental car and drink coffee black. Three and a half hours from now, I’ll be getting my first coffee of the day, on my walk to the bus station. 7-11 coffee has always been my favorite. The same guy who sold me bandages a few hours ago will see me again, a little worried, and will ask if I went to the hospital yet. I have not.

*

In the early summer of a few years ago, either 2000 or 2001, I decided I was going to walk from Salt Lake City to New Orleans. There’s a laundry list of reasons why, but I’ll spare. In the end I drove rather than hiked. Regardless, I managed to get to my destination but I still think of myself as a weak-willed pussy.

My goal was to take however long it took to get there, walking alone across the country and writing my stories, me and Kaiser on the road, dependent on nothing but ourselves, distracted by nothing but nature – working for no one but a slave to nothing.

We drove in a mid-90s Mitsubishi pickup, in July, with no air conditioning. We left the night of the 3rd of July, and some of my fondest memories were acquired during that brief trip – driving through the Rockies, all alone on the freeway as Fourth of July fireworks blew up all around us, Kaiser staring out the window in awe; the sun rising out of the flat black nothingness of the Kansas flats; hanging out with my high school friend Chanda for a week with her college buddies; sleeping in my truck in Metairie, LA for a week, with my dog, broke and wondering what the hell we were going to do; an attempted mugging at butter knife point almost literally the moment we arrived in New Orleans, broke up because Kaiser was an 80 pound pit bull/boxer mix and intimidating as fuck; meeting my brother’s wife and children; and so forth.

I returned home a few months later with my tail between my legs. I hadn’t written a goddamn thing, but I had come up with new stories and a renewed anger toward many of the people who occupied this state, this country and this world. This would and remains to be the source of much of my writing. I always have been and probably always will be somewhat of a misanthrope, although I’ve been accused of being soft and sentimental from time to time.

Skip ahead a couple of years. George Bush steals the presidency. September 11th happens. We’re at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I turn 24 on December 31st, 2003 and fall immediately into that quarter-life crisis. By February I was on a Greyhound aimed for Pittsburgh. Donnie meets me at the terminal and gives me a lift to his place. We acknowledge how I smelled like a homeless person. Four days on a bus will do that to you.

On the bus, unable to sleep for days, sitting between some new-age hippie and a soldier returning from Afghanistan, I read Catcher in the Rye and I wondered why no one gave me that book five years—fuck.

*

I just returned, limping and bloody, from 7-11. The guy I met a few hours from now is still there. He’s freaking out because I’m bleeding everywhere. I paused while typing to go open my last Modelo (reminder: a pop-top). It slipped, shattering on the bathroom floor, going through my bare foot on its way down. I knew it was bad, but couldn’t help but laugh – if only a camera had been there to see this blooper. I need stitches, or some duct tape and a shot of whiskey.

Six weeks from now and I’m happy to add the scar to my collection.

The hotel only accommodates two towels and I already used one as a cum-rag 10 minutes after I arrived, so I use the other to apply pressure to my toe and now I have none left to dry off after my morning hangover shower – these are the things I worry about as the towel fills with more blood than seems necessary.

As I sit outside the 7-11 applying gauze and band-aids, a guy walks up to me, presumably to sell me drugs. He asks if I need anything. I say, probably some stitches, showing off the damage, laughing with the knowledge that this is really going to hurt in the morning but is right now completely without feeling. This guy, this probable drug dealer, he looks like he’s been around the block a time or twice, a scar above his left eye running a few inches back into his shaved skull, he walks away, wordless, freaked out.

Blood covers my fingers and is beneath my nails. Blood is on the sidewalk, and seeps through my shoe. I would thank god that I’m drunk and can’t feel shit, but it was getting drunk that got me here in the first place. Also, I don’t believe in god.

In the hotel, the carpet is polka-dotted with blood. I’m not sure if they’re going to make me pay to clean it or not, but certainly they’re out one towel – I assume they’re use to cleaning jism – a bi-product of having the EXTSY channel on your TV, but blood is a different matter, so I toss it in the trash with my bottles and the broken glass.

Personally, I can’t wait to see the expression on the poor security guard who asks me to take my shoes off at the airport tomorrow. I wish I’d grabbed the Vicodins from my van when I packed my bag four hours ago. The Valium I’m going to give to my mother. Happy fiftieth birthday, seven months and three days late. I got both these prescriptions when I was bit by a black widow on Easter morning. More on this later.

So after shattering the last one I’m down to one beer– the Fat Tire, one of my favorites, which my wise younger brother wisely recommended to me – and I make damn sure to make sure I don’t shatter it when opening. It’s now well after midnight. On TV, some guy with an average size dick is fucking some blonde with fake tits in the ass. I was working on organizing my music and writing when I fucked up my toe. I’m almost ready for bed, but I’m warm to the idea of writing some more.

*

It’s 2:21 and I just can’t stop. This is all happening. Time doubles back on itself as I critique my writing, moments after typing it. I’m uninterested in the porn – bad lighting and audio, mostly, and the chick isn’t very hot. I wonder how much blood one can lose before it becomes dangerous, and I’m feeling more drunk now than a half hour ago. It’s almost time for bed.

My brother has to be to work in 7 hours. My mom is sleeping soundly, or not. Drugged, probably. The sun is rising over Virginia Beach. In 13 hours I’ll be in Nashville. The sun will be setting. I’ll be in need a drink and as I scope for the nearest dive bar my mother will worry about my safety, alone in the Big Big World. I’ll ignore her, telling her I only want a beer and some solitude but nothing I say will convince her I know what I’m doing. I’ll placate her and as soon as she and her husband fall asleep in the room next to mine I’ll try to hook up with a Kentuckian but fail.

*

I was wrong – my hangover never came. However, I fell out of bed hard enough to piss off the neighbors when my cell phone alarm went off. I wish I had the guts to check out my toe, to scope the damage. If only I had a goddamn popper none of this would’ve happened. Four hours after the smash, five minutes after a long, warm shower that will make me late for the bus to the airport which leaves in twenty-two minutes, I tried removing the gauze and band-aid but couldn’t muster up the balls to do it – the pain was excruciating, but also the toe itself felt like it was ready to fall off. It needs stitches both on the inside to keep together whatever meat the toe has, as well as on the outside to pin the gap shut. I wonder if tendon damage is possible. I’m pretty sure a broken bottle – even thrust violently at the floor – isn’t capable of slicing through bone, but twenty-four years and ten months ago an aluminum door sliced through my pinky finger like rice paper, so who knows. I’ll ask my mom when I see her in Nashville, after my flight is delayed two hours in a stop over at Atlanta. She’s a nurse, and would know more about my toe than I would, I think.

*

Ready for bed, I’m going to go ahead and try to wrap things up, and I'm kind of sad I'm not going to get around to including the black widow story.

*

I’ve always been hyper-aware of time. I’m convinced this is the cause of much of my insomnia as a kid. That, and the bad dreams and the overanalyzing of everything, and my parent’s drunken parties Thursdays through Saturday nights. Actually, in retrospect, it’s pretty amazing I got any sleep at all. I was prone to passing out in class. My track coach would throw things at me for falling asleep during his fire and brimstone meetings.

*

My dreams have always been vivid. Four days ago, I was told this is because I rarely fall into the deepest area of sleep, but instead remain in the R.E.M. cycle too long – a side effect of insomnia, I was told. The girl who told me this, she’s normally an idiot and quite irritating, but sometimes she says things that just make sense. This is one of those times.

Most nights I would stare at the clock, bright red and glowing, well past two or three in the morning. Sometimes four, sometimes five. The sun rises. I roll out of bed. Cross the hall to the bathroom for a shower. My vivid dreams, they’re usually about being chased by people I know and like, or know and dislike. Sometimes I’m falling, sometimes it’s all blackness, and me wandering frightened, sometimes I’m trying to run – to save someone, or myself – and I can’t move. Sometimes, I’m in a skyscraper under construction, standing on an exposed I-beam, too afraid to look down, but not able to continue moving forward because there’s someone in my way.

Nowadays, I sometimes dream of basketball and Kaiser and I certainly sleep more than I did 10 years ago, but my dreams haven’t changed all that much.

*

One year, eleven months and ten days ago my dog died trying to get out of the rain – a product of my neglect, something which I’ll never forgive myself and only recently – maybe six months ago – learned to deal with, although I still dream that he’s at home, waiting to greet me when I arrive. Every time I see the neighbor’s dog, I feel like a failure.

I’m sorry, Kaiser.

*

Twelve or so years ago I kicked Chad in the stomach during a tiff in seventh period PE. The sound of his breath forced from his lungs makes me shiver. I hear it when I sleep.

I’m sorry Chad.

*

Seven years and two months ago I packed up and moved to California, eyes wide with ambition. I left Ellen at home to deal with her family, to languish and feel unloved and unwanted, abused. She wanted to be a lawyer; I wanted to scrape the rust from my joints. I’m not sure where she’s at now or what she’s done with her life, but I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry and thought things through.

I’m sorry Ellen.

*

I’m finishing this up exactly where it started – sitting in my van, eating shitty bacon from the liquor store (which coincidentally I’ve only visited twice in my life), drinking warm beer, thinking about my toe, and about time, and about the short film IRAN I produced, which was submitted to Sundance today, on the final day of our extended deadline. My clothing is soaked and smells like rain, but I love that feeling, and that smell. It looks midnight outside, but it’s 6:47 in the afternoon. I’m out of clean clothes but the laundry mat is too far away to walk, so I have to drive, which means I’ve got to leave when there’s no one else on the road. I’m sick and tired of not being able to move this van.

As I’m leaving the coffee shop twenty-two minutes ago, the clouds burst and dump on the city. A million people disappear instantly. The homeless find somewhere else to be. Cars with windshield wipers wiping madly splash past. People behind glass watch the rainfall, but otherwise I’m alone. I’m cold. Eight hours from now in the laundry mat, I’m waiting for my shit to dry. I listen to an HDTV infomercial on constant loop on the radio, and I’m still cold.

*

The rain is stopped. People are out and about. A cute British woman just asked where she can find the leau. The people, they’re happy the rains are gone. Me, I can’t wait for them to return, to wash away the piss, the smog, to take away the stench of this place, to leave me alone, if only for a couple hours.

February 15, 2007.

New Rant!: $2.2B Burning a Hole in My Pocket.

2007-02-14T02:40:00.000-08:00

What would you do if you had $2.2 billion dollars? Would you pay teachers better? Dispense the money back to taxpayers to spend it how they wish? (It's enough for a $6 bacon guacamole burger from Carl's Jr. for every man, woman & child in America!) Maybe you'd fix some potholes or help save an endangered species. How about getting some quality armor for soldiers?

Or...

Would you build a nuclear-powered attack submarine and name it after your home state? (In this case, Texas.)

Me? I’d buy a country, for sure. I’m fairly certain you can find a half-way decent fixer-upper for around a billion. I'd invest the other billion into upgrading it, and put a big goddamn wall around it. Then, I'd bring in a Starbucks. And with the last .2 billion dollars (however much that is) I could, you know, get a couple kegs of PBR and some strippers and invite everyone over to watch reruns of America's Funniest Home Videos.

New List!: Favorite Movies of 2006

2007-02-13T19:04:00.000-08:00

My favorite movie of last year was Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Babel was a close second.

My other favorites, in no particular order:

* The Prestige
* Stranger Than Fiction
* Little Children
* The Departed
* Brick
* Apocalypto
* Little Miss Sunshine
* Borat
* Pan's Labrynth
* Children of Men.

New Film Stuff!: Promo Posters

2007-02-13T18:52:00.000-08:00

Poster for the ellacia Productions short "IRAN", written and directed by Brett Johnson:

And "Sunset in the Valley", written and directed by me:

New Goodies!: Bumperstickers

2007-02-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

Here's some bumpersticker ideas I'm floating around:

More to come.

New Poetry!: STILL LIFE

2007-02-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

Caught amid the masses of a white-collared culling
herded toward the cabinet
filed like so much busywork.

This Cesarean in progress
birthed with a cornflower-blue noose (a seven-fold four-in-hand)
buries his resistance beneath a stack of papers labeled due.

Silent, buttoned-down, productive
a victim of an apathetic generation
and of jealous neighborly competition
watches, waits & wonders "Why
won't you try something new?"

He is aware of the dangers that lurk in the unknown
and in knowing, stays safe
standing still.

His noose tightens, binding
reminding, if not now, when?

Rarely do members of his species venture outside the safety of the cubicle.

For the sake of conversation, the herd gathers
near the bottled-watering hole.

They speak in whispers
but when the lion is away
they roar
with laughter, carefree
swapping instant messages and stories
of sex
and
of sports.

He marks his territory with a 4 inch x 4 inch photo and a brass nameplate.

The bars on his cage are made of glass
to offer a view
of more cages.

He bears neither horns nor wings.
He's aged, but not evolved.
He's scared of his shadow, and of his reflection.

Soft busybody fingers type eighty words-per-minute, fully aware
of the impending disaster.

Unable to conjure the strength to roam the wild,
he's become the target
another hopeless victim
of this white-collared cleansing.