Saturday, February 24, 2007
New Goodies!: Bumperstickers
New Thing!: Best. Idea. Ever. #1
Thursday, February 22, 2007
New Fiction!: 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.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
New Nonfiction!: Given the Boot.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
Friday, February 16, 2007
New List!: Best Nonfiction Reading
* "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
