If you're a skateboarder over the age of 30 and you don't have a video game or a show on MTV, I'm judging you, and you've got a big hole to dig yourself out of for me to like you.
I want to start a website called etsy-wetsy.com. It will be the result of me and my rabbit going to craft fairs and peeing on kitchy, handmade items.
If you're a girl walking into my bedroom and you see one side of the bed is piled with clothes, magazines, drawings, pamphlets, empty shopping bags and newspapers, I didn't expect you to be here.
My life's Catch-22 is that I am good at everything but monotonous work, and monotonous work seems to be an essential part of the American Dream. Of course, this is what the American Dream looks like, so screw it:
redeemed by the cardiologist
I am seriously considering getting an online personal assistant from India or Bangladesh or whatever's cheapest because I become paralyzed by the most mundane, simple, routine tasks. This includes mailing a letter and writing a check. Or "paying rent."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really think it sucks that every time someone returns a pair of Tom's to the shoe store, they take a pair back from a needy child.
That being said, what a dream job.
I made this drawing. I call it "Jack Hannah-bal Lechter Goes To Australia." I probably need to color it in to show Jack's khaki shirt and koala blood.
They say cell phones cause brain cancer, but I feel like I'm safe since I pretty much text only. But then I realized I'm walking around with a $90-per-month asbestos cannon sitting in my pocket just two inches from my scrotum.
I overheard the following statement recently: "That's what sucks about autotune — it takes no talent."
I recently saw the best license plate I've ever seen in person, and risked death to get this photo:
the search continues
I think the term "runner's high" is nonsense, but I like to think of a "walker's high" as old people pushing their carts around stoned on pain meds.
I think abstinence is stupid. Who wants to sit around hearing someone brag about being an experienced virgin?
I not-so-secretly think it's okay to be pretentious (or at least educated) about almost everything — clothes, food, architecture, design, music, art, literature — but you should also understand that I wear my underwear and t-shirts until they literally disintegrate.
In my two years in New York, I have witnessed some weird stuff: two people getting urinated upon by bums, two fat old people make out — like, seriously go after it — in a thunderstorm, getting drenched all the way down to the control briefs and massive bra, heard countless stories of masturbating hobos on the subway flashing their crusty weiners at girls I know, but nothing could have prepared me for watching a woman hike her skirt and diarrhea in the street in broad daylight. Actually, that isn't true. I was prepared — I had my camera phone ready:
you see, the socks are protecting the sandals from splashback
I think this is all I have for today. I've been sort of manic-depressive lately over the completion of tasks and looking toward the next one, and to completing one thing before moving on to the next. I need to believe that I am, indeed, doing what I should be, even when sometimes it's very stressful and seems to be leading nowhere. And sometimes I just need to relax, and not be some damn high strung.
My good friend sent a text yesterday (that likely blasted my balls chock-full of cell phone radiation) telling me I'd been slacking on this blog, which gave me a little motivation to write a few things down that have been stuck in my head. Sorry they're all crazy...
i don't know how to act — in real or fake situations
The show is called "My Life As Liz" and is (I guess) a reality show(?) and this was undoubtedly the worst episode because it featured "real people" like me who weren't alerted that they wouldn't have a trailer, go to makeup and would have to brush their teeth/chest hair/wear a clean shirt/underwear/deodorant on their own the day of the shoot.
Surprisingly the crew and that girl Liz were very nice, sociable people. Usually production crews seem rife with incredible wastes of space possessing incomprehensible god complexes and feelings of superiority: People that were bullied enough in high school to become traffic cops but lacking the body type to pass a police physical exam. Not these guys though, they were alright.
Back to my fame/shame, I know that face I'm making: They made me turn off my music so that they could film the "dialogue" and so I had to sit in boredom and silence for about an hour. I was forced into Marlee Matlin moments. But there was some entertainment in the form of a drunk, dapper homeless Polish man who refused to get off the bench outside once he found out cameras would be rolling. This guy was hilarious, and I wish I had a photo of him. I'd still recognize him to this day and would love to make him a Homeless Trading Card, but I assume he's left Greenpoint and gone on to at least some stardom like that Ted Williams guy did before relapsing. This hobo hit on every production girl with a clipboard in drunken, slurred, but very charming Polish-English-Smirnoff dialect, a box of Hortex-brand beet juice and vodka in one hand and a plastic bag filled with various "possessions" in the other. (If you don't know, Hortex is this Polish brand of strange fruit juice combinations that are in every store in Greenpoint. Please visit the website if you are a fan of insanity, Joanna Newsom and bad MIDI rip-off instrumentation, because that is apparently what entices a bunch of blond people to mix plum-cabbage nectar and muskrat sweat with vodka.)
something creepy about the packaging
For the record, the Hortex "Leon" kids' juice boxes are pretty good; I like the one that's like banana, pineapple and orange liquid. Anywhooo, this guy was wearing a tan seersucker blazer, a fedora and had a lovely singing voice, which he showcased by stepping in front of the cameras and belting out some Polish showtune every time they started to film. And they filmed, A LOT, for a 2 minute clip. This show is less like the freeforall MTZ meme — which is feed people grain alcohol and see what happens, or, in the case of Teen Moms, see what happens after that happens — and more like a real, fake show. So it wasn't scripted, per se, but it wasn't exactly like following someone around with a camera.
Whatever. Everyone knows this already. I just wanted to tell the internet how grumpy I am, which is why I'm sitting inside in sweatpants, writing this and listening to '90s West Coast rap albums while the sun is shining outside on the nicest day in weeks. I gotztago get some vitamin D, for "DeezNutz", for sunshine, for NateDogg. R.I.P. N-A-T-E.
Some tributes:
Deez Nutz:
DJ E-Z DIK, One of my favorite songs of all time, and great hooks from NateDogg:
Boerum Hill might be the yuppiest neighborhood in Brooklyn, and it's where I'd probably live if I wanted to live in the West Village or SoHo but had read the gospel in Time Out NY that said Brooklyn is better. Or if I was richer/older/fatter/had a downtown marketing job/unlimited metro card/home office full of taxidermy pheasants/wore Oliver Peoples' horn-rims/wrote an antique watch blog/raised heirloom-breed chickens in the backyard.
windows to my soul
That being said, I am a self-loathing would-be yuppie with moths in my pockets and holes in my socks. But as I was eating at one of my favorite restaurants in the city, a whiskey bar, I heard an oddly rotund thirty-something ex-frat bro sitting next to us look at his smartphone and exclaim, "My Tweets are down." His was one of those statements in which very few words are able to convey very many ideas. It was a skillful use of language and I commend him for it, even though it was a brainless accident from a guy who probably misuses 'your' and 'you're.' It was like spoken micro fiction at its finest. Ernest Hemingway once wrote a piece of micro fiction in six words: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." If you think about those words you'll realize just how much emotion and meaning is hidden in a powerfully short, simple statement. You immediately recognize the situation, but its gravity lies in the unanswered questions it elicits.
That's how I felt when I heard, "My Tweets are down." In an instant, I knew so much about the speaker but there still remained unanswered questions that I could not ask. It's amazing to me that a person in a social situation — sitting with "friends" eating a late, leisurely Saturday lunch — would even have the chance to notice such a trivial thing as how many inane Tweets he'd posted. Do people really keep a close eye on that shit? Were his friends so boring that his Twitter account, where he was probably alerting the six people who follow him (3 of which were at the table) that he was "totez pounding pork nuggz and slamming bourbon this afternoon who's in? #longwknd #ballerbrobrunch" was more important than his surroundings? I would think the people you're with should be more of a priority than your Twitter account, but maybe I'm reading too much into this. All I know is that it made me want to leave.
(Wah! My life is so rough I have to listen to losers at the next table WAH! Wah! My hammock blew off my patio because the wind was blowing so hard now I have to go get it out of my neighbor's tree WAH! I got a piece of hair in my mouth today at the same time I ate a piece of gum someone gave me and I couldn't get it out of the gum so I just had to chew a free piece of hairy gum on the subway WAH! Someone gave me an unlimited metro card today but when I went to use it I found out it was expired WAH! (All true stories, BTW. Also, double parentheses? YouTube sensation in the making?) Anyway, I guess my life is okay if these are my problems and I always can choose to do something or go somewhere else. Wah.)
So I did leave. I had to get back home so I could feed Stephanie's chinchilla.
(Really, feed her chinchilla. She's out of town. That isn't a euphemism.)
So, @WallStLgnd99 @CharNo4, here are some words from actual smart people (and 1 crazy person):
I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it down. – Patti Smith, "Just Kids"
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. – Francois Auguste Rene Chateaubriand
You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist. – Bob Dylan
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press On" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. – Calvin Coolidge (thanks C.A.)
I got a job at Gray Line Tours for one reason only: To meet and seduce women. It certainly isn't for the money. – Timothy "Speed" Levitch, "The Cruise"
All of these quotes hold special significance to me in rationalizing my actions in life. Words like these fortify my resolve that I'm on the right path even when I take a few detours.
Speaking of, here's a little Speed Levitch teaser... you should check out "The Cruise" if you haven't seen it. It's an hour and fifteen minutes of this guy talking:
Should I wrap up this yuppie-ass, whiny, non-nonsensical, wannabe highbrow-meets-lowbrow, Hemingway and Dylan-quoting, documentary-watching post with a picture of a designer rabbit? Probably. No, definitely.
