It's Kind Of Like Frogger, But With The Superego...

Jeannie didn't necessarily want breast implants.  She, like most affluent urbanites  in their mid-twenties, was lumbering towards a ubiquitous sense of symmetry, and her breasts -- analogous to her lack of punctuality or pronounced speaking voice -- were coral in a sea of personal bullet points that needed remedying.  She sipped her Kombucha, not quite assimilated to the briny taste. The condescension dripping southward in mini-armadas all across the bottle transfered to her hands with each woeful gulp, and so on and so forth the keyboard on her laptop computer soon collected it's own mini-oases over non-related letters and numbers.

She didn't mind the research so much, kind of made her feel industrious and on the ball.  But Symmetry: piece of mind, oneness, this pendulous coupling of zen was monstrously expensive, upwards of eight grand of which she had 526 dollars to her name.  Hmm, let's see she thought: sell the record player?  No, tethered too tight to my personal aesthetics.  Get a second job?  Nah, If I'm gone all the time I can't mop up these other solipsistic maladies.  Maybe something homeopathic?  Meditating?  Incantations?  Find a Shaman who specializes in Augmentations of all shapes and sizes (pun sadly not recognized)?  Maybe...

Her cell phone rang, it was an old model, another source of insecurity and consumerist rung on the ladder to enlightenment.  It was her manager from the restaurant.  One of the dishwashers found, while cleaning out all the employees lockers -- a bi-yearly event advertised weeks in advanced, in the name of cleanliness mostly -- a vial of cocaine, half-full.  And Rosco would have kept it for himself if not for the Manger, Eugene, to have fortuitously walked through at that very moment.  Eugene, a born-again something, Jeannie couldn't really recall, was fuming.  She was asked, well, told to resign or face criminal prosecution.  In effect, she was fired.  The money train derailed.

She hit the END button on her shitty phone, tossing it haphazardly against the wall, uncaring of its fate.  And, in a biting lachrymose moment that would haunt her for the next 15 or so days, she took one last look online at the perfect pair of Breasts she'd hoped to make her own, and logged off the internet.

Gone Fishin'

Healthy Book Club will return to it's regularly scheduled programming next Monday, May 4th.  In the subsequent days I shall be moving, and working, and packing and scrambling and lifting heavy things, and trying not to feel too hungover, and lamenting superfluous drug-use at times where I should sort of be an adult.

But -- in a Melrose Place -esque cliffhanger, now that my relocation is happening, content will start getting very interesting, and our little project, these ideas we are cultivating will grow some legs and stroll around the city, yours and mine.  

Be Ready, Be Steady, Hold Your Head To Your Hands

And Breath...

-m

Pilsen Migration and the Fallow Conflagration

Tuesday!  I'm moving, in-city, by Sunday!  My epic search (epic in the way Michael Bay's Armageddon was epic, so not really) has concluded, waving the peripatetic white flag at Racine Ave in Chicago's Pilsen Neighborhood.  Ironically, I grew up in Racine, WI, and while it's tempting to make some sort of tarot-card connect the dots/coming full-circle sort of thing -- I have FAR bigger issues to attend to, like: Do I have my own can-opener?

That's right folks -- it's Scavenger Hunt time.  I've been living with one of my Best Mates for the past year -- riding the Gravy Train in his posh condo -- and my things have, sort of assimilated or just generally disappeared.  So, when you imagine me cultivating new ideas in my fecundate, fallow setting, the duality of being entrenched in an unflagging internal debate/inventory over functionality, quality of life VS complete minimal living will be a constant, but it's a good thing, really.  It's a fairly malleable space I can mold into one giant office -- a Healthy Book Club Headquarters if you will, and if that's a little too Fight Club for you I'll spare you the details on the uniforms.

There's a spare bedroom, and, if I'm so inclined I could rent said space out: on the cheap!  Maybe I could auction it off on the Blog here: an international essay contest as to why you feel you'd make the best roommate: prettier, smell nicer, constant flow of drugs, you like all the same coffee/tea/fine groceries i do, we can read to each other at night -- anything!

In other news, per blog-inspiration, my Pirates VS Drug Lords West Side Story redux will be staged @ Second City in our show come August: Southwest Side Story.  Thank you current events!

So you may infer I'm lacking in ideas/focus/general shit to talk about today.  Can't someone else entertain you?  Yes!  Check out some friends' blogs:

Bad Sandwich Chronicles

Car Accident Observation Deck

Also friends -- I'm in no way Blog Savvy w/r/t other cool blogs out there, so if you've got something you deem as The Bees Knees please send it my way.

xoxoxoxox

Your Own Montage, Your Own Swine Pandemic. How Will You Escape, What Catalyst Will Set It?

Happy Monday, and Happy Last Week Of April...

Today we're going to focus once again on Character w/r/t narrative, but tie-in, seamlessly a common thread, an omnipresent plot-point: The Turn Upwards.  We could also label this: Dude gets his/her shit together.  If we, to be gloriously ahead of the curve, were to make a film over something as inglorious as the Swine Flu -- The Turn Upwards could be, hypothetically, the time, say 70% through the story, where our Protagonist team of Scientists bands together, flexing their cortical might to once and for all banish this vile villainous virus to bacteria heaven.  But, the proper or better example is in Character-Driven stories where the hero figures it out and works towards the Synthesis of what's missing in his/her life.  Hence: The Montage.  Oh the feeling of Hey! the worst is over and now it's time to kick this Conflict's Ass and realize my potential! is always a joy for the viewer, for the reader, because we ALL in some facet are trekking through the maelstrom of some romantic goal, digging ourselves out of a hole, turning our lurid surroundings into gold.  Even if we aren't there yet, a tiny sect in our consciousness is satiated watching another character, fictional or otherwise, fight the Good Fight.

But, getting all meta-fictional on you, these individualized Mecca's, these compartmentalized Sojourns beg some interesting questions themselves:  At what point do we grow up?  What moves us to buckle down and embrace self-actualization?  Does nepotism or an overtly-coddling family mar, or invigorate one's ability to find such self-success? 

And perhaps the most vexing: When does my Own Little Montage commence?

Why do so many turn the Key only to hear the frightening chortle of the Engine Stall?  Is this happening to you, at this very moment?  Or, unsheathing your sword have you bested this process, felled your psychic enemy to experience the Promise of Your Premise?  While chatting with a friend late last night I was lamenting (in hilarious self-deprecatory fashion) my abjectly abysmal Time Management -- which of course permeates me work, keeps me from things, from Apartment Hunting to other, far greater Screenplays/Projects/Opportunities -- and ultimately this boils down to you.  Because, with my own effete Key igniting my Engine I'm unable to reach out to you, to share the Entertainment/Affirmation I've to offer.  Nobody wins in this situation.  And if you think I'm being self-lauding, patting my future accomplishments on the ole back: this shit Weighs on me.  Which brings to my question: is it really Time Management?  Or, is it something darker, more subversive.  Do we, subconsciously, seek the Damage Energy to light our creative fires?  I can't do this anymore.  I'm refuting all that stands in my way.  Now what?  

Where do you measure success?  Am I making you uncomfortable?

xoxox

-m

An Eviction Notice For Your New Lease On Life

Have there been too many I should have's orbiting around this week?  Do you find yourself keeping an oversized rubber mallet handy to bludgeon the Listless Gopher -- intermittently emerging to cough up spores of wavering regret into your psychic atmosphere.

Would you  say, at least entertain, a precognition of admittance, that you've noticed a stark, subversive, wraith-like brevity to your passion.  Are you sleeping well?  Are you sleeping alone?  Do you sleep well with your current partner, lover, husband, wife?  Is there a ubiquitous solution to the stuck arm while cuddling with your loved one?  Even in the throes of sleep, do you find yourselves reconfiguring with ease, a cohesive unit?  While walking today, outside, in public, will a smile erect itself across your visage, prompting the curiosity of passers-by?

Perhaps the armadas of self-doubt have sailed superfluously for too long?  And if you're expecting a metaphor analogous to docking said ship why don't we aim higher and simply sink the fucker?  Let's make it past-tense, tense-no-more, more or less a reset button, a bailout, time to bribe your local notary public and shred your new lease on life: because, trapped underneath your unpaid bills and sale papers, the Alderman's latest witch-hunt and the poor soul inquiring if you have, in fact, seen him or her? -- there's better documentation to carry yourself in accordance to.  Amidst the enervating errands and obligations, you'll find, even in sporadic bursts of light, a tangible passion, a plausible beauty.  And you'll want - - so very badly -- to hold on to it, to exploit it, to explore it.  So Magellan: in your travels today I'm going to humbly ask you have a one on one with your trusted cartographer and put a moratorium on his trajectory, because brother: it ain't workin'.

Running Errands, Running Gags

There I was -- 9:30 a.m. wearing a deep v-neck, royal blue short-shorts, and rubber gloves.  I was cleaning.  I'm a good housewife.  My ex-girlfriend came back from NYC this afternoon and, being in the top 1 percentile of house-sitters this city has to offer, had to make the place sparkle.   I sort of forgot to change the cat litter for most of the week, because while we were dating, she manned the Kitty-Lavatory-Station.  Needless to say it wasn't pretty.  Actually, supplanting beauty or lack thereof was the the full-on litter transfer.  By the end of it I was choking on Clay Litter Fumes, in tandem with the pungent vinegar-knives of cat piss repeatedly stabbing me in the eye.

Slow news day in Healthy Book Club you ask?  Not so much, just beat-down from the myriad of errands appearing and reappearing: it's really cutting down on my looking at myself in the mirror time.  I do, in fact, look at myself in the mirror far too much.  I have a psychological issue that defies Narcissism.

I'm actually stealing an idea -- from myself -- and writing a song about Mexican Drug Lords battling Somali Pirates in the vein of West Side Story.  Primarily, the music focuses on Jet's Song and America.  Are there Zombies?  Of course there are!

I'm afraid we're out of time: I have a hair appointment @ 2.  Soon I'll be astride Blue Velvet, burning up the Chicago streets, hopefully not getting hit by open car doors post-park.  The taste of hummus in my mouth has overstayed its welcome.

xoxox,

m

The Downward Slope

" What the fuck is his deal?"  He didn't pinpoint who exactly said it, but it was real, out there, in the open.  Tate: black hooded-sweatshirt, ill-fitting derby har, was bending over, at the waist to reveal: faded carpenter pants, in tandem with belt, hugging the downward slope of his buttocks.  Like a large-breasted woman tying a belt over her dress, directly under her, and accentuating, her pendulous twosome, only reversed.  He had flashed paisley boxer-briefs -- whose claim was staked by GAP -- to the entirety of the coffee shop, all for a copy of the Red Eye.  None of the patrons would ever be the same again -- for at least the next ten minutes or so.

Take crinkled his chapped lips into something of a smile and ambulated out the front entrance, the pre-pubescent spring air greeting him with a hue of passivity.  He didn't dress like this normally, or have any similar proclivities to such sartorial horror.  Tate was an actor.  If you'd lend him your ears he may tell you he was the 7th to maybe like the 11th best actor in the Greater Chicago Area -- maybe.  A few weeks back he'd earned the role of Hitman Hank in Take The Alleyway To My Heart: an indie-film being shot in Printers Row over the month of May.  Per steadfast ritual of living the role before Principal Photography, Tate had been walkin' in Hank's Shoes for nearly ten days, filming to commence in the coming weekend.  There was, it would soon be discovered, a little snafu: Tate had been called by mistake.  He hadn't won the role.  Thanks to the shoddy paperwork of a possibly too-stoned film student intern, his information was jumbled with the real (and despite an unctuous explanation/groveling from the Director, never to be) Hitman Hank, up-and-coming actor Maximus Tellery Johansson: a Scandinavian alpha-male type still well under 30.

Tragically -- at least in a bridge-burning-in-the-neighborhoods-you-hang-out-in social-sense -- Tate had bemused or outright offended a handful of people while purportedly in-character, as was Hank's true nature, an incorrigibly callous fellow.  Hitman Hank was a caucasian hip-hop phenom, propelled by a string of now-legendary, mix-tapes that circulated the NYC underground until he was , serendipitously, discovered by prolific producer Thunderhawk "bizzy ben" Benson.  He had been rapping, for one one in particular, but in very dramatic fashion, on the basketball court of a city park in Chicago's South Side.  Rumor has it there was a pretty heated game of 2-on-2 going taking place simultaneously, but that theory has been challenged before....But, long story short: Hank was an inveterate eBay addict and, in a pronounced and perhaps too formulaic fall from grace, found himself in trouble with the Wrong People following an auction for an $11,000 bundle of authentic Samurai Swords he had hoped to sell, but hadn't the cash for in the first place.  He refers to it as his Rapper fail-safe Insurance Plan to love interest Black Cherry Starling in one of the more poignant scenes in the script. 

The story takes kind of a science fiction-esque turn halfway through, some scenes told entirely in subtitles of binary code; at its crest, Hank has to mine a great deal of Chromium so he can travel back in time to thwart himself betting on the auction.  But it was never to be, at least for Tate.