(The New) Black Friday

It's over!  I've slain another Thanksgiving--though it was trying at times.  And it's pretty apparent that I'm becoming a bona fide weirdo when the Holidays strike.  Plans fell through with my ex, because, well, she's my ex, and after that I didn't feel like participating.  And the fucked up reality is: it was far more trying not to play along.  I don't mean some emotional fuck-fest where I required some familial company or anything, but my roommate had her family over (for 12 hours; I can't do anything for 12 hours, much less have a handful of company in my small condo) and despite my efforts to vacate, they remained, for a long, long time.  I took off, a rebel without a crew, to get stoned and see some films (Mlk, and Slumdog Millionaire), had some sushi, snuck a large delirium Noel in the theater--and they remained.  I return, 7 hours after they had just arrived, and they were AT the fucking dinner table.  This is certainly their right, but in my sociopathic need to not participate I'm relegated to weirdo in his room for like another five hours before they left.  Along the way I flaked on about 4-5 other offers, and I should've taken one.  I'm broke, had to work all day wednesday, didn't have time to shop or cook really.

It was so much more of an effort to not play.  But I remain firm.

There were others: there's this slob that comes into my restaurant, the bar really, this is a frightening 40-something restaurant-lifer who lives with his parents in the burbs (i told you it was scary) and on wednesday, when everyone repeatedly asks, "Hey!  What are you doing tomorrow?" his reply was, "to be as invisible as possible."  This makes me sure I'm doing something right.  Now don't get me wrong--if you're going to a friend's family, girlfriend/boyfriend, whatever--it's one thing to be a guest and mingle with folks you may never see (or want to see) again, but to see you're family and have that angst-laden of a response, if you're goddamn forties?  Buddy!  I have some news for you: don't fucking go!  Don't do it!  No one has a gun to your head, imploring you, violently, to play along.  To think, someone at this age, doesn't have the wherewithal to plan an alternate route of escape exposes the dichotomy of people who do this shit year after year.  

Be with friends, hell anyone, where you can muster the least bit of credulity, some venue offering tangible camaraderie and brotherhood, and if it causes those numbers, those gatherings to shrink: GREAT!

Quality over Quantity.  And if it appears--I know it does--that I'm being sanctimonious I feel I've the right to be, because this shit is waggled in front of me, brandished like a battle-ax in a slew of questions from friends, co-workers, strangers, and for such a hot commodity it seems like a vast majority of people are missing the point.

Whew!  Yeah, but in much more life-affirming issues I got my first pair of adult snow boots!  They're from Hunter, a UK based outfit, and they slide all the way to my knee, waterproof and all.  Bring on the snow, I'm totally ready.  When I see that first accumulation I'm going to let out a mighty battle cry and stuff my skinny jeans inside.

In the news: Terrorist attacks have devastated Mumbai, India.  Ironically I just saw Slumdog Millionaire, and a peaceful Mumbai, yesterday.  So far 125+ people have been killed...

Apartment Hunting has been dormant most of the week, to resume over the weekend.  I see these gaps and gaping holes in my attentiveness to this project and others like it, and I can't really answer 'why?', the days just pile up.  It's all very boring really.

Redux and Heart-Thrusts

Apartment Hunting made some strides yesterday, strides including rethinking a great deal of the plot, which, given the lull on this piece, is only natural.  Some of the key scenes, after all this time, aren't really necessary anymore to be honest, which opened up the plot in a whole new way.  The restaurant where I work (NAHA) is going to be closed the first week of January (take that financial freedom!) so my general goal is still very doable.

BOOKS: I finished A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and I have to say, he impressed me, I sort of rebelled against reading this book (I don't remember why), but I feel it had something to do with lumping him in with Nick Hornby...?  I started coming back when he (eggers) wrote a fantastic intro to the 10th anniversary edition of Infinite Jest...and how can I fault someone who loves DFW as much as I?  So today, it begins, gauntlet is being thrown and I'm starting Gravity's Rainbow from Thomas Pynchon.  I've yet to read any of his works, but grabbed GR, along with The Recognitions from William Gaddis in an attempt to connect with DFW's predecessors.  

I'm going to see Synecdoche, New York tonight, and while I'm inexorably linked to anything Kaufman does, I'm hoping this doesn't breach the self-indulgent vibe I'm getting from the film.

Spacy, jesus christ I'm spaced-out, a xanax hangover...not fun.

-m

Post Hair-Sex

Weekend(s):

This past Saturday I--around 1p.m.-- discovered there was a cattle call audition @ Lily's Talent Agency.  This entails stuffing whatever advertised demographic they need into their office for a quick one-line, meet and headshot dropping off process that is, in fact, much like herding cattle--opportunistic, self-absorbed, wistful little cattle.  On this particular day, they need On-Camera kids and adults.  So I'm there, gussied up and gleaming, tethered between a flock of weather-worn mothers whoring their children for a crack at some kind stardom; a fabled, better life.  But it's really fucking funny: there's cranky mothers; there's hyperactive and misbehaving, miscreant little ninnies; we have twenty-something employees of the agency (almost exclusively female) cordially guiding us from point A to point B over there to point--I felt they were especially nice to me; there's one lines to memorize!  One-liners are the crux of product placement commercials i.e., "I ate Quaker Outs for 30 days--took my cholesterol down 10 points!  QUAKER OATS, warms your body, and soul."

I'm finally upstairs, towards the end of this I-really-need-an-agent-but-am-too-lazy-to-mail-shit Sojourn, I have 2(!) of these one-liner deals memorized.  There's been patience--Gandhi-like Patience towards this mother and her 2 offspring--3 and 5 respectively--who in union harness this uncanny ability to disrupt yet intrigue everyone around them.  This woman, around my age, maybe a little older, early 30's or something, she's engaged in this unyielding, imminent threat of her kids just going completely ape-shit, and there's no progress, no solution, no ultimatum, because-- She's having them memorize one-lines.  Of course.  That's why they're present, but these ones...these compact, little Bastions of the American Dream, they'd hear keys in the corner and most likely combust, poof!, up in flames from excitement.  Overstimulation.

But we're near.  I've placed more emphasis on an American Express jingle I feel better suits calculated, distinct affect of my voice, of certain pronunciations that would obviously place me in the upper-crust of anyone who can even form words or syllables, propelling me to exclusive representation.

I fuck it up.  Yeah...they were so memorized once I started delivering the line, I felt a shard of cloudiness and panicked; I was shocked by my memory failing me.  I still finished the line, and this was in the office, the finishing-line, in front of 2 ladies and 2 guys, both gay I believe, and, 'Thanks!' was the feedback.  I grabbed my bag in the adjacent room, my jacket, and trotted downstairs, laughing, more than likely still, representing, myself.

Saturday evening there was a party.  People dancing--many not to the music, by that I mean out-of-sync; people watching me spew these political harangues on the "Intellectual Divide in this country,"; one party-goer carried an oppressive odor about him.

Sunday there was a medley of detoxification.  There was thai food and tim spent laughing, lying supine.

Now I'm weighing out the relationships of Thomas and Jane, the two main characters in Apartment Hunting.  While the overall calamity remains in tact (you'll have to wait to read what said calamity is) the real question, even in a dark-comedy, how emotional do we want to get?  It's a narrative tug-of-war because the relatable aspects people cling to will, in ways, bleed into the absurdist comedic elements too.  There is a balance.  But there is a need to keep it primal, especially in a short film, less time to meander.  Lessons learned find themselves a smidge more palpable in these situations as well.  Thomas' humanity would reverberate louder against the sillier humor too, I hope. 

Made cous-cous combined with oatmeal for  breakfast; in the end, it was dry and unseasoned.

Welcome Back!

So welcome back...and it's been nearly a month!  The world has changed, we've moved forward in every facet imaginable and elected Barack Obama President, well President-Elect at least.  It feels so good saying that.  The first day after the election, there was a ubiquitous weight-off-our-chests elation permeating the city of Chicago and it's been electric every since--save the for the whole financial crisis thing, which has even trickled down to my silly restaurant job.

We've arrived at the Holidays and coming off of an unexpected and gut-wrenching break-up I'm actually, factually, breach-of-contractually not depressed out of my skull--scurrying to the nearest ledge, causing Fire Departments to rumble.  This is refreshing.  I totally recommend it.

But to pull a corny line from The Matrix 'I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end; I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.'  So, in our Grand Reopening here at Healthy Book Club everything is priced to sell:

- The script for Apartment Hunting is back in the lab and will be finished by the year's end.

- A website of the same Moniker is in the incipient stages as well.

As promised, once Apartment Hunting gets back in the lab you'll get a detailed, step-by-step of the whole racket.  I now have 3 feature-length ideas in the works so there's a lot riding on this.

Focus on the process...

Movies: I just had the intense, hey-I-found-20-dollars-in-an-old-jacket! pleasure of seeing Let The Right One In.  In a nutshell this is an indie flick from Sweden where 2 adolescents find each other in a dreary suburb of Stockholm .  The hook: one of them (Eli, the girl) is a vampire.  This deftly and with a subtle sweetness missing from so many movies today, turns the whole Vampire Genre on its head and were all better off for it.  There's no origin stories, villains, epic prophecies etc., rather a simple film on loneliness, morality and companionship.  The performances--primarily the kids--are pitch-perfect, and in their quiet embrace all pretensions of the plot make sense and work for the general purpose of the story.  I needed to be inspired, to focus on film once again.

In other news: BBC has just reported that Somali Pirates have been paid more than $150 million in ransom per the Kenyan Foreign Ministry.  I'm very curious how modern-day Pirating plays out: are there theatrics?  Are there costumes?  Do they have some sort of Pirate Lingo?  A logo?  Do people even take them seriously at first glance?

Obama is efficiently putting his Cabinet together, and the advent of Hillary Clinton as Madame Secretary of State looks like a go. I'm very pleased with this.  I just hope the entire economy hasn't been flushed down the toilet by the time he gets in office.  I may be giving copies of Apartment Hunting away on street corners for a bagel and a box to sleep in.

Welcome back; it's time to party...

-m