The Portland St. Spa

Tuesday, today,  but first I'm going to refer to yesterday: I was riding my bicycle home from Second City (writing class, sketch comedy), head buried, back forcefully arched, asserting myself against the cold.  Fairing well, I crossed the domain of a 1,000 unattended potholes, as common in Chicago as Highways are in L.A., when a Shortcut crossed my eye: Portland Street.  At the time, amidst the potholes, I was riding through an industrial business park and I'd never noticed this offshoot from the arterial street of Cortland, but there it, was.  Portland Street followed a northwest/southeast trajectory, fortuitously where I needed to be, so I gave Blue Velvet (my bicycle) a gentle push and we were off.  

The Potholes were getting worse; with each rotation of my pedals I had to divert my attention from the street to the road, street and road, and back again.  I'm seeing things like one views a flipbook, and a sense of dread washes over me.  I catch an aluminum rendering plant to my left, a freight door ajar, but there was no one working, only a stage, three feet high, where a man in a white tailored suit was captivating an audience of no more than seven laborers, pamphlets in their hands, smiling unabashedly.  Another pothole: I hit this one and I'm a goner, cash in my life insurance policy...if I had one, a singing telegram to my primary beneficiary of my recent demise, but it's only a practice run.  I dodge the pothole, my lungs aching from the cold.  Flashes of catapults, the size of houses, find their way into my thoughts, and I feel like I'm going to cry.  How far does this street go?  And why aren't there any cars?

Steadfast, I continue pedaling, the tendons in my right knee threaten to go on strike, take a sabbatical to some Biological Resort where I'm not on the guest list this evening.  To my left I notice three consecutive offices for Social Workers with cascading, unmistakably similar names I imagined came packaged together and discounted for purchasing the entire set.  The middle office was Warren something, all lights aflutter and no less than 4 patients waiting in the lobby and I wonder how many people, if any, I'd helped that day, if I'd made anyone feel worthwhile, treated anything/anyone as sacrosanct, just generally gave a shit, and --

It was too late.  Black.  I was falling, subsumed in darkness.  I lurched and threw Blue Velvet to make way for my fall.  The patients in the Office, had they seen me?  Did Portland Street swallow me up.  No.  I had, taken myself, self-propulsion, bicycle and all, into a pothole the size of a Trailer Park.  And to them, interspersed with their problems, addictions, domestic disputes and obligations to the State and the Parole Board -- I was no more.  

There was no drop in the pit of my stomach and the once encroaching sense of dread supplanted by a somnolent hum, the kind we feel just before falling asleep when we know there's no other option and our thoughts can only grow to be innocuous at best.  Wait...I see, light?  Halogen lights, and I'm getting warmer, my heartbeat increasing, am I dead?, and... Water.  Clean, chlorinated water, I knew this smell, in my formative years I was a competitive swimmer -- the chemicals used to mar my bleached blonde hair and I was forced to wear a swimcap with a turtle on both sides.  I'd reached the bottom, and though my clothes, layered and voluminous, were sodden I felt no weight, no pull, and ascended to the surface.  There I was greeted by a wall of lavender, the succinct march of incense -- too much to count -- wafted all around me and I saw her: olive skin, black hair in a bob, lab coat, sea-foam greet high heels, couldn't be much older than myself.  She flashed a calm, unassuming smile and approached with a clipboard.  I tried to ask how many others had plummeted from the sky but my mouth was still partly submerged and I choked on water, the chlorine burning my nose.  She was hot, and it was embarrassing, but her disposition was warm and still status-quo.  Where the hell was I and--?  She'd pointed to the stairs in the shallow end of the pool.  My sense of time and space percolating, slowly gaining my wits about me and I swam to the edge.  The lavender was nearly too much.  She offered me a towel and a white robe, eerily my size, and craning my neck I noticed an alabaster statue of a woman, nude, holding a sword, bookshelves protruding from the firebrick walls, a sequential series of massage table portraits, next to, you guessed it, a nearly ostentatiously ornate Massage Table.  

She laughed and told me to cut the trans-dimensional-wonderment-thing I had going on.  Her name as Chenelle, and she was terrifyingly attractive up close.  She told me I'd found The Portland Street spa, and as far as she could tell, documentation-wise, I'd had an appointment from a few months back, confirmed by email and telephone.  But?  No matter, Id just come from Second City, and I can improvise the shit out of any situation, and dude, she was really hot, like keep you awake at night Hot.  Near the farthest bookshelf, which oddly was stocked with Raymond Carver novels and antiquated issues of Time Magazine, there was a curtain for me to change.  Call it arrogance, or intended voyeurism, but I left a slit open so she could see me if she was so inclined.  She wasn't.  She was preparing something at the massage table and I continued to change, to clean myself off.  There was an unmarked bottle I took as body lotion and I applied it liberally, feeling instantly better, reinvigorated, reborn.  Lady Lazarus called to check if I was OK...I gave a sure thing! wave and leapt out shortly thereafter.

With the brazenness of an anticipated first date I trotted to the massage table, she motioned, reading over some forms on her clipboard, not even making eye contact with me.  Hello?  Do you see this body, pay attention to me!  But, well, I disrobed, full-on nude, grabbed a hand towel and lay supine, the smell of lavender dissipating, and I felt warm, nebulous, increasingly drowsy but an undercurrent of coherent thoughts orbited my consciousness.  This is what happens when you take GHB.  She told me what I thought was body lotion was a precursor to the process, aligning my brainwaves via a chemical I can't pronounce, to assimilate with The Receiver: Chenelle, her official position at the Spa.  An esoteric, something near-erotic body buzz enmeshed itself around me before I could question the nature of this visit, or, where the hell Blue Velvet had landed: I just bought that bike.  

She sipped what I think was tea, pursing her lips and taking it in slowly, it must've been very hot, and with an immediate pang of clarity  like we feel after that first gulp of coffee, that first line of cocaine, she casually patted the inside of my left ankle and said it's time to begin.  The halogen lights dimmed, almost indiscernibly, or maybe I was hallucinating.

I still wasn't used to the sound of her voice: resonant but rounded and alluringly feminine in peaks and intermittent syllables joining together.

- Do you think people are easily disposed of?

I want to ask for clarification, but I feel I know what she's getting at, and I feel the sense of dread reforming, gestating somewhere just under the surface.  I tell her no, flat out.  But, in my experience there's a mutual respect between two people, lovers, participants in a relationship that needs to be sacrosanct (why am I saying that so much today?).  I tell her, no, I challenge her to tell me what actions to take when two people have Peaked, when a relationship has run its course?  But I don't give her time to respond.  I feel tears well up, disproportionately in my left eye.  Closing my eyes, I tell her we can still believe in each other, but bereft of passion we need to cut our losses and recognize what we had, what we were able to create, what we came away with, and that counts for something.  My right fist begins to clench, but the body buzz, the somnolent hum, is overpowering.  Regaining my cosmic, floating-in-space composure, shutting my eyes tight to focus, I implore her to connect the dots, the salient qualities of people and what the advent of new relationships, now that we're ready, hold the promise of the premise of what were trying to achieve in the first place.  I asked her what Primal meant to her -- how necessary it was for two people to connect, to flesh-out something meaningful, and then tell me who exactly it is I'm disposing of.  Yeah, take that.

Feeling mighty proud of my answer, and somewhat relived for reasons I would come to understand in the days to follow.  Nothing.  No response.  I open my eyes like what the hell man? to move along this whole psychic-interrogation, but I was alone, in my bed, 5 a.m. in the morning, nude.  I started to cry and the somnolent hum slowly gave way, vanished.  It was Tuesday.

And if you think dreams are a cop-out, well...

Tropic of Can't, Sir...

Happy Monday Life-Affirmers!

I just chugged my wheat grass smoothie with a few Gingko pills -- and I feel like I'm about to start hallucinating.  So I'm at a bar called The Whistler in Logan Square with a few friends, on the flank of the main stretch of the bar, the place is packed, and I see two women around my age (I'm 29 if anyone lacks said info), one who catches my eye, and I do what I normally do in spontaneous stranger mode: I -- in Elementary School Fashion -- stick out my tongue.

Big deal, right?  I've done this, and have a myriad of stock social experiments to pull off on strangers, and this one in particular usually yields hilarious results for both parties.  However, this chick had a Goddamn Existential Crisis over the whole interaction.  Well, I did it on the sly, and directly afterwards, seamlessly, went on talking to my company making sure I was audible, and made a point to speak succinctly and intersperse big-boy words so this person would, beyond a shadow of a doubt, infer I was a functioning, intelligent individual and my tongue-protruding-anomaly was innocuous and playful.  Nope.  Not the case.  She got all Meryl Streep on me.  Boring.

Directly after this I have to write a song for Second City: The Break-Up Song, I'm calling it.  Other choices, in true Michael Simon fashion, were convoluted/high-falutin' but this requires something simple/succinct/relatable.  And who can't related to breaking-up?  What I'm doing though, is adding a slew of pragmatic details in both parties decision-making w/r/t not splitting up: the creature-comforts that have superseded passion in many respects.  It should lend itself well humor-wise, but it's too close for comfort for many couples that'll even be in the audience I'm sure.  If I shoot-up some Brain Tonic and find a way to display PDFs I'll display my sketches weekly.

Henry Miller: a kindred spirit if there ever was one.  Tropic of Capricorn, Cancer, and I can't, sir, extricate myself from his core beliefs/timeline/passion/disillusionment.  In fact, I'm about the same age he was when he said Fuck This! and left NYC for Paris in 1929.  This is Nature beating the ever-living shit out of Nurture -- and it elates me to vertiginous heights.  I want to start a Book Club (yes, a Healthy one at that)/Writing/Art-Collective where we not only examine this works -- but find a way to incorporate their salient qualities in our work/daily lives.  There's an enter index of Red Tape, of reasons, of people, of mental obstacles obstructing our latent potential, our inherent power as individuals, and they're going to assign reasons How and Why we can't do the things we want, live the way we feel, shape our lives as we, see, fit: this is the Great Lie.  When you're out today, perhaps inside, reading a magazine, talking to a loved one, practicing your craft, and you feel that pull in your stomach, the wave of sensory-overload wash over your spine, and you see yourself, your life for what it is, or better, what it could be, what it should be, your skin crawls, your eyes well up, and for a moment, a secular moment of clarity, perhaps the finest moment of the entire day, the real honesty we're not taught growing up -- and you want to hold on to this feeling....

I need you to hold on, amass all your anger, your infinite frustrations, your misguided passions devolving into hinderances, and simply, focus yourself, let it all out, all of it.  Amidst explosions and foreign lands, the fearful uncertainties and fictionist futures we never wanted any part of, because today is the best day of your life -- and you will have what you want, what you've always wanted, what you deserve.  And they're not going to go down easy, oh no, they'll stand in your way, but it's time we start hitting back.  No more will you settle for mediocrity and the delusive unrealities you never asked for in the first place.  So stand up, dust yourself off, pick out your favorite shirt: and Let's Go Get Some Payback!

And Start West...

Cheers to you Friday and everyone knowingly participating.  But, be apprised: I don't quite have the same sense of week as a result of several years working in restaurants.  This isn't an obscure outlet to seem different -- off to the left if you will -- merely I've been divorced from the standard Monday-Friday go apeshit on the weekends sort of thing: which I dig, absolutely.

I'm sneezing, nose leaking, pumped full of antibiotics and West Coast dreaming.  My coffee is at the point where the French Press Sludge coagulates with the far less viscous consumable coffee, and it's just OK.

I have to work on a Song-based Sketch for Second City today.  For the most part, I've settled on a community meeting of concerned Chicagoans over exactly where the bailout money is headed?  And one confused attendee things Bailout is a Christian Bale fan club: priceless I know.  Lorne Michaels, if you're reading this, sign me up, I can be in NYC by Monday.    Actually I have received an offer/opportunity to move to NYC come fall.  And then the next I thing I tell people is, "But I don't think I can afford it," blah blah blah.  However upon mentioning this to a lovely woman whose origins shall remain a mystery, she casually (and by casual I mean I thought it was kinda hot) countered with the pragmatic, yet starkly poetic notion of -- work harder, adapt to said challenges/requirements/price-tags and everything will come up Milhouse.  Simple, yes, but I found over the course of the day the idea really dug its nails in my person, sort of subversive to the complacent/compartmentalized blinders-at-my-peripheries self, and it filled me with a sense of warmth.

Where has Apartment Hunting been you ask (or perhaps this was the last question you had)?  Dead.  Dormant.  Second city sapping my poor Time Management and Focus, but that's not a bad thing as SC's been been a fanciful proponent of improving my writing in general.  A quandary I found myself having, on my birthday spectacular last month, came via my pal -- and very talented writer -- Brendan Kelly: Bad Sandwich Chronicles

Brendan is also an aspiring screenwriter and has made some headway with representation and getting his work out there to some very pertinent people.  Let's put it this way, if I was in his situation I'd be throwing Internet Balloon Drops for all you fuckers and IM'ing 7-11 Big Gulps of Champagne.  Digressing!  So Brendan asked me about Apartment Hunting, which is around 40-50 pages projected, and if it  could be a feature-length work.  I responded pointedly (I was pumped full of adderall and booze) sure!  Why Not!  And I went on to expound on said enthusiasm by confiding I have 2 other feature ideas I was dying to get to after Apartment Hunting, and this project was sort-of-not-really-but-yes relegated to getting my bearings in the medium.  He countered (my word for the day I guess?) with a very good point: A majority of films, in terms of having a career in the field, are feature-based, this is the template necessary to play in the Big-Boy Sandbox.  I want to swan dive in this Sandbox -- I really, really do.  Brendan is (one reason you have to fucking love the guy) a modest cat, and suffixed his advice with something like Then again I don't really know what the fuck I'm talking about.  But, he's right.  And -- I can extend Apartment Hunting into a feature-length work.  The crater-sized caveat I'm having is I JUST tailored this Baby to be 40-50 pages and it's been a cathartic experience for me.  So the preface of going back to the development phase is a little daunting, because for as much as I like it -- and I do! like it -- I'm itching to write, well, not literally itching, that'd be gross.  Feel free to chime in!

Enjoy your respective weekends: eat good food, make-out with someone (or several people), sit down and read a book, write your congressman, dress up like a zombie and EAT your congressman?

Xxoxox

Character Shell and the Template of Doom

Thursday.

Things about my personal life: I'm getting a hair cut after this.  I prefer one side to be longer than the other, asymmetrical.  I generally have a glass of wine during my stay at the salon, and we laugh.  It's nice out today and I'm going to ride my bicycle: blue velvet.  I love her.  Yesterday, because I have toe clips on my pedals, I found riding in my pointy black boots a thing of ease, a feat of natural, luminous beauty.

And today the subject is: Character.  Any writers out there?  Anyone who cares to maneuver with an increasing deft whilst dealing with others, despite their waggling, omnipresent daft?

Where do the lines of Extrovert and Introvert blur?  How far does the seamy underbelly of selfishness really go?  Let's examine the social autopsy of two individuals: Person Alpha and Person Omega.  Gender is obsolete for now...

Person Alpha and Omega both share similar traits: extroverts/social butterflies, capable, determined and generally good people, with the capacity to identify and coddle the Human Condition and countenance this spark in others.

On their own, on this social platform some may find the two indiscernible.  But this is not the case, and the greater question is why.

Person Omega forms friendships, takes lovers, falls inextricably tied to another, ruminating in this notion of what love could be, could mean, and here is the change, the variable in Character: Person Omega Invests his/her consciousness, ego, capaciousness to exist with another, and takes on this responsibility not always seamlessly or just, but with an ironclad credulity serving as the backbone to this relationship.  It's the investment, the act of giving and trusting another individual with this power.  Simple?  You think so?  Ask yourself how far you go, or are willing to travel when these connections arise?  Be honest, please.  What's the average distance you're willing to stray from your myriad of Comfort Zone to be subsumed in a relationship, friend or lover?  Well, Person Omega goes and runs with it, and while the next obvious answer may be vulnerability, be apprised there's something else, a potential psychic trauma far more rooted than a surface act like Betrayal.  Person Omega, when things go awry, is immolated in the question of closeness, of being there, blissfully inside another individual, resolve never greater, and it still, falls, apart.  How could this happen?  How could Person Omega fashion such a traversable bridge to his/her person and still be let so gloriously down?

Person Alpha acts as a social hub, a streaming constant others find themselves inexorably linked to.  And all the while, amongst the sycophants, neurasthenics, alcoholics, cokeheads, and generally good people, Personal Alpha maintains a strong self-image, a personal edifice further driving those around him/her to seek their counsel, their company, confide something, hell, anything for a smattering of reassurance, of  repose only someone of this magnitude can bequeath.

But Person Alpha, like most of us, contains a most damning Paradox: the inability, in the trenches of the Human Condition, in its most stripped down iteration, to communicate with others.  And thus, in relationships, friend or lover, there's a fracture, a divide, an intense dichotomy of what is disseminated to the participating individual, and what scenes, salient or not, fall on the Editing Room Floor, cut to pieces, missing, vacant, vacuous.  The easy question is: How does Person Alpha ultimately relate to anybody?  But this logic is fickle and flawed, as Person Alpha offers some things, many things people need, desire and there's the glimmer, the undulating spark of soul, of a living/breathing entity staring you in the face.  And thus, the relationship continues, and the participating individual, unaware what's being held back by Person Alpha, what's missing.

And then it ends.

-m

A Call To Arms, A Phantom Limb

It's Wednesday.  I'm at my Girlfriend's kitchen table (my makeshift desk when I stay here), our breakfast a thing of the recent past, the coffee waning.  Purposefully I place a pillow on the back of the chair as for lumbar support.  I cross my legs: right leg pendulously swinging over left knee, left leg firmly planted on the ground.  And as I begin, one thing is clear: my left testicle is awkwardly compromised in my casual positioning, my insouciant posturing.

And here, we...go!

Last night at work (restaurant work for those lacking my autobiography, server, fine-dining restaurant) I, despite emanating a slew of pleasantries and generally being an affable fellow, found myself voicing a pointedly dour opinion, "I fucking hate this place!" to my coworker towards the end of the evening.  What sent me over the composed-person edge was our lack of business: this means less money and almost worse equates to us sitting around with various objects and body parts crammed up our asses.  And me, at 29 years of age, I for the most part have a handle on the duel identities of artist and indentured servant.  But, and apparently this is a deal-breaker for somnambulists and other delicate folk: I just can't be complacent or not vocalize when we're in the middle of a seemingly unnecessary shitstorm.  And I do, I vocalize the shit out of showing up for work, standing around all evening, and then having the privilege/obligation to wait on some oblivious fucking people, who want to dine in an empty restaurant, further drawing out my evening in both time and now, lack of funds.

So what?  This is your job isn't it?  No one put a gun to your head to do this, right?  Be humble in victory and graceful in defeat, isn't that what they say?

Well: fuck all of you, fuck you right in your ear.  Because again, let's extricate ourselves that people, like myself are cognizant of these vocational platitudes.  And so, for putting it out there, the absurdity of our situation, I'm deemed as NEGATIVE.  For those that don't have the pleasure of knowing my real-time, living and breathing self, I've found through experience that my energy/disposition is one that, when my magic wand is waved, either embolden/enlighten/energize or bring-every-motherfucker's demeanor down.  I prefer to use my powers for good, and being cognizant of this fact, if I'm methodically pointing out the bogusness of a situation I do it in a way where I've extricated myself, and the nuclear reactor of kinetic energy I can transpose on everyone else, and merely powerpoint-presentation the faults I see.  But, I admit, I broke a little bit yesterday.  And my coworker, sarah, immediately slapped me with sanctions for being a negative-nancy.

Here's my issue -- and finally -- my point: complacency is evil, and seductive, a cancer that pragmatists and other normally capable fellows often fall victim too.  No shit we're in an economic disaster and I'm lucky to have a job.  I know these things!  But the premise of not questioning your situation, in hopes it should improve, that we can do better, is completely FUCKED.  Even as a 3-time college dropout (last time I simply couldn't afford it, and was earning all A's) if I didn't question a myriad of situations both personal/professional, both aesthetic/pragmatic, I'd have nothing -- I can't even deal with the notion of where I'd be.  I pity these people in their microcosms, pointer-fingers lodged in their ears, "Oh no, no!  Don't bring that point to light, I need to get through my day, I'm fragile, this is all I can take!" 

And now, in the ultra-paradoxical phase, I turn the interrogation lamp on myself.  With the conviction and borderline sanctimoniousness I've released, where, oh where is this conviction for my true work, for my writing, my screenwriting, my acting.  And friends, I hold nothing back, there's a myriad of situations-to-be-improved, and yes, I've improved and I'm ready to do battle on these mediums, here I am: still bitching about Restaurant Maladies, still working (or rather I STOPPED working around my birthday LAST month)  with an Unfinished Screenplay (a damn good one) all tagged and boarded above my desk, still with NO agent w/r/t acting (and subsequently less/no work), still NOT using my potential, still holding back, yet here I am, telling others to shed these sorry clothes and get out into the world.

How did I fall into such an absurd and torpid quandary...is anyone out there?

-m

Assaulted In My Sleep!

Bang!

So I wake up around 8ish to a cacophony of muscular discord in my back, just behind my left shoulder.  Sort of like:

- I was doing Yoga in my sleep, and fucked up really bad.

- I was in some sort of multi-gang brawl and bludgeoned with 2X4 from that dilapidated church down the street.

- Tiny little people are waging war against one another, using my muscles for some sort of makeshift trenches

Point being it's pretty fucking bizarre.

So our Music Workshop encompassed all of class yesterday: no vampire sketch just yet.  But, all in all the Workshop was helpful for sure, and my comedic musical-proclivities will find new breadth, a renewed vigor and focus.  Now that I've got a template down  I can circumvent my pathetic lack of Music Theory knowledge.

So, before I journeyed off to sleep last night, I'm reading Adbusters.  You can laugh, or maybe you're a fan, I'm an intermittent reader and do admittedly enjoy the periodical for the most part (the messages get a smidge repetitive) but it's Goddamn Depressing to read, and NOT  I repeat not for the content.  There's an underlying malaise or sanctimoniousness akin to some White-Dude-With-Dreads in his early to mid-20's pontificating on every political/globalized subject under the sun austerity about it that irks me.  You know the kid: the sad sack who couldn't bring himself to laugh at that rollerblader who fell down over the broken mailbox, because people are suffering in Darfur.  And I'm not being irreverent or insensitive to any genocide or culture under oppression, but the only way I can function in this day and age is to extricate myself -- to an extent -- from the myriad of depressing fodder out there sodden with the portents of a 1000 potentially bleak future outcomes.  I'd actually love to hangout with the Adbusters staff for a week to be proven right/wrong, make some friends/enemies/frienemies/future make-out partners.  Maybe if Adbusters accepts a contribution from me (within the week) I'll change my tune ;-)

The Music: My Bloody Valentine 'Loveless' (someone really really really really needs to fucking remaster this album, please, it sounds terrible for being such a sonic achievement)

xoxoxo

What Vampires Talk About When They Talk About Love

It's Monday:

I'm hungover, smelly, eyes adorned with fallen bacteria hardened by the harsh room temperatures.   I just chugged a wheat-grass smoothie (detox pills, ginseng, blueberries, banana, rice milk) and am on the road to recovery -- whatever that means.  And, so you can keep tabs on Me throughout the week: Today (or this evening rather) is when I have my writing class for Second City.

I believe we have a  Song-Writing Workshop today which I'm fairly stoked about because, in the cavernous realm of Sketch Comedy, working with music (or raps!) is definitely one of my strong points.  But, and this is is a glorious But, there's some formatting issues I need apprising of, and my complete lack of music theory knowledge doesn't help matters any.

My skit this week, not music related: What Vampires Talk About When They Talk About Love.  This is actually a 2nd draft, but more or less a complete overhaul of the last iteration.  The premise is a Married Vampire Couple (one pure-bred, one newly made) wrestle with the fact their Relationship is showing the patina of wedlock.  The title is an homage to Raymond Carvers Excellent  short-story compilation: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.  And for all you literary nerds out there (this is Healthy Book Club after all) this is definitely a must-read.

But the sketch!  The Husband Vladimir is a 300+. pure-bred vampire, and investment banker in the vein of AIG, arguing with his wife Charlotte (liberal creative writing MFA from NYU, vampire for 5 years) over having to return bonuses from his firm as per current happenings in the U S of A.  As they get into it, Corliss The Vampire -- a knockoff of Kriss Angel/David Blaine -- tries to sneak out in his undies: he has been banging Charlotte, promising to turn her back human, a simple lie just to get in her pants.  And it goes on from there.  

If there was a copy and paste (from other documents) option I would post a PDF of the sketch, but alas.  Or, I just don't know what the hell I'm doing which is always a plausible outcome.

The Tunes:

-  The Pains of Being Pure at Heart 

-  Phillip Glass Radio Station on Pandora 

The Aggravating Pragmatic Decisions:

-  Should I move to West Town or Pilsen, where my new job happens to be?

The Lofty Life-Altering Decision :

-  Should I move to NYC this fall?

xoxoxoxo

-m

xoxoxoxox

Mysterious Machinations In The Heart Of Crazytown

Come away with me, gentle Internet readers, and witness the deconstruction of a lively, affable fellow, ambulating along a nondescript thoroughfare -- in the heart, of Crazytown.

Seemingly capable people wearing capes of finest brocade and thinking to themselves, "Is this really where I planned on being today?  Haven't I done this before?  In a dream perhaps!"

And then she woke up: face down, legs splayed, perpendicular to an obese and under-groomed (but no less loveable) cat.  It was Friday and Melissa was bored, broken, boyfriend sleeping on the couch per an esoteric quarrel after the bar late, last, night.  Cycling coffee and breakfast options while doing her damndest not to wake our furry friend, she remembered, in that ominous and unabashedly-admonishing moment of clarity -- her purse, was gone.  And now, at a surprisingly mature sixteen years-old, Donald Pickens, waiting for the bus to school (a very reputable Charter School mind you) faced a moral quandary on how to return Melissa's missing item, tucked neatly behind a bush as it was thrown the previous evening, and what exactly to do with the half-ounce of cocaine, tucked inside: a sticker of a giraffe wearing roller skates adorning the small, plastic, baggy.  The Boyfriend's phone number was written underneath.  Donald flashed a crooked smile, biting on the inside of his left cheek as he tended to do in situations of petty megalomania, and dialed the number, slowly, carefully, and here, we, go...

An open letter to the screenwriter of Watchmen:

Hello Friends.  I've been planning on posting my monumental disappointment to the film Watchmen but through some fortuitous something or other, was afforded a more entertaining chance.  Earlier this week Aintitcoolnews.com posted an open letter from one of Watchmen's screenwriters David Hayter: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40409 

This was my response, sent today to Harry Knowles, let's see if he publishes it.  And if you want to be extra rad devotees you'll email him: Harry@aintitcool.com and tell him what the Public wants.

And here, we, go:

Harry,

In response to Mr. Hayter's unctuous call-to-arms in repeat viewings of Watchmen, I have the following.  If you use this, please call me Fiction Science.

It's been 9 days since my midnight showing of Watchmen at the Navy Pier Imax and I'm (and my friends) still pissed-off.  I'll be upfront that everyone in attendance read the GN within the last 6-9 months in preparation for the film, but, for me something else happened: : 'Watchmen' was seamless in quality, scope and size with my normal reading, around the same time consisting of such books as 'House of Leaves' and 'Gravity's Rainbow.'  And before you tell me I'm waggling some Literary Cock (and you can fuck off accordingly)  in your faces, my only intent is to shower praise on 'Watchmen,' because this fucker moved me, and it's the Catalyst, the Kinetic Energy of such Thematic and Character-Laced magnitude that generally moves people: this, devastatingly, was absent from the film.  (Not surprisingly, this also equates to poor word of mouth.)

Maybe if we take something as vapid as Starship Troopers, oddly enough in your list of comparisons of some films that, oh, maybe, shouldn't be listed with Watchmen we'll start to scratch the surface.  In short: you were complicit in taking a Work that is mostly backstory and character development, suck the salient qualities right out of its narrative bone marrow, and throw the Pretty, Vacuous, and yes sometimes entertaining shell, right on the silver screen: kind of like...Starship Troopers.  I'm going to pump the brakes here and address the following: I understand this was a massive undertaking, aesthetically many things are beautiful and spot-on, and -- in its own remarkable victory -- Watchmen made it through development and studio-tinkering largely untouched.  Bravo (and I'm not being facetious).  But Mr. Hayter: How do you Nail all those things and fall so short on the Fundamentals of Narrative???!

Narrative.  Character.  These are the reasons The Dark Knight (and to a lesser extent Iron Man) made buckets of cash and were a big Love-Fest critically, trickling down to word of mouth.  When I saw TDK I was Most taken with the scope of the Narrative, permeated by Themes of morality/chaos/the ugly side of heroics -- and do you know what these elements afforded the film: iconic, deeply-moving moments that made the performances and imagery POP! because they had real Weight attached to them.  None of this (save for Jackie Earle Haley's raw/dominant performance, which is really a foreign element , orbiting around a benign film) was present in Watchmen.  And, you can call me an asshole, negative-nacny whatever, but now -- You have a Box-Office Quandary and are relegated to rallying the internet-troops via AICN to promulgate the idea that there's some silver living to your mercurial, maddeningly uneven film.

And I'm no Armchair Quarterback sir: I would love to take your job.  Here's a thought: A) start the film with the Comedian's murder.  B) Don't cut-away with recaps set to Very distracting Bob Dylan tunes because people like Succinct storytelling.  C) This is a big one, Adapt the narrative to your benefit: take Hollis Mason's 'Under The Hood' and make it the spine/backbone of the initial story/exposition  so the viewers see the History of the Superhero movement, and the, oh I don't know, take a little narrative glue and segue into his take on the 2nd Generation of heroes and their respective backstories.  this way we can have Thematic Cake and Eye-Candy too.  And this way important elements of the story like just about everything w/r/t Ozymandias, Tales Of The Black Freighter (which , if you're really a fan or understand the GN you'll see is a necessary element to Ozymandias' character/machinations), The Newsstand with Bernie and Bernard, The New Frontiersman, and yes, the Island and the Squid, don't have to be left out.

When you choose to fragment a film, or have the Hubris to think you can give it to us in pieces -- like The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions -- it never works.  Quality over Quantity in the end, Mr. Hayter, but nothing ends, nothing ever ends.

Slumdog Maudlin-aire

Welcome to March--belated I know.  I've let my work fall of the wagon in a fashion akin to the worst, most Damning fate of perennial computer fav The Oregon Trail.  The oscars came and went in a sea of inexorable politics and globalization: Gays and Indians tangoing down the red carpet, forming some sort of Worldly Voltron and waggling it's multi-tiered member in our oh-so-earnestly voyeuristic faces.

In short: Slumdog is great, raw, and just a smidge overrated--and Mickey Rourke was robbed.  Oh and the blind-eye to The Dark Knight's technical achievements is appalling to say the least, and eye-gougingly vexing to say the most.

The ceremony was kind of old-school in  way with the homo-erotic/Tony Award-Winning Dance numbers, bare-bones recession-cognizant fare, but I felt something missing: lust.  During the awards I couldn't help but notice a going-through-the-motions w/r/t many of the films, and a lack of honesty intermittently promulgated by the likes of works like The Wrestler.  My point is if we're to scale the Ceremony itself back for these tough economic times then let's reassess the Salient qualities in Story in Character that's supposed to be the foundation of this whole shebang in the fist place.  I'm speaking ideologically now and it's even boring me.   You have to understand the searing pathos/shame I feel watching this shit, because I should be there, not out of ego, but I know, I know I'm beyond capable and my work could be a very pronounced proponent of the medium.  And when it comes down to it: I want to help people, I want to entertain the living shit out of them, and make a very tangible human connection.  I want people to feel less lonely, less shitty about themselves, their misdirected lives, whatever.  It's hard for me regardless.

After the Oscars I contracted a stye in my left eye: it's still here...kind of.  For a majority of last week I looked like a very handsome, in-shape Sloth from The Goonies.  In tandem with working 8/9 days due to a tourist-y maelstrom called Restaurant Week here in Chicago I allowed myself to get very stressed out and behind in my work.  My other anchor was my lovely Girlfriend's birthday, and mastering the learning curve of her present: audiophile turntable.  She was very pleased and we're very happy.  But there's something missing, maybe not missing, but quiescent in a way that should not fucking be quiescent: creative-amnesiac-pitfalls in tandem with way too much unused creative energy in some sort of fugue state.  In short, by ignoring my work I'm quasi-neglecting the salient personality traits catalyzing us falling in love in the first place.

And Maudlin-aire: In a defiantly weak undercurrent I've seen complacency rear its nettlesome visage and whispered sweet nothings in my ear w/r/t forgoing all this craziness and moving on with my life via some restaurateur/bar related omnipresence.  I just threw up in my mouth typing this.  Spurring this on too, I'm waiting on a third interview for a second-job in a soon-to-open very trendy and vaunted restaurant in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.  Why does this matter: well, it'll be a good opportunity, but openings take time and you can see how tenuous my gossamer-wrapped psyche is with too-much-day-job-ness. 

My Second City class (the penultimate class of the program) starts next Monday and it couldn't come any sooner.  I need an anchor very badly right now.  In other news I received a call from very nice gentleman looking to start an adjunct sketch-comedy troupe for his D.C. faction right here in Chicago....

That's it: no special ending today.  I'm going to eat some hard-boiled eggs.