Burning The Altars(Part 3 In A Series Of Spiritual Misadventures)

Time to re-engage all of y'all with my Spiritual Misadventures series. I know it has been many moons since we've visited this part of my life, so if you clicky that linky(Part 1 & Part 2) you can revisit the earlier installments and bring your ass up to speed...

The group of us were sitting around Rev. Sassypants' living room, sipping on coffee and chainsmoking our misguided little lives away. He had made mention that dinner was going to be traditional French-Canadian holiday-type fare - meat pie and beets. I was pretty hungry, not to mention a wee bit HIGH from all of the incense that was used in the earlier Mass, so I was down to eat whatever.



Cindy, the employee of mine who had invited me into this entire exercise, was trying to explain to the rest of the group what it was like to work with someone like me on a daily basis. It was pretty funny to hear her regaling them all with tales of my workaday doings with the ragamuffin staff I had working over at my little restaurant. She spoke with a slow Southern Virginia drawl, which elongated and added breadth to words that were normally terse and concise - and that kind of shit is always instant comedy to me, being a Yankee and all that.


Scanning around the rest of the group, my mind made with a quick stereotype inventory - there was Cindy, the older, lost and lonely former Catholic who had pretty much nothing in the world other than her jobs(during the daylight hours, Cindy worked as a press operator for a printing company that I had once interviewed at, only to find out that all of the cats that they had working in the Pressroom were all ex-felons - thankfully, they didn't hire me - although I still have no idea how she survived in that environment).



There was Moustache McGhee, the good Rev's trusty sidekick, who looked like he had escaped from being a member of The Orphans from The Warriors - shifty and rat-like in his movements. Part of me wondered if he and Rev. Sassypants were lovers because of the way they communicated with one another without speaking. I soon came to find out that The 'stache had been rolling with the Rev for fucking years, and that made sense to me - motherfuckers in close confines will always develop that preternatural communication skill set after enough time in the saddle together. I kept my one good eye on The 'stache, as he set off all kinds of alarms in my head. Did. Not. Trust.



There was a younger, almost waif-like girl in the room, too. Her name was Heather, and she immediately came off as one of those girls who was afraid of not only her own shadow, but like the kind of girl who cries herself to sleep at night while listening to Loveline on the radio. In my head, the dots were already connecting that Rev Sassypants was going to try and push this poor girl off on me, even though one of the first things Cindy told me on our drive over there was that Heather had a boyfriend who was currently incarcerated for some shit that would have him out of the picture for a few months, but that he was usually a regular at these meetings. She was totally the Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club of the group, sneaking looks at me from behind her muzzle of curly bangs and pouty, too-bitten lips.



The other two people in the room were pretty inconsequential, as neither of them regularly showed up after that night. One of them, an older German woman named Greta, supposedly told the Rev that she was pretty sure that I was "willing her not to be there any longer" with my presence. Whatever. She was probably overcome with guilt every time the Rev mentioned me being a Jew, since she was old enough to have probably been around during the fucking Holocaust.



ANYWAYS...


Cindy is wrapping up her Tales of Brave Sean riff, when the Rev informs everyone that we're going to all take part in dissecting my secrets and delusions, and that everyone will have a chance to ask me questions about my life and about who the fuck I am.


Great. Just what I always wanted - to play 20 Questions or Truth or Dare with a bunch of downtrodden "cult" members with low self-esteem. This was even better than getting caught on the receiving end of a handjob by my mother.



"Now, everyone remember - Sean is a guest here, so let's not get too personal and scare him off, okay? Give the young man a chance to feel welcome before we really start digging!" - the Rev is in fine form at this point. I just watched him pour three fingers of Scotch into his coffee, and he had given me a sly little wink when he caught me peeking at him. We were already BFFs.



I'm not the kind of cat who shies away from answering questions from people - never have been. I kind of pride myself on always being "an open book" type of humanimal. But I have to admit that I was a little nervous when they started bombing me with queries about my life. I mean - how would any of you react if you were in a room full of oddball strangers asking you shit fifteen minutes after rolling through a High Mass in Latin?



It started out innocently enough, with questions about my upbringing, my family, where I grew up and all that type of standardized getting-to-know-you shit. As soon as I let my wall down a bit and relaxed, figuring that this was going to be the level of questioning and my initial fears were stupid as per usual, Reverend Sassypants dropped The Thermonuclear Ordinance on my monkey ass.


"When do you think you'll forgive yourself for wasting so much of your spiritual energies on hating 'The Church'?"


This motherfucker. Goddamn.



I quickly glanced over at Cindy, and I know the way I moved in that moment probably came off as accusatory, because she looked white as fuck. Spooked. I felt like she had let the cat out of the bag, and told the Rev all of the shit that came rolling off my tongue about wanting to "burn all the Churches to the ground," so that people would stop hating and being exclusionary - because that was pretty standard Sean-speak after my mother passed away, especially considering the way I was treated by certain members of my family who were chin-deep in the Church. I felt angry and ashamed at the same time, which was nothing new to a Bungler like myself. I tried to reassure Cindy with a smile, but I could tell that my snap movement had hurt her a bit.



"I don't hate 'The Church' so much - I just hate how so much blood has been shed under the banner, how many families have been divided by faith. It pisses me off that people cannot just accept the fact that we're all going to die at some point, and acting all High and Mighty about 'my way is better!' is just a waste of fucking time."



All of the air is being sucked out of the room. I feel like I am shrinking. Getting tiny. Amber hue to all the lights. My cigarette feels like it weighs a ton. My legs feel tingly. Fuck.



Reverend Sassypants kind of tents his fingers around his mouth, taking in a deep breath. He looks from set of eyes to set of eyes across the room. He slowly pulls a cigarette out of his pack, turning it in his fingers before he lights it. He takes a deep drag, and he looks right into me.


"Sean. Your mother knows. She understands what happened, and she is not upset with you. You did what you had to do. Deferring to your Aunt and Uncle, as much as it hurt you at the time, saved your mother a ridiculous amount of stress before she passed away. It hurt her to know that you weren't treated fairly, but really? What were you going to do? Your anger - really, your own righteousness - pushes everyone and everything away from you. You burn hotter than The Sun when you're filled with that anger. With time, and understanding, you will learn how to harness that amazing power for something much more important than fighting with people who are sleepwalking through this physical realm."



This motherfucker. Goddamn.


I couldn't really say shit. The man was dead on correct. I could feel how right he was. I just sat there, like a lump, everyone's eyes on me, waiting to see if I was going to pop or not. The Reverend reached over and put his hand on my shoulder again, this time much more gingerly.


"Okay. Enough about Sean - tonight, we're going to be watching one of my favorite films of all time. The gorgeous and criminally under-rated Kim Novak in Hitchcock's Vertigo..."



To be continued...

Enter: The Curmudgeon.

As leathered and as wizened as I try to liken myself to be, I am still a wide-eyed, filled-to-the-brim with hope kind of kid inside. Lately, I feel that wide-eyed kid getting smothered with a pillow by the angry old man inside.



Sure, just like everyone else on this planet, I have my likes and my dislikes. There are things inherent in human nature that make me want to start punching people in the throat without any warning. Things that people do that make me want to light them on fire in front of their fucking families.



Add living in a Megalopolis like The City to that equation, and the math becomes quite clear -


As much as I hate to admit it - I hate pretty much everyone.



Now, this isn't hate on a racism-based scale. Nor is it hate on a socio-economic scale, either. This is pure, unadulterated disdain for people's inability to think outside of the three foot radius that encompasses their pithy innermost being. This is scathing and boiling. This is acid reflux.



Scenario:


You don't drink, so you volunteer to be the Designated Driver for a few of your "friends," so they can go out on the town and get blasted beyond recognition. Before they start downing drinks like jackals on a carcass, they all make mention to you multiple times how much they appreciate you, and the fact that you will be looking out for their well-being during the evening's tomfoolery. You, being a sucker, feel all kinds of warm and fuzzy inside, because you have allowed yourself to feel as though they truly appreciate you. You get this immediately grandiose idea in your puny human brain that the night will be all full of smiles and good times - even for you.



Oh, but you're so, so wrong.


The first half an hour or so, you're just enjoying everyone's company - them with their cocktails and libations, you sipping on your ginger ale. Jokes. Laughter. Back-slapping. It really does start off like an atypical beer commercial. Even the chicks across the room are eyeballing the lot of you, staking out which one of you they're going to sink their claws into.



Life seems momentarily good.


Entering into hour two, your game plan has switched the fuck on up. At this point, you're trying to corral your buddy who has decided to repeatedly walk over to the group of off-duty cops and start running his mouth at them. And at the same time, you've got another buddy who keeps on running off to the bathroom with some skeevy fuck to do shit-tons of blow with. Your other pal? Oh, he's over in that corner booth, fucked up beyond anyone's threshold, making out with some seventeen year old piece of fine-fine jailbait that worked her way into the bar with her cocksucking skills and her older sister's ID.




Fast forward another hour, and you're actually contemplating leaving these fuckstains you call "friends" at the bar and to their own devices. You don't need this kind of stress and static. You've been punched in the face already by the coked up one for suggesting he chill out. The slobbering drunk cop-hater has already been tossed from the bar, and you threw money at the cabbie, begging him to take him home and not wherever he suggests to go. The burgeoning pedophile is now in an alley behind the bar, balls deep in some girl who will end up telling her mother she got that herpes at summer camp. You're spent. You throw your hands in the air and decide to cut your losses, gather up the troops, and try to head back to Real Life.



Not so easy, is it?


Even with the best of intentions, motherfuckers will bend you over and give you the old in-out, nice and dry. Your "friends," when they eventually sober up, won't even think twice about what happened, nor will they even be remorseful for putting you in such a terrible situation. They'll all laugh and laugh, giving you the business for being so stodgy and "tight." They won't even remember what happened for what it really was - motherfuckers taking advantage of you.


Yeah, I know this sounds all bitter and shit. And coming from a cat who no longer imbibes, it probably sounds a schtikel righteous. But it ain't. It's analogous in leaning.



This kind of behavior runs rampant through all of us. Shit, even me. I loathe my own hypocrisy. I'm not gonna lie, either - I get all kinds of boiling on the inside when I have to deal with people out there in The City. This motherfucker is overflowing with scurrilous little shits that will snake your last piece of kindness like old Henry Bibby sneaking through the back door. Think I'm kidding? Watch the next time some fuckstains are walking across an intersection. They will slow their roll to a fucking crawl as soon as the light changes or they even sense you're in a semi-hurry to get anywhere. Watch how the shitbirds will push an old lady out of the way to get onto an already over-crowded F Train at Herald Square. Look around you and see all the fucking scumbags eyeballing young girls like they're pieces of meat they can go home and fuck.



"Table for Mr. Bitterness? Table for one!"



I always have a hard time trusting anyone. That being said, I'm also the kind of cat who will smile at a stranger on the street - genuinely. I was raised to be good to people on a basic level. My Parental Units weren't uncouth assholes who left me locked in a cage and didn't teach me any pertinent social skills. I can be gregarious and outgoing when necessary. I just, over time and through the repetitive beating The City gives me, have realized that it's a mostly pointless exercise. Especially here in The City - motherfuckers just do not care. And that's fine. That's just The Way It Is sometimes. Life is the teacher, we're the apt pupils. I'm learning.



Of course, there are truly amazing people here, just like Smalltown World. And the people I have in my own little world are dope, on every level. People I would jump in front of a speeding cab for. But the rest of The Great Unwashed?



Hell no, son. Hell to the no.

In The Shadow Of My Family Tree.

A little Back-story before I unravel this Ramble -


My mother passed away on Mother's Day (May 12th, 1996). She was only 52 years old.


Over the last 13 years, I usually write something about her passing/death, or the circumstances that were going on within our family at the time (some of them can be found in the archives of this site - others have long since disappeared into the Black Hole of multiple URLs disappearing or being forsaken). This year, I'm going to flip the script a little, so I'm not going to write about her death.


This year, I'm going to tell you about the time she saved my life...


I was seventeen years old. My father had just left home, leaving the three of us (my mother, myself, and my littler sister) kind of in the lurch. I mean - it was pretty evident that their marriage wasn't necessarily The Greatest Of All Time, but coming home to find that he'd left was a bit of a shock. My mother was a fucking wreck. And me, being the douchey little bastard that I had the tendency to be, was overflowing with advice and witticisms that I thought could ease her emotional distress.


That didn't go as planned.


I remember the worst of them all, as it haunts me to this day - one early morning as I was getting ready to go to work (I was going to an "Alternative" High School at night, since I didn't seem to get along all too well with all the cute and fuzzy bunnies at the High School I was supposed to go to - so I worked in the mornings and went to school at night.), and we were having our customary "Mom and Sean" morning coffee routine. She was sitting at the counter, bags underneath her eyes so big and brutal she looked like she'd been hit in the face by Marvelous Marvin Hagler. I was standing on the other side of our kitchen counter, pouring her a cup of mud. It might have been Spring, but my memory about the minutiae is a bit foggy twenty or so years later.


She started crying, and as her son, her eldest, I couldn't bear the thought of her being in pain. It killed me to see her cry. Every time she started, I wanted to jack her car from her, drive to wherever my father was hiding out with his new womanfriend, and beat him unconscious with whatever I could find - as any Good Son should.


Instead, I opened my big fat yap and said quite possibly the most terrible thing that has ever come out of my mouth. I can still to this day feel the way the kitchen felt when all the air got sucked out. I can still see the way her eyes just exploded into a million tiny shards of sadness. I can still feel the immediate impulse to grab the biggest knife in the kitchen and commit Seppuku right there on the fucking spot.


"Jesus Fucking Christ, Mom? He dumped us. It sucks, but fucking get over it already and stop being so fucking weak."


Even typing that sentence out rightfuckingnow I feel like such a fucking shitbird. It's honestly my one regret in my entire life, my one Terrible Iniquity that I just cannot seem to shake loose from. My albatross of horrific proportion.


ANYWAYS...


Fast forward about six weeks, and I'm losing my fucking mind.


I don't know for sure what really sparked the fire in my belly, but the level of depression I was suffering from was beginning to become un-fucking-bearable. Not normal Teen Depression in the least - this wasn't even the regular old "I'm going to walk out into the middle of I-10 and get hit by a fucking Semi" depression. This was "Sean bought a little .25 deuce-quince off a Mexican coke dealer, and plans on shooting himself under his chin in the middle of the night" depression.


I don't even really remember if I had even talked to any of my friends about how bad it was. I just knew I was cracking, and cracking fast. I had found an old typewriter in the garage, and I would stay up all night, typing out these long as fuck letters to Jimi Hendrix, stoned out of my mind and spun out from eating handfuls of White Crosses. Those fucking letters, man - they were something else. Stream-of-consciousness shit that would probably make old Ted Kaczynski seem like a sweet and loving old man who only wanted to teach children math.


I was so angry that I would come home all kinds of fucked up and just terrorize my mother and sister, locking myself in my room with that infernal typewriter, click-click-clacking away all night long. Some nights, I would crawl out my window with my headphones on, laying in the gravel with the gun in my lap, looking up at the moon to see if there would be some kind of sign letting me know when to pull the plug.


I was slowly turning into something like those fucking Columbine Cunts, at least in my mind. Cracked in half. One half of my mind totally terrified of myself, and the other half willing to embrace all of that beautiful chaos and incendiary anger.



One morning, my mother just flat-out asked me why I was writing letters to Jimi Hendrix.


I just fucking crumbled right there, on the spot. Like, rolling on the floor, speaking in tongues, bouncing my head off the linoleum bawling like a little minge. None of that Nancy Kerrigan wailing, though. Just the physical aspects. I told her everything. I told her that I planned my death in my head almost every hour, and that I was terrified that I might actually do it. I told her that I didn't want to hurt her or my sister. I told her that I needed help, because I didn't really want to die, but that it was all I could think about. I told her that her life, and my sister's life, would be better off without me, because all I did was fuck everything up.


She told me that she knew. She told me that she knew I needed help, and told me that I was going to get some.


She was really patient and loving with me. She waited for me to come to her. She never pushed the issue, even though she knew I was about to go the fuck off. She had been reading the letters, even though I thought I had stashed them in a decent spot. She had already contacted my psychologist, and let him know that I was taking things way over the line of normal Teen Depression. She asked me if I was really intent on doing myself harm, and asked me in that way that only a mother can ask her child - the way that not only makes you feel retarded for having the thoughts, but flips that switch inside of your frazzled brain and lets you know it's time to take the help.


Later on that night, I was in an intake room for an Adolescent Psychiatric Facility. The Bughouse. My own Ginsbergian nightmare come to life. My poor mother. This intake nurse is sitting there running the magical gauntlet of questions, asking me about which drugs I've taken, what my thoughts of harming myself were like, my level of sexual activity, and how often I felt like hurting myself, and she's having to take it all in. I watch her hands shaking as I answer these questions. I see the fear in her eyes, this sadness that washes over her face and ages her in an instant.


I remember reaching over and grabbing her hand. I remember the both of us, crying. The intake nurse had no idea what to do or say. So I said it instead.


"Mom, you saved my life today. No matter what happens in here, you saved my life. Please don't be scared."


I'm not going to go into what the next 90 days of my life were like in that place right now. Maybe some other time. Sometimes, when the shit in my life starts to pile up on me and feels overwhelming, I think about what it felt like in that intake room. I think about how brave it was of my mother to take that risk, that gamble that I would actually go through with it.


I'm thankful that she did.

A Proclamation.

This rainy weather shit has me down a little bit.


It was so nice to have a few days of natural warmth and some sunshine that didn't have wind or gloom attached to it. Don't get me wrong here - I like the gloom, and I love Winter - but enough is enough. My body craves the warmth. And after getting to soak in it for a couple of weekends, I now feel like I'm 14 again, and I've been making out with some girl that has been rubbing her hand up against my crotch through my 501s, and then her older sister showed up at the park to take her home.





Typical.


Spring-time will always bring the Blue Balls, just like those little Catholic Schoolgirls that used to love pissing off their parents by fucking around with a Jewish punk rock kid like me. Not that I'm complaining about it, because I certainly have some fond memories of making out in the backseat of some girl's Jetta, roaming my hands up underneath that plaid skirt and getting told "NO."





Summer, on the other hand, is the dirty fucking College girl who just moved out of her house and came to realize The Power of Pussy. Summer is like that girl who was sort of an awkward duck in 7th Grade who suddenly realized that rocking a tanktop and getting some contacts would bring all the dogs sniffing around her ass. Summer is The Grime. Summer is The Sweat. Summer is like a Raekwon album - just enough nasty to keep your head bobbing along.





"The Ice Cream Man is coming!"


I sure could use me some Summer right about now.


My creative juices flow a lot differently with the seasons, which I'm sure happens to a lot of people. My choices in what I listen to shift as well - Summer is much more apt to have me reaching for Hip-Hop or old '80s Hardcore, whereas Winter is definitely all about Metal & Jazz endeavors (undertakings, really - think HUGE BOX SETS of shit that is just "Out There," and you're rolling with me). Spring is a mess, just like those Catholic schoolgirls, and Fall is usually all about breaking out the Miles & Coltrane, getting my head into the proper space for the seclusion and heady nature Winter usually holds for my psyche.





I could probably break all of this down Astrologically, but that might go too far over the edge of reason, even for my shit.





ANYWAYS...


All this shit about seasons & weather is funny to me, because I never had to deal with this when I was living out in The Desert. That wasteland didn't have any seasons - it just had varying degrees of the same thing, kind of like putting on any Top 40 radio station and letting it play for four hours - you'll eventually hear the same twelve cuts at least three times, and all of them will suck.





Moving back up here, to The City, was the inevitable Truth for me. If I had stayed out there any longer, I'd surely be dead by now. I mean, after all the stupid shit I'd done over the years out there, I'm surprised homelessness and being a drug addict were the worst things that happened to me. Sure, I avoided jail time, but that's only by the grace of The Universe. There were plenty of times my ass could have been locked down, and I can only imagine what that shit would have done to me.





I'm going to try and stay on my game and on point this Summer. I'm going to work hard on my shit, and do what I can to get it out there. I spent a long time woodshedding, honing my "craft," if you're so inclined. And it wouldn't be gentlemanly of me to be spouting off about all these Cornelius Fakers making way if I just sat on my hands and didn't get some of what's out there for my very own.





Cat, get the fuck on up out of this bag.

The Paper Tiger.

I've been in a feisty/bordering-on-foul mood for a couple of days now.



It would be far too easy for me to blame my mood on this over-reacting bullshit in regard to Hamthrax/Snoutbreak/Aporkalypse Now, but I'm not going to lie and say it isn't hilarious and maddening to see fucking losers riding the subway with their little "protective masks" on their mugs. I like to sidle right on up next to them and start coughing violently, just to elicit the cheap thrill and also for the adoration of the rest of the crowd that isn't panic-stricken.




I know, I'm an easily amused doofus.




Stress-relieving amusements like this help a bit. My record streak is 11 Perps picked in a row. Maybe the former junkie in me still has that Magic Eye after all?




This is the part of this Ramble where I whine and bitch - so, if you're not like, into that, stop now and go to the pretty picture at the bottom instead. You've been warned...


I've been reading a lot of sites lately. Trying to see what all this "freelance writer" bullshit is all about, and I have to tell you - it really just comes off like motherfuckers are getting paid to get their Nerd on. I'm all in favor of it, don't get me wrong. If some music site decided they wanted to throw me a bone and have me review records, I'd be a gleeful little schoolgirl for the rest of my life. For real.




But I guess the part that boggles my noodle is that I read a lot of people who I know in MeatSpace, and they do not sound like themselves at all. As an avid observer of human behavior, I find that people who create "art" that differs from their everyday personae (definition 5, suckas) are usually people who are afraid to upset or offend people. And me? I think that's just pointless bullshit, and I'll tell you why -




Anyone can write. Anyone can pick up a guitar and write a song with four chords in it. Anyone can stick their hand in a jar of Skippy, smear that peanut butter goodness on their junk and take a camera phone picture of it, and call it pornography. Anyone can buy some spray-paint and tag up an empty wall. Anyone can learn how to program a geekbox. Anyone can bake a cake. Anyone can sit naked in a litterbox while blaring techno in a gallery and call it Performance Art.




Breathe...and Confess...


Basically, I am a bitter and angry man lately. I get so chapped at the thought of not doing what I've always wanted to do, that I get pissed off that there are some people out there who are doing it. And that's not necessarily a healthy way to deal with my issues. My issues are simple: I'm paralyzed whenever I get what it is that I want. Any time a band I was in got within sniffing distance of a record deal, I bailed. Any time someone wanted to take some of my writing and publish it, I'd either force them to publish it under a fake fucking name, or I'd bail. Hell - even back in High School I would bail on motherfuckers all the time, because I never wanted to disappoint anyone.




This is a pattern that needs to change, and change quickly. I do not want to be one of those old fucks who is on his fucking Death Bed, and whimpers out "I sure do wish I'd followed my *sniffle* heart." Because I know that anyone who would be up in that room with me would fucking laugh their head off at me, for running my mouth nonstop about wanting to do something and not sacking-up enough to take that shot at it.




And I honestly wouldn't blame them one fucking bit.


Although, I have yet to pass up any opportunity in this life to possibly offend someone. That is some shit I am goddamn qualified for. Here, I'll prove it -




I am so fucking tired of trying to be cool to people in the hope that they'll do me a solid and hook me up with the people they say they will when they stroke my flaccid cock and tell me I'm a "good writer," and I should be getting paid to do so, all while I have nothing to show for it other than their half-hearted and equally flaccid accolades. Seriously.


I love all y'all, but let's get on Front Street here, and admit that it's High Time I put my money where my mouth is, and stop banking on people's kindness. Basically, I'm telling y'all to stop stroking me and force me to make a move my damn self.




Anything less than that would be some fake "art" shit to me, anyway.


Here is that pretty picture I promised you:

Good-bye Winter, Hello Stupid.

WTF, indeed...





Hi there - it's been a while, eh?



I know, I know - I am terrible. I've had a lot of stuff going on over the last few weeks. My Staycation ended, which is good for Ye Olde Banque Account, but not necessarily good for me maintaining this piece of work right here. Not to mention the fact that the end of WINTER dragged on and on, which sapped my will to live a little bit more than last year. All that being said - I'm going to try harder to maintain whatever the fuck it is I am doing here.




I'm totally going through Kari Ferrell withdrawal. The Hipster Grifter DTs are fucking terrible. My imaginary friend Kevin* made his very own Hipster Grifter at lunch last week, and I think he did it just to taunt me, because he has magical powers. I like Kevin - he's as twisted as I am. Sort of.


Someone needs to ramp up their sociopath-ish behavior, and make sure it gets documented, so I can stay entertained. And they should send me naked pictures. I like naked pictures.



ANYWAYS...


The last few days have seen my snarkability reach Threat Level Orange, which bodes well for getting some writing done. Unfortunately, according to the National Weather Service, this weekend will be glorious - so keeping myself tethered to this here geekbox isn't going to be a reality. After the length and nasty bitterness of the hopefully defunct Winter is behind us, it's best if I spend my time basking in the majesty of the Glowing Orb and soak up some good old Vitamin D.





I'm quite sure that I will see a fuck-ton of these morons crawling out of their crypts and into the park near my crib. Which will be great, because my camera phone is AWESOME. I hope to capture some of them in their unnatural habitat, to document the ghostly pallor of Childrensburg's finest and brightest stars.




And I'm pretty sure that at some point in the next few weeks we'll be making a journey down the Jersey Shore, where I'll be able to do the same kind of research on a totally different species of douchebag, albeit just as entertaining. I find this to be a good way to kill the time when I'd rather be writing, you know?




AND NOW I BRING YOU A GIFT:


Best Scott Baio/Scatman Crothers vehicle ever:




*Kevin and I both talk to The Wife about he and I hanging out and shit, but we're both so socially inept, that two years later we've just begun reading each other's shit on the interweb. How awesome is that? Also - I tried to text him tonight, to see if he wanted to get frozen yogurt with us. I sent what I thought was his number this - "Wanna get frozen yogurt with us, homo?" - and then got a phone call from a very angry Asian girl who could not pronounce anything resembling Engrish. Good times.

Touch Me, I'm Sick.

I've been far under the weather for the better part of a week now, and it is quite tiresome. This is some nasty flu-ish bug. Not only do my sinuses feel like there are rabid weasels trying to eat their way out of my skull, but I am constantly fatigued - I slept off and on for over 18 hours yesterday.


Hell, I even took the day off of work on Thursday, thinking a day of nothing but sleep would do me some good. But this motherfucker is still lingering.



I've been loading up on Emergen-C three times a day, and I have drank my weight in NyQuil the last few nights(which always lends to bad-ass dreams of an almost opiate-like nature). My right ear, as it is wont to do when I am ill, is completely out of commission - everything sounds like it is underwater, and I have no balance due to my lack of an equilibrium.



All of this, while the talking heads on the news are talking about Snowmageddon hitting NYC tonight. AWESOME.





ANYWAYS...


As someone who loves Chuck Palahniuk's early works(specifically his initial run of stories - Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Choke, & Survivor), I hate to say it, but I was totally let down by the movie version of Choke. Even after reading interviews with Palahniuk where he says he dug the film, I still feel a little cheated. I know, I am an asshole.



Maybe this is a bigger issue with me than I want to believe.


I get this way about a lot of shit. Like - what the fuck happened to Chris Cornell? Motherfucker used to have the best pipes in rock and motherfucking roll. Soundgarden was a beast of a band, with even that last lumbering effort, Down On The Upside having a lasting impression on my musical mind. The riffs. The melodies. It was still a damn fine album - no motherfucking Badmotorfinger, but really, what could ever top that?




And then Cornell goes on to front the remnants of Rage Against The Machine, under the poorly chosen moniker of Audioslave? Goddamn. Someone shoot me in the dick already. Audioslave was some terrible shit, man. It was like listening to two cats fucking outside a window(this coming from someone who has a HUGE soft spot for not only cats, but also both of the bands fused together to make Audioslave).



And then, after the Audioslave debacle is finally buried when RATM gets back together to play some shows during our election season(as if they wouldn't!), Cornell goes out and does the unfuckingthinkable, and records a song for a fucking James Bond film? That's akin to telling all of your former fans that you've cut your sac open and fed what was left of your testicles to a neighbor's dementia-suffering grandmother. Let's see...Bond film songs...Tina Turner. Duran Duran. Shirley Bassey. a-Ha. Paul McCartney & Wings. Sheena "My Vaginal Walls Are Coated In Glucose" Easton. Madonna.




Chris Cornell - lounge singer. And then he records an album with...


...wait for it...


Timbaland.




This is the same Chris Cornell who would fucking storm stages across the globe, screeching his heart out about how we all need to "Face Pollution", or how he was "gonna break out of my rusty cage and run". I am sure that Kim Thayil, Soundgarden's irrevocably amazing guitar slinger(and the guy who once said - "I love dropped D tuning because it makes my guitar sound like dragon's breath") is sitting in his basement, polishing bullets with Cornell's likeness engraved in the tips. No Soundgarden reunion, but you'll record an album with motherfucking Timbaland?



FUCKING HELL, MAN.


Back to how this ties in somehow to me not digging Choke as a film...


It just didn't have the right greasy feel to it. And by greasy, I mean lewd. Sure - Sam Rockwell wasn't necessarily a bad choice to play a sex-addicted social miscreant who may or may not have been a product of the Vatican getting involved with infertility treatment. And Anjelica Huston was fantastic as his institutionalized nutcase of a mother. Actually - I had no real issues with the casting at all. Nor did I have any issues with the performances.



I guess I am just a dick. I just did not feel the movie the way I had hoped to. And this happens a lot - because we all end up developing these deeply personal relationships with characters and ideas set before us in "art" - you know? I went into viewing the film with the hope that it would be as entertaining as the book, which is something I always warn others about. And in this case, I was an idiot who let my guard down and hoped for a much more fleshed out version of my own inner version of Choke.



Lesson re-learned.


This still does not let you off the hook, Chris Cornell.