self control

On the kitchen counter are 6 or 7 containers of Chinese food.  A “buttload” according to my sister.  It’s a little before midnight and I’m piling piece onto piece on my fork, stuffing the fork into my mouth and then repeating.  I had a really filing diner at a nicer than fast food chicken joint at the corner of Hollywood and Vine around 7pm, so I’m not that hungry.  This is a moment of habit, and indulgence.  It will be there in the morning, you don’t have to eat it all now. I skip the General Mao’s chicken and continue onto the other small black containers.

 I want change, but it’s slower and more difficult than I thought.  You can’t just stop.  You can either slow down or think about what you can do to replace what’s happening.  Instead of going to Amoeba records between shows and spending ridiculous amounts of money on pop culture, I go to the hotel café and see an hour show.  It means drinking coffee black, because then I drink it slower and don’t gulp down a ton of sugar and fat in creamer. 

Food is the most difficult of all, because my willpower’s drained at night and food’s an easy good time.  I can’t just let myself go to bed hungry.  I can’t just let the ice cream stay in the freezer.  I have to go through huge brainstorming sessions to find alternatives.  Right now the winners are carrot chips and precut apple slices.  Here’s hoping.

I’m drawing these huge brainstorming graphs trying to clear out my head.  All these wavy spider graphs dedicated to topics as heavy as my future, to as light as the after effects of obsessions with pop idols.  Anything is written down to figure out what I should do next.  The future is going to march on me if I don’t.  And same-old, same-old isn’t doing it for me anymore.

It’s hard to figure out what’s next for me.  There aren’t a lot of successes out there who are guys like me. No model.   It always seems like those who are successful in America are just a long life of skinny white people bequeathing each other onto infinity.  It’s a shame.  What’s great about the American dream, is it’s the reverse of most religious dogma. There is no chosen, just someone who is self made.  But how much of that is real?  And how much is just made to keep a status quo?  Who Knows? Not me.  I got spider graphs to make and a hustle to bust.  Holla.

Fiction Fighter: Dostoyevsky vs. Gaiman... FIGHT!

Coming Sometime Never from Mindless Entertainment!

The most acclaimed authors of the modern age do battle in a ring of death to reassert the world of its creativity..... WITH BLOOD!!!!!

Player One: Fyodor Dostoyevsky in a heavy brown overcoat underneath a shirt and bow tie.

Player Two: Neil Gaiman in a black tee shirt and jeans, and an unbuttoned black polyester dress shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

Fight!

The fighters sidestep each other in the parking lot of a dilapidated Borders Bookstore.  Rats scamper to themselves underneath the broken "B" that swings by the wires of its flickering halogen light. Dostoyevsky's beard trails behind him as he lunges at Neil.   Gaiman reaches into the pocket of his dress shirt and pulls out a pair of buttons.

"Buttons!"

The words breathe coyfully in a naive squeak, and Neil blows a kiss on them like he's about to roll a pair of dice.  The tiny black saucers wake up in his hand and in a split second fly away, smashing into Fyodor's eyes until blood runs out.

Fydor rips the buttons of his eyes and screams madly.  As he staggers back, Neil shakes his head side to side in a wild frenzy.  A purple and black hue rustles around him and out of the top of his skull the Morpheus' mask pops out and slides across his face.  A dark, moorish voice drizzles out from under the trunk.

"Enter the Sandman"

And Neil/Morpheus plows into Dostoyevsky with a series of furious headbutts.  "Enter the Sandman" over and over again until the puggish russian hits the ground.  The mask folds and crawls back underneath Neil's twisty hair.

 <unfinished>

Work Hard, Play Now

It's been a rough couple of weeks, for a lot of different reasons. The groundlings comedy theater and I parted ways.  And if that wasn't enough, my work in an accounting office gets rough because of the tax extensions deadline of September 16. And I'm doing this while my leg still hurts because the doctors can't figure out why and the auto insurance companies dick me around about my accident.  On top of that, my brother is going through some serious mental health problems right now.

So as you can imagine, My hive is kind of chaotic right now.  I'm operating in a tight space because my sister, my brother and I still live with my parents. This can be very stressful.  For me, a vague uncertainty has lead me back home.  Deep down I think there was this hope I would leave because of some sort of higher calling.  The outer elements of chaos and the inner elements of my hopes and dreams had finally found a compromise.  My calling would pull me out of here celestially.

But now the future looks so muddy I don't know what to believe anymore.  Over the last ten years, every plan I made hasn't just not come to fruition, it's been completely annihilated.  And I think that's why my family hasn't been too harsh about me living here, they see how hard I'm working.  But it's been a lot of square one planning, execution and back again to square one.

The failures don't hurt, that's life, it's the missed connections that burn. I've been judged inferior by every type of lifeform on this planet.  It takes a minute to get over when someone has what you want, and they act like a complete douchebag.  I wouldn't mind if I had a place in this world, I'd be too busy to care.  But stewing in my car on the drive, with only these stings to nurse my imagination, it hurts like hell.  I have a chip on my shoulder a mile wide.

There's a slight recompense, reminscent of a Saul Bellow story.  When I have a good time, it really shows.  I really feel it.  It doesn't get lost in other people egos or the noise around me. It cuts right through the bullshit.  My laughter goes from a tender hiss to a full blown chainsaw of guffaws.

But here in this abridged form of the here and now, I'm insecure about the rest of my mid September Saturday.  I just spent a tedious morning that completely revolved around people venting their frustrations over my brother's mental health issues.  Today I had loosely planned my final in a sketch comedy class at the Upright Citizens Brigade, then some music shopping in Amoeba records, and seeing shows at iOWest, another comedy theater I'm just starting at.

My teacher left for a writing job on Saturday Night Live, and I'm not sure about the packet I have to turn in.  A lot of the sketches aren't workshopped enough.  I feel a pull, something's missing. I can't articulate it.  But I have my materials together, and even though it means a lot of chores belated to Sunday, I forge ahead.

On the 30 mile the car ride from Simi to West Hollywood, I try to write lyrics to songs to the radio.  They never fit the songs that come out of my hands.  If the songs that come out of my mouth fit the songs that came out of my hands, I'd be in a rare form of heaven.  I swear.

After I got there, the class was a blast.  We practiced pitches for our own sketch comedy show.  I finally got to workshop my own idea, which went over really well.  The notes for my sketches went really well too. The substitute and I clicked. Apparently I have a gift for character sketches (...well not if you ask the groundlings I don't).  I also got notes from the teacher going to SNL through the e-mail.  I got to pitch ideas for other people's shows and generally a real good feeling of validation.

Then I went to Amoeba records, and had my usual fun.  I got a lot of Rush albums and blues stuff.  My random pick was a Slits album.  I liked the song titles.  I wish there were more restaurants along Hollywood and Sunset like the ones on Melrose.  It gets a bit grimy.  I hop out of my metered spot and drive two blocks down.  This may seem like overkill, but walking down Hollywood and Cahuenga by myself around midnight does not sound like a good idea.

The valet at iOwest is only $5 with validation, and it got a little crazy.   I got out of the car while it was still in neutral. It started to drive away without me.  I jumped back into the moving car and put it in park.  The valet said "now I know you're going to iO, because that was very funny".  I'm just glad the door didn't close and lock on me.

Because I look at improv comedy from more of a technical aspect, then personal taste, I'll just say the premises and leave my opinion out of it.  Mr. Body is an improvised murder mystery, Razowsky & Clifford were two seasoned pros improvising while sitting in chairs randomly placed on the stage, and the Armando show, is where a celebrity guest host tell stories and the cast improvises comedic scenes around what they said.  That Saturday's guest was Mo Collins from MadTv.

My favorite joke was about a zoo.  One guy was trying to release all the animals to make a zoo where all the animals could be free together.  The other guy replied, "the already have that, they call it nature."

There were a lot of pretty girls there.  One started talking to me and I'm such a nerd, I just talked about improv.  If I had to do it again, I would have asked if she was with a first date.  Then maybe I could talk.  I'm so used to being a 300lb introvert misfit, and making that transition to reasonably attractive, quirky dude has got me stumped.  She kept doing things like touching my feet and then apologizing and pointing her knees in towards me instead of her date, and that made me wonder.  But there's a lot of sleazy creeps in this town, and sometimes women stay in a secretive form of "maybe" so they can cut the cord unnoticed if its not to their liking.  It's hard to negotiate through what is only implied.

So with my night in Hollywood's ending, I walk out of theater while this song plays me out, which is a rare form of awesome:



After getting home I chew some cold pizza and watch TV.  I wish I could figure out a way past the late night munchies.  if anybody's got any ideas, feel free to send some comments.

The Black Keys were on Austin City Limits.  A while back, a girl in a groundlings class mentioned that she wanted to start a band with a Black Keys like vibe. Seeing these guys, I felt like I could try and not embarrass myself.  See what happens.  The next morning I shoot her an e-mail.  I've been around long enough that I know I need to be patient, and just let it unfurl like an accordion.

Millienium Falcon HONK! HONK!

If Highway 170 has one little quip against it, its that people often have to cross at least five lines of traffic just to get on or off.  California's drivers are very conscientious of this and often allow these passengers the right of way out of courtesy.  There aren't any accidents or middle fingers.  A quiet moment of chivalry on the open road.

Motorists pass smoke signals there in very creative ways.  Recently I was getting off the H-170, which at the time had become heavily congested in the post-rush hour / pre-evening traffic.  The divider receded and there was a small pocket of space my car could fit into.  I wanted to go but in my blind spot was a giant orange big rig pulling two cement mixer freights and if there was a quick stop it wasn't going to be pretty.

The truck driver saw my left turn blinker and gave two short horn blasts.  In my head, all I could think of was Star Wars.  That moment when Luke is in the trench and Darth Vader is about to blast him.  Han Solo blares away from the Millennium Falcon yelling, "Great Shot Chewie, That was one and a million! You're all clear, kid, now let's blow this thing and go home!"

After seeing why the Big Rig honked, the cars in the other lanes let me into their lane as well.  I cleaved across traffic like a hot knife through butter.  Since I wasn't driving at night, all the highway construction cones weren't up yet and getting on highway 118 back to Simi was a breeze.

It was a rare moment when driving was a smooth, whole hearted moment.  One to be noted, considering driving in California can cause so much stress.  I can think of so many times where I sat in my car furiously chewing on my own guts like a rabid baboon.  It's nice to have something different happen from time to time.