RENT Tonight I drove down to Old Arvada by myself and bought a ticket to see RENT at 10:45 at the ghetto theatre, which still costs seven dollars. I used a student I.D. from three years ago, and the lady asked to see my regular I.D. because I was paying with a debit card. In case somebody stole Zachary Johnson's debit card and was using it to see RENT at 10:45 on a Sunday night. I can't even tell you how bad this movie is. Because I couldn't even stand to finish it. Sometimes I like to go see bad movies that promise to be a little bit inspirational, sad, and fun. My forgiveness for bad/fun movies runs pretty deep. I liked The Phantom of the Opera. I liked Coyote Ugly, for Christ's sake. RENT is so awful that you want to punch every single person that was involved in the face, except for Rosario Dawson, who was the only member of the cast that didn't annoy the fucking shit out of me every time she opened her mouth, or even kept on breathing. Rosario Dawson is a fine actress, and somehow even managed to sing the shittiest lyrics ever without seeming completely ridiculous. I'm not going to applaud her for that, though. I'm mad at her. Example of shittiest lyrics ever: ROSARIO DAWSON: "You have strong hands, like my father. Do you want to dance?" PUSSY ROCKSTAR (nervously): "With you?" ROSARIO DAWSON (sarcastically): "No, with my father." PUSSY ROCKSTAR: "My name is Roger." My name is Roger? Are you fucking
shitting me? I thought this musical was supposed to be a gritty but
poignant portrayal of people dying of AIDS on the mean streets of New
York. I've never seen the play, but it has the same lyrics and songs
as the movie, so it is now on my shit list too. In fact, RENT is the
only thing on my shit list. I created my shit list tonight, because
of RENT. And people like this musical. I mean, I went to acting school,
and people raved about it. Christ, I can't even remember the last time
I saw a movie that I hated so much. And I liked Uptown Girls, for God's
sake, so my standards aren't too outrageous or anything. And the pussy
rockstar character affected his voice to sound like the pussy rockstar
Scot Stapp so much that I almost wanted to kill myself every time he
started to sing. Another example of shittiest lyrics ever: When singing
an indulgent song about how he used to be addicted to smack with his
old girlfriend, who died of AIDS, he refers to himself, I swear to God,
as "the pretty-boy frontman," looking so pleased with himself
and mopey that you want to punch him in the face. Who the fuck is proud
of being a pretty-boy, and so much that they think it's a good thing
to mention in a song about their dead, crack-addicted girlfriend. I
swear, everybody in this movie except for Rosario Dawson, you want to
punch in the face. And that includes the director, Chris Columbus, and
whoever it is that had the indecency to write such a feel-good, empty,
saccharine musical about people dying of AIDS in the first place. The
movie's not even good enough to be called manipulative; we can accuse
a movie like I AM SAM for using unfair methods to make you want to cry,
for pulling obviously at the old heart-strings, but it at least succeeds
in that. It sort of makes you want to cry, it doesn't make you want
to punch Sean Penn and Dakota Fanning in the face. Thanks a lot, RENT. You fucking asshole movie. 12/10/05 Snow
It snowed this morning. I woke up in the afternoon, and when I saw that it had snowed, I was so happy that I made up a little dance in the living room while singing an impromptu duet of a White Christmas song with my brother Marke. "Snow, snow, snow, snow! It won't be long until we'll build a house of snow! We'll build a man, an igloo, and a thing of snow!" I didn't know all of the words, and so I made up new ones. "Snow!" echoed Mark , in his best Bing Crosby voice, sliding and low. "Snow!" I echoed back, in mine. And I somewhat gingerly wiggled my little ass, nimbly stepping to the beat. Marke and I were
a couple of vaudevilles this afternoon. "Snow..."
I crooned to myself. Then I scrunched up my face, peering out warily
from squinty, cynical eyes, and tried to make my face look sober and
wise, reluctant and endlessly sad. Sometimes I do this when I am drinking
my coffee and smoking a cigarette after I wake up. I do it quite a lot,
actually. In the privacy of morning -or afternoon, when I am having
my coffee, I will always be an actor. Sometimes I even say lines from
movies like Taxi Driver. "Damn, I gotta get organazized!" Anyway, so I sent her a text-message. She's not talking to me, so she didn't text me back. "Boooring," I am now crooning in my best Bing Crosby voice. There is nothing more boring than when I start to get sentimental. Some people get sentimental in their old age, but I don't need to worry about that because I'm already sentimental. That is one thing I can cross-off on my list of "Things to worry about concerning my future." Things to worry about concerning my future: "I'll never be loved by a woman. I'll never make it in any vocation. I'll be a bad father. I won't get around to watching Dead Man because even though I've heard it's really good, something else at the video store will always seem more interesting at the moment. I possibly have a fundamental impotence when it comes to relationships (shit?). I might become sentimental in my old age." Nope, nevermind. Cross that last shit off the list! Bang. One down. It's hard for me to worry about anything when it is snowing. I really like the snow. Belle and Sebastian wrote a song called "Winter Wooksie." It's amazing. It goes, It even gets better after that. It's probably the best song I can think of at the moment. And so I like it when it snows because it makes it hard for me to worry about anything, even if I feel sad. You can feel sad in a snowy evening, and still be happy at the same time. Isn't that wonderful? I think so. That is the wonder of snow: everything is quieter and more lovely. For example, it's evening now, and I just went outside again; everything was so quiet and still, and even though it was evening, it seemed lighter out than usual after the sun has set, in a dimly-lit, cheery way that reminds you of Christmas carols and memories. The sun sets early in Boston these days, but there was a warm glow in the sky, reflected from all of the white, sparkling blanketing of snow on the ground. I like all of the old metaphors for describing snow. It is often described as a white blanket. I can't think of anything better. A white blanket suits it fine. Because I like blankets in general, and I also like snow in general, so it's perfect. When I think of snow, I think of Meredith bundling up in a crazy pink parka with a funny hood. She's never done that, though. She doesn't even own anything like that. I actually have no idea why I think of that when I think of snow. I don't know why I think of anything anymore. It just happens. I start thinking about something, and then I'm thinking about something else entirely, and neither of the two unconnected things even necessarily exist in the first place. Sometimes I make up conversations that I'm having with people when I'm walking around Boston by myself. The other day I realized that I had said something out loud, because I heard the sound of people walking behind me and thought to myself that they must have heard me. I felt embarrassed, so I did what I always do when I feel embarrassed, which is look mean. Maybe they thought I was talking on a cellphone. They have cellphones with ear-pieces now. I thought these were a joke, but they're not. I actually had a friend who used one once. He usually looked like he was in the goddam army or something. PRIVATE, WE HAVE A MOTHERFUCKING SITUATION! DO YOU MOTHERFUCKING COPY, COCKSUCKER? "YES SIR! COPY, SIR! AM AT LUNCH WITH FRIENDS, SIR!" "WELL HOW FUCKING NICE FOR YOU, ASSCLOWNSHITBAG. NOW MOVE IT, MOVE IT! IT'S IMPERATIVE THAT WE HAVE A LONG CONVERSATION ABOUT ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING, AND RIGHT AT THIS INSTANT!" I have no fucking idea how they talk in the army, but it's probably nothing like that. I've heard they use loads of profanity and shout a lot, though. Anyway, my friend was always on call, on duty, his phone and earpiece at the ready. Except the army never called him. His fiance called him all of the time though, and he was always ready to kick back and shoot the shit with her for hours, even if he was sitting at a restaurant with four other people who had to listen. Sometimes the rest of us would get annoyed, and start answering the questions he asked his fiance on the other line. "September?! I'm not going to see you until fucking September! Oh, but baby, I miss you so much! I want to have your babies, my little pumpkin schmoonchkin! Right now, too! What are you wearing?" Or: "That's great, you miss me. Big fucking deal, I'm screwing the postman." He would get all infuriated, and shush us with a meaningful look that said, basically, "A little consideration? I'm-on-the-phone-here-and-you're-acting-like-children." I always wanted to buy a walkie-talkie so that when he started talking away with his fiance at lunch, I could pull it out and yell, "BREAKER, 1-40! BREAKER, DO YOU COPY? WE'RE HEADING INTO THE FUCKING SANDSTORM BABY, AND GODDAMNED IF I DON'T SEE THE DEVIL HIMSELF! WHEEEEEEAAA! HOLY SHIT - MY ARM, THEY GOT MY GODDAM ARM! THE BASTARDS GOT MY ARM! WHEEEEEAA!" I always thought that would have been funny as hell. In fact, I still think so. I should buy a fucking walkie-talkie as soon as possible. Speaking of phones,
I saw a commercial the other day which showed a bunch of people watching
t.v. on their phones everywhere -- and I mean everywhere: sprawled out
in public places like the airport or the park or in a movie theatre.
The commercial said, "Imagine a world where the world is your living
room. With our new phones, it isn't hard to imagine..." I was watching
t.v. in my real living room with a few people, and I yelled, "That
world looks shitty!" at the t.v. screen. The church of
Scientology offers free stress-tests in the subway station at 42nd and
Broadway, in New York. "Are you stressed?" they ask cheerily
as you are hurrying by, surrounded by a moving mass of crazy people,
old people, young people, dead people, pretty people, ugly people, all
heading for the empty void of ambition, love, or failure, or all three.
"Goddamn right, buddy. Your goddamn right I'm stressed." Kim, who is basically my Favorite Person of the Day on any given day, responded in her fashion. She laughed, baffled, and then took a moment before suggesting that Marke buy himself a dozen eggs tomorrow morning and boil them. "Then you can eat hard-boiled eggs for a week," she said, and went back to doing what she was doing. "Good idea," Marke mumbled thoughtfully, after some lengthy consideration. And he continued to mull things over in his mind while sitting on his stool in his pajamas. Anyway, when I came home a few hours later from seeing my movie, I noticed a large piece of paper stuck to the refrigerator. In large, black print, and in what was obviously his own clean, architectural handwriting, it said: "Marke - buy twelve eggs tomorrow and boil them." Favorite Person
of the Day, no contest. Writing letters can be very sad. You never know what you'll end up saying. Sometimes you tell the truth. And then you can't send them. This is why I have a MySpace account. You never have to tell the truth. All you have to say is, "Cool pics," which means, "Let's fuck." That particular unsent letter was to my friend Ben. One time when I was in New York I wrote a letter to his girlfriend, who is now his wife, on a napkin in a bar. I had woken up on this particular evening at 2 AM, which is bad because the hour was already faintly sinister from the beginning, and so I decided to go to a bar up the street, which I knew was open to four. It was called O'Neils, and you could usually smoke inside after 2 AM. There is nothing more depressing than waking up at 2 AM on a Tuesday night, wondering how long you've been asleep, and then deciding to go to a bar. And so after I had ordered a tequilla and a Budweiser, I decided I might as well write a letter to Michele, because I didn't have anything else to do but smoke cigarettes and keep drinking, which I did as well. None of my friends were at the bar. I was a vampire in those days. Anyway, I sat at the bar and wrote on a napkin. The letter wasn't even about anything, and sometimes I would just let the pen run in a long line instead of finishing a sentence. I sat there watching, as I made marks and scratches and sometimes wrote words. And then I would place my beer bottle on the napkin so that all of the ink in the circumference of the bottom would bleed. Anyway, there was this girl sitting across the bar from me with her friends, and she was giving me the old eye. I had never seen her before, but soon she came over and sat next to me, starting up something that looked vaguely like a conversation, and daring me to join in with the farce. She was dark and cool, sexy and aloof. And I couldn't think of anything to say. So I asked her a few stupid questions, like where was she from, and what was she studying, and other stuff that I didn't care about, but which seemed polite. Basically I just sat there, sort of wanting to get back to my letter, although also pretending to be a very charming, gregarious sort of guy with dark secrets, like why I was writing a letter on a napkin in a bar by myself at 2:30 in the morning. She got bored as hell and left after about two minutes, and I sat there feeling rejected, even though she was the one who had approached me. That actually made me feel worse. You've got to be pretty pathetic if someone who is hitting on you, and not the other way around, gets bored and leaves within two minutes. After I had finished two beers, I went upstairs and vomited in the bathroom. I don't know why because I wasn't even drunk, but I certainly didn't do it on purpose. I did it because suddenly I had to vomit. "Damn," I thought. "I have to vomit right now." Then I went back downstairs, paid my tab, pocketed the unfinished letter on the napkin, and went home. I threw it away a few days later because I couldn't even read it when I attempted to. The parts that I could make out appeared to be about Meredith. I don't know why I write and don't send so many letters about her. I don't do it anymore. I am lettered-out. There was another time when I went to that bar at two in the morning by myself. This time I was drinking, minding my own business, and this old guy came over to me. He was eyeing me curiously, although not in any threatening or sexual sort of way, and finally he said, "You've been to prison, haven't you?" I've never been to prison, so I naturally said, "Yeah," and lit a cigarette, wincing like it was still painful to even recall. "I could tell," he said, grinning in a satisfied but concerned manner. "I could tell from a mile off. You look it." "Do I?" I asked. After a meaningful look from him, I grinned cynically and said, "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do." "Get this man another beer, on me," he said to the bartender. I thought, "Awesome." So we shot the shit about prison life for a little while, and he kept buying me drinks. Whenever he asked a question that I didn't have the knowledge or imagination to answer, I just feigned a reluctance about talking about it. He asked me if I had gone into the old slammer for drugs, and for some reason, even though I was lying through my teeth, I sure didn't want this guy thinking I'd been put away for drugs. That seemed like a sort of dumb reason to go to jail. "No. Let's just say I got into a bad fight," I said, which seemed to do the trick. "Ahhh," he said knowingly, and left it at that. I don't really know why I was stringing this guy along because he wasn't an asshole or anything like that. He was just making conversation, I guess. But hell, he was buying me drinks, and I guess I just wasn't particularly concerned about the truth at the moment. I didn't want to talk about myself: I wanted to talk about somebody else who looked like me. And I felt like one of the boys. You could tell he sort of respected me, but was concerned too. You could tell he was full of concern when, softly, unobtrusively, he asked me if I had been raped while I was in prison. Goddamn, I wondered. Was I raped when I was in prison? So I got a far-away look in my eyes, blinked back a few non-existent tears, took a long drag on my cigarette, and finally said, "Yeah...yeah, I was," like he was my confessor or something. He winced, and took a pull of his beer. "Listen," he said to me, suddenly impassioned. "Listen, you can't let that beat you! Do you feel confused now, about your sexuality?" Yes, I nodded. "Well, you can't be confused! Don't let them take your dignity from you!" He was getting very excited, just about nearly pounding the goddam bar. I was getting very excited too, because I was drunk and he was being really inspirational. "You have to continue on in this life, and take courage! Have strength! Because what has happened to you in your past should not be allowed to strip you of your future!" Then I think he did slam the bar in a rewarding finale. I honestly felt a little inspired at that moment, while also sort of sad because this stranger was giving me this pep-rally speech, and really meant it, and I had been lying to him all along. I was sort of amused with myself, but that's only because I'm an asshole sometimes. Mostly I felt inspired, though. I wanted to go be the man God had created me to be, no matter what had happened in my past. What a nice old guy. I was sort of sorry to have lied to him. But then again, I was sort of sorry about everything at that point in my life, which gradually turns into not giving a damn about anything in specific while feeling guilty about everything in general. It's a stupid way to be. That story doesn't have much of an ending, I've just realized. Nothing really happened after that. I said I had to go, and he said a few more encouraging words, and then we parted ways with a firm handshake. I went out into the freezing cold, pulled my collar around me, and smoked a cigarette on the walk home, a little drunk and a little listless. Even though everything seems to matter very much when you are drunk, nothing seems to matter very much for a very long time. Eventually you don't give a damn, and you just want to go to bed. The only bad thing is that you don't usually reach this point of just wanting to go to bed until after you probably called some girl up and left some long, shitty message on her machine. Which is what I probably did before I went to bed. China, who is the piano-player in our band, keeps making food for me. She makes me feel all looked-after when she makes dinner for her and her husband, Seth, and urges me to have some. I like to call her our pianist. Because, you know, it sounds like "penis." You can tell I think that's really great because I laugh every time I do it. She's helping me write a song. It's a love song, and we're going to make it very sad. I can't think of how to end this. Normally I would just stop writing, but it seems long enough to deserve an ending that somehow ties everything together, that brings a little cohesion and conclusion to all of this rambling. Oh well.
10/31/05 MORE SUMMER MOVIE REVIEWS
It also means that I'm going to write more movie reviews. MR AND MRS SMITH is about a married couple kicking the shit out of each other. It's so funny. It stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. She has big, sexy lips, and she adopted a son. I liked this movie so much. I like any movie that thinks domestic-violence is just one big fat joke. THE CONSTANT GARDENER has nothing much to do with a gardener. Thank God, because that would be boring as shit. That was a cheap, stupid joke. Anyway, it's about some political stuff that I didn't understand very much, and I liked it a lot. Rachel Weisz plays a pregnant girl in it, and she might have really been pregnant because it showed her naked and it looked like she was really pregnant to me. I don't know, though, because I've never seen a pregnant girl naked before, and because they can do a lot with special-effects these days, like have people fly and make totally crappy Star Wars prequels. MUST LOVE DOGS is a crappy movie about internet-dating with the stupidest title I've ever heard. The title doesn't even make sense when you read it, and it's even worse when you see how it relates to the movie, which is pretty much not at all. The characters have a requirement on their internet profiles: Whoever wants to date Diane Lane "Must love dogs." Which is a fucking retarded contingency for dating somebody anyway, and an even worse thing to make a movie about. The only good part of the whole movie is that, when John Cusack's character gets depressed, which is all the time, he watches Doctor Zhivago over and over, alienating himself from the world and drinking himself into a numb stupor. Which is an awesome way to deal with depression. Or, at least, I would guess that it is. I've never seen Doctor Zhivago. THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS is about four girls who go to different places for the summer and wear a pair of jeans that magically fits all of them. That doesn't make any sense, but the filmmakers didn't seem to care very much, and so neither did I. Wearing the magic pair of jeans helps them to deal with the varying issues involved in the complicated transition between being a girl and growing into a woman. And as if that isn't already an awesome enough premise, it's made better by one of the girls being really, really cute. Everybody thinks that the controversy surrounding CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY is whether or not it is as good as the original movie. I don't give a shit because both of the movies sucked when compared to the book. That used to be an unfair position to take with movies because the movie was never as good as the book that it was based on, and shouldn't have been expected to be: Of course you can't accomplish in a two-hour movie what you can accomplish in a novel, or children's book. Until Chuck Palanuk came along, that is, and reversed the system. FIGHT CLUB is an awesome movie that was somehow made by being based on a shitty excuse for a novel. Anyway, Tim Burton's remake of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY has a better look than the original until the oompa-loompas start singing rap songs, which I imagine was put in so that it would appeal to the younger generation, or because Tim Burton thought it would be cool to purposefully make his movie shitty. Jonny Depp is always fun to watch, but this is a role where I think a certain restrain and charm would have worked better than making an already weird part weirder. Lots of people disagree with me on this, though, and so I can't be certain that I'm right because I haven't devoted enough thought to the subject to be able to back up my claims against some really clever and demeaning remark from some really smart person about how wrong I am. And I hate that. BATMAN BEGINS is a good movie, and Michael Caine steals the show from a very good cast. Christian Bale brings some nice menace and confliction to the role, which is nice because otherwise Batman is just a sissy doing good deads, which is stupid. DOMINO is another big-action Tony Scott vehicle that is trying to be witty and daring and isn't. It does succeed in looking like whoever edited the thing was completely crazy and on loads of crack. Approximately every one-and-a-half second the camera does some crazy spinning shit and then zooms in, and then zooms out, and then cuts to another angle of the person talking, and then warps the color, and then shakes, and then cuts to only the lips moving, and then cuts back to the first shot except it's upside-down, and then goes sideways, and then twirls the fucking loop-de-loop, which is interrupted by more quick edits of the person's mouth moving. And the actor finishes saying their line, and you're so overloaded that you're thinking: "Wait, what the fuck did they just say?" And then another character starts to answer them with some quip, and the camera does the exact same thing again. And this continues throughout the entire movie, so that you don't even know what's happening when somebody says "Hi." Which is probably a good thing, because the script is fucking awful. And then Tom Waits, who is a badass, enters the screen for a few minutes that make even less sense than the rest of the movie, and you think, "Oh cool, Tom Waits is in this movie!" until the scene ends and you remember to think "Wait, what the fuck?" You think "What the fuck?" a lot in this movie. And then, at the end of the movie, after they've tried their very hardest to come off as PULP FICTION for a new generation (without succeeding at all), they throw in some drippy sentimentality about Domino apparently doing all the crazy things she did to save some little girl who practically wasn't even mentioned at all during the rest of the movie. And Domino also apparently now loves her mother, who you don't give a shit about anyway because nothing in the way of a relationship, strained or otherwise, between Domino and her gold-digging mother was ever set up anyway. And then the last shot of the movie is of Kiera Knightly swimming in a pool, which is apparently supposed to lift your spirits and mean something profound, judging by the crappy inspirational music that accompanies the shot. And then it shows a picture of the real Domino Harvey, and you basically think: "Wait, who the fuck is that?" CORPSE BRIDE is a nice love-story told through animation. WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT is a delightful claymation that loses very little, if any, of the clever writing, terrific characters, and loving attention to detail and excellence that made the previous short films of Wallace and Gromit so absolutely brilliant. I'm not going to tell you what it's about though, because it's hard to think of a concise way to explain a claymation about a cheese-loving inventor named Wallace and his dog, Gromit (who is silent and makes the best expressions ever) who must hunt down a were-rabbit which was created from a mishap in one of Wallace's inventions, and threatens to destroy the towns vegetable fair, which is taken very seriously by all of the townsfolk, including Gromit, who has been lovingly tending to a huge watermelon in hopes of winning the prize. Or it is at least hard to write a concise summary of the plot that I just described without it turning into a big run-on sentence. I am trying to remember what other movies I have seen lately. We rented DEATHTRAP, which is an old whodunnit sort of thing with Michael Caine that is ok, but not nearly as good as SLUETH, which is a great old whodunnit sort of thing with Michael Caine. In fact, everybody should go watch SLUETH with their boyfriend's and girlfriend's and eat ice cream. Because that would be fun. Shit, I wish I had a girlfriend. I don't really wish I had a girlfriend, by the way. I just think it's funny to say that all the time. We also rented THE GHOST IN THE SHELL, which is an older anime movie that is done really well, for all I can tell. I'm really not an expert on anime, and am basically judging everything that I occasionally see of it against SPIRITED AWAY, which I saw with my cousin Rian and my grandfather, and which I loved. My problem with a lot of anime, though, is that the backgrounds are so beautiful and the characters are so incongruous and cartoony, which usually brings me completely out of the movie, and I'd imagine would be comparable to listening to an amazing band with a crappy singer. Sometimes it works stylistically, but a lot of the time I end up seeing an amazing anime and thinking: that was so amazing that I wish it was better. Other than that, I can't really think of any other movies that I've seen recently. Oh yeah, I saw KONTROL which is about a hellish underground subway system and the people who inhabit it, both in passing, and for eternity. It was probably very deep. And I like movies that are probably very deep. I bring them up in conversations, and then sort of remain ambiguous about them until somebody else clarifies for me whether it was really deep, or just pretentious. And then I agree with them while still remaining somewhat ambiguous in case somebody else in the conversation disagrees with the first person with more conviction and apparent knowledge about the subject. And then I furrow my brow, light a cigarette, and pause for a few moments where I pretend to be considering something with wisdom and insight, and then I say, "It's a tough one, isn't it?" And by this point I'm wondering why the hell I bring up movies that are supposed to be deep in conversation all the time. And then I say that I liked a movie like THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS because you'll get points for being ironic if you don't really have anything to contribute to the conversation at hand, and also because I really did like THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS. It's okay if people know this too, because then you look sort of cute and dumb, which is a stance I like taking more and more these days. It's actually the stance that I've been taking throughout the entire last paragraph because I didn't really feel like going into an actual analysis of KONTROL. Because what I'd rather mention, as we reach our end, is CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. I know it's not a movie, but I've been watching all of the episodes of the first and second season lately, and I love it. My brother, Marke, and I have realized a funny phenomenon about this, though: We realized at some point that most people who watch the show think that it's funny, but that Larry David is basically a funny asshole. We always thought that basically everybody else on the show (besides his wife, who is awesome, and his manager, whom I personally find lovable) are the assholes. Shows how anti-social Marke and I are, I guess. Everything Larry David does in the show seems completely normal and rational to us. Especially the sets of rules about everyday life that he makes up all of the time, and expects everybody else to have also made-up and be adhering to. When everybody else looks at him in amazed bemusement, most people watching the show are looking at him with the same look. I'm grinning wildly and thinking: "Boy, he really is surrounded by a bunch of assholes, isn't he?" I broke my glasses the other day, and so I'm getting a headache by looking at the screen because they're perched crooked on my face, which means that I'm tilting my head at a weird angle, and adjusting my eyes accordingly to be able to type. If you think that's funny (and I guess it's not that funny, really), than you should see me when I walk while wearing my broken glasses. I haven't seen myself do it, but apparently I'm compensating for the screwy angle of my glasses while I walk, which means that I'm leaning to the side and almost running into things the whole way. Shit, I need to fix my glasses. Or stop walking. Either way, it's going to be a pain in the ass going to see a movie. My next set of reviews will probably end up being about something that I can do with about my glasses, like making-out. Just kidding. I'm not going to write fucking reviews about making-out. No girls would want to make-out with me if they knew I was going to go write a review about it afterwards. That's ridiculous.
8/30/05 The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
"What did you think of the movie?" asked my mom when we got home. She was smiling at me funny. "I liked it," I said. Then I smiled funny back at her. Then I got coffee with my ex-girlfriend. We usually try to meet up when I'm in town. We were both wearing sunglasses when we met at the coffee shop. "You look good," she said. "I like your hair." Then we took our sunglasses off. "I like your hair too," I said. It's no wonder why she used to date me. We talked for about forty-five minutes. It was nice. She is a good listener. I am practicing. After she had to go, I read a few pages of Moby Dick. Then I left too. I bought a carton of cigarettes at a convenience store, but the clerk didn't have any cartons intact, so he gave me ten packs of cigarettes instead. He only had one arm. The other one ended in a stub at his elbow. He was very fast at the cash-register. One time a friend of mine went to the same convenience store to buy a pornographic magazine. He saw a girl he used to sort of date while he was buying it. She was making-out with some guy who worked there. That must have been awkward. I just puked in the bathroom. I don't know why because I was feeling okay all day. Sometimes that happens to me. Every once in awhile I just need to puke. It scared me just now. Some of it splattered all over the wall, and some of it splattered on the floor, and the trash-can next to the toilet. I also puked all over my fingerless gloves. "Oh, God," I said. I was puking pretty violently. After I finished puking a few times I went upstairs into my dads room. He was getting ready for bed. "I just puked a lot for no reason that I can think of" I said. "Is that a sign of cancer?" He assured me
that it wasn't, which made me feel better. Sometimes I get scared when
I puke for no reason. I don't want to die. He said that it might have
to do with how I keep crazy hours and an unsteady diet. That sounded
better than cancer. "Goodnight, I love you," he said. I finished reading the sixth Harry Potter last night. It made me feel sad. After I finished getting coffee with my ex-girlfriend today, I felt sort of good. I felt like I was doing okay. "You're okay, buddy. You're okay." Sometimes my dad looks at me and says that. The girls I've dated can sometimes lend me more strength now than they did when we were going around together. I dunno why. Life is sometimes funny like that. Today, when we were getting coffee, we could look each other in the eye. Last night I had a conversation with a close friend of mine about how I want to stop having so many conversations. I duly noted the irony in that after I had finished saying it. I said that I also wanted to stop having conversations about how I want to stop having so many conversations. I'm hilarious. It seems to me that there are people who do things, and people who don't. And there are people who talk about how they are tired of being people who talk about doing things. I fall into different categories depending on the day. Sometimes I look at my life and am embarrassed by almost every conversation I have ever had, except a select few. I was feeling sad about this one day, and said something along those lines to a friend. "Do you want to talk about it?" he said. Jesus. The other night
Meredith called me. We talked for seven and a half hours. I didn't feel
embarrassed afterwards. I felt tired. Last night I had
a dream where I took my new computer that my parents bought me into
the Apple store. They had redesigned their layout. In order to get to
the service desks you had to cross large pools of water in a rickety
boat pulled by a line. There were stepped layers of pools, if I remember
correctly. I was still crying when I emerged from the water, and I was so angry that they had put large pools of water into an electronics shop instead of regular floors. It didn't make any sense, if I really thought about it. Then I woke up because my older sister came scrambling into my room, saying, "Wake up! Wake up! I'm bored! I need someone to play with!" She was in the sort of mood where she says "I need someone to play with" when she means "Let's go downtown and see a movie, or something." She knows that the only way to get me out of bed is to act like a little kid. I thought about it, and said, "Okay. I will get up and eat lunch. Then we can do something." I came upstairs and got mad at my dad because he had fed the salmon-ceasar salad I had been saving in the fridge to the dog. I was sort of trying to be funny by being so grouchy, but I was also sort of mad because I wanted to eat that salmon-ceasar salad. "That's the only reason I got out of bed!" I shouted. You could tell that he felt really bad, but I just kept rubbing it in, how mad I was that he fed my salmon-ceasar to the dog. He had fed it to the dog so that the dog would let him put funny bows on its head. He did it to welcome my sister home with some fanfare. And even though you could tell he felt bad when he saw how much I wanted that salmon-ceasar salad, I just wouldn't let it go. I just kept shitting on him. I felt bad a few minutes later, and apologized about getting so mad. We were smoking a cigarette out on the balcony, and I had realized how silly it was that I got so mad about some stupid salad. We were sort of joking around, but I could tell that he felt bad about how angry I had gotten. "It just feels like lately I can't do anything right," he said. I wanted to cry. I've been short with my mom all day, too. I dunno why. She asked me to unload the dishes and I didn't answer her. "Zach?" she said. "Ok," I said. Earlier she was asking me to clean my room sometime this summer, which is a very reasonable thing to ask considering the state of my room, but before saying it she said this: "I didn't want to ask you, because I didn't want to bother you with something like cleaning your room when you were busy, but you always seem so tired or busy that I never know when to ask you." I was playing the piano, and she was hesitant to ask me to clean my room sometime this summer because she didn't want me to get irritable. I'm very irritable a lot of the time when I am doing nothing in particular. I wanted to cry then, too. I get the feeling that a lot of people have been short with my mom throughout the years because she is so soft-spoken and loyal. It can be very easy to brush-off the people who love you the most without even giving it much thought. You know they'll always love you, and so you don't have to worry about being loving towards them if it's not convenient at the moment. And they keep on loving you, and they hope you won't be short with them, and they are overjoyed when you are just nice to them. It makes me want to cry whenever I see that my mom is happy just because I wasn't short with her. It makes me feel like puking. Sometimes I think everybody just shits on each other. But some people are a whole lot better at shitting. If it wasn't for my parents, I wouldn't know who to be. I don't know if they know that. But I try to tell them that I love them whenever we say goodnight. One time when I was young I thought about what it would be like if I woke up and my parents had died in the night. I thought about it really hard because I wanted to prepare myself for the chance that it could happen. I knew that everybody died sometime. I lay in my room and bawled like a baby. I later found out that this is a method they recommend using at acting conservatories in order to conjure up emotions for the sake of a lousy scene. You think about how you would feel if something terrible happened to somebody close to you, like how you would feel if your parents died. I thought that was a terrible method. I didn't want to imagine anything like that happening for real. I had already tried it when I was a little boy, and it scared the living shit out of me. Acting students are always trying to make themselves sad when they are not sad. I am sad enough of the time already. I liked to act when I was an acting student. I was pretty good at it, too, but not good enough, I don't think. Really good acting students are always making themselves sad when they are not sad. They spend the rest of the time acting like they are happy. I spent a lot of time at acting school acting like I didn't give a fuck because I was not very good at acting like I was sad when I was already sad. The last thing you want to do when you are sad is act like you are sad. Because you don't even know what that means. Sometimes I feel like going through a whole day without ever talking. But then everyone would think I was being rude, and I would have to explain why I wasn't talking, which would mean talking more than I would have had to do in the first place. I would like to be able to not talk without being rude. Instead of people thinking I was ignoring them, I would like them to think that I was listening to them. Sometimes I think that I would like to throw away all of my opinions, so that I could figure out which ones were good. And then I would have a few nice secrets. I would only tell my family and a few of my friends. And I would go see movies with my sister. Or with whoever else wanted to go see a movie. Even if it was a shitty movie about girls and traveling pants at the two-dollar theater. Because if I didn't have any opinions, I would be able to like movies like that without having to say why I liked them.
8/19/05 1. My Day (author's note: It's some months since I wrote this, and blah, blah, blah. I have nothing to add upon rereading it: some of it struck me as unlikely, but who the hell am I to critique a day I had some months ago? Nobody.) Last night I stayed up drinking in my apartment until 11 in the morning. Then I went out into the living room and fell asleep on the futon. I was woken up at four in the afternoon by Scott, who has been staying over for the past couple of days. Another friend of ours, Mike, also moved into the apartment about a month ago. It was his birthday a few weeks ago. I didn't get him anything. Happy birthday, Mike. And so I was woken up at four in the afternoon by Scott. He stumbled into the living room and shouted, "Zach, it's four in the afternoon!" I had been eyeing an alarm clock that was lying on the floor across the room, which said 12:30, for the past few minutes. I was in between sleep and waking. "Zach, it's four in the afternoon!" shouted Scott suddenly, stumbling out of my room. "It's four in the afternoon?" I mumbled. "Yeah, it's four in the afternoon!" he shouted. Everybody is always shouting when you're waking up. So I joined in on the fun. "Holy shit, Scott! It's four in the afternoon!" I shouted back. A certain company was supposed to call me about a certain art job I did for them around three in the afternoon. Scott and I thought that maybe I had missed their call. But I hadn't. They hadn't called. Certain companies are like certain girls. But I got off the futon anyway because what the hell. If you're asleep at four in the afternoon it's not a very restful sleep anyway. It is plagued by dreams affected by the waking world around you. Which, in this case, generally means that you're dreaming about people shouting what time it is at you. It was rainy when I pulled my cover off and looked out the window. It was a blustery grey day. I like those. It was a good day to take a shower. Everyone had been reminding me for days to take a shower, but I think I was waiting for the right sort of day. But I didn't take a shower right away. I moped around the apartment for a little bit, and checked my MySpace. I smoked a few cigarettes as well, but we didn't have any coffee in the apartment to accompany them. "We gotta get some coffee," Scott said. Mike was on his way home from the YMCA we used to live in, where he continues to work as a lifeguard for some reason that he won't tell anybody. And so Scott called him and left a message asking him to pick up some coffee. Mike didn't get the message until he got into the lobby of our apartment, however, so we still didn't have any coffee. We were in a lousy predicament. The grocery store is two blocks up the street. So the three of us went out on the balcony to talk about how we felt depressed. I squinted my eyes a lot and gave long looks into the blustery distance. I was a real beacon of regret. We smoked a few cigarettes without any coffee and talked about how we ought to live more healthily. We talked about how all that beer goes straight to my cheeks. Mike talked about how he wanted a girlfriend, even though he knew it wouldn't help any. I, however, didn't talk about wanting a girlfriend for once. Which means that space was cleared up for me to have novel things to say. So I mainly said things like, "I gotta get outta this goddam apartment. We should go to a museum or something, Christ." I don't remember if the conversation went anywhere. It probably ended with one of us getting cold and going inside. I called up my parents a little while later. We talked about how everyone is going down to the Cape for the fourth of July, and I worried over the logistics of moving-out in a week, lugging all of my belongings up to Boston, and coming home for a couple of months. I'll probably wash windows with my younger brother to pick up a little cash. He wrote a song about a bomber pilot. I like that sort of thing. After I talked to my parents on the phone for a little while I went into the bathroom, removed my clothes, and got into the shower. We have this pink shower-curtain that I bought at a dollar store in the Bronx just to annoy my roommate, Marcus. He loved it though, so my plan backfired. It annoys me because now we have a pink shower-curtain that I bought for a dollar in the Bronx that isn't annoying anybody. Anyway, I hadn't
taken a shower in over a week, and the hot water felt very nice. My
brain had felt a little numbing all morning until I put my head under
the shower-head and turned on the hot water. And then everything felt
more quiet and intimate. I looked down at my pockmarked chest, and I
let my slight stomach paunch out. It seemed less hard and shaped than
I remembered. This made me feel sad, and I rubbed my face and twitched
and distorted it silently for a few moments before I realized what I
was doing. I didn't know what I was doing, but it was sort of like I
was trying on different faces, which I didn't think was a very normal
thing to do in the shower, so I stopped doing it. I looked around the
shower instead, and touched different things with my fingers, like the
tile, or the nozzle. I also felt the ragged scruff, still adolescent,
that had been weeding up since I shaved over a week ago. It was slick
under the water, especially around my jaw-line by my ear and on my neck,
where it grows fuller. I didn't feel much like crying, so instead I
closed my eyes and stood under the nozzle. And then I sat down in the
tub, arranged my long legs in the cramped tub to my liking, and, when
comfortably sat, promptly shampooed my hair. When Marcus got
home we all went to the grocery store because we were determined to
make the evening feel better. And Scott, Mike, and I had our earlier
healthy-living conversation to think about, so it seemed a good meal
was in order. Marcus bought a 40 of beer, but we refrained. We bought
steaks, salad, rice, blue cheese, a clove of garlic, coffee, and coke
and ice cream for milkshakes. Then we cleaned up the kitchen a little
bit and made a fine meal. Marcus melted the blue cheese and garlic with
butter, and we spread it on the steaks. Scott set the table, and we
sat down to eat. Marcus said grace, but we left the t.v. on. We thought
about turning it off, but somehow it didn't seem too depressing. And now it is night. Scott left to go back to his place a few hours ago, and Marcus has been watching television in the other room. Mike and I just went out on the balcony to have a cigarette before bed. Mike has only recently taken up smoking, and I wonder if it coincides with him recently weening himself off of his obsessive-compulsive-disorder medication. Mike is a very sensitive and kind kid, and he is also very quietly troubled. He has recently grown into his good looks, which were somewhat awkward, I would imagine, in years past. But he is now a young man, while also full of a young boy's sorrows. He does not smoke his cigarettes like most youths, arrogantly and sullenly. He smokes his cigarettes slowly, and with ample consideration, as a child would, or perhaps a sad-eyed middle-aged man of temperate habits. I care tenderly for Mike, but I didn't know how to be there for him on the balcony tonight. We sat in silence for a few minutes, observing the black sky above queens. I could tell he was feeling sad, and so he started in, as is his way, with a funny recollection of his past, punctuating the story with almost pleading chuckles. But I could only quietly come up with a smile, and not respond. He told a story about an old friend of his who had fallen off of his bicycle while trying to impress a girl. And he laughed at the story and drew--rather longly, it seemed to me--on his cigarette, his eyes full of tears. No, but he was not crying; it seemed only that his eyes were wet, too wet, for such a funny story he was telling. And I wanted to laugh with him, to give that permission of mirth that can sometimes be given by friends sharing in a finally lonesome night -- I've often thrown the same forlorn laugh towards him when things felt down, and it seemed I could return the favor on this night when he was so obviously in need of some shared mirth. But I didn't laugh. I only smiled with some strain and finished my cigarette in silence. Then I stood up and we went inside, where we hugged each other and where I assured him he should wake me when he got up tomorrow. We may go to a museum.
2. Sam I like this girl
named Sam who lives in New York. Sometimes you only remember that sort
of thing when you move back home to Colorado, though. Then you think,
"Damn, I should've remembered that before." But you were busy
remembering that you liked a girl named Ana who lives in Colorado, which
you remembered when you moved to New York. And so on, and so forth.
But backwards. She was the prettiest girl in the fourth grade. Everyone agreed. Except the other girls. But she sent a messenger one day, who said, "Katie wants to dump you." And then I went home and did some push-ups. "I'll show her," I thought. But she didn't notice. And then I started remembering things. Sam is Vietnamese. I had a roommate named Jake from Tennessee, and he gave her a nickname: Chicken-Chow-Mein. He was a real beacon of intelligence and geographical knowledge, Jake. One day we had a fifteen-minute argument about WheatThins. "Who ate my WheatThins last night?" he shouted. I was trying to go to the bathroom. I considered this for a moment, and started to pee in the urinal. "Dunno," I said. "Somebody ate my WheatThins!" he shouted. He was actually very angry, which always made me giggle. "Maybe Scott ate them," I said. "How much did they cost?" "Man, they
costed about four dollars!" he shouted. "I don't want your money, man!" he said. And I looked blankly at him. "You know I'm a generous guy, man," he said. And I looked blankly at him. "But, man, it's the principle!" he shouted. "Somebody ate my WheatThins!" And I looked blankly at him. After some fifteen minutes of essentially repeating the same conversation, I tried a different manner of reasoning. I lowered my voice almost to a whisper and said, "You can either take my goddam four dollars, or you can shut the fuck up. We've been arguing for fifteen minutes about a box of fucking crackers. And you're from Tennessee." I didn't actually
say, "And you're from Tennessee," but I've accused him of
it a few times. It's a good way to start an argument. Especially if
you accidentally mix up Tennessee with Kentucky. Which I was often prone
to accidentally do if I happened to be talking to him. "Chapter 3. Zachary left New York. He went to Cape Cod for the 4th of July. He learned to captain a motorboat one morning, and took his younger sister and cousin out later that very day, showing considerable skill and temperance in the Cape Cod waters. For the boating trip around the harbor he dressed up in his best imitation of Captain's garb, donning a tattered old suit-jacket and a pair of fingerless gloves, which he had bought from a street-vender in New York while on his way to Union Sq. one cold, frosty afternoon. He never knew why he often headed to Union Sq. on cold, frosty afternoons, and rarely figured it out when he got there. Sometimes he would sit in the park, and sometimes he would browse Virgin Records, where he had bought a Belle and Sebastian album one year earlier. As is often the case, such a forgettable event had proved momentous to him. It was that very night when Zachary introduced M -- a girl mythic in reputation, to say the very least -- to Scott Teague, whom the reader will no doubt remember from chapter two, where he regularly drove Zachary around in a blue truck. M had become mythic in reputation, if not to say proportions, because Zachary had been talking about her in one very long monologue since he was seventeen-years-old. Needless to say, Scott was excited to meet her, and mostly because he knew that Zachary would stop talking about her if she was there. He was not prepared for how great of a silencing effect she could effortlessly command, however, and was surprised to see that Zachary, a regular interrupter and expounder in conversation, had almost nothing to say the entire time they perused albums. This was a point that seemed to dismay Zachary, and so Scott did not press him about it afterwards. One time Zachary had been sitting in the park at Union Sq., listening to music and trying to write, when he was propositioned by a middle-aged Asian man, who, after discerning Zachary's heterosexuality through not very subtle innuendoes, proceeded to argue with Zachary about it. 'I'm actually straight,' said Zachary. 'No you're not, you're gay,' said the man. 'No I'm not, I'm straight,' said Zachary. 'Look at how you're dressed,' said the man, who was not dressed well, but who had apparently heard that gay men dress well. 'Look at how you're dressed,' said Zachary. 'You're gay,' said the man. 'No, I'm not,' said Zachary. 'Just try it,' said the man. 'You might like it.' 'Go away,' said Zachary, who was growing bored. People often seemed ready to argue with Zachary about his sexuality, and as a result he had developed the tedious habit of pointing out that girls had breasts, and that he had noticed them, whenever they happened to walk by. 'Tits,' he would say, beaming at whoever he was with. 'You could close your eyes and imagine I was a girl," said the aging Asian man, winking and grinning with yellowed teeth. 'My roommate is gay and good-looking,' said Zachary,'and so even if I was gay, I wouldn't be interested in you because you are old and ugly.' The middle-aged man seemed to understand, and sat dejectedly for a few minutes. Zachary put his earphones back into his ears, and had all but forgotten that the man was there when he was again interrupted by the man, who signaled for him to take his earphones out. 'What?' said Zachary, taking one out. 'So do you want me to suck your cock?' asked the man." That is how the new chapter reads so far. It doesn't have much to say about the new chapter of my life that I've begun. After visiting the Cape with my family, I returned to Colorado, where I will stay until I move to Boston in September. "How was New York?" people often say when I run into them. "Good." "Good." There is then a pause where the both of us try to figure out whether I am going to expound, or am done talking. "That's cool that you went out there," they finally suggest. Then I usually say something along the lines of, "Yeah, it's a craaa-zy city." And flop my hands around in the air.
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