Articles Archive for July 2008
I have made a tremendous mistake.
Moving from NYC to Los Angeles may not rank up there with, say, millions of Jews fleeing Russia into Germany after World War One to escape persecution (whoops!), but on a personal level, me moving to LA is much worse (hey, I didn’t know any of those Jews).
I honestly don’t even know where to start, how to express the anger and self-loathing that has built up in me over the past few weeks. So let’s just jump right in and try to make sense of it later. We’ll start with the least aggravating and move to the most aggravating.
My commute is homicide-inducing.
I am living in a lovely little beach community called Redondo Beach. I live in a house with two roommates, both people I knew before moving out here, Mark and Selena. My original plan was to move to LA and crash with friends until I found a place on craigslist, thinking that it would be easier to find a place here on the ground as opposed to over email and realizing that what very little I now owned could easily be stored in my Town Car. However, their third roommate, Chris, called me a week or two before I moved to LA and said he was moving out. I knew the area (a little bit), knew the roommates and the rent was ungodly cheap, so I decided to take his spot.
(Full disclosure: I’ve actually made out with Selena in the past, but so far we’ve passed through several weekends of me being drunk and living in the same house as her and I’ve yet to be removed from the premises in handcuffs. I am also pretty sure that I’m not being followed by detectives from SVU as they try to build a case on me, since for the most part my actions speak for themselves and no case-building is necessary. Rest assured that if anything should happen, Site Guy Brendan will let you know. Also, I’m innocent. Probably.)
Every other time I’ve visited Los Angeles I’ve worked New York hours; that is, 6:30am to 2:30pm LA time. Therefore, as long as I stuck to these hours, my commutes to and from work, no matter who I was crashing with and where they lived, were pretty easy. Also, the novelty of driving, something I’ve rarely done for that past eight years in NYC, made dealing with the commute possible. I was just happy to be in a car, listening to the radio, laughing at people who were honking at me while I drove slowly and confusedly through the streets of LA; me driving on these trips was not dissimilar to Balki driving through Los Angeles, straight off the boat from Mypos.
Now however I work LA hours, 9am to 5pm local time (read: the very peak traffic times). My office is 15.6 miles from my current home, not an unreasonable distance in the grand scheme of things; I would guess that the large majority of Americans commute farther every day. But in Los Angeles, at 9am and at 5pm, 15.6 miles is not so much a “reasonable commute” but rather a test of endurance and sanity and an exercise in pure white hot hate.
To travel those 15.6 miles in the morning, it takes me an average of 1 hour and 25 minutes. In the evening, the commute’s a little better – I can be home in about 1 hour 15 minutes. That’s 2 hours and 40 minutes to travel 31.2 miles every single day (well, five days a week). I start my work day with an hour and a half in the car, and I end my work day with an hour and a half in the car. Nearly 1/8th of my day is spent in traffic. Three hours of my life every day not only gone, but dissolved in a sea of metal, heat, and fumes; incompetent drivers, bad radio stations, and angry people.
It’s hard for me to quantify or qualify how slow and miserable my commute is, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic, moving less than 10mph for 90% of the drive. I would like to invite all of you car-owners out there to take your car out for a spin, drive 12mph for 90 minutes, then report back about to whether you came home and beat your wife and kids or dumped your boyfriend/girlfriend. I’d really be interested to know, because after doing this commute for three weeks, I think I know why marriages fail and children grow up goth/sluts/theater majors – it is impossible for a rational, sane human being to sustain any reasonable level of happiness in such traffic. This unhappiness must then be deflected onto spouses or children and, long story short, this is a big part of the reason why we have "Girls Gone Wild" and 85% of all memoirs ever written.
(Not to mention, do you know how hard it is to change lanes in bumper-to-bumper traffic while driving a Lincoln Town Car? There are apartment buildings with better maneuverability than this car. The blindspots on it are so large that the sun itself could descend upon the earth and into the lane of traffic next to me, and if it wasn’t immediately to my left or right, I wouldn’t see it. When I do change lanes, I essentially look at the lane I’m going into, shrug and say “Meh”, and then blindly dart over. There is one point in the commute when I have to quickly pass over three lanes in only a short distance and I have so little idea if any cars are coming, I instinctively shut off my radio or iPod at this point, hoping as I blindly move the car to the right that if I’m going to hit anyone they’re going to honk, so their honking would alert me to either move back into my former lane, stop, or brace myself for impact. It is unquestionably only a matter of time before I kill a bicyclist. I’m so serious about this that for a moment I contemplated not writing that sentence, for fear that when it does actually happen, I’ll look even more like a monster. But you should know before it happens and hits the papers that it’s not my fault. Honest.)
In NYC, I used to walk to work. It would take me 28 minutes and I loved it – I got exercise, prepared for/unwound from a day at the office, and got to see the city coming to life in the morning and preparing for leisure in the evening. I loved each of those 28 minutes. Now, by the time I get to work I want to put my fist through my computer, and by the time I get home at night I want to jerk off, take a Xanax and go to bed. Los Angeles. Awesome. But even if I did want to do something when I came home from work, I couldn’t, because…
I am bored to shit.
Redondo is close to the beach. And the rent is cheap. So this is good.
But I am not a beach person. I am chubby, have no muscle mass to speak of, am so pale that parts of my body are actually see-through, and am approaching the time of my life when the hair on my back exceeds the hair on my head. So for me, living in Redondo to take advantage of the beach is the same thing as living near a poison factory to take advantage of the poison (“Well, at least you got the poison in Redondo, right?”).
But the cheap rent is key. A big reason why I moved out of NYC is that I simply couldn’t afford it any longer. I’m not poor – good lord, please don’t ever mistake me for a poor – but spending $2000 a month in rent and paying $1000 a month on top of that to live LA one week a month (flight, rental car, drinks for those letting me crash, occasional hotel room, etc) – is not going to allow for much savings. So now that I live in LA, my monthly “shelter” expenses have gone from $3000 to $700. This is a lot of extra money and I plan to save some in order to return to NYC and be able to afford a slave (wish me luck); the rest will go mostly to drugs and trinkets. In addition, I moved from a two-bedroom apartment in Little Italy/Chinatown that flooded with feces every six weeks to a three-bedroom, two bath home in Southern California with a yard. In theory, sounds great.
But you know what? It might turn out to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. I could go on and on about how I live in the suburbs and it’s terrible, but here’s an attempt at being word-efficient (and name-droppy): Heath Ledger died one block from my old apartment; now, I can’t walk to a bar.
Look, I don’t think I’m very high-maintenance. It really doesn’t take much to make me happy. I basically need three things: meat, beer and music or sports (I would add boobies to this list, but we’ll get to that later). And much like your average house pet, it doesn’t take much to entertain me: some jangling keys will usually keep me occupied for hours. So really, I’m not asking for much here. Christ, one of my top five favorite activities is getting drunk on Amtrak trains, so you have to understand that I am a simple, simple man.
But I am bored to shit in LA. Absolutely, 100% bored to shit. I live smack in the middle of the suburbs. I shop at a supermarket. If I want a burger and a beer, I have to drive. Within one square mile of my place, there is nothing but houses – I mean this literally, no stores, no bars, not even any landmarks – just an endless sea of suburban houses. My closest friend is Brian, who is 12 miles away and – no joke – last time I was in his neighborhood, on his street, actually, I sideswiped a parked car so bad that I’m not sure I can ever go back (I’m not sure how many black 1996 Lincoln Town Cars with PA plates there are roaming around Venice). My favorite night in LA was a few weeks back when my friends had a welcome party for me at a bar in Santa Monica, which is 15 or so miles from my place. The cab there was $55, my bar tab was $170, and the cab back was $80 – I could have gone and fucked two black chicks in Vegas for about $40 more.
This is how bad it is: Since I have nothing to do during the week, I’ve been spending more time at work – just because I want to. I figure I could go home and do nothing, or I could get an hour or two closer to sleep at work and take care of some stuff. So what happened? I got a raise. I got a fucking raise that I didn’t even ask for, because since I moved to LA, I’m in the office at 8:30am every morning and never out before 7pm. While my bosses think this is because I’m working harder (and admittedly, I am doing more work), it’s really because I have so little to do at home that I prefer to be in my office – which is terribly, terribly sad for someone who used to start drinking red bull in his office at 4pm on every Friday so he could drink until 4am that night. And I got a raise because I’m just that bored and unhappy in LA. I don’t know if I’m proud of this raise or if I should immediately invest this extra money in a cock-fighting ring in my neighborhood or give the money to a local high school basketball star to shave some points just to make things a little more exciting. Honestly, it’s getting to the point that every time I pull into my driveway I’m hoping that someone is in the process of robbing my home – chasing Mexicans around my house would be a far better evening activity than another Will & Grace rerun on Lifetime.
(Hilarious show, by the way. That Karen is just too much!)
This boredom doesn’t end with the weekend, either. The bars in Redondo/Hermosa/Manhattan beach, well, they leave a little bit to be desired if you know how to pronounce “Dostoyevsky” and don’t know where your lat is. I really don’t think the people in these bars know if anyone’s making music besides Rhiannon and the Bravery and if the Pacific is the world’s largest ocean or just “Fucking awesome, bro. That ocean is fucking awesome. Seriously. Bro. Fag. Lat.” The most intellectually stimulating conversation I had was when me and Brian – a former Division I wrestler – were trying to decide under what conditions he could beat up Kobe Bryant (we decided that if given one year to train and provided with head gear and metal fangs he may just be able to take him – Brian’s a biter). I really feel like I’d be more at home in prison than in these bars, because at least I watch and enjoy prison shows; I’m not as well-versed in tan people high-fiving and doing shots of 180 bombs. So I actually prefer the work-week to the weekends, because on Saturday, I wake up, have nothing to do except for maybe getting an oil change, then just have to kill some time before going out and wondering what the hell I was thinking when I moved from NYC to this place.
Hear me out: I’m not saying that I was the King of New York or anything. It’s not like I was hanging out with Prince and banging various models after long nights of cocaine and clubbing. But NYC was perfect for me, precisely because I was lazy. I could sit at home, have a few beers with friends, and then go out to one of the 50 or so bars within a half-mile of my apartment. Or, I could drink alone, send a mass text message at 11:30pm, and then have at least three options of places to go, friends out in various parts of the city. Now, my social life is Brian or my (really quite wonderful) roommates; the rest of my friends are disqualified because they live too far away. And really, that’s about it.
(By the way, I really have no idea why I named Prince above. Just came to me. Seems like a guy that likes luxurious things and the like.)
I don’t even know if I necessarily need to cover this next point, but here goes…
I may never have sex again (for free).
There is nothing to be had for me in the boobie department in Los Angeles. The women here are so astoundingly hot, I’m speechless. I simply can’t describe it. Think of all the clichés that one might have heard about LA women, especially those who live in towns with names Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, and they’re all true. There is so much blond and tan and boobie that I am at a loss for words (and this doesn’t happen often).
And none of it is for me. Absolutely none of these boobies are for me. After living here for two months, the only conditions under which I could ever see myself sleeping with any of the girls in these bars involves a chloroform-soaked hanky, a whole lotta bleach, and a sturdy shovel. Otherwise, it’s just not gonna happen.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I moved from New York to Los Angeles, I also went back to high school. See, in high school I was:
- reasonably smart
- relatively funny
- possessing a good knowledge of sports and music
I was also:
- quite overweight
- completely unathletic
- about as likely to find my way into a girl’s pants as a tampon made of shark teeth
Fortunately, as the years progressed, as alcohol became more available, and as women grew increasingly comfortable with the idea settling at the end of the night for the guy who might kinda look like a rapist but probably couldn’t overpower them, lo and behold, I began having sex – even (gasp!) fairly regularly. In college, and later in New York City, I learned that many a physical short-coming (pun intended) could be overcome with a few shots of SoCo and lime and a well-placed self-deprecating joke or mention of, you know, a book or a poem or something. These, I now refer to, as the Golden Years.
But now that I’ve moved to LA, things have reverted back to the old high school days. I am now:
- reasonably smart
- relatively funny
- possessing a good knowledge of sports and music
I am also:
- quite overweight
- completely unathletic
- about as likely to find my way into a girl’s pants as a tampon made of shark teeth
that is on fire and being carried by a werewolf
In Los Angeles, there is nothing that can overcome physical short-comings; no joke, no mention of something intelligent, nothing. If I actually did converse with these women, aside from me occasionally saying, “Excuse me, I’m just trying to get to the bathroom” and them replying, “Is that your penis you’re trying to show me, or do you have a baby in your jeans that’s trying to show me its penis?”, it would probably (hypothetically) go something like this:
Me: “About me? Well, let’s see…I spend my Saturday afternoons teaching Latin to inner-city African-American children. I started a non-profit devoted exclusively to saving and rehabilitating three-legged puppies. The most important person in my life is my mother. I was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2006 and wrote just about half of Cat Stevens’ catalogue (I have perfect pitch and can play several instruments). I like to cook, go to church, vote democrat and I can make women have multiple orgasms by staring at them, counting to three, and snapping my fingers.”
Girl: [staring at bartender/volleyball player/guy who can squat a higher number of pounds than points he scored on his SAT] “I’m sorry – I wasn’t really listening. How many push-ups can you do again? Did you say that already?”
Me: “Oh, I forgot one thing – do you know God? Long story short, I beat him in ‘Jeopardy’ about six years ago and now I’m immortal. Seriously, I can’t die. Subsequently, last year He and I bet on the Super Bowl and I won again, and now every time a woman gives me a blowjob, He deposits $5000 in her bank account. I can’t believe I forgot about that. He thought of that one.”
Girl: [looking at friend standing behind me mouthing, “Is that John Candy?”] “So…is it like more or less than 50 push-ups? Just give me a number here.”
[Girl mouthes “I think so” over my shoulder back to friend]
So like in high school, I can do nothing but wait and hope that girls eventually get lonely or desperate or want to get back at their ex-boyfriends and/or accept a dare from their friends. Until then, like back in high school, it’s back to stripping down, lying down on the bathroom floor, and masturbating like a goddamn mental patient (four-five times a day). We’re going old school-style.
******
Things will change for the better here in Los Angeles, if only because they have to. But I realize in order for me to make things better, I’m going to have to work on them. That is, I have to either move or find a better route to work, I have to put more effort into my friendships, and I have to start taking steroids and using less big words. But here’s a little something you should know about me: I don’t like working hard. While we’re here, another thing you should know about me: I’m a quitter. So if I know myself, I’m not going to change who I am or what I like to do to make my life out here more enjoyable. Instead, I’m more likely to shut it down, retreat inward, and treat this year in LA like I would a year in prison: keep to myself, read the Koran, and maybe dabble here and there in getting raped – all so that one year from now when I get back to NYC, I can look back on my time in Los Angeles and say, “No matter what happened, I survived. I endured and lived to tell about it. And that counts for something. Probably very little, but something.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with the bathroom floor.
You know where this is gonna go, so let’s just get there. Together. Now.
Red-eyes are fucking terrible
Of all of the variations of hell that have been conjured up by the greatest minds, from Dante to Sartre, Virgil to Matthew, Milton to Plato, I think I’ve figured out a version that tops them all: Hell is a never-ending loop of nightly red-eye flights.
I took a red eye from Los Angeles to New York City, and while I could not possibly have been happier about being out of LA and in NYC, my happiness was tempered by the fact that I was so tired after landing that I couldn’t say for certain if I was actually in NYC, on earth, or just dreaming (or maybe none or all of the above). The only thing kept me awake at my desk on that first day in NYC (I worked out of the NYC office my first Thursday and Friday on the east coast) was my unnaturally rapid heartbeat, courtesy of the half-dozen diet cokes I’d consumed during the day to keep everything moving along as smoothly as possible.
Women can alter their menstruation cycles with a pill, thus preventing them from getting pregnant. We’ve been putting men, animals and, accordingly to conspiracy theorists, criminals on the moon for decades. A question that twenty years ago would take hours and volumes of encyclopedias to answer can now be figured out in under thirty seconds through Google. Ten years ago, I had to spend $15 to buy a CD for one song; now, I buy a CD happens with less regularity than I buy condoms. (Which is rare. Trust me.) One year ago, I thought I had downloaded every last bit of free porn on the internet. Then Redtube came along and made me a man. All this, and yet humanity can still not figure out how to make plane that comfortably sleeps passengers during an overnight flight while being cost-friendly at the same time.
Look, I’m not being delusional here – I’m not asking for a geisha girl stewardess to come in my private suite (with bathroom) on my flight from London to Hong Kong and stick various things into her body for my enjoyment. I mean, I know such arrangements exist, but I have neither the finances to afford them nor the desire to pursue them. Mostly because I like boobies and Asian girls don’t have boobies – and the ones that do have boobies are not so much interested in a chubby bearded Irish guy and tend to lean more toward the LA Clippers/My penis is so advanced it can vote-types.
But for $600, you’d think they’d make things a little more comfortable (and I sat in a reclining exit row!). I didn’t sleep at all on the flight, save for at one point when I looked at my iPod and say that it was 2:28am, then looked back in what I thought was a few minutes to see it was 3:13am, so I grabbed about a 40 minute block of unconsciousness. Otherwise, nada.
So I’m done with red-eyes. I always talk myself into taking them, thinking they’re the most convenient, and this time, I say to myself, I’ll fall asleep on the plane. And it never, ever happens – I may arrive conveniently in the morning, but then my whole day is shot because I’m so tired.
So no more red-eyes. They are truly, truly hell. And the best hell ever, really.
DUYS
Speaking of hell, North Wildwood, New Jersey, the shore town my family and my entire neighborhood has spent summers in for decades, is starting to change. It seems that the guidos that have for years inhabited the shore towns of North Jersey are being priced out and making their way down to South Jersey, particularly North Wildwood. This is a shame, really; for generations upon generations, North Wildwood has been the summer home for 90% of the families from my neighborhood in South Philly (Second Street). But those guidos, they’re like cockroaches. Dumb, drunk, tweezed, teased cockroaches. And once they take over, they don’t leave.
Despites the presence of an alarming about of guidos and douchebags in the bars, the 10th Annual “Drink Until You Shit” tour was another great success. Once again, no one shit (running it to three years in a row no one has pooped themselves on the tour, which is a shame), but we had around 100 people involved, wearing t-shirts and celebrating the drinking and shitting lifestyle. We had planned to name our friend Dan captain for the tour, not so much for his performance last year but as a lifetime achievement award for best embodying the spirit of the tour, but, true to form, Dan couldn’t be located. Like, for the whole weekend. I honestly don’t know if he’s been located since. So we had no captain this year.
For me, it was an up and down night. For the most part, I held it together, being in co-charge of the pub crawl and all and having to answer questions and be a good host. But once we hit the last bar, I really don’t remember much aside from sweating a whole bunch and, ultimately, making a turkey sandwich after coming home to find my little sister passed out on the floor of my aunt’s house. So she had a good night.
Every year, David (the DUYS co-founder) and I say it’s going to be our last year. The tenth would be a good one to go out on; it’s a nice number, and this year we lost a record amount of money on the t-shirts (since they were tye-dye and cost a fortune to make and we never make a profit anyway and we usually wind up getting too drunk to carry them any longer and so leave them in a bar). But with each passing year, I wonder if how we could ever put an end to DUYS. We’ve been around long enough that people know that the first Saturday after Fourth of July weekend is DUYS time, and seeing the happiness (and drunkenness) on so many people’s faces gives me great joy. So my prediction: there will be an 11th DUYS. Be sure to keep your July 11, 2009 open.
Bar domination, part one
One of the things I’ve often wanted to do is go into a bar in the afternoon, possibly even when it opens, and sit there getting smashed until it closes. I knew I would do this eventually, but I never thought it’d be because I couldn’t see my friends’ new baby.
My friends Joe and Dani had a baby. It’s a boy, but I won’t give any more details, since I really don’t want this child mentioned on here so early in his life; if that’s not the very definition of “damning,” I don’t know what is. The kid was born the Sunday, the day after DUYS. I got to Boston on Monday night and asked if they wanted me to come to the hospital to see the baby. However, Dani and Joe were (understandably) tired and suggested I try the next day, as they’d be out of the hospital and home. No problem.
It’s weird on a number of levels when your friends have a baby, but in this case, I was in town only for a short while – all the way from Los Angeles, without a Boston visit scheduled again until March 2009 – and I wanted see the lil’ SOB, but I also wanted to be respectful of their privacy – Christ, they just had their first kid two days prior, after all. So on Tuesday, after showering and beating off and having run out of things to do, I texted Joe, inquiring about the baby, and he gave me the hold sign – they were home but not feeling it at the moment. I decided the best course of action would be to head to near where he lives – Boylston Street by the Pru – and kill time until I got the green light to see the lil’ guy. Joe said he’d hit me back in two hours (it was about 2:30pm when he said this).
It was very hot on Boylston, so I had walked less than a half block before I sought refuge in a bar, a sports pub unfortunately named McGreevey’s on the far western end of Boylston. It was just after three and the place was empty. I had had Anna’s for breakfast (a breakfast of champions, if I ever heard of one) and wasn’t hungry, but figured a nice pint of Guinness and the paper would help me kill some time until Joe got back to me. It was about 3pm.
Three and a half hours and several pints later, I heard from Joe, who said they were still not feeling any visitors. By this time I was pretty well in the bag and perfectly ok to sit there, nice and cozy, at the bar. So I texted my buddies Bill and Nevin and Site Guy Brendan, and by 8pm, the four of us were watching the All Star Game, pounding pints with grace and aplomb and definitely more than a little fear and anger about our real lives, which prevent us from doing this all day, every day, all the time.
We drank and ate and drank some more and I sat on the same bar stool, getting up only go to the bathroom, from 3pm until 1:30am, when the lights came on and we were asked to leave. My bar tab was a shocking $277 (including tip). Even more shocking was that all during the drink-a-thon, the first three-plus hours of which I spent alone, I did not get a single buy-back, not one free beer. I don’t want to say any more about this, because I’ll get so angry that I won’t be able to type for the next several hours.
So despite the travesty of the non-buy-back, Tuesday was an exceptional day, the easily the longest I’ve ever spent in a single bar (I think). While not a true open-to-close day, I think I did pretty well.
(And because I drank Guinness the whole day, I was not hungover the next day. However, my butt…well, let’s just say it didn’t make it. Not a good scene.)
29
Back in NYC, my birthday on Thursday night was spent much like I imagine most of my birthdays will be spent for the rest of my life: steak dinner with some friends, followed by a few whiskey drinks, followed by an aborted masturbation session in the shower because it’s too damn hot and I’m full of red meat and rye whiskey. This is the truest, most sincere paragraph I’ve ever written in this blog.
There was nothing exemplary to report about the birthday, aside from the good company of my friends Jeremy, Meredith, Nicole and Brendan and another stellar steak (with foie gras butter!) from Dylan Prime. But here it is: another year has gone by and I remain threesome-less. I know, I know – I’ve been complaining about this since the dawn of time (or at least, the beginning of this website). And true, I haven’t really been trying to make this happen; I’ve adopted an insouciant approach recently, thinking that if I act too cool for school for a threesome, I’ll start having several a week.
But honest to goodness, a legit goal is to pull off a threesome before my 30th birthday. No idea how I’m going to go about this (aside from craiglist – “Chubby 29 year old sad and wants to fuck you and your friend or whatever. So sad inside.”), but I want to have a memory of three-way love to wank to after my Dylan Prime steak next July 17. Mark it down.
Bar domination, part two
On Friday afternoon, my buddy Mike had a half-day and suggested I meet him and our buddy Fran for drinks at 3pm at Pete’s Tavern. Never one to turn down such an offer, I agreed. In the cab, I was talking to my buddy Brian on the phone and told him I’d call him back in a little bit – I was going to have a few drinks and didn’t think it would last very long.
Whoops.
Mike and Fran and I hit it hard at Pete’s Tavern. Then our buddy Pat showed up. Then some of their buddies from work and my friend Meg joined the group. Then we moved over to 7B (real name: Horseshoe Bar) . I usually hate 7B because I feel like I’m in a bodega when I’m there: the booths are so close to the bar that they’re almost on top of each other, and things – the bar, the booths, the chairs – are packed so tightly together that if the bar’s even a little bit crowded, you’re better off peeing outside or under the table, because there’s no way you can get through everyone. But it wasn’t crowded on that Friday night and anyway we were rolling large, as my buddy Terrence and my brother, who was in town, met us out, as well as our friend Bryan.
You can probably guess how this one ended: my buddy Brian, who I told I’m call back shortly at 3pm, didn’t hear from me again until 5am, after a trip to Rosario’s after the bar closed. Brian didn’t answer since it was around 2am in LA and I’m told the message I left him consisted mostly of me chewing, sprinkled with a little bit of snorting, but hey – I’m a man of my word and I did call him back.
It was a glorious wonderful night. The only downside was that I was so crippled that the next day, Saturday night in NYC, I couldn’t even make it out. I guess this is what happens when you turn 29.
******
I’m leaving a number of things out, but I think you get the drift – I had a blast back on the east coast. And I look forward to doing all (or most of it) again in the fall.
(God, I miss NYC…)
Tonight, I’m off to the east coast. I’m taking a red-eye to NYC, will spend one night there, then Friday night in Philly, then Saturday night down the shore (for Drink Until You Shit), then Sunday night in Philly, then two or three nights in Boston, then I’ll close out the week and weekend in NYC. I’m flying back to LA from NYC on Monday night, July 21. This is not looking like it’s going to be a very relaxing vacation at all.
(As a reminder, my 29th birthday is Thursday, July 17. I assure you that any and all birthday gift donations – which can be made my clicking the “Make a Donation” button on the right – will be promptly spent on booze and/or in the pursuit of boobies. Thank you for your consideration.)
Therefore, posting will…well, posting probably won’t happen it all. Uncle Jason desperately misses the east coast and needs some time to get back to his former life.
However, some music before the break. These songs can be heard on muxtape, along with the last Six Songs.
Six Songs
“You Can’t Break a Heart and Have It” Black Francis
I have no idea if this song is new or old or whatever, but I’m guessing there’s a 92% chance that it’s playing at either Motor City or at 151 right now. Bet on it.
“Let Me Know” The Sunshine Underground
Starts a little slow, but then gets slammin’. You will bang on your desk or car or chair. Promise.
“Warwick Avenue” Duffy
I’m inclined to say, “Ok, ok – I know this is totally cheesy.” But to be honest, I don’t think it’s really all that cheesy. Forget for a second that this is the chick that sings “Mercy” and you’re left with a nice little pop ballad with all the proper elements: a sad songstress, some strings and some minor key changes, and a climatic resolution. And true, while I do feel a little gay because I don’t think anyone has given such thought to a Duffy song before, remember, this is a guy who spent much of 1997 seriously believing he was going to marry Baby Spice. So I’ve come a long way since then. So back off.
“Amie” Pure Prairie League
If this doesn’t want to make you grow a beard, have a drink of some warm brown whiskey, and sit around in a circle with some friends and some guitars and have a good old-fashioned sing along, well, we must be listening to different songs. This recently randomly came on my iPod and I hadn’t heard it years; I then listened to it about 15 times in a row.
“Country Girl” Primal Scream
Just for fun.
“Anything You Want” Spoon
“If there’s anything you want/Come on back ‘cause it’s all still here.” I’m pretty sure that in one Spoon album, you can find every emotion experienced in a drunken night: there’s loss and sadness and longing all over the place, but there’s also exuberance and fun and even sultriness. If they only wrote a song about eating pizza and getting grease on your new jeans or yelling at a cab driver when he says he doesn’t have change, I mean, it’d be downright creepy.
[Have a good week/weekend/week/weekend – and wish me luck.]
My old roommate Ben was (and still is) very allergic to bees. This was very disconcerting to me as his roommate, since every time went he carried an EpiPen which he could stick himself with should he ever get stung. I’m not exactly sure if getting stung by a bee would actually kill him – I think he explained this to me once, but I wasn’t really paying attention – but the fact that he carried this dang thing everywhere was enough to lead me to believe that getting stung by a bee would not be a very good thing for ol’ Ben; it’s kinda strange to live and drink with a buddy who at any time may be murdered by a common insect.
For most of my childhood, I was terrified of all bugs, mostly because they’re gross and icky and I had an absentee dad who never taught me that “They’re just bugs, pussy. Man, I can’t believe you’re pretty much already a gay.” However it was another male figure in my life, my Uncle Joey, who helped me overcome my fear of bugs one day in my early teens when I was walking around barefoot by the pool down the shore. He looked at my toenails and exclaimed, “Damn – you could kill a cockroach in a corner with those mothers!” I had never quite thought of it this way; my own lack of hygiene in the form of vampire-like toenails could easily dispatch that thing which I so feared. Therefore, there was no need to be afraid. I was cured.
(Note: Those are not my actual toenails.)
(And sorry about that picture, but it was just too good not to link to. Yowza.)
However in my 20’s, because of my experience with Ben, watching his extreme (and justifiable) fear of bees, well, I sort of became afraid of bees. I mean, if they could kill Ben, why couldn’t they kill me? Would it be that one day I’m just sitting there in Central Park, rubbing myself under a blanket with a pair of yellow cotton panties I found on the southeast corner of the Sheep Meadow, right by the 65th Street Transverse, when suddenly a bee stings me, then I have a seizure, then I die, right there, half-erect, clutching those little yellow cotton panties, dead, with the panties, the little yellow cotton panties, in my hand? I mean, this could happen, right? It’s not impossible. So even though Ben moved to Seattle a few years ago, and I’ve since moved to LA (away from Central Park and the Sheep Meadow and that glorious discovery on that glorious day), I’ve still harbored a fear of bees.
Fast forward to this morning. I was driving to work in the Town Car, listening to either Adam Carolla or NPR (I’m very versatile), with the sun roof open, enjoying the glorious Southern California morning sun. I was on that long stretch of boulevard known as La Cienega, about 50 minutes into my commute (so still at least 25 minutes away from work), when I felt something hit me on the top of the head. I assumed it was a leaf that had fallen from a tree and through the sunroof, and so I mindlessly brushed it out of my hair. Then I thought, “It felt a little harder than a leaf.” Then I thought, “Wait a minute – there are no trees on this stretch of La Cienega.”
I looked down at my feet and there, on its side but trying to regain its footing, was a bee. And not just a cute little bumblebee, but a giant, man-eating bee, roughly the length of my thumb, as thick as the head of a well-endowed man’s penis. I let out an audible yelp and immediately started using my left foot to crush this Monster Bee into my floormat. For several seconds, I blindly stomped, trying to focus on the traffic and the driving, but more importantly, desperately trying to kill this bee before it killed me.
As the car was moving along in bumper to bumper traffic, I could only look down for so long to see if I had succeeded. I shortly came to stop, as a light turned red a few cars ahead of me, and I finally looked down to assess the situation. I hoped to see the bee crushed into the mat, but instead couldn’t see anything – no dead bee, no live bee. I assumed that in the struggle I had moved the floormat and covered the bee and believed I’d find its crushed body under the mat when I got out of the car. Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, I saw it: the bee was alive, very much alive, crawling along my right pant leg, heading down toward the hem on the bottom of my pants, prepared to go under and in my pants and directly up my leg.
At this point, panic set in. If I had yelped before, I screamed now, and, still stopped at the red light, threw the car in park, flung my door open, and threw the lower half of my body outside the door. Continuing to scream and yelp and maybe now starting to cry a little bit, I desperately swatted at my pant leg, trying to get the bee off my leg before it went up my pants and stung and/or ate a large chunk of one of my testicles. The whole process took maybe six seconds, but in the middle of the screaming/yelping/crying/swatting, the traffic light turned green and cars behind me started beeping at the chubby kid with the beard half-hanging out of his Hearse in the middle of one of the busiest thoroughfares in Los Angeles, shrieking and swatting at his leg.
Then I felt it: my hand hit something and when I took a quarter-second to look, I saw that the bee was finally off my pants. Quicker than almost anything I’ve ever done, I pulled my legs back into the car, put it in drive, and continued on my way to work, sunroof closed. Crisis averted.
The lesson? Close the sunroof whilst driving or face death by bug. Los Angeles is a dangerous, dangerous city.
Three quick things before we get to the music:
- WordPress is giving me fits. Big time. Apparently, WordPress, the platform for this here blog, has rolled out its newest version. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why every single thing I post is just one giant blob of text with no line or paragraph breaks. I’ve been posting the same way for years and have only had this problem recently, so I have no one to blame but the new WordPress template. I feel terrible for Site Guy Brendan, who has more important things to deal with than me emailing him with subject titles like “Not a fan of WordPress” and “Grrrr…” So apologies for any tech difficulties that you might experience.
- Netflix users: Please help me help a dear friend out by adding the movie “Pool Party” to your queue. You don’t need to actually rent or even watch the movie, just add it to your queue. I won’t get into the specifics of how this can help (since I don’t really understand it), but the whole process took me less than 40 seconds and, as mentioned, would really, really help out some friends. Thank you.
(And if you want to watch the movie, by all means, go ahead. Lots and lots and lots of bikinis, which means it automatically gets a 7 out of 10 in my book.)
- The only blog I read on a daily basis was Slack Lalane, a blog started by my dear friends Don Fiedler and Ace Cowboy but run mostly by Ace (Donnie sorta took on a consulting role). When it died in May of 2007, a little part of me died with it. Right up there with ESPN, CNNSI, the NY Times, and CocksForMeAndYou.com, it was not only a daily read but a toehold in the blog world – reading Ace’s posts provided me a forum for commenting but also reminded me to, well, post on my own damn blog.
But now, Slack’s been reborn! Many of the original commenters have returned too (except me, since I don’t remember my blogger ID or password). If you’re looking for additional ways to help pass your work day, check it out.
God I’ve missed you, Ace, you magnificent son of a bitch.
************
Six Songs
(Once again, this week’s Six Songs can be heard on muxtape)
“Are You Lonely For Me Baby” Freddie Scott Excellent, excellent soul song that I can’t help but listen to at top volume. I really hope his lady meets him in Jacksonville. The poor guy sounds pretty broken up.
(Really, nothing else to say. A terrific soul/oldies song. I don’t know too many of them, so thought I should share.)
“The Jaunt” Poets of Rhythm Excellent, excellent cruising song if, say, you happen to regularly drive a black ’96 Lincoln Town Car through Hawthorne and Inglewood, California (neighbors of Compton and Watts, and only slighter nicer neighborhoods). There are a number of bad things about my car – the $65 a week in gas it consumes, the ginormous size that makes parallel parking very difficult in a parking starved city, the fact that it’s a conversation starter in bad way – but I feel pretty fucking bad-ass driving around in it, especially with a song like this blaring out of the windows and sunroof. With this song and that car, all I need is a pair of furry dice and a parole officer and I’ll be exactly like 97% of the Hispanic people in Southern California!
“Wake Up Alone” Amy Winehouse I downloaded this album when it first came out but them immediately disregarded it, basically to spite all the acclaim that it was getting from critics and my friends alike. My general rule is if something’s widely considered to be great, it’s probably actually crap. After a while and once the hype dies down, I will revisit this “great” thing and make my own determination. Usually, I’ll have been right the first time and the much-hyped album/movie/book/tv show will be crap. But I rediscovered this album a few weeks ago and boy, is it good. Not crap. Not crap at all.
And goodness gracious, this is a very, very sexy song. I’ve never thought of Amy Winehouse as particularly attractive; big black hair and tattoos usually send me running and hiding from a woman like a dog during a thunderstorm. But the part about 1:23 in when she sings “This face in my dreams…”, wow. For real, wow. I kinda swoon a little bit when it comes on, get all goosebumpy when those background singers chime in, feel all giddy and warm she trails that “…by the bed.” Very, very intense. During that part, and the whole song, really, I get simultaneously turned on and intimidated, like I’m scared, but I’m also hard. It is a very confusing feeling and one that I can’t recall ever having, but I can tell you this much: about five of my female friends have gone out as Amy Winehouse for Halloween over the past few years and I remember seeing them in person or later seeing pictures of them and thinking, “Bleeech.” But after listening to this song, you can bet there’s been some beyond creepy/borderline alert-Benson-and-Stabler perusing of various Facebook albums entitled “Halloween 2007!” Just a lot of confusion, and a lot of riled up. No one wins with that combo.
Man. I think I need a drink. No wonder she’s a drug addict.
“Tim I Wish You Were Born a Girl” Of Montreal Ok – this takes a bit of the edge off. There really aren’t enough songs about wishing your best buddy was a chick so you could marry him.
(For further listening, Of Montreal’s “Requiem for o.m.m.2″ is also highly recommended, and one of the cornerstones of a new playlist of mine called “Dance, Hipster, Dance!”)
“Tops” Rolling Stones I have no idea how I feel about this song: work of genius or complete fucking joke. Mick’s spoken word intro, following by singing – often in a high-pitched voice – about how he’ll take a girl to the top (not a euphemism for sex, I don’t think, but more like he’ll make her famous), perfectly matches the utter redonkulousness of the early 80’s Stones, when this song came out. If this wasn’t the very song that made people stop taking the Stones seriously, then it’s close. And yet still I’m recommending to you as a song you should listen to. Joke’s on us, I guess.
“Sucker” John Mayer You know, I’ve experienced first-hand the sexual peak of Jimmy Fallon, the sexual peak of The Strokes and the sexual peak of Justin Timberlake, but I have to think that John Mayer is blowing them all out of the water. Let’s discuss:
- People forget that Jimmy Fallon was just about the biggest thing in NYC in 2002-2003 (seriously, I can’t believe it either, but it’s true) and was the object of nearly every female’s desire. And yeah, I could see how he was kinda cute because he was funny and self-deprecating and all that, but he just wasn’t all that good-looking.
- The Strokes had two waves of hugeness in NYC – when I very first moved there and they were at the peak of the “undergroundness” and then once again when they hit it big with “Is This It.” And while few things like a hip rock band will so lather up a 20-something girl in the big city, like Jimmy Fallon, these guys don’t exactly strike me as lady killers. Also, six months after they were the awesomest, they were a sell-out, and have since been replaced by a half-dozen bands de jour (though admittedly, none were nearly as big as they were).
- Justin Timberlake: now here’s our first legitimate piece of man-meat. And while no doubt he’s a good-looking guy, fit, can dance and sing, and came out with one of the most incredible Upper Hands in history after his break up with Britney, c’mon – the guy was in the Mickey Mouse Club and N’Sync for Christ’s sake. Nice perm, dil.
- And in this corner, John Mayer. While no doubt he’s written his share of vacuous pop rock songs, there’s also no denying he’s a very talented blues guitarist. He gets bonus points from me on this because apparently his band in high school was called “Villanova Junction”, which is the name of a bluesy instrumental that Jimi Hendrix performed at Woodstock and one of my most favoritest songs ever, not to mention one of the most reliable arrows in my quiver when someone says, “play something on guitar for us, fatty!”.
(Don’t ask me how I know about the “Villanova Junction” thing. It’s not like I masturbate to John Mayer’s wikipedia entry or anything.)
Speaking of masturbating, as someone who’s over 94% straight, I have enough confidence in my masculinity to say that John Mayer’s a good-looking guy. Edgy with giving off any dangerous/strangle-you-during-sex vibe, cool without seeming contrived, seemingly comfortable either having a draft beer during a game or eating $200 sushi at Nobu. And yes, this is getting kinda creepy. So let’s just keep going.
Finally, he’s funny! (“If I can’t get the girl, why don’t I just tell her I’m John Mayer?”). And girls love funny! At least, that’s what they say on their match.com profiles! Yet when you send them a hilarious message introducing yourself, they don’t respond! Probably because you’re chubby and have a beard! And you’ve misspelled the word “queef” in the message! Twice! They’re probably lesbians anyway! Fuck it! You’ll see them in hell!
For these reasons, I have to think that John Mayer’s having the greatest sexual peak of my lifetime. I was pretty sure he could get any 18 year old piece he wanted after that “I want to scream at the top of my lungs” song, but now he’s playing more blues and banging Jennifer Aniston (or was – I’m still 94% straight, so despite now living in LA, I can’t keep up with celebrity gossip), so he’s pretty much indestructible right about now.
(I mean, I don’t think he was one of People’s hottest bachelors, but still, he’s not doing too bad for himself.)
Consider this your official (and perhaps final) reminder: The 10th Annual Flood/Mulgrew “Drink Until You Shit” Tour is Saturday, July 12, starting at 6pm at Casey’s at Third and New York in North Wildwood, New Jersey .
Yes, this is the big one: ten glorious years of shitting and drinking along the Jersey shore. My co-founder David and I believe the tour has come a long way since its inception. We wanted to create a different kind of pub crawl, one that best encapsulated the neighborhood that we grew up in (Second Street in South Philly). So we thought, what do Second Streeters like to do? Well, drink, of course. That is first and foremost a hobby of those in my ol’ neighborhood, right up there with Eagles, greasy food, and a slightly more than casual racism.
We envisioned the pub crawl being a night of extremes, of celebrating and drinking until we physically could not any longer. So then we thought, when or under what circumstances do Second Streeters stop drinking? Unconsciousness first came to mind, but “Drink Until You Pass Out!” is neither funny nor original. “Drink Until You Puke!” was another idea, but that, frankly, is kinda disgusting (and also seldom stops people from drinking). Then we figured it out – the pub crawl would be “Drink Until You Fight!” The idea of getting so drunk and rowdy that people would erupt in fighting like in those old-time Westerns was appealing, but practically speaking, it was extremely dangerous: 50 drunks walking around in t-shirts that boldly said “Drink Until You Fight!” would probably lead to some trouble. I’m not a cop, so that’s just a guess.
And now here we are – ten years later*, keeping the tradition alive on Saturday, July 12. I don’t expect any of y’all to attend, but last year we had about 150 revelers, including readers from up and down the east seaboard and as far away from Oklahoma (provided, he was in PA on business) attend, so if you’re down the shore and looking for something to do, come on down. As usual, commemorative t-shirts will be on sale and each bar will have drink specials (except the Number One tavern, since they never give us any breaks). Shitting is not required or even encouraged, but drinking sure is. Hope to see you there.
[* This is technically the fourth year we've done this, since we started at seven. Just roll with it and shut up and drink.]
[And shit. Of course.]
Last night I had dinner with my agent, Joel. Having dinner with your agent is a very LA thing to do, but I assure you, this was unlike most agent-client dinners. First and foremost, we did not speak about business or “the business” at all, since there is no business to speak of. Right now, I have about as much of a chance of getting an endorsement deal with Summer’s Eve than I do of getting a development deal with a network (and probably more desire to nail down the Summer’s Eve gig than the sitcom deal). So no bidness with the agent at this dinner.
(Just kidding, sitcom development deal givers! I work for cheap, so that email address is jason_at_jasonmulgrew.com! Also willing to take random household trinkets in exchange for cash! And I can be zany in a family-friendly sense and won’t write any dialogue liberally using the word “cockblood” this time! Thanks for your consideration!)
Second, this “business” dinner was different because my agent is my friend. I mean, though we started with an agent-client relationship, we have since grown into gen-u-ine friends. “C’mon, dude,” you’re probably thinking, “the guy’s an agent, so of course he’s going to make like he’s your best bud. I’ve seen ‘Entourage’. Agents are schmoozers.” Yes, that’s true – many agents are schmoozers. But here’s the thing: many agents are schmoozers because their clients make them and their agency a lot of money (see: “Entourage” example). I have been with my agent since December of 2004, only ten short months after I started this here blog, and I promise you that the money I’ve made him and his agency (UTA) is far, far less than the money he’s spent on me by taking me out to dinner and getting me boozed and once paying for something that he said was an STD test but was really some middle-aged guy taking pictures of me while I did jumping jacks without my pants on (I’m not sure if he expensed this, as I personally saw him hand the doctor/gentleman cash – I think there was also some sort of awkward high five involved, but I was pretty drugged up at the time). As a matter of fact, if Joel and UTA are not actually in the red for having me as a client, I would estimate that Joel has made approximately 13 cents an hour over the past three and a half years as my agent. Which is good hourly wage for most inmates, but not so good for most individuals with liberty.
So we went to this place called Rock Sugar in the Century City mall, which is located close to both our offices. It’s from the geniuses behind the Cheesecake Factory (I mean, have you tried their fried mac and cheese balls?), but it’s some sort of pan-Asian type place, which is fine with me, since I still long for Sea Thai in NYC (which I will destroy at approximately 7pm on Thursday, July 10, when I’m back in the city – God help those little Thai party boy/girls).
Anyway, one of the appetizers we got at Rock Sugar was these little short ribs, maybe slightly larger than my thumb. I picked one up and threw it back, apparently forgetting that ribs have bones in them. But, averting a crisis (and my possible death), I caught myself before the rib was jettisoned down my throat, removed the small bone from it, and repeated the throwing back process, sans bone. Delicious.
After a few of those (ok, only when there were none left), I started sucking the little stuck strands of stray meat out of my teeth. This sounds like a gross process, but I was discreet; it wasn’t like I was half-sitting/half-standing at the table, panting, and sucking my teeth so hard that I threw my head back over and over again. Real gentleman-like, I cleaned my teeth with my tongue. Delicious.
And then I realized something strange: didn’t I have more teeth than this? You know, back there, right side, upper row of teeth? Was I…missing one?
Sure as shit, I was. Because there was now a fairly sizeable hole in my mouth where a tooth was previously, I surmised that I did, in fact, loose a tooth. I looked down at my plate, at the small bones of the spare ribs, and it wasn’t there. I fished around in my mouth, and it wasn’t there, hiding in some dark crevice. Stranger, I wasn’t bleeding or in any pain. Stranger still, even when I (gently) bit on that first bone, it was on the side of my mouth opposite the missing tooth. This tooth had apparently had enough, said its goodbyes, and went gently into that good night, without nary a fight nor whimper.
Joel was amazed by this, and more than a little disgusted, but I carried on through the dinner unperturbed. As I said, there was no pain or blood, so as long as I chewed on the left side of my mouth, I was fine. We enjoyed the rest of the dinner and by the time I fell asleep that night and had grown tired of playing with the hole in my gum, I had pretty much forgotten about the lost tooth.
Fast forward to today: I’m sitting on the toilet, reading an article from the NY Times about a federal agent impersonator during my afternoon defecation (I read the Sports Guy’s latest during my morning defecation). It was a good poop: solid and hard, but not difficult to pass; my urine in the bowl a bright yellow-gold-green Colorado sunset color due to my multivitamin and omega-3 pills. I wiped a few times and, satisfied that I had met my standard quota of 80% clean, stood up and pulled my pants up. As I zipped up, I turned to admire my handiwork when I saw what looked like a piece of corn in the poo. I thought, ”I haven’t eaten corn lately.” And then it hit me:
I pooped the tooth.
Sure as shit (literally), what was before me, nestled snuggly in my otherwise unspectacular lil’ monkey tail, was not a piece of corn or any vegetable, but the tooth that I had lost, swallowed, digested and now, finally, gloriously, excreted.
I pooped the tooth.
I pooped the fucking tooth.
As you can imagine, my first impulse was to take a picture. To this end, I did not flush, leaving the poo in the bowl, thinking that I could quickly wash my hands and return to the scene with my cell phone, and no one would be the wiser. However, while washing my hands, I realized: I’m at work, I just shit a tooth, and I’m leaving the shit in the toilet bowl so I can take a picture of it? Really? This is not exactly something that you want coming up in the annual review (“Well Jason, you prepared a number of successful pitches for the firm, but there was that one time in July when Mr. Smith caught you taking a picture of your feces…”). Dejected, I returned to the toilet bowl, gave the tooth-poo one last look, and flushed. It was a bittersweet moment, but truly there was no other way. There was just no other way.
I’ve done a lot in my (almost) 29 years, but now I can finally say it: there has been human teeth in my feces. I have shit teeth. I have actually shit teeth. Finally, gloriously, I am a Man.
************
I’m going to try to post a something, even if it’s a little something, every day in July (that is, every day in July that I’m not on vacation). Blogging is unlike riding a bicycle or sex, activities one can never forget how to do (and in my case, still require help from my uncle to last longer than a few seconds and most of the time result in a skinned knee and some sobbing). Instead, it must be regularly practiced, lest one lose his or her touch completely. These two months have been transitional, busy, discombobulating, saying goodbye in May and settling in in June. So now I gotta get back on the wagon.
We’ll see how this works out.