Just Write, Screw Editing

Just write. Put the pen to the paper or put the fingertips on the keyboard. Shit ain’t gonna write itself. Edit later, Write. Get it out. Let it flow.

So here goes. I hope you like it. I care what you think. I value your opinion. It matters to me. You offer insight and constructive criticism almost all the time. I know you take the time to read my stuff thoroughly and offer up honest yet helpful tips.

I can’t think of anything to write. Should I do comedy or philosophy? Should I do both? But I’m not exactly Woody Allen here now am I. I’m not married to my daughter. See, see what I did there? That was pretty funny don’t you think? Let us analyze: I set you up talking about writing and referenced the writing of Woody Allen and how I am NOT like him but then…I turned the table and said that I am not like him insofar as I did not marry my daughter. Classic humor in the classic style. Heck, I am into classic, it’s my new thing.

Aside: I love Woody Allen. I watched Annie Hall the other night for the first time in a number of years and is it ever funny. Interestingly, I noticed some, let us call them, directing “errors” if you will. If one considers the uncut (master shot in the biz, not to be confused with a different biz's money shot) shot of Woody and Tony Robbins walking and talking in New York about anti-Semitism with liners like “Jew eat yet? Not did you eat,” the shot has no errors because no other actors interact. But, and this is a huge bedonkadonk “but,” in the also uncut scene after the on-street breakup between Woody and Diane, he walks along the street and asks several characters “What Happened?” Of course the “We use a large vibrating egg” liner goes off unhitched. But in the conversation with the superficial couple, one can see the male actor start to pull away early and this impacts the timing of the interaction with the elderly woman (“love fades”) and then the timing with the horse. Does it ruin the scene? Of course not. Does it make the scene even more endearing? No again, the dialogue is what makes it endearing and timeless. And isn’t this the genius of Woody Allen?

Aside: listening to a pod cast of Tavis Smiley with Anthony Greenwald on prejudice and bias. Aside in aside: I am committing one of my own sins. Aside in an aside in an aside: I consider multitasking to be a myth. You can’t do two things at once, unless of course you are Mr. Guitar Chet Atkins. But he’s dead so there’s that. Now what this means for us is that we can’t do two things at once. You have to pick one. OK, a little bit of equivocation here but like Mae West said “I could tell the truth but it’s so boring.” What I mean is that you can’t do two things at once and do them well, you must pick one. I’m not talking about walking and chewing gum because I happen to know for a fact that you won the district championship in the Walking and Chewing gum Classic back in 06. I’m talking about important stuff like being a musician or being a writer or actor or theologian or high priced call girl. You can’t dabble in two things and expect greatness and here I am trying to be the best blogger since Red Buttons and I’m listening to a podcast, and committing 2 sins at once (one can multitask sins because they aren’t important by the way): not “hearing” the podcast (White men can’t Jump reference to the Jimi Hendrix conversation) and not “committing” to the writing of the blog with 100% of my focus. Shitballs, I thought I was better than this. Now you could ask, “Funner, why don’t you just do one then and not be a dick?” And I might retort and tell you to mind your own business and that when I want your opinion, I will give it to you.”

Angry Birds

Ad Exec – up and coming ad exec dressed to the nines, got lost out walking because he had his head down looking at his cell phone

Bag Man – homeless man in alley who meets Ad Exec

Rodrigo – restaurant worker who chimes in occasionally with Ad Exec and Bag Man as he takes out the restaurant’s trash

***             

Bag Man: Spare change?

Ad Exec: What? Where am I? Is this an alley?

Bag Man: Best alley in the city. You got yer scrap food from Carmines, pretty clean syringes, cats to pet, cans for fires…sometimes we make poorsmores.

Ad Exec: What are poorsmores?

Bag Man: Well when you can’t afford marshmallows or graham crackers you gots to melt any half eaten candy bar you can find and put it between two slivers of thrown out pancakes. Mmmm, just as good. Sometimes you feel like a nut. Ha ha.

Ad Exec: I guess I didn’t look where I was going because I was texting.

Bag Man: You sure you weren’t playing angry birds? What’s your high score?

Ad Exec: What no (looking around)…is there a way out of here…

Bag Man: I love that game. But without my cell phone I just play in real life by fighting off the crows. You know what a good game would be? Angry rats. Ha ha fightin’ off rats for thrown-away veal piccata and urinating on them for bonus points. That would be a hit.

[Rodrigo enters, throwing away restaurant trash]

Bag Man: Hey Rodrigo!

Rodrigo: Hey hey bag man. How’s scraps and coins today my man?

Bag Man: A+ on the scraps when I scored some half-moldy wonder bread and a partial can of cold Hormel chili but Mr. Angry Birds here can’t spare a dime because of his app addiction.

Ad Exec: What! I wasn’t playing angry…I’m not addicted to anything…

Rodrigo: What’s your problem mister! You think you’re too good for the bag man?

Ad Exec: What, no! -I…I got lost and…and how dare you accuse me of elitism.

Bag Man: Whoa whoa whoa, no one said a word about botulism! Them’s fightin words in this here alley my man! This is my house!

Ad Exec [frustrated]: yeah well, who’s yer decorator?

Rodrigo: Oh snap bag man! He got you! Angry Birds laid it down!

Bag Man: Oh it’s like that is it Mr. Counting Crows. Well when you’re done texting your mom about the blind date that ended when she beat you in arm wrestling, you can bring that cell phone over here and I can show you how it’s done on angry birds.

Ad Exec: I wasn’t playing angry birds! I was actually sending a very important text about a possible merger I’ll have you know.

Bag Man: the only thing you were merging was rocks to pigs Mr. Blue Jay. Uh huh, if you were any redder you’d be an irate cardinal.

Rodrigo: He’s baaaaack! Nice one bag man. He scared to play you!

Bag Man: Buck buck buck begaaaaalk! Ironic isn’t it, mr. chicken here doesn’t want to play angry birds.

Ad Exec: I’m an ad executive and I drive a Honda crossover. I don’t play angry birds.

Bag Man: Sure you don’t. You probably don’t know anything about King Pig or Boomerang Bird, what with your merger between Kibbles and Bits about to fall through. Buck buck buck begaaaaalk!

Rodrigo: Buck buck buck begaaaaalk!

Ad Exec: I can’t believe this. A homeless man thinks I play Angry Birds.

Bag Man: Oh you play alright, you sneak away from your brunches, you play on the toilet, you feign reading the Wall Street Journal to play, you play on-line waiting for a Frappuccino with soy, you play in your Honda crossover. Oh you play, and when you don’t play, you’re thinking about playing. You just don’t want to play me and not just because my fingers will leave feces on your phone’s screen but because I will destroy you!

Ad Exec: ok, one game!

The Mother of Invention

Scientist: I’ve built a machine that can read minds.

Scientist Assistant:  Oooh ooooh what am I thinking, what am I thinking?

Scientist: I don’t need a machine for that. You’re thinking about lunch.

Scientist Assistant:  Cool! How’d you do that?

Scientist: It’s after breakfast and before dinner time. Now help me with the neuronal-transducer steam engine. I need to plug it in to the electro-centrifuge.

Scientist Assistant:  You mean the blender?

Scientist: Oh just get out of the way. Here, go hook these up to the wire hangers over there.

Scientist Assistant: Should these wires be exposed like this?

Scientist: Who do you think you are working for here? Tesla’s third cousin? I have a degree from MIT. I cut the power to those so go go, hook’ em up.

Scientist Assistant: That’s a welding school.

Scientist: Metallurgy Institute with Tools also taught electronics! You saw the stereo speakers…I hooked up.

Scientist Assistant: It’s just that the wires are warm.

Scientist: They’re supposed to be that way. They heat the induction facsimile trans planter. If it’s not warm it can’t make it through the ear canal. Duh.

Scientist Assistant: I don’t know. Exposed wires connected to coat hangers. I think there’s a risk of shock.

Scientist: Do you have a degree? No, no you don’t. Do you have any idea what my budget here is? Huh? Any idea? An inkling? Look if this works we’re both gonna be on easy street. Now pretty please, with nougat on top, go hook up the wires.

Scientist Assistant: You think we’ll be rich?

Scientist: Not only rich but we’re gonna know what women are thinking! Imagine it!

Scientist Assistant: What if we know they think we’re dorks?

Scientist: Nonsense.

Scientist Assistant: I think that is what they think now.

Scientist: You are almost there, go ahead and attach those…

Scientist Assistant: Why can’t we ask them what they think?

Scientist: I didn’t go to school all those year…to ask questions. Now you’ve got one, just attach the other…

Scientist Assistant: Should you be holding that…

Scientist: Holding wha-

ZZZppppthHHHT!

Scientist Assistant: You ok! Are you ok?

Scientist: Are my eyebrows smoking? It smells like burnt hair.

Scientist Assistant: I think your nose hairs caught on fire. And actually, where your eyebrows were, is smoking, your forehead is smoking.

Scientist: Great, just great. If I never invent this, I’ll never know what women are thinking.

Scientist Assistant: You are married.

Scientist: The mother of invention my good man, the mother of invention.

Captain and Officer – The Feliciano Files

Captain: I’m starving. What’s the latest on the Feliciano case?

Officer: Which one?

Captain: Whaddya mean which one?

Officer: We’ve got two, Jose and Sanford.

Captain: Well felice navidad me with no lube. Two Felicianos. Maybe tacos for lunch. Well give me the status for both.

Officer: Juan’s has good tacos and I know Stan who works there will cut us a deal. Well for Jose, he was caught stealing an acoustic guitar from a blind man but our only witness is a deaf mute so we’re having a bit of a communication snafu. The witness writes but it is all in hoch deutsch so we’re trying to find a German speaker which isn’t so easy and the free on-line translator stuff indicates that she saw a well-maned lion fingerpick either a booger or a boogie woogie tune on a martin d-28 just before jogging in place or juggling plates. The Sanford case is a little more cut and dry. Guy runs a waste disposal site with his son and they reprocessed some of the rubber products into a synthesized carbon capturing photosynthetic diffusion chip that allows car tires to catch light from the sun and heat from the road to recycle through the carburetor and allow the car to get around 50mpg. The proprietor Sanford was booked on a citizen’s arrest for lewd conduct with an underage rubber tree.

Captain: What kind of deal on the tacos?

Officer: Probably 20%.

Captain: Good salsa?

Officer: It’s ok.

Captain: Hmm. What’s the point if the salsa is sub-par?

Officer: Skirt steak for the fajitas.

Captain: Grilled?

Officer: MmHmm.

Captain: Ok, bring in Sanford’s son and grill him to see what he knows and threaten the old man that he could get placed on the Ficus offender list and a scour the universities for a German professor and also scour the pawn shops for a martin d-28 with boogers on the back of the headstock and most importantly, try to get your boy at Juan’s to get us half-off.

Ruminations

I read ‘Infinite Jest’ -the magnum opus of David Foster Wallace. This book was fascinating on many levels. I read the book knowing that Wallace suffered from depression and committed suicide but this did not deter appreciation in any way for his incredible descriptions of drug use, addiction, and recovery. The book was very funny at times and it had to be given that most of the time the subject matter was abuse and addiction with sides of tennis, Canadian conspiracy hit men in wheelchairs, and avant garde film. You may know that the book is filled (about 15% of the total book) with endnotes with some being insightful and some confusing, and some where Wallace indicates “no idea.” Truly a wonderful mind he had. The book does not offer closure and it doesn’t matter. The ride is enough in and of itself and the ride never really ends. I find myself thinking about the book weeks after and figure that most will. I also did this with his ‘Broom Of The System’ –where there was no closure but the ride more than made up for the open end. Infinite Jest does however tease that it will come together. The end is in sight for the beforehand parallel lines but they never converge leaving you wanting more. The truly sad part is not that there will be no closure but that there will be no more.

I also saw ‘The Perks Of Being A Wallflower’ and think this was a great movie. Connection: my wife went to the same high school as the author Stephen Chbosky and parts of the movie were filmed in the neighborhood where she grew up. You know how that is when you have some small connection to someone famous and you take some silly little pride in what they’ve done – like someday you’ll meet them and talk about your connection and hit it off. It is hard for me to believe that Chbosky was a first time director for this film. The directing is just so good that it is hard to believe this was his first time. Where some directors mishandle things like scenes of actors being stoned or tripping on acid, Chbosky nails these with both sensitivity and humor. Maybe some of this is because the plot is close to my own high school years but the box office receipts sort of confirm his directorial ability. The performances are an important part of the success of the film. Where other teen movie performances lack gravitas, these performances (coupled with complementary editing) deliver if you are patient. The film culminates around topics of mental illness, implied sexual abuse, and therapy, ergo the necessary need for gravitas, and the film finishes in a big way without wrapping things up in a bow that suggests there is not work to be done but we believe in Charlie in a not too saccharine way – in a realistic way, warts and all. Conclusion: the ‘Breakfast Club’ of the oughts.

Sports Bits

Tidbits, tidbits, tidbits. Say that word enough and you’ll become aroused around dog food. That’s just scientific fact.

Now onto the bids of tit.

Ray Lewis, yes, pissed off for greatness Ray Lewis, has apparently ingested elk antler spray, which the NFL in its wisdom, has banned because if anything is going to give players an illegal edge it’s ungulate bones. Now hold on just one sec before you start judging Ray Ray. This is a man of god we are talking about so judge lest ye be judged. What’s that you say? He was implicated in a double homicide? Oh good grief, we all make mistakes. Why just last night I forgot to use my blinker. What’s that, he obstructed justice? Aren’t we splitting hairs here people, obstruction of justice, doubling up on coupons, we ALL make mistakes. The man cried at the national anthem for cryin out loud! You haters need to embrace embrace embrace. What’s that, he’s fathered multiple children and has never been married? This is a liberated man we’re talkin’ about. How can he do god’s work and marry up too? You expect too much. Ray Lewis is a shining beacon we can all get behind and deep in our hearts we hope he’ll hide the evidence of our wrong doing, if the elk semen doesn’t kill him first. That stuff just can’t be good for you.

Dan Marino, one time Miami Dolphin and Don Shula legacy murderer, who rose to fame for losing to Joe Montana and for of course holding the laces out in that hall of fame caliber comedy Ace Ventura, has admitted that he fathered a child to a mistress and paid millions to keep her quiet, and that while he put up big numbers in the regular season, played like a frightened school girl in the playoffs. When asked about his legacy by reporters Mr. Marino apologized profusely to those he may have hurt through his playoff play and flat performance in Ace Ventura.  It is rumored that CBS may cut ties with the NFL broadcaster for his playoff interception to touchdown ratio and for basically wrecking Sean Young’s career.  The child, a girl, though only 7, has signed a national letter of intent with Pitt.

Tiger Woods won the Futile Open with a 7 under who cares and took home a Buick with bucket seats and tires that roll. He beat out 40 other golfers to win the coveted bracket bet of the AFC championship game.

Death is for Suckers

Have you ever stopped to think for the briefest of seconds about how we use the phrase "afterlife"? You’ve realized that what we mean is life after life.

Um, yeah, couple of questions: Where does the after part come in? If there is no after part why do we talk about death? All this eternal life goin’ on with all this death goin’ on isn’t quite possible now is it?

Unless, unless we equivocate like mad hatters inside a Looney bin filled with pharmaceuticals and booze after a week-long Vegas bender chock full of ego altering substances and dimension warping inhalants.

What’s that you ask? What is “equivocate?” Equivocate refers to changing the meaning of a word…behind your back essentially.

You ever been offered a free month of something and come to learn that by free they mean you pay for 11 months at a rate where they recoup the so called free month. And you learn that free month or not, your wallet is $1200 bones lighter. Wait, it gets better. One can see equivocation in teenager speak: “I like him but I don’t like him like him.” Of course we all know the translation is that “I don’t like him.”

Which brings us to death? I guess death doesn’t happen, at least not to us humans. I guess these folks mean, and here is the equivocation part, that we “leave” earth but we certainly don’t die. Die means to cease living and if there is an afterlife there cannot be cessation of living now can there. But, if you think back to my point about us humans, it is important to note that non-human mammals, for example, do indeed die. Oh, I don’t know, pick your favorite mammal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammal), like your pooch Rexie or your cat Annabel or even that stray elk you picked up in Wyoming and named Oscar…your favorite mammal…dies. Yep, it ceases living at some point. Probably after the heavily infused Dominoes pizza diet you gave to Oscar.

I think I feel a rub. Definite rubbage. Rubbing the old nads and I think chafing may result. What if, what if you live in, oh I don’t know, this, let us say, century….no no no, too tough, let us say you live in the post 2011’s and believe that evolution is true. If evolution is true then this same process takes the same stuff and makes you me and Dupree, Dupree being your pet bonobo that uses your toilet…most of the time.

Why the different fates? One never dies, but poor Dupree falls out of a jerry-rigged tree house you created from balsa wood and kitchen string and falls 20 feet through a kitchen skylight face-first into your cast iron skillet filled with hot pancake batter. Dupree ceases to live, that is to say, Dupree dies.

Unless, wait, oh my goodness, is there, could there, maybe, is there a complete mammal afterlife? Yessssss! This fixes our little problem. All mammals (not just dogs) go to heaven! Niiice.

But wait, if evolution is true, then what about the non-mammals? Oh hell, we’ll through them in too. Party time! Be it rats, squids, fungus, spores…hop on board people, this trains headed for eternity and you are on it. Fuck death. Death is for suckers.

Sublime Discovery on this day 1/11/2013

Let her go, let her go, God bless her;
Wherever she may be
She may search the wide world over
And never find a better man than me

Oh, when I die, please bury me
In my ten dollar Stetson hat;
Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain
So my friends'll know I died standin' pat.

Get six gamblers to carry my coffin
Six chorus girls to sing me a song
Put a twenty-piece jazz band on my tail gate
To raise Hell as we go along

Now that's the end of my story
Let's have another round of booze
And if anyone should ask you just tell them
I've got the St. James Infirmary blues