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.”

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.

The Case of The Half-Bitten Shrimp

He began circling like a vulture. His eyes were wide open and his mind alert; looking, waiting, praying and preying like only the religious can. And he needed a miracle in this crowd. These dames were way out of his league, what with the degrees, the money, the jobs, and the morals. But maybe, just maybe, he had god on his side or, in his pocket. No one needed to know he kept a small bible next to his condom, unless of course he thought he could score one of these Christian broads with such factoids. Cleanliness is next to godliness he could hear himself saying to some religious chick with a small streak of irreverence with a dash of verisimilitude. He knew many were phonies but that wasn’t the point at all. The point was to get some…by hook or crook or god or jesus or buddah or booze, or weed or feigning whatever needed feigned.
                His head on a swivel, he scanned the room looking for the right combination of nice enough body and drink-in-hand posture to suggest scorability. He remembered Eddie Muprhy in 48 Hours when he said “look, if I don’t get some trim, I’m gon’ bust,” and how it worked…in the movie. He didn’t think he could be that forward but some reasonable facsimile thereof might work on the right one. “Do something, even if it is wrong” he muttered beneath his breath.
                “Hi, how are you doing…(glance at namecard)…Meghan?” He noticed before she even got a word out that her eyes darted away for a millisecond, as if looking for help. She said something very polite but he knew before she ended the sentence that she was a no go. So he meandered through another minute and created a sultry escape hatch near the shrimp, where another candidate was standing in red heels and red dress and probably a glass of chardonnay.
                Different broad, different tact. He hoisted some shrimp and cocktail sauce to his mouth and smiled at the lady in red and just in the act of biting said crustacean, promptly spilled some of the tasty treat right into her cleavage. This created quite a scene. “Oh my gosh I’m sorry,” he said as bodies backed away from the activity while eyes closed in. “I guess the lord works in mysterious ways…(glance at namecard)…Woody. Wait, is Woody your name?” “It’s not Bathsheeba sugar. Would you mind getting me a napkin…(glance at namecard)… Lance?” Lance, what a terrible fake name he thought, phallic though it may be. He hustled and felt glorious to hand this bombshell in red what she needed. He snickered as he thought to himself that he knows exactly what she needs. “Yes, the lord does work in mysterious Lance, how else can we explain cocktail sauce between my 34 c’s?” Those words, those intoxicating words: “cock” and “34 c’s”…might as well have been the ten commandments. “Woody, allow me to make it up to you, allow me to rectify the cocktail sauce between your 34’cs, allow me to atone for the sin of sauce between the sheets if you will, and I know you will Woody.” By this time the crowd had dispersed and he had free reign to feign whatever needed feigning. “I was thinking tang in the tarps there Lance but pre tell, how might you atone for such a diabolical act of soiling my pretty dress and boobs with horseradish and ketchup?” He was in. He knew it like he knew 2+2=4.
                But where did the half-bitten shrimp go?

Tame Me

I am reading ‘The Little Prince’ and came across the statement in the book, “that which is essential is invisible to the eye.” Upon reading this I immediately flashed back to reading Leo Buscaglia in my early twenties. Now 41, I felt a twinge of nostalgia, connection, and regret…or something like regret.
                Nostalgia is a familiar feeling; the longing for the past but a past when the future was more open. Despite having learned Heidegger and the idea that each choice can render an infinite number of new choices, I can’t help but feel that the number of choices is limted…very limited. And so the pull of nostalgia is strong; it is almost as if freedom resides in nostalgia. This particular nostalgia was my early twenties…when I knew everything and nothing, when I was studying philosophy and psychology with a keen interest in the idea of self-actualization and connectedness.
                Spinoza was a pantheist. The words literally mean back to god, figuratively it refers to god as everything. (Note: the god in this case is nothing like the christian god but rather, Being with a capital `B’, the greater existence in which all existences (lower case being(s)) reside.) I was never a Spinozist as Dr. Hart termed it, but I feel like I did understand pantheism. The idea that resonated with me in Spinoza was the idea that everything is connected but what I did was morph his idea of connectedness, which I felt was a very material understanding, and apply it to self-actualization within an emotional/aesthetic arena. Don’t overthink it…if you’ve ever been moved by a piece of music or experienced the joy of loving another, then you understand this connectedness and where you are it/him/her fit in the world. When I came across those words last night I felt that connection…I could see myself reading Leo Buscaglia, feeling like a sponge soaking up everything that was coming my way, growing intellectually, and here I was more than twenty years later reading what is considered a children’s book and feeling quite ignorant of the ways of the world and more importantly, who I am and what I am supposed to be. A strange connection, your present ignorant self to your younger know-it-all (naïve) self, but a connection nonetheless.
                Alas, in bed, my wife next to me and my 8 month old son asleep in his crib, I felt like I should be more…I felt un-self-actualized…disconnected…from myself, full of doubt, waiting, passively waiting for that thing, to happen to me and not from me…waiting for fate instead of creating fate…for a fate to sate me to fulfill me…and consequently them? Does it work that way?
                If Woody Allen taught us anything with `Match Point’ it is that luck matters.

If I learned anything from evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, it is that man survives in groups and not alone. But can we be alone from luck? Is luck necessary for self-actualization? Can the masses, a la the satirical newspaper `The Onion’, trudge through another day while the few, the lucky few, thrive with a self-actualizing wind at their backs? For all the books out there, and all the Leo Buscaglias,  and the sages with pithy one-liners just waiting to pass it on, are they wrong? What if it can’t be taught? What if those who have it can’t tame it and throw a connection to me? Or you?

Double-Spaced This Time

[Professor’s Office]

Student: Why did you give me a D?

Professor: I didn’t give you a D. You gave you a D.

Student: Well, I’ve thought about it and I want to give me an A now. Thanks, see you in class.

Professor: Maybe you should have wanted to give you an A before you wrote a D paper.

Student: D paper you are referring to was D bomb yo and by bomb yo I mean an A paper.

Professor: D paper was D shit and by shit I mean I mean I wiped my ass with it and by doing so improved it from an F to a D.

Student: I thought I smelled something when you handed it back? But then again, your mouth was open at the time so…

Professor: Yeah well, you might want to practice opening yours up a little wider, either that or move up to fries.

Student: Speaking of fried, I saw your wife at the fraternity house last night and talk about wide. Any wider and I could have hidden my bong. (finger in hole motion, fist motion)

Professor: Is this the same fraternity house where your, quote unquote brothers, roofied you, stripped you naked and placed a quarter next to your penis to give it scale and then youtubed it there babydick?

Student: Yeah I heard about your baby. Sorry it came out with 3 sets of genitalia but I guess with you as the father it just couldn’t make up its mind.

Professor: Oh no that’s been all taken care of, what with you on that genitalia-of-any-kind donation list. Congrats on getting a little something to go underneath your miniature vienna sausage. Your mom must be so proud now.

Student: Oh she’s beaming, just like the shine off your head and 2005 Ford Taurus. Man, to get to the point in life where you can afford a brand new Ford Taurus. Talk about pride. Is the rogaine working at all? But fuck it, haircuts are so expensive now and you are probably still paying on that car.

Professor: Speaking of paying, what is daddy paying for you to clean up after the bros at the house? And my god, with the market for the custodial arts booming right now, you are going to make a killing mopping up at the high school soon. But be careful, all those keys on your waist could lead to bad hips. And who needs bad hips to go along with daddy’s disappointment at not taking over the lawn care business. You guys hedge now too right?

Student: Oh I think you mean hedge funds. But what would you know about that with your soon-to-be divorce settlement stripping you of everything except your elbow patched blazer and prized Taurus with rear air conditioning?

Professor: Speaking of rear, I hear they call you “reartarded” now because your ass doesn’t know what to do with all the weight you’ve gained. Should I disperse it evenly amongst the cheeks or do a mom-jeans kinda thing in the back? But I have to say, the shorts and sweats year round – a good look for you.

Student: Look, are you gonna change my grade or do I have to make a scene?

Professor: Here’s what I’ll do, you rewrite the paper and get it to me by Friday at 5pm and wipe my ass with it again and give you a C-. Double spaced this time.

The Allegory of the Basement

Many philosophers have pondered the depths of the human psyche; wading through sewage infested thoughts and amoral impulses only to find that way down, in the deepest, blackest, coldest bottom of bottoms, a clown.

A very funny clown that just cracks them up with a series of delightful displays utilizing everything from a squirting flower to a whoopee cushion. And just when we are all happy and carefree the clown hops on his funny bicycle and rides off toward the unsuspecting sunset only to be leveled by a greyhound bus steered by a texting Bill O’Reilly. So the philosophers, having figured it all out, trudge back up the stairs in silence to break the confines of the basement and realize the light of day. A light so piercing and illuminating that they, for the first time, see the world as it is, just like in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. They see you, they see me, they see John Stewart and Eric Stoltz and the hot dog vendor and a hooker with a terrible fashion sense and then, off in the distance, they see a clown, on a bike, oozing toward them, ever so slowly, illuminated more and more they shield their eyes to find…Bill O’Reilly in the clown suit having a grand old time. He squirts all with his flower and all revel in the levity as he pops a wheelie on his bike.

Till Woody Allen steps in…