Cohen Knows...

He’s touched your perfect body with his mind

Wonder what the weather in the desert is like right now...
I'm just hanging out with my friends, getting drunk, talking about showbiz… Now I’m listening to Leonard Cohen and smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey… Sweeping up the Jokers… He gets into me like few else – I could listen to Leonard Cohen all night long and I might… I might…

He wants to trade the game he knows for shelter…

Is it like this for anyone but me? Tell me if you know what I’m talking about. I see it all so clearly, it’s all right there. It makes perfect sense to me. Chaos is the natural state. The more we try to impose normality on the human existence, the weirder we get. It’s just the way it is. We so want to pretend we’re so very witty and important like so many before us. They will not remember you. You will eventually be forgotten and that’s the natural state of things. Don’t worry about fighting it. To die is to die. Do what you have to do while you’re here. Once you’re dead, you won’t care.

MG is sleeping soundly on clean sheets and

It’s 4 in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold but I like where I’m living
There's music on Clinton St.
All through the evening
And I hear that you're building
Your little house
Deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now
I hope you’re keeping some kind of record

Yes, and Jane came by
With a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you
You looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat
Was torn at the shoulder
You’d been to the station
To meet every train and
You came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman
To a flake of your life
And when she came back
She was nobody’s wife

Well, I see you
There with a rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
And I see Jane’s awake
She sends her regards

And what can I tell you,
My brother,
My killer;
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you
I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way

If you ever come by here
For Jane or for me
Well, your enemy is sleeping
And his woman is free
Yes, and thanks
For the trouble you took
From her eyes
I thought it was there
For good
So I never tried

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear

Sincerely,
L. Cohen
Famous Blue Raincoat


I remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking
So brave and so sweet
Giving me head
On the unmade bed
While the limousines
Wait in the street
Those were the reasons
And that was New York
We were running
For the money and the flesh
And that was called love
For the workers in song
Probably still is
For those of them left

And ah but you got away
Didn’t you babe
You just turned your back
On the crowd
And you got away
I never once heard you say
I need you
I don’t need you
I need you
I don’t need you
And all of that jiving around

I remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
You were famous
Your heart was a legend
You told me again
You preferred handsome men
But for me you would
Make an exception
And clenching your fist
For the ones like us
Who are oppressed
By the figures of beauty
You fixed yourself
You said well nevermind
We are ugly
But we have the music

And then you got away
Didn’t you baby
You just turned your back
On the crowd
You got away
I never once heard you say
I need you
I don’t need you
I need you
I don’t need you
And all of that jiving around

I don’t mean to suggest
That I loved you the best
I can’t keep track of each falling rock
I remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
That’s all
I don’t think of you that often
Chelsea Hotel #2

Late on Wednesday

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
What would we do without them, these beautiful angels who touch our lives and make them so much harder than they have to be but make us better for the trouble? Where do they come from?

STRIKE! Day Two

There's a transit strike in the NYC and let me tell you -- IT SUCKS. You don't have to be a New Yorker or even know very much about New York to grasp how badly we need public transportation in this city. 7 million people a day use those trains and buses -- 7 MILLION. In a city of 18 million, that's a large part of the population. I drove MG and a couple of our other friends in to mid-town today so they could go to work. The Brooklyn Bridge was a sea of people -- people who were forced to walk because there weren't any trains. To drive into Manhattan between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m., there had to be a minimum of four people in the vehicle. We were lucky. I had the day off and didn't mind doing the driving (3 1/2 hours round-trip to go to midtown from where we live in Brooklyn), so it was easy for us. Not so for the thousands and thousands of people hoofing it across the bridges in the 15 degree weather. It's the week before Christmas, man. This is not right.

The Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority couldn't hammer out their differences in regard to the TWU contract (which expired last week) and when Monday rolled around, the talks ground to a halt. So, Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., the TWU struck and that was that. The pain to the city was immediate and severe. There are going to be people who lose their jobs (not counting the TWU employees themselves who are being hit with enormous fines and garnished wages), people who die because emergency services can't reach them through the traffic (the roads are a gridlocked nightmare -- I drove for almost 8 hours today in two trips to Manhattan), people whose holidays are going to blow because these assholes can't work it out. And don't even get me started on the mayor. We're all looking to him to be a voice of reason, a cooler head we can count on -- what does he do? Calls the TWU a bunch of thugs and criminals. Jesus, Mike, that's the best you can do? What the fuck? Now, everybody's feelings are hurt and we're not any closer to a settlement than we were this time last week. It could be days before this strike is over.

It's one of those historic NYC moments, like the 2003 Blackout, where you wish you weren't really there to witness the history. Or better, that the history had been different and you'd witnessed something else. Why can't we have something unbelievably good happen to us so we can say, "Remember when that happened? That was AWESOME!" instead of "God, I could not believe that happened. I hope nothing like that ever happens again." This town is hurting right now and there's nothing any of us can do about it. Held hostage by our own city. What a fucker.

So, who knows what tomorrow will bring... MG and I are leaving town tomorrow. Her mother's coming to get us and whisk us off to New Jersey for the holidays. I'm sure the strike will still be here when we get back and that the news will only get worse but at least we'll be okay. There's nothing we can do about it anyway.

Dispatches from the Front of the War on Christmas

NYC -- Heeding the call to arms set forth by the Liberal Media Army, Messupachristmasa in U.S., Queers Against Christmas, Menorah Defenders, and numerous other insurgent groups, thousands and thousands of Americans have joined ranks to wage unholy war on the combined armies of Little Baby Jesus and Santa.

Prompted by a non-stop barrage of propaganda put forth by these groups in recent weeks, insurgent forces took to the streets last week in a pogrom of destruction, setting Christmas trees alight, overturning Nativity scenes, and, in at least one instance, setting a drunken bell-ringing Santa on fire outside a JCPenny's in Dallas, Texas. The Santa's situation remains stable.

Reports of violence and destruction have been coming in from around the country as the War on Christmas heats up in this the final week before December 25.

Santa Helper and Little Baby Jesus General Bill O'Reilly said in a press release, "The hippies and Jews and God-haters of the insurgency will be destroyed by the righteous hand of Little Baby Jesus and the left hoof of fucking Prancer. We will rain down a shitstorm of commercialism and disingenous good cheer on all those who would oppose us; smothering them in platitudes and spending. Fuckers won't know what hit them."

Reports from around the country suggest a rising tide of anger this year due to a common perception of 2005 as a year when God clearly was not paying attention.

"2005 blew," one insurgent leader said. "W., Katrina, fires, tornadoes, floods, Iraq -- God hates us. If it's the last thing I do, I'll take Christmas and shove it right up his ass."

Read This

I was just watching The Safety of Objects, a movie based on a book of short stories by AM Homes. The book is brilliant. The stories have this incredible immediacy and voyeuristic appeal. They're all glimpses into the minds and hearts of "ordinary" people whose lives are anything but ordinary. The movie's a mish-mash of the stories -- the story lines intersect and overlap. The book reminds me of Raymond Carver but the movie isn't nearly as good as Short Cuts. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I guess because it was just on and it made me think what a great book it is. Read it.

Speaking of great books -- I finished My War today and it's fucking great. If you ever wanted to know what it's like for the infantry in Iraq, read it. I think everyone in this country ought to have to read it. Especially if you've got a yellow Support Our Troops sticker stuck on the back of your SUV. Then you should have to memorize it. Buzzell tells it like it is and owns every single action he makes over there. He doesn't call himself a hero and he doesn't gloss over the nastiness or the confusion or the fear. It's one of the best war books I've ever read and I've read a lot of war books.

I'm just starting Beasts of No Nation and I'm really excited about it. It shouldn't take me long to read since it's only about 200 pages long. I read the first few pages and it's told in this lyrical, poetic first-person style. This kind of stylized first-person narrative reminded me a lot of Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks (another great book that you should read or re-read immediately). I like it when authors give you the full-immersion treatment and the language really puts you inside the protagonist's head, Catcher in the Rye style.

So, tomorrow is the last day before the MTA strike. The deadline is 12:01 a.m. Friday. I wonder if they'll put a slowdown on the trains. Shit. It'll probably take me forever to get to work but at least on Friday I'll have someone from work come pick me up. Then I don't have to work again until Jan. 3. It's pretty sweet. Two full weeks off. Next week, I'm going to try and hook up with some of my friends that I haven't seen in a while, take in some movies, read, write, take it easy. I guess if there's a transit strike, I'll be taking it a lot easier than I normally would -- cold weather + no trains = stay at home and do shit here. I still don't know all the details about this strike -- what the union's bitch is and what the MTA says. It's all been kind of a blur. I did catch the part about the bus drivers only have a 4-minute turnaround at the end of their runs, which is fucked up. They should definitely have more than 4 minutes to stretch their legs and go to the can and eat a snack or whatever. I'm sure there's some crooked motherfuckers on both sides of this debate and they're the reason the negotiations are going all to hell. It's the same old story -- the bosses argue with each other and the workers (including all of the workers who have to figure out how to get to work when these dudes go on strike) get screwed. It's so typical. It ought to definitely shake things up in this city. There hasn't been a transit strike in a long time. Maybe it'll be good for everyone in the end, but it's going to SUCK on Friday.

Today at work I pitched this: H. says "You're going to take advice from some orthodontist who thinks he's going to L.A. to be a photographer hobnobbing with Tinseltown's brightest?" F. says, "Hobnobbing? There hasn't been any hobnobbing in Tinseltown since Bogart and Bacall were knocking back sidecars at the Brown Derby." I thought it was pretty quick, but they ended up cutting this entire part of the scene in the rewrite. C'est la vie.

Holy shit. I just read that Chris Whitley died on Nov. 20. Damn. I really liked that guy. His album Living with the Law was a soundtrack for my life for about two years. My (then) wife turned me on to him and he was exactly what I was looking for at the time -- bluesy, junk-addled, country rock. RIP, amigo. Enjoy the Big Sky country.

Okay, I gotta go lay down. My head's fucking killing me and the souvlaki I got from the Greeks is sitting like a rock in my belly. Time to go get down and dim.

Til Tuesday

So, I did nothing today at work except put my new War on Christmas card up. I'm so proud of it. I'm thinking I want to tell my family about my blog so they can go online and see the card, but I'm a little worried they'll read some of my other posts and freak out. I know they won't be too cool with the language I use but then again, this is the most honest writing I've ever done, so take the good with the bad, right? Anyway, I don't know how motivated I'll be to actually go out and get cards made and send them off, but you never know. MG might do it for us and that would rock. In the meantime, I've got the high-quality, photoshopped card ready for downloading right here.

I've been reading My War by Colby Buzzell and it's great. He's really been an inspiration to me as far as the writing goes. It's taken me a long time to be able to sit down in front of a blank screen and now all I want to do is write. I still don't know what I want this to be but it's starting to shape up a little. Learning how to post pictures and links and try to customize it a little has been great. It gives me something to do. I still can't figure out most of the technical stuff but the more I fuck around with it, the better I get at it. Truth is, the only ones reading it are me and MG so WTF, right?

I've always wanted to scrapbook, you know? An old girlfriend of mine bought the Journals of Dan Eldon a long time ago, and I remember looking at it and thinking to myself, "Wow. This guy was a genius." Of course, I knew his whole story and how he died and he's always been a huge inspiration to me. But, then again, sitting on my ass on some dirty couch in Austin, inspiration did not necessarily translate into action. Mostly, it was just fuel for the self-destructive fire. But, now, I have this blog and it's like I can do whatever I want and say whatever I want. It's overwhelming. I draw a blank sometimes thinking about what I want to say or what picture I want to put up or what book I can quote. I know the more I do it, the easier it will get. I was tempted to not post anything and wait for the right lightning to strike but that sounded like what I've been doing for the last 10 years. I know the only way I'll ever get better at this and anything else is to do it. It's on-the-job training in a way.

My friends and especially MG have always told me I needed to find an outlet for my opinions. I'm always going off (get a couple of drinks in me and watch out) about the war in Iraq and the Bush administration and the state of the world in general. I tend to get a little excited and intimidate people because I don't shut up. Since, I've started doing this, I haven't really gone off about anything because I've been too busy being a nerd and trying to "work some stuff out." That phase is rapidly passing. I know my style will change, too, as soon as I finish My War. I tend to sound like whoever I'm reading at the moment and I know I've been aping Buzzell. My apologies, CB. Soon, I'll have done this enough and I won't be scared anymore and I'll start sounding more like myself. Like I said, OTJ training.

War on Christmas Card

This blog is saving me a ton of money on stamps.

Stormy Monday

You may have noticed I put up some links to other sites on my page. I did this simply because I could. I know they might seem a little incongruous, but what the hell... This is shit I think is interesting and that's what this is for, right? As I go along and come up with more stuff, I'll post more links and pictures and what not.

I don't think there's anybody out there who's actually reading this, but if you (meaning M.G.) have anything you'd like to see on the site, e-mail a link or whatever.

My friend Bryan Mealer has stories in both the December and January issues of Esquire magazine. Check them out. Colby Buzzell's also got a story about Banksy in the December issue.

Banksy

I went ahead and provided the link to his website at right. Enjoy.

Cat Power

Cross Bones Style

Oh how time flies
With crystal clear eyes
And cold as coal
When you're ending with diamond eyes

Oh come child
In a crossbones style
Oh come child
Come and rescue me
'Cause you have seen some
Unbelievable things

Hater I have your diamonds and still
'Cause you have seen some unbelievable things
Hater I have your diamonds

Oh come child
In a crossbones style
Oh come child
Come rescue me
'Cause you have seen some
Unbelievable things

Hater I have your diamonds and still
So still

Oh how time flies
With crystal clear eyes
And cold as coal
When you're ending with diamond eyes

Oh come child
In a crossbones style
Oh come child
Come and rescue me
'Cause you have seen some
Unbelievable things

Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday

This is where it gets weird. As much as I want to sit down and write my situational comedy masterpiece, I feel like I need a little warm-up. I don’t want to pay for internet service at this coffee shop. This is actually one of the few times I’ve ever tried to write in a coffee shop and I gotta tell you, I’m not a big fan. I can’t smoke, for starters, and there’s so much going on, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to concentrate enough to get anything real done. Sitting here and doing this is no problem because it’s basically bullshit to kill time. It’s like calisthenics, a little PT before the real event. The good news is I brought my good Sony headphones so Death From Above 1979 is drowning out the world music/soft jazz that’s being piped into this shop. So, I’ve got that going for me.

Now, I remember why I drank so much in San Francisco. Writing makes me want to hurt myself. It used to be something I did to make myself feel better, a way to make sense of the madness inside my head. Now, there’s all this pressure and if I don’t write, I end up wasting a huge opportunity. I’ve got to get out of here. Out of this place where I can do no right. What am I so scared of? I want so badly to break through and spin this shit into gold. Capture some of that leftover angst from my days as a self-styled poet and try to make something funny out of it. Funny. That’s what’s so funny. All I really want to do is burn it all down.

Okay, I can do this. It’s not that big of a deal. I’ll write my spec. It’s going to be fine. I can do this. I just need a good idea.

You know what it is? It’s the same thing I’ve dealt with my entire life. It’s this ridiculous idea that I’m always on the outside looking in; I’m not one of the cool kids and this makes me want to tell everyone to fuck off, I don’t want to be part of their little clique anyway. This inevitably works – they all fuck off and I’m not part of the little clique. This leads to me realizing that I’ve made a huge mistake and that I really do want to be a part of the clique. Of course, by that point, it’s too late and they all think I’m some kind of disturbed retard for being so weird about everything. I don’t know why I do that. It’s like with my job now – I feel like I don’t know how any of them feel about me. It totally freaks me out. Maybe I’m just too intense or something. People don’t know what to do with me. I never get any of their jokes. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about half the time. I’m smart enough – I mean, I do the job part of it right. But, I get so weird about the personal politics and whatever. All I’ve ever wanted was someone I respected to take me under his/her wing and show me the way, you know? Give me some guidance and re-assure me that I’m not a total fuck-up, let me know that with my talents and brains, I’ll for sure make something out of myself some day. Instead, I just go around with this fucked self-image, alienating the shit out of people, making jokes no one gets, hopelessly trying to figure out the puzzle that is inter-personal relations. I suck at it.

Iggy Pop now – Sweet Sixteen – like a salve for the soul. Something angry and raw, songs about girls, seeking and destroying. Maybe I should consider a career in the music biz. I’d be really good at that, I bet. I love the rock. Rock’s all about feeling weird and isolated and alienating the shit out of people. It’s why it exists. From its roots in the Delta when it was songs about killing your old lady or getting strung up by redneck crackers right through to now – rock is all about being fucked up. Nothing touches me like music. I could live without everything else, I think, except music. It would suck not to be able to read or write, but it’d be a hell of a lot easier to deal with as long as I had some music.

I was watching HBO On Demand the other day. I wasn’t really looking for anything particular, just kind of letting the little intro thing play in the background and there was this song that’s part of their whole On Demand advertising. Maybe you’ve seen it – it’s the one where Tony Soprano walks out of his house and there’s giant block letters in his yard spelling Sopranos. Larry David runs by a set of giant block letters that spell Curb Your Enthusiasm. They have one for Deadwood, The Wire, all of their original shows. Anyway, the song that plays is one I’d never heard before but I thought it was so beautiful, so moving, I just started crying right then and there. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and I don’t know why it upset me so much. That’s the kind of effect music can have on me. I’ll be fine one minute and then I’ll hear some song and it’s like somebody punched me in the stomach. No one should be this sensitive. I’m so fucking sensitive. I try to act all tough and macho and shit sometimes, but really I’m just a crybaby. My feelings get hurt too easily and I feel sorry for myself all the time. It’s retarded. It’s definitely one of the things I’m going to deal with in therapy if I ever go back to therapy. It’s fucked up.

I need a smoke. Not being able to smoke when I write is bullshit. My girlfriend wanted some time in our apartment by herself to get some stuff done, so I came down here. But, shit, man, it’s like Grace Paley said – one of the main reasons to become a writer is to be able to smoke on the job. At least, I think it was Grace Paley who said it. It could’ve been someone else. Still, the point is valid.

Okay, I went to smoke and it’s colder than shit outside. I like the cold weather. Everything seems more serious when it’s cold. The cold brings out some kind of animalistic survival instinct in me, man versus nature and all that. I especially like the cold weather here in the city – everybody wears black and we all just look cooler in black. It’s the official color of NYC. You go out on the streets and it’s just a sea of black. It’s awesome.

Here comes success/here comes success – sing it, Iggy. It’s right around the corner, right? Here comes my new car, my big house, my financial security. It’s there for the taking. Just have to find a way to lay my grubby, un-motivated paws on it. Then I’ll be set. I’ll be ready.

Jesus, am I going to be poor and under-employed for the rest of my fucking life? I can’t believe I’m still doing this shit. I can’t believe that I’m going to be starting over AGAIN in just a couple of months. What a pisser. This time, I need to decide what it is I really want to do and go for it. Take the lumps and go for it, even if it means starting at the bottom. I know I want the money I’d get for writing a sit-com episode but I don’t really want to be a sit-com writer. I don’t know what to do. I love the biz and all, but there has to be something more meaningful out there. I can’t just sit here and blog every day. It’s ridiculous. Not that I shouldn’t blog but I really need to figure out what to do with my life. God, I feel like I’m 25 again. Staring at the abyss, wondering how close I can get to the edge before I just fall right over. I’m so stupid. I don’t even know if there is a job out there for me. I’ve been kicking around the idea of going back to college and I don’t even know if that’s such a hot idea. What happens when I blow it again? Then I’m back in debt and square-oned to boot. I’m going to make myself throw up. I swear to God.

How do they do it? Normal people. Am I really that lazy? It can’t just be that, can it? Maybe a lack of self-discipline is my biggest problem. I don’t know. I DON’T KNOW! I should have that tattooed on my forehead. God forbid I should ever have any real problems.

Now, I have to take a whiz and the bathroom here is out of order. What the hell? Does that mean I have to pack it up and go home and pee and then come back here? I paid the six bucks for internet access for the day and it looks like I’m going to have to go home and pee. I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave once I get home again. I knew I shouldn’t have had this giant coffee. Damn it. Oh well. I can hold it for a little while longer. I wonder how much more cleaning my girlfriend wants to do. I just want to smoke some dope and go see Narnia. That sounds like a good plan.

I don't feel very funny today. Maybe it's the weather or the fact that I've moved on to Cat Power for my listening pleasure. Either way, I think the day's shot when it comes to writing my spec today. I feel much more like doing this than I do trying to map out some kind of situation comedy. I'm only sporadically funny, anyway. I don't have any idea where to start. What can I do? I should take a class or something. Hell, I don't know what to do.

I have to pee, man. This blows. I guess I'll pack it up and go home and then come back. I can blog all day. Shit, this is easy.

Went home to pee. Lost my choice spot by the window but whatever, I have a seat. Now I just have to sit here and kill some more time until it's time to do something else. Maybe I can convince myself that it's not really that important I get a script this season. Tell myself that I didn't want to do it anyway. I don't know what it will take to pull this off. I can't believe it's this hard for me. I wish I had a partner. That'd be so much easier. I work well with others. It's true. When I have someone else to push me, I get so much more done. I respond well to the pressure.

Hell, I don't know if that's true. I have a bad habit of freezing up. Even when I have partners, I still freeze up. Then, I piss off my friends and they don't want to work with me anymore. It's happened before. I wouldn't freeze up this time, though. Not that anyone wants to work with me, anyway. I'm assed out on this deal. I'm assing myself out but assed is assed.

Cat Power's version of "Psychic Hearts" by Sonic Youth is pretty awesome. Sounds like a cover one of my friends would've done if any of them could sing. Just a chick and her guitar and one bad-ass song. That's what it's all about. "Losers/assholes/suck all the luck" Truer words have never been spoken.

Found out the name and title of the song on HBO On Demand that I like -- "Change" by Tracy Chapman. Just heard 30 seconds of it on iTunes and it killed me all over again. I don't know what it is about that song. I'm such a girl.

Well, it's official. I've managed to completely waste another Sunday doing nothing but bullshit blogging. I'm so proud of myself. Why try and do something that would actually pay me when I can do this? Fuck it.

Okay, time to go get loaded and go to the movies. Until the next time...

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

One of the main reasons I want to make a movie is so I can put the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on a soundtrack. I fucking love this band.

No Business Like Show Business

I found this picture while looking for things to post and I thought it appropriate since it's 20 degrees and there's snow on the ground. It's me and my girlfriend (she's hot, huh?) in St. Croix this past July. We were on an all-day boat trip to one of the little islands off St. Croix. We snorkeled and laid on the beach, then had a big picnic and got drunk on rum punch. It was a good time. Seems like it happened a million years ago.

Well, tonight is show night and I'm killing time in the office waiting for curtain call. We were on stage all day today for rehearsals and we had some laughs. There are some decent jokes in this episode and I even got a joke in. (It's the blow to a scene which in layman's terms means the last joke of a scene. I won't bore you with it -- it's only funny if I set up the first 20 pages of the script and I'm not going to do that here. The important part is I pitched it and it's in). One of the funniest moments occurred off-camera. We were rehearsing a scene where one of our actors has to belch. She's not a natural belcher so we had one of the writers do a stunt belch for her. During rehearsals, they dubbed in the stunt belch and it was funny, but then one of the executive producers concocted a scheme to substitute a fart noise for the belch during one of the takes in tonight's taping. I told the writer of this week's episode about it and he shook his head sadly -- "This is what it's come to at age 52. I had dreams once. I did." This cracked me up. I'm sure the fart joke will be funny, too, but the simple pathos of the writer's comment and the fear it induced in me was far more hilarious than anything else.

When do dreams die? And what hand do each of us have in their destruction? Is it dream murder to choose to make money rather than follow your heart? And what happens if your heart's confused because your body is so poor that any job seems like a good job? What happens when you get to the point of no return -- that point when you've committed so much time to doing something that you have no choice but to do it for the rest of your life EVEN though it's not at all what you really wanted to do? And what is it you want to do?

I love the old saw about "If you don't love it, don't do it" because it's such a pussy thing to say. It's the kind of thing an actor or an artist would say. It's not the kind of thing my dad would say. My dad doesn't love working shift work at a chemical plant. My dad loves hanging out with us, but you know what? That gig doesn't pay very well. So, he did what he had to do and sucked it up and he'll retire in a couple of years and then he'll be able to hang out all the time. I was a firm believer in the "don't love it, don't do it" thing for all of my 20s and part of my 30s. Now, I've decided that I what I really love is not being fucking broke. That's what I love. So, even if my heart isn't in it, I'll probably still do it if it means I'll make money at it. Hence, my spec script...

Soon.

Real soon.

Nephews

This is me with my oldest nephews, Ciaran and Ryland. Ciaran was born 14 years ago while my older brother, Daniel, was in the Air Force. Ryland followed 4 years later and now they live with Dan and their mom Lynette near Fort Worth. These are the kids who first taught me the absolute joy of being an uncle.
This is McKy. He belongs to my little brother Ty and his wife Amanda. I met him for the first time this last Thanksgiving. He's a beautiful little boy and I can't wait to see him again.
This is Cayden, one of the coolest kids I know. He's my brother Tom's oldest. Dig his Browning hat and NASCAR sunglasses. He lives in Amarillo with Tom and his mom Marcy.
This is my littlest nephew Liam, Tom and Marcy's youngest. I love this picture because he looks like I feel -- a surprised mess. He's the happiest baby you'll ever meet. Never seen a kid laugh like he does. My dad says it's because he was born with heart trouble and almost died right out of the womb. Since he's only 8 months old and has already had open-heart surgery, maybe he figures the rest of the ride is downhill. Sounds good to me.

I love to talk about these kids. They're all so different and special in their own way. It doesn't surprise me in the least that my brothers would have such good kids. Being together will all of them at the same time this past Thanksgiving was a high point of my life. It's hard for my brothers and I to all be in the same place at the same time, so having all their kids there made it the second best thing next to having us all there. I love these boys because they're rowdy and willful and all love to laugh. It's cool watching them grow up and, in the case of Ciaran and Ryland, growing up with them. I like being Uncle Kiley who lives in New York with his New Jersey girlfriend and works for a television show. We have a lot of fun when we're together. I miss them.

Banksy

Learning to Fly

Look, it's me. Today, I learned how to post pictures. This might seem like a non-accomplishment to the more experienced bloggers out there but for me, it's huge. I have many pictures. Sadly, I don't have many of them here with me at work or I'd be busy posting the hell out of them. All right, then...

I watched the news last night about the guy down in Florida being shot by the Air Marshalls. Now, I'm no fan of the cops and, most of the time, I tend to take a rather lopsidedly lefty stance when it comes to cops blowing people away. BUT... Come on, dude, really? You CANNOT get on a plane and start making bomb threats. AND you cannot get up out of your seat and run down the aisles screaming you have a bomb in your bag, especially when there are armed federal agents on board the aircraft. THEY WILL SHOOT YOU. I mean, if NYPD will poke 40 holes in you for taking out your keys, you can rest assured the feds will drop you like a bad habit for screaming bomb threats on a commerical aircraft and then running at them top-speed with your hand in your bag. Let this be a lesson to us all -- THEY ARE NOT FUCKING AROUND WITH THE PLANES.

I do think this highlights an important fact about life in these United States. Other than the random, devastating attack we have much more to fear from crazy people than we do from jihadists. It's the first time an Air Marshall has shot someone since they started the program after 9-11 and the guy they shot was a manic-depressive missionary who works at a paint store. So, for all the profiling and detentions and delays and "if you see something, say something", the first casualty in the domestic air war on terror is some poor, crazy bastard off his meds whose quiche lorraine of a brain told him to do something most people would never, ever, even consider doing. What a waste.

I live in NYC and I see crazy people all the time. It kind of makes a mockery of the city's advice to "report any suspicious behavior." What am I supposed to consider suspicious? The guy on the corner with women's underwear on his head eating his own shit? Or is it the normal-looking lady in the nice clothes having the animated argument with herself and lightly banging her head against the subway window? I have a feeling it would take something pretty goddam out of the ordinary to get people to look up from the Post and turn down their iPods. Especially on the trains. The morning commute is the only time a lot of us have to ourselves all day and the last thing we want is to be actively engaged with our fellow commuters. We want to listen to music and read. I know, personally, that if something serious pops off on one of the trains I'm riding, I'll probably be dead before I even know what's going on. I'm just not aware enough to save myself. And I'm okay with that.

"A working class hero is something to be/If you want to be a hero/Then just follow me..."
John Lennon

You Have Got to be Kidding Me

I'm not really sure what the hell it is I'm supposed to be doing right now. I'm reasonably sure blogging is not it, but I need a break from banging my head on the wall. I'm trying to write a spec script and it's a fucking nightmare. For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo, a spec script is a writing sample based on an existing television show. You write an episode of a show and then use it to try and get jobs. I've never written one before and it's killing me. I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I feel like slitting my wrists. But I have to write one. I HAVE TO.

The first problem is coming up with a show to write a spec for. In my adult life, I haven't watched much TV, and the last sit-com I watched regularly before this past year was, I don't know, M*A*S*H or Cheers or something. I got a job here as a production assistant two years ago when the show was in its first season, but I didn't start watching it until this year when I got this writers' assistant gig. I wasn't even really sure what this gig was when I took it -- I just knew it was a step up from dumping trash and that it involved writing. (This may come as a real kick in the ass to anyone out there who's got a drawer full of specs and would kill to be a writers' assistant for a TV show, but I totally lucked into this job). However, since I started in July, I've come to learn that the writers' assistant job is basically the minor leagues of television writing. And since the job I'm working on is a sit-com, it only makes sense that I would be working on a sit-com spec. So, I've upped my number of sit-com viewing hours and I've found a few shows that I really enjoy: Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, The Office. Okay, so I pick Curb or The Office (since A.D. was cancelled and Extras is British) and away I go...

OR

I sit in front of my computer paralyzed by my absolute ignorance of how to write for TV. I know a hell of a lot more about it now than I did in May, but, still, just to sit down and be funny? Ouch. My humor is more along the lines of the smart-ass comeback variety. I'm not sure I know how to write a joke. Okay, I am sure. I don't know how to write a joke. This little nugget of self-knowledge is not going to keep me from trying because, face it, I need a career. Sure, in my younger days, I wanted to be a novelist, a journalist, a Doctor Without A Border saving little kids in faraway lands. But, I'm none of those things. What I am is a 34-year-old burnout staring down the long barrel of his wasted youth, asking himself, "What the hell happened?" So, now my future comes down to me being funny. On purpose. For television. I don't know how I got here.

Boo hoo, right? Poor me. That's not at all what I'm saying. I know how lucky I am and what a great opportunity has been presented to me. I mean, my bosses are fantastic people -- warm, generous, and totally willing to read anything I put in front of them. The other two assistants on this job are most likely getting scripts to write for this season, and I'm sure they'd give me one if they had anything to read from me. But, they don't. They will. But, they don't. Yet.

My girlfriend came back from one of her business trips (Mexico, this time) last night and we talked for a while about the future -- mine, hers, ours. We want to live in NYC and get an apartment together, eventually marry, have some young'uns, the whole nine yards. But NYC is not the town for a bourgeoning sit-com writing career. Every writer I work with is from L.A. They're all going back to L.A. Our show is the only sit-com in the City. It's not like I can just go be a writers' assistant for another show once this one's over. And if we don't get picked back up for another season, I could be sitting here three months from now with only the memories of my lovely time in TV land as compensation for the last three years of my life. Want-ads in one hand, dick in the other, as it were. Fuck.

So, what's a boy to do? Going back to school is always an option. I don't know if that's economically feasible but I'm pretty sure I could write my way into City College. Take a job in another industry -- start out as some low-level assistant (again) and try to work my way up to wherever up is. I don't know what industry that would be exactly. All I've ever wanted to do was read and write so I guess it would have something to do with that. NYC is a good place for that sort of thing. Probably a little easier if you're a 23-year-old girl from a private liberal arts college but not impossible for a 30-nothing goofball without a clue as to how the real world actually works.

Christ, I'm going to make myself puke thinking about this shit. It's like everything I do in life is some anecdote to put in my memoir, another page in the "long look back on an extraordinary life." As if there will be a day when I'll just wake up an accomplished author with the luxuries of hindsight and a convenient sense of revisionism. "I remember those days -- the fights, the drinking, the jokes... We were young, fierce. And so fucking lazy." It was fine when I was in my 20s and really believed that it would somehow all work itself out -- I was too smart, too good-looking, too goddam ME for it to do anything other than all work out. Why would I need to actually do anything? Someday, the words would just start gushing forth and all I'd have to do is smoke cigarettes and look good in black-and-white photographs. The endless slew of restaurant and bar jobs, the drinking, the drugs, the hours spent in a stupor on one stained couch or another -- this was all Material. Material for The Book. It was all going into The Book. One day.

I'm afraid that day has come. And guess what? There's no book. There's no book because I haven't written it. I haven't written anything in years. But that's all about to change. I'm going to write every day from now on. I'm going to write blog entries, long and detailed e-mails to friends, love letters to my lady, the first three chapters of The Book, and yes, a goddam spec script. I'm going to be prolific and profound, drawing on years of Life Experience to compose beautiful, meaningful stories bound to make'em laugh until they cry. The Great and Terrible Personal Revolution of 2005 has begun, and you are here to witness it's insemination, that precise moment when the shuddering orgasm of release fulfills the promise of a new life. Oh, you lucky few, you privileged ones.

Long time, no see...

So, it's been awhile since I posted anything. After starting up in the summer of '04, I lost steam and convinced myself that the whole idea of blogging was bullshit, and that I could do better things with my time. This attitude lasted for about 14 months until I looked around and realized I hadn't done a single better thing with my time. Not a creative word written, not a meaningful task accomplished. So, why not blog? At least it's something.

[Funny how nervous I get about posting these things. Took me a year just to put my name on my blog. Really, the only reason I started in the first place was because I thought "Guts on Parade" was a bad-ass name for a blog. The good news is no one's found it yet and there's a chance they never will.]

I work with writers now and the stakes are much higher should someone find out about my little blog. Last year, my job was a joke and my world was consumed by the vast right-wing conspiracy and the selling of the Presidency and Ending The War. Now, I'm a writers' assistant and it's all about making with the funny. Not that I'm funny or even know what funny is; I just happen to have exceptional typing, grammar, and punctuation skills. If I had any real talent, I'd be writing scripts and making shows and doing whatever it is that people with real talent do. I'll probably be an assistant for the rest of my life.

My problem is me and my laziness and my fear of failure and my sense of entitlement, not to mention a superiority complex which is weird since I grew up in a town of about 20 people and then dropped out of college. But there it is. I have my passions -- music, books, writing, film -- but trying to get my terrified ass out of bed to put pen to paper or leave my house with a camera is a dogfight. Mostly, I just lay in bed and cry until my girlfriend loses patience and kicks me in the ass. It's worse when she leaves town (which she does a lot -- she's in international book sales) because then there's no one to make me leave the bed. Usually, on those occasions, I go to bed around 5 a.m. on Saturday then emerge two days later, covered with dried semen and bits of taco and the stink of bad dreams. It ain't pretty and I ain't proud.

I was just reading some of the stuff I had on hold for the site. It's pretty awful but I decided to go ahead and publish it anyway because why the fuck not? Me being all dark and drunk and gloomy and trying to sound like a bad-ass. It really cracks me up. It's the kind of thing where if anyone I knew ever read it, their faces would turn red from embarassment for me. How could I not want that?

Who am I kidding? I've only got about three friends in the world, anyway, and it's doubtful I could get any of them to read past the first couple of lines. All of my friends are smart and busy and wouldn't want to waste their time on shite of this caliber. Same with my girlfriend. She's real smart, too. Can't waste their time with this garbage.

Someday, I'll make this a site worth reading. Until that day, these Guts are all I've got. Better than nothing.