Hench!

This morning I woke up groggy and with red blotches on my face, kind of like when I was a teenager and was about to have a really sick acne outbreak. I’m kind of too old for acne these days, but I’m not too old to drink, and last night I drank a whole shitload of kosher wine. I don’t know what they put in this stuff, but I look like I’ve switched skins with Bill O’Reilly. Won’t he be in for a shock when he learns that I’m prone to skin rashes. Ha ha ha, stupid skin-switching Bill O’Reilly.

Despite this, I had a really good time last night at the passover seder that Garth and Sarah threw. Salad, potatoes, and kosher vino. I could do worse for dinner. Beforehand I picked up Ornette Coleman’s Change of the Century and Coltrane’s Ascension, just for shit and giggles. Now that I’m old, I tend to frequent this used record store with a lot of jazz and soul and all that stuff. It also features this one employee in his sixties who has yellow-tinted aviator glasses and a glistening gray pompodour. He’s always telling some customer about his glory days singing doo-wop in the fifties, harmonizing on the streetcorner and all that happy shit. It’s pretty great to listen to, although I keep myself from talking to him directly because I’m afraid that I’ll find him boring, and that wouldn’t be fair. Some people hit their peak early in life, or at least that’s when all the important stuff happens to them, you know? Like child stars or Vietnam Vets or ballet dancers. I can understand the urge to talk about that thing in its absence, and I usually like to hear stories about how things were back in the day. This doo-wop guy isn’t a different guy because he’s working for $7 and hour checking my messenger bag. He still shared a stage with Dion and the Belmonts . . . I’m trying to come up with an analogy here but nothing’s happening. Fucking hangover. My brain needs to think of something analogous . . .

[I go to the bathroom, drink a glass of water]

I can’t think of any analogies that are gonna hold up. Besides, I guess this stuff is obvious, I don’t know why I’m talking about it. I guess just because last night on the car ride home, with Sarah asleep on my shoulder and a pan of cold food on my lap, I got to thinking about my mortality [as usual] and how I’m going to be when I’m old, and how I was glad that I got off my ass to go to this seder. Even when I’m toothless and shitting my pants, I’ll still be the same guy who hired a car to go through Brooklyn to his friend’s Seder in Clinton Hill, where he met his friends and got very drunk and sang old tunes and read the Song of Songs in a circle, who talked about books and movies and his plans to go see a band called Love is Laughter that weekend, who kissed his girlfriend and then helped himself to two unopened bottles of wine, and who would drink half of one of them that night staying awake reading a book of Joan Didion essays. This, to me right now, is probably the most natural thing in the world, and even if it isn’t always it’s somehow important that it was once. Or is it? For some reason, it seems like it is, mundane though it may be.

I think things are all right now, although they weren’t before and may not be again. My normally dischordant advance through life seems a little more harmonious these days, and it’s been nearly a year that I woke up in pain from clenching my jaw during my sleep, or stayed awake out of anxiety. One thing follows another and accumulates, gradually taking on a shape that I can wrap my head around. I suppose there’s something to be said for this.

With the warm weather comes a lot of bike riding on my part, as I don’t get much exercise sitting in a cubicle during the day and hey, I like riding my bike, which is a red, white and green racing model from the seventies. Very cool looking, I’m thinking about investing in a green tracksuit to go with it.

It can get kind of lonely biking by myself all the time, so I’ve been kicking around forming a club called the League of Heroic Cyclists, which right now has one member, possibly two. The LHC would assemble on the weekends and ride to various points of interest throughout the borough of Brooklyn and, if we felt up to it, the city at large. It would be a leisurely sort of pursuit, and I feel that other cyclists will admire and respect our restrained elegance.

I put this idea past my friend Greg, who is the Chrome Consultant at Woodstock Harley, and he immediately shot me down. If you’re not familiar with Greg, you should know that he’s a Harley-riding hellion who thinks that most of my ideas are limpwristed, sad, and castrated. He may have a point, but I felt that I had to stick up for myself and, moreover, the League, of which I’ve appointed myself Supreme Chairman For Life. As it turns out, Greg’s beef was mostly with the name of the League, which he thought should be called The Asphalt Assault (yikes!), the Manhole Boys (yeesh!), or the Brooklyn Auto Dodgers (not half bad, but smacks of a victim mentality).

As illluminating as our dialogue was, I think I’m going to stick with the League of Heroic cyclists. I don’t know if there’s implicit heroism in biking to Prospect park, drinking wine out of a thermos, and then watching people fly kites while eating mozzarella and pesto sandwiches, but on the other hand, I don’t give a fuck. I feel like a fucking hero for getting out of bed in the morning, these days.

So, as Chairman For Life of the League of Heroic Cyclists, I am extending an invitation to those of you in the Brooklyn area who would like explore the fascinating pursuit of cycling. Since this blog must be read by literally tens of people a year, response time will vary.

Last night I went to go see the Daughters and the Locust, two . . . I guess you’d call them grindcore bands. The Daughters were OK, the Locust were great and had weird bug/superhero costumes. I don’t know how long people will be into their schtick, but I’m glad I caught them when I did. Highly recommended.

Feeling kind of sick after a good night’s sleep. Egg sandwich & Indian food undoubtedly to blame for that. Well, shit on a stick. I can’t eat salad every day, I’m going nuts. I think that maybe what I should do is take all of my food and put it through a blender, like we used to do for vegetative kids at the camp I worked at as a teenager. I think this might help my continuing ability to digest anything more acidic than a Ritz cracker. Seriously, I get stomach pains and feel really, really weird. Of course, no one wants to hear about your shitty digestion, it’s not very romantic. I wish I had some eighty year old guys that I could kvetch with about this kind of thing.

On the brighter side of things, Jake read my latest story and liked it. From his comments, though, I’m not entirely sure that he followed the ending. Not that it matters. You can usually count on Jake for positive feedback, which is nice. In fact, you can always count on Jake to always read your stuff. Very supportive guy.

Well, well, well. It’s that time of the day again. I have to wrap up another spellbinding entry in this stupid thing and be on my way. I’d like all of you to do something constructive today.

It’s finally warm outside. If it had stayed lousy any longer I wouldn’t have the leisure time to write this blog, I would be too busy drawing on the walls of my apartments with fistfuls of canned beets while singing Hail Columbia. As much as I like the winter the stir-craziness gets to me, as does the inevitable seasonal affective disorder. I don’t like summer, either. I know, bitch, bitch, bitch. But I really don’t.

Today Sarah and I are walking from 26th street back to Brooklyn, something I haven’t done since the blackout. Granted, that isn’t going to be interesting to anyone but myself, but this is my friendster blog, so there you have it.

What is interesting, if you’re the kind of person who reads this shit and takes things to heart, is that I’ve been reading a book by this guy named JP Donleavy. It’s called the Ginger Man, and I’d recommend it to . . . not everyone, really, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s a sort of rare comedy, the likes of which you don’t see so much these days. Well, maybe in Martin Amis, who, to tell you the truth, is kind of assy about it. Donleavy isn’t assy at all.

“Assy.” [?]

Anyway, I’ve got to get outside. Gentle reader, I’d suggest that you’d do the same.

The other day I went to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre to watch Sarah and her improv class do some funny improv for us faithful. It was pretty good, too. I mean, I was expecting a bunch of blushing, unfunny creeps looking like you look when you freeze up whilst trying to play Charades, but they were good. Sarah was really funny too.

The thing was that I thought that the show was at 1:30 when it was actually at 2:30. So I had taken the time to carefully shave, brush, and even floss—man, I hardly ever floss for anyone. Then I took a really long shower and washed with this weird soap that Sarah got from some weird soap store. It’s half soap, half like compressed sand, and the sand is supposed to help exfoliate you.

So I’m in the shower, trying to rub this sandy shit in my armpit and imagining what it would be like to fend off a flying bear when I heard the radio say it was 1:16. Shit! I jump out of the shower and into my clothes like a fucking beautiful gazelle and run out the font door. I’m soaking wet and dressed all in black, which doesn’t exactly scream comedy. I had meant to put on my attractive argyle sweater, but I didn’t have time.

Freezing cold, I run down the street. There is sand between my toes, in the crack of my ass, behind my ears, and I’m cursing the entire soap industry of the country of Brazil and just running as fast as I can. All of the church bells in the neighborhood are ringing, and there’s a lot of churches because it’s an Italian neighborhood. Old Italian people are streaming out of the churches, ALSO dressed all in black and crying about the Pope. They hold their arms out to me beseechingly but I just run past and ignore them. Fuck ‘em! I got bigger fish to fry.

Miracle of miracles, I outrun a geriatric mourner with a walker and an oxgen tank and jump into the nearest cab. I tell the guy that I need to go to 26th and 8th in Manhattan, and pray to the good Lord that it isn’t going to cost more than $20. And it didn’t! See, if you were god you’d notice that kind of prayer on a day when everyone is offering up all these churchy pope prayers. The cab driver complains about Pedro Martinez the whole trip, and I agree with him.

The whole time I’m in the cab I’m imagining how mad Sarah is going to be at me. OK, you know, I can handle that. I was trying to freshen up and look all nice for her improv pals, I spent too long flossing, these things happen. But then I began getting worried that Sarah is going to see that I’m not in the audience and isn’t going to be able to be funny because she’s so mad/sad. Then I think, what if she’s some kind of comedy keystone that keeps the whole kit and kaboodle from crashing and burning? What if no one else can be funny without her, and by flossing too long I’ve somehow managed to set an anti-comedic domino effect into motion which would pull down the very pillars of Humor itself?

Shit was grim, to say the least. It was 2 by the time the cab got to where we were going. I tossed a twentry at the guy and ran across eigth avenue whilst leaping and waving as cars honked and nearly killed me. I ran down the stairs of Upright Citizens and halted, breathless, at the ticket window.

“Needa ticket” I said, digging in my ear for the sand that working its way into the middle of my head.

It was at this point that the guy informed me that the show was at 2:30, and I was a schmuck. Boy, was my face red.

Have you ever really rushed to go do something and then find out that you’re really early? Kind of awkward, isn’t it? I mean, there isn’t that much for you to do. I walked around in the rain, got a slice of shitty pizza, reread a copy of the NY Press. It feels so awkward having to kill time after a racing around.

The upshot is that I got to see the comedy and laugh. What capers!

The other thing of note that I did was that I saw this noise band called Wolf Eyes, which is a bad name for a really good band. I was dug ‘em, even if it was at the Knitting Factory. $5 for a fucking Budweiser, shit. What is this, London after the Blitz? Budweiser should be free in America, goddamnit!

Either that or healthcare. Your call.