Half a Decade Later . . .

Well, it's been long enough and the need to write, to just say something and add to the white-noise that is the internet, is just too strong to ignore. And the whole sharing of artwork thing (miss it). Drinking a black coffee right now out of a jet black mug with a big red R on it, readying myself for a day of work. I will write, draw, and link a bit more in a little more than 8 hours.  

Oh . . . and here is a great online literature and arts journal I was lucky enough to contribute some humble doodles to. Check out the site whenever you can. You'll be pleased, perhaps inspired, and definitely glad.

http://www.alexandriaquarterlymag.com/robert-overbey-born-together/

Emily Dickinson . . . wowzers

The funny thing about misconceptions, aside from being baseborn blood relations to ignorance and assumption, is that they actually feel pretty good once they're shed. Case in point: I knew nothing about Emily Dickinson before this week. I had figured since she was a predecessor to Plath, she would be equally as well-written but lacking in depth. And, to be fair, she has her depth but since I am neither living in the late 50's/early 60's nor can be classified as a female, adolescent or not, I can never fully identify with Plath's work- technically, it's brilliant yet I have trouble connecting with it. I was ready to feel the same way about Dickinson, yet found her obsession with death so non-time or gender specific that I “got” it. What gives her poems a dimension missing from Plath's work is that they celebrate life, even if at a distance and even if they are sometimes lamenting it. Poems about unrequited love, or her jilted friendship with her sister-in-law, or funerals all resonated with me. Perhaps I should reread Ariel as I have a better understanding of how to read poetry now, more so than I did at 18 and, of all her work, The Bell-Jar is most fresh in my mind, but maybe I will walk away thinking Plath is second rate Dickinson. Or to quote Woody Allen from Annie Hall: Sylvia Plath - interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality.

Just felt like saving it here rather than hard drive

Trees silhouette against sombre skies, fallen leaves cleave to wet paths we've wandered, streets shine black, every other drop bursts in white in plashed puddles close to curbsides leaving nothing more than rings to see. To forget.

Who's your turkey now, beeotch?

I guess I'll raise my hand, Horshack-style, and holler "Oh-oh-oooooh! Mr. Kotter, me, me, me."

Yup, another ill-fated crush. She's my first ever "crush" on a Greek woman not counting Tina Fey or Jennifer Aniston. Like the above mentioned objects of desire she is only half-Greek. Maybe I am attracted to her Italian side. Am I that much of a self-loathing Greek? Are there any such Greeks out there like that? Most Greeks I know are like the dad from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" complete with nationalistic pride. Maybe I have just not met the right Greeks. I also lack olive-colored skin so I'd be considered either a "Snow-Greek" or a "White-Greek." Go figure. I became smitten with her only once I pieced together that she was, in fact, of Hellenic decent.

She is a barrista at my nearby Starbucks (crush on a barrista? I must be the only one, he thinks sarcastically). She wears a black cap with the green corporate logo, a smock, and keeps her hair in a ponytail that sticks out of the back of her cap. She also has a dotting of dark freckles on her left cheek which draw attention to her manga-sized hazel eyes. The steamers usually squeak and hiss as they shake out a cappuccino, served “right up” to faceless yuppies and wild packs of teenagers ready to squeal their way through all their conversations. Her hair droops with each “professional smile” she serves up per coffee, per customer, per hour. Since today was Thanksgiving, it was pretty silent in there. The bar I usually sit at was empty except for one other guy who sat at the end furthest from me, closest to the door.

She towers over the counter when she is behind the register, but when she mops the floors or refills the bag of cane sugar hidden under the condiment station wedged against the wall and the bar, that very same counter reaches her diaphragm. Her skin is the color of an olive, plucked from the vine, and held up to a Hellenic sun. Her hair is as dark as the espresso she serves. Wow . . . that is cheesy yet oh, so, true.

After a refill, which gave us the opportunity to talk about Spanikopita and Thanksgiving plans (albeit, very briefly), she smiled at me. I left with my coffee in a paper cup. I crushed it when I eventually finished the drink. From experience, I knows she will not be interested in me as anything more than a customer who tips better the more she flirts with me. But it doesn’t stop me from hoping. From thinking.

Oh wait . . .she has a ring on her right hand.

Opa? Sigh.

Do you need a B.S. to describe the S?

Not a lot of terribly interesting things happen to me at work. I count. Seriously. All day long I count. Imagine my horror when, upon being told that the site I currently work at is moving 30 miles away from where I currently live to a proper facility (and yes, you read that correctly. A top-notch facility is, in fact, needed for counting), the worker that plays Mr. Smithers to my manager put it bluntly with the following:

You have to make a decision and if it’ll help, just ask yourself if this is a job or a career. If it’s a job, you might want to start looking elsewhere.

Counting as a career? Was she serious? It’s not as if I wear a monocle and my skin is made of purple felt.

Does she ever stay awake at night wondering why she has never been made a manager? Actually, she was an assistant-manager at one point but they took that title away. To be fair, she does do a lot of work and is quite good at it, but with people skills that drove 3 out of 4 people in the department to choose in the negative, managerial she most certainly is not. Enough griping (I’m writing a blog here, not a novel).

Friday afternoon, I opened box after box of product to count like I did the Monday through Thursday before it. If you’ve ever wondered why I float towards authors such as Kafka, pepper my everyday speech with the word “bureaucracy,” or use socialist imagery whenever I see fit, you now have a better understanding of the influences that gave birth to something like this.

Kafka once said, “Real hell is there in the office, no other can hold any terror for me.” At least he was probably allowed to drink coffee or water at his desk. I digress.

I opened up a box and found a business card mixed in with the product (how very Kafkaesque of me, not identifying anything in order to convey its true sense of tedium and, by proxy, the sheer horror of dull repetition. And if I didn’t already, I think I made it pretty clear just now (and that’s the last Kafka reference, I promise)). But the real treat was on the other side of the card.


It’s for real. See.

That’s according to Wikipedia and anyone who has ever written a paper knows just how reliable a source Wikipedia actually is (now if only the academia would give it props, it’d make researching said papers so much easier).

So, anyway, after seeing this card, I wondered why it was made in the first place not to mention what the poor kid at the print shop thought when the initial order was placed.

“I’ll be requiring a 500 count and could you possibly make it a satin matte finish. And this is important, it must, I repeat, must be water resistant.”

Something about the seriousness and style of the little poo paintings looked like they would be more at home in an issue of Highlights Magazine or National Geographic circa 1958 and not on the back of a business card. I’d hate to be the doctor who pulled the wrong card for a drug rep. Or, on second thought, maybe I’d love to be that doctor.

I thought that maybe it was a chart for patients who didn’t speak English and it would act as an aide in helping to tell the doctor exactly what was wrong. Or maybe that very same chart was for people who did speak English but weren’t capable stringing a few adjectives together to describe what made them see a doctor in the first place. I also wondered if anyone has a poster of this in a dorm room somewhere, complete with black light and lava lamp. Or if it was equivalent to those cards the deaf carry with them made specifically for the incontinent. 8 hours of counting, one found poo chart, and this is what my imagination ran with.

What is shocking about the find, or rather the card, is that it was made for doctors. And it was first published in 1997. 1997?! Had doctors known what each different turd stood for prior to the late 90’s, maybe the obesity epidemic could have been avoided.

“Timmy, you made a number 28. That’s one through seven added together. Lay off the Doritos, doctor’s orders.”

Or do combinations of different types get multiplied? This is a Pandora’s box I’m afraid I just don’t (or don’t want to) know about. Thanks to recent scatological findings we can now easily identify “rabbit pellets” and the “runs.” I mean, if you can number food combinations at McDonald’s it seems fair to me that you can also number the results.

I was sad, I was glad . . .

Earlier this week, I had a typical consumerist reaction to a void unaddressed. That’s right . . . I just really wanted to get something. Anything. And in particular Radiohead’s newest album “In Rainbows.” I had heard it in its entirety a few weeks back and made a mental note that I wanted it for my Radiohead collection. Said collection consists of 4 albums and the rest that my friend uploaded to my iTunes- essentially everything except for “In Rainbows.” Oh well, that’s neither here nor there and for me to go on about it feels like bragging to other kids on the playground about having toys they may or may not have. Such is the way of collectors and their collections.

I decided to get it where I get the majority of my albums and, as it turns out, where I’ve purchased all of my Radiohead albums: marsRed Music in Haddonfield, NJ. The owner, Scott, has a great wealth of knowledge about music, as well as movies, in all forms of various genres. He’s an all around great guy as opposed to the usually snotty “gatekeeper of all things cool” attitudes CD shop employees and/ or owners tend to have. I feel bad that I swiped the swell picture from his store’s web site, since marsRed is now closing thanks to that post-Industrial mentality of entitled swiping and/or not supporting.

How often have you heard people bragging about what they got from Limewire? About seeing a current theatrical release movie on DVD that “looks crystal clear?” Anymore, it’s like a badge of honor to be shoplifting.

That’s right. Closing. Score one for the big box chain stores. Let’s root for the rich kid to get that full scholarship because their parents have powerful ties. Didn’t we do that in 2000 and 2004? Sure, lots of people are employed at BestBuy, Target, and WalMart. Right now, during this recession, that’s actually a great thing (until the corporate bigwigs have that desire to make themselves even more money by cutting whatever benefits they pay out to those very same employees). And, really, who buys music from WalMart? Apparently it’s a lot more common than I’d ever want to think about. Isn’t that like an child of the early 80’s proudly admitting that the clothes they’re wearing came from K-Mart? Have we no shame supporting those who don’t need that support? Trickle down economics doesn’t really work. In theory, it sure as hell makes sense, but all it takes is one Gordon Gekko to mess it up for the rest of us. And there will always be more than one Gordon Gekko.

To paraphrase Lord Acton “Power corrupt[s], and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He summed it up pretty succinctly.

Anyway, it felt like I was sucker punched as I walked by the shop on Tuesday and when I walked in again on Friday, I talked to Scott for a bit. He was visibly saddened that he was forced to close up his dream. I definitely saw it in his face as I talked to him and it killed me. I’ll miss swinging by to pick up a new CD by a band I heard on WPRB, WXPN, or glowing word of mouth review (including Scott's). I wish Scott great luck in whatever he chooses as the next path he’ll pursue.

Maybe we're all doomed to see our dreams die off in the name of getting things on the cheap. We kind of are, already. China and India have taken the reigns because we, as a people, feel entitled to get paid more than we are willing to work for. We work for "stuff" and for "money." How many people work to do a job well done?

This entry, which no one ever reads on their own, is all over the place. I’ll try and tighten and edit it later.

Oh, the "glad" part of this entry's title refers to the really great date I had last night which included umbrella sharing. That made the loss of marsRed not mar my week completely. I’ll write more about it later.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to find out I had low blood sugar. . .

Oh boy. I haven't written anything in a very long while, but here goes:

Yesterday I had to pick my friends Erin and Kenny up from the Philadelphia International Airport when I had, not one, but two epiphanies.

The first one was that I really, really need GPS. Mapquest and Google Map just don't cut it for me with their sneaky "slight left" directions that I always, without fail, seem to miss. More accurate directions would include phrases such as "turn RIGHT at nearest u-turn . . .0.2 miles," "see sign for destination over LEFT shoulder as you passed it . . . <0.1 miles," and "are you trying to get lost. . .seriously?"

I still remember getting lost to visit my friend Sarah thanks to a missed "slight left." I called her to say nothing seemed at all familiar from the map or from my stored memory/ experiences and she told me that was because where I was was actually considered North Philadelphia whereas she lived in South. I don't like getting lost as it makes me feel like an autistic who shouldn't be driving himself anywhere let alone responsible for picking others up. A few years back, I got so lost going to someone's wedding that I totally missed it and got there in time for food (well, leftovers at that point).

I was told time and time again that the airport was easy to get to because there were millions of signs pointing me to it all with handy little drawings of white airplanes on green backgrounds just in case I was illiterate (aside: if people can't read, should they be driving in the first place (second aside: I recognize that it's for people who don't really read English and the odd unattended toddler or two that somehow manage to get keys to daddy's big gas guzzler and make it work by saying "Vroom, vroom" . . . there's always one or two stories like that in the news every year. File it under "Aww, Precious . . .Aww, Poor parenting))).

What's interesting to me is as I get lost, it always seems to be dark (so those millions of signs are easier to miss) and it usually starts to rain (reducing visibility of said signs and making them a lot easier to miss). And when it starts to rain during those exact conditions, it's usually the type of rain that is best reserved for the adjective "torrential" (see previous parentheses and add or substitute the word "even more" where appropriate). I go somewhere I don't know, and suddenly I'm driving into the most clichéd opening for a story ever.

Luckily, as I found myself in Media and then in Plymouth and then in Springfield, I found a Pizza Hut and asked a guy who was picking up some pizzas where he was going.

On second thought, it really does sound like I was propositioning him, but I told him I was lost and offered him 20 bucks to drive me to the airport (with me following, not in his front passenger seat keeping the pizzas piping hot as best I could). Luckily, he said he lived near the airport anyway and that it would be no problem.

That's why I need GPS. To stop embarrassing myself to everyone involved. But what's the other epiphany? My blood sugar gets low when I get really nervous although I suspect that had more to do with not eating anything hearty before taking the trip to PIA. Who knew 2 meatballs and a bowl of soup wouldn't suffice. I felt very much like Llyod Bridges in "Airplane."

Gestures . . . aren't they all?

So I have become lazy with my drawing abilities (note the last update to my Flicker page) and after more than half a year, decided to do something about it: I started taking very humbling classes at Fleischer Art Memorial. I had always been intrigued by attending there, what with it's low cost alternative to debt-friendly fare such as enrollment at the Univeristy of the Arts or flying to France to study anatomy under the tutelage of Thomas Wienc from L'École des Beaux Arts.

The first class, or more appropriately, my first legitimate art lesson, was with gesture drawings. We worked from a beautiful model whose hair was something I wanted so desperately to capture but since hair has nothing to do with "finding the center," I had to ignore it all the while noting how great it looked even when it became matted to her forehead thanks to a very well-heated. She had scars on her body and a tattoo, but still I found her to be of great beauty. Sadly, I could not illustrate anything I wanted to. Why not? Well, not understanding how to "gesture draw" would be the most prevalent factor. Next to that, lack of practice with a conté crayon followed by all around artistic rust (once again, see the Flickr page and the last date I posted).

So, I tried to learn gesture drawing on my own, after the fact (posted here). 3 drawing done this morning in roughly 7 minutes. It should have taken me 6 minutes, but I lost track of the time on the thrid drawing. Next week, I get to learn contour drawings. I am humbled once again.

I finally remembered a dream, well, nightmare

I took a brief nap the other day. I despertaly needed some rest and with it came a dream. A nightmare.

A squirrel laid on its back, gasping for air. Its last sounds a cross between crying and screeching; wheezing and screaming; dying and pleading.

Its typical chuckling sound was replaced by something other. Colder. Direr.

Its arms seemed elongated, almost grasping and clawing at its furry chest. The bushy tail obscured its legs. A tangle of fur and imagined bone.

Did I kill it? Was it hurt before I saw that image? Perhaps it fell from the tallest of trees, miscalculating a leap, or it slipped from a wire on a nearby telephone pole.

Blood was caked amid its short hairy belly. A sliver of light reflected as a pinpoint globe of pure white dotted the corners of its black eyes.

Was I supposed to kill it? Relieve it of its misery?

In an ultimate act of ignorance, I simply woke up. It still haunts me.

Ick, unadulterated capitalism and bugs

When it comes to consistency in updating this here blog, I think the adjective "spotty" best describes any sort of new entry I may make to a collection of my intermittent musings. Accept my apology, please. And leave comments (also please).

I'll post a drawing sometime next week, I promise. But let's just start with something that happened to me last night: I took a visit to Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square, Pennsylvania with my girlfriend. Did you know that a plant called dumbcane makes the ideal gift to give disliked and/or over-explanative coworkers? I mean, seriously, it makes a much better Mentha plant to create a high-quality Mojito with than mere mint. The conservatory and the topiaries were definite high points even though the word topiary does not automatically equate to giraffe and chimpanzee shaped shrubbery. That’s in ideal world, I guess.

Since I am reading George Ritzer’s McDonaldization of Society, it became my conversational safety net partly because its so interesting to think about how we, as a society, have become so undeniably “McDonaldized” (which is something that builds upon Weber’s concepts defining bureaucracy) not to mention the many little trivial bits of information such as the Ikea catalog being purported to be the world’s 2nd most published work behind the Bible. Or the story about Colonel Sander’s cussin’ up a storm in reference to what ultimately became of his wife’s once amazing recipe for gravy after he sold his restaurant to the god franchise (we all remember the “special blend of 11 herbs and spices” claim to fame that was a mouth-watering ad pitch of yesteryear. I wonder how amazing it tasted before it was watered down to make its production more efficient). The book has surpassed “Ed McMahon’s Barside Companion” as my most interesting bibliothecal purchase. Ever.

So afterwards, we took a trip to some “McDonaldized” shops to buy her cat a new water fountain. As we walked in the parking lot back to my car (sometime around 8 in the evening), what had to be the world’s largest flying insect I have yet to encounter unexpectedly attacked me. I felt almost like Tippi Hedron in "Birds" since it made a beeline to my chest and stayed there almost as if it were clinging on for dear life. Thank god it wasn’t my hair since it’d be hard to look impressive after screaming like a circa late 80’s teenage girl at a New Kids on the Block concert. Seriously, if it flew in my hair I would have screamed (high pitched and everything). That or cry.

My girlfriend was about to hit me with the item she had just bought (pure instinct) in an effort to shoo it away but thankfully she did not because it would have surely injured me more than the entire shock of being hit with a bug the size of Volkswagen.

And, no exaggeration, that body-building beetle was a big'un (I have no idea what it actually was, I just liked the alliterative effect just now). All I heard was the sound of a crumpling paper bag (its wings were that solid) right before it landed on me. In fact, my gut response was to say “What the fuck” and spin around to see who threw a discarded paper grocery bag at me. I had only noticed it peripherally before it decided to use my chest as a landing pad. My girlfriend had to use her hands to get it off since my swiping at it was about as ineffectual as George Bush at a MENSA meeting. For dear life it clung on, I tells ya. For dear life.

It took a few frenetic swipes to get rid of it, but once it left, we ran back to the car quickly and in stooped manner (so as not to invite more unforeseen insect attacks). Any lessons? Well, don’t wear shoes that are too tight or make fun of the morbidly obese. These illustrative examples have nothing to do with the aforementioned bug attacks but they are lessons nonetheless.

For computer literacy class . . .

I have to make both a personal letter and a business one in Word to demonstrate I know how to use the program. So, here is my business letter, a cover letter to a résumé. Me thinks its funny. Enjoy:


Hammer and Anvil DVD Rentals
1825 Star Alexander Road
Das Kapital, ME 03092

Dear Human Resources Director:

I just read an article in the International Socialist Review about a DVD rental center for the proletariat. I would like to apply for the position of oppressed clerk trapped in a class struggle to advocate foreign and independent art-house films to the masses. A résumé is enclosed for your consideration.

My versatile background — covering over 10 years at TLA Video as well as recreating Jean-Luc Godard’s “Band of Outsiders,” frame by frame, for a master’s thesis — enables me to successfully recall and/ or recommend cherished original versions to their inferior modern remakes. I am dedicated, hardworking, and committed to enabling the great unwashed to free their cinematic minds within my strict set of guidelines.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you further. You may contact me at the email address listed above or the address stamped into the ex libris of my book, “Hitchcock: Genius or Capitalist Running Dog?”

YOU called the cops on me . . .

Here's a quick explanation: I went out with this woman sometime in March who, quite frankly, scared me. Since rule number one for meeting someone you've spoken with online is to choose a public place, we had selected a bookstore parking lot. Barnes & Noble, actually, because let's face it, who doesn't feel safe in a parking lot to any one of a gentrified America's cookie cutter commerce shopping plazas ?

We actually met inside the bookstore lest you think I'm cool with actually meeting people in parking lots, like some sort of drug and/ or arms dealer lounging by the trunk of my Honda.

"I gots the stuff right here and it's a beaut, lemme tell ya," right? Although the parking lot was very well lit, I wanted to look for some book by Philip K. Dick so why not kill two birds with one stone? Maybe the avian-killing stone was in the shady car trunk deal, but now I'm just being silly.

Since I had never seen a clear picture of her (thanks Craigslist) we had to do the old-fashioned meet-up that relied heavily on the wearing of a particular colored jacket and/or shirt. She should have worn a red rose in her lapel and stood near an old fashioned phone booth with some secret message we could exchange, to make the dealer/cold war espionage analogy an even stronger one.

"Split pea soup tastes best on a cold morning."

"History demands it."

"Glad to meet you, I'm Constantine."

We decided to go to a nearby bar for a quick beer and that's when things started to get, how can I put this . . . abnormal. Yeah. That's a nice word. Since I was not getting a great vibe, I wanted to follow (easy escape) but it was decided that she'd drive and I'd be the passenger. Dana Gould should have popped out in a top hat and tuxedo singing the phrase "Mistake" at the exact moment I agreed.

The inside of her car smelled like an ashtray and the windows had spider-webbed cracks on them (always a great sign). I started to imagine that "debt-collectors" took aluminum baseball bats to it maybe as they were carrying gasoline containers and lighters. Were the cracks from bullets? I didn't want to even entertain that line of thinking.

Then she told me, as we were driving to the bar, that she wanted to avoid driving to and from a bar as much as possible thanks to a D.U.I.

Gulp.

Have you ever met someone over a beer that does the majority of the talking and you have nothing to say to them? Well . . . let me fast forward to the present.

She said something that hurt my feelings in an instant message. I felt down, she felt up.

I told her she hurt my feelings in another instant message, days later. She felt down, I felt up. Well, bummed but better.

After that, I ignored her but she persisted instant messaging me. My solution was to simply delete her from my "buddy list" rather than block her. That was my mistake. Cue Dana Gould.

So last night she asked me to hang out with her which is something she has done many times before. And it met with the same answer or passive aggressive non-answer, like usual. It's something I have always refused or gotten around, in some way/shape/form. She also mentioned an ex-boyfriend she had been trying to contact and actually called last night. He had said some really uncaring things that depressed her such as "I told you I already have plans [and] when I feel like being around you I'll call." Here's were it gets scary, folks.

She started to talk about suicide. It wasn't the cry-for-help "just mention it" sort. During some of the previously mentioned instant messaging she'd say things like "no one likes me" and "I'm tired of it." But this time it came with a very persistent and detailed plan so I became frightened that she'd actually go through with it. It involved slicing her wrists as she videotaped it so her ex would watch it over-and-over again in his head. I kept talking with her in an effort to try and calm her down.

"I would cut myslef [sic] and bleed to death and film it all. thats what I am doing unless you come over."

Was it just a cry for help? A plea for company?

Since she wasn't expressing anything rational for a very long while, I was forced to call a suicide prevention hotline and lie to get her number to give to police (even though she had begged me not to call 9-1-1). I felt bad about asking for her number under false pretenses but, ultimately felt good about preventing her from killing herself.

This morning, she emailed me with a very angry message about how she got charged with possession of controlled substances and paraphernalia and now has a criminal record. Her mother, she said is sick from embarrassment although I'm sure if she had actually gone-through with it and killed herself, her mother would not be able to handle it at all. I saw a coworker die young (I think he was 35 and had only been married for a year). Althought it was unexpected, it was a health-related natural-causes death and I saw, firsthand, how much grief his father, who I also worked with, carried with him. Once again, and I stress this, that was unexpected but natural. Last night was not only preventable but prevented.

If I did something good, why don't I feel good about myself?

Happy birthday to me . . .

It started with a Swedish Fish.

A Darlin Marlin actually.

She held out the crinkly half-sized bag to me with a flick of her wrist. It was already ripped open, its red folded and stapled piece of cardboard used as packaging long since gone. There were books resting on every corner of the coffee table in front of us and a smattering of other bagged candies piled the middle like a bibliosacrifice of the sugarcoated.

Her first words to me were, "Darlin Marlin?" Since I was late to the book club meeting, I was trying much to hard to concentrate on the group discussion, already in progress. I kept my gaze on the group. She held the bag up for me by her side. I looked down to the bag she held on my left and saw Swedish Fish. I took one.

"Thank you."

During the meeting she playfully mocked my faint and nearly inaudible speaking voice. When she did so, it was always with a smile. Always with a glance. Green eyes overflowing with excitement. Coy and inviting.

When the meeting finished she, her friend, and I stayed together for beer and cross-questioning. The following Sunday my mistress of the Darlin Marlin and I had a laughter-filled lunch with greater conversation, expanded to the type of talk that two obviously interested people tend to have. To crave. She was even more radiant than I had first remembered.

"I don't have to worry," I thought as I found myself drowning in the beau ideal of her presence. "Everything feels right. Exciting."

The chemistry sparked in the air was undeniable. From the initial explosion of elation to the more subdued golden sparkles gently showered upon us with each glimpse of one another, like an undercurrent of attraction, chemistry was the ignition.

The next week brought with it dinner and drinks. Smiles and friends. Kisses while ignoring the glow of nearby televisions. Touching skin and embracing bodies. Tracing birthmarks with fingertips.

Felicity.

Wonder.

She sent me two emails on my birthday a week later. One wished me a happy birthday in the morning. It was a different story in the afternoon.

"While I think you're totally awewome and I'm really glad that I met you, I think we're better suited as friends...we're just too different, I think, to date."

The feelings of overwhelming joy had evaporated but the wonder did not.

Here are some things I have worn at work . . .

5 paragraphs to a short story . . .

The print shop is not there anymore. It was a small building.

"Hey," Mike obliviously snapped his gum as he tried to get my attention. "Can I, uh talk to you when you get back?"

He continued to chew, his gaze boring into my skull as he did so, like being in a staring contest with Burt Reynolds. At any minute I expected him to cackle.

"S-sure thing." He caught me off guard with the gum snap.

I could barely sleep on the plane trip from Philadelphia to London so what made me think I would fare any better on the two-and-a-half hour train into Paris? Yet in a single half-awake dream state moment I remembered back to that afternoon years ago.

*
*
*

So, how is it? Feedback? I think I need to write an outline, but if I put it out there, it lives and breathes. That should force me to write it to completetion if there's interest.

An open letter to the lady that threw up on my jacket at the Jake Johannsen show last night at Helium . . .

"Well, why did you do it? Are you some kind of jerk or something?"

It was my favorite jacket. And why did you leave? Did you think I would have put my jacket on and maybe, MAYBE, put my arm down on the table and suddenly think to myself, "Well, I just put my forearm down on some puddle of vomit that was apparently on my table the whole night which I didn't even notice. Shame on me for my obliviousness." Or maybe you were hoping I'd simply go to some other bar and think, "Gee. Someone else threw up on my arm. It couldn't have been the comedy club"

But you also got it on my friend's jacket. Much more of it, too. What's worse is, you just left. And neither you nor anyone else who sat at your table of ill-manners apologized for such a disgusting action. And you used the good natured sounds of a room full of riotous laughter to disguise your quiet call of the walrus. Deception, in its foulest of forms.

We heard you laughing kinda funny all night. Something was amiss. A little screwey. Strange even. But who are we, as other people, to judge another person's laugh? Some people guffaw. Some chortle. Yours was a wheezing hysterical laugh. Some people wheeze and some people are hysterical. Had we known it was the international warning sound for an oncoming projectile of sick, guess who would have moved their seats?

But why didn't you acknowledge it? You remind me of the man I once saw at a Border's who calmly bent over and threw up by the magazine section as he held his cup of coffee, stood up, and slowly walked over to the Dvd section where he did the same thing, just as calmly. And then he did it again. And again. Do you two belong to some sort of secret shameless spewers club? Was George H.W. Bush it's founder? Did it all start one January back in '92 at a formal dinner in Japan. "What a rush! I have to find some more people who know the joys of a good barf and bolt. If only I could have cloaked the evacuation of all I ate in secrecy. That's where I went wrong. Skull & Bones be damned! These are my people and this, THIS, is my society."

Next time review your menu in the bathroom. They have them in the club, I know. Two, even. One for men, one for women. Maybe you could have asked for sawdust from a utility closet or even, I don't know, made your way out onto the street. Walking in someone's unswallow is a lot less gross than wearing it.

"Well, well, what were you thinking? JERK!"

"Do the trees bend down, fold their limbs around you"

The still wet asphalt, daubed black in spots from the rain, still shimmered in the late afternoon sun. Her long auburn hair still fluttering in the wind reached the door before she did. She grabbed tight her application, now a wrinkled and dog eared curriculum vitae of fast food restaurants and video stores.
"This job is so mine," she thought as she entered the side entrance of the red brick building.

Yeah . . . I wrote another little snapshot of something I saw (then elaborated on). I promise I'll throw a picture up in a few days. One of these days, I'll throw it together for a story. Perhaps a novella (I really adore that word and would really like to tell people that I am working on my "novella").

Last night I had dinner at Jones, a trendy restaurant in Philly on Chestnut Street. It always makes me happy to eat there but our table was pretty drafty. Seems to be an analogy for life anymore. The good moments consitently tempered with the not-so-good. Ying-yang for the hopeless.

"Some kind of cupcake expert . . . "

Hey, check me out, all using de-intensified urban hues for my cartoon of Dana Gould and stuff. I thought he'd be easier to draw so cut me some slack, a'ight?

When I was a kid of 19 or so and the local cable company finally got the Comedy Channel or Ha! before they merged into Comedy Central, I was really into comedians and comedy in general. I remember watching "Evening at the Improv" late on Sunday nights when it used to be an A&E staple. Well, maybe not staple. More of a fastener with one busted prong.

I remember trying to make a homemade version of SCTV with some friends back in high school (freshman year). Ah, to be young and not understand that such things as life experience and learned knowledge can only help comedy as opposed to hurt it. While I was busy doing silly impressions or phony commercials for John Liebrand's video-camera or over-dubbing episodes of Mr. Rogers (complete with many an off-color joke about my German teacher Mr. Wagner), most kids were outside playing basketball and football or . . . um . . . playing football and basketball. Maybe some of those same kids tried to incorporate their love of the two by creating new games combining both. I wonder if they would have called it "basket-foot." Then again that was the nickname for this nearly blind girl that had the biggest mane of curly hair and a gimpy leg.

One of the funnier commercial parodies we did was a spoof of Oreo cookies called "Oleo cookies." Yup . . . it was exactly what you'd think it was: a cookie stuffed with margarine. My buddy Phil had the honors of eating it on camera while the remaining group of freaks and geeks watched on in giggling horror (more Uncle Floyd than SCTV, come to think about it). Another staple of our brand of young comedy (aside from grossing out friends) was appropriating, borrowing, or stealing jokes from comedians. The more obscure the comedian, the more likely you got away with it.

My favorite comedians were (and still are) Dana Gould and Jake Johannsen. I didn't dare take their jokes and/or observations partly out of respect and partly because I'd be found out quite easily. Not because the majority of my friends would know their bits and routines, but their material was so advanced it'd have been quite obvious the jokes were not mine. As I got older, I stopped stealing jokes and tried to think of my own for homemade comic books and comedy magazines (shout out to Urban Lunchmeat, the finest National Lampoon wannabe that never really came to be). My favorite article would have been "Death of Henry" asking the question that was on everyone's mind: whatever happened to the silent comic-strip star Henry. He just disappeared and my friends and I speculated with glee. The other was a satire of diet books which never saw print.

Okay . . . enough reminiscing. I finally got to see Dana Gould last week. Saw him at Helium, a comedy club, in Philly. He was just as sharp and hysterical as I remembered. He even spoke to me from on stage during his set since I had a seat at the very front and was just sitting down as he started. It was one of my greatest nights ever. Going with someone I think is the cat's pajamas didn't hurt either. That was one helluva red scarf, by the way. Do cats wear pajamas? I know monkeys do especially when their owners wear banana hued fedoras.

"Does it have to be a life full of dread"

New PJ Harvey on the horizon. Woot!

So last night on Family Guy, Peter went after his childhood bully who was now on crutches and attempted to beat him up. Chris tried to stop him.

Chris: "Dad, don't. He has M.S."
Peter: "What? Monkey scrotum?"

That made me laugh pretty hard. I used to have a friend who'd say, purely by accident, that I had muscular dystrophy. Pre-Richard Pryor, I guess people didn't know or care to know much about it. As with any disease, unless we have personal interaction with somebody that it afflicts it tends to be a case of "out of sight, out of mind." Kinda sad how celebrity replaces that, but I'd rather more people know about M.S. than not. How many people know about Morgellons disease? I really didn't know of its existence until someone brought it up in conversation. It's terrible yet very few people have even heard of it (unless it pops up on a report for 20/20 or 60 Minutes). I wish this line of thinking would change.

In the next few weeks I have to do the big fat scanning stuff (no exploding heads, sorry. That kind of scanning is infinitely more interesting) then another pop-by to Jefferson to be told the same thing I'm always told. In terms of having the M.S. I'm okay and, well, somewhat lucky. True, I'm not in a wheel chair or anything like that so I'll agree. No crutches or any similar crip-gear. Not even an iron lung decorated with various stickers friends might slap on. Just a damned needle I have to take every single day. A daily reminder that the phrase "at least you have your health" doesn't apply to me. Never will.

I celebrated my friend's 35th birthday by playing some good ol' Dungeons and Dragons. Well, it's not so "ol'" to me having only played it once or twice between the ages of 18 through 30. Since then, I have been trying to work on a script for a comic I'd like to draw. I need to find that something that has more meaning for me other than simple enjoyment. And I'm not going to let monkey scrotum stop me.

There is a spectre haunting the suburbs- the spectre of dating.

Last time I went out with someone, was with this incredible teacher. That was last Monday, I think.

The sky was a fine sheet of grey rice paper as lit from behind by the whitest of light. Branches filled the horizon like black tombstones cracking the edges of the cold dead air as I drove to meet her at the bar.

The bar was much too large and empty to even bother decorating its walls with demographic wall hangings from the knicknack collection. Page 17 instructions: nail retro-junk item to wall, wait for bored conversation to ensue. Music played louder and louder as the night progressed in direct contradiction to the amount of patrons. Would it have been set to a more chill lounge type volume better suited for a studio apartment get-together over some Cabernet if the straight-from-work types were pressed tight against one another, elbow-to-elbow, wall-to-bare wall?

I sat by the edge of the bar closest to the front door, making it easier for her to spot me. When she sat down next to me, all was right.

Hers was a cascade of dark hair which flowed down to that area just inches above the small of her back. She had eyes the shape of almonds, the color of espresso. They brimmed with life when she spoke of everything from her job to recent obscurities discovered over a morning cup of tea, googling whatever curiosity struck her fancy.

She kept her arms folded throughout the evening. When she spoke, it was with a candy-coated voice that overflowed with thoughtfulness. With passion. She was oddly pretty with long hair and striking features, but her beauty laid in her complex ambitions.

Sadly, she is dating someone and we are to be just friends. Yes, relationship drama takes up a lot of time (whether in or longing for one) as my friend Teresa said in a recent email. But hey, I'm Greek so I know all about drama & tragedy don't I?