Fan’s Complaint

Forgive me Internet for I have sinned. It has been 627 days since my last entry.

Where to begin… After my last entry, I spent a few months in Vancouver selling hot-dogs. I came back to New York, stayed for a month, then moved to Chicago. I became a real person there, with a job, an apartment, money, and yes, an electric tin opener. I also fell in love.

***

Chicago h. didn’t really feel a need to write stupid little paragraphs on the Internet for all to see. He didn’t have the time. After all, he had a job, an apartment, money, and yes, an electric tin opener. But then, after a year or so, he couldn’t take it anymore. The job was shit, the apartment was slanty, the money went towards the gas bill, and it turned out that a manual tin opener is much better than the electric kind. So Chicago h. quit his job, moved back to New York, and found himself right back where he started–living at home with his father, as though the whole Chicago episode never happened.  Except he’s now 27 (still smoking, even though he had always promised that he’d quit at 25) and quite a bit heavier.

***

It’s not quite that simple. A lot happened there. I had some very good hot dogs. I got to go to California again. I met someone who… made things better. It’s as though all of the angst and other volatile emotions that I used to fuel my “writing” just disappeared. I may even have been happy.

Maybe it’s love, or maybe I’m mellowing with age, but this space doesn’t seem to have any real purpose at this point. I don’t even really know why I’m writing this entry. Maybe in the future there will be actual writing here. Maybe the angst will come back. I have a pretty good track record of fucking things up, after all. I can’t possibly be happy for long, right?

The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant High School — New York Magazine

“It practically takes a diagram to plot all the various hookups and connections within the cuddle puddle. Elle’s kissed Jane and Jane’s kissed Alair and Alair’s kissed Elle. And then from time to time Elle hooks up with Nathan, but really only at parties, and only when Bethany isn’t around, because Nathan really likes Bethany, who doesn’t have a thing for girls but doesn’t have a problem with girls who do, either. Alair’s hooking up with Jason (who “kind of” went out with Jane once), even though she sort of also has a thing for Hector, who Jane likes, too—though Jane thinks it’s totally boring when people date people of the same gender. Ilia has a serious girlfriend, but girls were hooking up at his last party, which was awesome. Molly has kissed Alair, and Jane’s ex-girlfriend first decided she was bi while staying at Molly’s beach house on Fire Island. Sarah sometimes kisses Elle, although she has a boyfriend—he doesn’t care if she hooks up with other girls, since she’s straight anyway. And so on.”

A diagram of my relationships when I was at Stuy would’ve been a solitary dot on a blank sheet of paper.

(more…)

Getting into my car this morning, I was trying to decide what to listen to. Sure, I got a great reaction pulling up in the parking lot with Biggie saying “Somebody’s got to die / If I go you got to go” yesterday morning, getting good looks from middle-aged white men, but I didn’t really feel very gangsta this morning. So, I pull out of the driveway and put on some White Stripes. My iPod picks “Dead Letter,” which is a good song and all, but not quite what I was in the mood for. A block from my house, I thumbed my iPod to my “Self-Pity,” playlist, and get “Waltz #1″ by Elliott Smith. Not exactly the best thing to get me going in the morning. “Maybe I should try some Beach Boys,” I thought to myself, and put on “Surfer Girl.”

Then, out of the corner of my eye as I’m making a left turn onto Main St., I see a tall blonde on the street corner, waiting to cross. The wind catches her hair, and inexplicably she starts to smile, even though there was no one around to see her. For one moment, all I saw in the windshield was the golden sunlight of an early fall morning and a blonde, her hair in the wind, smiling, possibly at me.

A beautiful morning after a rainy night, a pleasant breeze coupled with a golden sun, a tall girl with long blonde hair on a nondescript street corner in Flushing… Somewhere in California, Brian Wilson must be looking out for me.

I remember settling in to watch a Rangers-Penguins game in the lounge of my dorm in sophomore year. ESPN was running some promotion to teach newbies about the game. There was a segment before the game started on hockey equipment with Mark Messier. They showed him in the locker room, putting on his skates, shoulder pads, etc. As he put on his elbow guards or whatever, Messier stopped and demonstrated how hard they were by rapping against it with a knuckle, as though it was really really important that all the viewers out in TV Land understood just how strong this piece of equipment is.

Later, during the game, he elbowed Darius Kasparaitis in the mouth for no apparent reason.

***

Of course I remember Game 6 and the guarantee. And the Cup. And the parade. And his first time back in a Canucks jersey. And when he came back for real (he’s gonna scare that Fleury straight, we told each other). And the disappointment.

Even though this has been a long time in coming, and is the last part of a sequence of events that started years ago, when Adam Graves was sent to the Sharks, I can’t help but get a little watery-eyed when I realize that the Rangers I grew up with are all gone.

Here is a shitty poem I wrote once about The Captain:

Mark Messier (2001-2002)

You trusted me back then,
fifty-four years after 1940.
From the News, the Post,
from every single grimy newsstand,
my ugly mug glared at the city.
I promised to beat the Devils
and the curse.
We Will Win Tonight.

At the Garden that night in June,
skating around the rink,
that thirty-five pound cup
felt light as a soda can.
A fan held up a sign
“Now I can die in peace.”

I’m forty-one now.
Leetchy’s still flying,
but Gravy’s in San Jose,
wearing that nasty aqua sweater
instead of Rangers’ blue, and
Ricky’s knees sound like
a bowl of rice krispies
every time he makes a save.

I played through a broken rib once.
Now the doctors say my sore shoulder
is a rotator cuff impingement,
I’m done for the season.
You say I should be done for good.
We will win next season.

Kanye West is my hero.

Video: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Sometimes I feel like my life is a song on repeat. Or it’s a series of sequels to a movie that wasn’t even all that good in the first place.

It’s the same story as last time, and the time before, but there’s a few different characters. Even so, it’s possible to tell that here is the part where I go get sloppy drunk and say things I shouldn’t say, and after that is the part where I think, “Hey, maybe I can get some good writing out of this,” which I of course don’t, and I end up going on a bender and hitting bottom. Again.

A few months later, the story starts anew: Chapter IX: A New Hope.

I wish my life were more like Star Wars, actually. And no, I don’t mean that in a nerdly “I wish I had force powers and a lightsaber” way, even though it’d be awesome to have those things.

The original Star Wars Trilogy was a heroic quest, it had a beginning and an end. And if I remembered more of my high school English (Sorry, Ms. Yoon!), I’d be able to tell you more parts of the heroic quest than just going into a cave and being reborn.

At this point, getting reborn sounds pretty good to me. Maybe I’d come back with “powers.”

Anyone who knows me at all would know the answer to the above question, as well as the answer to any other question I ask that begins with the words, “You know who…”

I was dismayed to learn that I would be living with a couple of vegetarians in my junior year of college. Freshman year, when we lived across the street from the Veggie Coop, we used to fantasize about sneaking in to their compound at night and smearing bacon grease everywhere. The Veggies also had a fishtank on their windowsill, visible from the street, and the coup de grace of my fantasized invasion would be to have the veggies awaken in the morning to the smell of their fish being fried in bacon grease.

Remembering my obsession with exposing vegetarians to bacon, a friend suggested that I buy a George Foreman grill, so as to antagonize the vegetarians that I would soon be living with.

“Why you could cook bacon every day, right in the comfort of your own room!” he said, “The smell would get everywhere–in their clothes, their hair–and you would be immune to it because you smell like cigarettes!”

How could I refuse?

It’s not that I equate vegetarianism with evil, I just think that bacon, and most other meats are so good that it’s worth having a few years taken off your life. I sort of feel the same way about smoking (You know who else didn’t smoke?), drinking (You know who else didn’t drink?), Coca-Cola (You know who else didn’t drink Coke and invented Fanta?), and driving fast (You know who commissioned the VW Beetle?). There’s something about people who espouse “clean-living” that rubs me the wrong way.

I know smoking is bad, I know cheeseburgers will make me fat and unattractive (more so), but it’s my choice, so leave me alone.

***

I’ve gotten off track. I meant to post about hamburgers. I had always liked burgers, but it wasn’t until I started making my own that I realized the full potential of ground beef on bread.

I started out cooking frozen pre-made patties, moved on to making my own from ground beef, and eventually dabbled in seasoning and marinating.

Even though I do not make my own burgers anymore, having lost my grill in to the necessity of having to cram four years’ worth of accumulated crap into a tiny car, I still love a good hamburger. In fact, burgers have displaced pizza as my favorite food.

Burgers are just so simple yet varied. You can have tiny White Castle burgers that truly express the union of meat and bread, and you can have 19 lb. monsters with all the trimmings. And anyone can make a good burger at home. It’s the ultimate democratic meal.

All of this was spurred by the excellent A Hamburger Today which I stumbled onto this morning, and quickly devoured, resulting in a yen for a Double-Double Animal Style.

Seeing as how I’m around 3000 miles from the nearest In-n-Out, I think I’ll just have to go buy a new grill.

A quick google maps search revealed at least two Codys in the part of the country in which my dream took place. I have not been to either.

Cody, Nebraska is just south of the Nebraska-South Dakota border, but I don’t remember seeing cowboys or cheap cigarettes in Nebraska.

Cody, Wyoming is a ways from the border, but I think there are cowboys in Wyoming. If not cowboys, then at least ranchers.

Either way, next time I’m ’round those parts, I’ll see if I can stop in Cody to sup with Manos McFate.

The New Yorker: Fiction

The link goes to “Along the Highways” by Nick Arvin, which is in this week’s New Yorker (which also has the third part of the incredibly alarming series of articles on climate change).

Before I turn this into something about myself, I should say that I really enjoyed the story, and thought that it was well written–the descriptions were not particularly stunning and the language not particularly poetic, but the main (only) character was real to me.

Maybe that is because he is me (and every other sad-sack who might get unhinged by unexpected yet minor setbacks), but multiplied tenfold.

So. If I could write something like this, and there is no good reason why I can’t, then I just might be worth a damn.

Then again, the author also has a novel out about a soldier (or soldiers) in WWII, so we know he can portray more than just the sad-sack driving for no good reason.

Either way, I need to stop making the excuses and just write. Maybe about the time I drove to Fargo out of spite. Or the time I headed for Detroit, but turned back by Eau Claire because I only had two dollars to my name.

***

If those stories were worth more than two sentences then maybe I’d have something.