True Life Choose Your Own Adventure- Blogger Style! Or:

 

Part II.

 

(Other working titles include: ”Opportunity Knocked and It Looked Lovely From My Window”, “Who Knows If Down the Road I Might’ve Considered Driving On The Wrong Side of It” and ”Shut Up, Optimism”).

 

“If you decide to go to the hidden bar, turn to page 88.”

 

“If you decide to not go to the hidden bar, turn to page 72.”

 

Page 72: “It is August 27, 2009. You are standing outside of the hot dog place. You are holding a chili dog in one hand. You look up at the hot dog sign that says “eat me”. You remember your friend.

You tilt your head a tiny bit because unbeknownst to you, that’s what you do when you are thinking. You stare at the sign for a good five minutes, which makes people around you kind of nervous. You look down at the ground, and on impulse you aggressively kick a pebble, but your foot hits a crack in the sidewalk and you stumble and- there goes your chili dog. You look down at it. You look back up at the sign. You pause for a moment…

 

….

 

….

 

“Ah, Fuck.“

 

The charming mutt accompanying you pulls on the leash while gobbling up your chili dog.

True Life Choose Your Own Adventure- Blogger Style! Or: “The Things We Do For Our Friends”

Readers, please excuse this post. I have never done this, and I assure you never will again- ’cause to put it mildly, this was not exactly what I had in mind when I set up IWJS. So why stray the course now? See the subject line. It’s amazing what we’ll do, really.

See, I’d rather write about things like the Memory Tower, or Daniel Radcliffe, or the Convention. But.

I don’t always get to do whatever I want to do.

Because when reasonable, respectable, conventional means fail to bring about reasonable, respectable, conventional ways of addressing matters at hand, we are unfortunately left to our last resorts…and so.

Matters at hand. There’s somebody I gotta talk to. Set the crooked straight with, so to speak. It seems I’ve been called upon to pull off a disappearing act, but I’ve said I can’t do that if I don’t properly rig the trick first.

You getting all this?

Of course not. Only one reader can, who may not be reading, or maybe isn’t reading in time, or maybe will pretend not to.

I’m mindful of the fact that this one totally goes against the grain of my blog-for-the-greater-good philosophy, in posting for a single reader. Who I hope appreciates this bit of personal attention, because I’m doing this one time, and that’s it. After that-

Forget it.

I leave it to fate.

There is a place on St. Mark’s with a little hot dog sign out front called Crif Dogs. And you walk down into the restaurant and there’s a phone booth. You go into the phone booth and on the other side of it, is a bar.

And that’s where you’ll find me.

On the same day, same time, like we said- before you stumbled out rather gauchely moments later for god knows why, really.

So.

Read it again-

Weigh your options-

Choose Your Own Adventure.

In the meantime, IWJS will get back to business as usual.

I got my James tickets

Yup Yup. James is playing at Radio City on September 19, and I am thrilled. This just may be the night to bust out that inner 13-year-old and hang around the stage door afterwards. I’m not typically one to do that sort of thing, but my favorite band ever is not typically one to play in the States either, so here I make an exception.  I can see it now: me and the English ex-pat version of Ashley Ferl, clutching hands and histrionically bursting into tears at the first sign of Tim Booth.

Smartypants isn’t much in the mood to utilize the brain power needed to craft an in-depth album review right now, so I’ll let the BBC tell you what a stellar piece of musical expression their new album, Hey Ma, is.

Nonetheless. They are not the headliners at Radio City, surprisingly. No, James is actually the opening act for….um….Squeeze.

Yeah, I know. I don’t get it either. Should be interesting, watching all the James fans stream out in droves after their set, going outside for a spliff, then dropping back in just in time to listen to “Tempted” out of a light curiousity and nostalgia for the 80’s.

So anyway, in closing, I was once asked what my process is for blog posts. And why I do it at all! Well, it varies. But there’s some general tendencies. However, now that I have recognized that I am little more than a lazy, self-deprecating Human Parrot, it seems using song titles conceived by people much more original and artistically industrious than I communicates a general sentiment much more effectively than using my own words probably could. Probably. Or not, but either way, it’s unquestionably easier. Enough to sell me on it.

Who was I talking about? Oh yes. James!

Let’s have some fun and pull some James song titles to illustrate what I might typically experience during a given drafting up of a blog post. And away we go!

Born of Frustration

I Know What I’m Here For

Pressure’s On

Stutter

Everybody Knows

Oh My Heart

Shooting My Mouth Off

She’s a Star

Live a Love of Life

Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)

Say Something

How Was It For You

So, that’s kind of what it is. Kind of. On a rough, writers block kind of day. Which is- you know- mostly what- oh, whatever. Sunshine and rainbows, lollipops and lolcats, I’m doing wonderfully.

Or at the very least, I’m seeing my favorite band ever next month.

In closing…..well, I was gonna quote Oscar Wilde, something about gutters and stars or whatever, but I forget how it goes now. So I guess I’ll just leave off with…..well…..

How Was It For You?

XOXO,

IWJS

Reader Meet Author

Let’s pick a random topic and blog about it. How about- Morrissey?

Ok, I know that zillions of people have written about the guy, but I haven’t! And away we go!

To quote some guy named Tom Gatti, his jangle pop-encased theatrical lyrics tend to be “bleak, funny vignettes about doomed relationships, lonely nightclubs, the burden of the past and the prison of the home.” Right on! Encyclopedia Britannica says he has a “compellingly conflicted personality”, which apparently is the answer to the question of why people are drawn to him. Wow- that sounds like someone I know! Also, he said once he’s “bored with men and…bored with women”. Holy Cow. Could he, and someone I know, happen to be the same person, split in half? Also he was celibate for a really long time. You know, maybe someone’s just had a little case of tunnel vision lately.

So as you’ve gathered, I’m fascinated with Morrissey because I’ll be damned if him at 30 doesn’t sound just a hell of a bit like me at 30. He is dramatic and darkly funny. He is quirky and outspoken. One time he said “I think I’m a realist. Which people who don’t like me consider to be pessimism. It isn’t pessimism at all. If I was a pessimist I wouldn’t get up, I wouldn’t shave, I wouldn’t watch Batman at 7:30 a.m. Pessimists just don’t do that sort of thing.”

Such a character, isn’t he.

Why I didn’t really pay him much attention before, I have no idea. I haven’t had that twinge of omg-you’re-me with respect to a male artist since I discovered Jacques Brel, who I once though was maybe reincarnated in me, until I found out that while he died in 1978, it was October 1978 so- aucuns dés (did I say that right, French-speaking readers?)

 

And so I have stumbled upon a brilliant idea. I decided that while I still have to put in a little effort with posts that discuss current events or are part of the blog series, slice-of-life posts really don’t need all the work. Why launch into a  lengthy diatribe and do all that work, when all I have to do to get the point across is just pull song titles from The Smiths and Morrissey catalogues and list them down? Like this:

 

Reader Meet Author

Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself

I Don’t Owe You Anything

Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

Nowhere Fast

What Difference Does It Make?

I Know It’s Over

You Have Killed Me

My Life is a Succession of People Saying Goodbye

I’ll Never Be Anybody’s Hero Now

I’m the End of the Family Line

That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

The World Is Full of Crashing Bores

Unhappy Birthday

I Have Forgiven Jesus

I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris

 

Brilliant!

 

The last one doesn’t really make sense, aside from the fact that I love Paris. But I needed to close off with something uplifting. I’m not here to make your eyes water.

 

Ok, I’m kidding. I’m trying to demonstrate just how ingenious Morrissey’s song titles are. I mean they’re so morbid, they’re wickedly funny. Aren’t they. Aren’t they? 

 

Oh come on now, laugh. Laugh I say!

 

So, Morrissey is newly added to the “Who I’d Like to Meet” category on MySpace, because when I first filled out that section, I didn’t get that it meant who you’d like to meet on MySpace (um, no one? if you don’t know me or at least someone I know- forget it, player). I thought it meant “So who would you like to meet that you never actually will, Big Dreamer?”

 

Oh dear. Did I really just say that? How Morrissey of me. Ok, one last song title, quite fitting right now in that it sums up a good chunk of posts where for the life of me I can’t seem to tie up my loose ends with a tidy, witty conclusion…..

 

I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish.

 

Inspired now, I respond with….um……

 

Yeah. What Morrissey said.

Olympics!

So when you get the chance, totally watch the Olympics with my friends Eddy and Kitten. They’d love to have you.

I’m kidding! You might not even know them! And then it would be kind of weird for you to show up at the door with your big bag of Tostitos Scoops, all set to sprawl out on their couch along with their really large gray lolcat.

What I was really saying is that after several in-depth discussions on topics ranging from hexidecimal notations, frames per second (the human eye registers 24! I did not know that!), how panoramic photography works, and pottery painting, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Wednesday night’s programming with them. It’s almost as enjoyable as I imagine it would be to watch girls’ gymnastics with Béla Károlyi. But seriously, when my self-esteem wasn’t sinking away into the psychological abyss on account of witnessing people half my age achieve more success than I may ever see in my entire lifetime, I was having a splendid evening. E & K are smart cookies: they know the athletes, the scoring, strengths and weaknesses, fun facts about the various venues, etc. I really should have live-blogged it! Unfortunately, I’ll have to do this retroactively.

So Eddy’s fiddling with my laptop and Kitten’s cross-stitching some famous painting I’ve never heard of because they are too ambitious to just watch the TV. I am on the couch sitting and breathing at the same time.

Needless to say, a large portion of the night was a Michael Phelps love-fest. Bob Costas probably summed it up best when he declared that this guy’s ability is “ridiculous”. Also mildly ridiculous and terribly fascinating was the informative blurb that was essentially an intense scrutiny of Phelps’ anatomy, featuring a CGI of him while every nuance of his physique was explained in great detail. Well, not every nuance. Just the parts that presumably contribute to his ridiculous ability. Dignified praise of him from our corner followed. When he is declared the most decorated Olympian in history or some such thing, someone in the room’s inner frat boy emerged with a brilliant “Damn I’ll decorate you, Michael….” Um, ha ha. Ha….

Well, Michael is fun to watch. I could watch Michael all day and all night. Here’s Michael eating his 45,000 calorie breakfast. Here’s Michael doing military presses by the floor-to-ceiling front window of his local training center. Here’s Michael drying off. Here’s Michael sleeping. Just kidding about the last one- that’s creepy!!

No but seriously, it’s fun to watch him race, because he always wins, and that makes me happy to be an American and a winner too by association, and I in turn celebrate my ridiculous athletic prowess by cracking open my second bottle of Stella and tossing the cap into the garbage from the couch. Win!!

There was also a mom joke in there. Mom jokes are always funny. When Michael pulls a strong lead in the relay, 4×100 m medley relay, one announcer stated that his mom could anchor the race at this point. Oh snap.

Then it’s synchronized platform diving, which I have never seen, and fall in love with immediately, and it makes me think how great it would be if all sports had a synchronized version of themselves which makes me start to think I’m either OCD or I have either done/seen way too much musical theater. Truly though, it’s beautiful- and the Chinese duo make it look just effortless. I like when the action is peppered with little back stories on the athletes, and I hear one I’m sure I’ve heard before about prodigies- that when the child’s exceptional gifts were recognized, one parent moved to wherever the child needed to be to nurture that gift, while the other parent and siblings stayed behind. I stated aloud that it was my newly realized dream in life to have a child who is capable of single-handedly breaking up the family, because if that isn’t a sign of extraordinary talent, I don’t know what is.

On to girls’ gymnastics! Ok, women’s gymnastics. Anyway, I just love the little powerhouse that is Shawn Johnson. Yilin Yang, too, particularly her balance beam routine. Gymnastics is always one of my favorites. That is, until the wet blanket of the trio of announcers poses the question to another in the gang: “So what are the differences between Chinese and American gymnasts?” The obvious answer flies out of my mouth, what everyone’s really thinking and wanting to say: “Um- force? And about 4 years in age”. The invisible man on the television put it more delicately: that the Chinese are selected (forced) at a very young age (like, 3) to begin their training; the Americans typically start a few years later.

On a non-snarky note, I do find this fact very sad. The Chinese girls (I’m not calling someone young enough to be my daughter a woman) keep whatever’s on their mind pretty close to the leotard in their interviews and on the sidelines in general, and you doubt they ever had a choice in their path. They were simply recognized to have the right build for the sport and the families were then “asked” (commanded- with a smile!) to accept the honor of giving away their child for- oh- a decade or so in order for the kid to compete. That kinda breaks my heart. Because let’s face it:

Not 16 years old.

So when an announcer comments on, say, what a joy it is to watch Jiang Yuyuan perform on the uneven bars because she just looks like a little kid at the playground having fun it prompts retorts from me like: “Yeah, she does look like a little kid. Know why?!”

Sigh….you wish you could hear the straight story from the kids, but whenever they’re interviewed, apparently it’s akin to visiting an inmate, they have so little to say and-

Stop! Enough about the cheating- let’s lighten up the mood already, shall we? This is supposed to be a party!!

Let’s talk about the weird, awkward lady that does the late night features- who is she? During her segment on pandas, she randomly posed the question to the Chinese trainer if he feeds the bears Whitman’s, and he has no clue what she’s talking about, and she’s like “You know, the chocolate!” And he’s all like “Um, no, we don’t?” and then that’s the end of the conversation. Um, okay. Then there was the Alicia Sacramone interview where Andrea Joyce asks leading questions like “So how does it feel to let America down?” (no, she didn’t say that but- that was totally the subtext), obviously a shameless attempt to score some big tears. Bitch. Well-spoken Sacramone holds it together remarkably better than you could, but barely. And then they cut back to the sonorously-voiced maladroit who responds with “It’s a killer watching (that) … I mean, they’re just kids … as a parent … this is why some people just raise chinchillas.”

Ummmmm, WTF?

Well anyway, so then we got talking about cheating again and Eddy said something about tripwires or whatever, to which I responded he’s getting this television show we’re watching confused with the Hanna Barbera Laffalympics, and we all lafflafflaff and then talk about the hippie van we’re renting for our upcoming hiking trip and then we say our goodnites.

And now I’m beat and can’t think of a nice closing, except to lie to you and say “and then in a moment of inspiration, I ran all the way home!”

Anyway they don’t know it yet but we will so have to do this again soon

Ugh.

I just got back from a trip to the post office in the building- I didn’t know they were closed now. When I asked one of the number of exceedingly helpful and refined security personnel roaming around, in line with my general experience with security here the guy thought it would be quite amusing- despite my obvious aggravation- to say “no speak English”. I don’t think I was entirely gullible in believing it, because the way this building runs, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they did hire someone with a limited command of English. As long as they can raise their arms in an “Up Up UP!” gesture to exhausted tourists sitting on the floor and block anyone carrying a large anything out of the building, we’re good, right? Alot of people tell me that there’s no way the terrorists would target here because it’s “too obvious”, and I hope to God they’re right because if our safety is in the hands of these guys, we all may as well be walking around with bullseyes on our foreheads. However, to their credit I’ve noticed that if you’re a ladyperson and wearing a cute enough outfit, you can be assured that they will do a stellar job in keeping a very, very close eye on you. Not that you can count on anyone to interfere if you’re in harm’s way, but you definitely won’t have a problem in having witnesses, should anything go wrong.

Anyway, the guy tells me he’s only joking and says there “should be signs” in front of the post office to direct people as to where the next closest office is. Of course, in keeping with what was the general spirit of things when the place was open, the post office really couldn’t give a crap about customers (no wonder it’s closed), and- as I expected- there are no signs. Oh wait, no! There was one sign- it said something along the lines of “don’t smoke in front of this door”. How much you wanna bet they have a security guy around that makes sure no one smokes “in front of this door”, but who hasn’t a clue as to where the next closest post office is.

I had hoped to God when I heard my office was moving that it we would be getting the hell out of this building. We’re talking about a management company who literally doubled the rent in the old space in their efforts to kick the little guys out and get a big guy in who will take the whole floor. Who wants to keep feeding that machine? But, we stayed, just went down a few floors, paid out the ass for it due to union restrictions, and here we are.

Lucky us! Of course- It’s 8-8-08! Lucky Day……….  :/