Sell Phone.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
This is my cell phone legacy. 14 phones in 10 years. They got steadily smaller over the first seven or eight models. Then I started a trend of big/small/big/small. As you can see, I'm ready for "small" again. And so, as is customary, I'm selling my phone. And, as is also customary, I have my eye on a Sony Ericsson phone. The perfect Treo antidote!

Après l'école.

In 1984, I lived in San Ramon, California. My parents were about to get divorced, my sister had run away from home at 15, and I was in the fourth grade. My best friends were a group of three brothers from a strict Christian household: Joe, James and John. Their parents were named Joseph and Mary.

Joseph had an enormous beard and worked for Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas' company. He had art boards propped up around the house that would be used in Return of the Jedi-- big boards with intricate paintings of the interior of the Death Star.

I would go to the brothers' house to play Atari, hang out in their backyard fort, climb trees and do other Christian-friendly stuff. For seamier times, I'd hang out with my other friend, Brad. Brad was a latchkey kid like me. He'd steal money from his mom's purse and buy us candy and sodas. Then we'd leaf through his dad's porn collection.

But Brad and the brothers were weekend friends. The interminable weekday afternoons-- between getting out of school and my mother coming home from work-- I spent alone. I would while away the hours after school by dumpster diving for Amway samples or shoplifting from the Safeway by the video arcade. And I figured out that if I worked a metal nail file in and out of the quarter slot of the newspaper machines that the quarters would spill out, Vegas-style. Then, it was off to play Ms. Pac-Man.

What I mostly shoplifted was candy bars-- five or six at a time, all different kinds. When I got home I'd unwrap them all and arrange them on a plate. I also had figured out that a certain combination of button presses on the cable box would tune in the pay channels. And so, each day after school, with my plate of candy bars, I would kick my feet up in front of Escapade, the precursor to The Playboy Channel. All by myself on Interlochen Drive.

Two Dads and a Motherboard.

I have an odd job, I really do. I work part time for a national tech-support dispatch service and jobs get routed to the pool of nearby technicians via email and text messages. When the text or email shows up on my phone, I scramble to get to a computer and log into my account and accept the job before anyone else does. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't.

The job can be either commercial or residential. If it's residential, I usually go to someone's weird house in god-knows-what suburb. In any case, I am required to represent whatever company is sourcing me that day (e.g. CompUSA, Acer, Dell). It's hard to remember who I'm representing on any given visit, so it becomes "Hello, my name is Nick and I'm with (slowly scan work order in hand) "International Laser." Smile.

Today I drove to Lebanon, Maine, near the New Hampshire border. Maine has all kinds of cities named after foreign places. A quick look at the map reveals names like: China, Lebanon, Vienna, Lisbon, Peru, Wales, Mexico, Sidney, Palermo, Paris, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Naples, Madrid, Belfast, etc.

Anyway, today I drove to Lebanon and met with an old queen named Ron who had a dead computer which he professed to having bought at "Walmart's." Ron had the patina of a serious lifetime smoker. He had 'smoker's hair', 'smoker's face', and a shredded voice. He wore black jeans, a tucked-in mock-turtleneck and a studded black belt. Ron lived with his partner Steven (another tense, white-bread Mainer) and an adopted Pakistani teenager, a boy named Rahesh.

Rahesh had only a Maine accent and was called on to figure out the basement lighting. That's where the computer was. His two dads snapped at one another upstairs while I got to work dismantling the PC. "I said 'can you pour me a soda?'!"

"You just had a soda!"

They were preparing something in the kitchen for their Christmas dinner and the entire house including the basement smelled like bagel dogs. My job was to replace Ron's motherboard, which I did, and as I waited for the computer to start back up, I looked around and really drank in the scene for the first time. Shelves and shelves of antique bibles, several dozen VHS tapes including a 2-tape set of My Fair Lady, several books on sexuality and a few really old sets of philosophy books, spanning dozens of volumes, on unfinished plywood shelves.

The basement was done up in wainscoting and brown shag, severely torn in places. Several dusty museum-ready stereo components were lined up on a low, lacquered entertainment center: an audio cassette deck, an early CD player, a turntable, a receiver. I began the final steps of reassembling the PC so I could get out of there.

Then the dads started in again: "Did you turn my oven down!?"

"Yes! Do you want the outside to burn before the inside's even cooked?"

I felt sorry for Rahesh, then felt guilty for feeling sorry for him. He's just a teenager with parents like anyone else. As long as the three of them love each other, it doesn't matter how weird Ron's skin is or if they are having burned or raw bagel dogs for Christmas. Then I felt a little bit happy for them.

I got Ron's elaborate signature on a few forms and wished them all a happy holiday. As I left the house, they were all filing down to the basement, as a family, to check out the fixed computer. I wondered what they'd do, gathered around the computer. I imagined them browsing to a sports website or maybe the dads would check a joint email account. I have to admit, I felt useful. Which is rare.

Do YOU Support Our Troops?

If I was less ADD, I would read a Noam Chomsky or Marshall McLuhan book all the way through. Well, among lots of other books. And blogs. I did make it through Chomsky's 9/11 treatise but that was more of a pamphlet really. The thing I love about him is that he's so level-headed. And because his political analysis is not aligned with religious values or commercial or political interests, he delivers interpretations of events and policies that are in stark opposition to popular media interpretations, and does so in an emotionless and matter-of-fact way. He's not a scaremonger or a shouter or even a conspiracy theorist. In fact his delivery is kind of dry. You'd almost expect him to be Canadian.

And because he's also a linguist, Chomsky is exactly the kind of guy you turn to when all of the magnetic yellow ribbons on Volvos and pickup trucks alike have you scratching your head. Here's an excerpt from a paper entitled "The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda" delivered in Kentfield, CA on March 17, 1991 (during the Gulf War).

"Support our troops." Who can be against that? Or yellow ribbons. Who can be against that? ... In fact, what does it mean if somebody asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes, I support them, or No, I don't support them? It's not even a question. It doesn't mean anything. That's the point. The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don't want people to think about the issue. That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for, because nobody knows what it means because it doesn't mean anything, but its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."

Snipers.

I absolutely love these three panels from Dan Clowes' Ice Haven. The line "An anonymous note speaks for everyone!" is brilliant; it must be what deluded, passive-aggressive neighbors actually tell themselves when they, say, leave a note on my car criticizing where I park.

Then, a few days later, an anonymous call to the police speaks for everyone when I'm rousted from bed on a Saturday morning by a cop pounding on my door telling me to move my car from its legal but apparently not-kosher-with-an-unnamed-neighbor spot. A spot which I pay to use.

And so, tail between legs, I go downstairs to move the car with the weight of at least one set of eyes on me as I begin to chip the ice from my windshield. Eyes, no doubt, on a pinched, chuckling, perhaps bearded face. Eyes most likely behind round wire-rimmed glasses. Glasses maybe a bit foggy from a steaming cup of coffee or tea clenched by the bitter fingers which had gripped the red pen to scrawl the note that spoke for everyone.

In Minneapolis, They All Look Like Me.

CLICK TO LISTEN
Here's a song I'm working on, feel free to offer ideas on arrangement and instrumentation.

The Todd.

Journal Entry: Wednesday, December 6, 2000

The Todd River wound through town like a dusty serpent fossil; once or twice each year it would attract enough rainwater to begin to flow, sometimes to swell, and sometimes to carry away garbage, animals, even people. On a particular summer night in 1992 it was as dry as ever, and as I approached its sandy banks I brought my bicycle to a halt and jumped off. I was returning from Alice Springs to our little home, a shy, lopsided wallflower on the outskirts of town. The warm air carried suggestions of drunkenness and discord among the tribes people whom resided among the wispy, brittle bush that dotted our Central Australian landscape: deep bellowing and shrieking from the torn numbed throats of a beaten, weathered people. It is tempting to trace the spaghetti schematic of my late 20's neuroses to my 17-year-old interpretations of the dangers lurking in the night along the banks of the Todd River. The idea of snakes haunted me terribly and with money I saved from stocking grocery store shelves I bought a small lamp to attach to my bicycle, anticipating better odds of survival lest I come across a king brown snake taking in the warmth of the Stuart Highway or one of many scabby three-legged dogs that were affixed to the "blackfella camps."


I could see our little porch light scratching through the tar of the moonless desert night: a comforting signifier that my cries for help might have the ability, if uttered during some grizzly scenario, to be carried by a hot breeze through an open window and into the ears of my sleeping parents. Our small tilted house lay at the end of a dirt track. The dirt track split from the Stuart Highway and ran about a half mile, corrugated and dusty, curvy and unforgiving and was cut in half by the Todd. My family owned a rusty Volkswagen bus that required a full-throttled preamble to a Todd River traverse. even then becoming mired, almost terminally, in the deep sandy basin but generally breaking free, as if from quicksand, to begin an overheated meander into town. Crossing by bicycle was impossible. I waded through the prehistoric sand, dragging my little machine behind, light flickering between white and yellow in a vain attempt to warn of miscellaneous evils via its dim composite of my immediate future.


At first I was confused by the hissing. To recall the prickling of skin and the welling of tears is effortless. The raw instinct of fear split through me like an axe and I froze waiting for teeth to pierce skin, for my spine to become poisoned, for venom to begin its journey to critical organs. I wondered about the breeze. Which direction was it blowing? Toward the house? Away from the house? Would the Aborigines hear me? Could I even bellow for help? I stared at the ground as I did once when confronted by a large dog while throwing newspapers on a dark winter morning. I hoped the serpent would sense my benevolence in the way the dog had as its snarls turned to growls and then throaty warnings until eventually he released me from his locked attention. I wondered if my jeans would help, or my boots. Where would it strike? Would it hurt? I then realized, with no lesser of a fear, that there was no snake.


____________

Watching the flickering oval of sand at my feet I realized the ground was becoming increasingly visible. illuminated with a green hue and the hissing was becoming louder. It's hard to describe how easily one can be frightened in the Central Australian desert at night. There are things there that kill people. There are spiders that can destroy a person's nervous system. There are dogs and snakes and scorpions. There are people, invisible and omnipresent: people half-understood. People kill people in the desert (the murder rate in Alice Springs is the highest per capita in the world). Loud hissing noises only serve to rattle a traveler's nerves. Bright green light on a dirt track miles from any appliance capable of producing bright green light only serves to cause a traveler to hastily review the details of his life and to try to revise his half-hearted religious pessimism.


I looked up. Falling from the sky was a green ball of flame, its descent clumsy and vital and mortal. An enormous rock was screaming through the sky over my head. It was on fire. It came from space. Never had I felt my eyes forced open so wide nor such a sustained chill throughout my body. My benevolence shifted skyward in its focus and I felt okay. No snake was biting me, no three-legged dog was tearing out my innards, nothing was infecting my spine with venom. I was watching a meteorite descend from the heavens. My body cut a sharp and shifting shadow on the ground as the rock rumbled through the sky just a few hundred feet above sizzling loudly and crisply. I started to cry.


The whole affair couldn't have lasted more than 45 seconds and ended with an almost subsonic impact several hundred feet to the north. It was the lowest of low sounds-- the kind you feel rather than hear. I felt as I did after sex with a stranger-- an odd post-coital awkwardness checked only by the validation of the sexual experience and the satisfaction obtained thereby. I stood spent and confused in the darkness that again swallowed my bicycle and me and I realized that my light was no longer flickering but shining steadfast. I started to laugh.


I covered the remaining distance to the house in record time, exhilarated and happy and humbled. I switched on the radio scanner in the living room and listened for any mention of the meteorite by air traffic controllers or policemen or truckers. Nothing. I stepped out onto the wide wooden porch and listened for sirens. I listened for shouting and I wondered if more celestial debris would assume broad sizzling arcs above the dark little house. But the desert was quiet. Even the specter that met the earth just minutes before had fallen deathly still and silent but I knew it was there on our neighbor's land. Melting the sand and rock it touched, pulsing, steaming, cooling and expanding, half buried. I climbed into bed wondering if the rock was still glowing, wondering where it came from. I wondered if I had not been out on the track, would it have gone unnoticed? Was I the only one on the planet who saw this shooting star touch the Earth? I slept beautifully and dreamlessly.

The 8th Destruction of Portland, Maine.

I was looking over the flap copy of this 1950's folding map of Portland, Maine recently (pictured and click-able above) and I learned that in the past 50 years or so, the population of Portland proper has dwindled from 81,000 to 63,000. Considering the hardship the city weathered prior to the 20th century (it was destroyed four times by fire and three times by war-- hence the Phoenix on the state seal), I am left to wonder what silent power is destroying the city now and whether this Phoenix has a ninth life?

Here's what the map people said back in the 50's (thank goodness for OCR):

PORTLAND INFORMATION

Portland, Maine's largest city, with a population of over 81,000, is the hub of a metropolitan area known as Greater Portland. This area includes South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Scarboro, Westbrook and Falmouth, with a combined population of more than 155,000.

Portland was settled by two Englishmen, George Cleeves and Richard Tucker, in 1632 and was known by the Indians as Machigonne. It was known as Casco Neck until 1658, when the name was changed to Falmouth. On July 4, 1786, Portland was incorporated as a town; the city charter was adopted March 26, 1852. Portland became the capital of Maine and continued as the capital until 1831, when the state offices were removed to Augusta.

Greater Portland has more than 250 diversified industries. Several, such as pulp, lumber, furniture, paper, boxes, wood turning and cabinet work, and the processing and canning of farm and fishery products, are based on the natural resources of the region. Other products manufactured here are printing and publishing items, foundry products, stoves, wearing apparel, boots and shoes, elevators, industrial machinery. refrigeration equipment, marine hardware, clothespins, candy, card tables, bakery products, metal and paper containers, and metal culverts.

The city proper is located on a peninsula, almost entirely surrounded by water. Portland harbor is recognized as one of the deepest and safest on the Atlantic seaboard. Its piers are closer to the ocean than any other port. Many shipping lines make Portland a regular port of call. Principal cargoes include woodpulp, oil products, coal, grain, china, clay, bauxite, and lumber.

Portland is also the center of transportation and a distribution point for northern New England. It is the present terminus of the 107-mile-long Maine Turnpike which links Portsmouth, New Hampshire with Maine's capital city.

Today, Greater Portland continues as a major recreational area. In summer, public beaches accommodate hundreds daily. Only 15 miles to the south is famed Old Orchard Beach. There are many parks, playgrounds and athletic fields, an 18-hole municipal golf course, nine other courses, tennis courts, yacht clubs, indoor swimming pools, and many other healthful and recreational facilities.

Numerous sites, within easy walking distance, are of historic and scenic interest to visitors in Portland. On Fore Street are the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow birthplace and the sites of the first meeting house, erected in 1680, and the first settler's house. Portland Head Light, built in 1791, under President George Washington, First Parish Church, Fort Allen Park, Fort Gorges, Portland Observatory, and various other scenes and structures merit the attention of visitors.

Minstrels and Charlatans.

I've mentioned Martin Seligman's book, Learned Optimism here before.
Seligman says that the pessimistic mind, governed by permanent, pervasive and personal explanatory style is also keenly realistic. He says (Page 109) "There is considerable evidence that depressed people, though sadder, are wiser."

I've been feeling sad and wise lately. Say, for the past 8 years or so. This wisdom keeps me from enjoying the dumbed-down blissful ignorance that is my right as an American and it pisses me off. TV, of course, is the lowest common denominator and I expect anything I switch on to be offensive and insulting. Only lately have I realized that this includes public TV too.

Apparently some people have no trouble believing the crap that comes out of the mouths of the Wayne Dyers of the world. But me, I watch "doctor" Wayne Dyer on public TV purely for comic relief. In fact when he came to my town (Seattle), I got some friends together and went and saw him in person. Try as we might, we couldn't keep from laughing out loud during his overly earnest presentation. Why can't everyone just get that any jackass who has written 18 books (not to mention all this other bullshit) is a complete charlatan.

Another thing I see on public TV a lot are these weird doo-wop concerts featuring all-star lineups of old-school doo-wop acts like The Penguins and The Drifters. First of all, these people are minstrels and their acts should be treated the way Sambo dolls are treated these days: preserved for reference of an early, ignorant time in our culture. Not trotted out in front of fat, bearded, Cosby-sweater-wearing crackers.

Secondly, if you've ever seen one of these concerts on PBS, the editing is truly unsettling. Swells of cheers and applause come from seemingly nowhere, at illogical times during the performances and the audience is never shown along with the stage performer, i.e. the audience was most likely shot by itself reacting to prompts rather than having shared time and place with the act they're supposedly watching. You know, the way the America's Funniest Home Videos audience is filmed.

Why do I have to be on guard constantly? Because someone's always trying to trick me. Every day. At least I'm not completely alone.

Miss Neighborhood, 1987.

Journal Entry: Sunday, December 10, 2000

It was the late 1980's. Our neighborhood was typical of the stale hot part of California east of the San Francisco Bay. In our section of Concord, we had an Elvis impersonator, we had a retired HAM radio operator, even a recycler. We had schoolteachers. We had psycho sex offenders and soccer moms and soccer kids and kids who beat up soccer kids and men who beat up their soccer mom wives. We had a Naval weapons facility; it lay at the fingertips of an arm of water that stretched eastward from the Bay, double-jointed and impossible, made possible by blasting and dredging and money. Ships and trains arrived daily trafficking nuclear weapons to and from earth-covered bunkers, scattered with antelope and invisible from the air.


The yards of the houses in the town were dotted with all types of fruits and vegetables now seemingly exotic and even incredible to me as an assimilated Midwesterner: walnuts, peaches, plums, guavas, figs, pomegranates, kumquats, loquats, oranges, apples, grapefruit, Swiss chard, persimmons. It seldom rained. It was seldom windy. Lawns were watered daily, garbage picked up weekly, and every other Thursday at dusk, dozens of pounding, black helicopters descended to dump Malithion onto our homes to exterminate our fruit flies. The government recommended we remain indoors.


I lived with my mother, her fourth husband, Jeffrey, and a truckload of insecurities in an Army green rambler on Margo Drive. My parents drove matching Dodge Darts and worked at the same middle school in Walnut Creek. Apart from that they had nothing really in common, save for an interest in Louis L'Amour novels and Gewürztraminer. On Sundays we'd have waffles for breakfast and then cruise the flea market at the Solano drive-in. They'd look for Louis L'Amour novels and I would covet old hi-fl gear and Beatles LPs. Apart from that, we weren't a family.


The only one-on-one interactions I had with my stepfather were boots to my bed when I slept through my paper route alarm and stern warnings about door-slamming. He knew a guy over in Solano who invented a little rubber device to make trees grow straight and so after his janitorial shift at the middle school, Jeffrey would go work at Grow-Strait until quite late. Doing god-knows-what. The weekends saw him shut in the garage turning wood on an industrial lathe or manipulating band saws, drill presses and the like to produce bizarre dishes and implements.


Each morning for five years I sat on the tiled floor of the front entry and folded newspapers. The smell of newsprint and recycled rubber bands collided with the exhaust from my stepfather's bright yellow Dart as it drifted through the screen door as he left it running endlessly in the driveway. He was very particular about his car. Once out of the house, I enjoyed the still, dark neighborhood and stumbled around throwing my papers and inspecting the yards and cars to see what had changed from the day before. I studied the front page of the paper: the extended weather forecast, the headlines, the pictures. The ink built up on my hands and I wet them with the dewy grass, wiping them clean on my canvas bag.

______
There was a girl who lived on my route named Shelly Doorak. She went to Concord High and dated a boy who drove a white Camaro. She was kind of a bad girl and never looked at me when our paths crossed. At sixteen, she was the cutest girl in the neighborhood and had never said a word to anybody I knew. At the end of the month I went around to each house to collect the $7 subscription fee and! actually prayed, to some god, that Shelly would answer the Doorak's avocado green door. She never did, but one morning in late summer there was a bra lying on the welcome mat where the paper needed to go and I picked it up, a little white piece of cotton, and wondered about it. I became nervous and didn't know what to do with it... leave it on the mat? Throw it in the bushes? Wrap it up in their newspaper? I decided the best thing was to stick it in my bag and take it home. I hid it inside of a toy helicopter and every now and then I took it out and looked at it but usually I was afraid to, until one day it was gone and I was paralyzed with fear and guilt. Who had taken it? My mom? Was I in trouble? How did she think a little bra ended up in my helicopter? What was she doing looking in my helicopter?


I was fourteen and my sexual slate was clean. Squeaky-cleaa In fact it had not yet been unpacked from the box. Rumors were all around school about Shelly and her sexual exploits with various high school bad boys. Standing in the Doorack's dark front yard. forty papers in my shoulder beg and breathing on my cold fingers, I watched her pull on sweaters and make her bed and put on lip-gloss. Huey Lewis played on my headphones and I watched her talk on the phone, flip over cassettes in her boom box and fight with her mom. I watched her brush, curl, crimp, tease and blow-dry her hair. I saw where she hid her cigarettes and where she kept her socks. I was looking in on Shelly Doorak's life and knew things about her that even the white Camaro guy didn't know. When I'd see her smoking behind the grocery store on the way home from school I knew how many shirts she tried on that morning and the color of her underwear.


In the summertime the sun came up early and I lost my window to Shelly's life. I knew it would be months before I would know her again. The sun pinned our town down like a tanned wrestler. The hills turned to gold in the distance, the antelope danced around on the nuclear missiles and my parents consumed more Louis L'Amour and Gewürztraminer. I saw Shelly smoking by the dumpsters behind the store and wondered how many shirts she had tried on beibre school. The yellow Dart choked me, the alarm was ignored and the bed was kicked for three more months. The helicopters dumped cancer and we remained indoors, windows closed, air conditioners on. I wondered about my older sister who ran away from home and whether she had a boom box in which to flip tapes or a hair dryer wherever she was living. I waited and waited until the cold weather and daylight savings would again change my world.

Teens in the 50's are a Thing of the Past.

Remember those filthy old computers I hauled out of the Jenny Craig? Well they're still in my car. Except one which I brought up into my apartment after scooping out the dander and human fur from inside. And what a diamond in the rough! Squirreled away in a safe place deep within the bowels of Windows 98 (first edition) was a folder chock full of personal MS Works documents.

Below is my favorite, in its entirety: a fascinating and meticulously-credited research paper entitled "Research Paper" that pulls no punches as it lays bare the differences between parents and teens of today and those of the mid-century.

In the 1950’s music consisted of mostly jazz, blues, and rock and roll. We still listen to those styles of music in 2005, but along with new music we have expanded our choices of style and have also expanded to new ways of listening to it. Being a teenager of 2005 is superior to being a teenager in the 1950’s because of the premium technology of CD players and IPods which have replaced the record player. The availability of these machines, where you can listen to the music, and what you can listen to has greatly improved since the 1950’s.

Records were 10-12 inches and easily breakable.(Gale, “45 RPM”) They sold for 4 to 5 dollars per record. CD’s are roughly 15 to 20 dollars each, but contain larger amounts of music and are a better quality. These CDs are much more compact than records are. The phonograph was a large piece of equipment as well. Because CD players can be quite small, it isn’t abnormal to seem them being stocked in local stores whereas a phonograph takes up a sizeable amount of room and was sold in very few stores. The internet has also helped the availability of CD players. In the 1950’s the internet was a thing of the future so phonographs couldn’t be advertised like CD players are now.

In the 1950’s listening to music was a family affair. The phonograph was usually like a piece of furniture. It was kept in the drawer of a cabinet in the living room inbetween the t.v. and a coffee table.(Pelham) The parents had control of when you were able to listen to music. Teenagers rarely had their own phonograph. The parents owned it and decided when you could or couldn’t play it. Their children wouldn’t be able to listen to music in their own bedrooms like teenagers today do. It is common for teens to own a stereo, walkman or even an ipod of their very own. This would allow teens to listen to music wherever they felt like, but teens of the 50’s were confined to listening to their parents music in their own living room.

Parents are more lenient with what they allow their children to listen to now than in the 50’s. As long as the parents of today don’t have to listen to what their children are listening to they don’t mind it. In the 50’s, since the phonograph was generally in the living room, parents had control over what their children listened to. If they didn’t like what they were listening to they just had to turn it off. If teens wanted to listen to something deemed inappropriate by their parents they wouldn’t be able to listen to it in the 50’s. The teens of 2005 have a better chance of listening to what they want to listen to with the technology provided. With headphones in their walkmans and ipods their parents would never know what they are listening to.

With the advantages of technology on the side of 2005’s teens it would be much better to be a teen now than one in the 50’s. CD players and CDs are much more available to teens now than in the 50’s. Today teens also have a larger variety of musical styles that they can listen to and with the invention of walkman they can listen to it wherever they’d like. Teens in the 50’s are a thing of the past.

*Results Not Typical.

I've been working sometimes for this weird tech support dispatch service. Calls come in via text messages and email and us registered techs sign into our "online office" and either accept or reject the jobs. There are a lot of techs and not a lot of jobs, so it's a scramble to get to the computer as fast as possible to claim the available work.

Recently I scored a gravy job (you might say) carting some old dander-riddled PCs from the sinister-looking meeting room of a Jenny Craig franchise in a nearby strip mall. If you haven't been to one, these "weight loss centers" are in a formal sense like gyms for sedentary optimists. Here, plump, shawl-clad "weight-loss consultants" tailor an eating regimen to allow clients to achieve their fantasy girth. All the trappings of a gym are present: duplicitous salespeople, unclear terms of service, memberships, managers, proprietary equipment, etc. Though I guess gyms don't have posters of Kirstie Alley everywhere.

Anyway, check out this photo I scored while there. These 'food portraits' are about 3 feet square in real life! Jenny's "product", that is, what the "consultants" are selling, is this weird food that is stored and sold on the premises. In fact, when I walked into the place I flashed back to the first time I walked into an Arby's (it was during a Minneapolis winter. I was a freshman in college and had just sold plasma next door and Arby's cashed the plasma checks but I digress). Wet cat food. That's the smell.

What'll It Be?

It's my third week of bar-tending. My 8th shift. I work in a hotel bar on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights-- a hotel for business travelers-- and there are very few "guests" on the weekends. And the hotel is by the Mall, directly across the street from Michaels Crafts (no apostrophe) so there are no walk-ins, only hotel guests.

The only stuff around here is mall-area stuff: some loco border restaurants, a stereo store called Tweeter, a Zales, another diamond store just like Zales, a few other hotels that look exactly like mine, a Best Buy, a Chili's, a giant pet store called Pet Quarters. Most of these get the possessive treatment by the locals: Tweeter's, Best Buy's, etc.

Some nights I have no customers, some nights I have a few. Last night I had the most ever. My first customers were a newly-wed couple married only hours earlier at City Hall. They were about 50 years old and the woman asked if I had Champagne. I was happy to report that we did have "sparkling wine"-- personal-sized bottles of Freixenet-- and would they like a couple of bottles. She asked if the bottles had corks that made a popping noise. They did.

The groom was in the ink game, and wove fascinating yarns like the one about the latest Bacardi label that has invisible, bootleg-proofing ink detectable only under a black light. Then there was his racountement concerning his company's production of money-printing ink for the federal government. "We got Brinks trucks comin' and guys with shotguns picking up green ink." After the Freixenet, he ordered a Mudslide. I Googled it.

Last week I had a woman, whose birthday it was, treating herself to a glass of wine before taking herself to dinner at the Old Country Buffet adjacent to Best Buy's. When she returned she seemed really depressed and finished another Robert Mondavi Chardonnay rather quickly before adjourning to her room.

On the Thanksgiving weekend, "Mainers" flocked to the hotel from all over the state to take advantage of the early morning Black Friday deals. Even into the night, groups of three and four would return to the hotel just long enough to unload their cars, the luggage trolley dripping with sacs de joie.

I had a single mother at the bar the other night whose daughter was upstairs sleeping after a swim in the pool. As the woman slipped into drunkenness, I learned about her visits to the Methodone clinic and life in general in Milo, Maine.

Later that night, a guy slunk up to the empty bar and sheepishly ordered a "Mar-ga-rita." He just turned 21 and I was his first bartender. "Let me ask you something" he said. How much liquor is in a Mar-ga-rita?" I showed him the conical metal shot glass and he twisted his lips around and asked if maybe I could use less. He spent the next 45 minutes talking about Christ.

I finally got a chance to make a Martini last night: dirty, up with olives.

Found on Craigslist.

family pet

___________________________________
Reply to: sale-501735212@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-12-07, 11:53PM EST


Loving family looking for a family pet for son. Must be good with kids. Either cheap or free.

It ain't.

Joblessness is depressing. You can't pay rent and have to ask the landlord to put you on a payment plan. When it's your girlfriend's birthday, all you can afford is a card. And even the money for the card has to come from the change jar.

I spent my last money on a trip to Boston on Monday to meet with an IT recruiter. I knew she didn't have any jobs and that it was basically an informational interview, but I figured I could use a break from lying at home on the couch combing the Internet for jobs.

What I hadn't thought through was that the trip out there would cost me, and not just the four hours in the car. After all the tolls, gas and parking, the trip cost $90. On Sunday, I did some fluke freelance work before my bar-tending job and made $120 in three hours, the same money as three bar shifts. I was excited because I thought it meant I could pay my phone bill. Today my phone was shut off.

Having recently read Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (recommended by my last therapist), I know that in order to save myself from the flat-spin of depression, I need to monitor my internal monologue . My explanatory style, says the book, determines how my circumstances effect my state of mind.

If I tell myself that I'm still unemployed because nobody wants me, or that I'm worthless because I'm broke, I'm going to start taking a whole lot of naps and getting into fights with strangers down in the town. The book calls those thoughts "permanent, personal and pervasive." Permanent because the attributes (e.g. "worthless") are not changeable, pervasive because the badness bleeds into other aspects of my life (e.g. 'broke = worthless'). Personal because I'm not recognizing other, external, circumstances that could cause my being unemployed (i.e. it's my fault).

Since finishing Learned Optimism, I have struggled to put the theory into practice. When my cat started sneezing, I imagined the other pets getting sick and the inevitable vet bills. When the recruiters didn't call me back or return my emails, I jumped to the conclusion that they were scam artists and that there are no jobs, only phony postings designed to harvest resumes and personal information. At least that's externalizing.

I'm hoping that the bank pays my bad rent check this month. If so, it will leave me $544 in the red, but at least rent will be paid. It will take me six weeks to make $544 at my bar-tending job. This is the kind of situation where credit cards are probably good to have. I can't get one though because my credit is so bad.

When my friends say they're broke, I get the feeling they mean they're cash-poor, but that they ultimately have savings, credit cards and/or relatives to fall back on. I have none of these. I already owe my best friend $1,500 since last year and my dad $500. I owe three years of back taxes to the IRS, $60,000 in student loans, and about $10,000 to a debt management company. My phone, gas and electric are frequently shut off. My girlfriend is sick of bailing me out and I don't blame her. In four months, she'll need to stop working to have the baby. Then it's all up to me.

And I wish my fucking eye would stop twitching.

Posting from Cell Phone.

This is where I spend my Friday and Saturday evenings. Gotta go Google how to make a Martini. In case I get a customer.

Evangelical Free Church: Queens, NY.

CLICK TO VIEW FULL-SIZE SLIDESHOW
I took this series of photos in the summer of 2007 at Community Bible Evangelical Free Church in Richmond Hill, Queens in NYC.

A Scanner Darkly: Part 1.

CLICK TO LISTEN

I've listened to this conversation dozens of times, though I was never intended to be a party to it. While it brings to mind Raymond and Peter, it's a bit more disturbing because, after all, this conflict is between a grown man and his mother.

I intercepted this cordless phone conversation (and many more like it) on a radio scanner while living in a ramshackle apartment building called the The Sherbrooke on the corner of Franklin and Aldrich in Minneapolis' Wedge neighborhood. I didn't just happen upon these phone calls; I actively programmed the the cordless telephone frequencies into my scanner and routinely trolled them while relaxing with a beer or two after work.

Let me set this up for you: the guy, Matthew, is around 40 at the time (year 2000), a pale, fat schlub who drives a shitty red pickup truck and sets up folding chairs at the Convention Center for a living. He lives in a ground floor apartment in the roach-infested Sherbrooke with his heroin-addled girlfriend, Kathy. Matthew has just returned from the hospital where he has been recovering from a heart attack.

While Matthew was in the hospital, I heard Kathy on the phone many times. She was doing what any lovesick woman would do while waiting for her stricken beau to return home: calling tricks over to the house, getting high and selling drugs.

Upon Matthew's return, he spent an afternoon on the phone with every distant acquaintance trying to borrow money. His only success that day was a guy who barely remembered Matthew, in Waconia, way the hell out on highway 5, who was willing to write a check for ten dollars. Matthew drove the shitty red pickup truck out there even though it was Sunday and the banks were closed.

Shortly after this call from mom, Matthew robbed a bank and was quickly taken into custody by the FBI, plucked from The Sherbrooke on a snowy Minneapolis morning. I was there. It was cool.

German Engrish.

Not to undermine my sincere good feelings toward the omnipresent Japanese non sequitur (wait, let's try that again), but damned if the Germans aren't giving them a run for their money. German tech company TrekStor has a line of MP3 players called iBeat, which comes in various colors. TrekStor's naming convention has been: iBeat Pink, iBeat Gold etc.

This summer, when it came time for TrekStor to dub its darkest of colors, things went terribly wrong. The "iBeat Blaxx" with it's astonishing name, caused quite a ruckus on the tech blogs and elsewhere. TrekStor said "our bad" and shortened the name to Blaxx (minus the iBeat moniker), but went on to name a special edition MP3 player the "iBeat Dieter Bohlen." I guess they didn't quite understand the mechanics of their grammatical mistake.

On a related note, I happen to own the TrekStor "Vibez" (a name not quite as embarrassing) and when I stopped into J&R to buy the neoprene carrying case (more of a sleeve really), also made by TrekStor, I received a delightful little surprise. The name of the sleeve? The "Vibez Skin Bag!" Not to be confused with the "Vibez Stretch Bag" of course.

Ken Create Part 2: The Press Pack.

Click for Entire Press Pack

This is for all the haters who think Ken is the Andy Kaufman of the 21st Century. Allow me to repeat what I told you in the first Ken Create post: Ken's "routine" is NOT ironic. Not intentionally anyway. Above are the documents comprising Ken's 'press pack.'

Teaser?

Here, is a couple of pictures to pass around. Thanks- Ken Create.
I'm also, working on a new Bio-- also, playing the key boards-- for my act.

Nick, The Lights you see at the end of the video, was-- Two color changes, since then my friends company-- has made green, blue, white, -- and a mix of colors, that I now use in my show! 6 lights altogether
Ken Create

TELEPHONE NUMBER
973-595-7359

Don't miss the list of every show Ken's ever put on, including the Nursing Home section. Below is the full, unedited, 12-minute Ken Create reel as it appeared on the VHS tape Ken sent to me as part of the press pack.

Oh, and if you don't have the back story on Ken, get it here.

Young Professional Seeks Shitty, Expensive Room.

About a year ago, I was faced with finding a replacement renter for the room I was occupying on Powers Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This wasn't hip Williamsburg; Powers at Graham Avenue was Italian to the bone and rumored to have a sizable mafia presence. After all, this was the neighborhood portrayed in Donnie Brasco where the Bonanno crime family achieved infamy in the early 70's.

The room cost $1,000/month and was in a free-standing former auto garage (a.k.a. loft), accessible by a monstrous roll-up door. The interior was dark and dirty. The furniture was dilapidated and matted with food and bong-water stains. There was no bathroom, only an enclosed toilet and a separate shower whose moldy curtain opened directly to the kitchen. The kitchen was unique in that it was the only room in the whole building with a window. My room was made of sonically-transparent Sheetrock partition walls.

There were three other roommates, all guys in their early 30's: a grade school teacher, a social worker and a graphic designer. The latter was obsessed with KISS. He had KISS comic books, KISS fridge magnets, an elaborate toy KISS music stage with poseable KISS action figures, etc.

My first night in the loft I took my dog out for a walk and on the way out of the apartment, I passed through the "living room" (the old automotive service bay) where the KISS roommate was on one of the stained couches watching a Japanese KISS concert DVD with a large pizza to himself. I went for a rather long walk and ended up spending an hour or two at Barcade before heading home. When I got back, the KISS roommate was in the same position on the couch, in a cloud of pot smoke, having finished off his pizza, and seemed to be watching the same interminable Ace Frehley guitar solo as when I left.

Oh yeah, and the roommates were all in this weird funk band. And they used to be in this other weird funk band.

Anyway, I posted an ad on Craigslist for my room and received a flurry of responses. In another city, you'd expect only weirdos to get excited about this apartment, and those weirdos probably wouldn't be looking to drop $1,000/month. But, in New York City, here's what I got:

I saw your post on Craigslist. Sounds like a pretty cool place.

I'm a 28 year old straight male. I work at a production company that focuses on stand up comedy for television and live venues, and I'm also a comedy writer. Also involved in making comedy short films, improv, etc., although that has nothing to do with work.

I'm a very laid back, friendly guy, neat, clean, etc.

A little bit more about me:

Favorite Movies: Bottle Rocket, Annie Hall, Sunset Boulevard, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Player, True Romance, Wet Hot American Summer

TV: Real Time with Bill Maher, Daily Show with John Stewart, Colbert Report, The Office, and I loved Arrested Development when it was on.

Books: Fitzgerald, Hunter S. Thompson, Amis, Evelyn Waugh, Douglas Adams

I went to University of Southern California film school and University of Vermont.

So...let me know if you'd like to set up at appointment for me to come by.

More just like this came by the hour...

Hi, I would love to meet you/ see the apartment.
My name is Ryan, I’m 24, and recently moved from Montreal.
I work in Manhattan full time as an event planner. I am creative, outgoing, respectful and clean. Love music (play the guitar), movies, and food (I am an excellent cook!). Overall, an awesome guy to hang out with/ share a common space.

Ryan

xxxx & Company
Luxury Marketing
xx Madison Avenue, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10016

The responses came for days.

I am a 28 yr old female with a small non barking bulldog. I work some days modeling and some nights bartending. This apt sounds really great 4 me so if you are interested in showing your apt please send me an email or giving me a call at 917 xxx 8948-Christie
________________________

Im leaving for virgin islands from 9-13th – could I come and see the space/meet you guys soon? I’m 27, female, like living with guys, love music – day job on 49th and park, starting two companies and love to sing. Laid back. You all sound cool…ok, you can reach me here anytime. Yours, Kristin
________________________

your place sounds fun. My name is Dave. i am 22 years
old. i curently work at a small company that builds
custom bicycles (brooklyn Machine Works). I do well, so making rent
won't be an issue.

i ride my bike everywhere, occasionally on adventures
and sometimes with no hands - to show off. i spend sometime at my
girlfriends place. but am looking for a home of my own. i'm sociable,
neat, and i have a passion for the dishes.

anyways i'd love to see the place some time this week.
i'm available in the evenings during the week and all
day on the weekends.

thanks
david
________________________

Hi,
The place sounds really nice, I would love to check it out if it is
still available. My name is John and I'm a singing/songwriting, painting,
photographer. I'm active and open minded. I have a lot of experience
living with new people and am clean, respectful, considerate, and
responsible. That equals good roommate. Right now I'm pretty focused
on art and paying the rent. I work at a photostudio and am interning in
the photography department at Saturday night live. Please let me know if i
can check out the room. Thanks a lot,

John
________________________

Hi, my name is Michelle. I'm a 25 yo female living in Boston. I went to school here for Graphic Design, and I recently got a job at Saatchi & Saatchi, thus the reason why I'm moving to NY and looking for an apartment.

About me: I'm very laid back, like to work out, go out, but I also work full and part time so I don't expect to be home a lot. Non smoker, straight, looking for a nice apartment and a nice roommate that I can get along with. I'm looking to move in on the first of January, or hopefully a couple of days before. My phone number is 857.xxx.9270.

Let me know if you're interested. Your apartment seems like a good place. Do you have any pictures of the apartment? I'll be in NY on Sunday so hopefully I can come by on Monday to see the room.

I look forward in hearing back from you.
________________________

Hi!
Your apartment sounds great and exactly what I'm lookin for. My name
is Fiona, I'm 25 and irish and I'm a graphic designer for Victoria's
Secret. I've been living in Brooklyn for almost 2 years now but still
haven;t found that place where i can feel settled and really enjoy my
home. I love to cycle, sew, paint, listen to music, take funny
pictures and go to shows with friends.
I'm looking for roomates who are passionate about what they do but
chilled and easy to gel with. I feel like I'm easy to get on with but
if you think I'd fit the bill maybe you can call me to meet up
properly...
Hope to hear from you soon!
Cheers
fi
________________________

Hi,
My name is Ed.

My girlfriend and I are looking for a place to live soon as she starts her job in Jan......

We are both in our mid 20's, musicians, and visual artists. (im the serious musician dabbling in bent/hacked video and shes a professional photographer whos been playing horns since childhood)

We are relaxed, responsible roommates in a !drama-free! relationship with lots of different references to back up these claims.

She just graduated from a fancy liberal arts school (Bard, upstate) and i will be going back to school and working part time (rent covered with the help of financial aid).

We are both busy individuals and will be out alot. any long weekend/break from school ill most likely be touring...(more so after feb.)....

i lived and worked in brooklyn for 3 years before moving into her dorm last fall and then we landed a sweet renovate-4-rent deal....

im a decent carpenter and electrician (not liscenced though)

hopefully we could suspend any aversion to moving two peoples into the room (if there is any) long enough, to actually talk over things as we are flexible people....

I could come by tues (the 5th) in the morning;early afternoon but have to leave for a gig at vassar college later on,,,,,
if that works for y'all so ring us anytime day or night (646) xxx 9661
or just write....

cheers
ed and lea
________________________

Hi there,

My name is Donna and I have just moved out of an apartment just off of Montrose Ave (Scholes St.). I am looking for something in the area as although its not the heart of Manhattan it is very easy to get to the city.

I am 29 and originally from London but moved from San Francisco two months ago where I was working in theater production for 15 months.
I work off of Wall St. for a real estate brokers but have just finished an MA in Arts Management and would like to be a writer. I am due to take a evening writing course in the New Year.

I am really easy to get along with, clean, respectful and love go out and be social at the weekends, especially in the city or in and around Bedford Ave. I work long hours in the week though, so love the idea of a chilled living situation too.

I always have a good relationship with all my roommates - in fact I moved to New York with my former roommate from San Francisco. He lives a few blocks from me and I am staying with him until I find somewhere.

My interests include music, painting, reading, writing. I am also a bit of a gym rat, so love to work out, bike ride, that kind of thing. I love to cook also and usually do a big cook up at least once a week.

Anyway, if you feel I may be what you are looking for please give me a call on 347 xxx 3347 or shoot me an email at this address.

Thanks for your consideration!

Donna
________________________

Hello Nick,

I'm a 26 year old male publicist who currently resides in Williamsburg. I'd be thrilled to come check out the place sometime.

I've lived in New York my entire life. My work deals mainly with books, however I also represent a charity, as well as some music acts. I also love to cook, and I'm rather good at it (pardon the immodesty)

I'm a total news addict, and I tend to read way too many newspapers, magazines, and books. I also have a really big tv.

I'm also very clean, and my bills are always paid on time. I do like to party on the weekends.

I'm looking for house mates that I can hang out with once in a while, have a meal or some drinks with.

I have references.

You can check out my myspace profile if you'd like.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Best,
Peter
________________________

Hi Nick,
I saw your posting on craigslist and I am so excited about your apartment! My best friend and I want to move in to a place together and we were thinking of splitting the room. We both travel a lot so we wouldn't be their all the time. She and I work at a coffee shop, and she and I work opposite shifts so we would rarely be their at the same time.We are both artists and your apartment sounds perfect, I'd love to come see it. We are both really nice and friendly girls and I hope you consider us. Here is my number please feel free to call with any questions.
646-xxx-6287.
All the best,
Aisling

I remember thinking how strange and depressing it was that all these seemingly interesting, fun-loving and successful people weren't able to do better than that rotten $1,000 room. But New York is like that. You sacrifice everything just to be there. That apartment was my best option at the time and I too was thrilled to get into it.

Wheel's on Fire.

You see stuff like this every day in New York. Minor human dramas that bring people out of their own worlds for a few seconds. Here in the Financial District, where Whitehall Street becomes Broadway just below "The Bull," we see a kebab cart fire, stoked by heavy winds.

I loved that people slowed down or even stopped to look at each other, sharing the experience, if only for a second, in what is surely NYC's busiest few blocks. In typical New Yorker fashion, a few even got involved: the guy in the white T-shirt who stamps out the flaming kebabs; the big guy in the shirt and tie who "supervised" the scene; the newspaper vendor who kept his eye on the kebab man's wind-swept cap.

To a tourist, it might look the opposite. It might look like people rushing by and not caring. Not picking up the cap. Not talking to the kebab man. When you live in New York for a while, you start to see the subtle humanity.

Buenos Aires 2006.

CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE SLIDESHOW.

I took these photos during a 10-day trip to Buenos Aires in February, 2006.

Cartoon Therapy.

At the peak of my depression, about two years ago, I felt like my psychotherapy and drugs weren't working at all. I was self-medicating with booze, food, sleep, web surfing and spending money I didn't have. Even so, I still felt like shit all the time. I had the idea one day that I'd draw cartoons to make myself feel better, and it worked-- but only while I was drawing them. Afterward it just made me sad to look at them. I was so at odds with the world that just going through the motions of living wore me out.

That year I was constantly broke and had collectors after me. My stepmother had recently died of cancer leaving my two teenage sisters without a mother. I was badly injured after being beaten up on a visit to Argentina so I was limping around on crutches. I was fired from my job without warning. I was getting divorced and secretly spending nights at work. My new puppy was very sick. I was 70 pounds overweight.

It seemed like everyone in NYC was prospering and loving life except for me. Everyone had more money, was in better shape, had better relationships, was better looking, more talented, and more accomplished. I found enjoyment nowhere and was constantly getting into altercations with strangers on the street.

The Dynamic Shows Ever Bein' Gave.

I got into the cult of 'J&H Productions Guy' a few years ago and I feel it's mandatory listening for all. There's a pretty good site devoted to J&H so I won't get too in-depth. However I will take a moment to identify these audio clips as symbolic of the type of thing that keeps me going spiritually.

I was walking with my friend Michael down Hudson Street in TriBeCa on a lunch break a couple of summers ago when he had a mini-epiphany: a common thread running through all of his friendships was an appreciation of the absurd. I felt the same, but I think it goes deeper than we realized that day.

I think what links Michael to me, etc., is not just an appreciation of the absurdity of human nature but also a deep, unequivocal acceptance and appreciation for its place in the world and for the people (and animals) who embody it. Even when the joke's on us. It's how I lived through the past several years of depression.

It's in this spirit that I present J&H Productions Guy: wonderfully deluded, perhaps clinically, yet with a true zest for life!

J&H Productions: (part 1) (part 2)

Sample quote:

"I would like for a respond to J&H Productions pertaining to these shows that will be giving inside and outside as for as the coliseums that he gave you a picture of on the paper, and he would like for J&H Productions and the labels to give shows together in these places."

Afro Ninja.

Afro Ninja: "Humh."
*Backflip goes terribly wrong.*
*Afro Ninja attempts graceful segue into nunchucks*
Woman 1: (off camera) Oh my god are you OK?
Woman 2: (off camera) "No. He's not."
Afro Ninja: No, I'm ok.
Woman 1: Are you sure?
Afro Ninja: "Yeah, I'm aiight."
Man with Fresh Braidz: "Sit down, sit down, stay down, don't try to stand up."
Afro Ninja: "Sorry."

Subaru Lesbians.

In early 1990, my mom's best friend bought a brand new Subaru Legacy station wagon. She had short hair and a golden retriever. I just got my driver's permit a few months before and Nancy was cool enough to offer me the keys for a spin around my shitty hometown of Concord, California. When she pulled into the driveway I ran out only to be face-raked: the Subaru had a stick-shift. Oh well.

Subaru-driving lesbians proliferated throughout the 90's and into this decade, and I started to wonder what it was about lesbians that compelled them drive these cars. It started to bother me. Was the Subaru an advertisement of sexual disposition or a subconscious coincidence?

I wondered the same about short hair and comfy shoes, golf clubs, high-waisted jeans, big dogs, polar fleece and precious acoustic music. Having lived in the lesbian-havens of Minneapolis, Seattle and now Portland, Maine1, I've felt like these cues are heavy-handed subtexts: passive-aggressive and, well, offensive.2 Moreover, a notion of wagon-circling, if you will, is implied, equivalent to pickup-truck ownership being mandatory suburban-macho accoutrement. I get that this perceived cliquishness may all just be a backlash to repression, but still...

Recently, this Washington Post article from back in 2000 made me realize that there is no subtext afoot:

"Coincidentally or not, the Subaru-lesbian connection seems to have spread throughout the car-buying lesbian community. 'We call [Subarus] Lesbarus,' said Pam Derderian, CEO and principal partner of Do Tell Inc., a gay niche marketing firm that created the Rainbow Card program."

(Subaru was a founding sponsor of the Rainbow Endowment, whose Visa Rainbow Card has raised more than $1.5 million for health, civil rights and cultural causes.)

I found more clarification here, where I was surprised to read as the opening line of Subaru president Rick Lociano's annual address to his dealers in 2004:

"O Forester! O Forester! It is as if thou hast dropped from heaven itself onto the Island of Lesbos!"

Further, the entire keynote was campy to the max:

"A crack team of psychoanalysts worked non-stop with top-tier engineers to design a body shape that breathes 'rugged utilitarian frumpiness' while avoiding the obvious pitfalls of what I call 'overphalluscizing'. In a stroke of genius, one of my junior marketing execs suggested that dealers add a deluxe dog cage at no extra charge. And we did it all at a price that even a substitute P.E. teacher can afford.

Then there were the Subaru print ads with taglines like: "Get Out. And Stay Out.", "It's Not a Choice. It's the Way We're Built." and the most provocative: "Likes to be Driven Hard and Put Away Wet."

Ironically, now that I know the Lesbaru phenomenon is merely the result of willful marketing, it seems less nefarious and even a little bit light-hearted. See? Writing can be therapeutic.

End Notes:

1. My girlfriend insists that the majority of Subaru-driving women here in Portland are not gay, but rather "rugged New Englanders" who happen to also wear polar fleece, LHBs, and high-waisted jeans. Let's just say it's probably no coincidence that there is a history of L.L. Bean Edition Subarus. Bonus factoid: L.L.Bean has a Subaru Edition women's 'fitness fleece' pullover!
2. In the way I seem to be offended by other 1-way communications like bumper stickers and these fucking hats.
   

Irony Kilt the Seatards.

Utilikilts were the bane of my existence when I lived in Seattle. I swear to motherfucking god these things actually exist, and in numbers. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on such an easy target. But man did they PISS ME OFF!

I had to laugh at this guy's page (entitled "Utilikilts are Stupid and Dumb"), which shows several photos of Utilikilts in the wild. If you think the official photo (above) is cringe-worthy, you ain't seen nuthin' yet!

Oh, and the best quote from that site I just linked to?

"If you ever see someone wearing a Utilikilt, do what I do and make him feel as shitty as possible."

Adventures of the B77 Bus.

The B77 winds through the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Red Hook and Park Slope. Along the way, it crosses the Gowanus Canal, you know, where the mob has been dumping bodies for around a century. On my way to work, the bus got stuck when the Gowanus started to overflow into 9th street

At around 45 seconds into the video, you can see the bus driver next to me, having abandoned his post, high and dry in the raised back section of the flooding bus. He said nothing to anyone the whole time. The passengers were interacting, however; one of those rare, beautiful moments of New Yorker camaraderie.

Ken Create.

CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO
For better or for worse, I’m responsible for Ken Create’s fame. A friend in my office was sent this video. He passed it around the office and I uploaded it to iFilm and VH1 selected him for their viral video Web Junk 20 TV show. The host was pretty harsh.

Contrary to popular belief, the tape is not old (2002). Or ironic. This video is also on archive.org where Ken himself comments:

I am Ken Create and welcome to my world of modern dance> I'm glad you like the video. If you would like to order one, or to just contact me you can do so directly. My phone number is *82(973)595-7359. I live in Paterson, NJ and the video was shot by the folks at Innovative Marketing, located in Wyckoff, NJ By Bill Hennessey.

If you would like more information, please contact Justin Style @ (201) 444-6267

I called the number and spoke to Ken, who said he found out about his bizarre fame when a friend called demanding he switch on VH1. To my surprise, Ken's thick Jersey accent and poor grammar were as intense as in the video and he betrayed not an ounce of irony. He earnestly explained that the phone number in the video was for an old cell phone that was stolen from his car and that he hopes people will find his new phone number in the archive.org comments.

I didn't let on that I helped to give him his little boost. Instead I mentioned that we might need his services for an office party. He quickly sent me a "press pack" free of charge, though initially he wanted $20. It included an 8x10 glossy signed photo, his full video reel on a VHS tape, and, for some reason, a complete listing of every Ken Create performance ever. The list dates back to the 80's and includes a special section for Ken's nursing home performances.

I go back and forth about whether I was cruel to Ken. Regardless, I'll be happy to scan and post Ken's press pack and full reel if there's interest.

SEE: KEN CREATE PART 2

Holy Christ.

"Reverend X" is perhaps the greatest potty-mouthed preacher I've ever seen.

Faith Center.

CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE SLIDESHOW.
A recent contract job I had with a NYC non-profit hunger advocacy group took me to some crazy places all over the five boroughs. Like this fabulous church basement in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.

A Lot of Dick's in my Pants.

I'm just over six feet tall. After college, in 2001, I weighed 180lbs. I had for several years. By 2006 I weighed 255. Today I'm hovering at 205 and drilling holes in my belts. These pants used to be tight on me.

I had reached the point of not being able to find my size in NYC. First I noticed at Express, when shopping for some wedding clothes. Then Zara, then the Levi's store, then H&M. In the summer of 2006 at my peak weight, I actually resorted to buying a pair of jeans (size 40) at WalMart in Missouri on a trip to see my older sister graduate from Army boot camp.

So why did I gain 75 pounds in six years? It was a lot of alcohol, food and SSRIs. Plus turning 30 I guess, whatever that means. I got so depressed in Seattle (2001) that my doctor at the Pike Market free clinic put me on Wellbutrin. I also started to self-medicate with wine and Belgian beer. And food. Lots of food. Tim's jalepeño potato chips were a favorite. Also "Beer Bites" from Uli's sausage stand at the Pike Market.

And I was eating out a lot, especially on weekends. Glo's on Capitol Hill, The Cyclops, The Crocodile, and Macrina Bakery in Belltown. Lunch and dinner options were innumerable: Shiro's for sushi, Palace Kitchen for burgers, Than Brothers for Pho, Tiger Room for Thai, Mama's for Mexican. Zeek's Pizza, Green Cat Café when vegetarians came to town, Bimbo's Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen, Le Pichet, La Fontana and Mario's for Italian, Jojo Teriyaki, Le Panier bakery for pain au chocolat, Alibi Room for risotto, the Caesar at Rose Bud, hot dogs at the Seattle Center, scones at Bauhaus, donuts at Zeitgeist, Chinese at the Shanghai Garden in the ID, ridiculous sandwiches from Mario Batali's dad at Salumi, and of course Dick's! Oh God, Dick's!

I also was burning through nearly a bottle of wine a day from the Cost Plus near my apartment, stocking up on high-alcohol Belgian beers from the Stumbling Monk, eating crazy amounts of breads and cheeses at home, cooking gigantic meals and going out drinking with friends frequently. The Wellbutrin gave way to Zoloft which yielded to Lexapro, the anti-narcolepsy drug Provigil, Effexor XR, Stratera and finally good ol' Prozac.

Moving to NYC didn't change anything. Only a new and bigger list of food places and just as much booze and pills. So how did I lose 50 pounds in 2007 without stepping foot in a gym or doing a lick of exercise? No more fatty take out food, no morning baked goods, very basic lunches (an Odwalla bar and some carrots for example), portion control at home, no more soda, rarely any preserved or prepackaged foods and 0-1 drinks per day instead of 5.

I'm still overweight by about 20 pounds; might have to exercise after all. Blah.

AH HA HA HA!

Bushwick, Brooklyn.

I took these a few months ago on a hot day in Bushwick.
CLICK TO VIEW FULL-SIZE SLIDESHOW.

Is it Road Rage if You're Walking?

So one fine Seattle morning I was strolling down 5th Ave. to my horrible government job at the world's 2nd ugliest office tower (the ugliest is a few blocks from it). Each morning I'd get coffee from the stand on the corner of 5th and Columbia. Coffee stands in Seattle are very popular and people wait in line a very long time for a perfect drink. Oh, and when I say "coffee," I mean an espresso drink of some variety. Mine was the Americano: 2 shots of espresso in a large cup topped off with hot (near boiling) water.

Well, upon getting my coffee, I shuffled off to cross the street. I had the light and stepped into the street when a big fancy Mercedes lays on his horn and starts edging into me from behind and left. He was making a right turn and I was 'in his way.' He was feverishly pointing out that I had a 'flashing red hand' signal.1 Huh.

So I did what anyone would do and pounded my fist on his hood, at which point he rolled his window down and started swearing up and down at me. So I did what anyone would do and spritzed some coffee at him through his open window. Enough came through the hole in my coffee lid to dot his fancy suit.

He grabbed for his coffee Thermos and tried doing the same, but came up a few feet short. So I did what anyone would do and got him again with my coffee.2 Only this time the lid came off.

To simply say that the guy's head was bathed in scalding coffee wouldn't do. His suit was ruined, his face was probably melting off, his foot relaxed from the brake and his car drifted onto the sidewalk silently, coming to rest with the driver hunched over the wheel.

So I did what anyone would do and trotted off to work with a little spring in my step. I sure showed him! A few minutes later I felt sick to my stomach and wondered just what the fuck I had done/become. That's around the time I started on anti-depressants. Unfortunately things would get worse before they got better.


End notes:

1. People in Seattle actually stay put on the curb once the 'red hand' starts flashing. Even if tumbleweeds are blowing across the street and there are no cars within blocks. Maybe it's because the SPD writes a ridiculous number of jaywalking tickets.
2. I hadn't had my coffee yet, obviously.
   

Do You Know Who I Am?

Poor Little Fool.

About the time I started college I began to not believe in things. I had an Ancient History teacher at Augsburg College named Rick Nelson who often cautioned against accepting historical "facts" at face value. There were so many points of failure when attempting to learn about history: political revisions (including lies), details lost in translation or interpolated incorrectly from incomplete records (or even from paintings or other physical artifacts), technology used in dating that can be less than accurate; the list goes on.

Then came other courses: Logic, Argumentation, Media Ethics, Public Speaking, each with its own new way to pick and sort facts and formulate interpretations. Each teaching a strange new precision: precision in the Humanities.

Since receiving my Journalism degree in the winter of 2000 (at age 26), I've been unable to believe in much that can't be proven. I must have been in the perfect malleable, freshman state when I walked into that Ancient History class and I'm sure Rick Nelson knew that. He was an incredibly nice old man, loved all around campus, but sometimes I think he ruined my life.

It was like I was suddenly cursed with the ability to see in another dimension. Like those irritating Magic Eye illustrations in the 90's that suddenly popped out at me when I finally learned to dislocate my eyes.

Magic Eye flap copy:

"Stare into these seemingly abstract fields of color, and an enchanting 3D image will materialize, all from an abstract, seemingly random field of color!

Once you discover your Magic Eye, a whole new world of experience will open to you. You will be astounded by the depth and clarity of the totally hidden image that develops before you like an instant photo! Discover and train your gift of deep vision!"

I discovered my co-worker in the college's A/V department was a pathological liar. And so was my friend Matt who I'd met that year. Everyone had ulterior motives, nothing was as advertised, everything was a trick, nothing deserved to be taken at face value unless it was undoubtedly simple and true. Like hobos, 78s, my Navy pea coat, and my Polaroid camera.

I became extremely critical of everything, especially advertising and art. I spent hours at the Hard Times Café on Riverside Avenue taking a Hi-Liter to my hard-back copy of the Warren Commission's report on the assassination of JFK. I scribbled little notes in the margins like "why?" and "doubtful."

I'd take breaks to play backgammon with homeless guys while they blew smoke everywhere. The large windows out to the street were foggy and icy against the Minneapolis night air. I drank lots of strong coffee even late at night and I had dread-locked hair.