- I really want to write one of those entries I write about just 4 or 5 random things that are on my mind. I’ve wanted to write an entry like that all day and yet, as I finally get the chance, I have sat down in front of the keyboard and have blanked on all the things I wanted to write about. I figured if I just started, stuff would start coming to me. Oh hey–it looks like Ed Kowalczyk is back as the lead singer of LIVE–that’s pretty extraordinary. I mean this was a band that was SERIOUSLY BROKEN UP. Like, much, much animosity. I would have ranked them very near the bottom on lists of bands that might get back together. But it’s excellent news. Whether you are into their music or not, if you see them live in concert it’s challenging not to admit they are one of the most electrifying acts out there. I never saw LIVE with Ed’s replacement–I bet he’s great, but like so many bands that replace the lead singer, it’s simply not the same band. I can’t wait to hear more about what’s going on in the LIVE camp.
- Speaking of camp–have you ever gone camping? Karla, the boy, and I camped out in my dad’s back yard last summer, but aside from that, I’ve never really been camping, like in the woods. We were close to almost “getting into” camping last year, and then somehow it just faded from our view.
- I need here to give a shout-out to Harrisburg’s gem of a book store, the Midtown Scholar. Although it is far from a secret, it also rarely gets the credit it deserves; this is a truly GREAT book store–as its name implies, it specializes in more academic or artistic fare, but it does have contemporary fiction, etc. The store is truly enormous; the basement just goes on and on. There is a quite good coffee shop, lots of places to sit, an outdoor balcony overlooking midtown Harrisburg, a huge collection of film, music and poetry books, tons of art monographs, and even a rare book room with books from as far back as the 17th century and a keen collection of art prints. I could literally spend days–and thousands of dollars–there. What perplexes me greatly is that somehow, I had never been there (and barely heard of it) before moving to Harrisburg; this despite the fact that it is about two blocks from the indie movie theater I used to frequent constantly when I lived in Carlisle. All I can say is, I’m tremendously happy to have found it now, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone from the area who hasn’t been there.
- Speaking of art–I was in the Scholar for Small Business Saturday and found my first ever art book focusing on the Ashcan School of artists; over the past year it has become clear to me that this entire group of artists is really my true passion when it comes to painting (although I still have other loves, ie Rousseau, Vermeer, Eakins, etc). But the Ashcans and their use of color, broad brush strokes that approached but stopped short of impressionism, and their tendency to focus on urban scenes as a means to reveal human nature–really speak to my core. If you’ve never heard of them and have an interest in art, I can not recommend highly enough Googling the works of John Sloan, Robert Henri, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Schinn, and George Bellows. I love Maurice Prendergast but it is often debated whether he qualifies as “Ashcan”.
- I like ice hockey.
Archive for reading
Throwing Copper, Tenty-Went, H-Burg Gem, Ashcan Love Puck
Posted in real life, Uncategorized with tags art, ashcan, dad, ed kowalczyk, harrisburg, hockey, john sloan, Karla, live, reading, sports, the boy on November 30, 2016 by sethdellingerBadass Harrisburg, Media vs. Trump, Eraser, Alexander Supertramp
Posted in Prose, Rant/ Rave, real life, Snippet with tags central pennsylvania, culture, harrisburg, Into the Wild, literature, media, music, politics, Radiohead, reading on October 28, 2016 by sethdellingerIt has now been over a year and a half since we moved to Harrisburg. Like every time I’ve made a large move, it’s been interesting how at first there is a large amount of culture shock, and then just a few weeks or months later, it’s almost like you’ve always lived there. It’s hard to imagine there was a time that I lived in Philadelphia, or Erie, or Carlisle. It’s hard to imagine there was a time when I actually could not imagine moving back to Central Pennsylvania. Did I ever actually move away from here? But also, the first time I lived here, I couldn’t have imagined living in Harrisburg, but now it seems the natural center of this area. Harrisburg gets a bad rap from many people, for those are people who are afraid of it, or have never spent much time in it. Granted, it is a city with its troubles, both financial and otherwise. There are plenty of areas that are downtrodden, poor, and wanting of many of the services that the surrounding areas take for granted. But there is a lot to love here, and plenty of neighborhoods that you can feel safe in, and with nice modern housing. There’s more than enough to do, more than enough beautiful views, and a vibrant arts scene. In fact, there are more things that we have not been able to do than those we have been able to do. And it seems clear to me that the city is still on the move. I know there have been lots of stories over the decades about the revitalization of Harrisburg, but this time it does seem legitimate. The independent music scene, hipster coffee shops, art galleries opening all over the place. Even a vegan coffee shop close to the state capitol building! There’s a lot to love here, and although there are certainly times when I’m riding my bike down a side street here that I miss being right in the middle of traffic on Broad Street in Philadelphia, there’s also something to be said for walking out of my job every night, looking to my right, and seeing the beautiful Capitol Dome less than a mile away, or walking my dog six blocks and being along the Susquehanna River Trail, almost always as the sun sets.
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The fact is, the system IS rigged against Trump, in the sense that the media (hold up; did I say the MEDIA?? You hate the media, don’t you? [I’m probably not talking to YOU here, but to about 30 people on my Facebook who bitch more about the media than the atrocities they report on} But what is it you are talking about, when you say “the media”? It’s an institution with hundreds of thousands of outlets, platforms, and systems, and it’s actually one of the best things about our country–one of the things that really DOES keep us free. But see, you gotta do some work, too. You have to sift through some things, figure out what sources you trust, the nuances of how to best receive information from the media, and where and when you receive it. You have to READ things. Hey, quick–who’s your favorite columnist? Don’t have one? How do you HATE the media when you’ve never really consumed it to begin with? Stop being lazy. The American freedom of press truly does set us apart–and I’m not one for “American Exceptionalism”. But yeah–most of the media operates by making a profit, so be careful, and above all READ things. And it does make a difference if it’s printed on paper; it’s harder to trick your eye into only reading the “interesting” stuff or items you already agree with. Just read the news. Hating and callously dismissing “the media” is just active laziness. And memes are not the media. FYI) are not obligated to report on an aspiring despot who would end the American experiment like it was no big deal. The “media”–contrary to what many seem to think–are not obligated to be neutral observers of facts only at all times. They are to report facts, yes–but also interpret them (again, this is where understanding media nuance will serve you well: there ARE places you can go for just fact, and places you can go for opinion, and places you can go for analysis. If you go to one place expecting it to be something it isn’t, you might think it’s corrupt, when in fact you’re just a novice). So yes, the media are biased against Trump because they are reporting on a man who would destroy our nation–and harm the world. And it is not their DUTY to remain neutral. The media IS biased–but not against Trump; they’re biased against evil.
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I wasn’t ready for Thom Yorke’s solo album, The Eraser, when it came out in 2006. I was baffled by it, listened to it twice, and put it away–not knowing if it was bad or I was daft. I put it in on a whim today and it turns out I am ready for it.
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Two nights ago, I got to meet Jon Krakauer, an author who is currently among America’s top 3 or 4 nonfiction authors. I’ve admittedly only read two of Jon’s books–“Into the Wild” being his most famous book and a work that has touched my life very deeply. In it, Krakauer tells the story of Christopher McCandless, who left a very comfprtable and promising life, wandered the country with little to no money and no contact with anyone for over a year, eventually hiking into the Alaskan wilderness where he would eventually die. Chris’s story is complex and multi-layered–it can’t be reduced to one single element. When I was at very low points in my life–still drinking and in deep depressions–Chris’s decision to disappear and walk into the wild until he died appealed to me. Later, sober and happy, other elements of Chris’s philosophy and his journey resonated with me. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to a man he met on his sojourn across the country. The man–who had been deeply affected by a month or so he spent with Chris–received the postcard after Chris died:
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” –Christopher McCandless
While it was McCandless whose story has so impacted me, Krakauer’s decision to tell it, and the respect he gave the story, resonated. In the many years since “Into the Wild” was published, Chris’s story has become of major import to a growing legion of people who find something inspiring about him, and Krakauer does not shy away from his role as a steward of the story. It was an intense honor to meet him.
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The sun goes up, the sun goes down. The wind begins to whistle through branches now bare with late months. The sky grays, the wind grays, everywhere color mutes, curls into itself. Even the insects look at you with worry.
The Past is a Melted Glacier
Posted in Prose with tags Erie, harrisburg, history, Karla, Lake Erie, past, Presque Isle, reading, river, shackleton, summer, the national on June 23, 2015 by sethdellingerThe section of the Susquehanna River that flows past Harrisburg has, by far, the most bridges in close proximity I’ve ever seen in my life. At one point the vehicle, train, and pedestrian bridges are so close to each other, you might be tempted to think immense, 300-foot-high mirrors have been slid behind some of them. The reflection off the water only heightens the effect. When one first encounters and really ponders them, many natural questions follow. Why so many, so close? How did this come to pass? The city, the river, and the bridges have, I suspect, a long tale to tell.
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It is this time of year that I am most alive. I can feel the air buzzing around me, the close buzzing of air and oxygen and the thickness of invisible moisture. All-everywhere life is springing forth, preparing to display its full self. Today I was simply unable to stay indoors, needing to feel the pavement under my bicycle wheels, exploring this city which I have always kind of known but never known, letting the sun warm up my skin, feel my pigment change shade. I was made for heat.
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Once every few years I become immersed for a few weeks in one of my minor tangential interests, early polar exploration. It’s not something I’m interested in enough to become an expert, or to have it be a true hobby, but it’s definitely something that intrigues me, for reasons I don’t quite understand. I have a special interest in Franklin’s lost expedition and the great adventure of Shackleton’s Endurance. I just finished reading the definitive book on Shackleton’s journey, “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing. I finished the last two thirds of it in a breathless sprint today, in coffee shops and under the summer sky by the river. My brain is filled with polar agony, soaked horsehair sleeping bags, salt water-filled mouths, brittle frozen beards. The thing that I always find in these tales is that despite some of the hardest and most intense human suffering you can imagine, they are always filled with joy, hope, and celebration. And also mystery, and the idea of being somewhere nobody else has ever been, or probably will ever be again, and the vast majestic mystic magical landscape, in a world that doesn’t give a shit about you. So yeah, cherry stuff. Good summer reading.
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In the quiet moments that I have, I’ve always spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating the bigger issues of the universe. Time, past, memory, and the nature of oneself. Not to sound hoity-toity, that is just what I do. Lately I have found myself mesmerized by the change that has occurred in the recently, and suddenly. I spent most of my adult life espousing the fact that being alone was my best gateway into the secrets of the universe. And I’m not backtracking now, I’m not saying I was wrong. Just that maybe these long years alone were perfectly setting me up to best experience the other side of the coin. Now I can see that living with a partner, child, and, yes, a dog, are enlightening parts of myself I’ve never even seen or thought of before. In the best possible ways, I don’t even know who I am anymore.
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Karla and I were taking a walk through our new neighborhood the other day, when we walked past an ornately and oddly built and designed church, sporting in huge block letters across the front PLACE OF PRAYER FOR ALL PEOPLE. We stopped to look at it and talk about its unique brickwork and design, when we noticed the two large angel statues at the top of the building on either side of the minaret. They were odd-looking men (both were identical). Unlike most religious imagery on most ornate churches, the faces of these male angels looked…modern. Like some dude you might see in the mall. But there was something else strange about them that we couldn’t quite put our finger on. Then it dawned on me. I turned to Karla and said, It looks just like George Carlin. After a moment’s hesitation, Karla burst out laughing. It was undeniable.
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I’m actually dictating this blog entry into my cell phone, while sitting on a bench in the black of night overlooking the vast but comprehendible Susquehanna River. It’s a warm night, warm enough for the bugs to be nibbling at my legs, but the breeze off of the river is calming and cooling, drying my sweat off my skin enough to keep me temperate. It reminds me of summer days and evenings in Erie, a period of my life that is not that long ago, but is also quite different than recent. The temperature and the breeze transport me right inside my 2008 Saturn Aura, with the windows down driving down Peninsula Drive, heading out onto Presque isle, the peninsula that juts out into Lake Erie, making it also the northernmost point in the state of Pennsylvania. On one side you have Presque Isle Bay, the safe harbor formed by the city of Erie and the peninsula, and as you drive your car around the tip of the peninsula, it opens up to the vast lake, a body of water that climbs to the horizon like a mountain, not unlike an Arctic ice floe. I remember the wind through my car, the heat and humidity, the breeze off the water, an enormous plastic cup of Dunkin’ Donuts caramel iced coffee, the sugar crunching at the bottom as my straw tapped it, The National’s “Squalor Victoria” blasting out of my stereo. It was quite a day, and quite a period in my life. But that guy, he and I don’t stay in touch anymore. I don’t know him. There’s a new me here to discover. The past is a melted glacier.
Sack Races Can Blank My Blank
Posted in Philly Journal, Rant/ Rave, Snippet, Uncategorized with tags culture, exercise, gender issues, music, reading, war on drugs on October 10, 2014 by sethdellinger1. It should be noted that, a mere two days ago, I did in fact participate in two sack races at a picnic. That’s right, on some occasions, folks are still doing sack races. But the important part: I totally owned my competition both times. I won by landslides. I say this to gloat. Because it is a rare moment indeed in my life when I find myself vanquishing opponents in any physical competition whatsoever–including leisure sports like pool and bowling. So yeah. Apparently I rule at sack racing. However, it should also be duly noted that even now, 48 hours later, my lower abs hurt like crazy! And I have been working my abs in workouts for a few weeks, so it’s not just from using unused muscles…there is something about sack races that MURDERS the abs, but especially, like…the very bottom ones. I’m a scientist.
2. You know who reads a lot? Homeless people. I’m not making some tasteless joke here, I’m serious. At least in Philadelphia, whenever I see homeless people, I would say 50% of the time, they are reading something, and not always a newspaper, but often books. I hear what some of you are about to say: They sure have plenty of free time to read! Well sure, and I’m not sure what my point is with this, but it seemed like an observation worth making. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
3. So there are these two bands I like (don’t stop reading yet, this isn’t actually about the bands). The bands are The War on Drugs and Sun Kil Moon. Both bands are fairly recent discoveries for me. Over the past month, a very odd “feud” has developed between these bands (who, while both “indie” bands, are not bands that would typically be grouped together or thought of at the same time). The were both playing the same festival, on different stages, at the same time, and apparently War on Drugs’ sound was drowning out the sound of Sun Kil Moon. Now, Sun Kil Moon is basically one guy, Mark Kozelek, a very outspoken eccentric who often makes waves in the indie community. Kozelek writes great songs, then gets other folks to play them with him and calls that band Sun Kil Moon. The War on Drugs is just a band. Anyway, so War on Drugs is too loud for Mark Kolezek and he gets pissed at them, for some reason, and he says something like this onstage: “This next song is called ‘The War on Drugs Can Suck My Fucking Cock”. Now, to make a really long story somewhat short: the indie music press loves feuds (who doesn’t?) and reported on this idiotic stage banter promptly, and Kozelek being the guy he is, he just kept making the problem worse and being extremely mean to War on Drugs for months now; for their part, War on Drugs has stayed mostly silent, seeing as they did truly nothing. Sun Kil Moon went as far as to release, last week a song called “War on Drugs: Suck My Cock”. You can read very interesting reporting from the feud as it went down here, or here, or here.
ANYWAY, here is what I want to talk about: the very first time I read that story, I winced at Kozelek’s choice of words. Suck my cock, while a slam I may have directed at many a male friend of mine over the years, is not a way I would choose to talk to today. I don’t want to say I am evolved or enlightened, but I think it would be fair to say I am certainly MORE evolved or enlightened about this topic than I used to be. The topic, as far as I can generally state it, is men using subtle violence and aggression in every day life to perpetuate the patriarchal society we’ve all come to inhabit; even as women gain a more visible foothold toward equality, men still casually sit with their legs wide open on trains, depriving women of proper legroom (your cock isn’t that big, guys), we use terms associated with the female anatomy to mean negative things (what does it mean when you so viciously call another person a pussy as if it is the last thing on earth you’d like to be?). Men gawk at women as they walk past on the street as though nobody can tell–or that nobody should care. And men like Mark Kozelek–ostensibly a very artistic, extremely intelligent man who skirts the edges of our culture in a way that one would assume means he’d be more enlightened–uses the language of male aggression to another man; the suggestion of this language goes deep (NO PUN FREAKIN’ INTENDED) and does more than hint at a latent hatred for homosexuality, not to even begin exploring what a mean-spirited “suck my cock” says about the speaker’s opinion about the women who, one would assume, have done so to him willingly.
Look, I know this line of thought seems “out there” to some people, maybe a little too new-agey. Being a male in today’s culture isn’t easy. We still want to treat women nice and be chivalrous, but it’s tough to do that and play the equality game. I get that. We’re not always going to be perfect at it; ours is a culture in the middle of change, and it’s tough to keep up with that as individuals. But really, at core, it’s easy. Treat everyone correctly, and realize that language is also action. The things couched in what you say are real and have meaning, not just academically, but to your listeners. Realize that your actions in public, even if they seem benign–looking, where you sit or stand, things you say within earshot–can still reek of male supremacy. Go ahead and hold the door open for your sweetheart (unless she’s told you to bugger off with that shit), but make sure you’re both standing beside each other at the Starbucks register. Don’t be a fucking asshole. What are your thoughts?
4. As much as Mark Kozelek has pissed me off with his War on Drugs feud, his song (as Sun Kil Moon) “Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes” off this year’s new album Benji, is one of the best songs I’ve heard, not just this year, but in years:
5. I like a lot of stuff. I think I have made that fairly clear over the years. And most people know that I love backscratchers. But nobody has ever bought me a really good backscratcher. #justsayin
Philly Journal, 7/24/14
Posted in Philly Journal, Photography with tags pennsport, philadelphia, photography, reading, summer on July 24, 2014 by sethdellingerIt is not unusual for me to throw whatever current book or magazine or newspaper I am reading into a backpack and bike to one of the city’s parks or otherwise unique public spaces to do some outdoor reading. I was just about to do that this evening, when I realized that I always go pretty far away to do this–usually the mile and a half or two miles toward Center City to hang out in one of the more illustrious or famous public spaces. There are tons of parks near me, but these are actual parks, used by the residents who are regular folks! I suppose I’ve stayed away from them not only because they are less interesting, but because I have typically felt like an outsider at them. But this evening I took my book straight to Mifflin Square Park, by far the closest park to my house, at only 5 blocks away. Mifflin Square Park is unique in that it is bordered on two of its four sides by the largest population of Cambodian residents in the state of Pennsylvania. Not everyone who uses this park is Cambodian, but I would say 80% of the folks there are in fact Cambodian. Like, first-generation, speaking-Cambodian folks. It wasn’t my first time there, but it was my first time spending any significant amount of time there. It was nice! Very pleasant folks (except the group of white teenagers sitting a bench next to me who were smoking weed). I took some pictures that you might find pretty interesting:
The Scent of Bitter Almonds, and etc, etc.
Posted in Rant/ Rave, Snippet with tags billhanna, culture, dad, history, internet, literature, love, mail, movies, past, philip seymour hoffman, reading, sister, sports on April 24, 2014 by sethdellinger1. Nothing says “I’m a boring person” quite like posting pictures of your alcoholic beverage to Facebook. Seriously. You went out to a bar or club and you think the interesting thing that is supposed to happen is the drink itself? Uninteresting, repetitive pictures of the person you’re with, or even another selfie, are more interesting than a beverage in a glass. We’ve got the whole internet, and you want us to look at a beverage.
2. I’ve brought this up before, but I just have to keep digging at this one. Why are there two kinds of screws and screw drivers, ie flat head and Philips head? I’m not over here like, meh, there should only be one kind! I am confident there are very good reasons for there being multiple kinds of screws, but I just for the life of me can’t figure out what those reasons are. Anyone with any insight, please comment!
3. War is terrible, but man, for a nation so young, we’ve had two very interesting wars! I’ll be damned if the Revolution and the Civil War aren’t two of the most amazing stories ever told.
4. With Philip Seymour Hoffman dead, the greatest actor of this generation (ie the generation currently the correct age to play the most interesting parts in the kind of films that get made the majority of the time) is James Franco. Discuss.
5. I get pretty tired of taking the trash out. I mean, we really just have to keep doing this?
6. Look at this picture of my dad and sister on vacation in Brigantine, NJ in 1980. What’s not to love about this picture? I want to sit on a porch listening to that radio, wearing those socks, next to a child dressed like that:
7. I recently asked a few friends of mine which baseball team they would like, if they had only to consider the teams uniforms/ colors and logo. Where you grew up and your previous loyalty should be not considered. I got a few interesting answers—Billhanna said the Astros, which was a damned good answer. My answer? The Marlins or Blue Jays.
8. Gabriel Garcia Marquez died this week. He is one of my (and many others’) favorite novelists. His most famous book is “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, which I love, but my favorite book of his is “Love in the Time of Cholera”, a book about a man who is obsessed/in love with one woman for his whole life, and dedicates his whole life to being with her. It sounds creepy, and at times, it is, but what I love so much about it is that it is the only work of art in any medium that I have ever encountered that treats the obsessive side of love with the tender and insightful kind of care that most people reserve for “romantic” love. It is a game-changer of a book. Here is the first sentence from that book: “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
9. I understand you didn’t ask for my postcard or letter in the mail, and I understand, in this day and age, you’re not really sure how to respond to such antiquities. I really don’t care too much. Ideally you’d send a letter back, but I’m not expecting that. You can ignore it. That’s fine, you didn’t ask for it. You can text me a response, which is the main thing people do, and that’s fine, if a bit gaudy. But please, please…don’t post a picture of it on Facebook.
10. What about this?
You Can’t Buy Me Happiness, but You Can Buy Me Fraggle Rock
Posted in Philly Journal with tags art, happiness, hitchcock, movies, neil young, philadelphia, Philip Larkin, poetry, reading, television, winter on February 15, 2014 by sethdellingerI sure am happy right now. I’m going through an extended period of inner peace, tranquility, and contentment. It rules! I’m not trying to get all new-agey, or brag about my emotional state. The fact is, I’m often pretty content, at least moreso than most people (with, as I have noted at length on my blog, a steady undercurrent of fear of death and general despair that has been with me always and always shall
remain…but it’s usually a little out of sight…my main operating mode is usually “happy”). I just note this extended happy period here because it seems so very unusual for most of humanity. This is only based on my very unscientific casual observations. But even folks who most would describe as happy are, frankly, pretty unhappy. Or at least uncomfortable, or full of worry or self-doubt or fear. Isn’t it strange how difficult it can be for us to 
be happy? Oy vey. I got tempted to go super-deep on the subject there, but I’ll resist it. I think it is impossible to go deep on this subject without sounding like a douchebag. I just want to note that I’m super happy. Tranquil is an even better word. I’m under no impression that my life is always going to be easy or that things will stay like they are now, but I’m tranquil with that notion.
That being said, this winter sure does suck. I know I know, someone wants to tell me It’s winter, what do you expect??? Well you see, here’s the thing: winter is uncomfortable. Physically. I do not like the sensation it creates upon my general 
physical being. So yes, although I am certainly aware that winter is coming, and I know what it is going to be like, that foreknowledge does not lessen it’s wretched impact upon me. I mean seriously, why does it keep snowing??? What kind of winter thinks it needs to snow this much?? Or be this consistently cold? It’s all pretty lame. Oh hey, also, look at this painting, “Chilly Observation”, by Charles Sidney Raleigh:
Another note on my happiness (and again, I’m not trying to get all zen on you here, I’m just thinking out loud. Except not literally out loud. I guess I’m thinking publicly), I’ve noticed lately I’m getting much less satisfaction from the acquisition of material goods. Despite all my cultural philosophizing, I don’t think I’ve ever denied that I derive a lot of pleasure from buying or acquiring things. Not big-ticket items, usually. Most of my life I’ve just loved getting more and more books and music and movies and things like that. And just random consumer goods. Hats. 
Backscratchers. Wall art. Random shit like that. Well anyway, lately, I’m getting less and less pleasure from acquisition. I suspect part of this is because of my natural tranquility right now, so I don’t have to supplement my happiness with the artificial high of stuff. but I also think that I might just kind of have enough stuff, finally. For one man, I have ALOT of books, records, DVDs, and the massive amount of random crapola that life in America will allow you to encircle yourself with. I have so much stuff (note that I am passionate about most of it and find it delightful; I’m not knocking my actual stuff) that I can’t begin to properly enjoy most of it. So I might need to chill on acquisition for a bit and start really paying attention to what I already have.
(although take note, I still really need some books by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a vinyl copy of Neil Young’s “Mirrorball”, one of these, a really nice digital camera, the complete series of “Fraggle Rock” on DVD [I aint joking about that, and it’s getting pretty affordable], Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” on Blu-Ray, that really nice 
hardbound version of the collected “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books that Barnes and Noble sells, an Ilya Bryzgalov Philadelphia Flyers jersey [even though he doesn’t play for the team anymore…oh and size Large], early editions of the individual collections of Philip Larkin’s poetry [specifically, I’m thinking about “The Whitsun Weddings” and “The North Ship”…first editions only, really, anything else is useless], a year-long membership to the Barnes Gallery…oh I guess there is still some stuff I need…)
Washington and Lafayette
Posted in Rant/ Rave, Snippet with tags friends, history, reading on February 8, 2013 by sethdellingerFor the last few months, I’ve been slowly trodding through Ron Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of George Washington, Washington: A Life. I love biographies, especially “life” biographies (meaning books that trace a person’s life from beginning to end, as opposed to some biographies that focus on a specific time in a person’s life, like the very hip Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals ) because full-life biographies not only allow you to see the amazing or substantial things that person did, but also allow you to see how their life, like just about everyone’s life, is kinda sorta like yours, no matter when they lived or what they did.
George Washington’s life was certainly very different than mine, at least as far as its “plot” is concerned. But in many ways, it was very similar. He had obsessions, failures, doubts, triumphs. Women he could never get, purchases he could never make, expecations he wrestled with, and the insidious pallor of mortality. Reading Chernow’s biography–widely considered the most accurate yet written–is really making the man come alive for me, and I’m finding this book to be not only very informative, but quite surprisingly emotional.
One of George Washington’s best friends was French general Marquis de Lafayette (Gilbert to his pals), one of if not the largest French figure of the American Revolution. Layfayette was 25 years younger than Washington–he was only 19 years old when he came to our young nation to help us win our independence, and at first, Washington played the role of a mentor to the young Frenchman. But by war’s end–a war that certainly had to be one of the most emotional and amazing experiences in the history of mankind, and the participants were far from unaware of its immense magnitute—Washington and Lafayette had become great friends and equals. A portrait of Lafayette hung in Washington’s parlor in Mount Vernon.
I tell you all this so I can put in here a passage I just read that moved me to tears. It felt odd to be moved to tears by a biography of George Washington, but this is why I love history so much. There were real people doing extraordinary things.
After all the incredible things these men had been through together in the war, there was a time of relative tranquility, before Washington knew he would become president, when he was looking forward to just farming his land in Virginia and resting. Lafayette visited him for an extended stay, but eventually, it came time for him to go back to France. This almost certainly meant the two close friends would never see each other again. Ocean crossings were no small deal in those days. Washington rode half the way from Virginia to Philadelphia (where he’d be sailing from) with Lafayette, and somewhere along the road, the two men said goodbye.
A short while later, back at Mount Vernon, Washington wrote Lafayette a letter (they never would see each other again, by the way). The portion of the letter that moved me so is as follows:
In the moment of our seperation upon the road, as I traveled and every hour since, I felt all that love, respect, and attachment for you with which length of years, close connection, and your merits have inspired me. I often asked myself, as our carriages distended, whether that was the last sight I should ever have of you? And though I wished to say no, my fears answered yes. I called to mind the days of my youth and found they had long since fled to return no more; that I was now descending the hill I had been 52 years climbing; and that though I was blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short-lived family and might soon expect to be entombed in the dreary mansions of my fathers. These things darkened the shades and gave a gloom to the picture, consequently to my prospects of seeing you again. Know, my friend, that I have loved you true, and my life stands altered for it. But I will not repine—I have had my day.
Like a Guilty Chimney
Posted in Memoir with tags addiction, alcoholism, CoryW., ee cummings, literature, memory, poetry, reading, writing on April 8, 2012 by sethdellingerI was meandering around my apartment a few days ago, terribly close to feeling, for one split second, bored. It was terrifying; there is, for me, almost no worse sensation, and I’ve been successful for years in avoiding it. To head it off, I walked over to one of my more neglected bookshelves and started nosing through books from my distant past.
I was almost immediately confronted with an unexpected sight: my own handwriting, on the inside cover of a book. And then the memory came flooding back: during a sizeable period of my 20s, I did a lot of writing inside of books.
First, I like to write things, as readers of my blog know. And I’m not referring to the creative writing aspect of my interests, I mean I just like to write. Even now, I fill notebooks with meaningless lists and jibber-jabber. I’ve always been a writer-downer. But during my mid-twenties—after I began drinking very seriously as an alcoholic but before my life became a miserable unlivable mess—I went through a period of two or three years when a majority of my nights were spent at friends’ houses, or friends of friends’ houses, or the house of a friend’s out-of-town grandparents, or a house a co-worker was house-sitting. It wasn’t an unhappy time, just a time of listless drifting, half-hearted partying, and a fair amount of depravity.
For the majority of this time period, my faithful companion was a backpack, in which I kept my alcohol (White Tavern Gin, half gallon, almost always), clothes and/or toiletries if I had any, cigarettes, and whatever book I was currently reading. This was quite often all I had with me in foreign homes. And I often found myself the only person awake in these places. Granted, as an alcoholic, there was a lot of sleeping in my life, but you’d also be surprised how drunk a practiced alcoholic can get after a few years of really going at it. And so it was on many, many occasions, I found myself in homes where I felt slightly uncomfortable, often the only person awake very late at night, in complete silence for whatever reason (don’t wake the parents/wife, can’t figure out how to turn the TV on, cable bill didn’t get paid, or just plain no TV or stero to be found, etc), and after some time, I’d become largely too drunk to actually read the book I had with me. This is when I started writing inside my books—because they were the only thing I could find to write on, and I had little else to do.
Not everything I found on my bookshelf was a great example of these writings. Sometimes it was just me leaving these little markings for my future self, a little flag saying, “Hey! You liked this part!” I think it’s cute and optimistic. Here is a “flag” from my copy of Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22”:
(clicking on any of the photos, and then click it again when it re-loads, to see the full-size scan)
And here’s another one not quite from lonely drunken nights, but from a golden era in a relationship I had with a marvelous woman named Cory. We both took turns reading stories in the “Collected Short Stories” of Ray Bradbury. We devised a coding system in the table of contents. (there are 6 pages like this):
Now, for some of the “lonely night” book scribbling. Here is a poem I wrote inside my “Selected Poems” of E.E. Cummings (a book I must have owned for almost 20 years now, and I still consult nearly every month, but I didn’t know this poem was in the back of it until I checked for this blog entry). The text of the poem is this:
Richard Simmons is a terrible man.
He seems to be more happy than
a lazy sleeping noiseless cat
which doesn’t mind being fat.
Some incomprehensible blabber from the back cover of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. It looks like academic notation, although I never had to read it for school:
From C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain”. Also, there’s a phone number (I came across a lot of phone number’s written in books; this was before the cell phone). Anyone recognize the number?
For a time, I stayed in the basement of some friends of mine. This basement had zero entertainment modules in it…no television, radio, whatnot…in fact, it barely had light in it. But it did contain, most of the time, thousands of dollars in musical equipment: full drum kit, multiple guitars, 4-track recorders and all sorts of other gadgets and whirlygigs I never understood. That’s because this basement was the de facto practice space of a band called Post Vintage (one of my friends who lived at this place was the bassist), and let me tell you, I loved this band. Not just because my friend was in it or because I lived in their practice room, but because they ruled! (listen to their stuff here; they’re unfortunately no longer active.)
Anyway, this is all a very long way of telling you that, apparently, one night in this dark, quiet basement, I decided to write the lyrics to their song “Next at Seven” inside the front cover of my copy of Sylvia Plath’s “Collected Poems”. “Next at Seven”‘s lyrics are by Dave Peifer, whose solo work (as Isotope) can be heard here.
Anyway, this one kind of shocked me. I have no memory of doing this. Although I do distinctly recall having my Plath phase at the same time I lived in the basement here. Not, largely, a very happy time in my life.
But here, for me, is the one that really tickled me. A drunken poem (I can always tell when something I wrote was composed while intoxicated) inside the cover of Gregory Corso’s “Mindfield”. Corso is (I think he’s still alive) a Beat poet who I liked very much back then but not so much now. His poetry is also markedly different than the poem I wrote inside his book, which I think it interesting. But what’s most interesting to me is that I really like this drunken poem I wrote. That is very rare. I wrote like shit when I was drunk. But this one really seems to capture the whole feeling and environment I’ve descibed to you from this time period of my life: being the only person, awake and drunk in a house that I am unfamiliar with, and the subtext of sorrow and addiction I was feeling. This is the poem:
Upon finding myself too drunk to read
and too severed to cavort
with folks
I resign to my own posturing
amongst myselves
amidst sleeping zombie-me’s.
Twirling in this foreign apartment
thier slumbering noses
reflect the television screen
and I cannot find my shoes.
Like a guilty chimney I sit still.
Manic Panic
Posted in Rant/ Rave, Snippet with tags art, exercise, history, internet, magazines, movies, netflix, newspapers, reading, science, the national, weight loss on February 17, 2012 by sethdellingerI am currently in the midst of a months-long creative and intellectual mania. I often say I don’t have enough time in a day, but it has certainly never been more true than it is now.
I attribute this primarily to getting healthy and exercising; it definitely kickstarted an increase in energy, and a change in mood to the extreme end of “good”, and energy plus super good mood=extreme mania, and it’s lasting a long time. Which is good—damn good—but my lack of ability to do every single thing I want to is getting a little annoying. Let me describe a little better what the mania entails:
First and foremost, I want to do stuff constantly. Like, outside of the house stuff. It being winter, there are a limited amount of things to do, but I have lists of things I want to do when I have time, like “take pictures on Raspberry Street” or “tour the Watson-Curtze Mansion“, etc etc. When I do have time for activities such as this, it’s damn difficult deciding what to do.
Secondly, I have an enormous list of creative and artistic projects that I want to start, work on, or complete, and the list of projects itself has become a project. When I’m at work or out and about, I find myself typing ideas into my cell phone’s “notepad” for me to add to the project list when I get home. Hell, my list of potential blog entries alone is staggering. This aspect of the mania is the most frustrating, as I am getting more and more interesting and ambitious ideas and I simply don’t even have the time to start on most of them.
The mania is also driving up my appetite for media/ information consumption, even as the mania means I have less time to partake of that particular fountain. For many years now, most of you know, rather than watch much television, I’ve (through Netflix) watched, on average, one new movie a day. Even as my appetite for film continues to grow, my attention to other projects and interests is decreasing my time for them. And the mania has only increased my desire to read; I currently could probably read all day for four straight days and not get sick of it. Information, information, information, my mind screams at me. I currently have very little desire to read fiction (although, Mom, I really DO want to read that Stephen King book you sent me, and probably will start it in about 2 weeks). I read the Erie newspaper every day, and often stop somewhere for a USA Today, New York Times, or Wall Street Journal, depending on what’s happening in the world or if I heard about an article or feature in one of them from one of the websites I simply can’t stop reading thoroughly every day (Slate. Huffington Post. Oh, and Hacking Netflix and Deadline). And my magazine consumption, which I had finally whittled down in recent years, has skyrocketed during the mania. I can’t seem to read enough science writing. I currently read all of the “big three” science mags (Popular Science, Discover, and Scientific American; I’ve been a big Discover supporter for years but right now it’s just not enough), and it seems my hankering for history now bleeds over into magazines. America’s Civil War has been a mainstay on my bedside table recently, as have some oddballs such as Archaeology and The Saturday Evening Post. And these are all in addition to the standard entertainment, arts, news, and cultural magazines you’d expect me to be reading. Oh, and yes, I read books, too!
I have also taken quite a shine lately to just listening to music. I have found that, in most of my adult life, I have rarely simply sat down, doing nothing else, and listened to music intently. And now I have started doing it and it is changing my life. But where is the time???
Oh, and I have REALLY started to enjoy just puttering around my apartment, re-arranging things, finding new homes for this or that, hanging the artwork in new arrays, paging through my old books, putting old photos in little frames, etc etc.
In short, I literally do not have enough time in a day right now. I already start out with a deficit, working 50-60 hours a week. Then, remember, I’m spending between 8 and 12 hours a week in the gym, so there is potentially almost 80 hours unavailable a week. And then there’s sleep, at some point, and getting on the internet. I have essentially zero downtime. Please do not misunderstand me: I am loving this. I am in a constant good mood, and never even remotely close to being bored or sad. But damn. Who knew there could be so much to do (without, really, doing anything)? Also, this is a way of explaining to some of you how and why I might occasionally sound out of my mind, especially after a day that may have been devoted to intense, marathon bouts of reading, followed by writing or otherwise creating something incredibly personal and emotive, followed by going to a hockey game or something, and then back home to shower in the dark while The National plays on my stereo. It’s a whole lot of fun, but sometimes can make me a little crazy.
I anticipate things leveling off as my body continues to adjust to being some degree of healthy. But I just had to put it out there how wild and fun and jam-packed my life is at this point, even if it might not sound particularly fun to a lot of you, it is for me. And almost everything I’m doing or want to do is free or relatively cheap (not to mention my food budget being more than halved in recent months) so I’m actually saving a lot of money recently (concert-going has all but stopped, and there’s much less time to go to the movies now). How one starts saving money by doing more stuff is some sort of mystery!
Hey, have an awesome day!
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Posted in Uncategorized with tags america, henry miller, literature, reading on September 15, 2011 by sethdellingerFor about the past year, I have had a growing fondness bordering on obsession with the book “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” by Henry Miller. The book is difficult to categorize, but I would call it a book-length anti-American essay disguised as a travel memoir. Now, the words “Anti-American” may turn some people off, understandably. But see here: Miller wasn’t shy about disdaining our nation. And while I love America, I can often see many of Miller’s points. I don’t blindly love America. There is, in fact, plenty to loathe here.
What I love about the book is the true amazingness with which it is written. The whole book—all 288 pages of it—reads like an abrupt, out-of-breath poem about a trip Miller took across the US after his lengthy self-exile in Europe. Every page is in exquisite joy to read, even if you think Henry Miller should have shoved his Commie dick up his ass. And what really astounds me about this incredible work is that it is arguably his least-known work; you will not find it at Barnes and Noble. you have to order it! Gasp!
So anyway, I read the whole book a few times over the last year and just couldn’t stop being held in it’s spell. Then I started reading it aloud…and I have never turned back. Yes, I am a man who reads things aloud to myself at home. Sometimes, there’s just nothing like it. But it’s usually poetry. Once I started thinking of “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” as poetry, there was no looking back!
Of course, then I had the idea of recording myself reading it for a blog (just the first chapter) and despite my complete knowledge that nobody would care and it would make me look like a weirdo, I just HAD to do it. I assure you, this was just for my enjoyment; I never had any illusions that this would be of value to any of my readers.
If you ARE feeling frisky, go ahead and start listening. You might just like it enough to order the book! But be forewarned, even this first chapter reading is VERY long. But I am a damned good reader and you’re bound to enjoy my audible interpretation.
Believe it or not!
Posted in Photography, Prose, Uncategorized with tags Appalachia, driving, kyle, list, literature, lyrics, mom, movies, music, newville, photography, reading, spring, the band, vonnegut on April 6, 2011 by sethdellinger1. I almost forgot to mention, about my recent trip home: I had more fun riding around aimlessly in a car with my momma for two hours than I would have had on a round-the-world cruise. Pure bliss.
2. I stopped for dinner at this small town of Zelienople for dinner yesterday. I Facebook’d and Tweeted it just because I thought it was a cool town name and a rather adorable tiny, town-that-time-forgot kinda place. And of course 6 of my FB friends replied that they knew the town, and it led me eventually to IMDB and finding out that it was one of the filming locations of the original “Night of the Living Dead” (and a few other movies)…kinda crazy! Now I’ll have to go back sometime on purpose to sightsee the filming locations!
3. I love this line from a song by The Band: “Life is a carnival, believe it or not.” Ha! That shit is funny.
4. I am very annoyed that my buddy Kyle mentioned Tim Allen’s ubiquitous voice-over presence in a blog entry before I could. I’ve been bitching about it IRL for months!
5. Just about every day lately, I am reminded of this great line from one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most famous short stoires, “Harrison Bergeron”, which is set in the year 2081: “April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not quite being spring-time.” Good to know this was a problem in the fifties, when the story was written, and will continue to plague folks well into the 2080s.
In an effort to make the “You Would Not Survive a Vacation Like This” blog post a little shorter, I did not include the photos that I took in the countryside around my dad’s house in Newville. So now here some of them are:
Wednesday’s Picture
Posted in Photography with tags business, photography, reading on March 9, 2011 by sethdellinger
Borders means it when they have an “everything must go” sale!
Posted in Photography with tags business, history, humor, photography, reading on February 25, 2011 by sethdellinger
50 More Things from 2010
Posted in Uncategorized with tags animals, art, buffalo NY, cleveland, comic books, concert, culture, documentaries, ed kowalczyk, horror, humor, internet, john updike, literature, LOST, magazines, media, movies, music, newspapers, NPR, poetry, politics, radio, reading, redbox, religion, sports, television, the national, turningart on December 25, 2010 by sethdellingerDue to the severe limitations of “top ten lists”, as well as the sheer amount of crap I love each year, I’ve decided to institute this general list of 50 things I plain-old loved in 2010. Most will be things that did not appear on my music or movies list, as well as things created, released, or performed in 2010, but I’m not going to limit myself with actual ground rules. Here are, quite simply, in no particular order, 50 things I loved in 2010:
50. The New York Times
Hear hear for a newspaper that still dares to have sections devoted to important things like science, business, and art. I’ve found it difficult to spend less than two hours on a copy—even on a day like Tuesday.
49. Red Bull Cola
It will probably be a short-lived experiment, but the delicious and almost-natural cola from Red Bull was a tasty shot of adrenaline (even if it was overpriced).
48. Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Other Guys”.
The movie itself may have been lacking, but these two good sports’ 5 minutes of screen time made the enterprise worth the price of admission.
47. “Dancing with the Stars”
For awhile, I hated myself for this guilty pleasure, until I realized it was actually genuinely compelling television. Cynical hipster naysayers need to actually watch a season (I should know–I am a cynical hipster naysayer)
46. The segment on NPR’s “Whad’Ya Know? with Michael Feldman” where they listed fake WikiLeaks
Far and away the most I’ve ever laughed at the radio.
45. The new Ansel Adams photographs
Whether or not they are actually Ansel Adams’ is still in dispute—but they’re terrific photographs anyway
44. This.
43. “8: The Mormon Proposition”
The documentary that reveals (gasp!) how Prop 8 was engineered by the institution of the Mormon church. Enraging, and engaging.
42. VEVO on YouTube
Sure, this music channel on YouTube is 100% a corporate whore, but my year has been exponentially enhanced by concert footage of my favorite bands not shot by a drunk frat boy with a first generation iPhone.
41. James Franco’s “Palo Alto”
Franco’s collection of short stories is good—real good.
40. James Franco on “General Hospital”
Yeah, it’s on before I leave for work, so sue me if I watch it every now and then! Franco’s performance as–ahem–Franco was an over-the-top piece of performance art so nuanced (with nods to the real-world oddity of James Franco being on a soap opera) that I often found myself stunned something so lovely and sophisticated was happening on American daytime television.
39. James Franco in “127 Hours”
Portraying a not-so-likeable man within a bare-bones script who also has to cut off his own arm, Franco manages to make us like him, and makes us want to be better people, too.
38. James Franco’s art opening in New York
James Franco opened a gallery exhibit of his art in New York this year, and although not all of it is great, some of it is incredible, and it’s all very valid. To imagine a Hollywood star opening an art show he says–out loud–is about the “sexual confusion of adolescence” makes me think we may be living in a culture with, well…culture. See some of the art here.
37. James Franco in “Howl”
So, the movie kinda stinks, but Franco hits an underappreciated home run as the poet Allen Ginsburg, an unlikeable, grizzly gay man with so many conflicting character traits, it’s an amazing juggling act Franco had to do–and a bona fide joy to see. Also, John Hamm is in the movie, too!
36. Salvation Army Stores
Thanks to this discovery, the visual palette that is me (it seems absurd to call what I have a “fashion sense”) is evolving for the first time in a decade. (read: more sweaters)
35. Joel Stein’s column in TIME magazine
The most self-absorbed man in the newsmagazine business continues to get funnier, even as his subjects get more serious. Every week, I’m sure he’ll be arrested.
34. The Mac Wrap at McDonalds
I seem to be the only human alive not disgusted by this, either literally, morally, or some other, more etheral way. But I’m not disgusted. I’m delighted.
33. “Gimme Shelter” performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony by U2, Mick Jagger, and Fergie.
Rock and roll heaven. An absolute orgasm. And I don’t even like U2!
32. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Because even republicans want to get into Heaven.
31. Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”
Franzen is this generation’s Hemingway. And “Freedom” is his “A Farewell to Arms”. Read it. Just do it.
30. The March to Restore Sanity
I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see a lot of it, but I love it anyway.
29. The “LOST” finale
It’s much debated, but I was never an “I need answers to X, Y, and Z, and I need them freaking spelled out for me” kinda guy. I didn’t have LOST theories. I work more by “feel”. And the finale certainly felt right. I still cry, every time.
28. The “twist” ending of “Remember Me”
Everybody hates it. I love it. What’s new?
27. The Chilean miners
Seriously? This story was too good to be true. If they made this movie and it was fictional, you’d be all like “No way this would happen like this.” Just an unbelievable story. The rare event of real news being real entertaining–and then uplifting.
26. John Updike’s “Endpoint”
Sadly, this posthumous collection is the last poetry that will ever be released by Mr. Updike. Luckily, it’s amazing (but, also, terribly terribly sad.)
25. “The Good Wife” on CBS
I’ve just discovered it, so I have to get caught up, but it is tickling me.
24. Seeing Art Speigelman give a talk at Dickinson University
Seeing the legendary literary graphic novelist give a highly entertaining and informative talk was one of the live event highlights of my year, and nobody had a guitar.
23. My super-secret crush, The View‘s Sherri Shepard.
I will do unspeakble things to this woman. In the good way.
22. Mila Kunis and–yes–James Franco in “Date Night”
See #48 and substitute these actor’s names.
21. The comeback of The Atlantic
One of the oldest and most respected magazines in the world revamps itself and somehow does not end up sucking. In fact, it’s now better than ever, and just announced a profit for the first time in a decade. And thankfully, it is somehow still completely pompous.
20. Michael Vick
I sure know when to get back into Philadelphia sports, don’t I??? I simply love this real-life tale of redemption; if I didn’t believe in second chances, my own life would probably look a little bit different.
19. This.
18. TurningArt
The Netflix-like service provides you with rotating art prints (and a neato frame). Sure, they don’t do much but hang there, but it’s a great way to explore what you like and don’t like about art. It’s interesting to find how your relationship with a piece of art changes as it hangs in your home; much different than seeing it for 5 minutes in a gallery.
17. Dogs
Still the best thing going.
16. “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”
Fallon has really hit a stride that is pure magic. Sure, he’s not breaking new ground like his competition Craig Ferguson (who’s got a bit of briliiance working, as well), but Fallon’s show works miracles within a formula. Delicious.
15. The Fusco Brothers
The smartest, funniest comic strip in (or probably NOT in) your local newspaper just keeps getting funnier. And smarter. And harder to find.
14. BuyBack$
A store that is just cheap, used DVDs, CDs, and Blu-Rays? Yeah. I’m kinda all over that.
13. The re-release of new-age symhony In C.
Composer Terry Riley’s experimental, semi-electronic classical piece In C was re-released on CD this year, and it is just as addictive as when I first owned it back in high school. Shades of just about all my current favorite artists can be heard in this breakthrough work.
12. Cherry Crush
Because it’s fucking delicious.
11. “What Up With That?” sketches on Saturday Night Live
This is by far the most enjoyable recurring sketch on SNL I’ve seen in years. It has a concrete element of the absurd, and a perfect setting for uproarious celebrity cameos. And Keenan Thompson is a genius, I don’t care what you say! Click here for a selection of this year’s What Up With That’s on Hulu.
10. Roles For Women
There’s still not nearly enough meaty roles for women in movies—Hollywood, indie, or otherwise—but this year saw a few choicer roles than before, thanks to dandy’s like “The Kids Are All Right”, “Please Give”, and “Secretariat”.
9. Dan Simmons’ “The Terror”
One of the most interesting, and also more difficult, novels I’ve ever read. Simmons’ explorers-trapped-in-icelocked-ships-being-terrorized-by-unseen-monsters-yet-also-slightly-based-on-historical-fact-of-Franklin’s-lost-expedition has got to be the world’s first historical fiction gothic horror novel. And it scared the shit out of me.
8. Cleveland
It really does rock.
7. slate.com
The one-time almost-sad story of an great website gone bad is now a must-read internet newsmagazine. I have it set as my homepage.
6. Blu-Ray discs in Reboxes
Hey thanks.
5. The first fight scene in “The Book of Eli”, where Denzel cuts that dude’s hand off.
OK, so the rest of the movie is kinda hum-drum, but that knife scene by the underpass with above-mentioned amputation is pure badass movie magic.
4. Free concerts in the square in downtown Buffalo
I got a free front-row Ed Kowalczyk show, courtesy of the city of Buffalo, in a very attractive, quaint little square with a big statue of some dude (Mr. Buffalo?) in the center. Can’t wait to see next year’s schedule!
3. Katie Couric doing CBS’s Evening News
I just plain trust her. A throwback to old-school news.
2. The poster for The National’s album “High Violet”.
Good art and good music, all affordable? Sign me up. Check out the poster here.
1. “The Expendables”
The movie was pretty bad, but I’d watch these guys pop popcorn.
Posted in Snippet with tags magazines, media, rant, reading, snippet on October 16, 2010 by sethdellinger
After years of trying to escape my Newsweek subscription, I finally managed to do it earlier this year. And now, this week, Fareed Zakaria has joined TIME as a new columnist. (For those of you who don’t know, Zakaria was Newsweek’s main public face for many years, and one of the main reasons I left the magazine behind.) What’s a boy to do? I love TIME and am subscribed to it through 2015 but I really, really hate Zakaria. I know there’s nothing I can do, short of cancelling my subscription. I’m just venting. Argh!
Living Like Living Was Good
Posted in Prose with tags driving, gratitude, life, prose, reading, spirituality, woods on July 29, 2010 by sethdellingerI can rise in the morning and electricity like bugs will crawl from the top of myself down through my extremities and out my toes to meet the world. This can be in excitement or dread but it is never in boredom. Boredom would be to not feel the sunshine, or the echoing confines of an empty room, or the dawning smiles of the friends who love your own dawning smiles.
I can drive along colorless interstates and imagine each unique spot in the countryside as we pass. That tiny grove back in the field that no one can be bothered to safely look at: I bet it gets nice shade, and is full of happy and fattened bugs and rabbits. I’d like to read a nice comfy book there. I’d like to nap like a praire animal. Smell it’s smell.
I can light incense in the living room and dance poorly naked. I can wear new socks without shoes when I take the garbage out. I can make instant coffee and smell the vapors coming off it, my nose a visceral clitoris. I can wear any hat I want, but I don’t.
I can sit on my couch and turn off everything that uses electricity. I can be in the silent dark. I can live like living was good.
48 Years
Posted in Prose with tags literature, question, reading, time on March 25, 2010 by sethdellingerWhile perusing the local used bookstore recently, after spending more than an hour ambling around, I walked out the front door with only a tiny, aged copy of Three Plays by Maxwell Anderson, an almost-forgotten playwright from the turn of the century. It is a tiny book, 
small enough to fit in a front or back pocket, despite containing three full-length dramatic plays. For the privilege of owning this book, I paid two U.S. dollars, in cash.
I got home with the book, sat it on my coffee table, and thought not much of it for a few days. Then, in a moment of distraction, I picked it up and leafed through it. It’s pages were thin, worn, and browned with age. It had that terrific musty smell of time. It was, quite simply, an old book. You are all familiar with those.
I happened upon the copyright page and noted, with little interest, the book was printed in 1962. This seemed appropriate and not too notable. As I stood up from my couch to go pee, I for some reason did the math in my head. 48 years. The book was 48 years old.
Now, 48 years is not an incredibly long time. My parents are older than 48. The company I work for is older than 48. The building I live in is much older. And on and on. But, I thought, 48 years was a long time for a book to be around and then be bought by me for 2 dollars for, basically, no good reason other than I wanted to buy something.
48 years. Half a century. The introduction—by editor George Freedley–still reads like the book is hot off the presses. Here we can read Freedley bemoaning the fact that the great playwright Maxwell Anderson died before his time. Meanwhile, in 2010, poor Freedley himself has been dead for decades. Here we can read as Freedley asserts that Anderson will have a resurgence in popularity after the book’s publication. He never did. Anderson’s contemporary, Eugene O’Neil, now holds the place in American literature that Anderson may have held, had things gone just a tad differently.
But more interestingly, I have trouble wrapping my head around the potential histories of this copy of the book. 48 years. Had this been someone’s treasured copy of a favorite author? And why did they part with it? Did they die? Or was it owned by someone who didn’t care about it at all, tucked away in a box in an attic, or absent-mindedly shelved in the guest room? Was I perhaps not the first person to buy it second-hand? How many yard sales had it seen, how many used bookstores? If it was only 20 years old, or even 30, I might not have so many questions, but no object makes it 48 years in this world without a worthy history.
I can’t help but think, sometimes, that nothing is just an object.
The End of “The Dead”
Posted in Rant/ Rave, Uncategorized with tags James Joyce, literature, movies, rave, reading on December 24, 2009 by sethdellingerIf you’ve never read any James Joyce, you are missing out! But you are really, really missing out if you’ve never read his short story collection, Dubliners, namely the last story in the collection, “The Dead”–a story thought by myself and many, many others to be the best short story ever written.
I just read it again recently, in preparation for the DVD release of the late, great director John Huston’s film version of the story. I am still blown away by how amazing it is. Here’s all you need to know: the bulk of the story–say, 7/8 of it–is a largely plotless account of a Christmas party in Dublin. We are introduced to characters, watch them sing, dance, and interact. Then, the party ends, and we follow a husband and wife (Gabriel and Gretta) home in a carriage. We can tell their relationship is strained. Then, all of a sudden, in their home, Gretta tells Gabriel a very serious and dramatic story about a boy she used to know who died when they were young. There is a lot of rumination on death and life. This seems to come out of the blue after the lengthy party we’d just read–but on repeat readings one realizes the whole story is laced with revelations about death, life, and of course, love.
The reason I’m telling you this is, I have just watched the movie, and was blown away by it. It is amazing, but especially the end, because the end of the Joyce short story is breathtakingly amazing, and I really didn’t think Huston would be able to do it justice. I still have goosebumps after watching the film, then pulling the book down off my shelf and reading the end again. So, here they are, the end of the book and of the movie. I’m picking up the text right after Gretta has told Gabriel her story about the young man (named Michael Furey) dying when they were young, and then Gretta immediately falls asleep, and Gabriel is left with his thoughts:
Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt’s supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good- night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
It’s Seth again. Isn’t that some amazing writing?!?! Ok, check out how Huston ends his movie. Embedding was disabled, so you’ve gotta click on this link:
How Far Can You Go?
Posted in Memoir, Prose with tags Carlisle, friends, literature, memoir, reading, sex, women on November 20, 2009 by sethdellingerNOTE FROM SETH: If you are related to me, think twice before you read this.
1. Circus Midgets Ate My Balls
A bunch of us were at a party at Sandra’s parent’s house. It was early autumn and the night was bearably chilly. The kind of night where your breath is just almost visible. You still have shorts on but can’t decide whether it was the right choice.
Sandra was an oddity in our circle of friends. She had at some point dated nearly all of us, but at the same time remained ‘one of the guys’ even while she was dating outside the circle. In our ways, we were all in love with her, all of the time, even when she was infuriating, which was always. And her parents had a nice place to party: in the country but not too far of a drive, lots of land to move about on, ample parking and parents that cared that we were partying there, but not enough to stop us.
On this particular night, there was a fairly good collection of people there: Monty, Lee, Terch, Ethan, Clyde, Simon, myself, Sandra of course. There were others, but in the Grand Rundown of Hours Wasted Partying, one never quite recalls all the exact details. Some of the more important luminaries of the core group were there, and we were having the kind of fun we normally had.
There was a lot of walking around the large yard, talking, beer in hand. Stopping by the fire pit for a warm-up and to see who was there at that moment. Somebody was naked somewhere. Somebody was making out somewhere. Somebody was passed out somewhere.
At one point, I was sitting on the porch at the outdoor table and chairs, drinking and smoking and talking to Sandra about God-knows-what. It was a marvelous, relaxing time and I was having fun, as I often did, trying to make Sandra fall back in love with me. The beer, of course, was making me piss a lot. It does that.
I got up and walked to the edge of the porch (which sits about three feet off the ground) and I pulled my dick out. I started pissing off the porch, angling my penis skyward for maximum arch effect in my urine stream. Suddenly, and seemingly from out of nowhere, Clyde walked into my field of view (on the ground, not the porch). He stood directly in front of my urine stream and put out his hands, cupped, like a man dying of thirst might put out his hands in a rainstorm. He began to catch my urine in his hands. I was not as shocked as you would think. If anything, the moment I saw him do this, I thought to myself Of course! He’s brilliant! It is a move I never would have thought of. I was laughing very hard at him while peeing, trying to let him get it all. When my piss started to die down, he looked up at me with this amazing grin and I realized he had one more trick up his sleeve. He put his hands up to his face and began rubbing my piss in, like an exhausted person washing their face with water. It was the most deft stroke of The Something I had yet seen. Clyde was by far the best at it, although sometimes I gave him a run for his money.
See, if that was the whole story, this would be a sad story indeed. But of course I am telling it out of sequence. The whole piss incident was near the end. Near the end of anything, you tend to get desperate.
What I am calling The Something was actually some kind of shared philosophy that, in my head, I’ve began referring to as the ‘How Far Can You Go?’ philosophy. This whole group of friends I’m talking about shared this philosophy, although some of us quite a bit more than others. Some of them, I think, never quite knew what was going on. Some knew far too well.
I don’t know when The Something started, and I’m not quite sure when it ended. And I’m not quite sure how it started. I think to most it was just a heightened way to have more fun, fun like nobody else was having. To some of us, though, it was the most important thing in the world.
We are driving around the midstate area in two cars. We are hopping from place to place, store to store, park to park. There are seven of us total, and we are constantly switching cars after we get places. The only constant is that Pearson is driving his car, and Monty is driving his.
This is in the early days of the group. There are a few guys here who will soon fade out of the picture, like Yuri, and some prominent members who we have yet to meet, like Simon or Addy. We had done a lot of partying with each other already, but it had yet to reach that fevered sustained pitch it reached between ’99-’03. We were still just a bunch of young guys having fun and getting to know each other. Pearson was the only one of drinking age, although I was soon to follow.
The highlight of that day of driving was when we’d get on the highways. The two cars would pass each other repeatedly, and in each car, we had a notebook and pens. The passengers in the backseat would furiously write bizarre and off-the-wall messages to the other car. This was quite possibly the funniest thing that has ever happened on the Earth.
We started out, I’m sure, with something common, like “I fucked your mother”. Then the other car would come back with “I ass-fucked your shoe”, and the absurdity never stopped from there. The culmination came with what would be our rallying cry for years to come. I can’t remember who came up with it, though I suspect it was Pearson. His car held up to our car, right before we got off an exit ramp, the sign Circus Midgets Ate My Balls.
I can guarantee you that seven people have never laughed so hard in unison while driving two separate cars.
Not to be deterred by Pearson’s car’s true hilarity, the next time we were on the highway I had Monty pull up next to Pearson. I unzipped my pants and grabbed my balls by the base, forcing the testicles to balloon outward in a very comically exaggerated fashion. Ethan, who was in the back seat with me, had scrawled on our tablet the exact message Pearson’s car had just given us. So, as I got up on my haunches to show Pearson’s car my exploding balls, Ethan held our sign up to the window. Simultaneously, Pearson’s car saw my balls and a sign reading Circus Midgets Ate My Balls, all while going 70 miles-per-hour down Interstate 81.
The incident seems tame by our later standards, but if I look back and try to pinpoint The Something’s origin, it’s probably that day. And the fact that we all laughed equally hard.
To me, ‘How Far Can You Go?’ was always about having a purpose. I, as well as most of my friends, were going through a protracted aimless period in our lives; we weren’t nearly ready to grow up, but we were too smart to do nothing. I figured, why not be a philosopher who puts his dick in couches?
I was aimless, untethered and essentially helpless against a world I assumed I was better than. To prove to myself and others that I had this world figured out (despite all appearances otherwise) I set out to prove that society’s rules of morality and good taste were completely wrong; anything could mean nothing, and nothing was against the rules. I was not alone on this quest. I had help.
It had been a long night of partying at Cassie and Willy’s house. It was never really a ‘party’ at their place, always just smaller gatherings, and only with core members of the group. For the short time they lived there, it was a kind of ‘home base’ for us. Their living room was the scene for many Somethings.
On this particular night, the gathering ended relatively early. Most of the guys actually went home that night, which was a rarity. Addy had passed out in the guest bedroom upstairs, and Cassie and Willy were asleep in their bedroom. I was left in the living room with just Simon and his girlfriend at the time, Kelly.
The three of us got along quite well; as a trio, we eerily completed each other. We had been, in a sly way, kicking around ideas for Somethings for a few days, without really knowing what we were doing. We were setting something up.
The room was uncharacteristically dark that night, I remember that. Perhaps just a lava lamp glowing, or some old Christmas lights that had been left strung up. And candles. Cassie has always loved candles.
I was slumped in the bean bag chair, and across from me, Simon and Kelly were on the couch. I remember we were talking about this book of poems that Kelly and I had stumbled onto in Wal-Mart the previous day. It was the transcripts of Clinton’s impeachment trials during the Lewinsky time, and someone had broken it down into verse, so it looked like poems. I still find the concept intriguing.
In the middle of this pretentious conversation we’re having, Kelly rather frantically interrupted me, saying “So do you wanna watch us fuck or what?”
The thing I remember most is how I sincerely did not care one way or the other. I was neither excited nor repelled by the idea. But I was sure as hell going to say yes, because most people would say no. I had to wonder, sitting there on the bean bag chair, “How far can we go?”
So I said Yes, in fact I would love to watch you two fuck.
Kelly politely informed me that it would be quite OK with them if I wanted to masturbate during the show. I almost said to her It damn well better be.
So that’s when that sort of thing started happening.
2. Song From Underneath
This night has a rhythm.
It beats like a plodding blues rock song, prying it’s way to some far-off crescendo.
Bum.
Bum.
Bum.
Bum ba dum ba dum.
Bum.
Bum.
And so on. There is no actual music playing, just a sinister determined rhythm beating in our heads, like some distant hammer were tapping the sky, or a rain dance was being prepared for us.
We are in the backyard of Ethan’s parent’s house. It is the dead-middle of summer; even this late at night, it is sometimes choking hot. The leaves underfoot crunch like brittle bugs. The grass is bent and brown, hanging onto life because it has to, for whatever reason.
There aren’t many of us here. Five, maybe six. We met here to find out who won the scavenger hunt that Monty had created for us. Monty was good at making ‘events’ for us. This summer, it was a scavenger hunt that lasted a week. There were ordinary items, like a plastic owl, and more difficult items, such as a food order receipt from Sheetz that was number ’00’. I can’t remember who won the scavenger hunt, or the $100 prize pot.
After reviewing our cache in his parent’s living room, we retired to Ethan’s backyard to have a bit of partying.
Ethan’s backyard is quite interesting. It is covered by low-slung elms, which provide a canopy over the whole property, giving a sense of privacy. You are given the false impression that you are alone there, that you are on your own Nature Preserve or in your own country, of sorts. Some of the trees are close together, creating small structures, or walls, of trees. Others stand by themselves, in the farther reaches of the property. It is a fine place for hide-and-seek, or foxes-and-hounds. The feeling of a fantasy world—especially at night—is inescapable there.
But that’s not the most interesting thing about Ethan’s backyard. That would be the treehouse. Or fort, as some called it.
I don’t know the full story behind the fort, and truthfully, I have difficulty picturing it completely now. But it is, essentially, a shack, built of plywood and various other kinds of scraps. It intertwines with a tree or two and reaches a story high. I remember it having a room or two, a few ‘hallways’ which were more like crawl spaces, and some portals from one side to the other, where one can simply step through the structure.
Plopped in the center of the yard, the fort fully completes the otherworldly feeling of the place. And tonight, somehow, feels more otherworldly than usual.
First, it’s dark. It’s really dark. Through the brown elm leaves you can see every twinkling star in the sky, rushing at us like pinpoints from millions of years ago; we are far out in the country, further out than Sandra’s house, and there is almost no ambient light around. There is no moon tonight.
It is well after midnight, much later than we normally began festivities. It’s after One by the time I have a buzz, and the rest of the guys are even slower to get there. Something feels awkward, forced, about tonight. The conversation is slow to roll, the laughs are few and far between. Someone is always sneaking off by themselves to play around in the fort. Our camaraderie simply is not clicking. It is a night for mutual introspection.
Standing in that dark night, chatting with Simon, still smelling like the restaurant I had worked at that evening, I feel the beat in my bones. The rhythm of the evening, pounding at my brain from millions of miles away, somewhere near the pinpoints of light overhead.
With everyone present, standing in a loose circle and talking about work, or pussy, or beer, I decide it is my turn to sneak off by myself and mess around in the fort a bit. Once inside, my buzz becomes more apparent, as I have some trouble maneuvering in the tight spaces and, at one point, get mildly lost. The buzz, seemingly, has become all-out drunk.
I sit in some plywood corner, light a cigarette, and do what I almost always do in such situations: try to force a revelation. I peer forward to my future self and try to ask him what he’s learned, what he’s done. I look back at my younger self and tell him what has happened since he got left behind, stranded in his specific place and time. I picture myself sitting there, where I was, and then pull upwards, flying up and over these crotchety woods, this green state, flying rapidly away from the globe, always putting myself to proper size and perspective. I wonder about the wall beside me, who made it, how long it’s been there, and how I relate to it. Will this wall be here after I am gone from this world? Or is this seemingly important structure more temporary than I am?
Usually no revelation comes. Tonight is no exception. After I finish my cigarette I manage to clamber back out of the fort and rejoin the group.
Something is on fire.
The guys are all standing around something burning on the ground. As I come nearer, I can tell it’s nothing of consequence. This isn’t just something burning, though. This is the brightest light, it seems, for miles. The flames illuminate the bottoms of the elm branches, almost like they would a cave’s ceiling, causing an even-more insular feeling in this backyard and at the same time casting an atmosphere of eerie calm over the whole landscape.
The flames are also the only thing that seems able to jar us out of our stoicism. Suddenly, we’re are all a-chatter, speaking rapidly and loudly to each other, and as soon as the flames begin to die down there is an immediate search for something more to burn. Everyone’s wallets come out and we are throwing our old, unnecessary ATM receipts onto the flames. Lee runs to his car and comes back with an empty shoebox. He throws this onto the flames.
Ethan takes Monty and they run into Ethan’s house to search for more flammable items. While they’re gone, the flames die. But the rest of us, now left again in the terrible darkness, are now more animated. Surely this is partly owed to the fact that we are all finally drunk, but also, the flames have sparked a sense of adventure in us (who does not feel this way about fire?). We are not talking about the fire, but other things. The fire certainly started this, though. It kick-started us out of our lethargy.
Ethan and Monty return with a treasure trove of boxes, wrapping paper, notebooks, shoes (!), Dean Koontz books, anything flammable that won’t be missed, and a few things that will be missed. We all get out our lighters and set multiple small blazes in the central clearing. The backyard lights up like a grand ballroom. The effect of the roof of leaves combined with the utter darkness surrounding us is mesmerizing. I have never experienced anything else like it.
Some things burn fast and have to be replaced quickly, whereas other items are interesting experiments. The shoes, for instance, take quite some time to get burning, but once they ignite they burn calm and slow, as if made of coal. A pair of golf gloves simply will not burn at all, until they are thrown onto a burning pile of notebooks, at which point they slowly ignite and create a green flame.
Ethan and Monty return to the house and the rest of us keep the fires going until they return. They come back with more questionable items: things not yet used, like paper plates and toilet paper, and some items that will be missed, like pillows. Other items that have an unsure flammability: a ceramic gnome, ice cube trays. A plastic owl.
Everything we burn is now a major experiment. How does this burn? Would this burn if it was touching this? The most interesting thing we burned at this stage was a catcher’s mitt. It took forever to get it going, and once it burned it burned really, really slow, but it left it’s used self behind in a fragile, black, flaky substance that resembled ground pepper.
Slowly we are running out of things to burn. This is inevitably depressing. Ethan can only take so much out of his house. After all, we are not insane.
Ethan disappears behind the fort. Nobody really notices that he went anywhere. We are still tending to multiple small fires. He returns shortly with a ten-speed bicycle.
Someone asks him whose bike it is.
“My brother’s”, he says.
Clyde says, “Won’t he miss it?” Clyde says this with a wide, wide grin.
“Probably”, Ethan says.
It is not easy to burn a bicycle. Of course, the tires burn easily and quick and almost out of control. But most of the bike is metal; we have to intentionally burn only parts of the bike. The seat burns OK, as do the plastic handlebar covers. When thrown onto a sizeable fire, the reflectors on the petals melt, then burn, like small pockets of lava.
In the fire-light, a sudden revelation seems to grip Ethan. He tells us he’ll be right back. He runs toward his house.
A few minutes later he returns. He is, quite impossibly, pushing in front of him a tractor tire. A big tractor tire. It is taller than me by almost a full foot. This is possibly the most unexpected thing I have ever seen. ETHAN style=”mso-spacerun: yes” farm. Nobody ever asked him where he got this tractor tire.
Rather than cause us to ask questions, we all cheer as soon as we realize what’s going on. This is truly the ultimate burn.
Ethan positions the tire by a still-burning small fire and tips it over onto the flames. It just sits there. Certainly, it’s going to take a bit of doing to get this fire going.
So Ethan went and got some gasoline.
In a few minute’s time, the tractor tire is burning. And the gasoline doesn’t waste time. This tire is burning, and it’s burning big time. It is a violent burn.
Lee throws the bicycle onto the burning tire.
These flames are getting very big. They hiss as they eat the tire. They seemingly spray out the sides of the tire, causing the fire to actually be about twice as big as the tire itself. We all step back a bit, but stay in an entranced circle. The flames are reaching out far, the flames are reaching high, the metal bicycle is melting, the heat can be felt from twenty feet away, the hissing noise is louder and louder. We are mute by the fire’s presence. We are stationary in it’s glow. We did this.
Vaguely I notice Ethan running from his house with a garden hose. The rest of us continue to stand stock-still, our faces lit brighter than daylight, our daily problems forgotten, our addictions and lost loves no more important than the small spark created by our Bic lighters. The dry elm leaves have now become embers, floating off their branches, landing on other elms, on the dying but alive grass, on the roof of the fort. The flames from the tire reach the lowest braches, charring them black, and now the highest leaves turn into tiny balls of flame, shooting off the trees from the violent force of the monster beneath them.
Bum.
Bum.
Bum.
Bum ba dum ba dum.
Bum.
Bum.
Bum.
Bum ba dum ba dum.
3. How Far Can You Go?
It is important to have some secrets. If you were to tell just one person every little dark detail of where you’ve been, what things you’ve done—why, there’d be nothing left for your soul to feed on, during the solitary quiet moments.
It is important for me sometimes to tell almost everything; to find some smooth, near-perfect mirror in which to view myself, my blemishes, my glories. This type of self-aware confession is not for everybody, and it’s usefulness is arguable.
But it is a shame, I think, to leave the most artful of your days to dwindle to mere sparks, left untold. Life is to be lived simply for the living of it, this much is true. But like a good movie, sometimes even life needs reviewed.
I don’t want my loudest screams to bounce off an empty sky.
When partying in the farm-separated, rolling-hills country, even while in good company, it is easy for the crowd to get bored. The more alcohol or drugs you put in you, the less you feel like just standing around and talking. All of a sudden, you realize, something should be happening here.
For our group, I think this usually took longer than for most people, because we did enjoy our conversations so much; at least five of these people should have been stand-up comedians, and two should have been novelists, and me…well, I’ll say anything to shock you. So it took some time for us to grow restless.
But grow restless we did. And we devised countless ways to combat this.
Some were simple, supposedly harmless. For instance, we liked to play the games from Whose Line Is It Anyway? with each other. A whole group of us would get going, just like the game show. We were never as funny as those guys, though.
Some were more sinister, but relatively common: small-time vandalism (road signs) or, of course, hedonism.
But we did develop something that was close to being our very own thing, and certainly was a form of performance art.
Sandra’s house was situated perfectly for road-side human displays. She lived in the country, but not so far that cars never passed her house. She lived close to the road, but there were heavy shrubs and dense trees on both sides of the road. For hiding in.
A simple example of a road-side human display is this:
Late at night (always late at night) two of the guys stand by the side of the road, awaiting the appearance of headlights on the horizon. As the car draws nearer, the two guys commence to pretend fighting each other. They must get really into it, in some cases really hitting each other. As the car closes in on them, they really turn it up a notch, making this fight look truly violent and absolutely real.
One must imagine the effect from inside the car. Out here in the country, there is very little light. Driving along at night has the eerie effect of enveloping you in this darkness. Your headlights only cut through a small bit of it. The driver of this car doesn’t really see you (or at least understand what they’re seeing) until they are practically upon you. Before they know it, they are past you, wondering if they actually saw what they think they saw.
Now, the fight example is a good one, because this gives the driver of the car a moral quandary. Do they turn around and try to help, or stop the fight? (the answer, always, is no) Do they call the police? (This was before everyone had a cell phone, so the chances of them actually doing it when they got where they were going was small indeed). As I said, the roadside was pure dense undergrowth; we had immediate and impenetrable hiding spots. We were in very little danger of repercussion.
As fun as giving the driver a moral quandary is, we found it more fun to make them question their sanity. You can do a surprising array of absurdist things in this situation. For instance, you can put on one of Sandra’s mother’s old long white flowing gowns, stand along the road (alone), face the other side of the road, and do a military salute. As the car goes past, pretend you don’t notice it. Do not swivel your head or body. Stand stock still, facing the other side of the road. Make sure to keep your eyes open, just in case they see them. This image will haunt the driver, perhaps for the rest of their lives.
A lovely variation of the ‘solitary salute’ is to take four to eight people and have all of them stand about twenty feet apart, so that we spread evenly down a small stretch of the road. We could then do all sorts of creepy variations. We could all salute. We could intersperse the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ hand gestures. We could be moving (arms up and down wildly, or doing old-time dances like the Mashed Potato or that one that makes you look like you’re swimming). Imagine—just imagine—what that would be like from inside the car. whiz whiz whiz whiz. People like telephone poles in the middle of the night.
And of course, we started doing it naked. It was the natural idea.
We started having props, too, like a large fish, a broom, or an empty dresser drawer. The infinite possibility for humor (while also a neat exercise in perspective) was incredibly exciting.
One night, however, stands as the crowning achievement of road-side human displays. It was the middle of the summer. Most of the group was at Sandra’s house, partying. This was, I recall, one of the more fun nights of my life. There was a tremendous feeling of fellowship amongst us, and a connection on a level above consciousness.
Oh, and we were really drunk. Most of us, anyway.
We did a few standard road-side human displays. Then somebody—I think Ethan—suggested two guys get fully naked, and one guy sit on the others shoulders. They would then stand by the road, facing across the road. Both would fold their arms across their chests—you know, that aggressive, angry male stance. As the car drove by, they would not make a single movement; they would stand completely still, facing across the road.
There was minimal pause about one dude’s balls being on the back of another dude’s head. We realized this was going to happen, but cared very little.
Of course, I was to be the guy sitting on a guy’s head. Because I’m short. But I’ve always been made of dense matter, even when I’m not fat. There were probably two guys there who weighed less than me, but I always get nominated for the ‘little guy’ stuff. Which is fine by me, because ‘little guy’ stuff is almost always fun, except when it’s sitting in the middle in the back seat of a car (fuck all of you for this!).
So, Simon and I got naked and waited by the side of the road. Now, this is the sometimes excruciating part of the whole affair, because sometimes this involves waiting about ten minutes. Which, in the middle of the night, with all your friends watching you from the bushes, can seem quite long, especially when you have to leave all beer or whatnot behind or else you’d risk the car seeing something besides the haunting image.
Finally, a car approached. Simon knelt down and I climbed on his shoulders. The car zoomed by. We returned to our friends, who were laughing hysterically.
Ethan enjoyed the show so much, he wanted to extend the concept. He wondered, what if Lee got on Simon’s shoulders, and then I somehow got on Lee’s shoulders? Three naked guys on top of each other’s shoulders would be sure to be funnier than just two guys.
As drunk as we were, I’m not sure how we managed it. I know that somehow I took a running jump at Simon and sort of clambered my way up to Lee’s shoulders.
The big problem with this set-up is that it takes too long to get it in place properly, so we couldn’t wait to see the car coming to do it. We had to set it up, then stand there and just wait for a car to come by. But then there’s another problem: it’s not easy to stay in that position.
It took us about an hour to successfully have it in place as a car went by. But it was well worth it; the reaction from our hidden friends was uproarious laughter, which is always the desired effect.
All this made us wonder: could we do four guys?
Let me just tell you: we did. It was Simon-Ethan-Lee-Me. It took friggen forever to accomplish. I was basically climbing up my friend’s nude backs like they were some rock face. And we had to hold it till a car came. And we’d fall (onto the road) and have to start all over. But oh! To imagine what it must have looked like going by at 50 miles-per-hour, and if that driver still remembers it, and what they think it was.
We called it the Human Totem Pole, and we never did it again.
Wondering how far you can go can take you to some fun, amazing places. And, of course, to some of the darkest places you can go. Dark places, after all, are always far.
What amazes me is how hard one has to try in order to be evil. Good things, well, they can happen almost without effort, once you are open to them. But evil…well, evil is a beast of a different speed.
We were at Monty’s. It was already very late at night. We were seven sheets to the wind. Someone was watching something on the TV. Somebody was on the internet. It was a foggy night.
I was looking at the books on Monty’s bookshelf. It was an eclectic collection. Some classic literature, some pop stuff, some video game books. I picked up his copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover. I had never read it. I knew it had been controversial in it’s day. I decided to read the first page.
But before I could open the book, I noticed something odd about it’s spine. It had been creased (it was a paperback) only about a quarter of the way through. I wondered if Monty had finished the book. He was on the couch, across the room from me.
“Monty, did you read this?”
“Yeah man.”
“All of it?”
“Yeah man.”
“How is it?”
“Pretty good.”
And it almost ended there. I started to re-shelve the book, having forgotten my desire to read the first page. As I was reaching for the shelf, I noticed his copy of the Pulp Fiction screenplay was creased all the way through, as was his copy of Stephen King’s It, and the war book We Were Soldiers. His copy of The Brothers Karamozov was not creased at all.
“Monty, did you read The Brother’s Karamozov?”
“Not yet.”
I knew right then that Monty had not finished Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
“Dude, did you really finish Chatterly?”
“Yeah man.” Now he sounded a bit annoyed. Which annoyed me.
I could not let this stand. I questioned him about the ending and his answers were vague, dismissive. I was getting really upset. But I kept my cool. I wanted to destroy him strategically.
I wanted to destroy him, and I did. Over the course of the next hour, I questioned him incessantly, and he wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t admit it. The rest of the group sat there, passively, probably wondering when I’d let it drop. I wouldn’t. I had to see how far I could go.
I began to accuse him of terrible things, of being a terrible person. I slung every insult at him,trotted out all his character defects and showed him how they all related to his having lied about reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover. He grew visibly upset. He left the room, locking himself in his bedroom.
Everyone else sat around. I can only speculate that they thought I was an asshole. No one condemned me.
Monty’s girlfriend then left the room, as well, and went to see if he was OK. She came back a few minutes later and informed us that Monty was on his bed, crying.
Good,I thought. Then, without thinking, I stood up and ran to his bedroom door. I pounded on it with both fists, screaming Did you read it?! Did you fucking read it?! Just fucking tell me you didn’t read the book! pounding and pounding with my fists in the glow of the computer screen.
In daylight things seem more real. Acts committed at night are never truly real; they are simply things you’ve done at night.
Very little of the Somethings were done during the day, and those that were remain more vivid than anything else. It’s as if, at night, you aren’t so much making conscious decisions as you are being pulled along by some invisible tide. During daylight hours,the overarching philosophy behind all your actions sometimes comes so clear, it might just be the voice of God. Or, of course, quite the opposite.
Just half an hour before, the six of us had just been hanging out, watching Sandler flicks, that sort of thing. Now, the three girls had left the room, with the promise to be back in five minutes when, they said, things would get “really interesting”. All because the three of us guys had kept pushing it, kept pushing it, kept pushing it. They were going to do it just to shut us up,and we were going to do it just to have something to talk about.
From my position on the bean bag chair, I glanced up at the two other guys, and grinned a wide grin.
There were multiple running themes in these events in our lives. The foremost was absurdism, followed closely by useless action. Then, bunched together, were self-satisfaction, groupthink, curiosity, escape, excitement, and, way down at the bottom, enlightenment.
Some of these themes spring from others, whereas some exist solely as a means to themselves. None ever made us any money, or found us true love, or transformed us into a ray of sunlight—a human being on a higher plane.
If they were about anything, I suppose they were about feeling the world more completely than TV and movies made us feel it; and conversely, seeing if the world felt us.
Willy’s parents had a cabin in the mountains, in one of those small campgrounds that is really a small collection of shack-like cabins. It really was a nice place, in a beautiful spot on the mountainside. A few times each summer they’d give Willy and Cassie the keys for a ‘romantic getaway’, but usually they’d just recruit some of us to go up there and party with them, instead.
Once, it was Willy, Cassie, Simon and his girlfriend Kelly, Pearson and his girlfriend Shawna, and me.
We spent most of the night at the picnic table in front of the cabin, drinking, playing cards (but not me; I truly hate almost any card game), smoking pot.
As the night drew on, I got restless, seeing as I hate cards. I suggested a friendly game of Truth or Dare. This was fairly standard; we played a decent amount of Truth or Dare in those days.
We played for about half an hour,with some fun results (naked tree climbing, drinking out of wire-rimmed bras)and then we took a pee break. We were in the mountain, so of course, the guys all go over to the trees to relieve themselves.
Simon, Pearson and I were all pissing beside one another, but we weren’t talking. I was just looking out into the darkness, in my own little world, when Simon and Pearson start laughing rather hard.
I looked around to see what was going on. Simon had pissed all over my right shoe, quite on purpose. I give him points for this. This was rather funny and ballsy of him. However, I knew he expected me to take the shoe off, seeing as it was drenched in urine. I refused to give him the satisfaction. I spent the rest of the night with my foot soaking in Simon’s piss.
We got back to the Truth or Dare game. When it was my turn to ask someone, I chose Simon. I knew he would say ‘Dare’, because he didn’t want to look like a pussy. He did choose ‘Dare’. Here is what I told him:
“Take this unlit cigarette. Pull your pants down. Turn around. Put the cigarette in your asshole. I don’t want it just wedged in your cheeks; it better be inside your asshole. Then, Kelly will hopefully be so kind as to light it for you. You must stand facing us with that lit cigarette in your asshole for a full sixty seconds.”
Nobody in this group ever refuses a dare, and most people don’t even hesitate to do anything. This dare is no exception. Simon does everything I said. Let me tell you, the sight is still quite clear in my mind, and it is hilarious even to this day.
Immediately following his ass cigarette dare, it was Simon’s turn to ask somebody. Naturally, he chose me. Not wanting to look like a pussy, I chose ‘Dare’. Here is what Simon said tome:
‘Smoke this cigarette.’
4. How to Crescendo
The world was potato-laden, and hilarious.
It started at work. I’d like to think I started it, but time has erased that fact. Somehow, someone started it, and it must have started something like this:
Someone took a whole, unbaked potato out of the box of whole, unbaked potatoes. They then hid this potato where they knew one of their friends would inevitably find it during the course of their work—say, next to the cheese, or amongst the coffee filters—and when the intended person came across the potato and they had the inevitable look of confusion come across their face, the person who had put the potato there said “You’ve been potatoed!”. This absurd “gotcha” left the poor victim no recourse but, of course, to potato the original culprit. Hence began a seemingly endless cycle of potatoing.
Once it began, we started refining the formula. If, say, I know that Clyde is going to count the freezer pull list in about 15 minutes, then I know that he is going to pull out the tray of Ground Sirloins to count them. If it happens to be a pretty slow night, I know the odds are that in those 15 minutes, nobody else is going to have to pull out that tray. So, I put a potato on it, comfortable that Clyde will be the first to see it. I put it near the back of the tray, for ultimate ‘reveal’ effect. Then, when I see him pick up the freezer pull clipboard (a sure sign he will soon see the potato) I make sure I am nowhere near the kitchen, because it is infinitely more frustrating when you are potatoed and you are all alone. You cannot look at the culprit and say “You motherfucker!”. You just know you’ve been gotten, and you are all alone in your humiliation.
There is no point system or scoring in potatoing. There is never a winner, or even a loser. There is just an endless cycle of getting people, and being gotten.
Your basic “hide and find” version of potatoing is as I described it above, although after a few weeks it began to get more interesting. I’d go to change into my street clothes after work and there’d be a potato in my shoe, or my pant legs would be tied shut, with a potato at the bottom of both of them. I’d go put them under my friend’s windshield wipers—especially if I was leaving before them, so they wouldn’t be able to say anything to me about it. They’d just see it at the end of their shift and be impotent before the potato.
We had to go bigger and better, though.
Once, I carved a primitive face into a potato and made a small hole where it’s mouth would be. I then lit a cigarette and placed it in the potato’s ‘mouth’ and sat the potato on the table in the break room. I then went and told Pearson that Steve, our manager, was back in the break room smoking and wanted to talk to him.
Clyde mastered the art of cutting potatoes into just the right sized wedges that they fit under car door handles without being seen. You’d go to your car after work, unlock the door, and go to open it. But your fingers just didn’t go under the handle, because of course, there were potato wedges under there. No matter how many times he did this to us, you still always had that brief moment of thinking “What the fuck is wrong with my car door handle?”
Monty once told me there was a torrential leak in the ceiling in the dining room and I should go look at it. I went to where he said it was and there, duct taped to the ceiling, was a potato.
Once, ten minutes before Clyde was to arrive at work (and when I was confident no other males were going to have to change in the male employee restroom) I went into the restroom and—using a needle and twine I had bought for the occasion—I strung up 5 or 6 potatoes in the male employee bathroom in such a fashion that they appeared to be hovering.
And on and on. The possibilities truly were endless. Oh, and if a dishwasher was playing, it got really fun.
One night after work a few of us went over to Delilah’s apartment to watch movies. This was a short-lived ‘movie night’ ritual where she made us watch cultural films; we hated her for it for a time until she showed us The City of Lost Children and I’ve been hooked on shit like that ever since.
So, a few of us were there on Delilah’s couch, some were on the floor. I was in the middle of the couch, between Clyde and Delilah. At one point I leaned forward, either to ash my cigarette or get a drink. When I leaned back, a strange object was behind my back that didn’t belong there. It took about two seconds for me to register that it was a potato.
Clyde had brought the potato game outside of work.
Some of us even went to the store and bought our own supplies of whole, unbaked potatoes. If I was hanging out with, say, Clyde and Addy, someone might suggest we drive past Lee’s house and put some potatoes on his doorstep. Or we drive past work, where Pearson was inside cooking, and potato his car door handles.
Once a bunch of us went out to eat at Bob Evans. I got up to go to the bathroom. When I got back, everyone was gone from the table, and in their places, around the table, were whole, unbaked potatoes.
One especially hot night in the throng of summer, we had a small, intimate gathering at Danielle’s parent’s house. Danielle’s parent’s were cool with us partying there, but it was the kind of situation where you’d better keep it kinda quiet and undestructive. Her parents didn’t mind us being there, but we knew that privilege could easily be taken away.
We spent most of the night wandering around the yard, smoking, drinking, simply being social. The bulk of the party was fun but fairly unremarkable. In the early morning hours the group was all asleep in the living room: on the couches, the floor, in the recliner. Everybody except me and Clyde.
Clyde and I continued to roam around the sizeable yard—probably three acres of ground—bullshitting and generally causing minor havoc: unsticking the numbers from their mailbox and rearranging them, finding dogshit in the yard and moving it to their porch, that sort of thing. We happened upon Danielle’s father’s pickup truck and hoisted ourselves into it’s bed, to see what was in there.
It was full—full—of unbaked, whole potatoes.
This was truly the mother load. We wasted no time in devising a plan to get as many of these potatoes as we could out of the truck and into the living room.
We went into the basement, and there we found laundry baskets and Tupperware tubs of varying sizes. These we used to stealthily transport our treasure.
Inside the living room (moving and acting as quietly as two very excited, quite drunk people possibly can) we surrounded every single sleeping person with potatoes. Completely surrounded them. In the midst of this work, unfortunately, we woke Ethan. However, we used this to our advantage and simply recruited him to our cause.
We had many, many more potatoes than we needed to simply surround the sleeping people. Now we wanted to completely inundate the room. We started placing potatoes on the entertainment center, beside the TV and on top of the VCR. We lined the room with them, around all the walls. Everywhere was potatoes.
Around this time, I have gotten quite drunk indeed. A blackout occurs.
I wake up on the floor. Danielle is yelling at me. I can’t understand what she’s talking about. She is very, very mad. Apparently, so are her parents. She grabs me by the hand and pulls me out into the yard.
Her parent’s mailbox is sitting on top of the pickup truck’s cab. It is full of potatoes. She takes me over to the post that the mailbox used to sit on. Where the mailbox should have been was a nice, tidy pyramid of potatoes.
5. Part of Me Is Still Hanging There
This isn’t the whole story.
The whole story begins in sterile four-cornered rooms and ends in steep ditches, and everything in between is just breaths. And sometimes, the breaths are broken down into yet smaller moments, quiet interminable moments. And sometimes, the breaths are expanded into longer moments, moments erupting exploding enraptured.
The breaths you take on your journey can be all kinds of breaths, in all kinds of places. You can breathe while weeping in Hong Kong or you can breathe while masturbating on the Gold Coast. But all that really matters, anytime at all, is that you’re breathing.
To understand the whole story you have to understand all the small stories first. The small stories make the whole story. If you don’t understand what happened to you last year, you stand little chance of knowing where you’ll be tomorrow.
I was drunk and I couldn’t lift my head; my head was heavier than it had ever been. The television—not far away—was playing something I hated. I swiveled my head to the right. I could see Simon’s arm. Without thinking, I reached over and burned his arm with my cigarette. He was slow to react, slow to realize what I’d done. When finally he asked me why I’d done it, I told him I did it because it was funny. And, truly, it was funny.
Clyde had just gotten home from college for summer break. I had missed him very much. I suggested he and I take three days from our schedule and go to my college apartment, which was standing empty all summer long. During these three days, we were to binge. We were to buy as much alcohol as we needed for three days, plus food and ample entertainment. We did all this. Over the course of these days, we were dirtier, filthier and more debased than we had ever been before. I woke up one of the nights with the flicker of the television static playing across my face; a wreath of cigarette smoke still hung round the room from the previous day’s drinking and smoking. I could hear Clyde laughing to himself on the couch next to mine. With some effort, I sat up. What are you all giggles about? I asked him. He replied: Dude, I just used your mayonnaise to jerk off. I asked him why. He replied: Because it was funny.
Simon’s girlfriend, Kelly, was blowing Clyde on Monty’s living room floor. Simon didn’t care; in fact, he was in the other room, probably playing Final Fantasy. It was a joy to watch. She moved her head in a perfect rhythm, and Clyde’s facial expressions went from comical to ecstatic and back again. It was like watching angels ice skate.
Monty and I were sitting on a balcony in an apartment complex. It was 7 in the morning. There were about ten empty beer bottles on the plastic table between our two chairs. On the stereo inside, the Phish song My Friend, My Friend was playing. I always thought Monty would like this song, but I suspect he never did.
Monty suddenly grabbed a beer bottle and threw it off the balcony. It hung in the air for an impossible amount of time, then hit the pavement of the complex’s parking lot with a rather satisfying smash. I looked at Monty in disbelief. I thought, Here is a genius. Nobody would actually think about throwing glass bottles into a parking lot at 7 in the morning; hence, it must be alright. I grabbed a bottle and threw it, arching it high, like a pop fly, for maximum hang time. The smash is so incredible because you feel like it is an extension of yourself, as if your hand—in which the bottle had just been—had caused the otherworldy sound. When we had thrown all the bottles, we hurried up and drank more, so we could throw more. Nobody ever said anything to us about it.
We would often take showers together, in varying combinations of males and females. These communal showers were never sexual, not even once. We were just dirty people who were afraid of being alone, even for five minutes.
A ‘turban’ is when you go up to a sleeping person and, taking your pants all the way off, attempt to make your ass, balls and penis all touch the sleeping person’s face at the same time, all without waking them up. Ask me about this sometime.
I used to have a schtick called ‘The Rats’. I had to have a beverage—any beverage—in my hand to do ‘The Rats’. It worked best with someone who’s never seen it before.
I would say, quite innocently, to the person: “Ask me about the rats.”
Immediately after saying this, I would take a sip of my beverage and hold it in my mouth.
The person is quite confused by me telling them to ask me about the rats. They almost always say one of these three things:
“The rats?”
“Rats?”
“What?”
Even if they say “What?” I still would then spit, quite dramatically, the beverage in my mouth directly into their face, and then I would scream (quite dramatically, again): “The rats!?”
Once, I did this to the wrong person.
Clyde’s younger brother had graduated from high school. It was a lovely, breezy summer night, and Clyde’s family was having a little party for the younger brother. This was not a party party, but the kind of party a family throws for a graduate. You know, a chips-and-dip kind of party.
Clyde invited most of us from the group, although I can’t be sure why. I know that I was never close with his family—they considered me a bad influence, I think. And I was.
It was a mostly boring night. I sat at the back of the living room for the better part of an hour, watching Clyde, Ethan, Simon, and Lee play the latest James Bond video game on PlayStation. I spoke with Clyde’s mother and brother a few times, and leafed through old copies of Grit magazine, leaving every fifteen minutes or so to go outside and smoke. I was immensely bored.
Eventually, Sandra showed up. She was a bit more excited to be there, because she was slightly younger than the rest of us, so she had known Clyde’s brother just a bit in high school. Her arrival was also exciting for me, because she, too, didn’t give a shit about video games.
Also, she was a smoker. So she stood outside with me. Clyde’s family lived in a neat little house, right on the outskirts of a tiny little town. For being in a town, they had a very nice yard. Two big trees (with a hammock!), some topiary, a well-kept vegetable garden, and ample street parking, because their’s was essentially the last house in town. So Sandra and I had a nice little bit of ground to stroll around on, smoke our cigarettes, and enjoy the breezy, beautiful evening.
The video gaming ended, and the guys piled out of the house, looking to stretch their legs. Sandra saw this as an opportunity to go congratulate Clyde’s brother. And so it happened that a bunch of us restless guys were standing in the yard, looking for a Something to occur.
“Let’s shit on Sandra’s car,” Clyde suggested.
This sounded positively awesome to all of us.
But it wouldn’t be easy. She could come back out of the house at any time. And how were we to do this, exactly? Sure, we were on the outskirts of town, but we were still in town. You can’t just shit on someone’s car on a town street. After all, we weren’t crazy.
And, naturally, not everybody had to shit just then.
Ethan—who was always very generous with himself in matters like this—volunteered to retrieve a plastic bag from his car. He would then go behind the house and shit in the bag. Once Ethan came back around with the plastic bag, Clyde would go into the house to ensure that Sandra stayed inside while Ethan applied the shit to her car.
And that is how it happened. Ethan went around the house to shit in the bag. He returned about five minutes later. He showed us the shit. After all, how fun would it be for us if we hadn’t seen the shit?
Clyde went inside to distract Sandra. Ethan (I believe Lee went with him, while the rest of us watched from the yard) ran out to Sandra’s car and—turning the bag inside out—smeared the shit on her car doors. I am not sure if they put it on the handles. I know that they had planned to, but I don’t know if they did.
While still standing at the car, we could see Ethan whisper something to Lee, and then Lee came running back to us.
“Someone go inside and tell Sandra you want to look through her CDs. Ask for her car keys. Ethan wants to put the rest of the shit inside her car.”
This was a risky proposition. It would be possible that Sandra would want to come outside herself, thinking that there was fun being had out here. Or, knowing us the way she knew us, she might suspect that we were in the middle of fucking with her. And if she offered to just come outside and open the car for us, how would you keep her from doing it, without arousing her suspicions? But putting the shit inside her car was truly the move of a master Somethinger; Ethan was right. We had to try.
Lee went inside. Lee had just gotten done dating Sandra, so at the moment, he had her attention more than any of us. If anyone could do it, Lee could.
A long, long time passed. After about fifteen minutes, most of us were getting ready to go inside and see what was going on. Just as we were about to go in, Lee emerged—by himself. You could hear keys jingling in his hand. He walked calmly to Sandra’s car, where Ethan was waiting in the dark.
There are five of us riding in this car, all night. We are not headed anywhere. We have no destination. </SPAN>I style=”mso-spacerun: yes” a feet. I have a bottle of Coke, which I am mixing with gin in a Super-Size McDonalds cup. I am chain-smoking Newport Lights. Someone in the front seat is smoking copious amounts of marijuana, and the windows are rolled up. I am a bit uncomfortable. This kind of moving party is fun, to be sure, but at the moment, I am just a bit too drunk to be so cramped.
We stop at a gas station and a few of the guys go in. I stay in the car. I think Lee is beside me. He says some of that nonsense stuff I find so funny. Stuff he only says when he’s high, like “I am fwoppin fwippin” or “I just heard a rooster walkin'”. I can barely pay attention to him. I want out of this car, but I am afraid to get out.
The guys return, and we start moving again. The windows get rolled down and I start to feel a little better, clearer. Some Led Zeppelin is on the radio, and this is during the two months of my life that I think Led Zeppelin is a good band. The veil begins to lift; I might just make it out of this car.
We are now far out in the country. Everything out of the windows is darkness. Road signs, the silhouettes of Douglass Firs, A-Frame roofs are like clunky living shadows in this deathly darkness. We pull over into a stone parking lot. I cannot tell where we are. I try to ask where we are pulling over; either I am incapable of asking, or they are incapable of hearing me.
The car doors open and everyone gets out. Somehow I manage to get out, too. My eyes adjust to the darkness. We are in one of the many pull-offs that line the Big Spring, our local creek. These pull-offs are scenic stops for nature lovers, fishermen and young lovers. This particular pull-off is not one that I am greatly familiar with. I have been here once or twice, but have no history here.
The guys are spread out. Someone is pissing into the creek. Someone is sitting in the grass. I wander around, trying to get the veil to lift further.
The veil does lift further, as I realize that there is a large boulder near the car, and someone is crouched on that boulder, like a catcher in a baseball game. His pants are down and his ass is facing us. And no sooner do I realize that, than I realize he is shitting. The other guys realize this at the same time I do, and they start to laugh. I do not laugh. I bend over. I vomit.
I knew this was going to happen, anyway. I had been trying to deny it. But the vomit had been inevitable for some time now. Seeing shit come out of a man’s ass was just the necessary impetus.
It is a hard, violent vomit, as they usually are nowadays, with lots of dry heaving, tears, and snot. This is not unusual to my companions. I doubt they even noticed.
With everybody’s secretions safely on the ground and not in the car, we pile back in. I am feeling quite better. I mix another drink. Someone in the front seat wants me to mix them a drink, too. I mix them a drink. I spill a decent amount of gin on myself. I take my shirt off, noticing for a brief moment the oniony scent that peeks from my armpits. When did I shower last?
We drive for a considerable time more. I have no idea where we are.
Once again we pull into a stone parking lot. This time, I ask where we are, and someone answers me: “The Duck Pond”.
The Duck Pond, the actual name of which is Children’s Lake, is a shallow, man-made lake in the scenic town of Boiling Springs. It is about fifty feet across, and perhaps four-hundred feet long. At it’s deepest point, it is perhaps five feet deep. Large, multi-colored, boulder-sized rocks line it’s bottom. It attracts a wide array of wildlife: ducks, geese, swans, turtles, beavers. There are manicured walkways all the way around it, red park benches at regular intervals, and little vending machines that dispense corn, in case you may want to feed the ducks. You are not supposed to go there at night, although I often have.
I make myself a fresh drink in the McDonalds cup. Someone retrieves a few beers from the trunk. We all make sure we have our cigarettes. We set off, to walk around the Duck Pond.
At night, you can hear the ducks, the geese, out on the water, but you can’t see them. They aren’t very active at night, but every now and then, you hear a splash, the flap of a wing against the heavy air, a short quick quack. It is melancholy in that worst way: dreary foreboding.
There is a place where the path kind of ends, and you are left to walk through grass for a bit, and under the canopy of some Willows. In the sunshine, this part of the lake is the most beautiful. At night, it’s majesty is lost. You can feel the grass, and perhaps the spray of the dew against your shins, but the Willows are lost in the night. The copse has disappeared.
If you were standing at this spot during the day, you would see that a narrow cement platform has been constructed, extending about fifteen feet into the lake. This is like a small concrete dock, which serve as a place for the birds to hang out without being in direct contact with human passers-by. During the day, this concrete dock is covered by birds; squaking, flapping, quacking birds. During the night, it is abandoned, and is covered only in bird shit. But it is truly covered in bird shit, like some foul Pollock.
As a group, we stop here. We are mostly silent. We are smoking, drinking, thinking. I start to take my pants off.
Someone asks me, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to run down that cement dock and jump in.”
They try to tell me not to. They warn me that the water is very shallow here, and that the concrete dock is awash in bird shit. I wave off their warnings. Have these guys stopped wanting to see how far they can go?
I take off my shoes, my socks, my pants, my underwear. I’m a naked man at the Duck Pond. The guys have warned me, so they are no longer worried. They are watching, smiling, ready to laugh and tell me they told me so.
I take a long sip of my drink.
I start running, down through the grass and then suddenly my feet hit concrete. It is terribly slippery, and even while I am running, I can feel the bird shit sticking to my heels, squishing between my toes. It is a gross feeling.
In this light, it’s not easy to see where the platform ends. Just in time, I realize I can see the moon’s reflection in the water; I use this as a guide.
At the end of the platform, I jump hard and high, as if from a diving board. I pull my legs up under my ass and clasp my hands under my shins: the cannonball position.
And I freeze there; I hover. Time seemingly stands still. See me from the back: my shaggy, rarely groomed brown hair, my pimpled back, a bit of flabby belly spilling over into view, my two half-moon ghost-white butt cheeks, with my balls and the tip of my penis jutting out below them, and directly below that, the soles of my feet. And in front of me, a nearly-black matte of stars, tree outlines and moony water. Now, rotate around me, as if you were a movie camera. Stop when you are beside me, at my profile. My mouth, wide like Pac-Man, my ample gut, spilling forth like a sack of oatmeal, the curve of my haunches, my arms flung below me, seeming to hold me in place, to levitate me. And behind me, a nearly-black matte of stars, tree outlines and moony water. Now, rotate around me further.<> Stop when you are in front of me. See that look on my face? That excruciating yawp of desperate living, desperate to feel these moony waters; see that fat, oatmealy belly, my hairy, caveman chest, nipples erect by the night wind, the pale fronts of my wobbly knees, my black overgrown nest of pubics, my dangling penis reduced to a nub by a run through the darkness. Now look behind me: look at those guys standing there, their faces frozen in various forms of laughter, disbelief, worry, apathy. Look at those guys! Oh, they are probably worried about so many things; I am sure they are worried that I am about to hurt myself. Also, looking at the set of their mouths and the glint in their eyes, I’m willing to wager they’re worried about drowning in a ferry accident with two-hundred strangers in icy cold water somewhere, or whether they’ll ever get to walk the length of South America, or what they’d do if they found a dead body in a hotel hallway, or if they’ll keep having that dream where they show up to the wrong building for a college final exam, or if they have syphilis, or if they’ll ever be the father they want to be, or marry a woman as great as their mother, and in there somewhere are the realizations, too, the realizations we are having every moment of every day: the lines of morality and sanity we keep drawing and moving and drawing again with everything we observe, and the list of Hopes and Dreams that is under constant revision without us knowing, the importance of breath and bras and bicycles all neatly ordered and the smells we love so much like old books and stale cake and the things we know we’ll never do like fly a jumbo jet or hide in a refrigerator to scare the crap out of somebody and oh look at the list of regrets written all over these guys faces the women they wanted to fuck the cars they wanted to buy the movies they wanted to see as though they were already dead as though their whole story had been told but that’s not the truth now is it we lived, we were burning to live, we were burning to live!
Seth’s Favorites of 2009: Magazines
Posted in Rant/ Rave, Uncategorized with tags art, Billy Collins, history, LHC, list, literature, magazines, netflix, poetry, politics, psychology, reading, science on November 10, 2009 by sethdellingerOther favorites of 2009:
If you know me, you know I enjoy magazines more than your average bear. I find them to be a great way to compliment my different interests. There’s just some level of involvement in things you simply cannot get off the internet, TV, etc. I subscribe to more magazines than I can possibly read every month, the idea being that when I want to read something, it’s there, but I don’t pressure myself to read every magazine I get (yes, I recycle them). 2009 was a great year for magazines. It seems the more and more that the death knell gets sounded for the future of the publishing world, the better and better the publications that remain are getting! And so here they are, my favorite magazines of 2009:
5. Mother Jones
I’d been hearing about Mother Jones for a few years until I finally decided to pick up an issue off the newsstands this year, and I loved it so much, I subscribed. Listen: MoJo is a liberal magazine, and it makes absolutely no secret about it. I think that’s why I like it so much: it’s one of the only magazines I’ve ever read where I wasn’t left, to some degree, guessing about it’s politics (even hard-line ‘zines like Commentary or American Perspective sometimes leave me scratching my head). But, more than just being a magazine I agree with, MoJo is a lot of fun: it’s not JUST about politics, but the wide range of subjects it explores are filtered through the liberal viewpoint, which means I can be guaranteed none of its articles are written by bigoted homophobes. Did I mention the magazine is fun? Recommended for everyone who used to like The Utne Reader before it became a strictly environmental mag.
4. The Wilson Quarterly
Over the last few years, I have had a very on-again, off-again, love/hate relationship with The Wilson Quarterly. It is written, basically, for intellectual snobs who are interested in interesting things. Sometimes this is very, very…well, interesting. Other times it is…well, annoying. Certainly there is a bit of the snob in me, but even among snobs, there are different kinds of snobs, and we don’t like each other! Also, WQ is “non-partisan”, which means sometimes I cheer for it, and sometimes it offends me. This constant yo-yo had it on my shortlist of “non-renewals” at the beginning of the year, but its smart, concise coverage of the economic collpase, Obama’s election, and our insanely evolving media culture this year truly did help to inform the way I’m seeing the world I live in, and for that, I think I’ll keep The Wilson Quarterly around for a few more years.
3. Poetry
There continues to be no better method for following current American poetry than the gold standard, Poetry. This year saw so much editorial involvement by Billy Collins, I started to think he was on the payroll (which isn’t a bad thing). Also, at the beginning of 2009, they started using even heavier paper stock, which smells really good.
2. Psychology Today
It’s not what you think. I discovered this little gem early this year via Maghound (a Netflix-like service that lets you subscribe to numerous magazines–and change which ones you get at any time–in a Netflix-like model. Check it out at http://www.maghound.com). Psychology Today is not for psychologists. As a matter of fact, they probably hate it. It’s a magazine about pop psychology for everyday people (for instance, why are you jealous? What happens when you sleep? Why do you vote the way you do?). Sure, it can get a bit hokey, and sometimes it reads like either Cosmo or Men’s Health, but regardless, it is ALWAYS a fun read. It’s like a bon bon of a magazine.
1. Discover
That’s right. The science magazine. Science is my secret interest, and I tried every major science magazine a few years back before I settled on Discover, and my love affair with the mag has just gotten hotter and hotter every year since. Discover is written for people who are not scientists, but who are not idiots. If Discover has an article on String Theory, for instance, you’d better already know what String Theory is, to a degree. But unlike Scientific American, you don’t have to actually be a physicist to understand it (and unlike Science Illustrated, you do have to be older than five). This year saw a ton of great stuff at Discover: terrific CERN coverage, in depth Darwin and Evolution stuff all year, and I can finally–finally–understand what the Higgs Boson is. Trust me, that’s no small feat.
Seth’s Favorites of 2009: Poetry
Posted in Rant/ Rave, Seth's Favorite Poems (by other people), Uncategorized with tags Billy Collins, list, poetry, rave, reading, Timothy Liu on October 30, 2009 by sethdellingerOther favorites of 2009:
2009 was a great year for American poetry (I say American because I just tend to prefer American poetry, both historical and contemporary). And although I wasn’t able to read a great deal of the new stuff, I got my hands on enough of it to create a top five list!
5. Joel Brouwer, “And So”
Brouwer’s second collection of poetry, “And So”, is filled with some of the best relationship poetry I’ve read in years, not to mention he sticks to my favorite poem length (half to three-quarters of a page), although a few do run longer, but always for 
good reason, and never long enough to get boring or tedious. For my money, there is at least one absolutely must-read in this collection, and that is Mona Lisa, a masterstroke of a poem in which Brouwer recounts a visit to the Louvre to see the titular painting…or is he recounting a love affair he had? Or is he addressing the homeless problem? Or…wait…just what the hell is going on here? It never feels like trickery, but then again, it never feels simple, either.
4. Rita Dove’s “Sonata Mulattica”
I’ve never been much for the poetry of black women (this isn’t racist, people–it’s truly a variety of poetry, and I just plain don’t usually enjoy it), but I’ve never met anyone who could turn away from Rita Dove’s beautiful lyricism, or her unassuming innocence, or her righteous anger. This year’s addition, “Sonata Mulattica”, did not disappoint, although it certainly wasn’t “more of the same”. “Mulattica” is a book-length poem following the career of a real-life violin student of Haydn’s. Sound boring? It does sound boring. It is anything but.
3. Deborah Meadows’ “Goodbye Tissues”
I admit, I was very suspect of this from the start. I thought it was going to be “chick lit” poetry, and nothing sounded worse to me than that! But it got such a rave review in an issue of Poetry magazine early in the year–written by Billy Collins, no less–that I sucked it up and gave it a shot. And boy am I glad I did! Meadows is a tremendous new talent, and this collection, despite it’s hokey title, delivers. What becomes revealed as Meadows works through this patchwork quilt of her life is that she’s not just referring to Kleenex-type tissues, but the bonding-tissues of life, love, and human relationships (and she’s saying goodbye to them!! Well holy moly!)
2. Timothy Liu’s “Bending the Mind Around the Dream’s Blown Fuse”
First, I’d like to just let everyone know that I once met Timothy Liu, when he came to speak at my college, Shippensburg University. I was “in” with the chairman of our English department, John Taggart (himself one of the most famous contemporary American poets), so when he’d arrange for other famous poets to visit, I’d sit with him and then before or afterward, he’d usually introduce me to them. Of course, later I’d look up their work and find out just who it was I’d just me (this process is probably what hooked me on keeping up with contemporary poetry). Anyway, Liu’s is the only poet Taggart introduced me to who I’m still following, and he gets more and more interesting as the years pass: he’s gay, he’s Asian-American, and he’s not entirely OK with what that means for him. But he’s getting amazing at how he expresses that. I’ve found a great write-up from Publisher’s Weekly that says things better than I can:
Known since the 1990s for his harsh blend of gay eroticism and visionary fervor, Liu (Of Thee I Sing) continues to pursue his high ambitions, from Whitmanesque odes to American jeremiads. This seventh book begins in a scarred and threatening America: “two boys hustling// in Union Square are Clubbed to death/ by a sack of rocks”; the southwestern desert shows only topographies of tumbleweed snagged on rusted barbs. Yet it soon veers into apparently autobiographical material, its language quieter and more reportorial, its landscapes much friendlier and mostly European—Athens, Rhodes, Edinburgh, Paris. (Most of the middle of the book describes an apparently fruitless search for a lover who disappeared in Greece.) Liu’s philosophical dealings with his own intensely chronicled frustration, and his tense stanzas, recall Frank Bidart, but his vibrant scenes might just as well please admirers of Philip Levine. These lyrics chase and capture insatiable desire, adrift in a sad and hostile world, with the heart’s purloined/ hermeneutics locked inside a box. A poem called simply Bittersweet begins: “Nothing made you disappear// faster than when I asked/ just what was going on// between us.”
1. Billy Collins’ “Ballistics”
It doesn’t get much better than Billy Collins, and any year when Collins releases a new collection is a banner year for American poetry. To those outside this tiny little hobby: imagine there was only ONE superstar novelist–like, say, John Grisham–and he only released a novel once every four years. That’s what it’s like for us poetry fans (no, NONE of us actually like Maya Angelou). Every collection by Collins is good. He’s the only poet I have ever read who manages to be funny, tender, insightful, and sorrowful all at the same time. “Ballistics” just builds on his previous material and actually improves upon it: the funny bits are even funnier, the sad bits even sadder, and the uplifting parts even upliftinger. My life would suck without Billy Collins.
Notes From the World at Large
Posted in Uncategorized with tags history, humor, language, literature, NPR, quote, radio, reading, science, silversun pickups, snippet on October 13, 2009 by sethdellingerJust got back from driving a friend of mine to the District Justice’s office. Inside, I saw this sign:
You will be prosecuted if you bring a handgun on these premises, and/or cause a handgun to be present.
A few questions: so…rifles are OK? And how do I cause a handgun to be brought?
Heard on NPR on the way to the District Justice:
Silversun Pickups just might be the next U2.
This is both awesome to hear someone say, and also makes me nauseous.
Also: currently reading my third book on Aaron Burr. I may be bordering on obsessed. He’s definitely the absolute most interesting figure in American history, so far as I can tell.
Also: I think I may finally understand String Theory. And it seems like total nonsense!
Blogging the Night Away
Posted in Uncategorized with tags blogging, Carlisle, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, history, humor, internet, joni, kyle, magazines, mary, Modest Mouse, movies, music, photography, poetry, prose, Radiohead, reading, Robert Creeley, sarah p., science, sex, television, vinyl, women on August 31, 2009 by sethdellingerLast night, my friend Kyle got drunk on rum, watched movies, and fucked around on the internet, blogging his thoughts on what he was seeing/doing. It looked like marvelous self-indulgent fun, so of course I’m doing it now! (except I’ll be drinking generic diet Dr. Pepper and various coffee products instead of rum!)
Tonight is a “Seth-time” night–I shut out the outside world and treat my apartment and everything in it like an amusement park. It’s not very often I get to fully enjoy all this crap I’ve got in here! Most of you will not be the least bit interested by this blog post, so I apologize in advance, but it’s gonna be fun for me, so take a flying leap! Also, I’ll be editing it throughout the night and adding to it, so check back!
7:30pm: I’m halfway through “Citizen Ruth”, the first movie by Alexander Payne (of “Election”, “About Schmidt” and “Sideways” fame). Kyle himself chose this movie for me by randomly picking a number (237) and then I counted to that number in my personal DVD collection. “Citizen Ruth” is a dark comedy about the hilarious issues of abortion, addiction, the religious right, and moral certitude. I know, hilarious, right?! But it IS, somehow, and also very, very issue oriented. I haven’t watched it for probably a year, and am now reminded of why I bought it. As a rule, I very much dislike Laura Dern (what with her association with David Lynch), but in “Citizen Ruth”, Dern does an AMAZING job portraying this very tortured woman (she’s addicted to huffing paint) who’s had 4 kids taken from her and is being pressured to abort her current fetus, when she becomes a national poster woman for anti-abortion…and then the poster woman for choice…and back and forth and back and forth, all the while Dern continues to skirt the line between intense emotion and light-heartedness…as much as I dislike her, she deserved an Oscar nom for this.
Here’s a scene from the movie that perfectly illustrates how it is played both tragic and comic simultaneously:
7:45pm: Cracking open the first Diet Dr. Thunder (wal-mart brand) of the night. I really do love this shit. I don’t buy it for economic reasons. I actually prefer it to the real deal now. I have cans tonight, but I usually have 2 liters. Wal-Mart was actually OUT of the 2 liters last night!
7:47pm: Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern) who is about to enter an abortion clinic but is waiting for some protesters to leave, just said “I wish I could take a dump.”
8:02pm: Just took the trash out. Why do I always insist in doing this in just my socks, when I know full well that the stone parking lot hurts my feet? I’ve always had very sensitive feet.
8:04pm: Just cracked open the newest Time magazine. What is this stuff about New Jersey residents protesting Gaddafi? This seems weird. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this.
8:07pm: The anti-abortion woman who is attempting to win Ruth to their position just accused Ruth of being addicted to “smelling drugs”.
8:12pm: Perusing the latest TV Guide (that’s right, I get TV Guide) to see if I want to put on the TV or another movie after “Citizen Ruth” is over. PBS’s History Detectives is looking pretty good. Anyone ever seen that show? It’s sooooooo intriguing! But that is really the only thing coming on a 9:00 that seems worth my time.
8:14pm: Oh man!!! Burt Reynolds makes his hilarious entry into “Citizen Ruth”! Gotta love this character!
8:35pm: Just read about this curious phenomenon in Time: Putpockets.
8:36pm: Flirting on Facebook.
8:54pm: Eating a can of Hormel chili. Interesting story about me and chili: about 2 years ago, my friend Mary and I were eating at the restaurant Chili’s. I was very, very hungry, and was talking about having an appetizer of some kind, at which point Mary says I might as well have some chili, since I always eat chili. I was astounded! Sure, I’ve eaten chili in my life, but I’ve never been a chili “fan”, or, as far as I can remember, ever eaten chili in front of Mary before that moment. I protested, but she insisted that I always ate chili. Well, wouldn’t you know it, almost immediately after that night, I DID become a big fan of chili, and now I usually have one or two cans in my apartment at all times. This, of course, always looks to Mary as though she were right all along! I can in no way convince her that I was not a chili fan before that night! Also: on my second can of Diet Dr. Thunder.
9:00pm: I’ve opted to watch History Detectives.
9:13pm: That chili was delish!! And this episode of History Detectives is boring! (enough WWII already, History Detectives!). I’m going to step out of the apartment briefly to take some pictures of Carlisle at night.
10:00pm: Back from taking pictures. Didn’t get a lot of good shots, but I should have: it’s “big trash day”, when people can put couches and refrigerators and all kinds of big stuff out on the sidewalk to be taken away. However, my limited-ability camera made capturing anything great very difficult. here are my favorites:
10:16pm: It is apparently impossible to not have these words snake around the pictures. No matter how hard I try, they won’t simply appear BELOW the pictures. Consider that my rant for the evening. Now: I’m well aware of how this sounds, but I’m now going to put on my vinyl copy of Godspeed You Black Emperor’s album Yanqui U.X.O., light some incense, and read some poetry. This is going to rule. Looks like the poet of the night is…Robert Creeley, who rules. Also, when the song “Motherfucker=Redeemer” plays, I am going to play air guitar on a golf club (which I guess is actually golf club guitar) during the 10-minute crescendo.
10:27pm: Texting Joni, who just sprained her wrist.
10:34pm: Internet and cable TV go down, not changing my plans at all, but preventing me from keeping you all updated for a second!
10:44pm: Play air guitar on a golf club, as promised, during the crescendo to “Motherfucker=Redeemer”. If you have a spare 20 minutes and some patience, you can listen to the song here. But that is only part one of the song.
11:25pm: Am astounded by one of these Creeley poems I must have always missed:
The Answer
by Robert Creeley
Will we speak to each other
making the grass bend as if
a wind were before us, will our
way be graceful, as
substantial as the movement
of something moving so gently.
We break things in pieces like
walls we break ourselves into
hearing them fall just to hear it.
11:33pm: Making a marshamallow latte. There’s no actual marshmallows involved; I have marshmallow Torani syrup. It’s just like a caramel latte except it tastes like marshmallow. It’s fantastic! And it sucks typing marshmallow that many times! Also, smoking another one of these cigars I bought for the birth of Paul’s daughter…uh-oh. Am I starting to like cigars?
11:48pm: Texting Sarah about music, and still texting Joni, but now about waffles. Putting Radiohead’s Kid A on the turntable. This is one of my only vinyls where I can notice the difference in sound quality on the vinyl.
Midnight: Holy shit, “National Anthem” on Kid A is making me move! Currently dancing around my living room, singing into a golf club…keep moving the needle back again and again…this song has got me stuck in it’s groove!
12:20am: I’ve made a commitment to essentially stage a fake concert here in my living room to the entire Kid A album. I’m getting sweaty and this latte isn’t helping! “Idioteque” is blowing my mind and it’s getting difficult to not make the record skip!
12:54: Marshmallow latte #2. I might not go to bed tonight. Been awhile since I saw a sunrise…hmmmm…??? I’m gonna let Pandora radio play my Post-Rock station and read some of the Stephen King book I started today, Lisey’s Story.
1:10am: I’ve tried starting this King book a few times now over the last six months, and I just cannot get into it. Is it, perhaps, that this is the one millionth book King has written about a writer? This is feeling a bit worn to me. Plus, the last King book I read before this one, Duma Key (which was about a PAINTER!) felt exactly like this book at the beginning; it seems I’m reading the same book twice–and Duma Key was barely scary at all! I’m afraid to let myself spend that long (these are loooooong books) on a non-scary, mediocre book again. But I shall try. Back to the book!
1:35am: Am totally ambushed by a MySpace Instant Message (that’s right, I was on MySpace!) by one of my friends who insists they have a hilarious YouTube video to show me. I relent, and they are right, it is hilarious! See for yourself:
1:38am: E-mailing back and forth with Joni trying to decide on what her new hairstyle will be…I vote for number 1 or number 4. I think number 1 will be especially amazing on her…it fits her face perfectly. Do you think I can utilize every single one of my existing blog tags in this single entry? Probably not, but the tags are getting ridiculous!
1:45am: I just gave Kyle and opportunity to select my next movie for me through the random number system again, but he dropped the ball and signed off Facebook, and Mary jumped at the chance. She chose number 267 (weird, since earlier Kyle chose 237), and that movie is “Dragonslayer”! Badass. This is an old-school movie about…well…killing dragons, back when special effects were still mainly stop-motion and models. But that doesn’t take away from this movie at all. It is still VERY creepy in places. This is another one I haven’t seen in a long time. Makes me remember my childhood. For some reason it seems I watched this alot when I was little. I remember it influencing my “play”…it really sparked my imagination!
1:54am: Bowl of Boo Berry cereal and a diet Dr. Thunder.
2:13am: Between Mary and Kyle, I am having my ass Facebooked off! Also wondering whatever happened to Peter MacNicol’s film career? He’s the bomb in “Dragonslayer”, and then he was in…”Sophie’s Choice”, I believe?…I suppose he’s had some success in TV though. Oh man, MacNicol is entering the dragon’s cave for the first time…this is so tense!
2:50am: Oh man I forgot about this little monster that jumps out of the hole in the cave! It scared the crap out of me! It’s a fierce baby dragon!
2:55am: All the lights out and some incense going for the big fight scene. I might pee my pants!
3:02am: OMG there’s that fucking dragon. That fucking dragon is popping up right behind Peter MacNicol…you can see it’s reflection in the pool of water. Now you can see the steam from it’s breath! This dragon ain’t nothing to fuck with!
3:23am: So ends “Dragonslayer”…so glad Mary picked that one! And it seems that now just about everyone is asleep…and yet I am wide awake, perhaps owing to my marshmallow lattes. I’m going to go cut my hair.
3:37am: Mid-cut:
3:45am: Haircut complete. That’s right, I can give myself a haircut in under ten minutes! Finished haircut:
Yes, it's true, I look like ass here. I blame it on my overhead flourescent light.
3:55am: Next up, I’m going to rock out a little bit more…I had so much fun earlier jumping around my living room! This time, it’s gonna be Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Then after that, it’s been decided (by Kyle again, by random number) that I’ll be watching the film “Matchstick Men.” OK…let the Modest Mouse begin!
4:32am: Nobody can sing like Isaac Brock, lead singer of Modest Mouse. Now, I’m not saying he’s a good singer–far from it. In fact, most of the time, he barely sings at all. It’s more a an in-key snarl. But nobody else does it. Alot of the time, he actually laughs the words. he laugh-sings words! WTF? It’s amazing and crazy. Totally sweaty from jumping around my living room pretending to be Isaac Brock.
4:44am: I have elected to skip “Matchstick Men”, as “Needful Things” is on Starz, and I’ve not seen it before. Also, I have elected to watch this movie while laying down in an attempt to sleep eventually, even though I am not tired yet, and I don’t have to be up for anything tomorrow, now seems as good a time as any to hit the reset button, although I’ll probably become engrossed in the movie and be up until 6 anyway. I hope somebody out there got some form of entertainment out of the endless blog. Good night.
Notes From the Fire 
