There was blood on the floor
Blood I vomited out
Before passing out
On the floor
In the blood
And thinking it was Tuesday
and my shirt was a sweater
I borrowed
Which was problematic
Because in my deathbed delusion...
I borrowed it from Brock
And Brock needs his sweaters
Like a Rhino needs his rage
And a Lighthousekeeper needs hi beacon
Of light. Bright, ebullient light.
Another brush with death later...
I'm alive
Happy
And Fulfilled!

Exaltation and happiness aren't the most compelling things to read about so I will share this anecdote from today in which a man, a very fat man, rejected every protocol and rule of society and the human condition.

It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon and friends had a free afternoon by warrant of a leaky gas main in the brand new cinema school. We decided to galivanting around and went for a swim at Heidi's place. Nick peed in the hot tub. We were all thoroughoughly disgusted.

Walking to the car we hear a booming voice, "TONY STEWART! TONY STEWART!" No biggie. This is Los Angeles and celebrity sightings are quite common. We pull out of the garage and in the adjacent intersection is a naked man. Roughly fifty pounds overwight with tattoos crisscrossing his backside. He was in the middle of the intersection, stumbling about until a city bus drew his ire.

He walked up to the bus, a DASH, and began punding on the windows with his hambone fists. We couldn't make out what he was yelling but hoo boy was he railing about something. Then he gave the sky the finger. When the helicopters came, buzzing about like urban dragon flies, he continued the gesture to the infinite ire of the LAPD.

The cops came. A man is usually a man, but sometimes he is something else: part animal/part imbecile. Confronted with the spectre of eight guns drawn in his direction, the man reached down to his genitals and masturbated in the direction of the gunmen.

They marched forward, slowly but surely, as the cries of "Fuck the LAPD" built to a crescendo. They shot him in the chest with a taser. He went limp, harmless, and fell to the ground in a gentle pile.

Across the street a Mexican was selling roses.

Hello My Name Is Paul Gleason

Perhaps the greatest curse of Sports Illustrated, aside from the much ballyhooed Sports Illustrated Curse in which those (people, teams, institutions, ANYTHING) appearing on the cover find themselves afflicted and free-falling from past glories. For a fan of Sports and Sports Journalism, the vision of one of your loved ones on the high gloss cover is the same as a black cat crossing your path, an old Cajun giving the evil eye, or waking up next to a Jack-o-Lantern. For further proof ask McWriter, his Cubs appeared just before last years playoffs when they were heavy favorites to win the NL. 3 games later and POOF! The Cubs had flaked and the Curse had struck again. 

(Note: I wonder if the curse is reserved for officially mandated Sports Illustrated Covers. Perhaps the black magic resides in the font or layout and not the approving editor. If so, I'm drawing up SI covers for the Celtics, Red Sox, Kenny Powers, and Rush Limbaugh) 

The other curse is the same dooming journalism as an entire industry. It comes too damned late. Just yesterday I received my weekly allotment. It comes on Wednesday in Los Angeles, a day earlier than in Detroit but it was too late. The latest issue featured an article (Check it BRYAN!) on Lamar Odom and issued a parable of wisdom that amounted to the beauty of running away from it all, turning off the phone, and experiencing great silence. 

On St. Patrick's Day Afternoon, I received a call from the ignominious Hoopster. Crestfallen at the elusive nature of Young Ladies he regaled with a tale of being left alone in a Hotel Room. If a geographic locale ever threw salt into the wounds it was this: the room was in Ohio. I guess I said some stuff. I guess it was pretty good, good enough to warrant a call from Hoopster saying "You make me feel bad and good at the same time. I'm sorry for always calling you with my troubles." Keep calling Pete. Someday Sports Illustrated will come at the right time and the wisdom of Lamar Odom can prompt a night of reflection and reverie. 

I am always happiest in the home of another, at least until it becomes to feel like home. I am a goofball, a rollicking bag of adventure, impressions, sad soliloquies, and other traits that supposedly make me feel like me. I am surrounded by friends, wonderful beautiful friends. If not for ya'll I would have in total honesty lost part of my soul. They're wonderful people each and everyone of them. We're a clique all our own, a new archetype that spins universes and funny pictures instead of discussing things we saw on television. 

When my friends leave home, for Spring Break on this occasion, I like to slink into their homes, inhabit their spaces, and slink into their essences. This is a task best done quietly, with few others around but I doubt you'll find another tactic that caresses with such catharsis. In January, I was my Dad. Last May, I was Jeff somedays, Nico others, but found it oddly difficult to assume the domain of Brock (In fairness, the room was a hybrid between him and McWriter and had the lingering sour stench of the lovelorn. It was however, a great room for reading.) 

I have just been informed that I have done something terribly wrong. I'm so so so sorry. During this sojourn, I've decided to become Paul Gleason, my friendship infatuation du jour. Brock just stumbled in from break and informed that Paul is extra sensitive about his things. I listened as I typed on his computer, his pride and joy, neglecting to inform that I was wearing one of his shirts. 

Paul, I hope this doesn't cause a rift in our friendship, because to emit it honestly, you're my new hero. I want to study under your care, not the specifics but the energy, the unassuming ball of ebullience. 

Paul's room is designed to soothe. It is lacquered in like the surface of the tide when seen from the Santa Barbara Mountains. Some pools are dark and foreboding, advising one of the depths below. Other panels are an electric baby blue. In between the panels, the trim is painted white. THE TIDE. There is an overhead light but I don't use it because if I were to have a list of things I hate it would be as follows. 

1. Abusing substance without reason but submitting to the compulsion. 

2. Going to a party and being forced to watch Youtube from politeness more than interest. This is inevitable. If one shows a video, natural instinct is to one up, leading to a defacto film festival of News Cast Farts and Kanye West Music Videos. 

3. Overhead light from above like God, blathering light into every crevice, making us all appear a bit uglier. 

Thankfully, Paul's room has an abundance of colored lamps. It would be a good place to smoke Hookah in. There are also two comfy chairs. 

Adorning the walls is a mix of framed pictures of personal importance and typical posters (Hendrix, The Beatles, Homer Simpson) that are hung unapologetically and thus beautifully. Everyone watched the Simpsons growing up. I hang with a gang of filmmakers. The influence is strong enough to nearly tinge every character yellow but when Groening's gift is brought up it is almost certainly to opine the show's (questionable) downfall. Paul parades this love for what it was, what it is, and that's makes all the difference. 

The influence of Paul, coupled with a fruitless job search that made me doubt I'd ever evolve from this creature, shed soft light onto the disconnect I have with my past. I consider past triumphs, even the recently completed novel, as creations of a different being exclusive to the moment of germination. Living isolated in the moment is no way to live. Over the past few days, this realization has spurred an onslaught of selfish behaviors indicative of, well, kind of a dick (I'm sorry Bryan!) but I'm surrounded by people constantly and having cast myself as an attention grabbing hog, I am too weak to demure from playing my role. It gets tiring and loads on an obtuse pressure to perform. I believe that, if given attention, one has a nearly moral obligation to entertain but do it enough and it becomes vapid. 

Last week, I had the first reading of my novel The Giant Explosion That Killed Everyone, perhaps the nearest and dearest endeavor of my short life. The novel had many goals, some of which are still being unearthed, but paramount was: to chronicle the feelings, fears, hopes, thoughts, and inklings that make up the current me (at least in that moment). If you are close to me and reside in the greater Los Angeles area, you were there. I thank you so much. I look forward to conversation and criticism from you all upon the book's reading but at the reading, the book's baptism if you will, I was too jittery to read with any confidence. No amount of Franzia could cool my nerves so I read to get through it, even skipping one of my favorite passages out of fear of boring or offending Li Lu. Only when Jeff, Heidi, Brock, Nico, and Nick read could I be proud of it. Once I was out of the spotlight. Once I wasn't, like so many times before, preening for approval. 

Things are different now. By becoming Paul, albeit for a few days, I've rediscovered the home within myself. Food tastes better, the breeze feels cool against my skin, etc. Today, for the first time since viewing Wall-E and Dark Knight this past summer, I enjoyed a film. My life, impending homelessness, and RV aspirations coalesced into dust and wisped away into the darkened theatre. 

Paul, whether you know it or not, my respect and love for you has skyrocketed. Your space is you while my space at home is covered in old bowls of Macaroni. My sincerest hopes for this life. 

1. Be happy and human through good food, company, and athletics 

2. Step foot on every continent and collect a vial of soil. 

3. Live with Tess someday. 

4. Don't be an old bowl of Macaroni

5. Hand out a flower a day for a year. 

Thanks Paul. I feel like I've been meditating but I've only been watching the Simpsons. 

I Am Seattle, Hear Me Roar

This is a picture of a very dangerous man. He enjoys playing Soccer, going to movies with Friends, and other pursuits gleaned from religiously viewed reruns of Saved By The Bell.


Been there, done that, that's that.
Mom's don't give up. To a mother, the cord's never been cut, just growing to accommodate moves across country. I have no problem with this arraignment aside from her insistence on eating "Textured Vegetable Protein". With no job, bicycle, car, or immediate family, I've been cut off from the world in a tower of garbage...In a good way. No. Not in a good way. It's habit to use that word.

With nothing to do, I've pounded my soul into atrophy by refusing to feed it. His belly is stretched high and wide at the moment. Hence: I'm very happy to be alive, be here and be me. It's so easy to get lost in the tedious and WHAM BOOM a month has passed. I almost went on Spring Break with the gang. It would have been fun. I would have gotten to get even MORE poison oak and revisited the happy forests of the Nicene Valley where no one can possibly hurt themselves. Such fun would have been decadently opulent. Fun's...well fun but I don't need to have fun right now. Hard labor, books, and ham sandwiches are the altars contentment lays around.

Living with four of your friends changes you. If a poop's over a foot, you don't flush, sanctifying your porcelain dome as an excrement Hall of Fame. You share meals, booze, and occasionally women. If you don't share the woman, you'll at least share an infatuation before concluding that everyone in the house feels the same way. Finally, and moreover the reason most live with friends is that it's really damned fun. The dancing, the drinking, the binge nights of HORSE. There isn't a single thing we haven't done in the past two years out here. If variety's the spice of life, mine's Indian Food, so spicy it fills the entire mouth with flavor, leading to future diarrhea.

I'm living in Los Angeles, Ca with friends and the pursuit of film making because I thought it would make me happy. It has for the most part but there is a lot left untouched. This lifestyle takes a toll on your wiring,, so afflicted was I, that by the time I stayed for three unfettered weeks at my Father's farm in Indiana...without another soul to see in the night...the living situation that had been normal since domesticity started resonated as a religious experience.

Talking with others about the experience, everyone basically gives the same answer.
"I just want a plot of land to call my own."

Happiness will soon come from pills.

I never finished this post but felt like throwing it up anyway.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! BASKETBALL RELATED CONTENT! COVER YOUR EARS AND PUT GRANNY IN HER PANIC KNICKERS!

With that out of the way, let us proceed into a series of anecdotes that illustrates why "The GReat Narrative" is the only pseudo religion worth making up. Amen.

Rasheed Wallace had the day off Thursday. So did his team, the Detroit Pistons (though located in the suburban locale of Auburn Hills, Mi). Athletic careers consist of practice, patience, and preparation. Anyone can be good at hooping up in the moment, it's those that carry the torch through all waking hours that stand out. When Rasheed works he only averages about 33.3 minutes of clock in time per night. Those 33.3 are a one man parade of yammering, towel throwing, and dances as the volcanic center of a circle of men swirling in turn. He has his own dance. Students of dance would say "That is a very good dance."

And it is. He jumps in a small circle, waving fist crested hands to and fro in epileptic bouts of striation. (Author's Note: WHAT IN THE FUCKING SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKMISSILE IS THAT LAST SENTENCE?!?)

Through out his playing career, Rasheed has been a wonderful player, reinventing the PF position with an influx of finesse. Finesse and yammering. However wonderful Sheed is as a player, he is far outshone by his personality. Sheed's world is one big argument. He is frequently ejected from games for yelling too much. This temperament has adverse reactions for the team but even the misers in charge know enough not to siphon a man from his passion.

With his day off Rasheed did what most millionaires do...watching television. considering purchasing a power yacht, and smashing lizard heads with a pointy rock. Do not blame Rasheed for the lizard heads. It is a culture of lizard smashing that is the culprit. Don't let these Monopoly man antics fool you, on the day of March 4th, Rasheed Wallace was anywhere and everywhere, editing the universe to bring us closer together.

The day began at 8am by a telephone call from the telephone company. The reason was clear enough. They wanted money, when was the last time a customer service representative called you up just to talk.

People hate courtesy calls but I LOVE them. I attach a body to the disembodied voice on the other end of the line, wondering where they are and what their lives might be.

Rules For The Road (Jeff You Have To Revise This Post In Bold With Your Additions)

Life is a futile, furtive gesture. It is the burden of mankind to find meaning in the intervals interspersed between nurturing the mammalian needs of screwing, eating, sleeping, and talking about Gallagher. I use the word "mammalian" because my life in no way, shape, or form resembles that of an Alligator or Insect. I do not soak up the sun for energy. I do not flap my wings, flit about, and suck skin, leaving a scourge of sores in my wake. I, like you, and you, and even you, am basically a Gorilla. I wake up in the morning (or past midnight), toast a bagel, and try to make sense of all this shit.

This mindset has...
- Turned Basketball into a great sprawling narrative of gladiators and villains with meanings behind every jump shot or staunch defensive stance. I only wish I had this mindset with the 2004 Detroit Pistons. What wonderlust champions!
- Made me push against any and all barriers. My favorite thing in the world is walking the streets of an unknown city with no destination. On these walks I observe and recognize, taking brief detours for conversation. Yesterday, a 400 lb man maligned the stain on his sweatshirt
"See this gravy stain right here? That's why I don't buy white sweat shirts."
My response: "Then why'd you buy it?"
His response: "Gotta stay fresh".
We met as he flirted with a security guard outside Union Station. Moments later, a Georgia old timer from a place just south of Chattanooga took my hand and drawled in my ear. "You're a healthy young man. Anyone would hire you for anything. It's gonna rain soon. I have half a sandwich from Phillipe's in this bag. I'm taking it back to Hollywood." My response: "Did you get extra horse radish?" His response: "Of course. I'm there every morning. Meet me for breakfast."
-In addition to these approaches, I always take on a big project. I'm lost and toothless without an insurmountable task to sink my fangs into. This is why I made a movie at 17. Made a play at 18. Finished a Novel at age 22. The last incident has drained my soul and heart and has been both the best and worst experience of my life. A post is coming. A "Dear John" to my alter ego Charlie Hoofing III.

Simply put: I'm wired to do things for the sole sake of doing them. This approach has given a good feeling through the last few eons but the focus recently changed from outward to inward. We are about to become a lost generation. nothing awaits. No mountains to climb. Talent, drive, and luck are lost in an errant wave of paying dues. Why? Fat pigs want to protect their profligate and go to Burning Man so they can pretend to be hippies. (Note to friends: this isn't you. Rather, an animator I met once.) With nothing to do and even less to conquer the question changes from "How can I succeed?" to "How can I be happy?"

What a wonderful change.

As I've previously stated Jeff and I moving into an RV come August. There are many reasons behind this enterprise, ostensibly to uproot and runaway, but we're chasing the mythic beasts of inspiration and happiness. I'd like to be like Tess. I want the life of an artist or at least someone who gives a shit. I think we share this aim, we have vastly different worldviews but are controlled by directors with similar styles. Our reasons are crystalline. Free living. Great friendship. Pursuing something conducive to something.

But there is always a need to be rules.

Rules for Jeff and Joel's Great Enterprise or An Idiot's Guide To Happiness.
1. Joel will become cleaner and more organized to avoid the ire of Jeff. Jeff will continue his godliness akin to cleanliness.
2. No complaining aloud. If we have a complaint. We will write it down and dismiss it into the sacred chair of Adimu, sure to dispell all worries.
3. Since this is about art, we will set 5 goals for the next year. Jeff will have 2, Joel will have 2, we have one shared goal which will become public at a later time. This is no slippery task, we will give each other weekly progress resports and view each other's work as our own (which it kind of is already). When we fall, the other will carry us. When we soar, we'll take the other along with us.
4. We will share one meal per day, alternating who cooks.
5. Jeff will learn to love beans and marinara sauce.
6. We will move around...alot but understand if we need to stay because of love or prosperity.
7. Since Jeff is gay and Joel is straight we will act as each other's wingman at all times. Your dick is my dick, vice versa.
8. The RV will be adorned in all sorts of decoration and only be referred to as "the roving battleship."
9. We will do something new once a week.
10. We will eat a new food everyday.
11. Joel will take ballet classes and boxing.
12. Jeff will own a shovel.
13. On the third Wendesday of each month, we will buy each other a toy. Less than ten dollars.
14. We will have an hour of quiet time per day.
15. We will make one video per month with alternating directors.
16. We will steal Nico's camera.
17. We will exercise at least 20 minutes a day.

More to come upon revisions.

18. We will keep in good touch and esteem with old friends and loved ones.
19. We will make AT LEAST one new friend per week, and new loved ones as much as possible.
20. “The Roving Battleship” will get lost at least once per month, abetting the discovery of new lands.
21. We will never stay in one place for too long (“too long” defined by degrees of happiness, contemporary and potential).
22. We will exercise self-control.
23. Jeff will continually work toward completing his “debut” album as a musician. This goal should not be included in the previously mentioned 5-goals goal.
24. We will be honest as much as possible, or – when necessary for the sake of relationship, and personal health.
25. We will continually expand the breadth of our artistic practices, exploring and acquiring new mediums.
26. We will appreciate the maintenance of life, including but fucking definitely not limited to the status of, “The Roving Battleship.”
27. We will give each other gifts as much as possible.
28. Jeff will get better at writing stories.
29. Jeff will keep a journal, like, in an actual journal, like, on paper and not a computer.
30. Monkey-in-the-middle.
31. We will continually look for ways to live free(ly).
32. We will exercise laughter.
33. Joel will star in at least one porno by the end of Year 1. :D