been given a raise. aged an entire year. been told to shut up on more than one occasion. made dinner. had dinner made for me. read parts of several books. not finished a book. lied, because I finished "Full Dark, No Stars". lied some more. worn jeans that have widening holes. not thrown said pair of jeans away because they feel too damn good.
written numerous words. written excerpts from 10 possible stories. decided that 10 possible stories is worth next to nothing. downloaded music from iTunes. listened to a lot of music. gone for walks. wished the weather would get colder. worked. worked. worked. worked. worked.
had a white russian or two or three or 10. purchased "In Rainbows" just so I could intermix the tracks with "Ok, Computer" and make one fantasmic album of Radiohead genius. opened presents. talked on the phone. hung up on someone. not gotten sick.
cussed at drivers I passed. wished that whoever planned road construction in this state would die in a fire. fought for the sake of fighting. bitten my nails. dreamed some pretty messed up dreams. been told I will probably be killed by someone. been told I will kill someone.
watched several movies. rearranged the furniture in my bedroom at least 4 times. played World of Warcraft more than I probably should. tried to find my ps2 controller so I can relive the awesome storytelling that is Digital Devil Saga Parts 1 and 2. found said ps2 controller in the closet. not yet relived the awesome storytelling that is DDS 1 and 2. blamed WoW for my lack of playing any other truly better video game in my arsenal.
written no other blog entries, save for this one. exchanged e-mails on the daily. bought the soundtrack to "Black Swan" because Clint Mansell is amazing. worked. worked. worked.
not done anything worth mentioning.
ps: the cake is a lie. and so is your face.
5.10.10
27: A Dream? Or Something Else Entirely...
The following is a dream I had last night. Looking back on it now, I think I have the workings of an awesomely B-rated slasher movie. So Wes Craven, if I see this thrown in my face next Halloween I will come for you. And I will cut you. This, I think, would be so poetic it makes me heart hurt.
I shall piece this together from foggy dream memory. It kind of makes me wish I had just written it all down in my post-dream, delirious state at 4:00 this morning.
So it begins like this:
I’m in a room. Pretty nondescript. Four walls, maybe a window, but probably not because it was really dark. There was a small lamp on an end table sitting in one of the corners. Instead of a door there is a curtain. I’m standing in this room with a younger woman. Black, frizzy hair. I’m holding a large lamp in my two hands. It isn’t plugged in to any outlet.
The young woman is talking to me, though I can’t really understand what she’s saying. She’s panicked. From under the curtain I can see two brown paws suddenly flutter by. I hold up my lamp, ready to swipe at the paws the next time they come by. The woman begs me not to do it. She says something like: “He’ll kill us. Don’t do this, he’ll kill us, he’ll kill us! Don’t mess with the dog”.
Naturally I don’t listen and, when the creature (a dog I guess) comes shifting by, I strike out with the bottom of the lamp and knock it off its paws. It whimpers and whines as I continue to strike out. The woman is screaming and I’m screaming and the dog is wailing and I just don’t stop. I continue to lash out at this dog. The woman is striking me with her hands, begging me to stop because we’re all now going to die and it’s all my fault.
The scene suddenly shifts to six or seven of us, black frizzy haired girl included, to an open room. It’s a very comfortable room. High vaulted ceilings, plush furniture. Windows. One of us, a young guy with blonde hair, light eyes and a killer smile is talking about this guy who goes around at night and selects three people. These three people are taken to his place of business and locked into rooms. There, they experience untold horrors. He grabs three people every night until his place is filled with 27 people.
He tells this story from the couch while sitting next to an equally attractive blonde girl with wavy hair. She looks skeptical, but I don’t really care about her look. I continue to pay attention to the guy telling this obviously ridiculous story.
So he gets 27 people. Once they are all collected, he forces them into a large room (“Like this one here,” he says which I am sure if merely for added horror effect). After they have all been corralled into the room, they are forced to select one among them to die. They must come to a consensus as to which one of them will die. And once they’ve voted, the unlucky person would then be lead off by the man and killed. The others would be set free and it would be as if nothing happened.
The blonde girl sitting next to him laughs. I can tell by the way the guy is looking at her that they are most assuredly fucking. Disappointing. He insists the whole thing is true and to be careful tonight when we all go to sleep.
The scene suddenly changes to three of us in a closed room with a pair of bunk beds, a small window and a lamp. It’s me, a red-haired girl who looks very unsettled and an Asian guy. The red-head is freaking out and rocking back and forth on her heels that “we’ve been taken, we’ve been taken, oh my God we’re going to die”.
I’m looking around, trying to remember how we even got into this place, but I’m drawing up blank. The room is damp and I finally notice that the paint (color I cannot tell because the lighting isn’t all that great) is peeling off in various places. The floor is hard and cold cement. There is no door visible.
The scene switches then to the girl on the lower bunk, still mumbling about dying. The Asian is nowhere to be seen, but then again, I’m not looking for him. I’m lying on the top bunk, watching the ceiling shift and move like some throbbing organ getting ready to burst. And then the girl screams.
I bring my head over the side of the bunk in time to see a giant form wrapped in a massive brown coat move atop her. His hands are a mass of fat fingers and they’re around her neck because I can hear her start to choke and thrash below me. And then it’s just one hand around her because his other has reached into his jacket or coat and pulled out a gleaming blade. And then it’s being stabbed into this poor girl and I can hear it slide so easily into her flesh and then there’s ripping noises and
The scene shifts. I’m walking down a small flight of stairs toward a glass door. Behind me a voice demands that I stop. I’m almost to the door and a hand grasps my shoulder. I swing around and a guy with nappy, horrid brown hair is yelling and demanding that I return to the room with everyone else.
“You’re going to fucking stay and we’re going to make a decision and if you don’t then I will convince everyone to select you and then YOU will die and we’ll live. Get back in that goddamn room!”
I look at this dirty guy. He’s got his hand on my shoulder and trying to pull me back into the room and I grab his hand and say: “It doesn’t matter. We’re all dead anyway. I’m not going back in there to condemn someone to death. Not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. We can all walk now. The door’s open.”
The scene shifts. I’m running around the room. The floor is slick with blood and the red-head is still on the bottom bunk, shaking with her hand held out. Her eyes are glazed over and she’s choking and coughing up blood. The Asian guy tells me to calm down. All I see is this girl, bleeding on a mattress, choking on her own blood and vomit and there’s nothing I can do.
The scene shifts. I’m running toward a shoreline of big rocks and boulders. On the other side of the wide expanse of water is where I am supposed to be meeting people. People who can help me figure out how to take care of this guy and his murderous ways. I don’t know if he’s behind me or not and I don’t care. I run like my feet are on fire. And soon I’m on the rocks. The tide is serious and crashes into the smooth, water-worn surface of the rocks with a vengeance. Cold water splashes over me, leaving no inch of my skin dry. And then it pulls back and I feel myself being thrown into the rocks. I cry out and stumble forward, along the side of the rocks, heading toward a small path that will take me across the water. I realize I have to time everything just perfectly, otherwise I’ll end up being pulled out into the sea and I’ll never be able to get to
Scene shifts. I’m wet and slowly drying in the afternoon sun as I enter into the outdoor market area. The place is awash with moving bodies and faceless strangers. I’m panting when I notice them all seated at a wooden table. They’re sipping on sodas and munching French fries. I wave. He waves back.
Blonde Guy With Killer Smile cocks his head to side as I approach, clearly taken back with my appearance. “Where have you been dude?” Girl He Fucks With Wavy Blonde Hair passes her eyes over me and arches a brow. I collapse onto a bench, panting.
“It’s true,” I finally say. “It’s all true. He came for me.”
And then Black Frizzy Hair gasps and looks around, as if to make sure I hadn’t been followed. Killer Smile nods and says, in a manner of fact way, “Yes, I know. I told you.” I just stare up at him, unable to find the energy to move my head. “I know how to stop him.”
Scene shifts. The dog, if it was a dog, has escaped by brutal attack. In its wake is a trail of black liquid I can only guess to be its blood. I can hear its whimpers getting softer and softer as it pulls itself further down a hallway. Black Frizzy Hair is crying, head shaking back and forth as she mumbles through convulsing sobs. “You sick bastard, why? Why’d you do that?”
I open my mouth to explain that it was all apart of the plan. It would surely lure the man out and we’d then strike. We would end his life and his reign of terror on everyone else. I never got to say these things because the curtain is suddenly pulled open.
Large hands grab my throat and I am violently yanked forward, out of the room. I can still hear the girl sobbing and then I hear the crash of glass and know that the lamp that had been providing light in that room had been knocked over. I’m not even struggling. I’m too surprised that I can’t even begin to comprehend what is even going on.
When I open my eyes, I’m in the middle of a large, open room. Killer Smile and Blonde Wavy Hair are there, all serious faced and grim. Hobo At The Door is grinning. Even the Asian is there. Killer Smile steps forward.
“So it’s you. You’ve been chosen.” I swallow, hard and audible and look around. I can’t count them all because I just can’t bring my mind to focus on reality. It’s gone on some wild vacation somewhere, leaving me doomed. There are, I’m sure, 27 people in this room, including myself. I open my mouth to say something, but Hobo At The Door steps in.
“I told you fucker. I fucking TOLD you this is what would happen. And you know what? It’s you. It’s fucking you!” And he laughs something crazy.
And then there is another. The 28th person. And I know, as those large hands descend on me again, that I will be dead.
I shall piece this together from foggy dream memory. It kind of makes me wish I had just written it all down in my post-dream, delirious state at 4:00 this morning.
So it begins like this:
I’m in a room. Pretty nondescript. Four walls, maybe a window, but probably not because it was really dark. There was a small lamp on an end table sitting in one of the corners. Instead of a door there is a curtain. I’m standing in this room with a younger woman. Black, frizzy hair. I’m holding a large lamp in my two hands. It isn’t plugged in to any outlet.
The young woman is talking to me, though I can’t really understand what she’s saying. She’s panicked. From under the curtain I can see two brown paws suddenly flutter by. I hold up my lamp, ready to swipe at the paws the next time they come by. The woman begs me not to do it. She says something like: “He’ll kill us. Don’t do this, he’ll kill us, he’ll kill us! Don’t mess with the dog”.
Naturally I don’t listen and, when the creature (a dog I guess) comes shifting by, I strike out with the bottom of the lamp and knock it off its paws. It whimpers and whines as I continue to strike out. The woman is screaming and I’m screaming and the dog is wailing and I just don’t stop. I continue to lash out at this dog. The woman is striking me with her hands, begging me to stop because we’re all now going to die and it’s all my fault.
The scene suddenly shifts to six or seven of us, black frizzy haired girl included, to an open room. It’s a very comfortable room. High vaulted ceilings, plush furniture. Windows. One of us, a young guy with blonde hair, light eyes and a killer smile is talking about this guy who goes around at night and selects three people. These three people are taken to his place of business and locked into rooms. There, they experience untold horrors. He grabs three people every night until his place is filled with 27 people.
He tells this story from the couch while sitting next to an equally attractive blonde girl with wavy hair. She looks skeptical, but I don’t really care about her look. I continue to pay attention to the guy telling this obviously ridiculous story.
So he gets 27 people. Once they are all collected, he forces them into a large room (“Like this one here,” he says which I am sure if merely for added horror effect). After they have all been corralled into the room, they are forced to select one among them to die. They must come to a consensus as to which one of them will die. And once they’ve voted, the unlucky person would then be lead off by the man and killed. The others would be set free and it would be as if nothing happened.
The blonde girl sitting next to him laughs. I can tell by the way the guy is looking at her that they are most assuredly fucking. Disappointing. He insists the whole thing is true and to be careful tonight when we all go to sleep.
The scene suddenly changes to three of us in a closed room with a pair of bunk beds, a small window and a lamp. It’s me, a red-haired girl who looks very unsettled and an Asian guy. The red-head is freaking out and rocking back and forth on her heels that “we’ve been taken, we’ve been taken, oh my God we’re going to die”.
I’m looking around, trying to remember how we even got into this place, but I’m drawing up blank. The room is damp and I finally notice that the paint (color I cannot tell because the lighting isn’t all that great) is peeling off in various places. The floor is hard and cold cement. There is no door visible.
The scene switches then to the girl on the lower bunk, still mumbling about dying. The Asian is nowhere to be seen, but then again, I’m not looking for him. I’m lying on the top bunk, watching the ceiling shift and move like some throbbing organ getting ready to burst. And then the girl screams.
I bring my head over the side of the bunk in time to see a giant form wrapped in a massive brown coat move atop her. His hands are a mass of fat fingers and they’re around her neck because I can hear her start to choke and thrash below me. And then it’s just one hand around her because his other has reached into his jacket or coat and pulled out a gleaming blade. And then it’s being stabbed into this poor girl and I can hear it slide so easily into her flesh and then there’s ripping noises and
The scene shifts. I’m walking down a small flight of stairs toward a glass door. Behind me a voice demands that I stop. I’m almost to the door and a hand grasps my shoulder. I swing around and a guy with nappy, horrid brown hair is yelling and demanding that I return to the room with everyone else.
“You’re going to fucking stay and we’re going to make a decision and if you don’t then I will convince everyone to select you and then YOU will die and we’ll live. Get back in that goddamn room!”
I look at this dirty guy. He’s got his hand on my shoulder and trying to pull me back into the room and I grab his hand and say: “It doesn’t matter. We’re all dead anyway. I’m not going back in there to condemn someone to death. Not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. We can all walk now. The door’s open.”
The scene shifts. I’m running around the room. The floor is slick with blood and the red-head is still on the bottom bunk, shaking with her hand held out. Her eyes are glazed over and she’s choking and coughing up blood. The Asian guy tells me to calm down. All I see is this girl, bleeding on a mattress, choking on her own blood and vomit and there’s nothing I can do.
The scene shifts. I’m running toward a shoreline of big rocks and boulders. On the other side of the wide expanse of water is where I am supposed to be meeting people. People who can help me figure out how to take care of this guy and his murderous ways. I don’t know if he’s behind me or not and I don’t care. I run like my feet are on fire. And soon I’m on the rocks. The tide is serious and crashes into the smooth, water-worn surface of the rocks with a vengeance. Cold water splashes over me, leaving no inch of my skin dry. And then it pulls back and I feel myself being thrown into the rocks. I cry out and stumble forward, along the side of the rocks, heading toward a small path that will take me across the water. I realize I have to time everything just perfectly, otherwise I’ll end up being pulled out into the sea and I’ll never be able to get to
Scene shifts. I’m wet and slowly drying in the afternoon sun as I enter into the outdoor market area. The place is awash with moving bodies and faceless strangers. I’m panting when I notice them all seated at a wooden table. They’re sipping on sodas and munching French fries. I wave. He waves back.
Blonde Guy With Killer Smile cocks his head to side as I approach, clearly taken back with my appearance. “Where have you been dude?” Girl He Fucks With Wavy Blonde Hair passes her eyes over me and arches a brow. I collapse onto a bench, panting.
“It’s true,” I finally say. “It’s all true. He came for me.”
And then Black Frizzy Hair gasps and looks around, as if to make sure I hadn’t been followed. Killer Smile nods and says, in a manner of fact way, “Yes, I know. I told you.” I just stare up at him, unable to find the energy to move my head. “I know how to stop him.”
Scene shifts. The dog, if it was a dog, has escaped by brutal attack. In its wake is a trail of black liquid I can only guess to be its blood. I can hear its whimpers getting softer and softer as it pulls itself further down a hallway. Black Frizzy Hair is crying, head shaking back and forth as she mumbles through convulsing sobs. “You sick bastard, why? Why’d you do that?”
I open my mouth to explain that it was all apart of the plan. It would surely lure the man out and we’d then strike. We would end his life and his reign of terror on everyone else. I never got to say these things because the curtain is suddenly pulled open.
Large hands grab my throat and I am violently yanked forward, out of the room. I can still hear the girl sobbing and then I hear the crash of glass and know that the lamp that had been providing light in that room had been knocked over. I’m not even struggling. I’m too surprised that I can’t even begin to comprehend what is even going on.
When I open my eyes, I’m in the middle of a large, open room. Killer Smile and Blonde Wavy Hair are there, all serious faced and grim. Hobo At The Door is grinning. Even the Asian is there. Killer Smile steps forward.
“So it’s you. You’ve been chosen.” I swallow, hard and audible and look around. I can’t count them all because I just can’t bring my mind to focus on reality. It’s gone on some wild vacation somewhere, leaving me doomed. There are, I’m sure, 27 people in this room, including myself. I open my mouth to say something, but Hobo At The Door steps in.
“I told you fucker. I fucking TOLD you this is what would happen. And you know what? It’s you. It’s fucking you!” And he laughs something crazy.
And then there is another. The 28th person. And I know, as those large hands descend on me again, that I will be dead.
3.8.10
Dead Tone: A Review
In an attempt to better my writing ability, I am taking up the advice of most successful, published authors out there (save for you Dean Koontz. I don’t like you.) and writing in a semi-regular fashion. Sure, some out there will tell you to hammer out like 10,000 words a day or write for 12 hours or lay a golden goose egg but I just don’t see how I can do that. Instead, I am going to attempt to write at least an article once a week.
In the spirit of watching a movie every week and telling everyone how wonderful (or not) it was, I decided to post another review this week! Hooray!
Last night I was set to watch “Mulholland Drive” and enjoy the wonderfulness that is almost anything David Lynch directs. (I actually wasn’t that big a fan of “Blue Velvet”. Sorry Dennis Hopper.) However, as I was getting ready to queue it up, the little voice in the back of my mind whispered something like: “Hey, check and see what new movies Netflix has added. Maybe something better is playing. BETTER!” And like the easily distracted, fickle person that I am, I went to the new listings. Oh boy, did I stumble upon a gem of a film…
The premise of “Dead Tone” sounded straight-forward and simple enough. Punk kids make prank calls, one goes awry and horror ensues. I was thinking to myself, “Hey Corey, maybe this could flash you back to those times when you’d make prank calls with Kylie, only without the psycho murder popping out of your closet with a hatchet and killing you and everyone you love and care for”. Needless to say, I was totally sold on that idea.
Let me stop real quick like to warn you beforehand that this review does contain spoilers. I want to spoil this movie so you don’t have to experience the awfulness that this movie was. Is. Whatever.
So. The movie opens with this group of children having a sleep over. One of them suggests a game to play involving a cordless phone, random numbers and being generally kid-stupid. Also, it is the middle of the night. So they take turn making prank calls, saying silly, immature little kid things. Finally, one of them (a dorky kid with glasses) gets up to put a stop to their revelries. Naturally his twin, but less dorky looking, brother threatens to beat him up if he tells. Well, he is saved from having to make that call because their father comes in to check on them and naturally they quickly pretend to sleep (or maybe they really were asleep) and he takes the phone off from the floor, where it had been left on.
After he leaves we learn that he has a bunch of people in another room smoking and drinking and generally having a Mad Men of a good time. Some undetermined amount of time passes and one of the boys wakes up. The phone is ringing. The adults are pretty much passed out in the room next door. So the geeky brother goes to pick up the phone and as he answers it, a scary voice comes over the phone taunting him about how it isn’t nice to make prank calls. And then suddenly the person the voice belongs to just bursts from the closet door, hatchet in hand, and proceeds to viciously murder EVERYONE in the house except for the children. Finally! Someone DID think of the children!
The killer did a number on the adults in a way that might even get Lizzie Borden jealous if she were, you know, still alive. A detective (played by the only actor I recognized and knew by name, Rutger Hauer) arrives at the scene and exchanges some really, really, REALLY bad “witty” dialogue with a street cop.
Flash forward ten years and we learn that all the kids were adopted and renamed and spread out over the country. Well, mostly. A few of them remained close after the brutal encounter, grew up normal and went to college. That just goes to show you that if a 10 year old can overcome the vicious murder and slaughter of an entire house full of adults and loved ones, then what can’t one overcome? So everyone needs to stop their whining and get over it already.
To spare the stupid details of this horribly acted, worse written and crappily editied movie, I’ll skip to the end. Basically, someone is going around killing all the kids responsible for the prank calls that happened 10 years prior. Cue a sex-filled, booze-fueled party in a secluded mansion on a top of a hill owned by a total prick of a college kid. Some stuff happens at the house, mainly TNA nonsense and the killer arrives and basically kills EVERY SINGLE PERSON. Yes. Everyone in this movie dies. Including the detective and his Asian lady partner.
In the final twist of the movie, when we learn the identity of said killer. It turns out that the killer this go round is the geeky brother who wanted to pull the plug on the whole prank call operation back before their parents were all axed up. So to help him do this, he had some mental patient he was housed with during recovery (looks like I was slightly mistaken about not everyone turning out okay) kill people too. At the end, when he has the last two victims cornered in a room, he decides to kill his partner and repeatedly stabs him in the chest and I think the throat.
Then, in a final twist of fate, as the psycho twin brother is struggling on the floor with one of his intended victims, the detective bursts through the door. And, seeing a black man with a knife, shoots him and kills him dead. And as the real killer lies on the floor, panting and all out of breath from his crazy killing spree, his mental health patient friend somehow returns to the land of the living, grabs the axe and takes a swing at the two cops hovering over the out of breath killer. And cue credits.
As I was watching this movie I was making mental notes about what I would say when I sat down to write the review. Alas, I have forgotten most of the little quips. To boil it down, this movie was marred by one teen-slasher cliché after another. There was a scene where this guy, in a Jacuzzi, was getting himself some oral attention by his lady friend. As she was diving deep, one of the killers came up from behind as he put his other head back and lopped it off. Naturally it caused for quite the scene when the girl comes up for air.
I don’t even want to talk about this movie anymore. It was just horrible. Watch it with friends after a night of heavy drinking and pot smoking. That makes almost anything entertaining. Almost.
For next week I’m going to go back to the year 2004. What am I doing there you might wonder? Who knows! Check back next week and find out!
In the spirit of watching a movie every week and telling everyone how wonderful (or not) it was, I decided to post another review this week! Hooray!
Last night I was set to watch “Mulholland Drive” and enjoy the wonderfulness that is almost anything David Lynch directs. (I actually wasn’t that big a fan of “Blue Velvet”. Sorry Dennis Hopper.) However, as I was getting ready to queue it up, the little voice in the back of my mind whispered something like: “Hey, check and see what new movies Netflix has added. Maybe something better is playing. BETTER!” And like the easily distracted, fickle person that I am, I went to the new listings. Oh boy, did I stumble upon a gem of a film…
The premise of “Dead Tone” sounded straight-forward and simple enough. Punk kids make prank calls, one goes awry and horror ensues. I was thinking to myself, “Hey Corey, maybe this could flash you back to those times when you’d make prank calls with Kylie, only without the psycho murder popping out of your closet with a hatchet and killing you and everyone you love and care for”. Needless to say, I was totally sold on that idea.
Let me stop real quick like to warn you beforehand that this review does contain spoilers. I want to spoil this movie so you don’t have to experience the awfulness that this movie was. Is. Whatever.
So. The movie opens with this group of children having a sleep over. One of them suggests a game to play involving a cordless phone, random numbers and being generally kid-stupid. Also, it is the middle of the night. So they take turn making prank calls, saying silly, immature little kid things. Finally, one of them (a dorky kid with glasses) gets up to put a stop to their revelries. Naturally his twin, but less dorky looking, brother threatens to beat him up if he tells. Well, he is saved from having to make that call because their father comes in to check on them and naturally they quickly pretend to sleep (or maybe they really were asleep) and he takes the phone off from the floor, where it had been left on.
After he leaves we learn that he has a bunch of people in another room smoking and drinking and generally having a Mad Men of a good time. Some undetermined amount of time passes and one of the boys wakes up. The phone is ringing. The adults are pretty much passed out in the room next door. So the geeky brother goes to pick up the phone and as he answers it, a scary voice comes over the phone taunting him about how it isn’t nice to make prank calls. And then suddenly the person the voice belongs to just bursts from the closet door, hatchet in hand, and proceeds to viciously murder EVERYONE in the house except for the children. Finally! Someone DID think of the children!
The killer did a number on the adults in a way that might even get Lizzie Borden jealous if she were, you know, still alive. A detective (played by the only actor I recognized and knew by name, Rutger Hauer) arrives at the scene and exchanges some really, really, REALLY bad “witty” dialogue with a street cop.
Flash forward ten years and we learn that all the kids were adopted and renamed and spread out over the country. Well, mostly. A few of them remained close after the brutal encounter, grew up normal and went to college. That just goes to show you that if a 10 year old can overcome the vicious murder and slaughter of an entire house full of adults and loved ones, then what can’t one overcome? So everyone needs to stop their whining and get over it already.
To spare the stupid details of this horribly acted, worse written and crappily editied movie, I’ll skip to the end. Basically, someone is going around killing all the kids responsible for the prank calls that happened 10 years prior. Cue a sex-filled, booze-fueled party in a secluded mansion on a top of a hill owned by a total prick of a college kid. Some stuff happens at the house, mainly TNA nonsense and the killer arrives and basically kills EVERY SINGLE PERSON. Yes. Everyone in this movie dies. Including the detective and his Asian lady partner.
In the final twist of the movie, when we learn the identity of said killer. It turns out that the killer this go round is the geeky brother who wanted to pull the plug on the whole prank call operation back before their parents were all axed up. So to help him do this, he had some mental patient he was housed with during recovery (looks like I was slightly mistaken about not everyone turning out okay) kill people too. At the end, when he has the last two victims cornered in a room, he decides to kill his partner and repeatedly stabs him in the chest and I think the throat.
Then, in a final twist of fate, as the psycho twin brother is struggling on the floor with one of his intended victims, the detective bursts through the door. And, seeing a black man with a knife, shoots him and kills him dead. And as the real killer lies on the floor, panting and all out of breath from his crazy killing spree, his mental health patient friend somehow returns to the land of the living, grabs the axe and takes a swing at the two cops hovering over the out of breath killer. And cue credits.
As I was watching this movie I was making mental notes about what I would say when I sat down to write the review. Alas, I have forgotten most of the little quips. To boil it down, this movie was marred by one teen-slasher cliché after another. There was a scene where this guy, in a Jacuzzi, was getting himself some oral attention by his lady friend. As she was diving deep, one of the killers came up from behind as he put his other head back and lopped it off. Naturally it caused for quite the scene when the girl comes up for air.
I don’t even want to talk about this movie anymore. It was just horrible. Watch it with friends after a night of heavy drinking and pot smoking. That makes almost anything entertaining. Almost.
For next week I’m going to go back to the year 2004. What am I doing there you might wonder? Who knows! Check back next week and find out!
28.7.10
Kyle (partial. rough draft)
KYLE
“So,” she asks me, “how did that make you feel?”
I stare behind her head and imagine a black, swirling void. It is a black hole and everything it touches is reduced to nothing. It remains fixed above her head, tendrils of darkness lashing out like an enraged squid. Everything it strikes disintegrates into a cloud of specks and then, nothing. And then the arms of the void destroy the wall behind her and the world floods into this space in a manner so overwhelming I can finally feel my eyes widening in surprise. An ocean of noise and torrents of color erupt from the tears in reality that this black hole has opened and I remain seated, gripped in a rising panic that threatens to end everything. A seagull, one wing melting as it flies overhead, barks like a dog and splatters like a spent raindrop as it collides with the wall I’m seated in front of. Large, yellow eyes glower from the black hole that has now grown to the size of three moving vans and-
“Kyle?”
I blink. The world is whole. I am seated in her office of muted blues and grays. Her various diplomas and certificates of accomplishments hang on the wall behind her. A computer rests on the desk of tempered glass she would sit behind when she was between patients. Now she’s seated in a simple armchair, one bare leg crossed over the other. A pair of thin, black-framed glasses rest on the bridge of her nose. She is plain, uninteresting.
“What was that?”
She straightens in her chair; jots something down in her legal pad.
“I asked how that makes you feel. We were talking about your friend, Jenny.”
“She’s dead,” I say, simply and without feeling. This is the most basic truth I can tell her.
Earlier, before coming into her office, when I was sitting in the lobby, I went into the bathroom. In the stall someone had scratched “Jenny likes rough sex” and “She sucks cock in Hell”. A wave of complete and utter sadness overtook me. With tears streaming down my face and snot dripping in ropes out of my nose, I scratched into the lines underneath them: “JENNY WAS A FRIEND OF MINE”. And then, unable to handle the whole affair, I popped a Firefly. And then fifteen minutes later I’m back out in the lobby, staring at my feet, which were by then glowing like two elongated suns.
“Yes, she is.”
She says this, tilting her head to one side. She looks at me with some concern.
“While it is perfectly normal to express an outward appearance of apathy, you must be feeling something underneath it.”
She pauses for a moment and continues speaking when she realizes that I have nothing to add.
“Think of it as your mind taking all those bad, nasty feelings you might have and wrapping them up in a giant cocoon. WHOOSH!”
She makes a wide, flamboyant gesture with her hands that is, I guess, supposed to resemble a cocoon being spun.
“All those bad feelings are kept prisoner, allowing you to go about life seemingly close to normal as possible. The problem, Kyle, is that while you go about your life, those feelings and emotions keep getting collected in this cocoon. And it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it just BOOM!”
She claps her hands together.
“Now Kyle, what I’m here to do, what we’re here to do, is to slowly unravel that cocoon of negative emotions and let them seep out gradually. If you let them fill until it bursts, well, it greatens the risk of harm you can do to yourself and others. So, tell me, how does that make you feel?”
Somewhere between her first mention of the word “cocoon” and her grand slap, small moths began to spew from her gaping maw. Their wings were a pale blue, with bright, white quarter moons emblazoned on them. They flew in a swarm around her head, buzzing and moaning as she spoke.
“I know this must be hard. Having to come face-to-face
----
It's funny how I can type that out in a quick ten minutes and then, just as quickly as the dance was going along, I go and trip over my own feet. I have this grand vision in my head about how all this is going to play out. I mean, who doesn't want to read a murder mystery ripe with disillusioned, spoiled, super dramatic, self-absorbed, drug-taking, alcoholic, sex-craved, idiotic children? And maybe I'll even throw in a little Lovecraft into the mix. I mean, a story isn't complete without a little reference to the Cthulhu?
I'll finish this tomorrow. I've got the soundtrack down.
26.7.10
Suspiria: A Review
Netflix is probably one of the greatest creations to have come along since....well, since whatever has come out recently that isn't as great as Netflix. I think I'm gonna turn this into a madlib and let you (whoever even reads this dribble) fill in all the blanks with wacky words to make crazy, but pointedly hilarious sentences. Anyhow, Netflix.
My "Insta-Watch Queue" has close to about 80 things sitting in it, collecting cyber-dust. Wonderful titles like "Evil Dead" and "Yojimbo" sit patiently waiting for me to move my ass from my desk chair to my bed so I can watch them and be happy and lazy and sleepy and all those other things watching movies while laying in bed makes me. So. Last night as I'm flipping through the 80 items in my queue (having at one point scanned the newly added sections and contemplated adding in like 14 more things I know I'll never watch), I come across a little horror "gem" called "Suspiria" that so many on Netflix have hailed as "quintessential horror for the horror buff". Naturally me, being the horror buff that I am, jumped all over this 1977 film like ADHD-crack headed children jump in one of those bouncy things.
The cover is, I think, a little misleading to what the movie is actually about. It shows this all-white silhouette ballerina with a huuuuuuuuuuge pool of blood in the area where her shadow would typically be. Okay, so maybe not THAT huge. I digress. The movie has, for like 5 minutes tops, ballerinas dancing about. Other than that, you probably forget it's even taking place in a school for those freakishly skinny, fugly toed misanthropes. Or that it takes place in Germany for that matter, other than this one instructor, who thunders about like an ogre (and kind of looks like one too, although she dress in black and things non-burlappy) speaks with a German accent and has her hair done up all German-like in those double bun things and did I mention already that she looks kind of like a man? German women are actually men right? Or did I get that wrong? I mean, there are some German women I might find myself in bed with, but that might be because I think they're men? Again, I digress. (At this point my conscience would like me to point out that I bear no ill toward German women, ogres OR ballerinas. Well, I might have a little distrust of ballerinas...)
<----- just your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill, batshit crazy ballerina enthusiast.
Gosh, where was I? Oh yes. An American woman played by an American actress gets summoned or invited or called (however they get unsuspecting American women to fly in the middle of the night in a terrible storm) to Germany to attend (I assume) a very prestigious dance academy. Oh yeah. This movie was directed by Don Argento, who is (according to critics) a very influential Italian horror-filmmaker (film maker?). As the opening credits role, a narrator comes on to tell us that this American girl was asked to come to Germany to attend dance school. I guess either Mr. Argento felt American audiences were far too stupid to figure out why the girl is there (even though it is brought up again 10 minutes later into the film) or that the opening credits needed to keep us enticed with something other than the names of people we could care less about.
Right away I knew something was wrong. The American girl (I can't even remember her name) gets off the plane and exits the airport. Argento shows off his quirky camera skills by focusing in on some random things. Like the sliding doors to the outside. OoooOOooo, SCARY! Then again, maybe automatic sliding doors were something of a terror back in those days. I mean that show, Rescue 911 sure did a hell of a job keeping me scared about exiting/entering onto an escalator! So, after some odd camera shots and ridiculous, over-the-top, screeching music (the music for the movie had some contribution from a band called "Goblins"), she exits the airport and into one hell of a crazy storm.
She trails very hard to hail a cab and it seems the Germans aren't as willing to taxi people like our friendly New York cabbies, because they just excelerate and get her even more wet when they splash water on her. When one finally DOES stop, after pretty much throwing herself onto the cab, he doesn't even bother to help her. He doesn't even listen to her when she tells him where she wants to go. He doesn't even engage in that awkward small talk I imagine people in cabs have all the time while waiting to get from point A to point B. Nevertheless, I have resolved that, if I make it to Germany, I shall never take a cab. At least, not one from 1977.
The girl is then deposited at the dance academy. While she is lugging her two bags out of the car, a very frantic ballerina girl comes rushing out of the building. She brushes past the new arrival and goes prancing off into the stormy night like I imagine most ballerinas would do. So graceful. So creepy. Well, the American girl (I have just now gone to IMDB.com and discovered that the one I keep referring to simply as "The American Girl" is actually "Suzy" and she is played by some woman named Jessica Fletcher. I mean, Jessica Harper.) isn't even able to get into the building because some other woman (who speaks perfect English) doesn't know who she is and can't be bothered to let some other woman into the building during the middle of a horrible storm and it's probably due to witches.
Yes. That's what this movie eventually boils down to. You have to sit through 60 minutes of very weird camera shots that I think were intended to create a sense of displacement or craziness or something like that, but really just seemed....well, disjointed to a point where it was silly. Oh. And the music. Crashing cymbals, industrial noises, random beeps and bops, screeching whatever instruments and occasional screams do not add to suspenseful mood. They just add to my eventual liver failure because I have to down Aleve to get rid of the headache. I'm sure the Goblins are wonderful people, but they need to not do whatever it was they did in this movie because it was not. good.
Also, I think Mr. Argento should have just shot the whole thing in another language. I mean, most of the non-essential cast were from Italy. The movie takes place in Germany. In a prestigious, creepy dance school for witches. Harry Potter and the Wicked Tutu? Lame, I know, I know. And I could still barely understand what most of those women were saying.
I also think that there wasn't enough dancing. I mean, I know I mentioned above that I am not a huge ballerina fan, but he could have really done something to make it extra creepy! I mean, this is Germany! This is a school for weird people who think mutilating your feet is awesome! This is a place where the leader of the school is a fricking old American woman who also doesn't dance! The only dance instructor is, like I mentioned above, a freaking huge-ass tree of a (wo)man who also doesn't dance! Did I mention that her sidekick minion is some mute Romanian giant with a fascination for the American Girl's lighter? (See, I already forgot that chicks name).
One thing this movie did for me was make me realize how far cinema has come, from a technical standpoint. We can now successful recreate scenes of total and utter gruesomeness that they just couldn't effectively do back then. For instance...
The girl I mentioned that refused to let American Girl into the school? Well, they become fast friends after maggots fall from the ceiling. And then what happens to her? She falls into a pit of razor wire. Only it wasn't really razor wire. And it didn't even look close to razor wire. It looked like she fell into a pit of extension cords. I didn't even realize she was being hurt until it panned up closer and she had red markings. Only, they were in areas that hadn't been scratched up. Though I guess it doesn't matter because the rude bitch ended up having her throat sliced by a black-gloved hand. OOoooOOoo, mysterious!
After her death (45 mins into the movie or so) American Girl investigates. And naturally, more trouble ensues. I think the whole moral of this movie is that meddling Americans getting into affairs that aren't really theirs to get into cause trouble to happen. I mean, yes the whole school is run by witches and they want to kill people (I guess), but come on! They wouldn't have killed her if she would have left it all alone. The headmistress/principal/Dumbledore knew her aunt for crying out loud!
Oh yeah. There was this one particularly odd scene where the schools only pianist (blind at that) is walking home in the middle of the night with his all-black German Shepherd seeing-eye dog and he comes to this wide open plaza and suddenly the dog starts barking. The next thing you know the blind guy is shouting for someone to show themselves (not that he could even SEE the person if they did). Well, a large gargoyle/gryphon statue on a building disappears. And then the next thing you know, the dog is mauling his owners throat. I was totally confused. I had no idea WHY THE DOG KILLED HIM! WHY THE BLIND GUY?! I MEAN, WHY WOULD YOU KILL YOUR ONLY FRACKING PIANIST? WHO WILL PLAY THE MUSIC FOR THE FREAKY BALLERINAS TO DANCE TO? Then I realized that, despite being a school for dancing, little to no dancing takes place.
Update: I guess I kind of nodded off or something while watching the movie because, according to Wikipedia, the blind guy quit the school shortly before after his dog was accused of mauling the nephew to the school's headmistress. I guess the dog had a prior.
Okay so, in short, this movie was awesome.
(Oh yeah. I forgot. The girl from the beginning? Who ran out into the storm? She died. She was stabbed repeatedly in the chest, strung up with electrical wire and thrown through a stained glass ceiling. It was intense.)
Oh, another note. There are spoilers in this review. Thank you.
My "Insta-Watch Queue" has close to about 80 things sitting in it, collecting cyber-dust. Wonderful titles like "Evil Dead" and "Yojimbo" sit patiently waiting for me to move my ass from my desk chair to my bed so I can watch them and be happy and lazy and sleepy and all those other things watching movies while laying in bed makes me. So. Last night as I'm flipping through the 80 items in my queue (having at one point scanned the newly added sections and contemplated adding in like 14 more things I know I'll never watch), I come across a little horror "gem" called "Suspiria" that so many on Netflix have hailed as "quintessential horror for the horror buff". Naturally me, being the horror buff that I am, jumped all over this 1977 film like ADHD-crack headed children jump in one of those bouncy things.
The cover is, I think, a little misleading to what the movie is actually about. It shows this all-white silhouette ballerina with a huuuuuuuuuuge pool of blood in the area where her shadow would typically be. Okay, so maybe not THAT huge. I digress. The movie has, for like 5 minutes tops, ballerinas dancing about. Other than that, you probably forget it's even taking place in a school for those freakishly skinny, fugly toed misanthropes. Or that it takes place in Germany for that matter, other than this one instructor, who thunders about like an ogre (and kind of looks like one too, although she dress in black and things non-burlappy) speaks with a German accent and has her hair done up all German-like in those double bun things and did I mention already that she looks kind of like a man? German women are actually men right? Or did I get that wrong? I mean, there are some German women I might find myself in bed with, but that might be because I think they're men? Again, I digress. (At this point my conscience would like me to point out that I bear no ill toward German women, ogres OR ballerinas. Well, I might have a little distrust of ballerinas...)
<----- just your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill, batshit crazy ballerina enthusiast.Gosh, where was I? Oh yes. An American woman played by an American actress gets summoned or invited or called (however they get unsuspecting American women to fly in the middle of the night in a terrible storm) to Germany to attend (I assume) a very prestigious dance academy. Oh yeah. This movie was directed by Don Argento, who is (according to critics) a very influential Italian horror-filmmaker (film maker?). As the opening credits role, a narrator comes on to tell us that this American girl was asked to come to Germany to attend dance school. I guess either Mr. Argento felt American audiences were far too stupid to figure out why the girl is there (even though it is brought up again 10 minutes later into the film) or that the opening credits needed to keep us enticed with something other than the names of people we could care less about.
Right away I knew something was wrong. The American girl (I can't even remember her name) gets off the plane and exits the airport. Argento shows off his quirky camera skills by focusing in on some random things. Like the sliding doors to the outside. OoooOOooo, SCARY! Then again, maybe automatic sliding doors were something of a terror back in those days. I mean that show, Rescue 911 sure did a hell of a job keeping me scared about exiting/entering onto an escalator! So, after some odd camera shots and ridiculous, over-the-top, screeching music (the music for the movie had some contribution from a band called "Goblins"), she exits the airport and into one hell of a crazy storm.
She trails very hard to hail a cab and it seems the Germans aren't as willing to taxi people like our friendly New York cabbies, because they just excelerate and get her even more wet when they splash water on her. When one finally DOES stop, after pretty much throwing herself onto the cab, he doesn't even bother to help her. He doesn't even listen to her when she tells him where she wants to go. He doesn't even engage in that awkward small talk I imagine people in cabs have all the time while waiting to get from point A to point B. Nevertheless, I have resolved that, if I make it to Germany, I shall never take a cab. At least, not one from 1977.
The girl is then deposited at the dance academy. While she is lugging her two bags out of the car, a very frantic ballerina girl comes rushing out of the building. She brushes past the new arrival and goes prancing off into the stormy night like I imagine most ballerinas would do. So graceful. So creepy. Well, the American girl (I have just now gone to IMDB.com and discovered that the one I keep referring to simply as "The American Girl" is actually "Suzy" and she is played by some woman named Jessica Fletcher. I mean, Jessica Harper.) isn't even able to get into the building because some other woman (who speaks perfect English) doesn't know who she is and can't be bothered to let some other woman into the building during the middle of a horrible storm and it's probably due to witches.
Yes. That's what this movie eventually boils down to. You have to sit through 60 minutes of very weird camera shots that I think were intended to create a sense of displacement or craziness or something like that, but really just seemed....well, disjointed to a point where it was silly. Oh. And the music. Crashing cymbals, industrial noises, random beeps and bops, screeching whatever instruments and occasional screams do not add to suspenseful mood. They just add to my eventual liver failure because I have to down Aleve to get rid of the headache. I'm sure the Goblins are wonderful people, but they need to not do whatever it was they did in this movie because it was not. good.
Also, I think Mr. Argento should have just shot the whole thing in another language. I mean, most of the non-essential cast were from Italy. The movie takes place in Germany. In a prestigious, creepy dance school for witches. Harry Potter and the Wicked Tutu? Lame, I know, I know. And I could still barely understand what most of those women were saying.
I also think that there wasn't enough dancing. I mean, I know I mentioned above that I am not a huge ballerina fan, but he could have really done something to make it extra creepy! I mean, this is Germany! This is a school for weird people who think mutilating your feet is awesome! This is a place where the leader of the school is a fricking old American woman who also doesn't dance! The only dance instructor is, like I mentioned above, a freaking huge-ass tree of a (wo)man who also doesn't dance! Did I mention that her sidekick minion is some mute Romanian giant with a fascination for the American Girl's lighter? (See, I already forgot that chicks name).
One thing this movie did for me was make me realize how far cinema has come, from a technical standpoint. We can now successful recreate scenes of total and utter gruesomeness that they just couldn't effectively do back then. For instance...
The girl I mentioned that refused to let American Girl into the school? Well, they become fast friends after maggots fall from the ceiling. And then what happens to her? She falls into a pit of razor wire. Only it wasn't really razor wire. And it didn't even look close to razor wire. It looked like she fell into a pit of extension cords. I didn't even realize she was being hurt until it panned up closer and she had red markings. Only, they were in areas that hadn't been scratched up. Though I guess it doesn't matter because the rude bitch ended up having her throat sliced by a black-gloved hand. OOoooOOoo, mysterious!
After her death (45 mins into the movie or so) American Girl investigates. And naturally, more trouble ensues. I think the whole moral of this movie is that meddling Americans getting into affairs that aren't really theirs to get into cause trouble to happen. I mean, yes the whole school is run by witches and they want to kill people (I guess), but come on! They wouldn't have killed her if she would have left it all alone. The headmistress/principal/Dumbledore knew her aunt for crying out loud!
Oh yeah. There was this one particularly odd scene where the schools only pianist (blind at that) is walking home in the middle of the night with his all-black German Shepherd seeing-eye dog and he comes to this wide open plaza and suddenly the dog starts barking. The next thing you know the blind guy is shouting for someone to show themselves (not that he could even SEE the person if they did). Well, a large gargoyle/gryphon statue on a building disappears. And then the next thing you know, the dog is mauling his owners throat. I was totally confused. I had no idea WHY THE DOG KILLED HIM! WHY THE BLIND GUY?! I MEAN, WHY WOULD YOU KILL YOUR ONLY FRACKING PIANIST? WHO WILL PLAY THE MUSIC FOR THE FREAKY BALLERINAS TO DANCE TO? Then I realized that, despite being a school for dancing, little to no dancing takes place.
Update: I guess I kind of nodded off or something while watching the movie because, according to Wikipedia, the blind guy quit the school shortly before after his dog was accused of mauling the nephew to the school's headmistress. I guess the dog had a prior.
Okay so, in short, this movie was awesome.
(Oh yeah. I forgot. The girl from the beginning? Who ran out into the storm? She died. She was stabbed repeatedly in the chest, strung up with electrical wire and thrown through a stained glass ceiling. It was intense.)
Oh, another note. There are spoilers in this review. Thank you.
1.7.10
taking my baby's breath (rough draft)
WARNING!
What follows is, for the most part, a story of complete and utter fiction. That is to say, what follows is completely and utterly made-up. Then again, maybe it isn’t entirely. If you are one, like me, who skims headlines and news stories, then perhaps this story might be true. Perhaps this story could be found between the lines of all those grisly articles about all the things that seem to make up the news of our current and everyday lives.
The following is just a story. Any similarity between actual people, places and/or events is most likely coincidental. The events that follow did not happen between the dates of August 3rd and December 16tth. And the year was definitely not 2006. With that out of the way, let me further preface this story with the following:
The lens is out of focus so the only thing that is really visible is a blur of dark colors. Crickets sound in the background and the audience is left feeling disoriented and, perhaps if the director does his job properly, nervous. Suddenly the chirp of crickets is intermixed with the sounds of heavy breathing. Soon that breathing completely overtakes everything and the crickets are forgotten. It’s just the audience, a blurry collage of muted blacks, greens and dark blues and that overly audible breathing.
What follows is, for the most part, a story of complete and utter fiction. That is to say, what follows is completely and utterly made-up. Then again, maybe it isn’t entirely. If you are one, like me, who skims headlines and news stories, then perhaps this story might be true. Perhaps this story could be found between the lines of all those grisly articles about all the things that seem to make up the news of our current and everyday lives.
The following is just a story. Any similarity between actual people, places and/or events is most likely coincidental. The events that follow did not happen between the dates of August 3rd and December 16tth. And the year was definitely not 2006. With that out of the way, let me further preface this story with the following:
The lens is out of focus so the only thing that is really visible is a blur of dark colors. Crickets sound in the background and the audience is left feeling disoriented and, perhaps if the director does his job properly, nervous. Suddenly the chirp of crickets is intermixed with the sounds of heavy breathing. Soon that breathing completely overtakes everything and the crickets are forgotten. It’s just the audience, a blurry collage of muted blacks, greens and dark blues and that overly audible breathing.
Then the camera shifts and very slowly a pale form came into focus. The breathing remains loud and thunderous and very much off-screen. The lens gives a slightly sharper detail and the audience can vaguely tell that the form is a naked body. A naked body covered in splatters of blood. It still looks like everything viewed through fogged glass. Then the body moves. The body is being dragged and the audience, because they are smart, can infer that the person making with the heavy breathing is the one dragging it.
The breathing is interrupted every now and again with a few well placed grunts and groans. The dragger is finding this task to be difficult, but completely necessary. Zoom in on the naked body. The lens comes to fully focus.
Her face is cut up and scared forever. Not beyond recognition, because her lovely blue eyes remain open and focused somewhere off in the distance. Somewhere very much off screen. Her lips, supple and moist, are barely parted and uncut. Her nose is broken and it once must have been angelic and near perfect. She is a blonde.
The body stops moving. The audience can hear her legs plop back down onto the tall, wet grass with an audible thud. More off-screen panting. The camera remains focused on the girl’s face. It zooms closer to her eyes. The breathing is replaced again with the sounds of crickets chirping.
And then the screen is just a single blue eye that had once been alive. And then the screen cuts to black and in bold, red letters is replaced with:
THE KILLERS
by Corey Fleming
LISTING
1. Jenny Was A Friend of Mine
2. Mark
3. Mr. Brightside
4. Kyle
5. Smile Like You Mean It
6. Natalie
7. Somebody Told Me
8. Andy
9. All These Things That I’ve Done
10. Kyle II
11. Andy, You’re a Star
12. Jennifer
13. On Top
14. Mark II
15. Believe Me Natalie
16. Natalie II
17. Midnight Show
18. Andy II
19. Everything Will Be Alright
20. Justin
21. Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll
22. Credits
the boardwalk nightmare
She isn’t who she says she is and that is how she manages to marry my father and become my stepmother. In the waking world she is actually the woman who gave birth to me but I am so far removed from that place. She has no name and a menacing shadow constantly obscuring half of her face. And she is a bitch.
The details of my actual mother’s death are never revealed to me and it doesn’t really matter because knowing probably, most likely, would not change what happens. All I know, all I remember is that this woman causes nothing but terror for my sister and me. We live on some costal town, probably somewhere in California because it’s sunny and temperate and wonderful. So probably San Diego.
The details are fuzzy. The four of us (Dad, Stepmom, Sister and I) are walking down a boardwalk, crowded with people and abuzz with noise and activity and excitement. Stepmom (remember, she is my real mom in the real world), is complaining to Dad that Sister and I are terrible children and we need to be sent to some strict, under-regulated, off the charts boarding prison school camp where they “straighten” children out. (Ironic note: they all undoubtedly sodomize their “students”). We are, naturally, vehemently against this option and insist that our stepmother “shut her fucking cracked-out mouth”. I don’t know about the choice of words there, but they were spoken.
This of course launches her into a fury. Flames seem to literally erupt from her hair and eyes and mouth. She screams and bellows and waves her hands in the air. My sister and I run. My Dad does nothing. We run past quaint little shops and bums and beaches. We run up streets with cute houses that are completely different from every other one. The palm trees are suddenly replaced with oaks and elms and spruces and there is grass and the sun is just a little colder. Behind us some yards away the beach and boardwalk remains, but we are now in Michigan.
Oliver Street. And we burst into our grandparents house (the home of our stepmother’s parents) and rush up the carpeted stairs to our grandmother’s room. And she is sitting on the edge of her bed, rubbing her eyes as if she has just woken up. Her face is aged and worn and covered with wrinkles that make her age almost impossible to accurately determine.
We fall to our knees, the two of us exhausted and crying. We beg and plead with our grandmother to protect us from the woman who has somehow tricked our father into marrying him and threatening to send us so far away. She speaks softly and assures us that we are going nowhere.
And then, as if on cue, the raging psycho burst into the room, the flames having died out. She points an accusatory finger at our faces and demands that we return to the boardwalk. The boat is ready and we are to be shipped off. Our grandmother stands and tells her daughter that, just because she failed her as a mother was no reason to take it out on her own children. And at this our stepmother slaps our grandmother and we scream because we know, at that moment, we are going to be loaded onto a boat and taken away to some horrible place and
I wake up. It’s 2-something in the morning. I really need to figure out how to sleep a whole night through.
In other news, I am pretty sure my mom’s conversation with that Cox rep last night is the cause for this dream. I’m almost pretty sure it’s almost impossible for my mom to actually be my stepmom and/or breathe fire. I hope.
The details of my actual mother’s death are never revealed to me and it doesn’t really matter because knowing probably, most likely, would not change what happens. All I know, all I remember is that this woman causes nothing but terror for my sister and me. We live on some costal town, probably somewhere in California because it’s sunny and temperate and wonderful. So probably San Diego.
The details are fuzzy. The four of us (Dad, Stepmom, Sister and I) are walking down a boardwalk, crowded with people and abuzz with noise and activity and excitement. Stepmom (remember, she is my real mom in the real world), is complaining to Dad that Sister and I are terrible children and we need to be sent to some strict, under-regulated, off the charts boarding prison school camp where they “straighten” children out. (Ironic note: they all undoubtedly sodomize their “students”). We are, naturally, vehemently against this option and insist that our stepmother “shut her fucking cracked-out mouth”. I don’t know about the choice of words there, but they were spoken.
This of course launches her into a fury. Flames seem to literally erupt from her hair and eyes and mouth. She screams and bellows and waves her hands in the air. My sister and I run. My Dad does nothing. We run past quaint little shops and bums and beaches. We run up streets with cute houses that are completely different from every other one. The palm trees are suddenly replaced with oaks and elms and spruces and there is grass and the sun is just a little colder. Behind us some yards away the beach and boardwalk remains, but we are now in Michigan.
Oliver Street. And we burst into our grandparents house (the home of our stepmother’s parents) and rush up the carpeted stairs to our grandmother’s room. And she is sitting on the edge of her bed, rubbing her eyes as if she has just woken up. Her face is aged and worn and covered with wrinkles that make her age almost impossible to accurately determine.
We fall to our knees, the two of us exhausted and crying. We beg and plead with our grandmother to protect us from the woman who has somehow tricked our father into marrying him and threatening to send us so far away. She speaks softly and assures us that we are going nowhere.
And then, as if on cue, the raging psycho burst into the room, the flames having died out. She points an accusatory finger at our faces and demands that we return to the boardwalk. The boat is ready and we are to be shipped off. Our grandmother stands and tells her daughter that, just because she failed her as a mother was no reason to take it out on her own children. And at this our stepmother slaps our grandmother and we scream because we know, at that moment, we are going to be loaded onto a boat and taken away to some horrible place and
I wake up. It’s 2-something in the morning. I really need to figure out how to sleep a whole night through.
In other news, I am pretty sure my mom’s conversation with that Cox rep last night is the cause for this dream. I’m almost pretty sure it’s almost impossible for my mom to actually be my stepmom and/or breathe fire. I hope.
30.6.10
i smell murder and drugs and bears.
It’s been a week, maybe, since my last posting. I think, because I never go back and read them, that I was droning on about what to write or where to start or why Dr. Seuss is such a fracking genius. Either way, today as I was carrying on conversations with insurance reps from United Healthcare, I was hit with an idea. While trying to translate the fellow’s broken Indian-English, I realized what it was that I need to write.
It is to be a story of love. A story of good decisions gone wrong. A story of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Of hot summer fun and cold winter nights. Of danger and intrigue. Of shallow and jaded youths with nothing but time and money. A story that will go absolutely no where, but end at a destination all the same. It will feature chapters titled: “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”; “Midnight Show”; “Everything Will Be Alright”; and many, many more! (actually, like 8 more, but who is counting?)
Working Title: The Killers. See where this is going? I bet you do.
In other news, I had a horrible dream last night. I can’t remember much of it except for being in a locked classroom with a bunch of other random people. I was seated next to Ryan and my co-worker, Mary Beth (this time alive and well) was seated in front of me. I was all panic-stricken and hyperventilating about a serial killer who (for reasons unknown to me) was out to kill me. Like, he would stop at nothing to end my life.
Well, Mary Beth is telling me to calm down and not to worry. After all, we were afforded the protection of a locked, wooden door right? Clearly she had never heard of a little novel (or film) called “The Shining”. Anyhow, the woman who is in charge of the classroom lets us all know that she has a squad of police officers coming to show us what to do in the even we encounter “a dangerous, psychotic escapee mental patient”.
So the cops show up with a tall man. The chief fellow introduces himself and holds up this orange jumpsuit-type thing with two very thin, very long sleeves. He says something like: “All escapee patients will be wearing this. So don’t worry too much because they can’t move a lot with them on. So, you know, you’ll be okay.” Then he calls for a volunteer to help demonstrate his moves. Naturally, since this is my dream, I get called.
So I come to the front of the room and get positioned in front of the guy and, sure enough, when he looks down at me I start screaming: “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD ITSHIMITSHIM!” And then his hands are on my throat and I can feel it crushing and I’m dying and-
I wake up.
PS: I was streaming KROQ (THE world famous) on my computer this morning and listening to the Kevin and Bean Show. Anyhow, one of the news reports coming out of LA was that like, some 100 people died the other night due to overdosing on Ecstasy. Which brings me to two things:
a) I do not want to die with a pacifier in my mouth
b) I am too freaked out to try that shit because I know if I did I would be one of those 100 people.
One other note. I spoke of my dream to a coworker and she stopped me midway through to tell me that she’s always had this creepy feeling that I will be murdered. She couldn’t explain why.
That’s all.
It is to be a story of love. A story of good decisions gone wrong. A story of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Of hot summer fun and cold winter nights. Of danger and intrigue. Of shallow and jaded youths with nothing but time and money. A story that will go absolutely no where, but end at a destination all the same. It will feature chapters titled: “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”; “Midnight Show”; “Everything Will Be Alright”; and many, many more! (actually, like 8 more, but who is counting?)
Working Title: The Killers. See where this is going? I bet you do.
In other news, I had a horrible dream last night. I can’t remember much of it except for being in a locked classroom with a bunch of other random people. I was seated next to Ryan and my co-worker, Mary Beth (this time alive and well) was seated in front of me. I was all panic-stricken and hyperventilating about a serial killer who (for reasons unknown to me) was out to kill me. Like, he would stop at nothing to end my life.
Well, Mary Beth is telling me to calm down and not to worry. After all, we were afforded the protection of a locked, wooden door right? Clearly she had never heard of a little novel (or film) called “The Shining”. Anyhow, the woman who is in charge of the classroom lets us all know that she has a squad of police officers coming to show us what to do in the even we encounter “a dangerous, psychotic escapee mental patient”.
So the cops show up with a tall man. The chief fellow introduces himself and holds up this orange jumpsuit-type thing with two very thin, very long sleeves. He says something like: “All escapee patients will be wearing this. So don’t worry too much because they can’t move a lot with them on. So, you know, you’ll be okay.” Then he calls for a volunteer to help demonstrate his moves. Naturally, since this is my dream, I get called.
So I come to the front of the room and get positioned in front of the guy and, sure enough, when he looks down at me I start screaming: “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD ITSHIMITSHIM!” And then his hands are on my throat and I can feel it crushing and I’m dying and-
I wake up.
PS: I was streaming KROQ (THE world famous) on my computer this morning and listening to the Kevin and Bean Show. Anyhow, one of the news reports coming out of LA was that like, some 100 people died the other night due to overdosing on Ecstasy. Which brings me to two things:
a) I do not want to die with a pacifier in my mouth
b) I am too freaked out to try that shit because I know if I did I would be one of those 100 people.
One other note. I spoke of my dream to a coworker and she stopped me midway through to tell me that she’s always had this creepy feeling that I will be murdered. She couldn’t explain why.
That’s all.
24.6.10
these things i do are not for you
I’m not sure where to begin. Ideas have never been that big of a problem. I guess for me, right now, my biggest obstacle is my own inability to formulate a proper starting point. I have been told, by more than one person that if starting at the beginning doesn’t work, to start somewhere else. After all, it’s not like I’m chiseling any of this in stone. As a matter of fact, the beautiful thing about computers is how easily information is manipulated. If I don’t like how one thing looks or if another doesn’t quite match up to something else further down the line, I can simply delete it and it’ll be as if it had never been at all.
So, we come back to my main dilemma. I don’t know what idea to focus on. I’ve always been the type of person, for as long as I can remember (which isn’t all that much because my memory sucks), to get bored easily. Or distracted. Or bounce from one thing to the next without the slightest bit of thought or consideration. I’m impulsive and prone to random acts of sheer randomness.
I have ideas floating in the cesspools of my imaginative brain, but I just don’t know which to try and cultivate. Previous attempts to keep my focus on more than one thing usually lead to finishing absolutely nothing. This then results in my writing folder on my hard drive to contain a million little word documents that contain small blurbs that ultimately mean nothing.
I feel I need to start with shorter stories. I feel that writing short stories takes a little more effort than writing full on novels or books. A writer of short stories has to learn control. They have to learn how to hone a plot with laser-like precision from start to finish. They have to be short, but contain near the same emotional impact that a novel might contain. They have to be entertaining and keep the reader engaged. They have to be nearly all that a novel is, but…shorter.
Then again, I have to wonder if the ideas I have could formulate into a full-length novel. I’d hate to be one of those writers who publish some 1,500 page book with 1/3 of it containing actual meat while the rest is just that steroid injected chemical attempting to boost the word count. The longest thing I’ve ever written amounted to exactly 91,470 words and it’s a StarCraft fanfic that I wrote back in high school. And, shocking I know, never finished. I actually skimmed through it not too long ago and, wow, it’s horrible in this “my words are all over the place helter skelter” sort of way.
Where was I? Where am I? And there goes my entire train of thought. I’ve been wading through my music library on iTunes. I find myself very connected to whatever creative mojo I have when a damn fine song is playing. I can’t write while the song is actually on, because I end up typing the lyrics (if there are lyrics. I know, music without lyrics nowadays is something most people can’t seem to grasp. Or if the lyrics are about melting popsicles. Really now. Did a five year old write that song)? It says something too, I think, about song writers who can, through the course of an album and with so few words, capture nearly every spectrum of human emotion and lay out the soul in a way a book or a story never really can.
Which is ultimately what I want to do, at some point. I just want to write something real and honest. I’ve been second guessing myself. I’ve been worried about the kind of response I’d get from people. Would my parents approve of this? Is so-and-so going to be mad that I’ve portrayed this like that? Would people think me a loser for writing such and such?
It’s funny, if I put half the amount of energy I put into debating with myself about how people perceive me, I think I might actually have had finished an entire writing project. Imagine that!
Sometimes I talk to myself, but not because I’m crazy or alone or because I like the sound of my own voice (though, come on, like, who doesn’t LOVE my voice); I talk to myself because sometimes vocalizing puts things into a greater focus than just thinking. And sometimes typing out words and posting them on a whim brings a certain sense of clarity. Even if, come the next morning, I find myself wishing I hadn’t.
There is a passage from “Oh The Places You Will Go” that always struck me as the most poignant. It’s the part where our intrepid traveler of life’s highways comes to The Waiting Place. As a kid the imagery sort of freaked me out because everything was so dark and damp and unpleasant. As a kid I never understood the message being conveyed, but now with adulthood and the various experiences that has, for better or worse, helped shape me into the person I am today and will, through the course of more experiences, shape me into the person I shall be tomorrow and the day after, etcetera, etcetera that passage gets to me.
So much so that, after having posted that passage in one of my various other blogs (now all long forgotten R.I.P.) a friend of mine asked me what I was waiting for. Perhaps because I’m impatient and impulsive and prone to flights of fancy, I was waiting for something to fall into place without really having to do much. I mean, come on, awesome things like that happen in movies and television and books. And then throw in the fact that all that kind of imagery is practically force-fed to us by society and wham! But seriously, Jacob, I still don’t have an answer for you.
So back to the beginning. Where to start? Maybe tonight, after I’ve tossed and turned and flipped my pillow end over end to keep it cool and wrapped myself all mummy-like to keep warm and that illusive beast we like to call “sleep” is just within my reach and I’m just shrugging off everything and slipping away it’ll come.
I mean, after all, if not now, when?
23.6.10
a dream in which mary beth dies.
I don’t know where the beginning starts, so I’ll simply share what I remember.
There is a house, Victorian perhaps, or maybe it isn’t a house at all. We’ll just leave it as a building, constructed of wood and aged to the point where most would consider it derelict and uninhabitable. I can say nothing of the surroundings outside, because from where I remember we were already inside.
The room is expansive and dusty. The floor is rotten, the walls seemingly wet. One wall is comprised of a series of large, angled windows that favor us there with a view to the courtyard. It isn’t noticed at first, but on the ceiling are a hodgepodge collection of wrought iron fences, nailed loosely and hanging precariously.
There are only four people in this room. Myself, Kitty Walker and her mother Nora and Mary Beth Richardson, a co-worker of mine. Kitty and Nora are characters on an ABC television program, Brothers & Sisters, but it doesn’t occur to me that it would be odd for them to be present.
An ominous voice-over states, with a touch of dramatic flair, “and by the end of the night, one of them would be gone forever.” And, almost on cue, the whole room starts to shake. Debris begins to fall. The wrought iron fences swing downward. Mary Beth is impaled. From her chest, four iron spikes protrude like the fangs of some ancient, evil beast. Circles of blood blossom around the spikes and she gasps.
I find myself shouting: “No! It can’t possibly be Mary Beth! She isn’t even on the show!”
Everything transitions seamlessly to another room. It’s a hospital room like any other generic hospital room around the country. White walls. A window. A curtain. A bed. Mary Beth lays there, seemingly asleep. I ask: “Are you awake?”
And her eyes flutter open. She sighs. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for so long,” she says. “I feel so rested.” I smile, thrilled to know that she was able to survive the horrible incident from before.
I turn to the door and call for everyone to come and see Mary Beth. No one comes. I find this odd, because I know they had all just been outside not but a moment before. I turn to face Mary Beth, words forming on my lips, but lost in an instance.
Everything has morphed to various shades of white, black and gray. Mary Beth is on the bed, circles of blood forming where the fence had impaled her. She is ashen and sickly. Her hair is stringy and lifeless.
I run from the room, terrified and in disbelief. As I move down the hallway, I see Diana, another coworker of mine, seated at a computer terminal, typing away. Quickly I reach her and ask:
“Diana! Have you seen Mary Beth? She’s awake!”
At this point, she looks up and gives me a blank stare. “Corey, that’s not funny.” She keeps typing. “Mary Beth died. You know this.”
I return her stare with a dumb one of my own. “But, she just woke up. I saw her in the backroom. She was sleeping.” I turn to look behind me. Mary Beth is standing there, a few feet from the two of us.
“See! She’s right there,” I say, pointing at Mary Beth. Diana looks past me and I can tell that she sees nothing. Her face remains unmoved.
“Maybe you should see someone,” she tells me. “Clearly this has affected you.”
Ellen walks up from behind Diana. “What’s going on here?”
I look to Ellen. “I’ve been trying to tell Diana that Mary Beth is alive, but she keeps telling me she isn’t. Which I don’t understand because she is standing right here behind me. Can’t you see her?”
Ellen raises her brow and I know that she must think I’m crazy. I walk to a row of cupboards to Diana’s left. I point them. I look at Mary Beth.
“Mary Beth, please open one of these cupboards and prove to these two that you are still alive!”
Marty Beth steps forward and grips the hand. She pulls it open. I see the door swing. If she were dead and merely a ghost, it stands to reason that her hand would have simply passed through the material. Here she is, however, pulling open the cupboard.
Diana and Ellen stare, unmoved. I look at them, smiling. I look back to the cupboard. Its closed. “But,” I begin to stammer.
“Corey, I think you should see someone. Mary Beth is dead.”
I look back to them with my mouth hanging open. I look behind me again. Mary Beth is gone.
-END OF DREAM
There is a house, Victorian perhaps, or maybe it isn’t a house at all. We’ll just leave it as a building, constructed of wood and aged to the point where most would consider it derelict and uninhabitable. I can say nothing of the surroundings outside, because from where I remember we were already inside.
The room is expansive and dusty. The floor is rotten, the walls seemingly wet. One wall is comprised of a series of large, angled windows that favor us there with a view to the courtyard. It isn’t noticed at first, but on the ceiling are a hodgepodge collection of wrought iron fences, nailed loosely and hanging precariously.
There are only four people in this room. Myself, Kitty Walker and her mother Nora and Mary Beth Richardson, a co-worker of mine. Kitty and Nora are characters on an ABC television program, Brothers & Sisters, but it doesn’t occur to me that it would be odd for them to be present.
An ominous voice-over states, with a touch of dramatic flair, “and by the end of the night, one of them would be gone forever.” And, almost on cue, the whole room starts to shake. Debris begins to fall. The wrought iron fences swing downward. Mary Beth is impaled. From her chest, four iron spikes protrude like the fangs of some ancient, evil beast. Circles of blood blossom around the spikes and she gasps.
I find myself shouting: “No! It can’t possibly be Mary Beth! She isn’t even on the show!”
Everything transitions seamlessly to another room. It’s a hospital room like any other generic hospital room around the country. White walls. A window. A curtain. A bed. Mary Beth lays there, seemingly asleep. I ask: “Are you awake?”
And her eyes flutter open. She sighs. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for so long,” she says. “I feel so rested.” I smile, thrilled to know that she was able to survive the horrible incident from before.
I turn to the door and call for everyone to come and see Mary Beth. No one comes. I find this odd, because I know they had all just been outside not but a moment before. I turn to face Mary Beth, words forming on my lips, but lost in an instance.
Everything has morphed to various shades of white, black and gray. Mary Beth is on the bed, circles of blood forming where the fence had impaled her. She is ashen and sickly. Her hair is stringy and lifeless.
I run from the room, terrified and in disbelief. As I move down the hallway, I see Diana, another coworker of mine, seated at a computer terminal, typing away. Quickly I reach her and ask:
“Diana! Have you seen Mary Beth? She’s awake!”
At this point, she looks up and gives me a blank stare. “Corey, that’s not funny.” She keeps typing. “Mary Beth died. You know this.”
I return her stare with a dumb one of my own. “But, she just woke up. I saw her in the backroom. She was sleeping.” I turn to look behind me. Mary Beth is standing there, a few feet from the two of us.
“See! She’s right there,” I say, pointing at Mary Beth. Diana looks past me and I can tell that she sees nothing. Her face remains unmoved.
“Maybe you should see someone,” she tells me. “Clearly this has affected you.”
Ellen walks up from behind Diana. “What’s going on here?”
I look to Ellen. “I’ve been trying to tell Diana that Mary Beth is alive, but she keeps telling me she isn’t. Which I don’t understand because she is standing right here behind me. Can’t you see her?”
Ellen raises her brow and I know that she must think I’m crazy. I walk to a row of cupboards to Diana’s left. I point them. I look at Mary Beth.
“Mary Beth, please open one of these cupboards and prove to these two that you are still alive!”
Marty Beth steps forward and grips the hand. She pulls it open. I see the door swing. If she were dead and merely a ghost, it stands to reason that her hand would have simply passed through the material. Here she is, however, pulling open the cupboard.
Diana and Ellen stare, unmoved. I look at them, smiling. I look back to the cupboard. Its closed. “But,” I begin to stammer.
“Corey, I think you should see someone. Mary Beth is dead.”
I look back to them with my mouth hanging open. I look behind me again. Mary Beth is gone.
-END OF DREAM
11.4.10
2: the ink sea
there is a beach where a gold fish swims in constant circles
in the confines of a clear bowl while the tides come in,
and pull out.
a boy with no name, because his parents never bothered,
walks this beach, his toes being stained
from the ink of the sea
'little fish' he says when he happens upon the bowl
'what has you trapped in this bowl? Should you not be out with your family?
Swimming in the sea?;
the fish circles, wide-eyed and shimmering
in the ever present sun that never seems to set
on this beach by the sea
'no, no,' the fish tells the boy, not stopping for a moment.
'a little fish like me couldn't possibly make it in a sea so large,
so i'll stay here and be content to watch.'
the nameless boy ponders this for a moment, confused
that it would willingly choose to stay in this bowl
when it had so much before it.
'but fish,' says the boy, 'think of what is out there!
'other fish you've never seen, other waters you've never swam,
and world without edge or end!'
the sea laps against them both,
leaving its trace of orange, yellow, red and blue in its wake;
and all is quiet
'there is endless possibility out there fish
for this sea is the ink sea and it can be anything you desire
and dream.'
the fish slows in its pacing of circles 'round the glass.
'but I do not dream. Nor do I have desires.
I am but a fish.'
at this the boy frowns and sits beside the bowl,
wondering what it must be like to want nothing more
than what one has.
'if this sea is so truly wonderful and great as you have proclaimed,
and if desires and dreams are so valued, then why, oh why
are you still here?'
in the confines of a clear bowl while the tides come in,
and pull out.
a boy with no name, because his parents never bothered,
walks this beach, his toes being stained
from the ink of the sea
'little fish' he says when he happens upon the bowl
'what has you trapped in this bowl? Should you not be out with your family?
Swimming in the sea?;
the fish circles, wide-eyed and shimmering
in the ever present sun that never seems to set
on this beach by the sea
'no, no,' the fish tells the boy, not stopping for a moment.
'a little fish like me couldn't possibly make it in a sea so large,
so i'll stay here and be content to watch.'
the nameless boy ponders this for a moment, confused
that it would willingly choose to stay in this bowl
when it had so much before it.
'but fish,' says the boy, 'think of what is out there!
'other fish you've never seen, other waters you've never swam,
and world without edge or end!'
the sea laps against them both,
leaving its trace of orange, yellow, red and blue in its wake;
and all is quiet
'there is endless possibility out there fish
for this sea is the ink sea and it can be anything you desire
and dream.'
the fish slows in its pacing of circles 'round the glass.
'but I do not dream. Nor do I have desires.
I am but a fish.'
at this the boy frowns and sits beside the bowl,
wondering what it must be like to want nothing more
than what one has.
'if this sea is so truly wonderful and great as you have proclaimed,
and if desires and dreams are so valued, then why, oh why
are you still here?'
9.4.10
1: on almost any sunday morning
Outside it’s cloudy in New York City. Or it could just as easily be Chicago or Boston or Seattle, but not Los Angeles or Detroit. San Francisco is also an option, but it strikes me as too obvious a place to meet again for the hundredth or thousandth time. Either way, it is cloudy outside and the windows of the café are dotted with raindrops. If one were to stare out either broad window that faced the street outside, light foot traffic could be seen milling up and down either side of the road. Even on a cloudy day with rain freshly fallen; people still had places to be. It is a world in motion.
Inside everything comes together almost instantly. A wide-spaced area for little wooden chairs and tables, some occupied at random with faceless strangers I don’t even care to notice. These people eat and drink from cups while filling the air above and around them with a hum of chatter and muffled conversation. I don’t make out words because what they are saying is just about as important as the faces they don’t have. Which is to say I only care for the ambiance they seem to exude just by being there, sitting and making the kind of noises and sounds one would expect to hear in a café like this one. In a café that could be in New York or Boston or Chicago, but most definitely not Los Angeles or even, and I dare chuckle at the thought, a place like Phoenix.
Inside this café there are a couple of well upholstered chairs and couches, all of which remain unoccupied at present. A large bookcase, lined with titles that call back to a time when literature was paramount in entertaining and keeping a culture well versed and rounded, rests against a wall. Then of course there is the bar where the faceless baristas toil over imposing espresso machines and fashion beverages after names equally rotund and boisterous.
I’d like a venti triple layered, non-fat caramel macchiato deluxe suprema grava with no foam but extra whipped cream. In a world bent on keeping the events of our lives down to a one hundred and forty-four character blurb minimum, this kind of ordering and structuring of our daily activities fits perfectly.
I am sitting at the bar on a high-legged stool, my back to the door and hunched over a piping cappuccino and scanning the headlines of a newspaper. PRESIDENT TO SIGN BILL AUTHORIZING MASS EUTHANIZATION OF COWS! Or: SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS UP BURGER JOINT, MARKET FEARS BACKLASH. Better still: COW UNION STAMPEDES HALLS OF CONGRESS. On and on these headlines pour down the pages and I have to wonder, for the briefest of moments, why society has become so hostile to the bovine community. I pause and wonder if there even is such a thing as a “bovine community”. Some would argue that if Jews, Gays, Blacks and fur-fetishists have a community, then why not our black and white-spotted, milk producing friends?
I continue to flip through the paper and realize, again, that the world is most assuredly coming to shit. Between financial meltdowns, global pandemic, wars, famine, homicide, patricide, suicide, embezzlements, entitlements, healthcare costs, terrorism, religious fanaticism, religious persecution, civil rights, animal rights, tsunamis, earthquakes, flood; a voice cuts through the background buzz of those faceless individuals.
I turn and look. I see the whole place as if viewed through glazed glass; all ripples and waves and indentations. Everything appears to have the vaguest of shape and form, but nothing stands out. The effect is rather haunting, but I’m not put off by this. It only serves to bring the most important thing to direct focus.
He stands now that he’s noticed I’ve noticed him. His lips form a cautious smile, waiting no doubt, to see if my reaction to his presence will be something of joy, happiness, even giddy enthusiasm or bitter rage, anger, or despair. Or maybe all three. His smile widens into something more confident because I’ve obviously given him some indication that his calling out to me was appropriate and well-received. I can’t tell if I’m actually smiling or not.
He looks the same, but older. His black hair, thin back then, is almost the same though cropped closer to his skull. He has forsaken the contact lenses of his youth for an older, more sophisticated pair of black framed glasses. His nose is thin and prominent, though now with a pair of glasses resting on its bridge seems to add more character to his face. True, his eyes are now obscured by the lenses, but they were dull brown to begin with. No pools to be lost swimming in for hours. He wears a white Oxford-style shirt, a blue-brown Burberry tie, neutral slacks and a fine blue vest. The perfect caricature of an academic.
He calls out my name again and draws closer; brushing past a fellow patron whose shoulder he casually touches and goes unnoticed. A hundred years ago, it seems, I would have killed to have been that nameless body he touched. A hundred years ago, I amend, I was. A hundred years ago we swapped more than mere glances and idle passing touches. A hundred years ago we-
I open my mouth and greet him warmly; the greeting of two old souls entertaining a chance encounter in a café on a crowded street on a cloudy day in a city somewhere on the edge of time. His name feels almost foreign to my tongue when it rolls out, like a traveler returning home after being months abroad in a nation far, far away. I extend my hand to his. He grins and instead engulfs me in a hug. I teeter on my stool as he says something to me my ears don’t quite catch. Most likely it is something rudimentary and polite. Something like: “you look great” or “imagine seeing you here!”
At the same instance I catch a whiff of his cologne and find it suited to the person he is now. Much like the change in his attire, this fragrance matches his professorial image. It is subtle, mildly spiced and earthy. A hundred years ago he wore graphic t-shirts with dead trees and birds and splattered ink blots. A hundred years ago he smelled of the summer sun, menthol and sugar.
We pull out of the quick embrace, our eyes meeting. I wonder if the smile on my face looks as weak as it feels. It must not because he continues smiling between his words, in his eyes and with the movements of his hands. His paper, I noticed, remains where he had been seated moments before, still crisp and folded. The bombardment of questions continues to come and I find myself giving answers as if on autopilot.
“It’s been so long! How have you been?”
(Fine, you know, just living life. I mean, it’s only been a hundred years. What could possibly happen between then and now?)
I tell him I’ve been well. Finally finished school.
“Degree?”
(PhD in Time and Energy, emphasis on Wasting)
English.
“Congratulations! Are you teaching or writing or what?”
(What’s the point of all this really?)
I shift nervously, trying to get him to break contact with my eyes but fail. He’s still grinning. I tell him the truth. I’m in town for a meeting with my publisher. Finally finished that novel I’d been talking about writing for a hundred years.
“Amazing! That definitely calls for some celebrating! When is it getting published?”
(Why? Are you going to read it? I doubt you’d even find interest in it. It would probably all be quite foreign to you anyway. A time long removed and best forgotten)
Two months.
He continues his inquisition, though never digging too far beneath the surface. It’s all small talk and polite exchanges. Little, insignificant morsels of words that tell only an eighth of what has really transpired over the course of a hundred years.
“Are you still in Phoenix?”
(Like you don’t know the answer to that)
Yeah, unfortunately.
“How long are you in town?”
(Not long enough to cause you any trouble if that’s what you mean)
Just today.
He manages a look that might pass for regret if I were stupid enough to believe he’d actually feel that way. Since I know better it just looks like relief. He doesn’t have to worry about extending himself any further than this. A casual, brief meeting that will most likely be forgotten about the moment he walks back to his waiting paper and coffee. A meeting that will leave my stomach in knots for the next
(hundred years)
He asks a few more general questions that make me feel like I’m talking to some stranger about the weather outside. It’s all inconsequential and amounts to nothing, just a way to pass time and keep from being too bored.
I see then time unfold before me. Hours from now, when the sun is sinking into the horizon and these skyscrapers of metal and glass are illuminated in hues of oranges, reds and purples; he will enter his high rise apartment and be greeted by his lover, probably calling out from the kitchen where the smells of some exotic meal is being prepared wafts out. He’ll remove his jacket, hang it on the rack next to the door. He’ll remove his designer shoes and set them neatly aside. He’ll look up and from the vantage point of the wall-sized windows see the world awash in the colors of the coming night. He’ll smile and know that life is practically perfect. He’ll start toward the kitchen and make it about halfway before his lover rounds the corner, a glass of fine aged red wine in hand. Their lips will smack in a kiss that belies the passion they truly have for another. He’ll sip red wine and talk about all sorts of things. The class that just couldn’t get enough of Mahler; the lunch with a colleague; the news that the college had to cut another scholarship program. All the while they’ll shift through the motions of a couple preparing for twilight. They'll dine. They’ll retire to a couch. He’ll sink into his papers and his lover will become engrossed with the television.
They’ll retire to their bedroom. They’ll undress one another and make love. And only after all this, and the two are in their afterglow, limbs entwined will he be asked one more time if anything else interesting happened. He’ll pause for a moment, eyes resting on the circling ceiling fan. He’ll take a couple breathes as if truly contemplating. It’ll feel like a span of hours, but in reality five seconds has ticked off the clock. He’ll shake his head. He’ll speak two words that indicate he had nothing further to add to the timeline of today and they’ll both wander hand-in-hand to peaceful dreams.
I’ll be on a return plane to Phoenix, lulled into near unconsciousness by alcohol and Valium. I’ll stare blankly out the small window at the darkened sky and the ground below. The city will start to sink away. He’ll start to sink away. And for another hundred years I’ll be grasping at an encounter that might not have actually happened at all.
“So it was really nice seeing you again.”
I hope my smile is strong enough. I agree with him.
He offers to exchange numbers.
(Translation: I know you’ll never call)
I take his. He takes mine.
“If you’re ever on this side of town again we should get together”
(I won’t ever be coming back)
I nod.
“Listen, I’ve got to run. Classes starting and I just stopped in to grab a latte before heading off.”
(Translation: You’re not worth my time. Though, really now, is that a surprise?)
I nod again, finding it the easiest way to deal with his words. His cheap and easy words. At this exact moment, when he hugs me again, I want to spit razors at him. I want to shake him. I want to smack him. I want to kiss him. I want to hold him tightly. I want to drive a pencil into his left eye. I want to ask-
He breaks from the hug and smiles. Repeats his enthusiasm for having seen me again. Turns. Walks toward the door, his paper and latte abandoned. The door chimes jingle.
(do you remember a hundred years ago? When you’re lying in bed at night and just falling into sleep’s embrace, do you ever think back a hundred years ago? Do you feel the same lament I do?)
Outside he’s lost to the traffic of moving feet.
I have had this meeting with him a hundred times. A hundred times a hundred. I sigh, disappointed with the events. I withdraw and the world around me starts to melt and run like a painted canvas dipped in thinner. It becomes streams of color until they all bleed into each other. And then it is simply black. And I am left alone, save for the singular ticking of a clock.
Inside everything comes together almost instantly. A wide-spaced area for little wooden chairs and tables, some occupied at random with faceless strangers I don’t even care to notice. These people eat and drink from cups while filling the air above and around them with a hum of chatter and muffled conversation. I don’t make out words because what they are saying is just about as important as the faces they don’t have. Which is to say I only care for the ambiance they seem to exude just by being there, sitting and making the kind of noises and sounds one would expect to hear in a café like this one. In a café that could be in New York or Boston or Chicago, but most definitely not Los Angeles or even, and I dare chuckle at the thought, a place like Phoenix.
Inside this café there are a couple of well upholstered chairs and couches, all of which remain unoccupied at present. A large bookcase, lined with titles that call back to a time when literature was paramount in entertaining and keeping a culture well versed and rounded, rests against a wall. Then of course there is the bar where the faceless baristas toil over imposing espresso machines and fashion beverages after names equally rotund and boisterous.
I’d like a venti triple layered, non-fat caramel macchiato deluxe suprema grava with no foam but extra whipped cream. In a world bent on keeping the events of our lives down to a one hundred and forty-four character blurb minimum, this kind of ordering and structuring of our daily activities fits perfectly.
I am sitting at the bar on a high-legged stool, my back to the door and hunched over a piping cappuccino and scanning the headlines of a newspaper. PRESIDENT TO SIGN BILL AUTHORIZING MASS EUTHANIZATION OF COWS! Or: SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS UP BURGER JOINT, MARKET FEARS BACKLASH. Better still: COW UNION STAMPEDES HALLS OF CONGRESS. On and on these headlines pour down the pages and I have to wonder, for the briefest of moments, why society has become so hostile to the bovine community. I pause and wonder if there even is such a thing as a “bovine community”. Some would argue that if Jews, Gays, Blacks and fur-fetishists have a community, then why not our black and white-spotted, milk producing friends?
I continue to flip through the paper and realize, again, that the world is most assuredly coming to shit. Between financial meltdowns, global pandemic, wars, famine, homicide, patricide, suicide, embezzlements, entitlements, healthcare costs, terrorism, religious fanaticism, religious persecution, civil rights, animal rights, tsunamis, earthquakes, flood; a voice cuts through the background buzz of those faceless individuals.
I turn and look. I see the whole place as if viewed through glazed glass; all ripples and waves and indentations. Everything appears to have the vaguest of shape and form, but nothing stands out. The effect is rather haunting, but I’m not put off by this. It only serves to bring the most important thing to direct focus.
He stands now that he’s noticed I’ve noticed him. His lips form a cautious smile, waiting no doubt, to see if my reaction to his presence will be something of joy, happiness, even giddy enthusiasm or bitter rage, anger, or despair. Or maybe all three. His smile widens into something more confident because I’ve obviously given him some indication that his calling out to me was appropriate and well-received. I can’t tell if I’m actually smiling or not.
He looks the same, but older. His black hair, thin back then, is almost the same though cropped closer to his skull. He has forsaken the contact lenses of his youth for an older, more sophisticated pair of black framed glasses. His nose is thin and prominent, though now with a pair of glasses resting on its bridge seems to add more character to his face. True, his eyes are now obscured by the lenses, but they were dull brown to begin with. No pools to be lost swimming in for hours. He wears a white Oxford-style shirt, a blue-brown Burberry tie, neutral slacks and a fine blue vest. The perfect caricature of an academic.
He calls out my name again and draws closer; brushing past a fellow patron whose shoulder he casually touches and goes unnoticed. A hundred years ago, it seems, I would have killed to have been that nameless body he touched. A hundred years ago, I amend, I was. A hundred years ago we swapped more than mere glances and idle passing touches. A hundred years ago we-
I open my mouth and greet him warmly; the greeting of two old souls entertaining a chance encounter in a café on a crowded street on a cloudy day in a city somewhere on the edge of time. His name feels almost foreign to my tongue when it rolls out, like a traveler returning home after being months abroad in a nation far, far away. I extend my hand to his. He grins and instead engulfs me in a hug. I teeter on my stool as he says something to me my ears don’t quite catch. Most likely it is something rudimentary and polite. Something like: “you look great” or “imagine seeing you here!”
At the same instance I catch a whiff of his cologne and find it suited to the person he is now. Much like the change in his attire, this fragrance matches his professorial image. It is subtle, mildly spiced and earthy. A hundred years ago he wore graphic t-shirts with dead trees and birds and splattered ink blots. A hundred years ago he smelled of the summer sun, menthol and sugar.
We pull out of the quick embrace, our eyes meeting. I wonder if the smile on my face looks as weak as it feels. It must not because he continues smiling between his words, in his eyes and with the movements of his hands. His paper, I noticed, remains where he had been seated moments before, still crisp and folded. The bombardment of questions continues to come and I find myself giving answers as if on autopilot.
“It’s been so long! How have you been?”
(Fine, you know, just living life. I mean, it’s only been a hundred years. What could possibly happen between then and now?)
I tell him I’ve been well. Finally finished school.
“Degree?”
(PhD in Time and Energy, emphasis on Wasting)
English.
“Congratulations! Are you teaching or writing or what?”
(What’s the point of all this really?)
I shift nervously, trying to get him to break contact with my eyes but fail. He’s still grinning. I tell him the truth. I’m in town for a meeting with my publisher. Finally finished that novel I’d been talking about writing for a hundred years.
“Amazing! That definitely calls for some celebrating! When is it getting published?”
(Why? Are you going to read it? I doubt you’d even find interest in it. It would probably all be quite foreign to you anyway. A time long removed and best forgotten)
Two months.
He continues his inquisition, though never digging too far beneath the surface. It’s all small talk and polite exchanges. Little, insignificant morsels of words that tell only an eighth of what has really transpired over the course of a hundred years.
“Are you still in Phoenix?”
(Like you don’t know the answer to that)
Yeah, unfortunately.
“How long are you in town?”
(Not long enough to cause you any trouble if that’s what you mean)
Just today.
He manages a look that might pass for regret if I were stupid enough to believe he’d actually feel that way. Since I know better it just looks like relief. He doesn’t have to worry about extending himself any further than this. A casual, brief meeting that will most likely be forgotten about the moment he walks back to his waiting paper and coffee. A meeting that will leave my stomach in knots for the next
(hundred years)
He asks a few more general questions that make me feel like I’m talking to some stranger about the weather outside. It’s all inconsequential and amounts to nothing, just a way to pass time and keep from being too bored.
I see then time unfold before me. Hours from now, when the sun is sinking into the horizon and these skyscrapers of metal and glass are illuminated in hues of oranges, reds and purples; he will enter his high rise apartment and be greeted by his lover, probably calling out from the kitchen where the smells of some exotic meal is being prepared wafts out. He’ll remove his jacket, hang it on the rack next to the door. He’ll remove his designer shoes and set them neatly aside. He’ll look up and from the vantage point of the wall-sized windows see the world awash in the colors of the coming night. He’ll smile and know that life is practically perfect. He’ll start toward the kitchen and make it about halfway before his lover rounds the corner, a glass of fine aged red wine in hand. Their lips will smack in a kiss that belies the passion they truly have for another. He’ll sip red wine and talk about all sorts of things. The class that just couldn’t get enough of Mahler; the lunch with a colleague; the news that the college had to cut another scholarship program. All the while they’ll shift through the motions of a couple preparing for twilight. They'll dine. They’ll retire to a couch. He’ll sink into his papers and his lover will become engrossed with the television.
They’ll retire to their bedroom. They’ll undress one another and make love. And only after all this, and the two are in their afterglow, limbs entwined will he be asked one more time if anything else interesting happened. He’ll pause for a moment, eyes resting on the circling ceiling fan. He’ll take a couple breathes as if truly contemplating. It’ll feel like a span of hours, but in reality five seconds has ticked off the clock. He’ll shake his head. He’ll speak two words that indicate he had nothing further to add to the timeline of today and they’ll both wander hand-in-hand to peaceful dreams.
I’ll be on a return plane to Phoenix, lulled into near unconsciousness by alcohol and Valium. I’ll stare blankly out the small window at the darkened sky and the ground below. The city will start to sink away. He’ll start to sink away. And for another hundred years I’ll be grasping at an encounter that might not have actually happened at all.
“So it was really nice seeing you again.”
I hope my smile is strong enough. I agree with him.
He offers to exchange numbers.
(Translation: I know you’ll never call)
I take his. He takes mine.
“If you’re ever on this side of town again we should get together”
(I won’t ever be coming back)
I nod.
“Listen, I’ve got to run. Classes starting and I just stopped in to grab a latte before heading off.”
(Translation: You’re not worth my time. Though, really now, is that a surprise?)
I nod again, finding it the easiest way to deal with his words. His cheap and easy words. At this exact moment, when he hugs me again, I want to spit razors at him. I want to shake him. I want to smack him. I want to kiss him. I want to hold him tightly. I want to drive a pencil into his left eye. I want to ask-
He breaks from the hug and smiles. Repeats his enthusiasm for having seen me again. Turns. Walks toward the door, his paper and latte abandoned. The door chimes jingle.
(do you remember a hundred years ago? When you’re lying in bed at night and just falling into sleep’s embrace, do you ever think back a hundred years ago? Do you feel the same lament I do?)
Outside he’s lost to the traffic of moving feet.
I have had this meeting with him a hundred times. A hundred times a hundred. I sigh, disappointed with the events. I withdraw and the world around me starts to melt and run like a painted canvas dipped in thinner. It becomes streams of color until they all bleed into each other. And then it is simply black. And I am left alone, save for the singular ticking of a clock.
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