drunkenbee

Beginning to End: Brad Pitt

"Hey, all the interns just got invited to a party at Mark Seliger's house. Come back into the city and let's go!"

It was Lauren calling me in Hoboken where I was living with my brother while spending a summer working for this nonprofit poetry foundation, which actually consisted more of me spending 8 hours a day organizing this old "experimental poet" geezer's personal papers, which were strewn about his crazycheap, got-it-before-it-gentrified apartment on the Bowery just north of Houston while he stalked the space wearing a bathrobe, muttering "experimental poetry" under his breath. By the end of that summer, I was ready to tell the dude to go experiment on THIS, motherfucker, but he did have a postcard from Allen Ginsberg, and that was sort of cool to see.

Lauren was on a less shady career path, interning for that one music magazine, you know the one, and we were hanging out a lot that summer, even though I was so totally bridge and tunnel I spewed exhaust behind me wherever I went.

I got dressed, donning some chunky black shoes I'm sure (hey, it was 1997, but please, fashion god/Marc Jacobs, please don't EVER bring the chunky black shoe back) and got on the bus back into Manhattan.

So there we were. A bunch of 21 year olds at this famous photographer's live/work three story loft, a block off the Hudson River. Holy Shit. Vince Vaughn is f-ing tall, dudes! And Jerry Seinfeld? Am I looking at a television screen when I look at his face? He's so pixelated, there's no difference between how he looks on TV and how he looks standing over there wearing-- excuse me? I thought that was a sitcom gimmick-- WHITE SNEAKERS with a SUIT.

We drink. And drink. Whatever, you get the picture. Oh, here's a good way to intimate how very drunk we were becoming: Lauren and I walked right on up to the VERY chic, very bald-on-purpose black woman DJ who was spinning some kind of atmospheric electronica (again, with the 1997) and asked her if she could "play some Madonna? Or maybe Prince?" Laser Beams of Chicness.

It started as a slight vibration, a bit of a ruckus, a kind of gossipy tsunami.

"I heard Brad Pitt just walked in."

"Brad Pitt is totally on the roof getting a drink right now!"

"Omigod! Omigod! HE'S RIGHT BEHIND US!"

There we were, enjoying the sweet scent of fame, which is not totally unlike chicken. I've always been ok with getting my fame by proxy; it's the "Ima just stand right here next to this dude and call it a night" school of fame whoredom.

Because I'm a wimp, is why.

But when you've got your back to Brad Pitt, and you can feel the flames of hot, hot stardom emanating from the man's body, and the person standing across from you goes seriously BUG-EYED, like omigod I can't believe it and exclaims/shrieks "HE NEEDS A LIGHTER! HE'S PATTING HIS PANTS LOOKING FOR A LIGHTER!" and everything slows, and that damn annoying music fades far into the chic distance, and you look down at your hand and realize "Hey! I smoke! I have a lighter!" there is only one thing to do.

You need to kick-ball-change and swing your little body back around to face the man, unfold your arm in a balletic manner, flick your thumb like you've never flicked your thumb ever before, not in all the time you've spent practicing smoking, because you've had to practice because you don't really like it but it's sort of what all the other writing workshop people do, so you figured you had to take it up, too. You need to LIGHT THAT CIGARETTE dangling from his drippingly luscious lips, and look at that! your hand is within inches, INCHES, of that face, that face that's launched a thousand plus bored housewives' vibrators.

The next week, the infamous Brad-Gwyneth breakup story graced the cover of People Magazine.

Coincidence? You decide.

Beginning to End: Monroe, Louisiana

I saw you first from five thousand feet; your expansive forests, your mall, your paper plant. Monroe, Louisiana, you taught me that a smelly town is not at all a stinky town. You taught me how to pronounce Ouachita, how to clip my ings, and how to spell y'all.

Monroe, Louisiana you don't have a decent grocery store, but you sure as hell have plenty of places to get a kickass po' boy and some pie. You taught me how to crack and peel crawfish. Monroe, Louisiana, why don't you sell any good bread? Where's the French bread, my friend? It hangs just below this Bible Belt, if you know what I'm sayin'. You gave me bread envy, Monroe, but your shrimp are sweet. You have an establishment called Aron's Pharmacy Gift, and Grill, and indeed it is all those things and more. Monroe, where else can I get a prescription filled, pick up a Hummel figurine, and have an 80-year-old woman cook me up a freaking incredible hamburger?

Monroe, Louisiana who built your houses? They are beautiful. Living in your Garden District is like living in the pages of Southern Living Magazine, like playing ball in a Rebecca Wells novel, like wearing a seer sucker suit without irony. Why don't they know about the cast iron sink up North, Monroe? The Chambers stove? Why don't they know about vintage glass front cabinetry? Why do they love the dark wood trim in the big city?

Monroe, you took my urban blinders off. You taught me about what people do and how they live when they live in a town like this. Not really a city, not at all a suburb, you are the way America used to be. You brought me together with wonderful, interesting people, people who know how to make a Saturday night memorable better than any rock band or bar hopping shiny-shirt I've ever encountered. Monroe, Louisiana, you reintroduced me to the backspin.

Monroe, Louisiana you helped me relax. You helped me put some of the weight back on that I had lost somewhere at the corner of Damen and Division and Neurotic. You put me back on a bike, and you gently guided me and my bike over to the daiquiri store to pick up a Strawberry Sucker at the drive-thru. You let the wind blow my hair back and let me enjoy propelling myself on this strange two-wheeled machine through dark and quiet streets, sipping that sweet, sweet elixir. Monroe, Louisiana, you made cocktail hour relevant.

I taught your college students, Monroe. They were frustrating and poorly prepared for college level humanities, and also, they somehow never learned how to write properly. But they were earnest, and Monroe, THAT is an accomplishment. They were not rich or educationally-preened, Monroe, not like the Louis Vuitton-bag-having bitches I'll be teaching this coming year, but they had spirit.

Monroe, Louisiana, you gave me wide expanses of time to devote to my own academic pursuits. I did not take as full advantage of this offer as I should have, but I did discover the internet, Monroe. How ironic is that? Monroe, you gave me back the joy of writing without a thesis and without research. And in so doing you also gave me more satisfaction in writing clean, elegant, and articulate academic argument. You confirmed my career choice, Monroe.

I shared one of your houses with a man I very much enjoy, Monroe, Louisiana. Thanks for the real estate. We had a lot of good times, a lot of marital hubba hubbba. Perhaps too many dance routines were made up within these walls, perhaps the downstairs neighbors haven't enjoyed our performative reinterpretations of Carly Patterson's gold-medal-winning floor exercise, perhaps they don't appreciate the sounds of my sloppy ass high- heeled 4 a.m. entrances into the house. Monroe, you taught me not to care about any of that.

Monroe, Louisiana, I guess I could just about go on forever about you, but I have a feeling I might be wearing my melancholy welcome mat a little thin out here on the doorstep of the internet. Monroe, let's just leave it at this: you made me feel at home.

Beginning to End: The Girls

Margaret
She was dating a boy who lived on the first floor of my dorm. I'd seen her around. I did a lot of lurking those first few weeks of college. I didn't fit in with the hordes of leggy Southern blondes that populated the dorms, but I also didn't fit in with the wallet-chained girls with dyed black hair constantly slinking the halls with armfuls of 7-inches from Plan 9 Music.

So I saw her around. I knew her boyfriend and his roommate, the kind of guys you wanted to keep knowing, with infectious drawls and disarming grins. I could hear her raucous laugh echo off the cinder block walls of the dorm when she came by to visit. I wished that I knew her.

We're standing in a circle outside the south entrance to Lefevre dorm, getting ready to go to a party. Her name is Margaret. We shake hands, I feel the familiar guilt over being the creep who already knows who someone is before being introduced. It's been a lifelong malady, and it is at its worst during those first awkward weeks of college. She's wearing a white t-shirt and a long wrap skirt. She clutches a box of Marlboro reds in her hand. She has this voice. It's a famous voice. It's raspy and sexy and totally compelling. She walks with a confident swagger.

We're eighteen years old. We don't yet know how two years later we'll drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway together to talk about failing relationships, how we'll throw beer bottles at sidewalks with drunken abandon, how we'll be in the same sorority, how we'll share embarrassment over being in a sorority, how like bowling pins we'll fall with and for one another. We don't really know anything then, and in the most familiar way possible, we don't realize that we'll look back with such wonder at that circle of teenagers, standing outside a dorm, under the black sky.

Sarah
I'm not entirely clear exactly what convergence of forces made this happen, but there were a ton of Sarahs attending college with me. You probably think this is a non-point; after all, it is a common name. However, I did happen to make it through 12 years of schooling-- at remarkably huge public schools, nonetheless-- rarely having another Sarah in the same class. Making a conservative estimate, I'd say that approximately 20% of all the women I met that first semester of college were named Sarah. It got to be a ritual; the sheepishly humorous bobbing of heads when you met another Sarah, the banal exclamations over how strange it was, how very many Sarahs we all seemed to be meeting.

But this time, something was different. I'd never met a Sarah like this.

She has this presence, this joy. It emanates from her body, it makes you wish you could be in there with her. She's engrossing. When you look at her, you forget that you are you, so fascinated you become with her mischievous expressions, her goofy dance moves, her tendency to throw herself so charmingly upon the surfaces that surround her.

We were being shuttled back to the dorms after our sorority bid night. Maybe this was a touch of big sisterly care; maybe the older girls didn't want us to jump too quickly into the overly sexualized atmosphere of greek life, maybe they wanted to get us safely into our beds, alone, just this one night. They put a bunch of us in the bed of a pick-up truck. As we sped along Rugby Road, we huddled close to one another in the chill air. I was next to Sarah, who I still didn't know very well.

We looked at the stars; it was a clear night, I remember. We sort of leaned into one another, and realized out loud how strange it was to know that we were going to be friends. To not really be friends yet, but to know it would come, that we'd build so much up out of that strange pick-up truck snuggling. We got dropped off outside the dorms, and went our separate ways, already carrying a little bit of each other inside.

Lauren
Technically, I should've already known her. Like Sarah and Margaret, she was in my sorority. But I've always been a bit of a social ostrich, head in the sand and all that. You might characterize this as a sort of Puritanical "don't tempt the fates, you already have enough" approach to having friends. Luckily, not all my friends are so subject to this neurosis. There were four of us looking for a house to live in. We found one, a perfectly ramshackle big old house. We needed one more girl to live with us. Elaine knew Lauren needed a new place to live. It was set.

Lauren's entrance into my life is like her existence in my life: surprising, charming, hilarious. I had lived in the house all summer long, but had been in New Jersey visiting my parents for the two weeks prior to school starting.

I returned and went up to my room to sort of check things out. Lauren had decided to live on the sun porch attached to my room. I guess I wasn't really thinking, or I didn't realize she had moved into the house while I had been gone, but I sort of barged into her room only to find her and her boyfriend making out.

Not a good beginning, I thought, as I awkwardly and desperately swung the door back shut.

I went downstairs, totally embarrassed at my uncouthness. This is not something I would handle well. I would stutter and stumble trying to explain myself, I would make make a mess of it, I'd make her feel embarrassed, I would make the whole thing into an irritating boil on the ass of our nascent relationship. I would do it wrong, all wrong.

In a few minutes, Lauren came down the stairs. I smiled weakly. And then, she worked her magic. I don't remember what she said. I doubt she even said anything about the incident that I was obviously overthinking. She just started talking to me. And I was hooked. How do you describe in words someone who uses words so wonderfully? Someone who wraps you up tight and warm in stories and observations and worries and exclamations and wit? Someone you could talk with for your entire life?

(Psssst)

The Beginning to End project is still ongoing, but on hold for the rest of this week as I travel to Chicago to find an apartment for my tiny family. Get the cardboard box ready for me, Harry!

In unrelated news, I wanted to tell you that this past weekend, my husband got beat in a freestyle rap contest, AB's husband got beat in a breakoff, and we saw Dominic from Flickerstick (and don't even PLAY that you don't know who that is) drumming for this sad, sad band that was OPENING for another, less sad band in Monroe.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Thud.

Yes, that is the sound of hitting rock bottom.

Straight Up

In the car, curiously quiet. The radio is on at a very low volume; as far as I'm concerned it's just background noise. For Ed, however, it's the subject of apparently intense internal debate:

"No!" he blurts out, "No, I really don't think this is the Enrique Iglesias version of Hero!"

Beginning to End: Anna Beth

"Wanna ride bikes?"

So it wasn't a typical proposition for one twenty-seven year old to make to another. Sue me. We had just moved to Monroe, Louisiana. I was confused, and Ed and I really, really needed to meet some friends. Ed had done a search on Friendster to see if he could find any twentysomethings in town. He had turned up exactly six people, about half of which appeared to be using the photo the media would distribute after they had committed armed robbery or manslaughter: blurry scowls on their faces as they took an unattractive drag off a cigarette.

But there she was. A young woman named Anna Beth. Adorably pixie-haired, she professed to like Buffy, Ryan Adams, even Center Stage. Ed came busting home from work one day.

"Honey! You have to email this girl. She looks, like, totally normal! I can't email her, because she'll think I'm creepy."

I was resistant. It may not seem likely now, but a year ago I was not an internet person. I had never-- seriously, never-- looked at a blog, or online journal, or whatever you want to call it. I'm not sure I wouldn't have looked at you very blankly if you had said any of those words to me. My husband, the voyeur, had gone through a livejournal phase. I remember, when we were dating, I'd go over his house and he'd be zoned out in front of the computer eavesdropping on people's lives. I couldn't understand how he cared.

And now? He's telling me to EMAIL someone he has found ON THE INTERNET? Ew.

So I wait a few weeks. I turn the possibility around in my mind. Ed and my conversations begin more and more to resemble those of my six-year-old nephew and niece:

"Ha! You farted!"
"No I didn't!"
"Yes you did! Farter Farter Farty McFarterson!"

Et cetera. We need, desperately, to begin talking to people who aren't us.

I work up the courage to send this "Anna Beth" a message. I think on it for a little while, deciding my Friend Procurement strategy. I come up with an obviously brilliant one. I will ask this woman, who indeed does look not only decidedly normal but really, really cool, whether or not she wants to ride bikes.

Let me repeat that. I will ask her if she wants to RIDE BIKES.

Huh.

Isn't that what people in small towns do? I mean lacking Thai food and art galleries, isn't riding bikes an appropriate first friend date?

Right. I guess I knew that, deep down, somewhere.

Anna Beth, bless her heart, is familiar with the ways of the internet. With how sometimes people who seem awesome on the internet are total suckfests. With how sometimes, people who seem so completely and totally short bus can turn out to be real charming.

She writes me back letting me know gently that, no, she does not want to ride bikes with me. She then deftly brings the conversation into the correct decade and suggests that perhaps I might come over to her house with my husband for a drink some night that week.

Eureka! Now THAT'S how you do it.

It's Thursday night. Ed and I are going on a double date. With our new Friendsters. Who happen to live two blocks away. It's serendipity. It's make it or break it for our nonexistent social life. It's nerve wracking.

Are these shoes too aggressive? How do people dress in Monroe? How could I know, when we've barely gone out in public since we've moved here?

OK, yes. Definitely the Seven jeans. But what top? Casual? Flirty? The Pumas or the flats? Are the sneakers too Gwen Stefani? Do I want to appear urban athletic? I don't think so. Ok, no sneakers. But the flats?

"Sarah, maybe you could just go alone?"
"Ed, shut up and get your 'going out' jeans on. I'm not going over there alone."

Oh god, we're walking up to their front door. How do you do this? How do you, as a couple, meet and make friends with another couple? Does it feel artificial? I've never done this before. Do we have to drink scotch and laugh, bwah ha ha, at one another's urbane and cosmopolitan jokes? What happens if I drink too much, like I always do, and get too loud, like I always do? Can I trust you to get me out of there if I'm acting foolish? Should I have worn the sneakers?

She's swinging open the door. She has the brightest smile. She is the tiniest person you've ever seen. Her hair! Oh my, her hair! She's hugging you. You, a stranger and possible pervert who proposed that you ride bikes together, as if that were some euphemism for dirtier deeds and she hugs you like you've known each other for years. She's wearing an awesome t-shirt that says "Angry Little Asian Girl." Her house is beautiful, clean-lined and warm.

She makes it easy on you. It doesn't matter what shoes you wore. You settle into place on the couch-- the couch! the couch you will spend hours and hours upon as the year progresses, but you don't know that yet-- you settle into place.

You talk. You feel one another out. You sip wine, at first. Then you gulp it. You get animated with one another, because you make one another excited about things. You smile a lot. You settle in.

You talk books. The Chaos have a lot on their shelves. You don't trust people who don't have a lot of books. Jonathan Franzen comes up. Time slows. It's fish or cut bait, right here right now. You lock eyes with Anna Beth. You realize you are looking into eyes that say "Yep, right back atcha," with mischief and intelligence and good humor, and just plain good taste.

Fuck Jonathan Franzen.

You settle in.

Beginning to End: Ed

A few too many things are ending. I think it's safe to assume I'm beginning to feel a little bit overwhelmed by the prospect of moving back to Chicago, to being catapulted back into a life I left behind a year ago. It's a strange feeling, "moving back." Far different from "moving to." And goddamn it if the weather is not cooperating. I thought the sweltering Louisiana late summer would chase us carpetbaggers out of town with the torches and the tar and the feathers. And that once safely across the stateline, we would pause with nothing but relief, mop our beading brows and relievedly point ourselves north, dreaming of the sweet breezes scurrying off Lake Michigan. Instead, I find myself back where I was last September, sitting outside on our incomparable balcony, typing and sipping iced tea on as perfectly temperate a day as you'll find anywhere.

So all this is ending. What I want to write about, then, are beginnings. I want to write about the moments certain people have come into my life. The moments it wouldn't do to be aloof, it wouldn't do to be mincing, it wouldn't do to shrink from the challenge being set in front of you. For a person who in her less admirable moments doesn't really like people-- doesn't like how facing another spotlights how inconvenient and inefficient and downright exhausting having a self among selves can be-- the moments when the really important ones have refused to quit knocking on the door still ring loudly in my ears.

I'm not sure how long or how many entries this project will take, I guess I'll stop when it feels right to stop. But let's not think about stopping, or ending, when we're only just beginning.

Ed

There's this guy named "Ed," and they all keep talking about him.

"Wait until Ed gets back from Texas. You're going to love him."

"Ed is so funny, remember when you first met him, Scott? And he was dancing around in the backyard making up songs about you?"

Who is this guy who dances and makes up songs the moment he meets you?

I was in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. I had just moved there to attend graduate school, leaving New Jersey where I had spent the year after graduating from college living with my Very Serious Boyfriend (VSB), who, did I mention?, I was going to spend my life with, except we weren't going to get married, because we were Very Serious about living the theory and theorizing the living.

"Ed's from Austin. He's very cool in that Austin kind of way, but also really goofy."

When I walked into my new apartment-- that I had secured over the phone without ever having seen it-- I nearly collapsed. It was nighttime and a single, bare light bulb hung in the garishly linoleumed kitchen. The apartment, I would come to realize, was incredible, a wide open expanse of what was probably the formal living and dining rooms in a very old house. But I couldn't see that yet. All I could see was absence, all I could hear was the silence of living alone. Both my parents and the VSB were there next to me, but they had already faded, cinematically disappearing from my side.

I looked for this "Ed," this supposedly cool and goofy and incredible guy with the improbably middle-aged name. I saw messenger bag types bicycling across campus, and I thought, could this be "Ed?" I saw turtle-necked men in tortoise shell glasses and I thought, could this be "Ed?" I don't remember exactly how I rationalized my extreme interest in "Ed" in light of the VSB. I guess I just thought I'd make a new friend. Heh.

So the days passed, and the beginning of school approached. Apparently this "Ed" was SO cool, that he didn't want to leave Austin until he absolutely had to. Then I get a call from Scott, a boy whose Stephen Merritt obsession meshed well with mine and bode well for our future friendship (And who I later found out, had been prepping Ed to meet me, telling him that I had "punky hair" (which I did) and "nice tits." Now anyone who's ever seen me will know that I have very average, smallish tits that I enjoy quite well, thankyouverymuch. Scott may be forgiven for his puffery, however, because he is very gay and so really shouldn't have much familiarity about what qualify as "nice tits" in hetero nomenclature). So I get a call from Scott, who says a bunch of students are getting together at this bar called The Office, and that, gasp!, "Ed" had finally arrived and would attend as well.

I think you can imagine what sort of bar The Office was. Dark wood paneling? Check. Pool Tables? Check. Men with loosened ties? Check. Big plates of fries on a large percentage of the tables? Check.

I sipped my vodka tonic. I looked toward the door. Where was this "Ed?"

The grad students prattled. They probably prattled about Foucault, which is like, c'mon already.

I glanced to the left.

I turned my head to the side to talk to someone who knew someone from my hometown.

I leaned back in my chair, looked up, noticed Scott shifting next to me, pushing his chair back and standing up, "Hey!" he chuckled in his deep voice, "How are you?"

It was "Ed." In the most heartbreakingly thrifted outfit ever known to man: brown super-polyester old man pants, and an off-white-and-brown striped boucle short-sleeved wide-collared shirt.

It was at that moment that he stopped being "Ed" and started being Ed.

Elixir

Bonnie "Prince" Billy -

Greatest Palace Music

A Little Bit Mish, A Little Bit Mash

Even though I don't have too much to say, I'd like to get that last entry off the top of the page. I got a bit rhetorically exercised, to the point where it begins to seem as if I'd like to devote my life to Yuppie Defense Law. My pal Leo joked that the whole situation developed into a sort of A Few Good Hipsters, with me screeching YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH. Although secretly, I want to be Demi Moore (of the unfortunate hair) lamely yelping, "I strenuously object!" Because I'm nothing if not a pencil pusher who's found herself deep within the dark beating heart of corruption.*

In another oldie-but-goodie vein, Ed and I watched a bit of Waiting for Guffman** on HBO last night. I just wanted to note this very funny moment that had escaped my notice until last night's viewing. After Corky "quits" the show, the cast all go to his funky downtown loft to try and convince him to come back, but he isn't answering the door. And there is typical Guestian chaos as they all pile in on the tiny landing arguing over whether or not something might be seriously wrong inside when Parker Posey*** freaks the fuck out and screams "He JUST wants to be alone! JESUS!" and then runs back down the stairs. And then Catherine O'Hara follows her off camera and you hear her saying "I know how you feel!" Heh.

*I know this whole A Few Good Men metaphor barely scans. Am I Tom Cruise? Jack Nicholson? Demi Moore? Kevin Bacon? Kevin Pollack? What's my motivation? Am I the slow guy, with the noncognizant murdering? Ahhh! I don't know, leave me alone!

**And I'll blow you a virtual kiss if you know what the other connection between A Few Good Men and Waiting for Guffman is, besides my crack-hopped mind.

*** I have it on good authority that Parker Posey was just as frightening back in the day when she was still called Missy and made her spending money babysitting tiny little brown-haired girls.

You Gonna Drink that or What?
This past weekend was totally batshit. We met Miss Doxie and her adorably jailbait boyfriend and basically desiccated Ouachita Parish by drinking every available liquid in a 50 mile radius. I'm not much for a blow-by-blow description of a weekend that just happened (on par with making a home video in the afternoon and watching it that evening; and yes, I'm looking down the barrel of my Sony at both my brothers) so suffice it to say I made a retarded 3 a.m. fool of myself on AB's website, Ed did his fancy high kick routine to Panama, and three very hot ladies of widely varying heights got all up on each other on the dance floor while three men ignored the lesbotronic display in favor of watching a fourth man dance all Weekend at Bernie's 2 while sitting on the floor. Anyway it was real fun, and I'm happy to find that, indeed, I still do MUCH prefer to spend my time with real life people rather than internet people. I might chuckle at your writing, but I love you in the flesh my peeps!

Fun, Sun, etc.
And finally! We did go to Hawaii, and it was fun, and indeed we did swim with dolphins, and not on no "Swim With Dolphins! Promotional Package" neither. It was just a regular ole' day sea kayaking across a glittering sapphire bay when lo and behold Flipper and his 50 pals decided to start cavorting all around us. So we did what the kayak shop dude told us to do-- "Just be totally mellow and they'll come check YOU out." We hopped out our kayak, put some masks on, and watched them swim under us and heard them talk to each other. That was our first wedding anniversary. We have a lot to live up next year, I guess.

The other thing about Hawaii, is that there is a shitload of lava all over the place:

Nothing between here and Antarctica.

A rainbow just for us? Gee, thanks!

I Guess It's Called a BANDwagon for a Reason

Warning: The following is a somewhat insular address to real life people I know in real life. The kind that in a very real life manner have totally beat down my friend (and, on better days, theirs as well) Gabe for speaking his mind.

I'm pissed. I get back from Hawaii, and all I want to do is reread Gabe's hilarious post. See, I only got to glance at it through travel-bleared eyes while stranded in San Francisco waiting to hear whether Mr. Martinez, United Airlines Bitch Extraordinaire, was going to finally let us on a plane to Hawaii. I read it there at one of those free internet kiosks, and I laughed and laughed; it was the first smile to grace my face on a day where I broke down sobbing not once, not twice, but three times in front of very uncaring airline employees. So I finally get home after an arduous journey, and I want to reread the post. Silly me.

You all should be ashamed. Seriously. What is this, Heathers? Who are you, a bunch of John Ashcrofts, draping the jiggly breasts of indie rock from prying eyes? Maybe you felt like his post was a personal attack on you. Maybe you should stop taking everything so personally. The world doesn't revolve around you. Gabe wrote an intensely self-deprecating rant about a caricature of a culture-- this is called satire. Your reaction has shaded and filled in this crudely sketched caricature so elegantly that it's now more like an Old Master, a shockingly realistic depiction of the world in which you live.

And look what you have done! The post was achingly funny-- "It's not like you're the fucking Tutsi and the Hutu"-- and here you've got me shaking my finger in classic schoolmarm style. The funny is drained because you're being humorless, because you have chosen to take yourselves so damned seriously. People, lighten up. Don't you recognize the silliness of our lives? I write about feminism and literature while living on the money my husband makes. I've known lots of people who were devoted to the tenets of Marxism while guiltlessly attending expensive schools. Can you seriously tell me that you don't ever feel like laughing at yourself, at the time you spend getting yourself to look rumpled and tattered, at the absurdity of your complaints about your meathead neighbors who've only just moved to Wicker Park when you've been there for FIVE YEARS, man? I've done all those things. And I've laughed at myself for having done those things.

The problem is your criteria are impossible to meet. Even you can't meet your criteria. You can never be as indie as you wannabe. I mean everyone's gotta buy shit sometime (sometimes even on "Buy Nothing Day"!) and everybody has to sit on a French Colonial blue flowered couch when they go visit their moms. Maybe this makes you uncomfortable, so you beat up on someone who has the AUDACITY to say he sees the value in property ownership, and who JOKES about one day owning a BMW. So what if the whole indie scene makes Gabe feel a little sad for his loss of belief in music's promise? My career in academia makes me sad everyday. So much heartbreaking sincerity that all this really MATTERS, so little payoff. You think he's "just bitter" that he could never join your indie aristocracy? That's like saying lesbians are "just bitter" cuz they never got slipped the big one.

I'm sorry Gabe apologized at all for writing what he wrote. If people are going to willfully and carelessly misread, you can't really do anything about it. But maybe I can try and help. A very wise friend of mine (Hi, Lauren! We wish you had written something last week, too!) summed his post up very simply and very well: "I read Gabe's post as being basically about finding your own path to being happy. And about how when you're in your twenties you think finding your own path has to mean the opposite of the conventional path, so it was weird for him to realize he does care about conventional things."

I'll put it my own way, with my own polemic: Your "lifestyle"-- as politically deadening and distracting a phrase as has ever been uttered-- has nothing at all to do with whether or not you are a sweetheart, a prick, interesting or boring, smart or stupid. Fashion is not politics. Music is not politics. Politics is politics. If you think differently, you're taking the easy way out. It's much easier to "subvert the dominant paradigm" with your hairstyle, or dress, or job, or whatever than to fully and intellectually engage with the world in all its variety and weirdness. I think Gabe was trying to do the latter, and he should be proud of that.

I've restored Gabe's post to its rightful place below.

Fists with your toes?

When Sarah (the capo of this Drunkenbee shit) asked me to contribute, I was suitably honored. However, once the feeling of honor faded away, I was just confused. What the hell was I going to write about? From what I can tell, I could be writing something about my feelings, my personal life, my emotions, my struggle for self-awareness in this crazy era, as people tend to do on this here internet thing (capo gets a pass, she's actually funny). Well, call me old-fashioned (or just English) but I am most certainly not going to do that. As my mother would say, no-one in their right mind is interested in reading my psychobabble. And in this case, mother certainly does know best. Anyway, this is kind of a one-shot deal, and I think it would impossible to give a reasonable impression of the enormity of my complex inner workings in this short amount of space. Nah, just kidding. I'm actually a fairly simple fellow. In fact, before I go any further, allow me to introduce myself, my name is Leo, L to the EO. I hail from the dirty city of London, but I now make myself at home in the interesting continent of America. Both of my parents were lowly coal miners and I came over here to make a better life for my brethren and myself. I currently live in a charming one-bedroom flat in Logan Square with my charming lady friend (who is very interested in trees, Hawaii and, most of all, Hawaiian trees). I spend most of my spare time drinking cocktails, cooking and listening to Hip Hop. When I'm not doing that, I annoy my friends by making constant references to afore-mentioned musical genre. I've already made a couple in this paragraph. Oh, I watch a lot of TV as well. It's pretty pathetic. Anyway, there's not much left to say about me. I feel like I'm on the Dating Game or something. Let's keep it moving.

As I said, I'm not really sure what to write about. I don't want to write about myself in any kind of depth and I don’t want to write about politics (there are plenty of people who can do that a lot better then I could, the majority of whom are paid for it) or any of that stuff. First I had the idea of just writing a diatribe about how much I dislike the capo's husband Ed. I actually love Ed like a brother, but I was tickled by the idea of capo coming home from the Pacific Rim and finding an illiterate rant about her husband on her very own website. Sadly, I'm not very good at being ill-mannered, so I knocked this idea on the head. Then I had the idea of emulating those books by comedians where they just offer random observations on life which cause not only great laughter, but also increased awareness and wisdom. You know the books I mean. The ones your Aunt gives you for Christmas. Sterling examples of this genre might include Jerry Seinfeld's hil-air-ious Sein Language (Christmas 1993), Bill Cosby's Fatherhood (the War and Peace of this genre) or any of the 11 books that Jeff Foxworthy has penned (don't take my word for it; ask Ed, he has a PhD in Foxworthy studies). But I don't think I have the wit, wisdom or time to do this. Then I realized that a book that I had been eagerly awaiting had recently come into my possession (cheers!), so I figured that I may as well review it.

So here I present my first foray into the world of book reviewing. I mean, I guess the many papers I have written on second- and third-tier talents like Henry James and Saul Bellow kind of count as 'reviews' in a loose sense, but that's too easy. The author of this book is a much more complex beast altogether.

Ahem.

It's Not Easy Bein' Me : A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs by Rodney Dangerfield

First of all, if you don't like Rodney Dangerfield, may your sad, simple soul rot in hell. Well, OK, maybe that's a little harsh. Still, I've always liked him. He's like a more punk rock version of Henny Youngman, and that can't be a bad thing. He's made a few mistakes over the years (the Rappin' Rodney debacle comes to mind) but for the most part he's been the very model of comic consistency. So I was pretty psyched to read this book, despite the title. It's a little too long for my taste. Too busy. I think The Ugly American would be better. But maybe Dennis Franz would be better off using that one. Come to think of it, I'll be really pissed off if he doesn't. Anyway, this is by no means Rodney's first book. He's already published several books - I Couldn't Stand My Wife's Cooking, So I Opened a Restaurant; I Don't Get No Respect; and No Respect (notice the distinct theme here). The difference is, this is his first 'serious' book. The book that got him the dubious honor of an interview with Terry Gross (talk about no respect), this is surely Rodney's definitive statement. Sure, his previous books have outlined precisely how little respect he receives, and the manner in which afore-mentioned respect is denied. But this book? Well, this truly provides a window to Rodney's soul. And it is truly chilling.

We start with his childhood. This is by far the most compelling part of the book. As anyone even slightly familiar with the comedic stylings of Mr. Dangerfield knows, jokes about his terrible childhood are a staple of his act. However, I doubt that many of us knew how truly terrible his childhood was until now. There was never any question that his lack of respect must have started at a young age, but what was unapparent until now the sheer magnitude of this dearth of respect. This section of the book is about as funny as The House of Mirth . Rodney is neglected by his mother (who sounds like the devil incarnate), abandoned by his father and beaten daily by his aunts. In one particularly shocking episode, Rodney reveals that he didn't even taste lettuce until he was 10. Oh, the humanity! Taken by itself, this would be pretty unsettling. However, what makes it really unsettling, is the choice by the author (and I don't think that there was any ghostwriters here, this is 100% pure Dangerfield) to interpose every anecdote in the entire book with a little zinger. I'm assuming that this is so people buying this book hoping for some cheap laughs do not get upset, but it leads to some truly strange juxtapositions. Take, for example, these somewhat haunting paragraphs (which could have come straight from a work by Edmund White or Hubert Selby Jr.);

On one of my walks - I was five at this time - a man asked me to come to his office. After I'd climbed a couple of flights of stairs, he offered me a nickel in I'd sit on his lap.

Wow, I thought, a nickel!

So I sat on the man's lap. He held me and then kissed me on the lips for about five minutes. Then he said "You can go now, but don't tell anybody about this. Come by again tomorrow, and I'll give you another nickel."

I never told anyone, and I kept on going back to this man everyday, and I got a nickel every time. How long did this go on? I don't remember. It could have been a few days, a few weeks. Or maybe it was just a summer thing. Let's face it - at five years old, I was a male hooker.

Thanks for lookin' after me, ma.

This is followed immediately by -

When I was a kid, I got no respect
When my parents got divorced
There was a custody fight over me...
And no one showed up

Er...ha ha ha? Until reading these chapters, I had always chosen to put my copy of the No Respect LP on at times when I needed a laugh. From now on I'll file it next to Joy Division's Closer and Nick Drake's Pink Moon . After this highly Dickensian piece of work, the rest of the book is bound to seem slightly more frivolous. And so it proves to be the case. Taking advantage of the fact that nobody in his family cares if he lives or dies, Rodney enters the cutthroat world of showbiz at the tender age of 15. He then quits showbiz and enters the cutthroat world of selling aluminum siding, but realizes that comedy is in his blood ("Show business was my escape from life. I had to have it. It was like a fix. I needed it to survive"). After a lot of hard work on the comedy circuit (the word 'Catskills' appears more then once), he finally wins fame and fortune and all of the good things that fame and fortune bring (a formidable weed habit, friendship with Johnny Carson, lots of sex with hookers and a whole lot of photo opportunities with people who would go on to be more famous then him). A true Cinderella story, to be sure. It's certainly an entertaining book, and one that paints a vivid picture of the type of showbiz carrier that won't exist in 20 or so year's time. I'm pretty sure this will on the curriculum at Yale in 2050. Mark my words.

I feel that I should leave the final words to one of my true idols. Ladies and gentlemen, none other then the Camus of the comic strips himself - Ziggy. Yes (in a pairing that, in my mind, is something like James Brown fronting The Who in 1965), this book features a reproduction of a Tom Wilson panel from 1980. This epic work of penmanship (which I'm seriously thinking of having tattooed on my chest) depicts Ziggy on his analysts couch proclaiming "…I have a profound, unshakable respect for Rodney Dangerfield!!" Me too, Zig, me too.

Wow, as so often tends to be the case, I've gone on for far too long. I guess my argument that The Blueprint by Jay-Z is the greatest work of music to be released in the last 30 years will have to wait until another time. I'M OUT.