My friend Tim Gordon (of Royal Quiet Deluxe) was released from jail out in San Francisco last Friday. He had been locked up in there since late September on a false testimony for crimes that he definitely did not commit.
That’s the justice system for you. They tried to break him, tried to get him to plead guilty to crimes he didn’t commit, and he stood strong. Now he’s out and I couldn’t be happier about it.
We have been writing back and forth like teenaged lovers at two different boarding schools since sometime around Halloween. As happy as I am that Tim is out, I am going to miss writing so often. I looked forward to opening his letters at my office. I’d shut my door and read them over and over throughout the day, keeping them in my pocket until I got home at night.
He’d send me little stuff from time to time, stuff that showed he was thinking about me — stuff that showed he was keeping his soul alive, too. He said it was okay to share some of these here, and I will be over the next few months.
I was supposed to be the one keeping Tim’s spirits up, but the picture and letter below really made me smile. My friend Xeni coined the term “unicorn chaser,” and I doubt she’s seen one as bittersweet as this one.
Before reading, you should know this: Tim actually did used to hammer a pen up his nose and make drawings for all takers on the streets of San Francisco. Trust me, it’ll make sense later.
I have learned that there is a SUPERVOLCANO (which is a real thing not made up by an 8-year-old kid, apparently,) underneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. This supervolcano has erupted in the past, and was possibly partially responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to one guy (who keeps saying “million” when he means “thousand”, which you’d think would be problematic for a physicist,) it WILL erupt again, and everybody who lives in the huge area depicted here will be pretty well f*cked.
Coincidentally, on the same day that I learned that 11 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces are just incontrovertibly screwed six ways to Sunday, I came across this amazing and hilarious Jack Kirby drawing from 1972 of what our future might look like after “A GREAT CATACLYSM!”:
Now she’s working on a one-woman show show that traces her journey from a little suburban Jewish girl obsessed with Wonder Woman to a fabulous burlesque Queen in NYC.
The show’s called Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.
I’ve been writing and editing and re-writing my story for this Monday’s Moth GrandSLAM, just scribbling it over and over on a legal pad to make sure I’ve got it. The theme is “Into the Wild,” which poses a challenge. I’ve pretty much told and re-told what I like to think is a pretty solid story on that theme. I’ve told that thing right into the red dirt, to be honest. I’m sure my friends, family, and the odd person I am totally trying to impress is sick to their guts of it. I think I’ve worn a track in my brain from repeating it so damn much.
I got one of the best passive-aggressive guilt trips about this that I’ve ever had from anyone that wasn’t my own mother recently. She’s a great friend I met through the Moth, and when I suggested I wanted to visit that old incarnation of that story for the theme, she said “Yeah, I mean, you could do that. But if you won with it, I think you’d feel pretty cheap.”
She’s right. So I’m working on it, but brother, you never know you’ve got something until it’s over and done with. The challenge here is to find other material in that experience, stuff that didn’t make the first cut and massaging it into something brand-new. Read the rest of this entry »
The Moth’s podcast this week features a story told by the Reverend Al Sharpton. It’s funny, sad and moving, and one of the better stories that I’ve heard on the Moth podcast in some time. He’s an amazing speaker — I mean, he wouldn’t be who he is if he wasn’t — and the whole thing is a real joy to listen to. You can hear it yourself here:
I actually have a story about my own experience with Reverend Sharpton, which I’ve blogged about here before. But I thought it might be worth a repeat mention.
Essentially, I used to play the typewriter in a ridiculous performance art band featuring two keyboard-playing chickens. For real. That really happened. You can hear two of our songs here:
I was at a dinner with Al Sharpton and a number of heavy hitters in Virginia’s African-American community, and someone made the terrible mistake of asking me what I did. I got way too into it and ran off at the mouth forever. And I could see Al Sharpton rolling his eyes and thinking what all black people think from time to time:
Is there a worse word in American English than the dreaded “c-word?” I really need to describe pretty much the worst human being I’ve ever heard of, and “cunt” seems downright generous under the circumstances. I like the Jamaican “bumba claat,” but it’s not really my language and I need to see clearly when I swing this hammer.
It’s a shame I can’t ask the author of the little document below. If he doesn’t have any leads now, I bet he will in a couple years. A good friend of mine teaches GED school. He found this on a desk in his classroom last month:
This cardboard-and-Sharpie sign is nailed up in our friends Alex & Emily’s bathroom:
According to Emily:
“Alex and I were walking one evening in northwest DC and discovered a bunch of these signs (same misspellings and all) posted outside an embassy, I believe it was the Lebanese embassy. Since they had so many, we figured we could snatch one without them noticing.”
The sign is brilliant enough on its own, but I LOVE the thought of a cranky Lebanese diplomat stepping in dog shit once, and then scouring the embassy for scrap cardboard and scrawling out TONS of these things to put out all over the lawn. And possibly spending the rest of his day watching with one eye through parted curtains for trespassing dogs to yell at.
(Jeff can relate.)
