I told this story at my friends Brad and Cyndi’s “Stories at the Creek” a couple weeks ago. It’s a work in progress for me. I’m trying to turn this year’s cancer battles (well documented on this blog) into a story I tell on stage, and this is the first crack.

Like I say in the video, I’m not sure if I’m ready to talk about this or not, but I’m ready to be ready to talk about this, and that’s as good a start as any. I think that telling stories based on our memories helps us get control of them and bend them to our purposes — something I’m really eager to do with this particular experience.

I wouldn’t have told this or posted it if I weren’t ready to see this as material, something to be honed and edited with the help of sharp-eyed, caring friends.

This thing’s a whammy, too — two ten-minute videos about cancer and depression. Not exactly the light and fluffy feel-good romantic comedies I’m known for performing, so brace yourselves. Maybe this is like watching “Requiem for a Dream” (not to flatter myself): good once, but a total fricking BUMMER.

Long story short, I’m used to telling funnier stories with big laugh payoffs, and this sure isn’t one of those.

Popularity: 5% [?]

A disgruntled Vietnam Vet with a foul mouth and a serious anger management problem is not the kind of guy I’d like to have running the country. Hell, I wouldn’t even want him on my bowling team.

John McCain and Walter Sobchak — John Goodman’s character in ‘The Big Lebowski’ — seem like they have a lot in common, once you think about it. David pointed this out to me the other day, and we got pretty obsessed. So we partnered up with Chad Williams of PBC Productions to mash together one of John Goodman’s titanic tantrums in “The Big Lebowski” with some images of John McCain’s face … hope it’s as fun for you as it is for us.

You can see a hi-res version here, or just check it out on Youtube below:

Popularity: 3% [?]

A couple weeks ago, we ran a big fat blog post about a bunch of people sparring in Union Square. They were practicing mixed martial arts (MMA), and letting pretty much anyone get in the ring who wanted to fight.

In writing the post, I tried to focus on the vibe in the air, how cool it was to witness the thing happening — as well as describe some of the utterly ridiculous videos David shot. The post got a ton of traffic (for us), and a corresponding ton of utterly retarded comments that totally missed the point.

David’s videos were pretty choice — and we intentionally focused on the ridiculous side of the thing to attract more attention. The blogosphere’s principal exports are bullshit and outrage, and its chief currency is attention. I’m not a journalist, I’m a storyteller, and I don’t mind altering the telling of an event to make it work better as a story. The thing about stories is, when you tell one story, you’re not telling another one.

All that aside, here’s some really spectacular photos of the Union Square Spartans by Anya Roz that really capture the dignified ballet of the thing, all the grace, training and prowess — and of course, tons and tons of rock-hard man-candy:

More photos and some video after the jump …

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Hey there, visitors — there’s more (and much better) photos of this here — check ‘em out.

I got another cryptic text from a friend last Friday afternoon: “Fight Club in Union Square. GET HERE.”

For those who don’t live in New York, Union Square has historically been a giant meeting place for political protesters, social activists, and merchants of all sizes. In the days following September 11th, it was a meeting place for rescuers and mourners alike. Now it’s home to a multiplex, Ann Taylor Loft, a Whole Foods, and a Diesel store.

So really, it makes perfect sense that in the inner chamber of Manhattan’s consumer culture, right there in Union Square, there would be a massive, public fight club.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]

This is the story that I would have told last night at The Moth for the theme “Making Peace.” I don’t think I’ve run it here before. Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

I’d been dating this girl who was confident and cool with beautiful tattoos, so gorgeous she’d make a whole room turn and feel ugly whenever she walked in the door. I’d just lost a pile of weight and was giddy with the sudden attention — giddy enough to miss the warning signs and get my newly narrowed ass dumped in about three weeks. I had no idea why, didn’t see it coming at all.

I lived in tired little termite buffet painted the color of dingy Band-Aids. A small community of grizzled vagrants in electric wheelchairs would commune around a trash fire in the alley behind my house most afternoons, drinking Thunderbird. Sometime around twilight most nights, one guy with a blurry swastika tattooed on his forehead would rev up out into the road, barreling upstream against one-way traffic. I had decorated the interior of the place myself — carpeted the entire house in Astroturf, green for the living room, the stairs, and upstairs hallway, my bedroom in neon blue with a giant American flag for a bedspread. Waking up each morning was like a Lego funeral at sea.

All the furniture in the downstairs was inflatable — a couch and two easy chairs. There was a sculpture on the front porch that I’d made myself out of several deer carcasses and a giant head covered in glowing white war paint.

In hindsight, I may have been dumped for aesthetic reasons.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

My glasses are broken and it’s time to get new ones.

I don’t give things up very easily — never really bought into the “get the next and newest” craze that’s swept the nation. I use things ’til I just can’t anymore, and also have the unfortunate habit of developing an emotional attachment to inanimate objects.

My glasses have been there for me, right there on my face for three years, and I’ve seen a lot with them. And they were pretty tough, too. I only take them off when I’m sleeping or showering.

I was hiking to Uluwatu, a temple in Bali located on the edge of a cliff high above the ocean when a monkey leapt from the trees and ran laps around my face and shoulders. He knocked my glasses off and onto the crumbling, moss-covered pathway. They teetered over the edge, flirting with a dive down into the churning blue ocean as I threw the monkey deep into the forest like a furry soccer ball. I put them back on, unharmed.

I swam with stingrays in the cloudy surf where the Southern and Indian Oceans collide, my glasses folded carefully against my palm with one stiff, cramping thumb.

I used that same thumb to hold the same glasses against my palm when leaping from a giant boulder into a deliciously freezing swimming hole in the mountains near West Virginia, jamming the glasses back onto my face as I dog-paddled to the rocky shore. I gulped hot, humid air through suddenly stiff white lips, smelling trees, tobacco and Budweiser as my body heat fogged my newly cooled lenses.

I biked 30 miles each way to and from work for a while. While the rest of co-workers saw traffic jams and Support The Troops stickers on the back of SUVs in Ashburn traffic, I saw hawks, deer and the occasional blacksnake.

I was in the hot room at the Russian-Turkish Baths last March — it was 180 degrees in there and the metal arms of my specs stung my face. I left the room when I couldn’t take it anymore and dove into a 40 degree pool, crinkling the coating on my lenses and covering them with hairline fractures. I still wore them for months.

I took a hit or two in the face at my completely candy-assed boxing class in DC. This wasn’t even supposed to happen, though — the puncher was daydreaming about the instructor, I think, and I was thinking about pummeling the puncher.

The glasses gave it up completely last week in the lamest glasses-breaking story ever: I accidentally walked right into the edge of my bedroom door, totally sober. Then it was really like getting punched in the face. The frames shattered, lenses went spiralling across the floor. Now my eyes are limping around, frames scotch-taped together. the new ones should be ready tomorrow. I look weird, no getting around that.

Sometimes I get really bored and angsty. I think that my life’s being wasted, just plopped in front of a screen while everything drains out of me one pixel at a time. But just now, right this minute, when I use my smashed, taped glasses to look back at that life … parts of it look really, really good.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Like any decent American, I am ashamed and embarrassed by my country.I spent decades thinking we were the good guys until Bush and crew came and ruined us, turned us into a bunch of heavy-handed fratboys with no consciences or consequences.

Except maybe not. I wasn’t around for Vietnam, but Kurt Vonngut, Jr. sure was, and his words on American torture in Vietnam are as true and heartbreaking today as they were when he wrote them 36 years ago. I first read the following piece in “Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons,” a marvelous collection of Vonnegut’s essays and speeches.

Originally published in the New York Times in 1971, “Torture and Blubber” mirrors my disgust with our country and a sadness for the entire human race — a disappointment I thought was new and mildly fashionable.

The piece is short and well worth your time — in its entirety after the jump …

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]

This is the Jesus Lizard performing their classic jam “Nub,” live in 1994.

The song itself is a hellish deep-fried crotch-grinder made even more frantic by the band playing it at double- speed. In the end here, Duane Denison and David Yow double-team a meddling audience member who makes the horrific mistake of fucking with Duane’s amp, earning a mid-song beatdown. David Sims and Mac McNeilly never miss a beat.

The Jesus Lizard were one of the few authentically scary bands that I’ve ever seen. When all four members locked into their respective grooves, they opened a mildly Satanic portal to a moist, sweaty hell. Imagine teleporting into a dark wooden shack in the middle of the desert at noontime. There is a shirtless, sweating man drinking heavily at a knife-scarred table who looks you deep in the eye and cackles as he offers you a beer. Nothing actually happens, but it could get very, very bad at any moment.

That’s pretty much what the Jesus Lizard felt like in concert, plus a very real fear of being trampled or accidentally touching the singer’s exposed penis. It was easier to do than you might think.

I can’t even say that shows like that were even fun, in a traditional sense of the word. They were just so magnetic and powerful that you had to go, just to see what was going to happen. I always came out a little different, changed.

I worry that those days are gone. Now when I see live music (less and less with each year), I love it but get a little bored. I don’t feel the thrill and terror that I used to get. Sometimes I worry that it’s me, being too adult and jaded. Other times I worry that it’s the music itself, that we are in a wash of pissweak derivative bands that really actually can’t hold a candle to the jams of days long dead.

I happened to run into Ian Mackaye (yes, that one) at a gallery opening in D.C. for Suzie Horgan’s book a few months ago, and I asked him about this phenomenon. His bands basically triggered TWO major revolutions in American rock music, I figure he should know a thing or two about it. This is what he said, reconstructed in its essence from my memory:

It’s all in your head. Trust me, music is safe and kids are still doing incredible things. It’s just that you, at this point in your life are unaware of it. Take a look at this picture, for example

He walked me over to this photo:

If you, in your life now, happened to walk past this you’d just think it was a bunch of kids in a parking lot. You wouldn’t have known that it was historic hardcore, or thought anything other than some kids hanging out. this stuff is all around us, all the time, little groups of people forming communities and trying out new ideas. Good, new ideas happen in small groups and the word doesn’t always get out very well — but the results can be so incredible if you’re right at the middle of it all.

On a grand, humanist scale, I am completely relieved: weird music is safe, rock is still scary and shows are still dangerous. Just in different ways. But I’m really sad, too — because while music is wild and life is still weird, it’s harder and harder every day for me to walk into that little room in the desert and cackle over beer with the sweaty man.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Cindy Sheehan
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

o I’m sitting here in Busboys and Poets (a coffee shop in D.C) just hammering away at the freelance work when the phone rings. Its an unavailable number, which, to me, is a good sign. A lot of corporate phone numbers read “unavailable” on my cell. I’ve spent a fair bit of time these past few weeks trying to get that word to appear on my telephone. I jumped up and outside onto the street.

it was indeed a company interested in my writing/web content services. And man, it feels good to be wanted. Even when you don’t want the thing that wants you, it just feels good, like the universe is giving you a wink and a nod.

So I’m standing out there on the street, cell on my head and thumb in my ear going on and on about my services when this pack of teenage girls comes hollering on by. I could hear them down the street, hence the thumb in the ear. Then the gaggle stopped right in front of me, right as I as talking to this recruiter. And it wasn’t just boisterous anymore.

Shit got HOT and onlookers circled up and went “OOOooOOoo daaaamn I wouldn’t take that if I was you!” There was about to be a girl fight right in front of me, during my phone interview, right in front of Busboys and Poets. Looked like it was gonna be a real weave-ripper, too.

I moved down the street and hands started flying. It got UGLY. “I’m so sorry, I’ll have to call you back, there’s a fight happening on the street,” I said, hanging up abruptly.

Then I didn’t know WHAT to do. I didn’t feel like I could break it up exactly, and the crowd was growing. I just stood there anxiously, an official grownup who is supposed to DO SOMETHING, just watching and fretting and hoping it didn’t roll into the street.

The fight went into the street. Traffic stopped. The crowd on the sidewalk grew, a bunch of nervous grown white people standing around, saying to each other “somebody should really do SOMETHING,” but none of us knew what.

The fight rolled across 14th and sort of evaporated like a dust devil that just quits all of a sudden and then it was just us nervous citizens on the sidewalk. One of those nervous citizens was Cindy Sheehan and a lot of the other citizens were part of her peacemaking brigade.

I know that her thing is more stopping the war in Iraq instead of breaking up teenage girlfights, but I thought she could have tried SOMETHING. Sort of like how on an island full of castaways a veterinarian delivers babies and takes out swollen appendixes every month or so. But you know, she’s another nervous grownup just like me too and neither one of us really had a clue.

It was just me and Cindy and this big weird girlfight on the street this afternoon and there wasn’t any point to anything at all.

Popularity: 2% [?]