Thinking Outside The Penalty Box

Speaking of neat tricks, this is the kind of creative tactic one or two of my teammates could easily master. (I'm looking at you, Nathan. Well, you and your plateful of London broil and gravy...)

To be honest, ale, fish and chips, and meat pies probably give the English an unfair advantage in this kind of gutsy football.

God help us, though, if they ever played a friendly in Mexico...

Just A Trick Of The Hat

In a way, it's appropriate: "kinky" and "tricks" go together like your mom and the body of work she's inspired.

(snap!)

Which explains why it feels so right that, this past Friday night, I should score three goals in my first soccer game with Team Kinky, earning myself a hat trick and our team its first win of the season.

A consistently strong defense laid the hat out, and a few perfectly-placed passes to the outside post helped me turn the trick. As they say al sur de la frontera, "GOL!"

Also, like many tricks, I had trouble walking straight the day after...

My Hat Trick: something like this, only much

less nightmarish or...French-looking.

Freedom Marches On

Can't you smell the sweet, sweet bouquet of billions of dollars worth of Western-style freedom?

Sadly, I'm hardly being facetious.

Sing Thee To Thy Rest

Other than my brief goodbye, I haven't really had a chance to address the recent loss of Steven Bach, a screenwriting professor of mine from Bennington College.

He was probably the first teacher I'd had who made me feel like I'd stepped sideways in the world, slightly out of sync with my life as it had been lived previously. "Him?," I thought. "This man, former senior vice president in charge of worldwide production at United Artists and producer of such movies as Hair, Raging Bull, and Annie Hall, has come down from the heights of the profession I'm hoping to enter just to thumb through my inconsequential dramatic doodlings? How did it come to this? I'm just a kid from podunk Georgia...."

He wasn't the kind of teacher you were ever "close" with; Steven was much too dignified to indulge in anything like gossip. But this dignity meant that he treated the ideas of those around him with respect. And if you faced his honest scrutiny with a confidence that your ideas deserved his attention--in short, with your own dignity--then even fundamental disagreements were amicable and informative.

This is not to say that every single student was treated to a jovial how-de-do and a cup of warm cocoa. Like every diplomatic soul, he had little patience for people who seemed unaware of how they appeared to others, or for those whose default response to criticism was to dig in their heels and bare their teeth. To quote a stoic of whom Steven undoubtedly approved, "If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." He preferred that people take their slings and arrows straight on.

After hearing that he'd passed, I went digging around and found an old notebook from one of my screenwriting classes with him, just to relive for a moment my brief time under his tutelage. Below are a few of the advisorial bon mots I was sufficiently amused and/or enlightened by to record for posterity:

• "Put a gun on the table--it's gonna go off. Hang a little girl from an orange tree--somebody's gonna notice, besides the Florida Orange Tree Council!"

• "I don't play."

• On the flaw in studio execs' stressing character likability over all else: "If I ask you to close your eyes for ten seconds and when you open them I have laid on the table a teddy bear and a rattlesnake, I know where your eyes will gravitate."

• To a student whose screenplay featured a man who may or may not be a sexual predator: "You've gotta take him off the hook of our wandering, debauched minds."

• "It's okay to be comical in a tragic situation, it's not okay to be trivial."

• On inborn talent: "...And Sibyl Shepard, when she was 25, was Sibyl Shepard."

• On our class time together: "This isn't the self-pity hour."

• On negotiating for anything you can get away with: "PriceChopper doesn't give food away, even though you're cute and you've got a pencil."

• On character development: "Nobody lives such a one note life except monks...and we're not so sure about monks even."

And finally, just to demonstrate his control of understatement:

• "We're the most harmless people in the world, in Bennington, Vermont."

He will be missed.

How Bureaucracy Is Like The First Day Of Middle School

I walked into the Certificate of Fitness testing office for the FDNY the other day:

• To discover the kind of plastic seating you find waiting for you at assembly, and a linoleum floor patterned to hide the stains from spilled sloppy joe sauce.

• To find that no one else knew where they were supposed to go, and that each person was nervously searching every look and gesture of everyone else for a clue about how to behave.

• To see cliques form around those few individuals who seemed to know what was actually going on.

• To see a scattered few mumbling to themselves, earnestly repeating phrases from a packet of study materials.

• To finally be led into the testing area, have a seat at the test computer and--first thing--have the man next to me lean over and ask me in a whisper what the answer to such-and-such is, immediately bringing us to the attention of the middle-aged biddy sitting not ten feet away (whom I then had the adolescent urge to placate by pointing at the man to indicate who started it).

• And finally, to pass both CoF tests with high B's and feel inordinate satisfaction as I was issued ID cards with my picture on them.

I could practically feel my voice wanting to warble and crack the entire time, and not just because I still wear a backpack. One positive development, though, is that this time I wasn't wearing pants whose cuffs end above my ankles.

So I guess I've learned something...

43: Addenda Ad Infinitum

This shit was obvious to anyone with even the mildest interest in tangible, political results over base self-gratification. I'm sure it felt great to beat the hell out of the guy. I'm sure there was a collective deep tingle when he started singing.

Here's the thing: it didn't get us anything remotely useful.

Christ, and they say libs are the ones who can't tell a strategy from a tactic. This policy was so short-sighted it should have been deemed legally fucking blind...

And Flights Of Angels...

Steven Bach, rest in peace.

So Heavy It Made That Vein Pop Out

Well, that went well.

We loaded in, fired up the axes, skins, and vox, respectively, then all took a seat just behind the beat, where we chilled comfortably for the evening.

Later, I got kudos as well as some excellent tips and feedback from several of the fine folk in attendance. So I learned something too! My grade school librarian would have been pleased.

About needing to seek medical attention for her ruptured eardrums, probably less so.

(throws up devil horns to communicate to the deafened marm our full endorsement of teh rawk!)

The Deep In Vein lady, when she's feeling modest.
What can I say? Her wardrobe is limited.

A More Perfect Union

Congratulations are in order.

Could there be a better pairing of someone whose genius is beating men up with someone whose genius is beating men off?

May their wacky combination of prepositions bring nothing but happiness!

And then kick someone's ass.

Just saying...

If she'd had to wear gloves like these her career might have turned out differently.

Push The Plunger Deeper! (Updated)

Deeper...In Vein, that is!

That's right. The heavy rides again on its...um, really well constructed conveyance...which can support the burden of all the heavy, um, heaviness. Rawk!

March 21st. Deets to be announced. Bring your struts, i-beams, prestressed concrete girders: whatever you need to use to bear the weight.

~~~~~~~

For those looking for the option that best suits them, such helpful hardware can be found here.

They don't call it rock 'n radial roller bearings for nothin'.

buh-dum-bum-B power chord

The face of Deep In Vein. The breasts probably
won't be making an appearance.

Update: The gravitational collapse is scheduled to happen at Port 41, midnight. Considering that the gig's in Hell's Kitchen, I think we've moved into hot and heavy territory.

buh-dum-bum-sternum rupturing bass tone

ABM

I think I've seen a few of these in the financial district downtown.

From 'Bama To Loo-sianna

I watched the President's speech last night and thought it good, though it did creep me out a bit to see our elected officials jumping out of their seats to applaud every other minute like pre-teens at an 'N Sync concert...or whatever expertly coiffed, Disney-built eunuchs the kids are agog over these days. (I'm looking at you, Pelosi.)

I did not watch the Republican response, though I hear the strategy was clever: show the American people what Obama would look like if he had been born a red-blooded, patriotic conservative and, through the stark contrast, leave the President's failings open for all to see.

The problem, apparently, is that a conservative Obama is half Fred Armisen and half sophomore debate club go-getter unaware that the Armisen half is mocking him.

The Poor Man Institute (founded to document and dissect just this kind of issue) has released a paper on the topic so that I don't have to pull myself further away from the warm sun, golden sands, and flowing margaritas that constitute every day off for me from my work in the New York theater world.

Senorita, una más, por favor.

Ah....

One Across

"Mute Glute"

7 letters.

I know when my name is called from the Great Book Of Life that I'm going to owe an apology for this, but I can't help it; it made me laugh out loud when it occurred to me walking down Sixth Ave.

Besides, it's just too cheeky to keep to myself.

Giggle, snort.

...

Whoever leaves the correct answer to this little puzzle in the comments section will win, um, something nice. TBD.

"Fiancé" Is French For "Soon The Legal Entities Of Our Land Will Know That We Plan To Do Nice Things To Each Other Forever And Ever."

And so it happened, on a chilly February night in the year Naughty-Nine, in a tastefully decorated nest of art, humor, philosophy, carnal pleasure, and cat hair located in the 3rd Borough of New York City in the great L'Etats Unis, only a few minutes into a chapter by that internationally celebrated observer of romantic love, Judy Blume, (ahem) in said time and place I confused the hell out of my true love by interrupting her reading Fudge-a-mania to me, leaping out of bed, teary-eyed, digging out a guitar case from its place underneath the bed frame, pulling out a simple silver band, and proposing that she and I spend the rest of our lives together.

My love accepted.

So as of 11:45-ish PM, EST, on February 18th, I am engaged to be married to the very woman for whom I have been patiently waiting the better part of three decades, and who, in sixteen unbelievable months, has made those three decades seem truly worth it.

Oh, don't go jumping to conclusions; it's not all sweetness and light. My cheeks hurt something fierce from all the smiling. No pain, no gain though, right?

The circles represent eternity. The threaded rod and the nut--each perfectly sized for the other; the rod strong and stiff; the nut ready to have the rod slowly but firmly screwed into it--represent, um, why eternity is going to be pretty fun.

Random Thought: On Art And Boredom

The one human state no art is able to capture is boredom.

Music can't do it. Notes have an intrinsic energy that's the opposite of listlessness, a kind of temporal tension: a tone has a beginning and, once begun, we wonder where it will go. Will it rise or fall, or will it simply fade back into silence?

Words, whether read or spoken, have this same energy. There's a tension between the meaning of the word and the way that meaning sits within the larger message of the thought being expressed. So writing--though capable of describing the feeling--can't actually convey it.

Similarly, color and line relate to each other through boundaries, all of which relate to the larger border of the frame (whether a rectangle of wood molding or, for a mural, say, the perimeter of a wall), which is to say nothing of the energy inherent to the pigments themselves, the gray scale included.

Boredom, as we all know, can be provoked (and here I must mention the art of theater, the ne plus ultra of such a provocateur), but it can never be artistically transmitted.

There's a saying that despair is the greatest sin against God (which we secularists do no injury by interpreting as "life"). Perhaps. But underlying such abject devastation is a longing for life as it used to be. Boredom, on the other hand, while certainly less overwhelming is actually more extreme. It is, at heart, a disinterest--a detachment--from the senses, from chronology, and so, really, a detachment from life (no matter how briefly).

Of all the social and emotional purposes the arts serve, perhaps rescuing us from boredom is the most basic.

43: The Starkening

It really is never going to end, is it?

V-V Day

I admit, I don't quite understand its significance.

I already know that I love her, so I do my best to show her that every day of the year. If I had to wait till some random day in February to tell her how wobbly she makes my knees go...well, I'd probably spend 364 days switching my weight from foot to foot in a corner somewhere, slowly perfecting syllable after syllable of overly earnest romantic poetry.

As tempting as it is to have the one monumental day, all it would most likely lead to is a few minutes of stammering as I blank on all the painstakingly honed verse followed by the most epic case of spontaneous ejaculation this side of 8th grade. So, clearly, it's in both our interests to spread the sex liberally over the entire calendar.

As for the poetry, let me just say that the level of conversation I have with my lovely woman is more intelligent, lively, and satisfying than anything I could come up with on my own.

So, Happy 365th Day! Don't forget to enjoy the other 364 too! (And save something special for that 0.24219th most people forget about!)

And to my dearest, I love you very, very much.

Like...

whoa.

...Or As We Say Here In The States, Fucking Booze Sponge!

A little ditty from Deep In Vein practice the other day: Bloody Liver.

I hear the bass player is a real cool cat.

Just saying.

Happy 7th Birthday, Billy! Here's Your 2.5 Milligrams Of Ketamine!

I am officially a proponent of getting little kids high as balls.

I so should have been a dentist...

Going Green

And you know what? Now that I'm thinking about things that offend li'l miss common sense to fainting, how's about this one? Look, I'm not a smoker. In fact, I'm so not a smoker that when I hang out with my musician friends they know to go ahead and puff-puff-pass...pass-Marlon...puff-puff. But the stigma attached to the drug by those who have...what, hang-ups? See, though, that little word sounds so forgivingly mild, considering the harsh legal penalties our society levels against those millions of our neighbors who relax by smoking a naturally occurring, green-leafed plant...oh, wait. Not that one. That one's legal because it's safe. No, I meant this other, dangerous, Vietnam-Vet-spitting-on, Baby Jesus-mocking, pro-free-love, anti-free-market horror house of criminal madness and immorality. Behold! And yes, I realize that's a pro-legalization website, but finding unbiased voices on this issue in America is a little like finding a virgin in an abstinence-only campaign. Actually, you know what? I feel qualified to submit myself as that voice. My credentials include: 1) having no vested interest in the area of study; 2) my years of observational experience living with and around the aromatic indigenes in their native habitat. After analyzing the wealth of available data, I can report that it is a very lethargic species, with a healthy appetite for fried cheese and Mexican take-out. Compare such a gentle lummox with his more aggressive cousin. And to think, the branches of that family tree differ by only a leaf. But seriously, who can insist with a straight face that Phelps has somehow sullied his extensive victories? This is an athlete whose Olympic achievements have redefined the sport's possibilities. And, um... Uh... Hol' up, I just realized...you're trying to tell me that, because he smoked, Michael Phelps is now some kind of loser? Lord help me, maybe I've been overly hasty all these years! Perhaps, in failing to seize the many bowls of sticky dank that have been passed around me, I've also failed to seize the day! My god, I could have been an Olympian! Maybe though...maybe it's not too late. Maybe there's still time...ah, here it is... History books...pfffffft...here I come... ... Update: Exactly. Update (2): Ok, so maybe the guy is more likely down the road to leave his stones at the bottom of the local swimming hole, but considering the self-inflicted drubbing "normal" people inflict on themselves, well, one can safely say the bud still barely holds a Bic lighter to the booze.

43: A Just Addendum

More of this, please.

The slate really just cannot be wiped clean enough.

The Minotaur

43: A Stark Addendum

I have no words for the awfulness of this.

How much more of this will we find in the coming months? Putting snark aside, where does the shock wave from the confluence of venality, incompetence, and malice that was the previous administration finally dissipate?

This makes me viscerally thankful that Obama won office and is using his authority to begin to make this right. But on a deeper level, as an American citizen who does in fact put stock in the ideals of his country, this just makes my heart hurt.

What can one say in the face of something like this?

43

Today, we Americans bid 22% of a fond farewell to a man who has touched so many of us, in so many ways (others, he has simply ogled, yet it was enough): George W. Bush.

We would have bid more than that sad little two-bits' worth, but the other seventy-some percent of said fondness prematurely staggered out of the barroom door five years ago to drunkenly beat its Middle-Eastern mail-order bride. (We smacked around her retarded cousin for a while too, but that was during a sober spell, and really where's the fun?) The hangover from that exotic little dalliance is ongoing--you wouldn't believe the splitting headache--but after some fluids and a few mild painkillers, we should be back on our feet in no time, thanks for asking.

And so, we offer our most heartfelt god-by-ye's to:

--A man who has made the most important television program ever worthy of its pretensions.

--A man who did more to creatively expand the English language than the Irish--including that wonder of Celtic sexual dysfunction, James Joyce. Mr. Joyce's work, I'm told, is finally able to be anatomized after a graduate school program and years of devoted study. Dear Leader's bon mots suffer no such structural flaw; his linguistic flourishes resist the tyranny of sense and scrutability. Instead, they float, perfect and indivisible, like molecules of one of the noble gases.

--A man whose spiritual conduit ran directly from his mysterious, (graven) image-conscious sky-god directly to his tummy-wums, like some divine feeding tube slipped down the throat of a brain-dead patient. (I realize I'm stretching the very idea of metaphor here, but bringing reality dangerously close to satire is a nonpareil skill of our departing leader, and one must pay homage appropriately.)

--A man who made science magic again. For too many years in this country, the scientific method--forced to blindly accept the results of empirical testing, no matter the desired results--languished in the open light of the public eye. Bush, in both his compassion and his conservatism (the combination of which, alone, signaled his devotion to radical--some said, lunatic--AP-level chemistry) brought the poor, hounded creature in from the unrelenting klieg lights of reason and gave it direction. I.e.: wander no more in the indeterminate landscape of inquiry, thou bedraggled rational procedure; I will tell you what to discover. Now...hup, hup, fetch!

--A man who showed that being a cowboy takes more than the advantages of elite Northeastern roots. One must also learn the ways of ambulating with the properly pronounced, Texas-style pelvic irritation. They do not teach this in Kennebunkport. Nor do Mainers teach the subtleties of metathesis. Considering the consequences to an outsider of either the walk or the talk coming off as false to the wide-brimmed natives, we may add a healthy dash of personal courage to the man's resume. But then, many were already keenly aware of this.

--A man whose youthful worldview and joie de vivre compelled him to bring the good-natured ribbing of his Delta Kappa Epsilon years to a stuffy international community.

And finally,

--A man whose embodiment of the ideals of his party and the peerless way he met his historical moment have insured that those ideals will live on past his departure.

In short, the man loved this country till it hurt. In his own words: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

President George Walker Bush, we who are about to die, salute you!

E & Me

A portrait.

I love that woman. And her evil eye...

...

And when I'm feeling philosophical: