la pomme du ciel

The other night, after a nice bout at the local after-hours (reigning Galaga and Mr. Do champion), I came home and fired up the computer to see how many misguided messages I could send on okCupid before sleep overtook me. It’s a fun game I play the next morning, seeing how far my judgement went to hell.

I checked my favorite webcomics, making sure that I was more informed of the lives of the characters of Questionable Content than I was of my own friends, and it was all a whole bunch of happy until I clicked that last tab on the right. Facebook.

I had a message! Hooray! My first thought was which one of my idiot friends was using Facebook instead of email, which is what adults use. Seriously, next person that does that gets de-friended. With a spiked bat. I opened it to find that despite multiple negative responses and comments, my high school class reunion committee was still on my nuts like an overly friendly physical.

Hi Jason-
Can you send us your current address?
Thanks!

Yes, it’s a nice simple request. Yes, it seems like I’m being a bit dramatic. Yes, I’ve been routinely ignoring friend requests from these chumps for years. Out of a class of 300 something, I only keep contact with a dozen or so, and I’ve been very vocal with my opinion on reunions and those that arrange them and hunt down their lost besties like Dog the Bounty Hunter. On the internet.

this analogy totally applies.

So you would think that firstly, the fact that I’ve been declining to give a rat’s dick about anyone outside of those I already know, some hint would have trickled down. Or b of all, when I already said no to the reunion in the first place. I feel like someone is trying to sell me aluminum siding. I mean, why even bother inviting the guy who was a known pissant in high school? Unless the cool kids had a couple more jabs left to get in. And by cool kids I mean band nerds. I was pretty fucking low on the totem pole. Furthermore, I wouldn’t invite me. I can barely stand to be in the same room with myself, which is why I’m sitting down.

I mean, I guess I should feel good about it? Like I’m part of something. But that’s just it, for there to be a re-anything the anything has to happen first, and there was never any fucking union, that much is for sure. The whole thing is just so much obligatory platitude, which is why, after a few seconds of deliberation on how big the bridge flames were gonna be, I replied.

no thanks. it was real and all, but i honestly want nothing to do with what i don’t already have in my life.

have fun with the reunion.

thanks!

Uncharacteristically restrained, especially given how absolutely retarded the whole enterprise of a reunion is. Why in fuck would I want to interrupt my action-packed and fulfilling life, take time off of from my job that I effing love, go to stanky-shit Cleveland and blow my hard earned dollars to stand around in a room filled with people for which I can barely even summon up the effort of disdain, while listening to Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”?

I would be lucky to get out of there without alcohol poisoning.

I honestly feel bad for people that are pumped for the event, for the sportos that packed on the extra ELL BEES, or the folks who, not for lack of trying, can count their sexual partners on one hand, if at all. Most of all, I feel for the sad fucks whose lives have actually not improved since high school.

Which is probably the main reason for not going- I surround myself with vibrant, wide-eyed enthusiasts of life. As a bartender, I get to see burned-out hulks of humanity everyday. If I’m going to bother to remember all those fucks from highschool I barely remember anyway, I’d rather not have more examples of how badly people can fall apart in my head. That type of shit can really bring me down if I think about it too much. Which is why I won’t.

I work in a half hour, and I’m already pretty excited about that, and I’ve got some amazing plans for my night off tomorrow, along with starting a second job in the morning that I get to ride my bike to. Looking at my calender and thinking of all the cool shit I’m doing with myself, I can’t think of how to improve it, barring doing more cool shit. I mean, like, Star Wars cool. I’m an X-wing, bro, and I’m winning. Seems to me that any stroll down memory lane is one giant, depressing step backwards.

I have, in my more wild moments, been known to be friendly to an almost oppressive degree. Everyone wants to be liked. Usually. Sometimes I find my friends oppressive and I lock myself in my room with a bottle of gin and turn off all the lights. I would like to think it all balances out. In any case, in these wild moments of bonhomie, I make friends with people I will forget about within mere hours. Because I was that excited to meet them in the first place.

Months ago, my best friend and I were at Logan’s. We go there because we’re the only ones we know in our social sphere that go there. We can sit and talk and not worry about some jackass interrupting conversation, or fucking with the flow of the evening. That’s why we like it.

It was sadly one of the last times we went there, but we’ll get to that. Upon arrival, we were immediately greeted by a very large woman we both apparently knew very well. Now, I’ve explained to people that “I’m a bartender, I know a lot of people, sorry, blahblahblah,” so many times that I don’t feel bad anymore. I just usually want them to leave, because I remember the important people. That’s why they’re important. QED, bitches.

My best friend on the other hand, usually tells them exactly that, seeing no need to sugar coat the fact that they were not important enough to remember. It ensures we do not need to talk to them for the rest of the night.

We still hadn’t even gotten our drinks yet, it was so important that we re-connect with good old what’s-her-fuck. Which was awful, because we were in that situation sober. After what little connection there was had been severed, we ordered a pitcher and shots, settling in for a hopefully decent night.

Before we even got into our second pitcher, another lady strolls up and announces to us that we don’t recognize her. Well. No shit. She tells us her name, but it finally clicks when I realize it’s a patron we barred along with her boyfriend at our place of business. Great. My good pal, drunk and screeching drama-bomb, what’s new?

I occupied myself with idle talk with the bartender, but listened in on the purely retarded conversation my buddy found herself trapped in, one that was started with our long-lost pal stating to my best friend, “You got chunky!”

And here we come to the crux of how to behave in public- when in doubt (and like 90% of the time, only complete jackasses lack doubt), utilize yr discretion and keep yr valor in yr pants. I could have easily taken the annoyance down several pegs, but I waited for the conversation to end itself in a whimper of existentially-challenged platitudes. And also ordered another round of shots to celebrate finally having some face time with my best friend, who doles it out like an a-list celebrity. To be fair, she has met the mayor. And I think someone from Night Ranger. Probably.

if this is wrong, i don't wanna be right.

By this point, we were both pretty worked up, annoyed that the rhythm of our night had been dotted with interruption, especially by such giant wastes of time. Then the reason I stopped going to Logan’s came in.

Crazy Sauce, as I call her, was a drunken mistake, compounded by a few more drunken mistakes. She’s Crazy Sauce because she leaves five garbled and disturbing voicemails at a time, paired with indecipherable and at times, violent, text messages. Thankfully, the last time I received an invitation to the Den of Evil was over a month ago (albeit at 3am). I’m hoping she was deported for being crazy and drunk.

Again, I kept everything in my pants, all the way down to my valor, and as I remember it, we skipped out after pitcher number three. By that time, the prospect of a bar filled with our friends didn’t seem like something that would crush my soul anymore. After three strikes, we trekked back to the command center to subconsciously plot the next time we were tired enough of all those fucks at our bar to try and drink alone, together, again.

Like many of my age and social persuasion, I’ve had a fairly broad range of roommates. There’s been sloppy ones, neat ones, cranky ones, friends, enemies, utter douchebags and wish-fulfilling, awesome individuals.

This is about the worst roommate I have had to date. For the purpose of this story, we’ll call them Kooky Asshole Who sleeps on the Couch. So, KAWC. Strangely enough, KAWC is an awesome person in social settings. Football talk, appreciation for music and good beer, and a sizable sense of humor. We had no idea what sort of niggling hell the House was in for when KAWC moved in.

To make a long story short, there was a laundry list of gripes against this person, chief amongst them was the tendency to be in the Common Room at all hours, watching Scrubs or Law and Order (I thoroughly hate those shows, partially due to the intense immersion this experience yielded), scratching various locations on some impressive bulk, stinking up the room, and yes, sleeping in the Common Room as if it were a bedroom.

Occasionally we would chase KAWC out, only to find that KAWC had moved to the hammock on the porch. Some nights were like a shitty game of ping-pong. In the winter months, a running car parked outside of the house was used as a bed substitute.

Why the need to sleep in places that are not a bedroom? Because you could not see the floor of said bedroom, and when the door was left open (conveniently located at the major intersection of the first floor), not only did you have to witness the lifestyle of someone who had given up a lot of dignity, but you could smell it all the way up on the third floor, where I live.

Despite repeated attempts using varying degrees of diplomacy, the impressive bulk would not budge. Diplomacy was eventually abandoned, harsh language was used, decibels were raised, and war was declared. It was only after my roommate and I made the entire house so unbearably inhospitable that the KAWC finally left. And there was much rejoicing. And also a room to fumigate, a tub to replace, and a couch (the suspension of which had called it quits long ago after repeated assault) to soak in Febreeze for the next month.

wars have been started over less.

A few months before I got on my mean side and put parental locks on the television (a gambit which backfired when KAWC figured out how to get around it and locked the whole house out of OnDemand, among other things) and tried to make life difficult for the worst roommate ever, myself, my landlord/roommate and my best friend/roommate received an email.

I believe the war that eventually followed was entirely justified. If you keep crazy around, it’s only a matter of time before they cut yr head off and use it for a sex-puppet. Yes, that’s how it happens, I’ve read up on it.

Subject Line: Mah Legs

Jason / REDACTED / REDACTED,

I’m wondering about something, and am on a bit a fact-finding mission.

It’s only recently occurred to me that I used to have hair all over
both of my legs.  The outer halves of my legs no longer appear to have
hair on them any longer, as if they had been shaved?

Anyhow, given my propensity to rack out in the public areas it makes
me wonder if someone didn’t play a prank on me.  I suppose it’s likely
I burned some hair off on artificial turf but if one of you or your
houseguests amused themselves at my expense, I’m offering a free pass
for all information volunteered until halftime of the Superbowl via
email, text, phone, or in person.

Should I get to the bottom of this unassisted and find a culprit after
that, all bets are off.

Thanks.  I know this is a little weird.  It feels a little weird.

-KAWC

Yes, KAWC, it was very weird. If memory serves, the three suspects in question barely dignified the craziness with a response.

But let’s break this down- if you suspect that you’ve driven yr roommates to the point of discreetly shaving yr legs while yr stinky ass bloats on the couch in some sort of fitful surrender to wrecked biology, then perhaps you have made some poor decisions.

In fact, my best friend was both mortified and furious; “Why in fuck would I get anywhere near his disgusting body?!”

My landlord and I dealt with it in a detached and bemused fashion, but we both privately wondered what sort of threat bets being off implied. I mean, how would you respond to that? It’d prolly go something like this:

Shaver: Yeah, I did it. Respect the common spaces, you fuck.

Shavee: … (Deer in headlights, followed by empty threats and/or a shamefaced withdrawal)

Now, I’m not saying I did it. Nor am I saying my esteemed roommates did it, and while my associates have questionable judgement at times, I can’t in good conscience finger them. Not unless they asked me nicely.

Again, I’m not saying anyone did it. But if they did, as Chris Rock said of OJ, I understand.

Since I lost the email I needed to make my planned post go off as planned, you’re getting a completely different story. This one is about why I hate Marble Madness. Yeah, I said it. Fuck that game, and fuck you if you like it.

even luke skywalker has a bad feeling about this, and he's not even from this galaxy.

The setting is my parents’ house in Cleveland, way back in 1989. This is when they still had no clue I would shatter their aspirations for my life, so they still loved me. They were all about throwing a pizza party for their darling little brat of a son for his 6th birthday. I was pumped: my folks had rented a Nintendo(!), and they promised nothing but the finest array of pizza toppings for my friends and I. Yes, I did have friends, but this was a year or two before I got glasses. Damn you, 3rd grade.

We played, as I recall, a good bit of Mario, and then this crazy game that centered on two balls. Marble. Fucking. Madness. After about three rounds of that perfidious black ball ruining my shit, my joy was approaching sadness. Marble Sadness. My friends fared no better, thus proving that first-graders have a ways to go with their motor skills. Hooray science. It is entirely possible, however, that our failure was on account of the sounds in the kitchen, and the promise of our own personal pizzas. It was totally probably that.

My dad, being the responsible type, informed us that we had to wash our hands before we were allowed to so much as look at the bounty of toppings, so a friend and I took off like a shot for the bathroom leaving the other guests in the dust.

Now, I have been thoroughly convinced for all of the days that followed my sixth birthday that what happened is nowhere near my fault. My parents, being strict revisionists (sorry ’bout them aspirations, guys!), routinely inform me at holidays that it was my fault. But fuck that, they weren’t there. They just came in seconds after the screams.

Either my childhood canine protector, Molson, or my sister, Little j, had somehow gotten water all over the bathroom floor. Now, again, my folks blame me for this, but consider that I was a newly-minted six year old. There was no way in fuck I was washing my hands for anything other than pizza, and then, only at the prompting of a parental ultimatum. I’m 27 and I still forget to flush sometimes. Let’s keep things in perspective.

So I pull ahead of my friend and get to the bathroom first, he comes in right behind me, we slip and our momentum carries my domepiece square into the counter top, putting a one-inch long split left of center, just above my nose. I don’t remember it hurting, I just just remember losing my shit and howling when I opened my eyes and saw the bathroom floor completely covered in blood.

This would be the first of many trips to the Emergency Room for yr humble writer, believe me. The last time I went to the ER, I was pissed I didn’t get a popsicle. Who gives a shit if I was seventeen? You scrub-wearing dicks are pissing on childhood memories. That first of many ER popsicles made the whole ordeal of having my head bashed open go down easier. After all, my jerk friends who got to make their jerk pizzas didn’t have grape sugarwater staining their jerk faces.

It’s true, they didn’t. But while I was getting my head stitched closed, they had been totally (well, relatively) owning the Madness. When I finally came back, my friends had all but forgotten about me, busy digesting their personal pizzas and being spellbound by the magic of video games. Like a ghost, I popped into the room and stood behind them, silently fuming at their electro-joy. They were of course excited to see that I hadn’t died, and offered up a turn at the controller for the birthday boy. I promptly lost, obviously.

I tried to play the Marble Madness a few years ago, and my scar started itching, and I lost in short order.

That’s probably a true story. In any case, I still fucking hate that game.

instant character. i would trust this man if he weren't me.

The real itch to this is that a a few years ago, my baby sister did the same head-splitter routine (relax, she was 17) , except this time it was on the soccer field. Instead of a scar and story about a birthday gone south, she got plastic surgery and it wasn’t even her damn birthday.

She probably got a fucking popsicle too.

The night began in a benign enough fashion. It was a Friday, a buddy of mine was a having a benefit thrown in his honor, to defray his medical expenses. For context, dude’s aorta got all like this:

this is supposed to be a picture of an aorta sticking it to the man.

He survived, obviously, but is now part-cyborg, and occasionally is contracted by the future to track down persons of future interest.

So fine and good- an event to look forward to, a drink at the crib, a game of pool with a buddy, another drink down the street at Sonny’s tavern, then off to find parking in the South Side. A flask was shared as we parked on 19th, off the main drag, and I could already hear the strains of idiocy; the bellowing and squealing on Carson Street like a special-needs zoo exhibit. Ye Gods, someone was feeding booze to these animals.

We arrived at the Rex in horribly early fashion, and after chat with the man of honor and those few early comers honoring him, we were proper bored. A two-beer session astride an empty dance floor at the Rex Theater led my team to Dee’s for some pool and more beer. An hour later, we were back at the Rex, scheming a route home. The South Side tends to keep my fight and flight instincts on high alert, all oranges and reds. We made it back to Bloomfield, but sometime during the ride back, my mind stopped recording. The tape snapped, and aside from a dozen worried interviews with friends accounting for my good behavior, I cannot account for myself.

Questions Remaining:

-How many drinks were consumed after the South Side?

-Did I really not cause problems? Seriously?

-I’m very charming?

-Why was after-hours a good idea? Additionally;

• Why did my associates abandon me?
• And their untouched beers?
• Why was I, as they describe, inconsolably angry?
• Did I make it out of there without the strike of the banhammer?

This brings us near the close of my ill-advised odyssey. I will re-create, through the magic of creative non-fiction, the last chapter. I could use the workout.

Jason lurched home along Essex Way, turning down towards Yew and then right, approaching the Millvale Bridge. In front of Sonny’s Tavern, the mark of a nearly-full circle for the evening, he stumbled, bloodying his hand, bruising his knee and losing his pet Zippo. The penalty for attempting to light a cigarette can be high at times. As he caromed off the bridge rails, his fevered mind began to germinate a thought. There was no space left among the alcohol-saturated braincells to make qualitative judgments, so upon reaching the other side of the bridge, Jason bounded up to the side window of his neighbors, pounded, and like a puppy, scrambled through the snow to the front stoop. As V opened the door, Jason fell forward onto the floor with a grin.

“What the hell dude? What are you doing?” asked V.
“Lookin fer Jesus,” Jason mumbled, as he shuffled his body upright.
“What?” asked M, the confused boyfriend of V.
“He’s looking for Jesus!” V snapped.
“An I neeya sannich a GehGo,” Jason added.
“Jason, how about you sit down and have a glass of water instead?”
“Mmmmkay.”

With that, V had succeeded in keeping Jason still just long enough for him to collapse and fall asleep.

And that is the story of how I lost six hours of my life, lost a lighter, and woke up confused on my neighbor’s couch. V’s visiting mother and Granpap were my wake-up call. The shock of fear and resultant cocktail of shame and guilt was a hell of a way to start the day. Don’t do drugs, kids. Stay in school, stay the fuck out of the South Side. Most importantly, be thankful for the friends that watch out for yr drunken ass, and pay that shit forward.

A few months ago, I started putting in a few hours a week writing, in preparation for the ostensible writing day (that would be today, and I only blew three hours on Zelda, for the record). The supposed writing ended up being more on the side of of micromanaging and folder shuffling, and some *pleasant re-reads of things I forgot I was capable of, one, and B of all, had created.

*Ardent procrastination

Some time in the summer of 2009, in the midst of writing some of the most depressing, alcohol-soaked poems I ever hope to and wandering the alleyways of Bloomfield soaked in alcohol sweat, armed with a sixer of PBR tall boys, I had a few sharp moments. These came when I would try and distract myself from the horrid little self-fulfilling prophecy of The Snail Colony, the project I was working on.

For fun, I recorded a few real good chunks of bar conversation in shorthand in my pocket notebook. Then I took them home and wrote things like this:

Don’t ever be fooled by the slick, the suits and the perfumed. They all take classes on how to shake hands like stand-up human beings, right after they’re given a costume to cover up the lizard skin. Those types rarely come in, but it’s a joy to give them a dead-eyed stare when they ask for wine, or laugh when they ask if I know how to make a margarita.

Of course, I do. Any idiot with a barbook and booze can. But fuck me if I’m dicking around with that horseshit. This is a Dive, not a fucking club for the slimy professionals, the suburbanites and the floozies. Dives are places where you come in, talk with your friends about how sore your body will be tomorrow after today’s work and tonight’s drunk. You get a shot with your beer, you smoke a dozen cigarettes, you leave the tip on the inside bar ledge. You don’t fuck around. Places like this are the links of chain in a lot of lives. Most of all the bartender’s. Whether they like it or not, the bar becomes woven into the fabric of their life. Bartending is not a job, it’s a sad devotion to a dying way of life. It’s a slot saved for zealots and nighthawks, a breed or two higher than the panicked robots you find at a club, black-shirted fascists pouring from jiggered bottles, marked up by 80%. Slide them the credit card, they’ll slide you a 16 dollar Long Island. I’ll do that for 8, and mine will actually get the job done. Given the choice between blind profit, letting a Gucci-clad fuck buy a girl the drink that will let him rip her to shreds with his rejection-tempered dick, or listening to Carrie Belle rattle on about when she used to shoot league darts, I’ll take the $ 2.50 cash tip on that hour, not the 40 on a receipt. Real bartenders deal in straight cash, facts, rumors and heresy. Real bartenders aren’t smart enough to be greedy. It’s a life of oppressive dignity.

The joy of being so completely scattershot with my writing effort is that I occasionally find these little surprise gems, polish them up, and realize I finished my first short story in three years.  The angry fellow in the above text is Lloyd, one of the denizens of an imaginary Faulknerian city somewhat like Pittsburgh. He knows other people in other stories, and has probably seen some of them naked, but not too many, because angry people are never that popular.

I have realized, over the short years I have logged, that writing follows much the same patterns of discipline and ability as anything else. If you haven’t really sat down and worked at it for more than a few hours on a consistent basis, you’ll end up playing Zelda for three hours, being happy about a single piece of fiction, and move files around for an hour. That ardent procrastination is a motherfucker, and this workout plan, for now, is leaving me sore and grouchy, that kind you know will leave you feeling better in the morning. One of these days I’ll get up and have my morning constitutional and find a novel before I flush. One of these days.

After having a few friends ask about this, then forgetting they ever asked, I let this thing languish. This is not how an efficient and effective portfolio is run, dammit. This is America, and I am a voter.

Without going into fruitless and boring explanations of why I had better things to do (I totally did, like whoa), I regret to inform you that I now no longer have better things to do. Just different ones, because habits are generally boring and likely cause cancer. Despite this, I aim to make this a habit.

I gave up a regular shift at work to ardently pursue my dream of being in the chorus line of writing luminaries; I have a killer set of gams.

More to the point, I now have a killer amount of time to totally be a winner. Working long hours at a bar is pretty rad, but after a while, the stories you file in the sponge start to dry up and fall to dust. To put additional perspective on this unfortunate turn of maturity, I am pretty sure I graduated, and only five years late! This means that I’ll be victimizing you, the reader, with a higher volume (likely 11) of writing. This is due to the fact that now that I have a ticket (read: degree), I am allowed to take the ride, but will also need ‘cred’ to get a seat up front. Enter the portfolio, and likely Tiger Style, and, potentially, a Wu-Tang sword.

Definitely probably maybe this too.

In the spirit of 2011, I offer my earnest hope and excitement for you and yrs. I hope that a sizable fraction of yr holiday fantasies were filled, along with the appropriate stockings. As another year begins to trudge by at the usual played-out speed (365? More like 36jive), may yr bookshelves be stocked with angry Frenchmen and steamy Latins.

If you don’t have a bookshelf, you can fuck off.

A few weeks ago, I was given the honor of an invite to a friends’ wedding. My guest and I chose to make a full weekend of it, and planned to go to Cleveland, to enjoy an evening in my hometown before driving to Mercer, PA for an outdoor wedding that promised to be a wonderful time.

We never made it to the wedding. Thursday evening and on into Friday, I felt increasingly ill, but I’m young. I thought, fuck it. I’ll get my ass in gear and get to the wedding just fine. After a nice night out, ending with a quiet session of Pabst consumption in my folks’ backyard, I went to bed, and woke up literally speechless and in what could be termed as agony.

It would be easy to pin it on a hangover, but hangovers don’t test your intestinal fortitude for three days. I caught a nasty bug, which may or may not have been avoided had I been nicer to my immune system that week. We were forced to go back to Pittsburgh, and I was forced into bed for about one straight-laced forever. No wedding! No wedding cake! No wedding dances! No wedding stories! No wedding hook-ups! The heavenly missed opportunity hung heavy in my mind.

But something, at least to my mind, redeemed my absence. My friend and I, eager to kill time before the evening began, started our brief stay in Cleveland with a trip to a convenience store for a six pack of Great Lakes Brewery’s finest, a double treat for us Pennsylvanians. If you were not aware, I cannot saunter down to the gas station for so much as a forty. That requires a trip to the bar or other licensed dispenser, due to Pennsylvania’s monopolistic and arcane laws. So, it was a beautiful late afternoon, my old college friend and I, shooting the breeze, strolling through my old neighborhood.

Then we made a friend.

A long-haired tiger tabby, skinny as a rail, came out from a bush and demanded our attention, which we gave for a minute, before walking on, going by the pet store on the next block. My friend peeked into the window of the shop, and while I waited I looked at the missing pet notices. We both agreed that our new friend was potentially someone’s missing pet. We walked the last block to the store, picked out a six of Edmund Fitzgerald, a slurpee and some cigarettes. On the way back, our little feline friend’s cries seemed even more desperate.

I put down my load, told my friend to wait and watch the cat, while I went back and got the number and called the supposed owner.

The lady, whose name was Mary, was not much help. She seemed terribly confused, but happy, but also confused, and said she would call me back. After hanging up, I resolved to bring the cat back five blocks to my folks’ house to figure out the next move. Neither of us were a fan of that maneuver. The cat of course managed to get loose when my unwitting sister let two Newfoundlands outside. My folks’ neighbors, who were out gardening, helped track her down and provided me with a cat carrier. When Mary finally called back, letting me know her daughter (apparently in possession of the only means of transportation) would not be back for an hour, I commandeered my sister and her car to take the cat a good mile and a half back to its home.

My fear that I had kidnapped an overly friendly and needy cat vanished when Mary broke into tears at the sight of Munchkin. Munchkin. She gave my friend and I about ten hugs while poor Munchkin, who had been lost for four months, been carried five blocks, spooked by 300 pounds of dog, and forced into a box, tried desperately tried to get free of her owner’s gracious clutches. I rapidly became more concerned that we would get roped into a brand-new rescue mission, but as we bid our goodbyes to a lady who does not know our names, we watched her bring poor, wayward Munchkin home and into the bosom of a fully closed door.

It’s not the same as being there for my friends’ wedding, but it feels pretty good. What’s more, it sets the mind aglow with all the permutations of what ifs, whens, whys and what-have-yous.

To close this little ball of fluff, I would like to address another ball of fluff:

Munchkin, the next time a thunderstorm occurs (as they are wont to do around this time of year), please be sensible and stay the fuck indoors. Or at least have the sense to get back to your owner before she thinks you’re wormfood. It’s common decent courtesy. While I am amazed at the resiliency of an indoor cat (kudos, you furry fucker), four months is a long time to worry somebody, and I hope you’re learned your lesson.

This statement does not bode well for most.

I’m an avowed Welsh fan. I’ve read almost all of his stuff, and if you pair that my penchant for, well, basically, novels about drifters and fuck-ups, I would say I’m a pretty good judge of his abilities. That being said, while his star certainly has not reached its apogee, he is taking his sweet old time getting there. If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work is a collection of literary toys. While his first collection, The Acid House challenged, terrified and reviled, the short stories in this collection will likely leave you with a noncommittal shrug. Not to say it isn’t a fun collection, but it is a collection of toys. Not quite the stuff you would put on the mantelpiece. If you’re looking for something akin to the slender perfection of “A Perfect Day For Bananafish” or “Hills Like White Elephants”, you won’t find it here. Welsh came close to that mark years ago with his cerebral Acid.

“Rattlesnakes”, the first entry, is a page out of Palahniuk’s laziest gross-out writings. The characterization is just as bland as the character cliches employed. The tension builds with all the subtlety of a magnesium flare, and Welsh’s love of loose-string and ambiguous endings leaves an ashy taste in your mouth.

“If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work”, the titular entry, is a fairly lighthearted snippet, entertaining but not elevating. It feels more like a character exercise, or a left-over scrap from one of Welsh’s more developed works. All the standards of Scottish wise-guys are present- constant hunting for sex, dodging of responsibility and acting irrationally (and not only when completely shitfaced). Still, it’s a bit of a nostalgiac joy to see the Scottish dialect in print again.

“The DOGS of Lincoln Park” was built around a few clumsy and undeveloped plot twists, and it’s not challenge to figure out how to feel about the protagonist, an upper-crusty Manhattanite with little to no understanding of the intricacies (or simplicities). It was as irritating to read at times as it would be actually knowing such a character, but then, that is likely the driving point.

“Miss Arizona” was almost there. It was almost at that, sinister, paranoia-inducing level, but it sadly fizzles, due to a lack of development in the other characters and really poor pacing. The end will make you want to throw the book across the room, and it’s a good one. But Welsh could have taken a few notes from old school Gothic, rather than trying to reinvent it with a somewhat pork-laden fist.

“Kingdom of Fife”. How do I feel about a story whose protagonist bears my namesake and is a pervert and a drunken asshole? Pretty good, actually. If anyone can redeem the bottom of the barrel, it’s Welsh. Any doubters need to pick up Marabou Stork Nightmares and marinate on exactly how much we, as individuals, as a culture, judge people, and what that can do to people. Not that this is a preachy, inherent goodness of humanity trip- Welsh would never do that. What he does so masterfully is create convincing characters in need of a second chance, then he almost psychically persuades the reader that the character deserves that chance. Welsh goads you into rooting for people you would rather spit on at first glance. For as much as I enjoyed the story, however, it felt, like much of the collection, undercooked. I wanted more, and more could have been done with this. Hopefully, Skag, a full novel in the works, will give me the drug I crave.

This book is more for the Welsh monks rather than novices, and you should ignore anything on the cover of the book (a silly lesson we all seem to have to re-learn periodically), because, yeah, it will get you pumped up for a Welsh Odyssey, but this ain’t it. If you’ve never read Welsh, pick up Crime or, of course, Trainspotting, and come back later. You might be disappointed when you get to School, but you’ll love the work it took to get there.

Grade: C+

Two weeks ago, I managed to land myself in some poison ivy. As it turns out, my body no longer offers much protection from the havoc the evil plant is currently wreaking on my epidermis. I am in need of an ocean of calamine lotion. It might have been smart to talk to my doctor earlier, but I already had the appointment, and I was going to be a big tough man about the whole unsightly and hellish rash thing.

This course of action proved to be a poor decision, but the ordeal put a few things in perspective. To start with, I used to be immune to poison ivy. Never worried about it. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe it was part and parcel of being your run-of-the-mill indestructible child. Revisiting valleys and creeks, wines and rope swings, I started to wonder when the whole self-preservation instinct kicked in. My money is on 19 or so, when I became crazy boring. Or boring and crazy. Whatever. That timeframe locks up nicely with the end of a regular camping schedule that I enjoyed for the bulk of my teenage years.

The more I wander abandoned factory yards, the bowels of parking garages and the miniature jungle on the hillside behind my house, the more said self-preservation eased off. Sure, hurtling down a hillside in the middle of the night is made easier with some dutch courage, but not so much courage as to preclude a brief moment of hesitation, especially when faced with army-crawling through the underbrush. I swear there is a good reason for said crawling. Honest.

A week ago, while flailing about in the dark, running into trees and rolling around in who knows what, I managed to somehow compound my rash. And slice my left hand. And bash my legs up for the nth time this summer.

The point is, the more I wandered around, the less I worried about comparitively minor annoyances, like rashes, sunburn, or potentially impaling, breaking or ending myself somewhere in the dark green busom of the hill. I’m having fun, which unlocked the riddle of what happened to my childhood penchant for suicide missions: They never left, I had just been lazy. It was kind of like finding an old bike in a basement. Imagine that.

While it may seem preferred to chill out and watch Godzilla in the air conditioning (especially with this relentless heat), it is entirely more fulfilling to be Godzilla. Outside. Not that there’s anything anything wrong with AC, but is nice to earn it in a sense- especially if you’re coated in fresh scratches. Or lingering plant-based rashes. Or whatever. I mean, you don’t wanna die without any scars, do you?

This last weekend I returned to the fair shores of the Allegheny Reservoir to enjoy the rites of brotherhood, handguns, roof repair, bacon, cliff-diving and canoeing. I’ve written about the place before; it’s a fun time, and generally a safe place. This go-around, however, was a little soured by one drunken comment, among other things, and my own inferiority complex. You can have the most gorgeous painting in the world hanging on the wall, but if the frame is made of fresh, steaming shit, no one is gonna want to be anywhere near it. That’s what the trip left me with.

As the weekend went into full swing, I innocently jibed a buddy about his ‘fancy’ iPhone, to which he replied, “That’s what you can have when you have a real job.”

I’ve since let the sting of anger recede, but the stench of classicist bullshit remains.

As my mother used to tell me, “A job’s a job.” Now, I don’t think my mother even believes that, because it seems to me that only certain tax brackets feel that they are entitled to that distinction. I can’t help but feel that a number of my associates look down their nose at my life, and it’s not just because I’m shorter than some of them.

A real job is something with tangible results. In a world where things are increasingly frail, where your very identity can be stolen and rewritten, I like to focus on things with results you can touch at the end of the day. I wonder if I worked day labor trade job, if the same comment would have arisen. As far as I’m convinced, it would have, but I can’t fault people for not being clever enough to get out from under their upbringing. Right? Everyone I was with over the weekend, myself included, grew up with varying degrees of middle-class comfort, and all can fend for themselves with jobs of varying sophistication.

Hell, I was raised with the idea that community college was a joke, and I would be a failure if I landed there (amongst other elitist garbage), and I wouldn’t be surprised if the people I was with hadn’t broken themselves of that sort of lazy and habitual bourgeois thinking. The irony in this instance is that I’m taking my final class at Community College of Allegheny College this fall. Ha!

But back to a job’s sophistication, or lack thereof: I submit that there is no difference between shoveling code and shoveling shit. Both are a means to an end, and no more real than the other (although only one job can be fucked up with a few magnets and only one requires physical effort), the real point is that if you can fend for yourself and afford to make a trip out to hang with your friends, your job is as real as it gets.

Last time I checked, my bills were taken care of, and even though it meant taking one of my nights off (the square’s concept of a weekend is generally a foreign concept to bartenders), I could more than afford the trip.

As I’ve said in the past, if you hate your job, you’ve got no business being there, you should move on; but even that doesn’t change the fact that you are working as a means to an end. A job is a job. Furthermore, even if you love your job for the art it allows you to put into your world, it makes it no more real than a job that someone hates. As long as you can leave the office at the office and be happy at home, the job you have doesn’t really matter. With little exception, your job will never define you as a person. It’s just a job, a checkmark, a mark that billions of other people also have checked off. Your job will never make you inherently special. Nor does it entitle you to a penthouse in some illusory professional Valhalla where you can look down upon the plebes. Last time I checked, we all live on the same planet.

In closing, I will admit that I occasionally experience smartphone envy, but I am more than well aware that iPhones and their ilk are bourgeois tinker-toys; a swell way of showing people you have money to waste.  For my own part, I waste the money I could spend on an iPhone (yes, it’s true, I have done the math, and it is more than possible that I could be a part of the club) on tattoos, but only a dick would consider art a waste.

Besides, there’s something special in laying out cash for a treat like a tattoo, especially at the end of another sweaty 40+ hour week; on your feet and constantly scrambling, seeing exactly how many cases of beer you can get up the stairs at once each day. It’s something you know you’ve earned, something you can’t lose (barring a heinous accident), something that doesn’t require a c-note a month to keep. I guess I’ll never be cool (read: douchey enough to waste that kind of money) enough to have a smartphone, but there’s a lot to be said for passing up on the apple.

About 12 years ago, in the Cleveland Metroparks, I took a pretty nasty spill going downhill on a brand-new, shiny mountain bike. My grandmother, the gift-giver (along with grandad), was convinced it was because I had not read the instructions. To her credit, the idea of a suspension system on a bicycle was a wholly foreign concept. Sadly, the burden of the error landed squarely upon the pilot’s head. And ankle. My helmet cracked in two (always wear it, spilled brains are for nerds!) and my ankle swelled up to the size of a Florida grapefruit. Thanks to Boy Scout training and the company I keep, we managed to get me up the hill (my impatient self hobbling the last and steepest bit of the way) and to the ER. In the agonizing recuperative months that followed, the company I keep became better and better at mountain biking, and I resolved to post up and get back in the saddle ASAP. However, an unforseen consequence of my accident was that my riding confidence was FUBAR. I rode a few times after my leg mended, but with all the courage you would expect to find from someone who’s part French. I was terrified of going fast, going downhill, riding trails, even riding down the street. I never touched that bike again, unless it was to clean out the garage.

Last year, I found a bike in the basement of the bar where I work, which the owner encouraged me to remove, mostly because he had no clue how and when it got down there. Also because I am pretty sure he likes me, because I have yet to be shitcanned. The bike languished in my basement for about a year, until I finally got it fixed about a month or so ago. I bought a helmet. I bought a U-lock. I was equipped. Of course, two days out of the shop, I landed myself in a pothole, threw both wheels out of true and blew out my back tire. The learning curve on city riding is pretty sharp. I was nervous at first, but a month later, I’m more concerned with the fastest routes around town and buying new brakes. Because I apparently enjoy going fast. On a bike. Who would have guessed? Certainly not me- The only time I rode a bike in the last twelve years was a nerve-wracking trek to work a few years ago in Squirrel Hill (read: uphill), hungover and with no helmet. Now, I’m looking for excuses to ride and getting on my friends’ cases about getting their own wheels. The big downside to my bicycle hiatus is that I’m not skilled, and will probably get doored tomorrow.

I have lived in Pittsburgh for five years now, and I feel like a grade A pendejo for not getting a bike earlier. And for riding the wrong way in the bike lane several weeks ago. Oops! I am trying so hard to not be judged by the extensive cycling community. I shouldn’t be too worried though- as I was carrying my bike away from the pothole that christened my bike, Dude in a Subaru slowed to offer a ride. Judging from the roofrack or just using common sense, Dude was totally a sympathetic fellow rider. Thankfully, my lack of skills landed me in said pothole a mere two blocks from my house, but Dude’s gesture was an encouraging sign on a number of levels. With any luck and a little time, I’ll be the guy rendering assistance to a greenhorn rider, so long as I don’t get plowed by some jagoff, thus ensuring another riderless decade, or, horror of horrors, a Jason-less reality.

I dunno, Boomers. You tell me, I'm asking you.

Cynicism is healthy, at least to a degree. I think what kept me marginally sane throughout high school and the ID crises of college was an ever-crooked left eyebrow. The lyrics to the Dandy Warhols’ “Cool Scene” come to mind:

Well I’m just not making your scene
and I really don’t feel like I need
I really don’t mean that it’s cool
didn’t really wanna be in high school

I don’t mean to give the impression that cynicism is a thing a grew out of after college- more like my gaze became a good bit wider. Believe it or not, I’m an optimist, and that’s why this book on the decline of community and assumed societal values struck me as so much plaintive bitching, especially coming from a Boomer. I mean, really. Why the fuck are you bitching? This society evolved to present on your myopic, self-aggrandizing watch.

My grandmother is the one who bought me the book, based on some sort of Greatest Generation cultural buyers’ remorse- “Here, Jason, this stuff was never our problem, we didn’t have the internet, we had nothing to do with it. You fix it.” Merry Christmas. The basic gripe I have with the Greatest Generation and the Boomers it that it’s so easy to use the internet and what some idiot kids listen to or wear as a meter of society’s evils, but only if you forget who pays the t-shirt press, who signs the raunchy, wannabe be gangstas to record contracts, and yeah, who designed, then shoved (Welcome to AOL!), the internet down our collective throat.

If this book is a call-to-arms, it’s the most castrated, armchair-ridden and self-pitying one I have ever read. As soon as all you old fuckers apologize to my generation (currently reaping/choking on what you morons sewed), maybe I’ll give your whining some credibility. Kids are wearing “Slut” t-shirts? How’d they get the money, and how did they not get values?

The book does set up a good framework explaining how we Americans lost the values, but this is polishing the brass on the Titanic. Entertaining and helpful for conversation, but you’ve got more important stuff to do.

I think what’s more important is why this book doesn’t speak to me. All of the bullet points on the lack of church attendance and the decline of bowling leagues mean nothing to me. Yeah, it’s sad that people are so lazy they’d deprive themselves of the finer things in life (like bowling) in favor of sitting in front of the television, but what are you, personally, gonna do about it? Nothing. Who’s gonna read this book without having some of the same perceptions of society as the author? My guess is the choir members.

For my own part, I’ve got my own traditions, my own dart league, and a quiet watering hole (it’s a dive) down the street where I meet new people and friends alike on common ground. On Election Day, for example, we cook a big breakfast and march down en masse to the polling station. A lot of people in my generation already had your book written for you, but instead of preaching to the choir, they went off and found their own community. Obviously the older generations blew their chances, but we’re still young enough to have chances to blow.

To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut (a big reason I ended up this way), we’re put on this earth to fart around- forget efficiency. It’s totally cool to go to the postal office for a single stamp. If you get too wrapped in defining yourself, your generation, or whatever, you won’t have a lick of time to just chill and enjoy what you already have. I’ve got a dart league game tomorrow, and I can guarantee the evils of society (and this book) couldn’t be further from my mind. I might hate, but I also congratulate, and as long as you can do that, you’re all good.

Grade: A Gentleman’s C. Only because those don’t exist anymore, and it’s a pretty useful book if you didn’t already understand the concept.

About three years ago, staggering drunk at 8am on the Fourth of July, I called my mother to wish her a happy Fourth, unwittingly waking her up  to remind her of my somewhat hedonistic and unorthodox lifestyle. Dazed by the sun and a long night that had yet to end, I boldly informed her that I was going to join Mensa. To get chicks.

Why not? I lack the accreditation my friends and siblings have; waking up before noon is not the exception for them, it is the rule. Somewhere in the fatty space called brain, becoming a bonafide genius seemed like a swell idea. Something like that might make up for the fact that I am decidedly not the favorite child. Something like that might make it permissible to be more concerned with bartending than taking that one last class and finishing my degree. Something like that might totally get me laid. Someday.

The whole Mensa thing became a joke in my family. My half-cocked blast of hot air was called out, and being sarcastically called a genius is never any fun. The final straw was a 2009 Christmas gift of Mensa puzzle books. A few months later, I was taking the entrance test. If nothing else, I am extremely adept at finding new ways to give people the finger.

In the aftermath, I’m glad I did it, if only to remind myself and everyone else I know that if I actually feel like doing something, I’ll do it. So get off my back. Gosh!

Other than that, I feel damned silly, almost like I was tricked, carrying around a Mensa membership card. Other than posting up and showing some sign of life, I’m genuinely embarrassed to talk about it. Unless, you know, I don’t actually have to talk to anyone. Bless you, internet, for excorcising this foul demon.

Despite my grand intentions, I’ve managed to join an organization that for my purposes, is almost entirely useless, nearly elitist and superficial enough (I would feel more comfortable joining a Beautiful Peoples’ Club, but those fuckers won’t have me) to offend even my indelicate sensibilities, and cost 100 dollars to get in (you would think that after paying forty bucks to take a proctored scantron, they’d waive that first year of membership).

As for the chicks, I was doing just fine before my special lady friend knew the full extent and size of my, uh. You know. Then again, there’s not much reason to be impressed, I persist in doing a lot of essentially retarded things, which usually elicit a resigned sigh of, “You’re ridiculous.”

And I still feel, at times anyway, like I’ve been put in the corner by, you know, something. Life. My childhood. Whatever.  I just happen to be wearing a pointed hat with a different word on it now. But hey, at least I proved myself right. Even complete jackasses get to be right sometimes.

It seems I have eyes on this venue again, so it’s only appropriate to act with a bit of professionalism. At least, that’s the word of the new year, now that I am done celebrating the fact that for one reason or another, the human race and the planet have seen fit to keep me around for 27 wonderful fucking years.

They were actually wonderful, if only for the fact that it represents the mountain (or hillock) of experience upon which I perch. I still can’t see a whole hell of a lot, but then again, I might just be in a place where there’s nothing to see. To paraphrase both myself and Tom Waits, a new pair of shoes can change a lot of things (happy birthday to me, from me, for being such a good boy this year). I do have a decided spring to my step on this gorgeous May day. That newly-sprung step might carry me someplace new.

Last night, after our neighbor called the cops on me for shouting a fairly innocuous and decidedly isolated “Now, gahdammit!”, Bliss and I had got to talking about how much the neighborhood is changing, I think we both realized that we are perpetually bored by the activities that held our rapt attention only a few years ago. A snippet of lyric from “Fairies Wear Boots” (“Coz smokin and drinkin is all that you do”) has been floating in my head for weeks. It does, upon cursory examination, seem to have been a constant in my brief adult life.

What has also arisen as a constant is my penchant for projects. With the increase in projects, and despite my best efforts, I have managed to accidentally complete things here and there. It feels surprisingly good. Even, dare I say, more exciting than those beautiful moments listening to Bob Dylan for the first time for what seemed like hours. Three minutes later, it was time for some other excitement, something just as transitory.

So, with the twilight of my twenties upon me, I gleefully accept nobody’s challenge to build my slipshod giant’s shoulders up a bit more, maybe to some point where I can see something, anything. There is life, in any desert, and even with the dearth of posts on this site, there are still the sparks needed for a beacon to find out exactly where the hell I think I’m going. Someday, maybe even where I actually am.

Opportunity, or, as I am fond of saying, Opportronity, abounds in this land of milk and honey, as any student of PT Barnum will tell you. In equal amounts is a rampant self-defeatism. People with very tiny dreams allow themselves and, subsequently, their dreams to be crushed in equally tiny ways.

I remember a conversation I had in college with a friend from Ireland about the ease of living; doing and being whatever you wanted. At the time, we were both on a one-meal a day routine, smoking our faces off, then using alcohol to re-connect them. We had no money, but we had managed to carve out a lovely niche for ourselves. The gist of the conversation was that if you’re willing to give up on some of your creature comforts, you can do whatever the hell you want. When you let your comfort level get in to way of that, then you have failed.

I have a lot of friends who travel extensively, have lived in multiple countries, and generally been living some form of a life that I covet, and maybe, at one half-baked point, thought I would have for myself by now. My lady recently spent two weeks in France, one of many tiny dreams of mine. After the resentment and self-disgust subsided, I came to a pretty a nice catharsis.

I am a bit of a slow learner, it has taken me a while to get a design for life together. After figuring out why I have yet to get beyond Canada (and that’s not even recently. I have never used my passport), I realized that I am a bit more together, collected, and dare I say- less manic than some of my more subjectively successful associates.

Here’s the key difference, and it comes in something my lady said a few days before she left; “Whenever I have money, I travel.”

After I was ready to deal with her absence, after I let the classicism stew for a bit and was done bitching about friends that had plane tickets pretty must thrust upon them by doting parents at one time or another (to be clear, the lady paid her own way, unlike many of the folks I know), I realized that I could have been doing the same thing.

Anytime I have savings, I quit my job. Ever since I escaped Erie, PA, I have been consistently trading up in terms of income and overall happiness. Not to make my sig a case study, but she is a bit of a worrier. It gives her a reason to keep me around, because I am adept at convincing people that e’ryting goin to be eyeree. When she came back from vacation, underemployment was there to meet her, along with added responsibilities (sans raise) for being so competent and solid. She could probably single-handedly save the publishing industry (she’s pretty awesome), if one of those fuckers gave her the key to the secret club. Hell, I can name a half-dozen of my friends who could save the creative industry if those fuckers weren’t such circle-jerking assholes.

I had a few jobs like that, added responsibility for no real gain. At one point in my life, I thought the added trust and responsibility was worth something unto itself. Unless you’re a total moron, you ascertain, in short order, it’s really just way for this shitheel economic system of ours to keep us all down. You have a key to the backdoor, you say? That’s just great. Did a raise come with that, or do you just have to do inventory every shift now?

So, instead of swallowing the shit sandwich, I quit, on several occasions, although I’ll tell you myself, it was probably too late, and never very well planned- Par example: Last year, I ended up with no job for about a month solid in mid-2009, and it took me all summer to recover.

As much as I would like to swap travel stories with friends, I’ve had different priorities, mostly trying desperately to live the dream. Beyond a lack of healthcare, I’d say I have nailed it.

To put this into a more general context, to anyone who reads this, anyone who is working a thankless job (and most of us are) that also gives you no joy (heaven help you), get out and fix it. All the vacations in the world won’t fix what you have to come home to. It can be easier said than done, and in the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with throwing some money into stocks, taking a weekend off to a casino, or calling off for a week and getting baked. But don’t delude yourself into believing whatever trip you desire will be some end-all-be-all adventure.

Sounds like a solid deal!

As my friend said, “Just fuckin do it. It’s no a big fuckin ordeal. Quit bitchin abou’it, and fuckin do it.”

If it’s worth it, you’ll starve for it, at least temporarily. But you’re still going to have to work some sort of job to keep that starvation temporary.  Your life is going to be waiting for you, every time you put it on hold.

Never put what you really want on hold, but if your employment makes you want to die, forgo the vacation this round and find something better. You’d be amazed how easy it is to live comfortably, even when you give up NetFlix, full cable, and all of those little toys we value so much. If you think a high-paying  job you hate is worth the years it shaves from your existence, you probably aren’t worth your existence.

I have a friend who landed a very lucrative consulting job last year. She’s harried, confused, and borderline miserable (though she has recently, in her words, “managed to fit her life back into her life”). Everything has a price tag attached, and it’s not always in cash. The big cake is your day-to-day happiness- those grandiose trips, new televisions and expensive tickets are just the icing.

Take the money you had saved for your big trip, and invest a little in the big cake.

This picture decidedly confuses my crush.

Despite being a near-instant darling of the indie-rock scene, obtaining residencies with radio stations, and generally hitting every big festival ever, Giant Drag sort of curled up and went away, right when it seemed like it would be a good time for another release.

Annie Hardy, armed with a darkly suggestive album cover and sometimes-bandmate Micah Calabrese, has finally dropped something new for the masses, who have likely forgotten they ever loved Giant Drag. I mean, I pretty much forgot about them. It’s been four years since Hearts and Unicorns.

Hopefully this release is not truly as advertised, because Giant Drag is pretty awesome, and Swan Song is a solid reminder of that. Hardy’s lyrical skill and humor is in full force, even on the slightly annoying singer/songwriter “Heart Carl”. Get it? Hardy’s weirder quirks are present as well, with “White Baby”, a song about…having babies. White ones.

The dark, violent little heart of the album is on the ambivalent yet defiant  ”Stuff to Live For”, which is the best display of everything Giant Drag does right, and probably their best track yet.

While a four-song EP is more like table scraps than the full release we’ve all been waiting on (it’s in the works, according to Hardy), it’s definitely better than nothing. Hopefully this is just the appetizer for a main course in the near future, and not a true swan song.

Grade: B-

I feel a bit like a piece of old farm equipment when I admit that I discovered St. Vincent through an NPR special. You know, rather than one of my cool friends or my hip elder sibling. The sad fact is, my friends are not that cool (which is why they never  go to shows with me) and my siblings, although lovable in their own right, are neither hip nor elder. So I count myself lucky that I am enough of a pretentious ass to listen to NPR, if only for the fact that I found out about Benji Hughes and St. Vincent through it, among others.

I had planned on going to the show for a long while, since shows here in Pittsburgh are a bit like the mirage of an oasis in the desert, always just over the next erg. Or month. Or, for the most part, never.

I had my doubts about Diesel, because I had been there before, ostensibly to dance, but that effort ended up as a bitch session about the South Side in general, and bad DJs at large. I was pleasantly surprised; the management has figured out how to turn a profit with what must have been a dead night by bringing national acts in for early evening, all-ages shows. Thankfully, the upstairs was blocked off to the scabby teens. Rather than jostle for position at the railing overlooking the first floor, the lady and I relaxed on the mostly empty couches and enjoyed the music.

The opener, Wildbirds and Peacedrums, was a borderline jam band of two; a very proficient drummer and a lady with a magnificent set of pipes. A little too much warbling and drum-noodling at times, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual album was better.

After the usual interminable wait and another gin and tonic, St. Vincent came on, opening a solid set with “Laughing with a Mouthful of Blood”. I had watched some live performances a few days earlier on the interwebs, and I was not disappointed. Despite the general lack of vocal effects and looping (there was a bit), Annie Clark’s vocals didn’t fail to rise to the occasion, proving all the production tricks in the book can’t really improve upon an angelic voice like hers. Where the studio tracks sometimes sound restrained and artificial, even contrived at times, the live band gave Ms. Clark’s computer-wrought symphonies the Lazarus treatment.

The noisy fury of “Marrow”‘s breakdown was especially intense, and the alchemy of improvisation turned some of the dull moments on the studio tracks into gold. Most of the set was from Actor, but they did manage to hit a couple tracks from Marry Me, including the Ophelia-tinged hopelessness of “Paris is Burning”.

The highlight of the show was a slow snowfall treatment of Nico’s “These Days”, done as a solo by Clark. It totally made up for her lead-in to the song, which somehow tied Ice Cube’s “Today Was a Good Day” to the song. You know, if it were sung thirty years prior, by a “morbidly depressed” woman. Artists have funny ways of stringing things together. With the icy hell we’ve come to expect outside for the last few weeks, taking the bounce out of a classic felt like just the right dose of just the right medicine.

I didn’t time it, but the set was around 45 minutes, maybe closer to an hour, which is a little lame. To boot, there was no encore, which is total bullshit. If Pittsburgh gives you love, throw a bone. Judging by the fans’ reaction on last.fm to Diesel, a lot of people, myself included, swallowed our tongues just to be there. The venue didn’t even stay open past 10:30, cutting the bar off and hustling people out around 10:15.

On the whole, for 16 bucks it was a little under par. But if an all-ages show is the only way we can get any attention from national acts, I guess I’ll be at Diesel the next time someone decent comes around. I guess.

Grade: B

Since I was young, I repelled nicknames. My folks called me Jazz when I was growing up. I hated it. I pitched so many hissyfits about it that sometimes I think they don’t even remember the moniker.

In school, if it wasn’t the odd “four-eyes”, it was simply my last name. Later on, some shining example of humanity tagged me with Stuart, from the old Saturday Night Live sketches. You might not remember those. I barely do myself, but it was Al Franken’s character. He’s a senator now, imagine.

That was all kinds of fun, especially after the sportos picked up on it. There’s a number of reasons I got into so many fights throughout school, and that was one of them.

At one point, I tried to self-apply ‘Dok’, but never really with any conviction. Thankfully.

So, going into college, I was 0 for 4, but extremely jealous of friends that had nicknames. It became apparent to me that it was something like a badge of honor, a symbol of others’ affection and just straight up baller all in one.

I guess it makes sense that I finally got my time in the sun, so to speak, when I stopped giving a shit about it and just wandered around the fourth dimension doing my thing, which was mainly complaining, writing, and complaining, but mostly writing. This illustrious if ultimately dead-ended pursuit gave rise to my second imaginary friend and literary alias, Vick McNair, Private Investigator. A few of my friends in college still give McNair a holler, and I still have arguments with him on particularly drunken walks home.

It’s a divine irony though, that my best friend has more nicknames than Jehovah. While she’s understandably curious about our man Vick, that’s not a name she ever spits out. On the other hand, her nicknames seemingly number like species in a rainforest. Here’s a sample; Cougar, Skip, Noonan, Bliss, and Rooster. Again, it’s because she doesn’t give a shit and rolls on her own groove.

So I was secretly overjoyed that right before the holidays fell like a cloud of mustard gas, a friend of mine and regular at the bar called me Sunny J. I was even more pleased that the name later passed the test and has been uttered by friends. Again, it was because I was just doing my thing.

While this story and the happiness it might bring me may seem trivial, I submit that there’s no such thing as Big Happiness. If you can’t get excited about things like slurpees, fresh cigarettes, a perfect Manhattan or a slightly breezy sunny day (or a slightly rainy day), you don’t really have any business being on this planet. You’re probably one of those people concerned exclusively with the Big Things, like buying a house, or getting married, and you probably don’t have the sort of nice and easy natural rhythm a human life begs. And while you might have a nickname, it probably wasn’t for something you didn’t already notice about yourself. It’s like digging through a cereal box for the prize as opposed to forgetting there is a prize, and just basking in the natural arrival of wonderful things. Those kinds of things can’t just be taken from life, someone else has to reach up to the high shelves and bring them down for you.

As much as I hated being called Jazz when I was young, I kind of wish my folks would throw it out there every once in a while. I’m probably ready to appreciate it, as long as they don’t do it more than once or twice. I mean, really.

After dropping the ball on three really good pieces following the G20 here in Pittsburgh (yeah, it happened, but nobody really cared outside of the city) your faithful writer dropped the ball on the site entirely.

So, there’s a new approach, where I stop fumbling the ball.

Also, because this costs money, and I work moderately hard for that. Like right now, in an empty bar, half-watching the underdog Jets beat the Colts in the 3rd quarter.

While it pains me to watch friends leap and bound across the world, I never particularly had my collective shit together. Instead of being ready for liftoff, I was fumbling around in the swamps just outside of the launchpad. While I am convinced that I’m an expert at crafting excuses for myself, there is still overly compelling evidence that while I am not a leaper or a bounder, I have a distinct ability to steadily move upwards. Something like the construction of the Burj Dubai, and then the next Tower of Babel. And the next one.

So while many people I know catapult themselves around the world, they still crash land in a morass of confusion, something I crawled out of . I even have a map. It looks like an inverted California mixed with a roller-coaster.

To put it plainly, this is Sunday with Sunny J, and I don’t question it.

Upcoming:

-A lovely story about recording my friends’ conversations

-Scans of recent paintings

-A book review

-A small overhaul of the site, because the pictures are dated

-New writing, from a project I finished over the summer

-Finally, at least a post a week