a fun post

ON MY WRITING:

My computer's been down for the past week or so. Bought a $100 replacement cord for the old, burned out one. And like an idiot, I didn't write a single day of that hiatus. I've got my book open in Word and this open in Firefox, and this is me recharging the batteries, trying to get going again. If you stop, most times you don't start again, so this is a plus. It's hard every time.

Two great things have happened with the writing of this book. One, I threw out all the rules I made for myself. My book was going to be this, it was going to be that. But what it ended up being was stifled, and I wasn't able to get anything out for fear of breaking the "quality control" safety net. Once I said, "Fuck it, use an adverb or two." Or, "Fuck it, tell instead of show, just this once," or "Fuck it, use 'as though'", the writing flowed much more easily.

The second thing is I stopped taking myself so seriously. I think I understand where my place is going to be, when I start to write full time. I'm comfortable with it, and I can be the best at it, so long as I kick the self-loathing to the curb. And I think so far I'm doing that.

BIRTHDAY BINGE:

Went on a buying binge today. It's Rios's birthday come Tuesday, and I got her a whole bunch of shit. I can't tell you, because "you" is also "her" and it'll spoil the surprise. But I'll type it up on Tuesday, it's some good shit. All books and graphic novels. Plus Season 3 of "House" on DVD and "50 First Dates". She knows about those, she asked for them.

LONG STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS PARTY STORY:

On Friday night we had an 80's party at Rios's friend Shelly's apartment. I helped them put streamers up at about five o'clock. They had pictures taped on the wall with 80's themes, names of bands, etc. Beer pong table and LOTS of alcohol.

At about eight some friends met up with us at my apartment. Eric and Laurie, Lawton people I've known forever, Melissa and Jeremy, two of Rios's friends, both of whom are cool, and Chermaine and Jamil, the former a friend of Rios and mine, and the latter his roommate, who is a good guy. He and Melissa were the DDs for the evening. At this point Chermaine and I have been drinking Hpnotiq and Blue Moons and Bud Light. I'm already moderately buzzed.

We get to Shelly's at about 10:30, and I wander into the kitchen area to find some booze. I think I was hunting for Captain Morgan. There was a tall, athletic black guy and a short, slightly overweight white girl, who we'll call Red because of her hair (or maybe dress, memory is fuzzy) that I'd never met before talking with each other by the stove. Red was saying something like, "I'm black on the inside. No, really. All my friends are black, I only listen to black music, I should have been born black." And the black guy seemed to be getting a kick out of it. I said something about being black and he laughed really loud. I forgot what I said. I grabbed some Captain and left, but that wasn't the last I'd see of Red.

The rest of the night is blurry up to a point. I know there was beer pong played, one game was won and one was lost. I rolled down a hill with Eric. A shit ton of people showed up who I've never seen before and the living room got crowded with all these gyrating motherfuckers and that's when shit got crunk.

Some ho-ish types (not friends of either Rios or Shelly) invaded the place and decided to replace the half 80's/half crunk mix with just straight crunk. This involved going behind the stereo we brought, unplugging the shit, and plugging in a different stereo. I got pissed because it upset Rios, so I took matters into my (drunk) hands. Some chick was rubbing her ass on this guys crotch (dude's wearing aviators inside...in a blacklit room at midnight) and I did the obnoxious, drunk guy, "I'm-just-going-to-walk-through-motherfuckers-who-don't-move" shove to get them out of my way. The music was that pulsing Lil' Wayne shit, and I hit the power and the place got quiet. One of the ho-ish types got in my face and said, "Excuse me?", so I put my finger in her face to shush her and went about the business of re-plugging in the 80's stereo. Someone else, maybe the same girl moved to turn the crunk back on and I slapped at her hand and turned it back off. She said, "Um...excuse me but why you turn our music off?" To which I said, "Oh, my bad, I didn't realize this was your house. I'm sorry. Oh wait, it's not."

Boosh, son. Surprisingly, this worked. The girls vanished. Never heard anything from any of the dudes in the room. Katie Gaddis came over and tried to help me figure out how to reach the electrical outlet, which was inconveniently close to the heavy entertainment center. A few minutes later, I got a tap on my shoulder from some chick. We'll call her The Law.

The Law: What are you doing?

Katie Gaddis: This is my stereo and my I-pod, and we're trying to turn it back on.

The Law: Okay, well this is my house, okay?

Shelly had uninformed roommates. So we said fuck it. Katie took her stereo and I grabbed all the alcohol I bought, the Captain and the Smirnoff and the whole cooler full of Everclear punch. I heard the tall, athletic black guy yelling at me that I'm going to get my ass kicked, but liquid courage is a hell of a thing. The Law latched on to my arm and repeated her, "What are you doing?" mantra again and I shrugged and said, "I paid for this shit, it's mine," and left.

We were all trying to leave, and Shelly was upset and drunk that we were leaving, and we explained that it's not her fault, but if the party turned sour we weren't just gonna stand around and watch other people have fun. It's Rios's birthday, for Chrissakes.

This is where Red comes back in. Chermaine was drunk and had mad beer goggles on and was exchanging numbers with Red, who was obviously trying to fuck the nearest breathing black dude, sharpish. We separated them and head for the car, but Eric, also wickedly drunk, decided it would be funny to text Red something to this effect:

"I gotta get my dick wet, nigga."

Thinking this will piss her off. Evidently this is common and not offensive at all amongst the Reds of the world, and she simply walked outside ready to do this thing. We once again had to peel Chermaine off of this beast, and the whole rest of the night I got to hear about how we (being Eric and I) are some cock blocking motherfuckers and how he could have hit that (which he demonstrated by pounding his fist into his palm).

Already too-long story short: about ten of us went to Katie Gaddis's and 80's partied it up. I woke up for work with a wicked hangover and got the shame treatment from my boss the entire day. Oh, and I thought I was going to die.

INSERT CLEVER SEGUE HERE:

Read some pompous windbag from "Reverse Shot"'s essay (via the Scanners blog) about how the recent superhero movies, in particular "The Dark Knight" and "Hellboy II", are being critiqued as serious films, and that this is a travesty because the serious critiques should be left to serious movies. Hollywood has managed to make "seriousness" and "quality" marketable, franchise-able buzzwords, so the masses eat that shit up and pay no attention to the real seriousness, not the "faux-seriousness", as he calls it. Whatever, dude. Those movies are good, and you can eat me. This guy, Andrew Tracy, is basically advocating ghettoizing movies. Celluloid gentrification. "Comic-book movies" have to stay in their goofy little ghetto, and can't come out and play serious, no matter what. If a "Comic-book movie" tries to act serious, it's all phony. It's all corporate bullshit. The suits finally figured out that quality = ticket sales, so what did these bastards do? They went and hired TALENTED people to make COMIC-BOOK movies. And how dare they? And what else should a good punk, non-conformist, elitist prick do? REBEL AGAINST QUALITY. Whine about the fact that good movies are being taken seriously because of the TYPE OF MOVIE THEY ARE. Jesus Christ.