I've written a bunch of books and managed to publish 8 of them. In my spare time, I also tinker around with this little history blog. My latest book, "Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1992," was published in August 2022.
Glass House, as it came to be known over time, was a memorable and dare I say even legendary residence located at the corner of Mulford Avenue and McClain Road. Well, the house is still there, of course – it’s just that the people and circumstances which made it so remarkable, lending it that nickname which would even wind up making its way into places like Columbus Alive!, have long since gone away.
Among the unique features, at least during this time, were that it was a large house chopped into two separate units, and yet both shared the same basement. One had a Mulford address (1177) and the other McClain (977). Also, which is probably the ideal setup – considering the whole shared basement business – all the people living in both halves during this period in question knew one another prior to moving in here. You wouldn’t exactly want to roll the dice with some random dude having access to your half of this funky duplex, only for him to wind up as the next Dahmer or whatever.
But anyway. My first visit to this residence occurred during the New Year’s Eve transitioning from 2001 to 2002. I can’t quite recall the exact mix of roommates at this time, because for example Norman Flores hadn’t entered the picture over here yet, but the most “famous” lineup I would say eventually consisted of Chris Hostetler, Keith Spain, and Norman on the Mulford side, with Kevin Spain and assorted roomies or even flying solo on the McClain half. Whatever the precise mix of occupants at this point, though, I know Chris was living here, because he was the primary instigator and ringleader for a big New Year’s blowout at his pad. Which would become, if it wasn’t already prior to this, an annual ritual.
Speaking of annual rituals, Mad Dog 20/20 entered that hallowed realm itself on this very night, but only on New Year’s. We had all long since moved beyond our formative years drinking Mad Dog otherwise, which is what made it such a hilariously retro pick for the party. To be reprised every single year thereafter, by whatever crew I happened to show up with. On this initial occasion, it was Matt Montanya, Libby, Kevin Kasper (I don’t think Vanessa was with him for some reason), Kim, and me, riding together to the house, which had not yet been labeled Glass House. Libby and Kim had both eaten mushrooms prior to leaving for the bash. We stopped off at this convenience store on Kenny Road for some alcohol, which was when an already half drunk Kasper insisted with a mischievous snicker that we should totally show up with some Mad Dog, totally. Which is where the whole thing started.
Of course, by this stage in our lives, if you’re showing up with Mad Dog, you’re going to suffer some wild guffaws and eye rolls. It’s the equivalent of maybe rocking a bottle of Boone’s Farm wine or clutching cans of malt liquor or something as you roll up into the shindig. One year, by which point the MD 20/20 had long since become ingrained in our New Year’s culture, a bunch of us wasted no time in passing the bottle around the kitchen, instantly upon arrival. Scott Imsland declared, “you guys are fuckin stupid”…then proceeded to immediately reach out and snatch it from whoever was holding it, tilt his head back for a healthy slug himself.
Eh, so onto specifics. I actually don’t recall a ton about that maiden voyage into this precinct. Other than it was still years before I would get a cell phone and, this being an era where I was messing around with Lisa, I called her at some point from the kitchen landline phone, surrounded by mobs of people, only because I had promised to do so. But couldn’t stop laughing for whatever reason, which in one of the most baffling examples ever, made her ultra-paranoid mind leap to absurd conclusions. “Why are you laughing? Are you getting a blowjob?” she demanded. Which only served to make me laugh harder, in turn upping her paranoia. “You are, aren’t you!? You’re getting a blowjob right now!”
I’m like, “what!? What on earth would make you think that?” but she just kept going on and on, and therefore so did my laughter.
By the next year’s party, I had long since become a basic fixture here myself, and become that much more comfortable. Enough so to show up toting a film camera, snapping photos…and to also bring Miles with me as my lone guest. He was already quite blasted and this was the infamous New Year’s where, though not bringing up this topic at all prior to our arrival, somehow the instant we strolled onto this quite crowded scene, he got on this huge kick, practically shouting, “AW, DUDE, WHO’S GOT THE COKE!? ANYBODY GOT COKE?” in that notorious loud and chalky voice he gets when drunk. He went around from room to room, repeatedly, demanding this of its occupants. When everybody he encountered basically just shrugged and told him sorry about your luck, but no, Miles then eventually pivoted in most unexpected fashion indeed: by going through the kitchen cupboards until he found a big bag of totally normal white sugar. And chalking up lines of that on the countertop, snorting it instead.
Andy Lorenz holding on for dear life to Dan Bandman. Seeing this picture for the 1st time, Dan joked, “the most remarkable thing about it is I’m wearing a long sleeve shirt on one arm and a short sleeve shirt on the other.”
Word of Miles’s sugar snorting antics spread like wildfire, more so than actual drug usage ever would have. And as such this became a huge attraction, watching Miles continually vacuum up a line of Domino every so often – because, try as he might, he was unable to convince anyone else that they should join him. Despite, pinching his nose, his continual instance that, “DUDE, I’M SERIOUS, YOU GUYS SHOULD TRY IT! YOU CAN REALLY FEEL SOMETHIN!” and so on.
He wound up leaving at some point, but I crashed there that night. Then the next morning a handful of us were sitting around the living room, recapping the events, when Crystal said to me, “was that your friend?” regarding the already infamous sugar snorting fiend.
“Yes….,” I reluctantly admitted.
“What an ass,” she concluded with a disbelieving laugh.
I don’t think I ever really made an ass of myself at any of these, personally, although maybe it’s just that my bar for embarrassment is so high (or is it low? This is one of those euphemisms which somewhat confuses me). The closest you might argue I came, though, was one New Year’s where I worked two jobs, back to back, but had seriously eaten nothing all day, prior to coming here. Was kind of banking on there being some food here of some sort, but instead only encountered…this gigantic frosted red velvet cake, sitting on the dining room table.
After the long work day, no food, probably not much sleep the night before it’s safe to say, I was just completely spent. Therefore all I did was inhale a couple pieces of cake, drink actually very little, before effectively saying fuck this to myself. But not a word to anyone else, as I stealthily crawled behind the couch, in this gap I had spotted between it and the wall (don’t ask me how), and passed out for the night, I think before the ball even dropped. It seemed like an awesome hiding place. Yet I awakened the following morning to discover I was completely covered in red velvet cake – people had eventually spotted me there, then found it hilarious to drop little cake bombs from up above, chortle over how I wasn’t even responding.
Norman making a triumphant Glass House entrance.Me outside the house. I don’t think this was the red velvet cake night, but it may very well have been. I actually kind of like this picture, except of course MUST have something spilled all over my shirt – I suppose it’s too much to ask that I would ever take one totally normal photo, ever.
II.
Live music would of course become a staple here, too, in the basement. In addition to the show referenced above, I recall at least one other where Superstar Rookie played (I think) their only ever reunion set, some five years after disbanding. That was I believe the night Matt Montanya acted as between-band entertainment, as he got up on the mic and did his world famous, spot on Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor imitations, reciting many of their comedy bits verbatim, to the delight of the masses.
Naturally, in a sprawling house at least partially occupied by musicians, some tunes were recorded here as well. Including at least one full-length album I’m aware of, A Year At Mulford & McClain by Kevin Spain and Phil Minor. It’s a stunning, fully instrumental effort, somewhat of a departure – at least for Spain, from his work with The Judas Cow and others. You can listen to a solid chunk of it here, along with one video I made (on my own, but with their blessing) of my favorite track, Weave:
As you can see from the liner notes, this was fully recorded and mastered et cetera right here. The project has a tremendously warm and atmospheric sound to it. Unfortunately, for years now my disc has been so scratched up that it won’t play or rip the last three songs on the disc. And I’ve discussed this with Spain, but it appears that he doesn’t have any left in his possession, or at least can’t locate them if he does. He probably has those tracks somewhere in his files, but admits at this point he can’t remember what names they gave to which instrumentals, and isn’t fully confident exactly what these last three tunes are. So it remains an incomplete mystery. Copies were only ever handed out to some of his friends, so if any of you have one, by all means please let me know.
Victorian’s Midnight Cafe was a former…well, I don’t even know what you’d call it, but it sure was something. A cafe, yes, I suppose, and definitely located in Victorian’s Village. And though I was certainly there past midnight on occasion, those times were rare – and yet I still might have classified it, for a few years there, as the most interesting place to visit in all of Columbus. Cafe at some point morphed into this meaningless all-purpose term applied to just about any spot, equally at home on the floor of a dance club as to a quaint diner two seat table that is only open for brunch. And Victorian’s encompassed nearly every plot point between these extremes as well as anywhere ever did.
It wasn’t just the mismatched furniture and similarly inclined artwork, the weatherbeaten floors. Or the patrons you could also often apply some of those modifiers to. It was a certain vibe you couldn’t get anywhere else – in large part because even those running this enterprise kept the borders fuzzy, as far as what Victorian’s was even supposed to be. But then again, they weren’t afraid to draw the line at what they absolutely were NOT: owner Greg Rowe usually told people who were hoping to bring CDs in here and have it cranked over the system to politely forget it, even when other bars would often play ball with such a concept. Or back when, though it’s hard to really fathom this now, you could pretty much smoke cigarettes everywhere (places really only started going smoke free en masse somewhere in the mid aughts, a concept that probably seems as alien to youngsters now as this mysterious “compact disc” music playing medium I just mentioned), Victorian’s was a notable outlier in that it was always forbidden here. They do have at least one pool table here, covering yet another base in that regard.
I once brought my brother in for breakfast, and he is still known to gush about it, specifically the corned beef hash, twenty years later. Connie Harris and Za Hansen are among the cooks who pass through here, during its spirited run under Rowe, and the signature morning offering might actually be a heaping casserole named Mr. Gut Wrencher: eggs, gravy, home fries, cheese, three kinds of meat in one large dish. “That scared the hell out of me the first time I read the ingredients,” Hansen admits, in a May 2008 Dispatch piece, “first I thought, why?, and then I wondered, do we even have a plate big enough for this thing?“
Well before that, in fact before I’d ever set foot inside the place, a coworker once secured some of us a slot to play at their open stage jam night, though I chickened out and failed to show – though assuredly no great loss for anyone involved, whether performer or attendee, I still sometimes regret not following through. Because of course they had live music here, too. This place was a local institution for such, with for example the various members of Cowboy Hillbilly Hippy Folk meeting one another here, after which Victorian’s was only the most natural choice for their CD release party. The Moops played their first show here in 2001. Of course, unlike many “open stage” jam nights I’ve attended over the years, the Victorian’s take on this meant that during the Thursday night edition, poetry readings were totally okay, too, if that’s how one chose to fill his/her slot – Wednesays are reserved for acoustic music alone.
So once again totally fitting the Midnight Cafe aesthetic. But yeah, I would say music mostly prevailed anyway, on balance. When I introduced Damon to Victorian’s, to catch some other random band on an equally random night, he was instantly a fan and remarked that a place like this could only exist in Columbus. As those in charge of the operation are quite aware, considering the top of their website home page describes this cafe, in a dictionary style definition entry, as “an eclectic home for people wanted or unwanted. Loyal patrons refer to her as the “hub of weirdness” where all walks of life come and go. A refreshing gateway from reality, a place to find a warm smile and friendship.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up.
Incidentally, their website offers yet another punctuation plot twist that I didn’t expect. Working on this Love Letter To Columbus project has, however improbably and unwittingly, often thrust me into the role of an apostrophe detective (there’s two words you never thought you’d see together). And so I am presented with another case here. In every single article I referenced online (47 of them) and in my own writings, thoughts, whatever, the name is never spelled as anything but Victorian’s Midnight Cafe. I never even entertained a notion that it could be anything else. However, much like other defunct operations such as Brewmasters Gate and Tommy Keegans, the conflicting truth is hiding in plain sight – either that, or we have to assume that we know what the founders of these operations truly intended, and they just weren’t polished up on their grammar. Because according to the logo at the top of the VMC website, which runs unchanged for years, it’s actually spelled with an apostrophe after the S: Victorians’ Midnight Cafe. Although in this instance these waters are certainly further muddied when you consider the abbreviation, the logo inside the logo, which calls this place Vic’s. And then the “dictionary definition” beside it as spells this as Victorian’s. These three variations are, what, an inch or even less apart. So I’m really not sure what to think. But crafting a logo you would think has to take more time than typing words on a web page – even back in 2004 – so it would seem more thought had to have gone into that as well, and the logo therefore carries more weight.
I guess maybe in the name of keeping a clear conscience, I should refuse to take on this truly baffling case.
II.
Sometimes Vic’s was even open on Thanksgiving, serving a customarily funky meal that had nothing to do with your traditional Turkey Day offerings – and sounding no less inviting because of it. Circa 2006 meanwhile, on most totally normal nights of the week, there was this cute redheaded waitress, her belly swollen and many months along with child, working here, that us guys all agreed was “the hottest pregnant chick ever.” And the reason I’m coming here so often then stems from my greatest stretch of involvement with Victorian’s, strollling through these extremely funky doors roughly once per week, as a central figure in this writer’s club we’d started.
Nathan McKnight (a pen name, BTW), his friend Shannon, our mutual pal Dan Bandman, and I are the four who materialize here for its first ever meeting, in January 2006. Bandman is the one who told me about it, and as I’d been trying in vain the entire time I lived in Columbus – nearly a decade at this point – to catch on with a decent writer’s club, I’m instantly all about it. I guess it somehow never occurred to me to just start one myself. In a hilarious stroke of just about the most predictable cliche ever, three of us bring our copy of The Elements Of Style to this first meeting – and the fourth person almost did, but decided to leave it at home.
Nathan was here every single week, though, and deserves credit for organizing the thing, keeping it together for a solid year (possibly more, as I moved away at end of 2006, and have no idea what happened beyond that point). I made it a good 90% of the time, I would estimate, easily the second most involved. Nathan’s dad, Joe, would eventually become a predictable attendee, and while both Dan and Shannon were only intermittently engaged, moving forward, other highly random figures like Rob, Alison, and Brad would pop in on occasion, in descending order of frequency, culled from whatever rock we could find them under. One or two of them might not even have really been writers, or at least weren’t writing much, but liked to soak up the atmosphere and debate things anyway, possibly take a stab at editing a copy of whatever you brought.
Some of these conversations stick with me to this day. Like a passionate extended group argument one night, in that window seating area section, concerning the use of the word habit, which someone was claiming didn’t fit in such and such scenario. We had just about settled the debate, agreeing that it was basically applicable in situations where a person couldn’t stop doing something often. Until some guy piped up and wondered, “yeah, but would you say robbing banks is a habit?” Which set the argument ablaze all over again. Another time, I brought a then short story where the main character killed himself at the very end. A plot twist which Shannon was quite vocal about not liking.
“I just don’t remember ever reading a story where the main character killed himself at the end, though,” I pointed out.
“There’s a reason you’ve never read a story like that – it pisses people off!”
Well, I ended up using this scene anyway, eventually, in one of my novels. So who knows. These philosophical dustups were always highly entertaining, at least, even if you didn’t take the advice. And some of this stuff was demonstrably helpful. Another occasion, Dan brought a ton of song lyrics to the table, and was lamenting that he kept trying to squeeze in more adjectives, but they never seemed to rhythmically fit into the songs. I suggested in response that instead of adjective cramming, which a lot of people try to do in whatever they’re writing, it’s usually better to come up with stronger verbs instead, like replacing the words go and went et cetera whenever you see them. Nathan’s mouth was open, because he was just about to say the exact same thing, but I beat him to the punch. So he agreed with me, as we elaborated on this point. Then the next week, Dan proudly brought his revised songs to the meeting, and was effusive in praising us, because he felt like that one tip had made a huge improvement on his lyric writing.
I would eventually conclude that although these meetings were a lot of fun, and gave me something to look forward to every week, they were ultimately not that productive for me. And the reason for this was that I felt I’d advanced beyond everyone else on the seriousness front. It might sound a bit pompous to declare, but I wasn’t thinking this from a quality or talent standpoint, because most of them were great writers. They just weren’t doing much, which was the whole issue. Whereas I couldn’t seem to stop, even back then, and was cranking out reams of material, writing something just about every day. I had an endless stockpile of material I could and sometimes did bring for them to dissect, passing copies out to everyone who attended. But then would feel like I was hogging the spotlight, so might skip a week, except then there would be times where nobody brought anything as a result.
Plus, as previously alluded to, would typically not apply any of their notes anyway. I could get into debating philosophies and word usage and so on until the end of time, though in general believed that as a rule you couldn’t really carpet bomb any of these strategies onto every piece of writing, or anything near it, because every piece was different and we all had such diverse styles on top of it. Like I recall that after some of us attended this Kurt Vonnegut speaking appearance, where he was ranting and raving about semi-colons, Nathan showed up at the next meeting and proudly announced that he’d gotten rid of 63 semi-colons in something he was writing. And I was thinking, well, that’s cool, but that’s just never going to be me. Vonnegut might have felt they should be eradicated from the face of the planet, and Nathan might have agreed, but I thought and continued to feel that they are occasionally quite useful.
My fondest memory probably concerns a session where I brought this thinly-veiled “fictional” piece about the Mansfield area music scene, which had Bandman howling with laughter at various points. He loved it so much he was praising it later to people who didn’t even come to these things, like for instance Travis Tyo’s girlfriend Martha. She came up to me somewhere, weeks later I believe it was, and told me that whatever I had written, Bandman thought it was hysterical.
The picture up top, meanwhile, stems from a mix CD Nathan once brought to everyone in attendance. He did this at least twice, because I have another one titled Jug O’ Tunes that I liked so much I made copies of it myself to pass around. Songs For Victiorians as you can see is pretty solid, too, and a number of those tracks have entered my permanent playlist as a result. And on exactly one instance, I cranked out a mix of my own, which I titled J-Mac’s Spring Mix 2000 and 6. Those discs I foisted on this club to start with, though eventually expanding outward and handing them off to the likes of Kevin Spain or my brother, people who had never come to any of these meetings.
Nathan had some experience organizing these things, and in fact a previous club was so organized and serious that they were printing impressively professional looking zines for a while. He brought me a couple-few issues at some point, though I only seem to have one in my possession now. He’s also one of these guys who seems to know everybody in town, to the extent I wasn’t exactly surprised to eventually discover he was working with Damon’s sister, Melissa, at one of her jobs, a short while after I left town and this writing club had ended. When I asked her if she knew Nathan McKnight, she chuckled and said, “well, he might wish his name was Nathan McKnight…but yeah, I know him.”
It was only then that I even learned this was a pen name! You might say I’m bad at asking people questions about themselves. Well, actually, I feel like I’m good at observing some stuff, noting various details about people, and learning a bit of their history – it’s just the material I get down isn’t necessarily important. A kink which this Victorian’s writing club never did straighten out.
A sample of Nathan’s edits (in green) of a short story I brought to the group. I did use some of his suggestions on this one.
III.
I still possess some of the pieces that others brought to this group, but haven’t had much luck getting their blessing to post them here. So the above snippet from one of my short stories will have to suffice, to give you an idea of the work we did here.
The final occasions I came to Victorian’s all occurred in 2008, the absolute last of these a bar-hopping odyssey marking my return to Columbus, during which we wound up here for a spell. That night was also, to date, sadly the last time too that I’ve hung out with such disparate characters as Alan Kline, Ancie and Dan Schmidt, Kevin Spain and others, all of which were among this Victorian’s entourage that night. Though it seems most surreal of all to recall this was the site of my first conversation in 19 years with on old friend who’d moved away, Byron McClurg, because he had called someone, and a few of us were passing around the phone on the back patio here.
From here the picture becomes a little murkier. In March ’09 it’s announced that local musician Andreas Kleinert has bought the place, along with his wife, Kristy Venrick, and that they are renaming it Vic’s Cafe. It is closed a short spell for remodeling, although they maintain many of the same employees, even some menu standouts like weinerschnitzel or the Behemoth Burger. A continued or perhaps slightly elevated devotion to live music, six nights a week, including open stage jams on three of those. Yet they are also switching gears, somewhat, like with a curious focus on a lengthy pina colada list (or is this not playing right into the site’s scattershot, eclectic vibe?) including one that’s served in a coconut shell.
And yet by July, it would appear they’ve reverted back to the former name, Victorian’s Midnight Cafe, though closing right at midnight on every night not named Friday or Saturday. Even so the last event listing I can find occurs in March 2010, a fundraiser in support of and featuring local musician Billy Zenn. Shortly thereafter, those owners sold it to the next, and whoever bought this now not only changed the name but the entire aesthetic as well. One night in 2011, Kyle, Erin, and I drifted through the new establishment, which was like this voodoo rockabilly place called The Shrunken Head. And while cool enough for that sort of thing, it was also just not the same, and none of us ever came back. Nowadays this spot, at 251 W. 5th Avenue, is known as the Vic Village Tavern. This one’s rocking some old school vibe, and I’m sure it has its adherents, but it also looks even more normal and therefore farther removed still from what once made this spot on the map so special.
I said their website was hilariously generic, even by the standards of that time, and this is true. A plain white background, no photos whatsoever, text even more basic than my somewhat vanilla choices here in the year 2025. If visiting that page, you would have no idea what a wacky establishment you were in store for, should you follow up with a physical visit. However one cool feature they did have, which I haven’t quite seen replicated anywhere else, is that they also made a running list of every musician they could think of who graced their stage. So here’s the roll call up through 2006:
Amy Steinberg Andy Germak Andy Shaw Annie Schumm Apocalypso Ariel Godwin Athena Reich Avalon Nine Barrie Z. Beau Bristow Bel Auburn Bill Kurzenberger BlueForms Theatre Group Blue Level Music Brad Yoder Brian Griffin Brian Lisik Bryan Christopher Lee Bumwealthy Cathy Wicks Chad Eric Chief Johnny Lonesome Chris Gough Chris McCoy Cropchecker Dan Gonzalez Dan Vaillancourt Dave Golden Dave Lippman David Nefesh Deep Blue Groove eight foot cactus Elisa Nicholas EN2 Ennui Eric Nassau & Friends Eric Pressler Frisky London Garrin Benfield Gipson & Fitz Greg Klyman Gruver/Gruver Deeluxe Hal Hixson Happy Dragons heather shayne blakeslee Heather Waugh Hipswitch Jared Mahone Jason & the Argonauts Jeffrey Altergott Jesse Henry Jen Miller Jen Shamro Jeremiah Birnbaum Jim Volk Jim Zartman John Turck Jonah Sage Jonathan Rundman Kara Kulpa Kit Malone Kristy Hanson kristi strauss and the blue medusa La Revancha Larry Mariotto Leah-Carla Gordone Liz Malys Maioan Person Mark Fitzharris Mark Webster Megan Palmer Michael Joseph Michael Shoup Mike Mangione Modern Gomorah Myke Rock Nathaniel Seer Nic Engel Nobody et al. Nude Porterhouse Pretty Balanced rachel ries Rachanee Richard Thorne Ripley Caine Sarah Asher Sarah Cohen Sarah Lovell Scott Stein Shelley Miller SJ Tucker Sonya Lorelle Stickmen Music Summertooth The Bogtrodders The Farewell System The Floorwalkers The Kyle Sowashes the moist star The Peasants the red wheelbarrow The Sure Things The Vague Thora’s Birch Tom Freund Tristen Shields Ukulele Man Way Past Frown (Thomas Boles) Willie Phoenix Worldwide Ocean Yikes McGee
Victorian’s also had a little artwork gallery, dubbed the Hub Gallery, where they would rotate in various featured artists. So they have listed just a pair of artists, John Nagy and Tom VanKuiken, who it says “have visited Vic’s Hub Gallery.” Although I’m not sure if that means these are the only two artists who stopped by to view their own gallery (which seems more likely), or if those are the only two artists who ever swung through, period.
2006 events
Beyond the punctuation shenanigans, their hilariously simple website was also a little confusing for another reason. The events calendar would list things that were happening all over town, not just here, yet to my mind it’s not always entirely clear which is which. So I think these things I’m listing below all happened at Vic’s…but I could be wrong about that:
January 18
open mic night, hosted by Crazy Pete Frenzer. This is a regular Wed and Thu night thing and it runs from 8 to 11.
January 19
The Thursday edition of open mic night, hosted by Crazy Pete Frenzer.
January 20
themed musical night under the banner “Folk The War – A Bush Bashing.” UkuleleMan, Pete Cassani, and Bob Starker play.
January 22
movie time with Tadit Anderson, whatever that entails
January 25
open mic night with Crazy Pete
January 26
open mic night with Crazy Pete
January 28
Mike Mangione plays at 8pm, followed the The Two Timers at 10.
January 31
Something called “the people’s address to the State of the Union.” Megan Palmer, UkuleleMan, Connie Harris, and Victoria Parks all appear in some capacity. Ohio Peace Network are listed as the primary speakers.
February 4
Connie Harris headlines some “Come Together For Peace” event from 8pm until midnight
February 5
Amy Steinburg plays from 8 to 10
February 6
It’s the first Monday of the month, which means it’s time for the latest Columbus Area Filmmakers’ Group to meet. It begins at 7pm.
February 11
The Yogi Poets perform at 8pm, followed by Moonlight Child at 10
February 25
Mardi Gras Costume Ball. Chief Johnny Lonesome plays and the special drink of the night is the Hurricane
March 3
Brad Yoder plays from 8 to 10pm. Chris Gough then takes the stage at 10.
March 4
reserved for a private party
March 17
Folk The War
March 18
Central Ohio Peace Network
March 24
SJ Tucker plays at 8pm
March 31
Thomas Birch plays at 10pm
May 1
latest meeting of Columbus Area Filmmakers’ Group
May 3
Open mic – no host listed, so it may or may not be Crazy Pete by this point
May 4
Open mic – see above
May 10
Open mic
May 11
open mic
June 9
Liz Malys & Nic Engel perform, 8pm
June 17
SJ Tucker plays, 8pm
July 12
open mic
July 13
open mic
July 19
open mic
July 20
open mic
July 21
Heartbreak Ochestra play at 8pm
August 12
Heartbreak Orchestra with special guest Neal from Go Robot, Go!
As someone who was at their first and last shows, not to mention countless in between, I had a bird’s eye view of their all too brief flight path. During that time, Early Empire went from being a good group to one I was going around proclaiming as the best live band in Columbus.
The picture above is the tray card from their lone CD, and features what most would consider their classic lineup. They actually had two other bass players before Joel, while the other four guys were there from the beginning. This was by far their longest tenured, most memorable, and consistently best iteration, though – but then again, in any guise, they were always good, from the first show onwards.
My only complaint is that these guys didn’t do more. As is sadly often the case from bands of that era (anything before 2008-ish, really), their music is currently unavailable on the streaming services, the only CDs limited to what was pressed at the time. They released this five (actually six) track EP in 2005, Resolutions and a Gun, and that was that, although they had many more songs than this in their live set, and I know recorded some others, at some point along the line. My favorite is probably Simpleton, which gets off to this amazingly frenetic start and never really lets off the gas from there, even when slowing things down a smidgen in the middle. Recorded at Diamond Mine studios in 2003, it’s a killer release from start to finish.
This is some relentlessly compelling modern rock, and I was able to find one official video, for Television Eyes, on YouTube. It’s fun trying to play spot-the-venue on there, although the cuts are so fast I wasn’t having much luck. Maybe you will fare a little better:
The lone bum note about this release is, I’m not exactly crazy about the cover. The picture of them inside is awesome, and I like the liner note tray card idea. That all looks cool. It’s just the cover image itself that doesn’t really work for me, and I would say doesn’t seem to match the project as a whole. But these are exceedingly minor beefs, and don’t matter. Actually, I’ll tell you what this whole EP reminds me of: it’s like something from a seminal band who went on to greater heights, where their first 3-4 albums are all considered classics. Their debut, a somewhat rare, hard to find EP on a smaller label, meanwhile, is merely rated as very, very good. Kind of like maybe the career trajectory of Tool, whose Opiate EP also had not the greatest cover. The only difference is…life got in the way for these Early Empire guys, and the full length albums (at least thus far), of which they were certainly capable and I would even say were expected to deliver, never came. Anyway, here’s the EP in full:
In an April 2006 issue of Columbus Alive, Stephen Slaybaugh gives it a favorable review, coupled with a photo of these five lads standing in front of that very familiar internal window in Andyman’s Treehouse. Then there’s a writeup in a July 2006 Other Paper concerning their last show and impending breakup – as reported, singer Chris Hostetler was moving to L.A., and guitarist Travis Tyo to Raleigh. “It seems like we’re just peaking now,” Tony Bair laments, and I would agree. Up until the very end, though, they are still practicing roughly once a week, and this piece nicely describes the 8×12 practice space over at bassist Joel Walter’s house. One factual error I would like to point out though is that the article claims they were formed at Comfest 2002. Well, it’s possible they agreed to form the band there, but their live debut, in November that year at Andyman’s, was heavily hyped as being just that. Also, reporter Chris Deville uses the word “goofball” twice to describe them, and I just would never think to use that adjective in conjunction with this band. But overall, yeah, it’s a cool article, capped with a totally different photo of the five of them at Andyman’s, this time in the performance room, with Joel posing in triumphant fashion while the other four offer appreciative smiles behind him.
I still have the recording I made of their first ever show. This is among the secret little treasures I’ve been hanging onto all this time, for deployment at just the right moment. And it feels like posting this dedicated page in their honor is as perfect as it gets, for leaking at least one of the tracks. The rest I will hold onto as a bargaining chip, so to speak – a bargaining chip because there’s been discussion over the years, off and on, of letting their unreleased studio recordings reach the light of day. I’ve even been involved in these discussions, on three separate occasions I can think of, where a few of us have had extensive back and forth about getting this stuff out there, over a series of days or weeks, and they were enlistening my theoretical help. Sometimes even with talk of a reunion show appended. But, who knows what happens, something continually goes haywire on this front, and these talks fizzle.
Until that happens, here’s the first live performance of Simpleton for you, from Andyman’s Treehouse in November of 2002. I can’t quite make out what Hostetler’s saying at the very end, as far as the song title, but it sounds like they must have changed that over time. Still the same song, though, effectively –
It’s about a block away from Broad, in German Village -esque type block that’s actually kind of cool and respectable – not the usual ghetto that Parsons would imply.
Erin just started back at work, and she’s here. Pops a tire just as she’s pulling up to the curb in front of the bar, but at least this means she gets to come inside and wait and have a beer until the tow truck comes.
Judas Cow play first with a backlit projector showing old video clips of them, with vaguely psychedelic touches around the edge (supposed to be Floyd-esque blobs, but this doesn’t really come off). Our mob is getting to be mighty sizable now – Norm, Keith, Matt Hubbard, Greg & Michelle, Jay & Lori (and Lori has friend, some blonde with curly hair, who’s checking me out – but I’m never introduced?), Martha, Nathan and Rob from our writer’s group (Nathan wears hilarious brown leather jacket with grey duct tape all over holding it together), Kyle, his buddy Sean, Josh Minto, Ned, in addition to all those guys in the bands. John O’ Conner works bar here, as does Amber.
Bearded quiet but nice guy running sound – that’s the owner. Soundboard in between black & white checkered dance floor (why always this design?) And tables are on north half of bar. Jay drinking pitcher of Youngstown Stout, or whatever it’s called, he’d never heard of it before and neither have I. Dan and Ancie bring an assload of pizzas – I hold the door for them on our way in, having arrived at the same time, ask if they plan on vacationing anywhere, they were walking up the same time as me.
Early Empire play 2nd and completely blow the doors off the place. They’ve gotten so incredibly good. They’re selling CDs now, on a side table – though still have not had official “CD release” party. Chris amusingly full of himself onstage, as is occasionally the case – announces some of the things everyone’s celebrating tonight, yet even as Ancie’s Dan is trying to get his attention, and Chris grubbed on the pizza with everyone else, he says nothing about their 20th.
“What else, he what else….,” he ruminates, while Dan Schmidt waves a hand near the front.
In the background, Ninja Scroll is playing, and Norm’s so familiar with the movie that at one point he says, “this is one of the best scenes of the movie coming up.” Chris says he lost his voice by the end of the set, but if so it didn’t show.
Mirrors left wall of stage; Spain complains it makes the cymbals a terrible wall of shitty noise. Bandman telling some story to Michelle about drinking in Mexico and having “the Sasquatch holler” (puking) the next day. The Handshake play last, and suffer by comparison, I hate to say, to Early Empire.
Earlier, Dan Bandman and I were at the bar and bump into Miriam Sobel, the girl who was doing sign language two days ago (another Mansfield alum) at the Vonnegut appearance. We’re clowning around with her, because as we noted right after leaving, somehow none of us caught what her sign language was when Kurt made his “blowjob” joke. So we’re asking her if she can possibly demonstrate that for us now.
April 8, Andyman’s Treehouse. CD release party:
Tonight is the long awaited Early Empire CD release party. A five song EP titled Resolutions and a Gun, it’s the first thing they’ve put out, after 4 years together (and official releases from The Handshake and The Judas Cow are still nowhere in sight, even though they too have both been around since ‘02). Recorded it a long time ago, but money hassles and just general dicking around even after the thing was pressed have kept them from booking this until now. As among the first 15 people in the door, our $5 cover charges mean we get this CD for free – I had no idea, but gladly accept.
Slow at first, talking to Quinn about this article I read recently saying he and Andyman are trying to sell this Treehouse. “Yeah, I’ve been in this business pretty much my whole life – eighteen years – it’s time to try something else,” he says, mentions devoting more time to the X-Rated Cowboys, etc.
Tony Bair comes up and does fake boxing moves, which I match. “Hey, I heard you guys’ stuff, man, you gotta look up this one friend of mine, he goes by Nate Dominion!” Tony enthuses, “his stuff reminds me of yours, like really off the wall, you guys should get together. You can get his email off our MySpace page…..”
Copper asking me about my experience at the Anderson’s, says he couldn’t find the place, was thinking about applying. I tell him about the ultra-precise filets, ridiculous cutting list, etc. He’s mildly discouraged, but intrigued by the potential (top dollar, I tell him, for it is) pay. Talking about how he plays street hockey in the abandoned Big Bear warehouse lot on 3rd, tore up his hamstring, should have taken a few months off, but came back after a month and tore it up again.
Elissa’s wearing this puke green shirt tonight, okay, and when she showed up at the door earlier, she had this red backpack on. Except I didn’t know it was a backpack, not initially, all I could see was this diagonal red strap cutting across the front, which even has buttons all over it. Therefore…it seriously looked to me like a Girl Scouts outfit. “Okay, I want a box of Thin Mints, and two boxes of Do-Si-Dos,” I joke, as she punches me in the arm.
The reason she’s rockin’ the backpack tonight though is that she wanted to bring her new Hi-8 camera to the show. She’s walking around all night filming stuff, pregame footage, then the bands playing, et cetera. She and I are singing along with Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak which somebody played on the jukebox. I think she’s totally awesome and am really into this now. The only downside is I know she slept with Ultimate Donnie over there in the deli, and I’ve heard rumors about Gold as well, but, eh, for some reason I just don’t care when it comes to her. I don’t know, our personalities just seem to click.
Talking to Carracher about the motorcycle he recently purchased, he’s sitting at the bar. On opening day, the Indians night game we all watched over at the Glass House (before rainout), everyone (Carracher not present) was sweating this purchase, saying it “was too much bike for him,” and worried because he tends to space out, they were saying. But I don’t know, he seems like about the most straight-laced no nonsense dude in the world to me, and is surely proud enough, confident enough talking about his bike at this moment.
Vena Cava are the opening act tonight. I saw them in ’98 at a Superstar Rookie show at Little Brothers, and remember being considerably unimpressed. I think in my journal I might even have said they were horrible. Tonight, as it turns out, just two of the four members are playing, though I don’t initially know this; I wander back about three songs into their set, and assume they’d suffered a gradual defection of other members.
Whatever the case, I find my attitude concerning this group, aftere all these years, instantly thrown overboard. Who knows, maybe had all four members been present, I wouldn’t have felt the same way. “The other two are on vacation in Florida,” the singer/guitarist explains, a guy I later introduce myself to, after the set, name Keith.
“Really?” the drummer says.
“Well, one of them is, the other one’s stuck closing a Borders bookstore tonight.”
Wearing some kind of archaic plaid sport coat over a white tee shirt, a vertically rectangular goatee spotted mostly with grey and the wildest yet most natural looking bedhead ever – which means it most likely is a genuine bedhead, not some look he’s affecting – Keith’s voice has this husky genuineness to it, and his guitar playing, while not the greatest on the planet, manages to wring out these terrific little passages now and then, from the whole less-is-more camp mostly during these moments, just a line picked out w/ the right kind of mournful effect on it. A cornucopia of effects pedals down by his feet, and most of their songs feature at least one extended, high energy jam, but the aforementioned bits are what impress me more than the latter.
“This means we can play songs we never get a chance to,” Keith adds, in reference to the missing members, “this one here goes waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy back, it’s one of the first ones I ever wrote.”
“How far back?” someone in the crowd questions.
Keith’s mouth flies open in a dismayed smile as he ventures, “‘88? ‘89? I don’t know, it was right around then, back when I was still living at my mom’s house.”
“So last year, then,” the drummer jokes.
Wearing a dapper tophat from roughly the same smoking-a-pipe-by-the-fireplace era as Keith’s sport coat, the drummer is nothing short of amazing, armed w/ a steady supply of perfect, original, impressively creative beats, without overplaying. My only complaint is that their songs are often structured as verse-chorus-verse-chorus-extended jam to the finish line, but that’s a minor one. Glad I had a chance to catch them again, here almost a decade later.
“You caught us in our infancy,” Keith laughs, when I track him down by the pool table later, explain my first experience.
“Same four guys?” I question.
“Yep, same four guys,” he says. A pretty nice dude – Travis and Chris were remarking earlier that they’d met him a bazillion times, and he was cool, but they felt bad because they could never remember his name.
Bumping into Tony Allman in the restroom: we both issue near simultaneous sarcastic, “well, well…..”s, and I add, “they’ll let just about anybody into this place, won’t they?”
The Pretty Weapons play second, and are a hard act to classify. Travis tells me beforehand they rock, but need a different singer (“he sounds like a bad Geddy Lee”), whereas Spain swears they’re heavy, but not good. Having watched them now myself, I’m not sure what to think. First off, the bass player does have about the most phenomenal sound I’ve ever heard in such a setting. I honestly had to leave the room at one point because I thought my kneecaps were going to melt. He’s playing some obviously heavy – literally, physically weight-wise – full bodied bass, and his amp has that logo of the little dude wearing, like, an ancient Roman battle helmet. Like a Stratego piece, whatever brand that is. And the guitarist and the drummer – they were a trio – could definitely play, but the songwriting surely needs more work. Like they’ll get on this cool groove, and sure, it takes chops to play it, but they ride out this same groove w/o any changes, and often no vocals, for sometimes up to two minute long stretches, and after awhile you start to figure – yeah, so what. I didn’t mind the vocals so much, actually, but thought the drum chair in particular could use an upgrade – Vena Cava’s was better, for instance.
Dan Bandman’s here w/ this cute brunette he just started dating, really nice. The story of how they met is odd and funny, which makes you think, as the old rule of thumb goes, they’ll stick around. He was buying a guitar off someone and she was the gopher, for whatever reason, bringing it to him at this coffee shop on behalf of the seller, and they hit it off, she stuck around, chatted, the rest is history.
“Good for Dan,” Spain tells me, “she’s gotta be better for him than that other nut he used to date, I hear she was a psycho.”
“Who, Kara?” I laugh.
“Yeah,” Spain nods.
Anyway, talking to Dan & his girl before the Pretty Weapons play, stage right on the other side of the tree. Leaving the room during my kneecap melting episode, I encounter Spain sitting at the bar. He’s told me, earlier, that Matt Miner is all about the Pretty Weapons, which doesn’t surprise me; now he wants to know what I think.
“Well, it’s like, they rock, but are they good? I don’t know. They get on these grooves and ride them forever, it’s like, big deal.”
“Exactly!”
“I wish Miner was here so I could debate him,” I lament.
“Matt Miner tries to come across as being into all this extreme music, but you’ll find he is actually really very conservative in what he listens to,” Spain says, which is funny, because Miner says the same thing to me about him almost verbatim. But Kevin has a point, talking about how Miner claims to be into total noise merchants like Sword Heaven but that he has a hard time believing Matt “gets home after a long day at work, and says to himself, hmm, I think I’ll throw on the Sword Heaven record to wind down to. I just can’t picture him sitting around actually listening to that stuff at home.”
Early Empire play a smoldering set, of course. Chris drunk and commiserating, before one song, that the Dispatch bought out Columbus Alive and are about three weeks away from completely overhauling that weekly, cheesing it out. Copper distressed because someone drew an arrow to him on the flyer above the men’s room urinal, w/ a caption that read, “fire this man.”
Chris telling me he’s had writer’s block for a year and asking me for advice. “You’ve got to find some way to break up your routines,” I tell him, “you know what really helps me, walk around the library aimlessly and don’t even pay attention to what section you’re in, then if some book catches your eye, whatever it is, pull it out and start reading it. It sounds crazy but it works.”
Though a local live music institution at this point, it’s kind of funny to look back and recall that Cafe Bourbon Street took considerable arm twisting before owner David Brown agreed to host a single show. Considering it was the guys from Superstar Rookie who finally convinced Brown to give it a shot, it therefore soon turned out that the bar and the band both were marking this as their first ever live show. At the time, understandably, Cafe Bourbon Street didn’t even have a proper stage.
Regarding the photo up top, I took that on an actual film camera (gasp!) back in 1998. The exterior still looks basically the same, with that dark blue awning, the name spelled out in white. I love the color composition on this shot, as it possesses a warmth you normally can’t get with your handy little smart phone, at least not without a filter. And it looked the same at the time, too, it hasn’t really faded much if any.
Chef Ninja X used to run the Taco Ninja business inside here, up through at least 2006. Was also drummer in something called Classical Ass. Cafe Ninja had homemade falafel. Other signature dishes are Big Bad Buddha’s Black Bean Hummus, Nunchuck Chimichanga, unfried pinto beans, shredded chicken. He liked to say, “your hunger has been assassinated by the Taco Ninja!” when serving you.
A line of mirrors, halfway up the north wall, has always lined the stage. They would string Christmas lights up and leave them well past the season, perhaps even year round. There for a while – I’m not sure if they still do this – musicians would get free Black Label beer on the nights they played. One other interesting tidbit is that my all-time favorite piece of bathroom graffiti was formerly located inside the men’s room here, a scribble on the stall which declared moustache + beard = face. And then demonstrated such with a drawing of just a moustache and a beard, which was indeed enough to suggest a full face. I’m not sure what inspired it, but found it so moving that we eventually used it as a name for one of our albums.
That was for one of my crappy little “bedroom” type home recording projects. Regarding real bands that have, you know, attempted to learn their instruments in earnest and rock out through the years, I will attempt listing every show I can find here, as well as whatever other history I can dig up on this establishment. Since this club remains a going concern, though, this is going to make for a daunting task, in that the meter is still running, so to speak, with live shows booked constantly. But you’ve got to start somewhere, so here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
Click the year in question to jump ahead – otherwise keep on reading…
Our first visit here will transpire only a few weeks before this initial live show, during that summer of 1997. Dan Bandman rings up the house and talks to Alan, suggests we meet him at this place up the road called Café Bourbon Street. The two of us have never frequented this establishment, though it sits just a few blocks from our house. With its eyesore interior of tacky multicolored tile and walls painted so bright they nearly glow, the horseshoe shaped bar in the center is a point of refuge we scamper for and cling to, more so than usual. The bar stools represent a small chain of islands, ports against the storm of crass interior decoration. Of course we’re still left basking in an eerie hue of orange and green overhead lights, molding our faces into monstrous masks if we catch the wrong angle.
Dan is one of the good guys, among the cooler people I’ve ever met, a stout, dark haired, conscientious Jewish boy who’s loyal to his friends and kind to the casual stranger. When he smiles his face actually seems to shine, somehow. Our core group often remarks that he could and should probably be the fifth member of the inner circle. The only reason he isn’t, really, aside from possibly not having quite the same enthusiasm for our more off the wall stunts, is that his first passion has always been music, and he works relentlessly at it. Hence the instrumental demo cassette he’d played in our kitchen earlier this summer, featuring him and another friend, Travis Tyo, and a drummer we’re not familiar with by the name of Dave Copper. Now Dan tells me they’ve settled on the tentative moniker Superstar Rookie. I think it’s great and suits their sound like a well-oiled kick drum, but he is having second thoughts, at present considers it a mismatch.
The old man who runs this place is pacing around between this bar and the one next to it, Summit Station, a lesbian hangout. He oversees both through a door connecting these two disparate establishments, though he doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything at either. Wondering how he’s going to pay the bills this month, maybe, judging from the sharp creases on his brow.
Slinging drinks here, while the owner paces around, is a sharp Asian fox by the name of Seresa. Seresa, it turns out, graduated from Clearfork, a country school district in the sticks about ten miles southeast of Mansfield. She smiles a lot and flits through each of the conversations taking place at her bar, which at this hour and day doesn’t amount to much. Her shiny silver blouse and tight black slacks accentuate a body I’m already a big fan of, that and everything else I’ve seen from this girl.
“You gotta watch her, though,” Dan cautions, “she’ll start you a tab and keep slapping drinks down in front of you when you’re not paying attention. Last time I was here she hit me with an eighteen dollar tab.”
Aside from the three of us, Dave Kemp’s sitting further down the bar, at one of the corners, next to another face I remember from high school, Tiffany Miller. Tonight Kemp’s already drunk and just as hilarious as ever, though he’s also apparently taken a serious turn with his music, and is now playing in a band called Secret Of Flight. As for Miss Miller she’s wearing a sleeveless black blouse with tattoos up both arms. She’s younger than the rest of us and I never really knew her, but don’t recall that she ever looked this incredible before. Elsewhere, across the bar from us sits a tall, lanky goon who resembles the bass player from Nirvana, with a couple teeth missing and messy black hair. He and the chick sitting next to him, representing the only other people in the bar right now besides Seresa and our Mansfield crew.
One of the perks hanging out with some fresh faces delivers, apart from the possibility of catching up on old times, is that it allows you to shake up your conversational game. With Alan, Damon and Paul, the four of us pretty much never talk about anything else but girls, alcohol, and classic rock music. That’s it. Entire weekends have been kept afloat without a single variation in this material. Seated at the bar tonight with Dan, however, we’re venturing into offbeat topics such as Beethoven, jazz, and the films of Kevin Smith, all of which are welcome diversions – although some of the old standbys aren’t necessarily verboten, either.
“You guys try that Pink Floyd/Wizard Of Oz thing?” Bandman asks us at one point.
“No,” I admit, having somehow become the mouthpiece for our party as Alan’s not saying much tonight, “we keep meaning to rent that movie, but I always forget.”
“My roommate Norman tried it,” Dan explains, and by this he means Norman Flores, yet another familiar face from our Mansfield days, “but he said it didn’t work. I don’t really see the connection anyway – The Wall and The Wizard Of Oz?”
“No!” I protest, laughing, “it’s not The Wall you’re supposed to use, it’s Dark Side of the Moon!”
“Dark Side?” Dan returns, intrigued, as if he’s just been afforded some amazing revelation. “Well, no wonder it didn’t work…I’m gonna call him right now actually…”
At this, he strolls over to this alcove where a working payphone awaits. I take this opportunity to have a look around at the rest of this fine enterprise. A piano along one wall, a jukebox next to it. A tiny raised platform in one corner utilized exclusively on karaoke night, as they’ve never had live music here in all the years that old man’s owned this tavern. By the door, this minuscule booth with a window serving a small selection of pub grub, though closed at present and the lights turned off.
Concerning the embargo on live music, Dan addresses this upon returning, when he explains that they’ve just about convinced the wearied owner here to host his first ever rock band. Naturally, that band would be Superstar Rookie. They wouldn’t fit on the stamp sized karaoke stage, obviously, but there’s no reason a handful of tables couldn’t be shoved aside in that vicinity, enough to cram in their gear. They’ve been practicing with a singer of late, Brandon Tuber, and are just about ready to play out. The owner isn’t sold yet on the concept but they’re convinced they can draw enough if persuading him.
2006
January 10, 2006: Early Empire is already three songs into their set when I arrive. They sound great as ever, though I can’t hear Tony’s guitar quite as well as I’d like from where I’m standing. They play three new songs, one of which, Medicine, has this really cool semi-jazzy breakdown in the middle, just Tony and Joel playing. Something different for those guys.
Norman, Taylor, Martha, Tim, Artie, Scott Smallwood are all here. $3 cover, small crowd. The second band is from Jersey, Scream Hello!, and despite the dumb name they are fucking awesome. The drummer has a beard and looks almost like he should be wearing a turban, but no, he’s white, and he is a complete animal. No lie, I think he might be the best drummer I’ve ever seen. Anywhere. He never overplays, even though he’s playing the hell out of the kit, and has all these terrific ideas. Keep in mind I’ve seen Neil Peart, and while Peart may technically be better, I’d rather have this dude in my band. The singer is this scholarly type, tall, dark haired, somewhat of a wisecracker but not too bad, he plays a red guitar the same as Eddie Vedder’s. Tall, bald, muscular bass player does a lot of the between song bantering, and the kid w/ big nose and long black hair headbangs, dances around while he plays. While Early Empire were playing, Dan and Martha were doing goofy dances as well, though Martha later explained to me these were “Heidi Palermo dances,” making fun of some night I guess the notorious band hag was out making a total ass of herself recently.
“This song is about a friend of mine who lived across the street when I was growing up,” the singer explains, “he was literally about 80 years older than me. I was 10 at the time, and he died. My parents tried to cover it up but that didn’t really work too well,” he laughs.
“Was it Bruce Springsteen?” someone from the crowd shouts.
“No, he’s still alive,” Taylor calls out.
“Yeah, unfortunately, he’s still alive,” Copper yells.
“Ooh. Hey now,” the singer grins.
“Must have seen the video for Tunnel of Love!” someone else in back speculates, as to why the old man kicked it.
-The Handshake play last, and new bass player aside (tall, older guy w/ receding hairline and beard) they only sound okay. Nonetheless I’m shaking Rob’s hand afterwards, as he’s leaving, telling him they sounded good. “That’s always nice to hear, anyway,” he laughs, putting their performance down.
-Dan tells me about this writing club he & a couple other guys are attempting to start
-Joel and Travis are talking about the Anthrax show tomorrow night. Travis about has a heart attack, acts like a robot, says, “does….not….compute…..” when I admit I actually like John Bush better than Joey Belladonna singing for those guys. Joel leaps to my defense, agreeing Sound of White Noise is a great album and they did some quality material w/ Bush.
-Tim is working for Bob the Fish Guy now, down at North Market. Says, “I need a new job.”
-Martha has gotten a job teaching down in Raleigh, she and Travis will move there in July.
-half assed string of Xmas lights, one string, spanning these two walls – a W with one extra ass cheek, so to speak. That’s it.
-Chris says after hours at their place; Tony and his girlfriend say they’re coming over, not sure who else.
March 9 – Man Man
August 25 – The Minor Leagues
October 13 – Grafton play a CD release show for their album Jumpstart Wire.Times New Viking, Guinea Worms, and The Patsys open.
October 14 – Earwig play a CD release show for their latest album Center of the Earth. Rosehips and The Proper Nouns open.
October 26 – Mission Man is in town to ply his wares.
2007
All shows start at 10pm unless listed otherwise, though bands generally don’t begin playing until 10:30ish. They would typically start loading in around maybe 8, through the front door, then chill a bit – no small concern considering the bar at this time had a policy of unlimited free PBR (canned) for musicians on the bill. A door guy would cost you $25 and sound man $50, however. Most shows cost a buck, but a popular touring act might bump it up a little. Circa ’07 they are also boasting a bigger stage, touchless paper towel dispensers in the restrooms and, according to their Myspace page, a “staff who despise bullshit.”
March 16 – a benefit for the lead singer of ? And The Mysterians, who had apparently suffered a recent house fire. Cheater Slicks headline, with Guinea Worms, The Patsys, and Magic City also playing.
March 17 – a “St. Pat’s Garage Rock Shindig” featuring The Beatdowns, The Gentleman Callers, and once again Magic City.
April 13 – Columbus Power Squadron, The Proper Nouns, The Libertines US
April 14 – The Main Street Gospel, Modena Vox
April 20 – Shellshag
May 25 – Wifey, Voluntary Mother Earth, The Sutra, German Castro. Was apparently quite a spectacle considering that J.R. Wifey, a member of that first band, is apologizing the next day on said Myspace page for their behavior: sorry if i yelled at anyone. hopefully we Wifey will play a show at Bourbon street and i will NOT make an asshole of myself.
May 28 – DJ Captain Lonesome is spinning soul, garage, and other types of albums. No cover, $1 tacos.
May 29 – Knockem Sockem Robots, Jacoti Sommes, Bitwise Operator, Nick Messer
May 30
DJ detox and dj rare groove hosted by blueprint, FREE!!!!
May 31
Gunfight, Phantods, Lo-Pan
Jun 1
Masters of Luxury, 1.3, Boy/Girl, Gay Blades
Jun 2
King Kong, El Jesus the dude who does stuff, Guinea Worms
Jun 3
Best Karaoke Ever!
Jun 4
DJ Captain Lonesome is spinning soul, garage, and other types of albums. No cover, $1 tacos.
Jun 5
Meah, The Hot Damn, The Science Logic
Jun 6
DJ Detox and dj rare groove hosted by blueprint, FREE!!!!
Jun 7
High Violets, Big Black Cloud
Jun 8
Crimson Sweet, The Means
Jun 9
MV/EE and the Bummer Road (ecstatic peace), Time+Temp, Sarah Asher
Jun 10
Best Karaoke Ever!
Jun 11
DJ Captain Lonesome is spinning soul, garage, and other types of albums. No cover, $1 tacos.
Jun 12
The Tanks, Ospreys, Mosquito Bandito
Jun 13
DJ Detox and dj rare groove hosted by blueprint, FREE!!!!
Jun 14
The Leper is Lenard, Hellsfire Sinners, Descolada
Jun 15
Grave Blankets
Jun 16
MC Cum Dumpster, DJ Bexley and the No We’re not Rich Crew.
Jun 17
Best Karaoke Ever!
Jun 18
VCR, Attractive and Popular, Phantods
Jun 19
Warmer Milks, Swamp Leather
Jun 20
DJ Detox and dj rare groove hosted by blueprint, FREE!!!!
Now they are touting $1 well drinks that rotate daily; also a happy hour special at Mr. Peepers Pizza where you stroll up to “Dave’s window” and order a cheese pizza for $3.50. A new and improved PA, as well as urinals that work! The classic Simpson’s Pinball Party game, video crack, and “the best goddamn juke in cowtown.” Oh yeah, and the staff still allegedly despises bullshit.
March 14 – The Helio Sequence
April 14 – American Music Club
June 3 – Mudhoney, surely the highest profile gig I’ve stumbled across here so far. As such, their set list is known:
The Money Will Roll Right In Next Time I’m Now New Meaning The Lucky Ones Into the Drink Suck You Dry It Is Us Inside Job You Got It Sweet Young Thing (Ain’t Sweet No More) Touch Me I’m Sick
Cheater Slicks opened.
August 19 – Black Cobra, Weedeater
September 5 – Don Caballero
September 18 – Dan Melchior
October 3 – TsuShiMaMiRe, Jellyhearts
October 5 – The Antlers are listed in one events calendar, Excess Karaoke in another.
October 9 – an “Outer Sounds” show (whatever that means) featuring Russenorsk, Melty Melty, James & James, Blood On My Neck
October 10 – Rosehips, Sexes
October 11 – Royal Pines
October 15 – Hip Hop with So What Wednesdays
October 17 – Jerry Decicca & Matt Bauer
October 21 – The Anabolics
October 28 – Pale Young Gentlemen
October 31 – Sword Heaven
November 1 – Cotton Jackson, Ghost Writer, Swamp Witch
November 7 – Ugly Stick
November 8 – Black & Whites, Fey Gods
November 11 – HEALTH
November 13 – Penetrator
November 29 – Jeb Morris Betny, Country Death Rats, Couch Forts
December 15 – Times New Viking
December 19 – Mors Ontologica, Warhorse, Tree Of Fern, Time & Temperature
?
I have busted Dan Bandman’s chops (member of The Handshake) about this before, regarding a different flyer, but…it’s driving me (retroactively) nuts that a lot of these don’t state the year. I have a paper copy in my collection, yet don’t remember attending it, and doubt that I did. Guaranteed at least The Handshake portion was a good time had by all, though. Um…depending on which member(s) of Kopaz were involved, then I might have liked Jinx Palm as well. And presumably Life In Bed did not travel all the way from Pittsburgh to completely suck. But yeah, if you have a hot tip concerning the exact date, by all means hit me up!
2025
March 29 – KJ Valium
I spent most of this day, off and on, working on the very post you are reading now. Then was finally kicking back in front of the TV, much later (technically 3/30 by this point) and decided to pull up my Instagram account. The instant I did so, a message flashed on the screen, saying there was a live broadcast of some show at Cafe Bourbon Street in progress, if I cared to watch.
Anyone who knows me or for that matter has read much of my stuff might recognize that I could scarcely resist this bit of coincidental happenstance. Though often chalking up such occurrences to “randomness,” I believe the technical term is actually synchronicity – and yet whatever the case, am a huge fan of following these so-called rabbit holes or huge flashing signs to see where they will lead. It’s just really weird, because I’ve never done anything like this, and for that matter don’t even recall getting one of those notifications before concerning any account that I follow.
So I tune into this live show, which is already in progress. It’s a static camera, tilted to the left of where this one guy is playing. I can’t tell 100% what’s happening but he appears to just be playing records and occasionally screaming over them. The song in question sounds like someone singing something about I’m just trying to make a living, etc, and at times this KJ here shouts along with parts he either knows and/or likes, while at others screaming stuff not found in the song at all.
You can’t see any of the crowd from this angle, although I do occasionally catch the tiniest sliver of the right side of this one girl’s face, and an occasion or two where she’s holding up her phone to take a picture. But it does at least sound like a decent sized audience. Even so, and not to rip on this guy or anything, but according to the little “eyeball meter” up top on my screen, I am the only person tuning in for this broadcast the entire time I’m on here. Which I would clock at about a half hour or so.
I find this more interesting than anything else, as it has me thinking about how maybe some of these concepts have come full circle. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, live venues and musicians were just dipping their toes into the water with stuff like this – single cameras mounted in a fixed location, left rolling, with the show broadcast live on the internet. Even the image quality in this instance I would have to imagine is probably not much different (and there are even a few brief buffering delays!) And so it would seem we have now seen this complete arc over the past 25-30 years: stuff like this went from total obscurity, to where it was only oddball cultish weirdos who would have been online watching live shows, and you might have realistically had just a single viewer; to where it kind of blew up into a mainstream phenomenon and people would have been flocking to this relatively novel trend; but then the current landscape, where we are maybe just so overly saturated with all these events happening all the time, everywhere, with people flung in every direction following them, that the audience is diluted to the point it’s reminiscent of that earlier internet vibe.
So it’s fascinating to think what the next major trend will be. Regarding tonight’s actual performance though, when the first song I’m watching ends, our guy here engages in a little audience banter. Someone in the crowd shouts that they love him, and he says he loves them, too. As if you probably couldn’t guess, I should mention that our performer is a shaggy haired white kid in a tee shirt, college aged from the looks of things – but it’s just dingy enough that I might be wrong about that.
“I’ve been drivin’ a lot,” he says at one point, and also offers other such disconnected tidbits as “I’m like, super autistic n’ stuff,” and, “I didn’t mean for things to be all silly n’ stuff…I’m a serious artist.”
The walls in here are black, as is the drop tile ceiling. They don’t have much of a light show beyond some swirling red, green, and blue circular patterns swirling around off to the right side of this performance area. A black light also beams directly down from overhead, onto this table, in front of him, that’s supporting much of his gear. Like a boombox I think I see there, and a keyboard or a synth, who knows what else. Directly in front, where it looks like a crowd could be gathered, nobody is, possibly because they do not wish to appear in this live feed. Beyond that, however, are a couple of open internal windows, which you can see people walking past every now and then, and even one girl with glasses and a face mask (possibly the one I could partially glimpse, though I’m not certain) pausing to lean into the window and watch for a handful of seconds.
I’m trying to figure out where these various pieces are all oriented in the room, but can’t match it to the furniture in my head, and am forced to conclude they must have remodeled since the last time I was in here. Which was admittedly eons ago. I also for example don’t recall this one giant decorative art piece painted on one wall, featuring a bunch of interlocking black and white geometric patterns, random, like triangles and parallelograms and so forth, with exactly one red circle I can see in the middle.
But back to the music. Up next, for the second selection, some other kid joins DJ Valium on stage. He kneels on the floor, facing this way, to bang on some kind of plinky percussion piece. While the main dude now shouts spiel into the mic – no other music to speak of during this stretch, just some windy sounding background noise piped in. Except then Valium switches to synth and begins cranking out a bunch of crazy sounding squeaks and squiggles.
There are some cool sounds on this one, though no actual “song” to speak of. And it does go on a bit too long for my tastes. For example this other keyboard part that follows, either programmed or taped I think, which drones on for an eternity. Having stopped, the percussion guy now starts back up atop the keyboard drone, which buys the ringleader time to get his gadgets set up just so for the next segment. In this instance it’s an unholy buzzsaw synth that overpowers and outlasts everything else. And then he is definitely messing around with the boombox now, as it sounds to be broadcasting some staticky radio station.
That was the 2nd to last song of their set, meaning I get to watch 3 total. The final one consists mainly just of an echoey, slowed down spin of this somewhat popular tune I remember, maybe ten years ago, about “…I wish I could…be like the cool kids…” which he’s just sort of singing along with sometimes.
In summary, though initially believing that this was going to suck – and actually wasn’t entirely sure he was even officially “playing” yet when I tuned in – I have to admit, this was better than expected. There were some mighty interesting ideas and sounds on display here. Having said that, I wouldn’t exactly be listening to this material every day or anything, in part due to the repetition and the excessive song length. But, you know, I would have to conclude that he is on the right track, if he can iron out these kinks.
When the song ends, some guy in blue jean coveralls runs on the stage and grabs the mic, announces that this “Sanctuary” event continues tomorrow and will be streaming live on Twitch. KJ Valium, or should I say most likely whoever was in charge of filming this, “waves” to me on Instagram, and then the broadcast ends.
Out of all my Columbus living years, 2006 likely ranks as the most insane of all – which is really saying a mouthful. As a result, it’s probably my favorite, too. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t necessarily the “best” or “most fun” among these years; it just happens to be the most absurd. Some of the things that happened this year I still can’t quite believe. But I was proud of myself too, for the most part, in the moment, with how I was handling everything, thinking even at the time, man, you’ve still got it! Regarding things like the bicycle odysseys and the nutso work schedule and a whole lot of other stuff. It felt like a nice return to form, and rivaling years like 1998 or 2001 on the personal accomplishment front. To this day some of what I pulled off in 2006 feels surreal. Most of all, my daughter Emma Lucille was born, which on its own is reason enough to consider this the all-time highlight.
Incidentally, I did initially fret when posting the first of these yearly online journals that maybe this was a step too far, that nobody would care about this junk. To my suprise, though, they consistently pull in way more traffic than the non-personal, events-calendar page I also create for every year. I don’t exactly believe these entries are incredibly remarkable or anything. It’s more like how they always say people want some kind of story, to draw them in. And I think maybe the daily journal entries help connect a reader with the era and certain people and places better than some static events calendar does – even when they might have no idea what/who the hell I’m talking about.
As previously noted in umpteen places elsewhere, I’m already fearful that, as is the case with my other more chaotic eras, insanity on the level of 2006 typically means the documentation itself will be somewhat lacking. Most of this stuff I haven’t looked at in about 19 years, so I have no idea, but would place money on that being the case. So having said that, let’s rip with the latest one, and see what I managed to jot down…
January 9
time is not our friend. The year is already about 2 percent over. I work Target from 4:30am-1pm today (every little bit sleeping in certainly helps.) Come home and crash out from about 2 till 6, wake up, stagger over to library, manage a pretty encouraging hour playing chess (there’s a wait for the computers.) About two months ago, I was playing the best chess of my life, but then went through this godawful streak and bottomed out after returning home from N.C., but I think I’m on the upswing again. I don’t know what it is, but concentration is a major issue, obviously, and being well rested helps. Home to write, listen to radio, make a dinner of chicken broccoli alfredo pasta. With a few extra minutes online, not enough to get in another game of chess, I had goofed around at an online bookstore browsing around, and was amused to discover that somehow there’s a used copy of my Night Driving novel for sale at a bookstore in Santa Clara, CA, and another at a bookstore in Frederick, MD. O, the power of ye internet! That book is garbage, but I feel like someday the few existing copies could be worth a lot of money.
Battling a cold last week, coffee just sounded terrible to me, and I’ve only had two cups in the past week. Went through withdrawals of some sort already, but at this point I feel fine.
January 10
my latest goal has been to knock out 2 pages of the Virgins rewrite on my days off, which I manage today. Otherwise stick to the page a day, on the days that I’m working. Also, screw around recording ‘73 Ludwig kick drum, just brought in from garage, it takes me about ten different techniques to find one that seems to work alright – the drum, which has no back head, a few feet away from mike, and wrap the cheap computer mike I have in a sock, and wrap this hammer in two socks to soften the blow, as I pound the drum with medium force. I say this seems to work okay, because it’s the only thing that sounds good on playback, but given the cheap equipment I’m using to listen to it – computer speakers – I won’t know for sure until I can burn this off onto disc and play it on a really good stereo. Of course now that the DVD player bit the dust last week I have no way of listening to discs, either. Oh wait! Not true! Still have the battery operated portable disc player, forgot all about it….
On a somewhat related theme, I’m stoked because I also found my brown corduroy pants in a basket, having concluded months ago that Jill must have thrown them out. My favorite pair, ever, and it turns out I do still have them after all.
After the show, I head across town to afterhours at the “Glass House.” Well, but first, we plan on hitting Marshall’s for last call. On the way there, I am mentally turning over the paragraph I’d stopped at in Virgins, came up with a great next passage. And then when I stop outside Marshall’s I scribble the lines down on the cover of my notebook so as not to forget it. You can’t take this stuff for granted. As for the bar, its doors are locked, I have to hop the fence and stand outside w/ locked out people on the smoker’s patio, draw someone’s attention, who lets me in, only to discover those guys have already checked out the bar and left themselves.
It seemed amazing at the time. But now I can’t even remember what scene it was for, and doubt that I ever used it.
So I drive around the corner to the house, and now somehow it’s just Chris and Norman. I ring the doorbell, but Keith’s sleeping, Norman nervously giggles, “don’t ring the doorbell!” as he answers. He and I sit around and have a couple beers. Chris, whose idea this had been in the first place, talks their band up a storm, how they’re on the verge of being signed, says Travis will not move if that happens, has one beer, makes himself a burrito, then heads upstairs to bed. Wasted. Of course, he did have about 4-5 shots of Cuervo, and if the one I saw him drink on stage is any indication – it looked more like a wine goblet – they were quite generous behind the bar tonight when it came to quantity.
January 25
Writing club meeting at Victorian’s Midnight Cafe. Nathan brings this short story about some various figures of nobility sitting around talking about all this exotic game they’ve eaten – and then they wind up dining on an alien. Something like that. It’s pretty entertaining overall.
January 30
Another of these meetings and this time I bring some opening pages from the Flirtation Device novel I’ve been sitting on for a few years now.
February 2
The pages come so easily now, I get spooked and try to slow myself down. Seriously. Nearing the end with the Virgins rewrite and for the past three days I’ve been able to crank out 2,3,4 pages a day instead of my customary one, but, fearing the quality might be wack, instead of printing them off and saving them as “final,” I keep slowing down, stalling, printing off one and going back to the project the next day. The last thing I want is to blow it now by rushing. I think this an amazing book, I really do, but the hard part will soon begin – marketing, getting it out there into people’s hands. I didn’t even bother with my other book, but this time I’m going all out. Lately, I’ve been able to knock these pages out so fast, that I’m wandering around the house lost afterwards, restless, thinking okay, what now, how do I fill my time.
Sunny and fifty out right now, I’ve got the windows open to blow out this stale air in here. Gotta go into the Oats in about an hour which, regardless how cake it is, I’m beginning to grow extremely bored with. Can’t wait to get out of this town.
February 16
the past 3 weeks, I’ve had the same schedule at Target – off Sun & Tues, work only till 10 on Thu, till 12:30 other four days. The only vagaries are at Wild Oats, though even here it’s always 1pm to close shifts on Sat and Sun, though maybe a Thu or Fri or both depending on who’s on vacation or whatever.
After my shift at Target this morning, it’s already almost 60 degrees, albeit cloudy. Throw Royal Tenenbaums on for 3rd time since I bought it, what, less than two weeks ago, and fall asleep. Wake up at noon, near end of movie, drink some coffee and head over to library to play some online (free) poker (chess site crashed.) Awesome day more than doubling my limit hold em stake – I think that might be my game, at least online, and the way they do it at this site (fulltiltpoker) the play is more realistic than usual play money sites.
Determined to grill out today, now that it’s over 60 degrees (almost a record), even if cloudy and occasionally spitting a short rain. After much effort, light grill, walk over to Kroger, grill’s out, throw on some twigs and light again, takes off on about 4th effort. Cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, and Michael Shea’s beer – never had before; good dark beer taste, but then the aftertaste is vaguely like Budweiser-esque junk, which knocks it down a peg or two. Cranking CD101 and writing at the kitchen table while food cooks, couple beers, then crash out again briefly after I eat, watching Floyd video from ‘94 tour.
Later, hop in car and just drive toward Columbus aimlessly, decide maybe I’ll try and catch a movie at the Drexel Grandview – I know The Squid and the Whale is booked there – and as it turns out I show up at precisely the right moment, just as previews are beginning. But tickets are $8 here, a medium popcorn $3.50, a small pop $2.75 – not cheap – and the popcorn is absolutely terrible. Totally bland yet at the same time gross, I don’t even know how that’s possible.
Home to write my daily Virgins page, and as it turns out I’m right at the part where Alan and I are battling lighting this same red charcoal grill I fought with today, which was his but somehow I inherited along the line. Then my 80 pushups, now it’s 9:30 and CD101 on, as I like to have it while I write, and I think I’ll knock back a couple more beers and have a salad, crash in front of a movie. It would be really nice to rustle up just one more brand new chick around here, to close out this debacle, these wasted 10 years I’ve spent in this town. Started out so promising and there’s been some hot stretches, a ton of great moments, some worthwhile accomplishments…but it will always feel somewhat of a failure.
I don’t know. It all looks very good on paper, these Columbus years. And if you had told me back in 1996, living in Mansfield, “hey, these are exactly the things you will experience down there,” I’m sure I would have slapped the buzzer and said, fuck yeah, let’s do it. But at the same time, I know things could have been POSITIVELY INSANE down here, and to a great extent, we blew it. We were perpetually like a tweak or two off from owning this city. I’m kind of wondering what guys like Damon or Paul or Dan Bandman and many of my other closest friends would say about this phenomenon. It’s been awesome but could have been so much more, and, I must admit, I feel like kind of a joke as a result.
In reality, having Emma is my most significant accomplishment, as it should be for pretty much anyone. That alone makes the entire experience worth it. I owned a house for a few years and sold it for a nice profit. It looks like I will have published two books during this time – that fact is also easy to forget, would have seemed possibly impossible ten years ago, and is a good example maybe of how the goal posts are always moving and you never really believe you “made it” with anything, no matter the topic. So it’s easy to forget the triumphs. I’ve made a lot of great friends and had some fun with the ladies, et cetera, et cetera. But even so…I don’t know, it still feels like a decade of things that almost happened.
But, on the flipside…at least I have an extremely likely candidate for that “brand new chick” now in Elissa (and hot, too, and only just turned 21), who, as I was lying in bed thinking last night, the next time I’m closing with, all I’ll have to say is let’s grab a drink and I’m sure we would wind up screwing. It really is just that simple sometimes.
March 1
Kurt Vonnegut speaking appearance. He says it’s his last. Dan, Nathan, Shannon, and I attend it together. I have this theory about his being in this sweet “middlebrow” zone where critics mostly like him but it’s also light enough that the general public reads it. This Miriam chick from Mansfield is somehow the one doing the sign language up front.
March 3
“Glass House” reunion party at Cara Bar. Even though the key people still live there, so I’m not exactly sure how this is a quote unquote reunion. Sounds cool, though – and surely a Hostetler concept, considering he does have something of a genius for marketing. Also Ancie and Dan’s 20th anniversary.
March 6
Frustrating day in online poker. Playing the limit hold em play money tables still, couldn’t get anything together yesterday, nobody would ever fold for any reason and none of my cards were hitting, I went at least 50 hands (play history only goes back that far) w/o winning a single one – bluff, semibluff, whatever, even those wouldn’t work.
March 7
Weirdness prevails. In at 4 but scraping off the windshield for the first time in – what, over a month.
After my Target shift, I’m shopping for Madison, her 5th birthday tomorrow: a Strawberry Shortcake card that mentions it being her 5th; a book coauthored by actress Jamie Lee Curtis titled It’s Hard to be 5, which I’ve been looking at for months in my travels stocking this stuff, and a Dora the Explorer backpack w/ some kind of magnetic game attached. That book in particular I have made a point of getting her, thinking about it for weeks: something about the cover I liked. I remember what it was like to feel every birthday was so big and important and special, you’d sit and daydream about how cool it felt, being older, you’d look forward to it for weeks.
And though I don’t have anything to complain about my childhood, there’s always this feeling like it could have been made to feel a little more special, which I’m sure is how everyone feels, is always something we’re working toward addressing in one way or another by these endless diversions, travel, plans for retiring early and loafing and living the easy life, I think it all stems from that. I want to make Madison’s the best I can in these limited circumstances, and the same applies to Emma. I don’t know why, but something about that picture w/ the kid smiling and holding five fingers up, it casts me back and reminds me what it felt like being that young. And anytime I see these cartoon characters Madison loves – Strawberry Shortcake, Dora, etc, I just start grinning and/or cracking up, because it reminds me of her. And I see this stuff every day, obviously, because every day I’m stocking those shelves.
Anyway: they had one Straw. Short. card for $1.99 but I decide to upgrade to the one that specifically ties in w/ the 5th birthday. Doing so messes up everything: I have 30 dollars on me in cash, because the employee 10 percent discount only works w/ cash, but crunching the numbers in my head I figured up everything was cool earlier, but then when I decided to switch these cards forgot all about it. Up at the checkout line, then, the total comes to $30.62 and I explain I’ll give the cashier $30 (“that’s a great book!” she says, by the way, some new girl w/ curly blonde hair and thin face, says she works in some kind of children’s literary program in addition to here) and will have to put the other .62 on my bank card (idiot!) Ok, she says, rings up the cash, then when I go to debit card the rest, it rejects – not because of my balance, because there’s plenty in there, but because the employee discount voids on everything now. A pretty dumb system they’ve got set up, if you ask me. I tell her to subtract off the birthday card, then, and ring it up as a separate transaction and forget about the goddamn employee discount for that particular item, but she’s confused, and there’s a line backing up (only 3 lanes are open) and she calls the front end supervisor over, who says, “you don’t have sixty two cents anywhere? Not even in your car?” sighs, pulls sixty two cents out of her own pocket and drops it in. I’d feel embarrassed if I were to blame somehow, but this whole setup is ridiculous and I’m just grinning. “Cool,” I nod.
Out to my car, I realize I’ve left my keys in the ignition (and of course all four doors are unlocked, as they always are) all day.
Home, proof/edit last night’s Virgins page, then knock out the next – only 3 left to go, writing wise. I’m feeling ambitious as hell, like I could do two more tonight, and one more tomorrow, and that’s it! Just in the nick of time, right before I leave for my trip…..
No sooner finish this and Julie calls. She left a message Sunday, called again yesterday (no message), now again this afternoon – yeah, she wants it bad. We talk 10-15 minutes. After a lousy week last week in chess, I played ok yesterday and pretty damn good today, walking to the library as I always do. An hour of that, and an hour of poker.
Today I started to figure out some things ($10/20 play money tables, same as yesterday), i.e. you have to stick around and see almost every flop; no reason to raise before flop if you were one of the blinds, because by the time it’s gotten around to you everyone has already either folded or called at least once, you’re not going to scare them off; everyone sticks around to see the turn, too, because the bets don’t go up to $20 until then, you still get out cheap. I also made a mistake one time folding on the river w/ a healthy pot and $20 to me to call, sitting on 4 spades w/ A, 8, 3, 2 of spades on the board. My thinking was that of the two guys left beside me, one of them had to have a better spade. Would seem to make sense. I failed to consider the pot odds, however. Such as 8/45 cards can beat me, and since it wasn’t costing me $8 for every $45 in the pot, I should have called. I’m usually better at spotting this, but flubbed it. Common sense just seems so strong there, I chucked the cards w/o even thinking about it. A lousy pair of twos won that hand.
Though this is play money, I think what I’m learning about limit hold em applies, generally, and I should be able to use most of these strategies when I feel confident enough (and have the spare $ lying around) to attack the real money tables again. Last time I did, in December, I came out $30 ahead for my troubles, not bad for a couple days’ work, a handful of hours all told. For now, I believe limit hold em will be my game.
Home to make a sandwich, then walk up to this Sport Clips place on Cemetery. They’re showing a rerun of 1981 Bucks/Sixers playoff game 7 while I get my hair cut, featuring the notorious Sidney Moncrief, a name so hilarious I once used it for one of my bands. Moncrief, that is. Never been here before, but at $15 a little steep; a nice day, sunny mid 40s, though, and good for a walk, and lord knows I need this haircut badly.
March 8
This may be the most amazing period of my life so far. I finished the novel tonight! Done. I’ve got a baby on the way! And I’m leaving for my Florida trip tomorrow, with Julie waiting on the other side!
I did actually manage to talk to Jill earlier. She says they may take Emma by C section this week, they may take her next week. Jill has no idea. Emma actually isn’t due till the first week of April, though, so who knows. The baby could come any minute for the next month, and if I’m not right by a phone, my whereabouts known at all times, within 30 seconds of the Batmobile and right there at the hospital the instant she is, I know Jill (and her mom) will never shut up about it.
I’m fucked. I don’t know what to do. Do I call off my trip to Florida entirely? Even if I drive down there and call back for constant updates, it’s an 18 hour drive. I’ve spent $500 on hotel rooms and $77 on a ticket, and Paul’s counting on me for a ride to Miami. Maybe it was stupid to coordinate in the first place, but this is seriously a month before Emma is due. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to even find an available week between two jobs that you can schedule your vacation, let alone deal with management if you did possibly try to change it down the road.
Maybe I could have taken the week’s vacation anyway, but planned absolutely nothing, then sat around town twiddling my thumbs and hoping Emma was born this week. I mean…that does feel kind of idiotic. Not to mention: Jill backed me into this corner with her antics. Bailing without warning a few months into this more expensive apartment, at which point I basically had to take on the second job. This is before the child support even kicks in, and who knows what I’ll do then.
One other consideration is that I feel justified, for the most part, with my responses to things that other people do. But often as though I’m not allowed to initiate any actions myself. So this is definitely a mindset to work on. Am I not allowed to say I feel like I need this vacation? Does that make me horrible?
It’s not exactly life or death for me – Jill and Emma are really ones on the line – but I want to be there. Even if Jill tells me all she needs me there for is to sign the birth certificate. I get so angry thinking about Jill’s mom and how she lies to get things back to the way she wants it and Jill knows she lies, but when it’s convenient for her she takes her mom’s side. Everything has to be 100 percent their way and I’m this big asshole etc for not foreseeing every potential trick in the book. Even when they’re mostly not speaking to me, won’t return my calls, and so on. You can’t just do whatever the fuck you feel like, then expect everyone to feel sorry for you anyway, because you’re so emotional or whatever and easily manipulated by your puppetmaster mom at the age of almost 30, and so on, and yet click your fingers on a whim and have everyone you just dissed dance to your commands anyway and if not, then they’re the dickheads. Sorry. It doesn’t work like that.
March 14
My daughter Emma Lucille is born today! This makes me one of the proudest yet unlikely papas ever, I think, if you really look into these matters. The doctors told Jill she would “never” get pregnant and now she’s had two kids. Cliched or not, it really is a life changing event – before this even technically happens, you’re already switching into this total mental mode of wanting to do whatever you possibly can for your kid. It’s really weird. A complete mindset flip, intensified so much more now that she’s here, into total survival, doing what you can to keep things afloat mode. And not caring so much about a ton else.
March 20
well believe it or not I finally got around to resuming the short story Denial, which stalled out just past 9000 words years ago. This was my strategy, of course, after finishing the book, is to take my time and dick around, putter around with a number of projects and see what takes off. It feels great to not have any deadlines. My goal now is to read my old journals from the summer of ‘98 all the way up to now, which I haven’t done, some of that stuff has just sat there literally unlooked at from the moment I laid it down onto the page. Which I find fascinating -who knows what I’ve forgotten, what I’ll find? Who knows what this will spark. But for now, the short story I hope to have knocked out in time for the writer’s group on Wednesday, because nobody else ever brings anything and I sense it will dry up soon. Heck, I can bring something every time, no problem, if it means keeping the group afloat. Today I typed a handful of paragraphs on Denial, which aren’t as good as all the stuff that came before, but help me get back in the swing of things – reading what I have of the story so far, it holds up amazingly well to this point.
April 1
Delete the Cabin in the Woods project at last – been 5 years since I started it. I still have all the master tracks burned onto disc if I ever care to use them, but I doubt it. It was one of the first songs started for our Lions album, and one of the first ones dropped. Every time I go back to listen to the work in progress, I gradually delete something else, until today when I realized there’s no way I’ll use any of these parts we’ve recorded for this song, if ever we even work on this tune again.
April 4
Work a rare Tuesday night at Oats. To Half Price Books afterwards, pick up a few 25 cent vinyl albums – Mirage, Tea for the Tillerman, Born in the USA – and a book of art history of the 70s and 80s for $1.
April 5
Pulled over a block away from Target at 3:55 am for having expired plates. $80 fine. Although he also noted my muffler was excessively loud, and I happened to not have my wallet with me – never have any reason to bring it to work, so I don’t – so I suppose it could have been worse. What a dick, though. He even asked me where I was headed, and I told him I was on my way to work. Is this such a pressing crisis, for a guy to be out cruising on a license plate that’s five days old? And they wonder that people have such negative attitudes toward cops. He asked me why, and I said I didn’t get paid until Friday – true. What, does he think I drive this piece of junk car and get up at this ungodly hour for some shitty job at a department store because I’m flush with all this spare cash? And if he’s really so concerned that I get the tags renewed and muffler repaired, how is this $80 fine going to help me achieve those ends – what other reason would a guy have for cruising around w/ deafening muffler and expired license, if not monetary?
Chuck warned us at the huddle one day last week that Hilliard just hired 25 new officers and they’re going to be writing tickets left and right. I guess he knew his stuff. So bravo, o boys in blue, bravo, way to rake in that revenue. But you piss off even so little as three or four people in a town like this, though – which is disproportionately thick with cops for such a small town – who consider it a factor in moving elsewhere, and how many $80 tickets do you have to write to make up for lost property taxes, lost sales taxes, lost payroll taxes, not to mention money spent at all the local merchants that will subsequently be spent elsewhere? From just three or four individuals. I don’t like it here that much, and would certainly consider this incident alone sufficient motivation to leave.
Writing club tonight, Shannon and Brad both attend for only the second time ever, in addition to Nathan and me. We really accomplish nothing at these meetings anymore. But the social interaction I suppose is important enough reason to continue.
Stop by Half Price Books again, second night in a row. Stock up on a whole pile of 10 cent vinyl albums, a smaller stack of 25 cent ones and Jackson Browne’s For Everyman at a still reasonable fifty cents. Had a few coffees at Victorian’s, know I’ll be up late late late – sifting through journal pages from 2002, sorting them out of late, clarifying some obscure notes that need blanks filled in.
April 6
Sunny early, but cloudy and eventually misting over. Sounds crazy, but I get on a very, very mild cleaning kick after lighting up the grill a 2nd day in a row. Decide I am going to give this living room rug away to Goodwill (in addition to placemats for table), and as soon as I load it into my car, I realize how much, in a feng shui manner, that rug must have been bumming out this room, making me not like this room subconsciously without ever realizing I didn’t. Or why. Every time I walk past now, I can’t believe how much better I like the living room now, how better I feel being in it. And here I always thought that stuff was a load of bunk.
Clippers opening day, for which I received two tickets in the mail (they send me tickets 3-4 times a year. I’ve never figured out why) and a coupon for up to four more at $2 apiece. Kyle meets me down at the front gate, along with a guy he works with named Jim. Everyone else backed out for an assortment of lame reasons, all of which boil down to their being too lazy to leave the house. Chris and I were talking just the other day about how boring everyone is, and it’s true. Norm has a day off and it’s 70 and sunny out recently, sits inside all day watching cable; Keith declines to meet Chris for a beer after work, even though he has the next day off. Travis says he “doesn’t like baseball,” which may be true, but basically he too would rather sit home and watch tv than do most anything; Spain was going to go, but then said “why don’t we do it Monday night?” even though I suspect he doesn’t have anything going on tonight, and even if we did switch to Monday night, it probably wouldn’t happen then, either. I don’t understand people’s lameness.
An enjoyable ass whooping against the Scranton Red Barons, a Phillies affiliate, soon follows. Sean Henn starts for the Clippers; their only other notables that I’ve heard of before are first baseman Eric Duncan, and Melky Cabrera. They pour it on all night, though – 2 in the first, 3 in second, 2 in fourth, 3 in fifth – and it’s an enjoyable game, for a rout, because the offense is evenly distributed. A 13-1 blowout, in the end, but we have plenty to talk about. They have this bizarre segment between innings with three hot dog shaped mascots racing each other to this finish line, where two chicks, dressed up as a mustard and ketchup bottle respectively, are holding the tape. Kyle makes a joke about how he’d like to get with one of those girls.
“If I was one of those hot dogs, I’d be working on either ketchup or mustard, one of the two.”
“Both!” I said, “I’d have ketchup on one side, and mustard on the other!” Everyone cracks up.
“You have to leave your costumes on, though,” Jim elaborates with a laugh, “that’s my fetish.”
“You can take your spouts off, that’s it,” I suggest, to another hearty round of laughter.
Kyle had three hot dogs and a small Bud draft before the game began, Jim and I both a small Amber Bock draft (which we both agree tasted funny) and a dog. I went back later for a large Amber Bock, but those two never left their seats again. We receive small inferior cowbells to ring, at the gate (and they show the infamous Walken-Ferrell SNL clip now while playing the standard Ring Your Bell theme song), and refrigerator magnets of the schedule.
Something about this Amber Bock draft must not sit right w/ me. Although come to think of it I don’t have this problem at Studio 35, just here. Last time, when I came w/ Matt and Catherine and Jen two summers ago, it was the same story, albeit worse (true, I drank much more then) but coming home, I feel as Miles would say “a little bit off to the side.” Semi queasy stomach, just from two drafts.
Now that I’ve finished the novel, I feel out of sorts and lost again – the common malaise when trying to figure out what the next project will be. I always dabble in a bazillion things, and something, one of those, eventually takes off; I’ve never been able to consciously plot it with a hundred degree certainty. My plan right now is to write a first draft of The Straw, although I’m struggling with finding my footing on that at the moment despite a plethora of ideas. It’s going to be a challenge, but I’ll come out of it a much better writer – a difficult book to write, I believe. After the first draft of The Straw I’d like to do the second draft of Flirtation Device – although the first is so horrible and mangled at this point I’m not even sure I should count it – though what the third novel I actually publish will be I can’t say. Ideally, I’d like to do Straw, then Device, but we’ll see.
April 8
One of the most hilarious nights I’ve had in awhile, but good, too, one of those nights that reminds you why you ever bother going out in the first place – right at a time when I most needed it, as always seems the case. Literally, I almost didn’t even go out to the show at all tonight, thinking aw hell, nothing exciting happens anymore anyway, and I feel an inconsequential joke half the time driving home from these occasions.
-Suddenly hungry, fly over to the Wendy’s on Olentangy and go inside, inhale a quick cheap dinner (jr bacon c-burger, fries, caesar salad, water like always), then, having brought a change of clothes, do so in my car: shiny blue short sleeved collared shirt, tan dress slacks, black loafers, change also my nasty socks and stick them in this rectangular cookie tin I’ve used all winter as a windshield scraper, to minimize the smell. Stick smelly shoes in a plastic bag and wing them back into the hatch. Keep my ballcap on from work, though, because I’m tired of this chronic bedhead/hathead – I either have one or the other, at all times, and it’s driving me crazy. Nothing works. Of course I’m going bald too and I swore I’d never be the Mike Love character wearing a baseball hat around for the next 40 years as if everybody doesn’t already know anyway. But my hair always looks so ridiculous anymore – I just got it cut a month ago and it’s already a shaggy mess. What else is there to do? I guess I’ll have to start shaving it myself or something, but until then, tonight, I think I inadvertently stumbled onto a look that works – maybe that was the one missing component.
-after hours back at the Glass House. Keith from Vena Cava is here with this Doug guy who is the drummer from X-Rated Cowboys. This Doug guy is a complete tool, completely annoying. He walks around with this stapler all night saying “hey! I’ve got a stapler!” – literally – which someone explains to me later is a line from Office Space but I don’t care, it’s still annoying. Matt Hubbard just broke up w/ his girlfriend earlier tonight and looks like he’s on the brink of kicking this Doug guy’s ass. I have a seat in the “sliding” chair (it’s not a rocking chair, it slides back and forth on this track; what do you call these?) by the fireplace. I notice with considerable amusement that to my immediate left the Lions of March CD is sitting on their end table, beneath the lamp, out of its case – obviously been listened to recently. Ah, this life, it’s so fucking strange I tell you….
Jeremy sitting beside me in a chair he’s pulled from “dining room.” He asks me, “so when do I get to meet this girlfriend?”
“Never,” I joke. In reality, they may have already met, but I have no idea. Mostly I’m just riffing on the fact that it’s highly unlikely I will ever bring her around “the guys” in a situation like this.
“How about this,” Jeremy says, pulling pictures out of his wallet, “My girlfriend has three kids – seven, eight, and ten.”
“Wow,” I offer, “wait, don’t you live with Jack and his girlfriend?”
“No,” Jeremy corrects with a grin, “my girlfriend and me live with Jack.”
“How’s that working out?”
“It’s working out alright,” he says.
This Doug guy is on some kick now, after puffing on the weed a few people in the living room are smoking, of throwing this coconut shell around the living room. He’s inclined, more often than not, to stand like a football center, and “hike” it across the room, in fact. One such hike topples the piano shaped/designed ashtray, perched on the coffee table on a bed of empty beer bottles. Hostetler has had it, and takes the coconut, tucks it behind the swinging door of this end table between us. Hubbard still looks like he might kick that dude’s ass at any moment. Sensing a bad vibe, Keith from Vena Cava wisely whisks this Doug character out of here. He understands it’s nothing to do with him, just the jackass he brought here with him.
April 9
Though operating on one hour of sleep, I agree to meet Miles at Andyman’s for a beer. They have a DJ here on Sundays, mixing up beats near the western wall, between the end table w/ the Elvis lamp and the mounted glass case w/ the Kiss figurines w/ giant hands. No cover. The bartender I’ve not seen before and the chick sitting at the bar is named Tracy, a brunette, nice face, nice figure, lives on Gerrard she says. The two of them are talking to Miles and me; Tracy says her man’s out of town, seems flirty, though probably digging the bartender in fact it appears she isn’t even paying for her drinks. After 3 or 4 here, talking up Johnny’s Glenn Avenue – Tracy and bartender rave about the place as well – I have Miles follow me over there, as he’s never been. Right in the door this huge black guy w/ manufactured curly hair named Jamie – talkative, but acts very white – shanghais us w/ talk about the Buckeyes, but Miles has nothing to say outside of “dig it,” and I hardly do much better. His woman, a white chick w/ straight long black hair, is named Brandy. Miles and I manage to get away from them & scoot over to the other side, but then she comes over, asks if I care to play her in a game of pool, disappears for awhile, now she’s back over here, now Jamie is, he wants to play partners, Miles isn’t into it, so some other vaguely hillbilly guy, the only other person around (a number of regulars sit on the other side, around the bar) becomes my partner. And Jamie bugging the hell out of me, a very annoying individual overall, do I have any weed, won’t shut up, but of course I don’t smoke weed, tell him Miles might just to get him off my back, so now he’s pestering Miles. Miles sucks down two beers to my one. Those two are a very peculiar couple, in fact I alternately suspect they might even be undercover, or that she’s the type who gets off on seducing other guys just to piss him off and raise a ruckus. Either is equally believable. Standing outside talking about the place, I ask Miles his impression.
“It’s corny,” he says.
May 3
Writer’s club meeting. I bring copies of my short story Smuggler’s Cove, which I really don’t care much about, so others can have fun slashing away with their proposed edits.
June 5
Daniel doesn’t wake up until 1:30 in the afternoon. I wanted to take him to Starliner Diner for breakfast – and he was stoked about it – but I let him sleep. When he wakes, I play for him the comp CD of all the guitar parts he’s ever recorded, from 2001 onward, for these Lions of March projects. Had him tell me which ones he absolutely wanted to scrap, though not necessarily committing to the others, the ones he may or may not wish to keep. Also, had him sort through my ideas for drums/bass tracks to add to his various songs – he only liked about two of the seventeen ideas, but that’s fine – we make progress. Interestingly, though I grouped his guitar parts on the CD by song, they were in no special order sequentially, yet without exception the parts he told me to delete happened to all have been the oldest ones, from ‘01 and ‘02. There’s no way he could have known this, it’s proof positive the improvement he continues to make as a guitar player. There are now just two wave files left from 2001 that have remained on my hard drive all along, which means they’ve never been deleted nor were used on the songs from our first Lions of March CD – the small chiming guitar part I had Daniel play for my still unfinished Neighborhood No More song, and Matt’s short bass part for this one small segment I still currently refer to as Song #2. And only four unused parts from ‘02 remain.
June 9
This apartment is actually quite charming here in the summertime. Just enough sun but not too much, and flanked by green, as well as the giant bush beside my front living room window, it has personality plenty this time of year – far removed from the gloomy pit of this past dreadful winter, almost too depressing to bear.
Here in my early evening writing session, Ghetto Perfect is officially wiped out as I split its pieces into a # of different projects. Time goes by, and I get better at figuring out what I want to do w/ material, more original ways of approaching it, arranging it. Ghetto Perfect was ultimately a project without a point, but I can use chunks of it in mostly brand new projects such as Drama House and Room, ones I’ve just recently come up with.
June 12
The most annoying bird in the history of the planet is perched in the shrubbery outside my apartment, singing all night – loudly, and in an admittedly impressively exhausting repertoire of voices. I think it had every bird voice ever ready on command, the Olivier of singing. Oddly, he was the only bird singing, anywhere. Full moon out may have had something to do with its bizarre behavior, but whatever the case, I couldn’t sleep. Driving to work and with the donut tire on driver’s side front, tires squeal hotfooting it and this too sounds exactly like that bird. I can’t escape his grasp.
It is just after 5am at the moment. I woke up for no reason basically at 5am on the dot, having slept very soundly last night from about the moment my head hit the pillow at midnight. Didn’t wake up once. But when my eyes popped open at 5, I thought it would be hilarious to get up and do some writing, just to say I did – it’s important to bust out of routines, after all. At the moment I am working on Room. It’s amazing how simply reconfiguring the furniture in your head can get you 100x more excited about the same material that you’ve been mulling over sometimes for years. Simply coming up w/ this new project has gotten me inspired and working fairly heavily on it – I’m in one of those envious phases the past week, not just with this project but also some others, as well as musically, where I have more ideas and inspiration than I do hours in the day. Which always makes the days seem action packed and rewarding, because you crash every night having been mighty productive, but at the same time having a lot left in front of you and knowing exactly what’s in front of you, what comes next. I started a pot of coffee, and here I sit.
June 16
It is now about 2:30am. I have to be in at Target at 4 but have been unable to sleep. Just took a shower and am now drinking coffee, having given up on sleep. What the hell, who wants an ordinary life anyway – anyone can have an ordinary life, you can fall into an ordinary life at any moment you choose, you might even fall into it by accident; it’s certainly nothing to shoot for intentionally. I like whoever it was that said “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Lunatics like me, these euphemisms are all we have to cling to. I think I’ll go get some breakfast.
June 17
Maria calls me at work hysterical – she found her dad dead this morning, sitting on the toilet back home. She and Tommy went back home for the weekend; she took her dad to the doctor’s office yesterday for a checkup and they were told everything looked fine. Obviously not, but it’s still too early to tell what exactly happened to him. Maria has already gone off on Tommy once today, she says, because the stress Tommy has created with this outrageous drug problem of his is (so Maria says, and it’s probably true) a huge factor in Mr. Yanik’s health decline.
“Is Tommy keeping it together?” I ask.
“Fuck no! He’s still all fucked up on drugs!” she shouts into the phone.
I’m left in charge of calling Clif and Miles, breaking the news to them. Clif is at work and can’t really discuss the situation properly, though we try to cobble together a plan to drive out there Tuesday and be with the family. Clif also tells me he and Andrea are getting married on the 22nd of July.
“Damn, dude, y’all don’t play around,” I joke.
“We don’t have time to play around,” he says. I take this to mean they have to get married because of her pregnancy, because her family (not happy about her dating a black guy to begin with) will flip out otherwise.
Miles has considerably more to say about Mr. Yanik’s death, and Tommy and Maria and Lisa, etc. He got off at 10, went straight over to his mom’s house “to plant some flowers, I figured that’d take an hour, I’d be outta there,” but then he mowed the yard as well, puttered around some more, just now getting home (4pm) and says “I’m already on my second double deuce.”
“You know Tommy’s gonna get drunk and start running his mouth, I can already see it now,” Miles says, “mmm mmm mmn….”
“Maria said she already had to go off on him once.”
“I’ll bet. You know how he is. Man, that ain’t gonna be nothin but stress, that brings up bad memories just thinkin about it, when my mom died, my family, man, that’s all we did, everybody gettin fucked up after the funeral. Why is that? Man, I guess that’s just the way it is when you’re an American – after a wedding, e-body wanna get fucked up, after a funeral, e-body wanna get fucked up. But you know, you gotta keep a clear head until all that shit’s over with cause man, people come in there and steal shit offa ya. They will!”
“I can believe it.”
“That’s why I didn’t really get too fucked up until after my mom’s funeral and I got all that shit dealt with. My uncle Harold man when his wife died you go over there and he’s a mess, the place is tore up he’s got a trash can full of empty whiskey bottles…..I was just a teenager, man, but I remember thinkin, hmmm……and see he had these safety bonds he kept in his bedroom, man he had those things for yeeeeeeeeeeearrrrrrrsssssss, and sure enough, wouldn’t you know it, somebody stolt them. He didn’t keep his shit together. But see when my mom was at the hospital, I didn’t get fucked up, man, I didn’t! She was at the hospital I was there every day, I might slide down to the Ravari Room afterwards and have a few, but I was cool, I was cool, you know, I didn’t get too fucked up, cause I wanted to keep a clear head, there was too much shit, I didn’t wanna be rollin up to the hospital hungover the next day and my mom could smell it on my breath, too….”
“You had business to take care of.”
“Yeah, I had business to take care of, I waited until after my business was taken care of, after I got the funeral dealt with and all that shit to get fucked up. But Tommy, shoo, I can already see it, it makes me not even wanna call Maria, although she probably…..she probably handle it the coolest out of the three of them…….although Lisa, I can see Lisa, Lisa probably don’t get too crazy, since it’s her dad…….but the three of them get together, shit, you know they arguin from the minute they wake up, I don’t know what it is about Lisa and Tommy and Maria but you know they gotta be screamin at each other all the time. All the time! Shit, they the nicest people in the world, but I wonder what happened to those kids. They the nicest people in the world but for some reason you get em together and that’s all it is, screamin and yellin, I ain’t never seen anything like it.”
Miles if off Tuesday, which is looking like our day.
“I was thinking I’d really like it if we didn’t spend the night there, though, if we just drove out there and paid our respects and came back that night,” I admit, “I think that would be best.”
“I think so too,” Miles agrees, “you know that place ain’t gonna be nothin but a mess, man, chaos. Tommy’s gonna be drunk and runnin his mouth, they gonna have that house full of people and e-body’s gonna be stressin at each other.”
June 20
Clif, Miles, and I meet up to drive out for the calling hours for Lisa and Maria’s dad. Andrea is not going. I meet Miles at his house at 5 – he’s dressed to the nines – after parking, trying to gain entry (could not), walking to Kroger, buying a 22 ounce Heineken to get change for payphone, calling Miles, he finally answers on my third attempt (says, “Pockets!” instead of hello, asks me if I have any “sodas.”), by the time I emerge he’s already waving to me from other side of the fence. We kill brew, get some more at gas station, kill these on the way to Clif’s for the most part.
“Now, how could anyone not get along whiff Matt?” Miles is saying, talking old days, about Libby, “or you (to me)? Y’all are both cool, I mean you’re different, you gotcha own personalities, but ya both are real cool…….”
“Clif’s a nice guy,” I remark a little further down the road.
“Yeah he is,” Miles says, as we’re discussing the wedding, “good for him.”
He and Andrea are kicking it around their pad on campus when we arrive down there. She’s tanned something fierce, looks good – and I still have to wonder: how in the hell did Clif pull this off?
Then the three of us are on the road, Clif drives.
On the way back, Miles and I pass out just a few moments after reaching I-70, about as soon as his jokes about this girl working at the gas station run dry. I don’t know about him, but riding up front, I don’t stir again until we pull up in Clif’s apartment complex. He made kickass time getting home, it’s only 1am.
“Damn……,” Miles marvels, as he and I walk to my car, “it’s quiet down here tonight….I ain’t never seen campus this quiet. Someone musta called in a bomb threat hmm hmm hmm.”
And he’s right, it’s preternaturally silent down here, kind of creepy. So much for this grand revival that idiotic Gateway project was supposed to bring, not even a block away from here. Serves them right.
June 21
Nathan brings a cool piece to our writer’s club, detailing this real life saga about some chick from COSI he fell in love with and how they spent a month traipsing around Europe.
June 27
Madison excited when I show up at the front door toting a brown box; deflated when I tell her it’s something for Emma; jumping through the roof w/ excitement to find a sticker book about Jesus and bible scenes for her inside the box, then all over again to find a talking Dora bubble maker and bubbles further down. These are gifts Mom and Mona bought – two outfits for Emma as well – and sent to me, which I didn’t open until I got over here. Jill’s babysitting some bratty, slightly older girl as well, the daughter of some chick she works with, but at least the two of them pal around and keep themselves entertained. “Gives me a break, I don’t mind,” Jill smiles, “it’s better than having Madison in my face all the time.” Poor Madison – she just doesn’t have any friends, that’s all, so I’m happy to see she has someone to hang out with. They’re goofing around in the pool, until it gets too cold, then chilling out with popcorn (Jill makes me a bowl as well) and a Harry Potter movie. Emma sleeps contentedly in my arms. “She likes it that you’re holding her,” Jill speculates. “I think she’s going to be my normal child, the sane one,” Jill adds, later.
June 30
Return 9 o’clock this morning from ridiculously short trip to N.C. Sunny morning. I was supposed to work at Target this morning, but just didn’t have the energy to drive through the night on no sleep, so oh well. I’m still exhausted, actually. And wouldn’t you know it these fuckers are working on my roof today, right beside my bedroom window. Amazingly enough, though, and despite the heat as well, I’m able to instantly collapse into bed and sleep till noon. You toss and turn a ton sleeping in the car, for the most part, it isn’t like sleeping here. And funny, as long as I’ve been working at Target I still don’t know the phone #, so I don’t even bother calling off, and anyway my phone is out of minutes (prepay like this you can’t use it, period, when it has no minutes), so whatever.
I’m reduced to listening to the Indians on headphones now, both at Wild Oats and around the house. As I am now, sitting here in front of the word processor. There was only one radio of mine that picked up AM well, and even then only when I set it on the kitchen counter between the sink and the stove. But of late, even that hasn’t worked – instead, it would fade in and out, alternating between this 70s rock station, the two stations would take turn getting louder and softer. Very strange.
July 9
party at Dan’s for Travis & Martha going away. Work both jobs, change, then straight over there. Run into Norman on sidewalk, then around back and Shauna introduces me to her new roommate (Liz) who is the sister of her old roommate (Becky), looks similar but better, and seems oddly transfixed by me as we’re shaking hands. “New roommate, meet old roommate,” Shauna says to us. Miriam sitting with Jeremy on a bench style car seat in the backyard, shakes my hand, says, “I haven’t seen you in forever!” even though I protest to her that it’s only been a couple months (if that.) Funny how after the Vonnegut thing she just started showing up everywhere somehow. Kasper still here even though he swore he was only staying from about “four to six.” Sitting beside twelve pack of Miller Lt cans, Vanessa too, Matt in town for Jen and Carlos’s wedding since Friday, he’s back w/ them in corner of small yard. Kasper tries handing me a Miller Lt but I refuse. “I can’t drink that shit anymore.” Matt says he woke up with a hangover one of these mornings and realized it was because he drank Budweiser the night before – the older I’m getting, the higher my quality cutoff seems to be on these beers. Bud has been a no no for years now, I can’t stand the stuff, and I realized at Tiffany’s party having those two Miller Lights that I don’t really like this junk now, either. Yet the Rolling Rock still goes down like water, it’s still often the only thing that ever sounds good, for some reason. A much commented upon curiosity, I can tell you, as I’m walking around with these bottles. Sarah: “what’s up, J-Mac!” in Dan’s kitchen, is wearing a jean jacket. “Isn’t it too hot to be wearing that thing?” I question, Dan laughs. “It’s to cover up my breasts,” she explains, as she’s wearing a provocative low cut black top, “I don’t want Keith to get mad.”
“I always associate you with Kenny Baumberger,” Dan tells me.
“Really?” I grin, “that’s awesome. Kenny was cool.”
“Yeah,” Dan nods.
We were talking about the one night I remember Dan and I (Heather was there too) were on his parents’ basketball court (driveway) talking about how much we liked the song Mayonnaise.
“Smashing Pumpkins?” Jeremy cheers, walking into this conversation just now, “yes! I love that song!”
Jeremy says he always uses SYD whenever he gets high score on a video game, and I tell him I do too – we both crack up and give high fives at this one. Then we’re playing poker and I win $55, from Matt (three $5 buy ins), Travis (one) and Jeremy (seven). Jeremy was playing really bad cards tonight, the worst I’ve seen; on tilt, after awhile, beating himself. One play there was a flop of AAK and I have a K buried, I bet a reasonable amount, he goes all in. My initial reaction is to fold, but he makes such an elaborate display of counting out his money – and as I stare stoically, motionless, at the flop, I catch him out of the corner of his eye once glance over, halfway through the count, to gauge my reaction – that I decided he didn’t have an ace. “I don’t think you have an ace,” I declare, meet his all in. “Hell no I don’t have an ace! I don’t even have a king! I don’t have anything!” he declares, flipping over a Q and a 10 in disgust. I too only have to buy in once. This format, by the way, we may stick with, of allowing, for the first time since we’ve gone to tournament style play, people to buy back in: sure, you can buy back in again with $5 after busting out, but you get the same starting amount every time, but the blinds are going up every 15 minutes so you have to contend with them, and it’s worse, obviously, each time, to try and get your head above water.
July 14
bored around 10, after a couple hours of writing, I figure I’ll slide over to Leap N’ Lizards for a couple beers, watch tail end of Tribe game. Ends up being 8 beers, in addition to these two shots (pink; called Chicken something) that some guy buys a bunch of us: extra inning game (Indians lose 3-2 to the Twins), yes, but there were some actual girls I was talking to, including one promising future prospect named Dawn: short blonde, pretty face, nice body. Maybe a touch older than me and has a couple kids, but I don’t care. Seems an easy place to get hooked up in, I need to frequent more often. Hot tall brunette, well dressed, named Kara, and she’s with this guy named Rick w/ shaved head and goatee, friendly and talkative, looks familiar to me and it turns out he hangs out with John Maul, although it’s doubtful that’s where I know him from. Later, talking to two other girls and some preppy guy along with Dawn, she and I standing beside their table. Unfortunately, it’s about 2:30 by the time I drag myself into bed, and though I set the alarm (and it’s still set in the morning; unfortunately, as I later discover, the volume is turned all the way down for whatever reason- I know I didn’t do this even half asleep, it must have been bumped by accident) and I don’t stir until 8 in the morning, way late for work.
July 15
I don’t wake up until 8: fuck! Take the car up the street and drop it off, walk back (hot already), get dressed, walk to work. Don’t get there until 9:15. Matt seems mildly pissed at first, but oh well. Off at 12:30 (he asks me about staying over, but I can’t), walk home. Flip on Game of the Week (Yankees-White Sox), and dip out during commercial break for a walk over to the library to check emails and print off a couple “galley letters” to send out w/ my latest batch of review copy mailings (which I forget to mail today anyway.) Change, trim my hair some (hilarious note: ever since I gave myself that 1st haircut, the crazy bedhead I’d had ever since starting at Target, for whatever reason, disappeared, and has not come back since), walk to get car. Mechanic cracking me up talking about everything wrong with my car, says it’s unsafe to drive. “There’s all kinds of cars in the paper for two or three hundred dollars that’d be better than that one,” he says. I’d dropped it off for an oil change and tire rotation (had coupon) but he did neither, said there was no point because this car wasn’t going to last a whole lot longer. Damn – it’s hard to find an honest mechanic, I really appreciate this.
July 17
brakes completely give out on me this morning. There’s a car in front of me pulling out of our complex onto Leap (even at 3:52am, yes) and I have to swerve to the left, onto this grassy knob, to come to a stop. I’m sure she thought I was driving like a complete lunatic. Then coasting out into the middle of Cemetery, off of Brown Park, the next time I have to stop. By down shifting and laying off the gas, etc, with no traffic to speak of, I figure out what I’m doing from here however. I know I can make it to work okay, which I do.
Debate all day, decide to drive home: it’s more than 90 degrees out, muggy, I’d have to walk home in this heat and this getup to get title, then walk back here to wait on tow truck: I think not. And anyway, as I discover testing them out in the parking lot, the brakes are working passably better now, for whatever reason. I take the long way home, for the 1st time, just to be safe: Trueman out to Davidson over to Leap, much less driven upon at this hour. Everything works out just fine, in what is surely my last drive in this vehicle.
July 22
sitting on the Glass House porch, 4am:
Hostetler – man these last two months I’m not lying, I’ve been drunk every night. Ever since Travis announced he was moving, I’m serious, it’s been nonstop. I’ve been drunk every night.
Me – and how is this different from every night before these past two months
Spain – (giggles) thanks for saying that Jay
Hostetler – yeah fuck you guys
July 29
I clock out at 8:34 and make it from there to the clock beside the post office at Leap (across the street from my apartment complex) in 32 minutes tonight – four minutes better than my best time. I’m on fire. The 21 speed has three settings on the left handle and seven on the right, in increasing order of difficulty. I started out thinking 2-5 was the best setting, but my legs have progressively gotten stronger, and I’m already up to the highest setting now, 3-7, except when climbing the steep hill (west up Fishinger, beginning at Riverside) at which time I kick it down to 3-6. Of course, there is some soreness involved: last night dirty dancing with Michelle, when we’d bend low the front of my thighs were screaming.
A word on my morning routines: for months upon months working at Target, I set the alarm for 3:30, hit the snooze once, actually crawled out of bed at 3:39. But then – and I’m surprised it took me this long – I thought, why not make my sandwich the night before (I have almost always taken a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and my coffee thermos to work), brew the coffee the night before and put it in my thermos. So for a month or so there I was able to set my alarm for 3:35 and climb out of bed at 3:44 – funny how precious these moments seem so goddamn early in the morning. But now that I’m on my bicycle, even when getting that stuff taken care of the night before, I’m setting my alarm for 3:23, hitting the snooze twice, and climbing out of bed at 3:41. At least so far. I’ve got it dialed into a science, which is about the only way I can tolerate work/work related activities at all – to get to where I don’t even think about it.
Later, Lisa’s 35th birthday party, at her house. It starts around 5. And Nicole is here! Most unexpected indeed. This is the first I’ve seen of her since that night years ago where we started to make out, right before she puked. Tonight as soon as I show up she’s all smiles and calling my name with a little wave and a hiiiiiiieeeeee! from the picnic table or whatever in the back yard.
Since about early March or thereabouts, though declaring my social/dating life DOA at that time, I’ve actually rebounded in pretty solid fashion. It turns out I was maybe not completely toast in this town after all. After Jill moved out, understandably I suppose, yet again it was another months long cold snap where I couldn’t seem to get it together with the ladies around here, leading to the doom n’ gloom pronouncements from earlier this year. In fact even in a mindset where I’m telling myself I’m over that stuff, and don’t care if I hook up ever again.
But these matters have always been extremely streaky. Which is easy to forget – during every down period, I pretty much tend to think, well, looks like my antics have finally hit the inevitable brick wall, it was bound to happen sooner or later, chicks are finally hip to this game. But no! And in fact the way I have things set up now might be the most improbably hilarious era ever, because I’m even more aloof than before. Legions more aloof, it feels like, as absolutely nobody has any sort of even remotely accurate picture of my life. And it’s like these girls know they are getting nothing else out of me whatsoever. An ideal scenario, in other words.
I’ve had plenty of time to ponder this aloofness, and why it seems to work so well with the women, when you rationally wouldn’t think there’s any reason that it ever should. I think the reason it succeeds – when it does, that it is – is because there are 2 different levels where you have a shot at connecting with them. Plus one obvious tactical reason it works from what you might say is a strategic standpoint.
So yeah, two different avenues for connecting with them, with this extreme aloofness approach:
They are hoping to remain incredibly aloof themselves, i.e. keep it on the “friends with benefits” level, and so they appreciate the same from you
Hoping for something more, but consider your aloofness a challenge, one that they are determined to break
Either of these might work, then. And as far as the tactical – practical – explanation for why this is successful, I think it’s somewhat obvious, at least to me, in that you’re far more likely to get away with this crap if you’re just kind of floating around (like at a party, sure), not really saying much, not focusing on anybody in particular above anyone else, making your stupid jokes and nothing resembling a real conversation, then leaving – or crashing here, or whatever. Point being if you’re ever in a small setting where you’ve slept with more than one person and are wondering how on earth to pull this off without it turning into drama central, this is pretty much the only route that I’m aware of.
Beyond that, though, there are 3 other extremely easy points to forget, to the extent that even I tend to. The real boiled down essence of why any of this works, at least for me:
This is my basic nature anyhow. Being aloof is the preferred default mode that I would just unconsciously gravitate to anyway. “Normal” dating strategies feel incredibly weird and cheesy to me, which is why I always struggled with them.
I am typically bored in short order if spending tons of time with some girl, without lengthy breaks in between. This I have admitted on occasion, although it typically doesn’t go over so well, even when I explain it’s nothing personal. Or should I say it doesn’t seem to go over well on the surface, though I suspect they secretly dig it and this actually works to your advantage. Even so, that too really obscures the biggest point, which deep down I’m aware of, yet haven’t actually spelled out to anyone that I’m aware of:
They would become extremely bored with me, in short order, if we were spending a ton of time together. They just don’t know it. This zany existence I think might look interesting from a distant, bird’s eye view, and it’s definitely interesting to live it. However anyone caught in the middle of those two extremes would probably consider it tedious.
July 31
that guy Michael (“New Gedroe”) who used to work mornings with us has been spotted by numerous individuals out and about the town of Hilliard still attired in his Target uniform. For months now. Troy (Planogram team, or, as I like to think of them, “The Reset Squad”) spotted him just last week crossing the street dressed thusly, and Amy has reported a handful of sightings alone. Today I’m sitting in the Starbucks on break and here comes New Gedroe pulling up on his bicycle in tan dress slacks, black belt holding them up, and the familiar heavy cotton blood red collared shirt…yes, the Target uniform!. Racks the bike, enters the building, lips moving on the other side of the glass as he clearly mumbles to himself. Did I mention it was 96 degrees today?
August 4
-off at Target at 12:30 bicycle to bike rack at OSU building far west on Waltham. Walk to car rental place on Northwest, go pick Miles up, pick up beers and ice at gas station near my house, then load my things, then subs at Jersey Mike’s and we’re on the road. Miles has Philly, I have an Italian. It’s 2:30 by the time we’re out of town.
August 7
Miles says, “me and Maria were talkin one day….what Clif do with all his money? He don’t drink, he don’t do drugs….he don’t even leave the house really….so what he do with all his money!” (Last sentence in squeaky voice)
“I don’t know…..he’s got that car payment but it couldn’t be that much…,” I mumble, “it always seemed to me like he had all these old bills from the past he was still trying to get caught up on.”
August 9
productive day. Home to crash out after Target – broke the news to Bridget about part time status – and up at 4:30 to the tune of Floyd’s Time playing downstairs on classic rock station I left on (lyrics still the kind of sad, and music too I guess, that makes you feel lazy and should do more w/ your time. Which is the point.) Over to library, submit piece to this Alive contest to try and determine their next sports writer: the readers (supposedly) get to vote on the pieces, and there are 16 finalists who will submit a piece each over the next 15 weeks. The entry must pertain to the Buckeye football squad’s chances this upcoming fall, and since I don’t know anything about Buckeye football, that is precisely what I run with: that I don’t know, and don’t care, but will risk a guess anyway. This little item might look funny in a collection someday, who knows; it’s funny how these little projects twist and turn your portfolio in directions you never dreamed. Home and I get the two songs Matt has finished mixed down onto my hard drive – he recorded them on his own 4 track, and thank God I kept that one I bought for Dad, which we couldn’t get to work down there for whatever reason, but works fine here: it’s exactly what I needed to separate the tracks, get them recorded. Then, once upon the hard drive I realign by syncing them to the guide track, which is just the song recorded here w/ all parts playing at once.
August 10
Lisa and Maria in to visit me at the Oats – obviously out of the ordinary. Pat flipped out and moved in w/ some other girl; Maria has bruises on her arms from fighting with the guy. “He’ll be back in about three weeks,” I speculate. Lisa’s over the top flirting, but I’m playing ignorant – not sure if I’d even sleep with her again. They’re in to see if I’m coming out for Michelle’s birthday tomorrow. “Since you don’t answer your phone,” Maria explains.
“I haven’t been out single in five years,” Lisa says.
“Gonna pick up a dude?” I question.
“No. All I’ve had is a guy for the past five years – first you and then Pat – that’s all I need,” Lisa jokes.
On to more important news, Elissa isn’t even working today, but also swings through, with Amy. Elissa’s leaving tomorrow for some hoedown in the mountains of West Virginia, which is simply titled “The Rendezvous,” where everybody supposedly throws down like it’s 1840. I ask her what people even drank in 1840, but she doesn’t know.
“Mead?” she guesses, and laughs.
“I’ll bet you’ll find some corn in the jar there, though,” I speculate, and she nods and winks in response – a mannerism she picked up from me? I think so. She and Amy leave with a pint of Shut Down Ale apiece.
“Have you heard the story behind it?” I ask.
“Yeah, we just heard it,” Elissa says.
“Awesome,” I nod approvingly.
“Awesome,” she giggles, and they disappear down an aisle.
I don’t know what it is about that girl. It isn’t even sexual (or at least not for the most part.) She seems to even have some of our customers’ heads spinning. The past couple of times Jason has been in shopping he’s asked about her, and we’re both talking about what an amazing chick she is, and it’s true – just something about her personality I really jibed with from the word go. And apparently he is quite smitten with her.
August 11
my first day at Bob the Fish Guy, 1:30-7. I’ll be working exclusively 11-7 shifts from now on, though. Legs feel like jello now, after a full shift at Target, then there. Stopped at Oats to grab a Red Stripe 24 oz, killed that in the park on Northam reading Updike short stories and listening to Indians game. Didn’t do much to make the rest of the ride any less excruciating – more so than usual. Some nights it doesn’t seem like any trouble at all. But the wind was blowing in my face the whole way down this afternoon, and by tonight – sunnier, calmer than it had been all day – I was just exhausted. Reds game on the radio now (I put the radio at the top of the stairs about a month ago and it picks up the Tribe just fine; but around 9, it fades out for some reason, same as with my headphones). Michelle’s birthday tonight, she and a bunch of her girly friends are going out, but there’s just no way I can swing it. Wrote up last week at Target and they’re basically saying if I miss or show up significantly late one more day, I’m toast. Which I can’t afford at this late stage in the game, plotting my exit. Once again life compromised by these goddamn jobs.
Bob the Fish Guy I can already tell I’ll love – easier and better paying, more laid back than Oats. Clientele not the least bit condescending, not to mention even more girlies crawling out of the woodwork: yeah…….
August 21
Clippers game with Dad M, Laura, her boyfriend Eric, and Robin. Perfect weather, the last dime-a-dog night of the season. We get there right in time. The girls and Eric are gone about 4 innings retrieving the hot dogs – I sprung for ten. Dad had purchased the tickets for all of us, six dollar seats in the second section up on the first base line. They’re playing the Mud Hens and crack a home run, then load the bases in the second, while the hot dog posse is away. Almost a grand slam – a Clipper blasts one straightaway center, but Toledo’s center fielder made a sweet basket catch. It would’ve been a bases clearing double at least. From here on out, a tight game – the only Clippers I recognize are Bubba Crosby and Terrence Long (bald headed now), and I vaguely remember seeing Kevin Thompson play for these guys before. On the Mud Hens side, former Indians Ryan Ludwick and Dustan Mohr. The Clippers eke it out 3-2. It’s amazing these guys can throw 93-94 and some of them will never even make the majors. All in all, a perfect night.
August 24
My bike tire comes off riding home from the North Market. I’d made the decision to ride all the way home and use the tip $ from today on beer instead of the bus. It flies off along that dirt track connecting west campus to North Star Road, through that marshy farm land slash field OSU also owns and maintains. I dick around with it awhile, but either lack the tools or the know-how or am missing a part, because this tire will not stay on. I end up chucking it aside onto a pile of woodchips and walking the rest of the way home. Capping it off, my headphones, which have worked spottily the past few days – dropped on their head one too many times, they only work if I plug in the headphones ever so slightly – are working fine today up to this point, but from the moment I start walking I can’t get them to operate again, and I chuck the unit into the first trash can I encounter, at a gas station the next block up. Why didn’t I wheel the bicycle a scant two blocks to Wild Oats and chain it up there? It occurred to me, but the bike repair shop is in the opposite direction, whenever I find the time to take it there, and really I’m just tired of fucking with it period. I think I’ll just buy a new one instead.
August 25
unexpectedly given $415 in cash today by Bob for the week I’ve worked thus far – he’s a good guy, he was worried about me having to wait till two weeks from today till I got any dough. Jason (W.O. customer) in shopping, bumps into me, we talk too long, Bob yells, Jason feels bad buys two pounds of sole. “Talk to him all you want, now,” Bob jokes. Pat smacked me a couple of times earlier today. “How ya like working with Pat?” Dan came over and asked me, “she’s a maniac, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you two get along?”
“I think she’s funny,” I admit.
Bought a new bike this morning, lighter, faster, after the debacle last night – only because I couldn’t walk and catch the bus in time, I knew. In the end I’m glad I did it though, the right move. Ride bus down to 12th & High, bike to work, off at 7 (got to know Stephanie chick works at the pizza place quite well today), bike down to Neil and Goodale, catch bus in front of the BP there, then dinner at the Chipotle at Tremont shopping center, bike home. Wine and ice cream to cap the night off, in light of my unexpected payday.
The Reds station always came in clear as a bell, now it seemingly does not exist anymore – seriously, I haven’t been able to pull it in for days now. Indians station just faintly comes in, but too staticky and annoying to listen to. Yet, strangely enough, tonight I somehow manage to pull in the Phillies station. Their announcers are really slick and professional thus cheesy. I hear Rollins and Victorino bat for them, then Endy Chavez for the Mets while in the shower (radio in hall nearby), but as soon as Julio Franco’s due up to bat, the station completely blanks out to a wall of static itself, never to return. Very mysterious.
August 26
Jacqueline brings me a pair of ear buds because I told her (factual) that I ripped mine accidentally – last Saturday we had this conversation. She listens to her iPod at work, I’ve got my headphones for surreptitious rocking until recently. Bringing them over, she tells me about this local zombie movie she’s acting in, dramatically showcases some of her parts for me now. She’s 22, lives with her grandpa. Has dyed her hair black. Makes an elaborate show of pulling her shirt down for me as she wires up ear buds to her iPod and up to ear.
August 28
ride my bike in the rain directly from Target out to Jill’s. Surprisingly takes much less time than I expected – I was planning on cutting across Hayden Run to Bethel and up Sawmill, but only while talking to Jill on the phone and she’s giving me directions does it occur to me, for whatever reason, to take Dublin to 161 and across that way: don’t ask me how or why, but this seems much shorter in my head, and I’m convinced it is. The first couple minutes in the rain I’m irritated, this seems completely ridiculous, but after that you don’t even notice. I remind myself being soaked now is no different than swimming, since this is summer and it is warm out and all. I wipe out bigtime on Dublin Road between Frantz and 161, though, having slid off the shoulder onto a grassy slope, yet with this car bearing down on me, unable to jerk back onto the road until he passed, tried to halt my progress before I went all the way down this hill and ended up flipping over the handlebars, off the bike. Surprisingly, a cut on my left palm and that’s all (rough day in that dept: slice hell out left ring finger with box cutter, too, just a few minutes before leaving work). But other than that, no problems; a change of dry clothes in my backpack, lunch and switch out of the wet ones at the 161/Sawmill Burger King. Then over to Jill’s. As soon as I walk into the door Madison, sitting in easy chair eating a bowl of pasta w/o sauce, with cheese and butter on it only, says, “I went to school today!”
“I know!” I chuckle.
Emma’s fussy when I hold her, but after a diaper change and slipping into these cozy looking full bodied pink pajamas, she’s in a great mood. I feed her one jar of pea flavored baby food (she likes these and carrots, but not broccoli.) As I’m feeding her, I sing that old song we had to endure (torture!) in 5th grade choir, that Southern standard about “peas peas peas peas eating goober peas….goodness how delicious, eating goober peas,” except I change “goober” to Gerber, because this is the brand. Every time I sing, Emma lights up, smiling broadly – and of course her blues eyes are everywhere these days, taking in everything, they focus upon me as I sing. Mom says she’s a happy baby, like me and Daniel, which is true. Jill says she loves the Baby Mozart series of videos. It’s so amazing to think I created this – a living breathing being, already almost six months old, smiling, folding her tiny fingers to grasp just one of mine. Having already changed hair color once – it’s much lighter now, peach fuzzier, and getting teeth. A discernible personality, but so vulnerable, dependent upon you to take care of them. Likes and dislikes, and falling asleep instantly in my arms on the couch after she’s eaten, stretching out cozily in these pink pajamas. Now, I want to have a million kids, I see no reason not to. Each a separate, amazing miracle in its own unique right.
Emma rolls over on her own on this blanket on the floor, now; I wonder how long before she crawls. It’s a shame all this stuff passes by so fast, and I get angry, too, to think that this family is busted up for basically no reason, or at the very least for reasons Jill’s not adult enough to admit, she’d rather make up dumb excuses and blame me, instead of admitting this was all her choice and I had nothing to do about it. I get angry thinking about how much I’m missing, what an idiotic situation this is. Riding my bike away from their house I feel like I might start crying: I really am in an impossible dilemma, whichever way I lean it’s completely wrong, I’m completely fucked. I know I’ll regret the rest of my life not moving down and being closer to Mom while she’s still healthy and alive, I know I’ll regret the rest of my life moving down and being closer to Mom and missing out on so much of Emma’s growing up – and Madison’s too, although it seems Jill and her delightful goddamn mother are determined to distance themselves from any notion that Madison used to call me Daddy, too, or call my parents her grandparents, it’s being discouraged bigtime. So whatever. This is so stupid.
August 30
hookup bonanza. Pete and Dan give me a bison burger they had on display, bun and all, as well as this cabbage (which I don’t eat) stuffed w/ rice (which I do), then Dan brings over these brownie type sponge things, not sure what they’re called, that Shea had donated to the cause from Omega Bakery. Dan also gives me a healthy dose of this coffee like beverage called toddy (not the alcoholic drink, but not sure how this one is spelled) which is potent as hell, I don’t even finish.
August 31
Bob: “I sell 50 pounds of tilapia a week, it’s farm raised and nobody says a word about it, nobody asks. You know what they do to farm raised tilapia? They give it a gene to make it automatically change sexes at some point to become a male so it grows faster. But you feed your salmon some carotene, and all of the sudden you’re Hitler. Back before all this shit started I was selling 150 pounds a WEEK of the farm raised salmon, 120, 120 to 150, I sold a little less when the wild was in season but still….since then, I’m lucky to sell fifty.”
-I’m making tuna patties out of ground up scraps. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he questions, barks, “would you buy these?”
“Uh…..yeah, actually, I probably would….(he slides over to show me proper method) but that doesn’t mean it’s what you’re looking for….”
September 1
-2nd rainy day in a row, making my way to work, though I’m smart enough this morning to put on some rain resistant gear over top of my normal clothes, and pack a change of clothes, socks, shoes.
-banana nut bread from Benevolence this morning good flavor but a touch too dry
-black coffee from Touch of Earth Bob springs for late is great
Bob closing with me, as he did last Friday, because his sons are in Italy. Near the end of the night, screaming over at the guy from North Market Poultry who always leaves cooked ears of corn on the eating counter for me: “What did I tell you! Don’t give this guy anything!”
-home, the plan is to meet up w/ Miles and Maria to celebrate her b-day. They’re on the way to Gallo’s, and I say the only way I’m coming out is if someone comes to get me. So Maria calls Lisa, who’s supposed to be on her way, but Lisa’s being difficult, so now the plan is after they kill their beer they’re meeting me over here at Mill Run Tavern. “Call Bill Flory,” Miles says in the background, which Maria relates to me.
“I don’t know Bill Flory’s number,” I laugh.
“Oh,” says Miles.
So in the end, in addition to Maria, it ends up just being Michelle and me and Miles meeting at Mill Run Tavern for her birthday. A much more subdued affair than years past, you might say.
September 8
Another burst where everything seems to be coming together….loving this three job setup, not only for financial sake and the sake of a more sane sleep schedule but also for variety’s sake….speaking of the financial end, I am 100 percent in the driver’s seat now – even with shelling out an extra $580 a month now in child support! Everyone says that’s a crazy amount, but the way I look at it, since Madison’s dad is such a deadbeat it’s like I’m supporting her, too, so in that light I guess it’s perfectly reasonable. All I have to do now is save money for my planned Key West trip with Julie, and get this novel out, within the next month or so – and to that end, two weeks from now, my next paycheck, will be over $1000 free and clear (I get paid on the same day from all three jobs, coincidentally) to do whatever I want with – or should I say, to do those two things with. Crank out the novel, and buy my plane ticket, boo ya. Then the big move south.
Kyle is still the only person who knows about all this. I actually told him my masterplan clear back in April, down to the day. Because I knew he could keep a lid on it but also because it seemed more hilarious to me that way, which will eventually come out, and the two of us can laugh about it with everyone. That I seriously had much of this plotted out to the day, months in advance, and told Kyle about it. Which he can confirm. Until then, I’m 100% confident he’s kept this all under wraps, the various pieces of the time line – like how I plan on walking out of Wild Oats in the middle of my shift during the Michigan game. It’s a Saturday, of course, and I will be closing alone. I’m just going to disappear right in the middle of that one without a word said to anybody – serves them right.
Dan brought over this shredded barbecue chicken left over for me to take home. I took one bite and thought wow, this is great….but then this second wave of flavor hits you and it’s like HOLY SHIT, this is the best barbecue I’ve ever tasted. Unreal. Of course, everything I’ve tried from that place, virtually, has been unreal. Two days ago, instead of eating my daily meal I’m granted at Bob’s, I traded it (Dan came over and approached me, his idea) for two barbecued chicken legs – “we do a dry rub under the skin beforehand, then we baste it throughout as it’s baking,” Dan explains, “that way the skin doesn’t just taste good, which it should, but the meat does too” – and this is nothing short of phenomenal, plus some mashed potatoes (very good) and these garlic parmesan wings. “These are kinda played out, but I’m proud of em,” Dan says, meaning they’re a bit past their prime, and dry, which they are, but have great flavor. “I’m not gonna hook Devon up,” Dan curses, “that guy’s a tool.” But ends up adding a few extra wings, anyway, tells me Devon can try them if he wants. Then later on that night, Pete brings me over even more mashed potatoes (a different batch) – “very creamy” he says – and these are absolutely ASTOUNDING, the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever had. Then last night, the guy who’s always bringing me the corn on the cob (which I can’t even keep up on, so jammed with it is my fridge) has a container for me to take home of mashed potatoes on top and this rabbit goulash (rabbit, mushrooms, pasta, in some kind of sauce) which is just fantastic.
Even the writing is looking up. I have a sports article making it into Alive on September 21st. Our writing group, which has basically sorted itself out to Nathan, Joe, and me (Dan, Brad, and Shannon have not attended in months; Alison made it to exactly one meeting) is determined to have a short story finished apiece and submit them all to McSweeney’s by October 1st. And Joe came up with the idea that we should all be reading the same novel, too, to give us something to talk about – I suggested Scott Smith’s finally released 2nd novel The Ruins, while Joe suggested Tom Robbins’s latest. So we’re going to run w/ either one of these, whichever he can find three copies of cheap at the Half Price Books where he works.
September 12
These two old guys order 8oz clam chowders each. This burly black guy walks past with his toddler son, and one of the older men darts over, on a mission, begins wailing away on this harmonica right in the kid’s face. The black guy smiles politely.
“What’s the deal with the harmonica?” I ask Devon, after they leave.
He rolls his eyes and says, “they do that every time they’re here, especially if there’s a child around. It’s so ridiculous.”
For the next few minutes, I’m laughing so hard my eyes tear up and I can’t see straight.
Lunch is China Market. These places are interchangeable in name, menu, taste, you name it. Lady seems suspicious, too, when I ask for employee discount, and even then only knocks 50 cents off an order of $6.75 – broccoli chicken and fried rice (75 cents extra for that instead of the steamed). I only order the egg roll after she’s given me the 50 cent discount, and it’s 75 cents more, no discount. Food average, egg roll maybe less so but somehow the fried rice is awesome – not sure how, as it’s pretty much always the same everywhere else. Still, I doubt I’ll be back. Rainy day thus far.
September 13
Meeting at Nathan’s apartment at the corner of King and Belmont. He was originally up on the top floor – or rather, originally in this apartment – but the only time I visited, he was in the one upstairs, and now he’s back down here. His sweet “command post” desk takes up about half the living room, then he’s got a futon and the futon mattress on the floor. His dad’s playing guitar, not bad. Some medieval video game’s opening legend keeps scrolling out over and over again on the television. I spot a die on the desk and cheer “ah! Twenty sided!” despite having not played Dungeons and Dragons in twenty years – the dimensions stick in your head, you can spot such things a mile away. The whole point of having our meeting here this week was to drive over to the bookstore and check out possible magazines to submit our short stories to, but it’s pretty obvious we’re not going anywhere. Just as it’s pretty obvious these guys have written nothing in the past week, just as it’s obvious Joe did nothing about trying to pick up one of the books we decided upon.
“The house doesn’t even have electricity right now,” he says, of his home on the west side, which he almost has paid off but is trying to sell.
“Hey, I would just like to say that I am the guy who officially took Pluto out of the textbooks today,” Nathan announces – his job at McGraw Hill is to edit textbooks, a process much simpler than it used to be.
“What, downgrading it from a planet to a dwarf planet?” I surmise.
“Yeah,” he nods.
“So there will always be only those eight planets now…..,” I note.
“Right. They’ve found something like a hundred and fifty dwarf planets but….”
“Just in our solar system?” I exclaim.
“Yeah, just in our solar system. There’s like a hundred and fifty dwarf planets, you have Pluto and Xena and Ceres, which they’ve known about forever, and a whole slew of others – and they’ll keep finding more – but yeah, just the eight planet planets. That’s all there’ll ever be.”
“Man,” I shake my head, “they just don’t make em like that anymore.”
“That’s right, they don’t make em like that anymore,” he laughs.
A pretty pointless meeting, as they all tend to be anymore. A couple of flyers he hands out for upcoming parties, but that’s it. Still, if they accomplish nothing, I at least continue to take these arbitrary deadlines serious, and intend to have a story ready by Oct 1 – which I suppose is reason enough alone to continue attending these “writer’s club” meetings, continue thinking of them as such.
But it also happens to be an interesting chat session, as far as philosophy, religion, science, travel, and girls is concerned, so I suppose this has its value, too. Though I would prefer to meet in the coffee shop, which at least holds the promise of interacting with other individuals, and a much more interesting atmosphere, to boot.
And for the first time tonight, it occurs to me to try and ride my bike out King to where it ends into Cambridge, which meanders out of Arlington and crosses Riverside becoming Trabue, then up Dublin to Scioto Darby which enters Hilliard and becomes Leap and shortly thereafter leads to my complex. Takes about the same amount of time, I guess, but was much more boring – and harder to see, with no headlight – and has much less of a shoulder for me to ride on (tail light broke) to escape these lunatic drivers. So I don’t much care for it.
September 16
coming home from Oats making awesome time for once, got out early and cruising, and wouldn’t you know it I suffer a back tire blowout. Barely 1/4 of the way home at this point. Have to walk the bike to the school on Eastcleft, then lock it up against a tree there and continue the rest of the way on foot – nothing I can do about the bike at this hour.
September 17
and so walking to Target, then walking to Oats (considerably late getting here, of course); tonight I must walk the bike home, but the reason I decided to split it up was a) well, to split it up and b) because Sundays I get off an hour earlier at Oats, thus work an hour less, as well as theoretically get home an hour earlier and an hour more of sleep. So the ordeal of walking home the bike tonight, yes.
September 20
I am indestructible.
Alarm clock starts ringing at 5:35am, I roll out of bed at 6:02. Leave house around 6:30, half hour bike ride to Oats. Work 3 plus hours there, half hour bike ride to Bob’s. Work 8 hours there, ride to library on High, then to Skully’s. Drink 7 Rolling Rocks there work slide show while watching the Handshake. Start riding bike home suffer blowout park bike at bike shop a block away, handily, it is 1:01am UDF closing right as I walk up continue to Speedway on 5th get coffee walk the rest of the way home in starry patchwork fluffy clouded night glimpse post office clock at 3:15am, as I expected I would now I sit composing these lines as well as some song lyrics I thought of on the way. Centered around this phrase “the decade of things that almost happened.”
(And now, hungry, I will make peanut butter sandwich, collapse and wake up somewhere around 8:30am to do it all over again)
September 21
Actually out of bed at 7:35 – too excited about day. Brilliant weather. Walk to catch bus, and it turns out I made the absolute correct call, time wise, getting up an hour early. Take 84 down to Kenny and Henderson, unlock bike in front of store, wheel it inside and they say they can have it ready by tomorrow morning. Then walk up to Bob’s – somehow it only takes me a half hour from the time I left the bus to get here (city blocks take up much less space than you think) and standing outside on eating patio, scan the surrounding neighborhood, spot what appear to be a stack of either Alive or The Other Paper over in front of this bar, on the sidewalk, and walking over there I confirm it is indeed Alive. Kickass! I grab five copies – my first ever published article in even a semi-noteworthy magazine/newspaper/whatever.
September 23
I wake up just after 3am and it’s raining and I lay around in bed till the time I should get up for work, decide fuck it, I’m calling off at Target – only a ten minute ride in the rain, maybe, but I really don’t feel like getting soaked in this hour: 3:51am when I make the phone call.
And I absolutely believe I made the right call. Anyone else but me would’ve cracked a long time ago under all this madness, but it barely fazes me. I stay up and watch The Crow and half of Election while flipping through a book on baseball stats, doze off on couch, wake up feeling positively energized. Ride my bike into Oats for 1:30pm shift.
One of Matt Montanya’s left field calls – reaches me at Oats – where he’s pumped up again for whatever reason about recording music. Says he just went out and dropped $200 for cymbals to go w/ that red Coda set “so it doesn’t sound like we’re playing cardboard anymore.” I ask him about dropping off our CDs at Reckless Records, though, and he says he hasn’t gotten around to it because, “the boss is out of town” and he’s “worked nine days in a row.” Though it was the first weekend in August when I made those arrangements, and he said he’d take them down there on Monday. I expected as much, however, only find it amusing; and will send out the CDs myself, though listing him as the contact should we actually sell out of them.
The plan was to go down to Frog, Bear, and Wild Boar with Maria, Michelle, and (Tony’s ex) Stephanie, but owing to some alleged shadiness, Maria is pissed off at them at the last minute and backs out. I could have gone down but am feeling like I need to absolutely make it into Target tomorrow, thus can’t risk staying out till all hours – especially not even knowing if I’d even run into those two girls down there, or how it would be received. Plan B is this party Nathan’s throwing:
For some reason everyone is being insanely nice to me today at work. I mean, literally, people I haven’t spoken to any more than once or twice in my year working there. Totally bizarre. I wonder if it’s because I’m leaving? But then again I would guarantee none of these people are aware of it. Or am I acting different? The closest comparison, the way everything in my life is falling into complete focus and place, is like may last days in Mansfield at the tail end of ‘96, when I rallied and got my act together again and had this insanely bubbly demeanor about me, so happy I was w/ the rebound, and Jessica, and what was at the time a wild new adventure for me – waiting tables – and the lease I had just signed with Damon and Alan to live in Columbus, and I knew I was leaving in a couple of months, and had a month plus in North Carolina before the move to look forward to. This feels about the same.
Emma smiles when I tickle her chin. Madison shows me some cow she drew and superglued onto a green sheet of construction paper at school (though peeling away already)(though I sit on it accidentally for much of the afternoon while holding Emma in rocking chair). Clowning around I take off my glasses, put them on again, take off my glasses, put them on again and Emma’s eyes follow me; eventually I hesitate, holding the glasses in one hand, and her eyes dart from them back to my face again and again, she’s clearly expecting me to return them to their rightful resting place. In purple outfit with some kind of cartoon kitty kat on it; fussy only momentarily – though she keeps spitting out pacifier and sticking fingers into mouth, probing, I ask “you think her teeth are bothering her (hasn’t gotten many in yet) or she likes chewing on her fingers?” and Jill says, “probably both” – but, given bottle, she slurps down most of it, then conks out like a light switch w/ just a little milk left, her head – thunk – flopping against my belly. Awakened rudely maybe fifteen minutes later when Madison starts rattling this toy. Madison trying to catch this balloon from Chuck E. Cheese – they went yesterday – that I’m hitting, then retrieving on its string, then she accidentally lets the air out and spends the rest of the time I’m here trying to refill it. Has one temper tantrum earlier herself – because Jill won’t let her play with this mat from the crib, she’s trying to build a fort with it – and is sent briefly up to her room. Jill reading magazine in easy chair, seems relieved someone’s holding Emma. Later, Emma bouncing in her mobile little chair w/ toys on a ring around it (not sure what called) and seems pretty stoked by this development. I snap two pictures of her in it, w/ Madison clutching her. Jill gives me the latest Emma pictures, at 6 months, she had professionally done.
Madison returns from her trip to her room with Teddy, excited: “do Teddy’s voice!” she requests, handing him to me – ah, a good memory. My Teddy voice is really the same voice I’d use to mimic Mr. Hanky from South Park, even down to “hi-dee-hi!” salutation.
Home from work, after visiting Emma: start sifting through Daniel’s umpteen vocal takes for the song Dirty Laundry, get them sorted out somewhat.
September 26
An unspeakably cheerful morning: riding bicycle down to Kingsdale in the sunny late morning, listening to R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction on cassette.
Edit all the different takes of one verse of Daniel’s Dirty Laundry, the one that starts, “shouldn’t have this time….” and delete all the duds, dump the keepers down onto two tracks to free up memory.
September 28
a ridiculous morning. Raining out and I keep looking at alarm clock, crawl out of bed late because I no longer give two whits about this place (Oats); though due in to open at 7, it’s past that before I leave home by bicycle, listening to cassette player, getting soaked. Shift at Wild Oats.
October 6
I drop the bike off at the Kingsdale Giant Eagle, after work, after getting off the #3 bus there. The plan is obviously to retrieve it on Tuesday morning, take it to the bike store on 5th to have the flat fixed. But meanwhile, a brutal stretch.
Walking up Fishinger listening to Come on Feel the Lemonheads. Dart over to the Arby’s on Riverside for some grub, carry it w/ me up the hill the rest of the way up Fishinger. Money in pocket and baseball games to watch and feeling that I’ve certainly earned it with this maniacal nonsense, I pop into Run of the Mill Tavern, for two Heinekens, w/ Yankees-Tigers game 3 on. Randy Johnson pitching with considerable mediocrity. I don’t get a second look, but believe Amber is sitting at the bar w/ some other dude, hair short and blonde and cloudlike curly. A couple chicks sit by me (“is this seat taken, honey?” the one asks, she works at Friday’s across the street) but I’m having one of those nights of just drinking the beer and pretending to ignore them and paying attention to nothing but the baseball game, and for this reason, even though dressed crazily in filthy hooded sweatshirt, hair sticking up all over the place, grubby work pants and beard, they – large chested flirtatious barmaid including – seem to find you more interesting, because you’re not paying attention to them. But then I’m out. And home to change, and then over to Leap N’ Lizard’s to watch the rest of the game. No girls here to speak of. Tigers win 6-0.
October 7
only been to Ci’Ao once before, and wasn’t impressed; only swung through here on my way home through desperation, though, and am so won over by the owner I think this will be a regular pit stop for me in the future….
Walking as I am, the only things keeping me going are the thoughts of beer and baseball, telling myself I’ll stop here if I can force myself forward to the next outpost. And this is the only one between work and Hilliard, really, more than an hour’s walk. I stop hoping to catch Mets-Dodgers playoff game, but even though there’s some meaningless college football spectacle on, I stay. Not really too many girls to speak of, for all the ones here are coupled off, either at the table beside me or at the small bar. But such a warm atmosphere here, and the owner – never seen before – is this middle aged nut, totally hilarious.
“I need beer,” he declares, knocks back a slug from this cup that looks like a toothbrush holder, the statement more an overall assessment of his life in general than merely talking about this specific moment. Then tells me he’s bringing out a pizza from the oven, says, “it’s the best, you’ll love it, I’m gonna get you a piece” – and by the minute updates, though I haven’t asked – and then he brings it out and it’s more like cheese bread, so light on the sauce, and really nothing exceptional but he sure is proud of it. I’m cracking up. He brings me a second piece, also on the house. And the regulars here are equally hilarious, mild mannered guys, good guys, one of them gets up from the bar every time I need another Heineken, tells the barmaid I need one, and drops it off at my table. Another pours himself gargantuan shots of vodka, two seats down.
“Can you believe this guy?” the owner says with a disbelieving smirk, jerks a thumb in his direction, “he’s tryin to kill himself.”
They close a couple hours earlier than most bars, though, even on a Saturday, and I’m out the door. The owner shouts out a thanks from this booth he’s reclining in, watching the game. I wave and tell him I’ll be back. Hysterical.
October 9
-almost 80 degrees, sunny, a beautiful day. So tired and sore from all the work and walking this weekend I don’t feel like I can make it, but after each break I’m revived enough to make it through to the next, and then I’m home w/ a 24oz Heineken and a frozen pizza, a movie I’ve rented (Lucky Number Slevin) but don’t come anywhere near making it through. Fall asleep for a few hours
-up and I walk over to the library, submit my manuscript and cover design online: a much faster process than it used to be! Email Damon, then play some chess for the first time in at least a month (I just haven’t had any time.) An hour all against this one guy, 4/0 time, and he always opens w/ queen gambit, which I almost always accept. After taking 4 of 5 I’m one win away from putting him away – by this I mean passing him in points, at which point I won’t play him anymore – but my concentration falters and I “tilt”, drop the last 5. No big deal.
-home, record a couple bass parts while listening to Daniel’s song Dirty that I think might work. If not there, then certainly somewhere else. Now writing, trying to go through this pile of stray papers and make some sense of it.
October 17
Alex cracking me up – talking about how for dinner last night his grandma (Pat) made pork chops: no seasoning whatsoever, she just threw them in a pan; and then they weren’t even cooked all the way through; and then she collected them all in a pile and poured water on them, called this “gravy.” He had one bite, told her he wasn’t really all that into pork. That woman is a complete lunatic.
No money I have to ride bike all the way down to Bob’s today. Friday is all mad money – almost $1000, with my only expense a $33 electric bill. I’m telling you, it is so amazing what I’ve been able to accomplish in the past couple of months, I’ve just really put it all together again. Well, almost. The world class hottie who is really smart and has her act totally together eludes me, heh heh. Perhaps this shall always be the case. But at least I have a complete change of scenery on the books very soon And Julie left another message, saying she’s booked the room in Key West, too.
Listening to it rain all night and this morning, dreading the ride, threw on my rain gear but it stopped right as I left the house. Still wet, but not as bad as expected. Listening to Guided By Voices (Bee Thousand) and I’m making much better time than I thought, stop and have a coffee at Oats, rocking away in cozy rocking chair by the plate glass front wall. Then on my way again, now a Beach Boys mix tape. Bizarre day in that no lunch business, but for some reason insanely bombarded at 1:30, just Rich and me – and he’s got food poisoning, leaves as soon as it’s over. And in another amazing coincidence – I don’t know how it always happens like this – but it is only when I’m at my brokest for some reason that the customers leave tips. Seriously; a rare occurrence, and yet today they drop $3 and some coin in there. I decide to pedal home instead of taking the bus, using the money on a double deuce of Heineken while I watch game 5 of the NLCS. Money well spent, I tell ya. And I finally got this here computer up and running, the Pentium 4 I bought off Kyle for $100. The old Pentium I still use for everything it runs like a champ and I’ve accomplished so much with it, I always consider it the best investment I ever made in my life, by far…..but I have a feeling this here machine (66 GB compared to a whopping 3) will easily eclipse that one, someday. If nothing else for the amazing memory we’re going to have now for our music tracks.
October 18
these days are completely uneventful, often meaningless. But a stretch I must endure, this next month, as the past couple have been – seen overhead, in relief, there is a strategy here, a game plan, and I need all three of these jobs for the time being, I need all of this. It’s just that taken day to day this stretch seems so lifeless at times, so dull. I don’t mind because it’s short term.
October 24
Or I can say the days are completely uneventful, when in reality sometimes I would kill to have one “normal” week. Nobody else has any idea how insane my days are. It’s a wonder I get anything done at all….although other times, I find myself completely in awe of how many hours there are in a day to get things done. Time seems limitless, unless you’re being lazy. Working 4-9:45 this morning at Target, to make up the hours I lost Saturday (unloading truck for the first time in weeks; me and Ricky), then ride bike down to Kingsdale shopping center to catch bus, work 11-7 at Bob but of course my back tire blows out between getting off the bus at campus and getting there. This latest tube lasted, what, a month? I swear. So then all day is spent, off and on, deciding what to do about it. I decide I really don’t feel like walking, will ride in exceedingly annoying fashion w/ back tire blown out….#5 bus caught on High then after work, deposits me off at McKinley out in the boondocks and surprisingly, annoying or not, it really doesn’t take but a few minutes longer to ride into Hilliard w/ blown out tire than it does w/ fully functioning tire. Then at library, checking emails at 8:15, printing off one cover lever to send w/ one of the two remaining galley copies I have left (out of 20) to the Other Paper for (I hope) a book review. Then home to knock off ½ of a beer, call Mom – she’s home from the hospital today – talk to Daniel some, then up to grocery store and now home to watch game 3 of the Series. See what I mean? And I’ve got notes I’ve written throughout the day on papers in my pockets, come to think of it that might ultimately be a more fitting explanation behind the nickname I acquired years ago. Always w/ these notes, everywhere. House in chaos, papers and clothes everywhere – can’t imagine how I’ll pull all this together in time for the big move. But mentally, I am certainly ready to make that change.
October 27
Halloween party at Nathan’s house. This being Columbus, flyers are of course mandatory for whatever it is you are doing. I’ve made flyers for a house party before. For this one he is also helpful enough to add a map, on the backside:
October 28
Saying to myself for awhile that I would really like to establish one completely brand new chick before leaving town, as a beachhead of sorts for my eventual returns. Elissa has already seemingly come and gone as far as that goes – she might resurface down the road, who knows, but for now is not in the mix. And following her, eh, I haven’t really done a ton about the matter in who knows how long. Maybe subconsciously because even so, I swear, I know that I seem to consistently get better results doing absolutely nothing anyway.
With this thought in mind, for example, I had decided there were three different girls at Wild Oats that I wanted to invite to tonight’s show: Erin, Jen, and Tricia. Well, I managed to ask the first two if they felt like coming out to the Cara Bar tonight. Neither of them took me up on that. Meanwhile, I never quite had an opportunity to ask Tricia…and yet she does materialize out here tonight. It’s completely bizarre.
Between Tricia and Carrie Ann and a handful of Lexington girls who look much better than they did a decade ago or whatever, it’s a very encouraging evening. Who knew all these geeky chicks from high school would turn out so hot? Like Jenny Mundy! Holy smokes! Not to mention the assorted hilarities from these clowns I hang out w/ that such developments are cushioned with.
Dan says of Laura’s playing: “I thought she did a good job…..usually a chick looks gangly playing the bass, but I thought she did alright. You know, it’s hard not to be Michael Anthony (laughs) but I thought she came up with some cool ideas.”
Dan says of Zaun’s playing: “I was really looking forward to see him because, you know, he was the wunderkind of every instrument growing up, so I just assumed he’d be better than me on drums. But I don’t know, man, I think I got him! I mean, he pretty much played along with the songs, and it fit, but to me the mark of a great drummer is you’re not just playing along with the songs, but it still sounds cool.”
-there’s an afterparty following the show. I invite the Wackerly brothers but they both just kind of nod and smirk and I can tell they have no interest in such. A sizeable mob of us do end up back at Chris and Norman’s new apartment afterwards, however.
October 29
“Jeremy! Open the door!” I hear Norman call – apparently, the door is cracked enough that he can see inside. But he’s either lost his keys or something, rattles the hell out of the door but it won’t open. “Jay-hay Mac,” I hear him giggle after a groggy Jeremy wakes up – having moved to the floor sometime in the past few hours – and lets him in. Norman starts firing up a breakfast of sausage links, eggs, and tater tots, makes a pot of coffee. “Man, I really don’t feel like breaking up with my girlfriend today,” I hear Jeremy groan to Norman, pacing around the kitchen. I can’t help but climb off the living room floor myself now, with conversation this interesting floating about.
“Got any water in the fridge?” I ask.
“No, but there’s orange juice,” Norman informs me. Grabbing that, I reach into the cupboards and I’m delighted to find an old McDonald’s glass w/ Mickey Mouse on it – it’s square shaped, but with rounded out corners – that I also too used to have.
“Man, I remember I used to have a bunch of those plastic cups from the Dream Team Olympic Basketball team from ‘92,” I recall, though in fact I actually brought these home from work and gave them all to Daniel – they were actually his collection. Norman and Jeremy affirm they too once possessed such a collection; Norman notes Jose had every single Happy Meal toy they came out w/ during his stint there at our McDonald’s.
In the living room, I’m checking out an array of model cars and planes Norman has lining the window sill. “Ooh, is that a Mustang!” Jeremy enthuses, picks it up, promptly drops the thing – a front wheel and other various pieces bust off. I start cracking up, but Norman doesn’t hear a thing. He does enter the living room now, however, bandying some piece of conversation, and Jeremy pretends to be examining the Mustang, cradled in his hands, crouched on the floor. Norman turns his back and Jeremy shoots me the finger, mouths, “fuck you!”
Norman drifts back into the room and discovers Jeremy’s broken the plastic black ‘66, but seems unconcerned. “That’s okay,” he shrugs. Now Jeremy tells some longwinded tale about his grandfather’s amazing model collection, that took up one entire bedroom, but then his grandfather died and his dad gave every last one of them w/o consulting anybody – the rest of the family was pissed. Oh, but his dad did keep one piece, “except he broke that just like I broke this.”
Stories like these I never tell, though I’ve got a million of them. I guess it’s because I’m all too aware that people forget these kind of family stories five minutes after you tell them, so I get discouraged, I find no reason to. Except it occurs to me now that telling such stories at least paint your outline in fuzzy detail, even if people don’t remember particulars; people remember outlines, they form a general picture of you. Whereas I often get the sense I never seem real to anyone, because I just float along and listen to everyone else’s stories – I mean, I discuss what we hold in common, as far as past experiences or people we know or music or girls or what have you, but never stories like this one he’s just told.
Or even general observations like the one we sit down to at the breakfast table: “Hines Ketchup!” he declares, pouring some on his plate, “believe it or not, that’s one of the few things I take a stand on, it’s my ketchup! I don’t want Hunt’s Catsup, I don’t want that Kroger brand shit….”
And then repeats the above sentences verbatim once more.
“Need a lift?” Norman’s asking me, as I pace around the apartment in my jacket, after breakfast. It’s a sunny day outside, and the first day I’ve had completely off of work in almost three months; half by accident, as I took a personal day at Target but was scheduled off completely by chance at Oats. And I like this apartment quite a bit here in the daylight, it’s very cheerful, with a view of the football field across the street, it’s very 1970s – heavy on and favorable to the oranges, browns, greens, and yellows; light colored woodwork.
“Just up to the Oats.”
“Who brought this fuckin guy heh heh heh,” Jeremy cracks, but agrees to drive me there. Norman is in at 2 but I don’t feel like waiting – it’s just now noon. “Eh, what the hell, I’m not in any hurry.”
He does live clear down in Grove City now, though, and admits as we walk out to his truck, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen when I get home.” The rest of the short drive over is eaten up by a very enlightening dissertation on his second job, which he’s just taken up again, at the same Subway he worked at on campus 9 years ago.
I thank him and pop into the store to pick up my backpack. Kyle is cooking bacon, but it’s not quite done yet. He’s shocked to hear, from me, that Eric Voss’s wife has kicked him out of the house.
A pleasant ride home by bicycle, and though I’m tired, I’m not hung over. And crazy as it sounds, just by knowing what to stay away from – mostly, this means cheap beer, and liquor that doesn’t agree with you – is three quarters if not more of the battle to not feeling like crap the next morning, on the rare nights anymore that I do go out. The fog lifts in this respect, too, because no matter how late it gets or how much I’ve had, there’s just certain things I won’t do anymore – Heineken all night at the bar, then we get back to Chris and Norman’s place and there’s five cans of Yuengling, which are quickly cashed, but even when Travis and Chris arrive w/ PBR, I refuse to touch it. Jeremy has a bottle of Southern Comfort, which everyone including me cringes at and makes him put away, unopened; but then Chris produces some Crown Royal, which I’m all for. And I feel fine today.
November 1
-it seems the secret to me is knowing when to wait, and knowing when to pounce; you can’t do one or the other all the time, it doesn’t work.
-thinking this as Michelle’s in the shower and I’m lugging stuff by hand from her old apartment (in the same complex) to the new. Sipping a beer, taking my time. I used my patented jury rigged method to at least net her three channels on the tv earlier – she was complaining she couldn’t pull in any, and won’t have cable until the 9th (?). All you need, I discovered years earlier, is a coaxial cable connected to nothing. I’ve used this myself, am currently using it to pull in 6 or 7 stations at home. You have the cable just touch the side of where you’d screw it into the tv, but you have to curve it just right so it sits there, doesn’t come dislodged every time somebody stomps his foot. Here is just pulls in three stations, but as she says, “better than nothing.”
-and then she’s driving us over to Maria’s. We pick her up, then the three of us head out to Polo’s. 17th Floor is playing, a band I haven’t seen in forever. At some point tonight Maria says she knows the whole reason for the apartment switch was so there was no chance of Tommy getting in, and Michelle doesn’t deny it. Meanwhile I can’t decide if Tommy would knock my block off if he ever bumped into me out somewhere with Michelle, or shrug and say he doesn’t give a fuck. It’s probably playing with fire. But I think she’s hot and pretty cool and basically don’t care anymore.
-then there’s Kim, an unexpected bonus. It helps to have multiple plates spinning at once, I think, and she certainly qualifies. We talk for an eternity. She’s more the type that I always seem to vibe with a lot, at least from Jill onward – short and soft, a nice body, but not too ridiculously skinny. “I like your body,” I tell her at one point, which should be fairly obvious by now. “What, fat?” she jokes. But she has lost some weight, is going to the gym, and is in this nice middle zone that I believe works to my advantage – she’s feeling confident about her current appearance, but at the same time defensive and uncertain enough. Well, at any rate, when I say “we should continue this conversation later,” she instantly writes down her number, at warp speed, and hands it to me.
-the only song I distinctly remember 17th Floor playing is Bubba Sparxxx’s Miss New Booty, which does seem apt, I suppose. And as previously noted in countless similar occasions before, do we suppose the unexpected presence of one girl makes some other girl behave better or worse? Heh? You might be surprised at the answer to that. Except not really.
November 2
Michelle gives me a ride into the Oats this morning. She says John was trying to pick her up last night, kept touching her (John and Molly both still work at Polo’s, which blows my mind.)
“You liked it,” I tell her.
“I’m not saying I didn’t…I’m just saying he kept touching me all night.”
She plays the radio the whole time, except throws on a Buck Cherry CD for just one track, Crazy Bitch. Then it’s back to the radio.
wind so fierce during my bike ride home I swear it gave me whiplash in the struggle to keep my head aloft. Came home and showered just to try and thaw out my noggin.
November 3
A pair of visits, both unexpected: Tall (non-freakout) Matt from Target, during a break in his classes, came in to say howdy, and we chatted awhile. But then not too long after that
November 8
2nd day of no work in a row, it feels great. Figures a cold threatened to overtake me yesterday, but I’m a master at fighting it off: just lay around a lot, eat a lot, drink tea and ramen noodles too, take 3-4 showers, watch movies, sleep a ton. That was yesterday. Today I feel almost 100 percent again, like that. And I suppose there are two ways of looking at these things: instead of saying “figures it would ruin my days off” I should be saying, “well, at least I had the days off instead of working.”
Today I called Heather for the first time in 4 yrs. I mean I returned one of her phone calls in the summer of ‘02, but haven’t spoken to her since. I just feel like I’m leaving town soon, man, why put off what I really feel like doing?
I’ve spent today alternately writing and cleaning out this place, and I put that old bookcase Alan gave me out by the trash. It was gone within a couple of hours, which I’m happy to see. I don’t mind giving things away, but I hate throwing them in the trash for no reason. It used to always bother me when Jill would constantly pitch things for no reason, because she’d just bought something new (also for no reason.)
November 10
I go in on my day off and work four hours at Target, come home, crash, then upon rising around noon I start cleaning house. Call Kim, who’s off today, about going out tonight, then call Kyle about happy hour. Change and shower and then I’m off on my bicycle. I try to rent a car at the place here at Mill Run, and am unable to, but it doesn’t matter: would’ve been nice, that’s it. Continue ahead into Upper Arlington, and then onward to Wild Oats.
-after that, move ahead to Kyle’s, where I arrive fifteen minutes early, at a quarter till 5. Sean’s on his way. We sit around drinking cold sake that he’s purchased for 99 cents at our store, which really has no flavor at all.
-park at North Market, walk in to have our ticket stamped. Tim is behind the counter at Bob’s, replacing me, where I replaced him. “What’s it like to be back?” I ask.
“Like crawling though hell,” he says. I thought he got his teeth fixed, but no, he hasn’t, he’s just found a way to talk around having the top two front ones busted in half.
Move ahead and say howdy to Dan. The cassoulet got a great writeup in Columbus Alive this week and I ask him if he made it that day, but he says he did not. “So close to immortality!”I lament. I’ve never had it, but he gives me some, as well as a flyer for later tonight – he’s playing drums for Kyle Sowash’s CD release party down at the Cara Bar. That other guy, the chubby kid who was always giving me free grub, too, comes over to say hi – I wish I would’ve learned his name at some point.
-at Barley’s, I have the Pale Ale, which is phenomenal, Kyle the Oatmeal Stout and Sean, who doesn’t know anything about these high end beers, drinks a pilsner at Kyle’s recommendation. Apparently liked it okay, because like us, he has a second – and at happy hour prices, these are unbelievably cheap.
-I go for an appetizer of mushrooms stuffed w/ spinach, feta, and panko breadcrumbs, drizzled w/ some kind of garlic sauce: phenomenal. Kyle has calamari (one thing cool here, you get a mix of tentacles and tubes, which most places don’t offer), though this is pretty average, flavor wise, and some wings that were supposed to be the hottest this place has to offer; I don’t try them, but neither Kyle nor Sean is impressed. Finally, our main courses, which for me is a croissant stuffed with shredded beef and cheddar and a side of green beans – once again, absolutely killer. Kyle has pierogies, Sean a turkey club.
-while waiting for our food, though, I step outside to call Kim, and tell her where we’re at. Checking my messages, I see that Heather has called – on her way to work.
-Kim eventually meets us at Brothers. Kyle is somewhat smirking to see who my date is for the evening, but my attitude is I’m leaving town soon, and no longer give a fuck who sees me with who.
-Kyle and Sean, after having a Guinness, switched to Bud or Bud Lt, and Kyle seems about half hit. Both definitely sluggish. We try playing pool at this one lopsided table – the middle one of three – but all the balls roll downhill. Never a good sight when you see paper towels wadded underneath two of the legs: seriously, what the hell is that going to accomplish? And there’s no chalk, either, because (I ask the bartender) “they’ve been stolen already, all of em, and it’s not even weekend yet.” I somehow manage to own this mockery of a pool table, though, against these two. And Sean defeats Kyle at air hockey, barely, while I wax Sean, so I guess I own this as well. Those two move on to either Sugar or Spice, one of the two bars (along with Gas Werks, and Park Street Tavern) on this same side of the street, in this same block.
-Kim and I continue to chill here at Brothers. She’s wearing heels, a black blouse, and jeans. She starts off drinking water, which is never a good sign, but says she had a few vodka & red bulls before even leaving the house. She’s a Hello Kitty nut and was in that section of the store at Meijer when we spoke earlier in the afternoon, our first conversation of the day. Now she tells me about being engaged to this guy, then moving to Indiana because she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, then he asked her to go to his grandma’s funeral and she went and it was awful because all of his relatives were asking about the wedding, if they were going to go through with it. And then she wound up back here, single.
-Kyle and Sean return, sit at a table. We’re at the bar. Kim suggests we join them, which we do, though I think she kind of digs Sean, at least initially. He’s got close cropped hair and a handsome face, wears this giant flashy diamond earring and dresses very “urban.” All the usual stuff chicks find alluring. Says nothing, though, which for some reason works if you’re a “bad” boy but not if you’re a nice guy, which Sean is. You’d think he’d be this real ladykiller but he doesn’t seem to be.
-we move onto the Lodge Bar. $5 cover. Packed to the gills, and now the interior is like a hunting lodge, and the stage is at the back end of the bar. A really bad band doing “college rock” versions of familiar songs. I was trying to pin down what exactly it is that makes all these college jam cover bands sound the same – I mean, you know that sound, but what is that sound? I think part of it is that the singer quickly establishes he’s going to “sing” every song in a conversational tone of voice, which if nothing else also keeps him, technically, from ever being out of tune. But there’s this horrible dumbing down of the music, too, which is hard to pinpoint, exactly what these elements are that always come together in the same way, to sound exactly the same. I think they definitely must be playing a bare minimum of chords, and at that always barre chords, like the shorthand version of cribbing songs, and the rhythms are always slightly slower than they’re supposed to be. Bad “shoutout” backing vocals, too, and way to many audience participation moments.
-Kim gets really animated talking about tv shows at the bar. She was knocking back Diet Cokes and Captain at Brothers, switches to a Blue Moon w/ orange slice here. We all have only one beer each.
-she’s trying to talk me into taking a more lucrative job.
-Kyle and Sean split, then we do.
-she gets a teriyaki chicken gyro w/ extra onions from this sidewalk vendor. Has trouble walking on heels, takes them off when we reach the gravel lot where she’s parked. “This is way more car than you need,” I joke, of the giant silver SUV she’s driving.
-all night, I wonder: why? What is the point of any of this? Having another one of my moments….it’s like on one hand I’m horny, which is why I called her, but on the other I don’t really care, it always seems completely ridiculous to put any effort at all into any of this. Particularly a chick you’re not even that into.
-but anyway, we make out for a minute in her car. It’s still only about 11:30, somehow, which seems borderline impossible.
-unseasonably warm for the second day in a row! 60 degrees out even at this hour…and I’m filing away every bit I can of this ride home, because for all I know, this could be my last ever, along these routes I feel I’ve known all my life. Cruising through west campus, the furthest fringe, and I’m tickled for some reason to see a bus creeping through this lot at 11:45, with somewhere between five and seven students on there – awesome.
November 14
After my shift at Target, finally get around to calling Heather back, but wake her up from sleeping. Very groggy, she groans, “cool……” but says she’ll call back.
November 15
another day off. Turns out to have been a definite blessing to have scaled back my working hours these last couple of weeks. There isn’t a whole lot to do, just tedious sorting of various rooms, boxes, etc, but it’s nice to have a leisurely pace to do this in rather than rushing around.
Up at about 8:30 today, and I ride my bike to the Starliner Diner – who knows when I’ll have another chance to eat there. Such a crazy place! I have a breakfast burrito, which comes w/ hash browns, both incredible and incredibly filling. Meanwhile, I check out the always changing room – and this is just one half. The other side, with the bar, I’ve never been in. But the food is incredibly awesome, all hilarities aside, and that’s really all that matters.
Spend a few hours in the library – now that I have the free time, this is what I’ve been doing again – and then cleaning, of course, writing (I can never seem to help myself, I run over to this word processor all the time, whenever an idea strikes me), dinner at Great China. All these strip mall Chinese places look the same, but I swear this is the best of them. Fantastic portion sizes, and everything tastes good, reasonably priced: even the vegetables are kept perfectly crispy. The menu is cracking me up, though, the way every item that has a kick to it, the first two words in the description are Hot Spicy!
November 17
Updike-ian details – drank the last can of orange pop in the fridge, been here since Jill and Madison moved out last year (there were 5 or 6 to begin with). Jill came over today and got the last of the stuff she could fit into her SUV – Madison’s play kitchen, that cedar chest, some toys. She asked about having left any dresses behind, but I confessed to having thrown a black skirt and that red dress out already. I’m pleased to note someone took the rocker, and that end table from my original ‘98 haul, the donation her parents gave to my and Alan’s apartment we had back then. The lamps, however, hit the dumpster today. I took the green recliner out last night, today the four antique kitchen chairs, the leather (or faux leather) couch, the hutch, the swinging wooden crib. Hopefully someone claims these items. I’ve got some leftover boxes and may condense, rearrange, continue going through and throwing out stuff, anything to reduce the freight.
November 18
As planned clear back in April, I walk out of Wild Oats today at about a quarter ’til 4.
-Ride my bike to Maria’s, stopping only at formerly Rock N’ Roll Sunoco for a six pack of Heineken. It’s 7-7 by the time I make it there: I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t actually fairly interested, for a change. Jamie sitting there with Maria, in OSU sweatshirt, it’s just the three of us.
“You’re sweating?” Maria marvels.
“Hell yeah, it’s warm out there,” I tell her, “once you get moving, anyway.”
“You better plan on jumping in the shower before we go out,” she says.
“Nah. Girls like the funk.”
Jamie laughs and starts singing this, to the tune of We Want the Funk.
-Miles keeps calling/we keep calling him. He says him and Sarah are on their way, then that they’ll be here at halftime, then that they’re leaving at halftime, then that they’re not coming at all. “I’m already pretty buzzed,” he concludes. Plus, he did not take tomorrow off as he had said all along he was going to.
-I figured it would prove mighty hilarious once word got out via Kyle and/or me that I told him I was doing this months ago, and he kept a lid on it the entire time. However, the comedy has burst forth much sooner than expected. Like I’m already aware that by some fluke, Mom just so happens to have called Wild Oats this afternoon, shortly after I walked out. She knows this is the best method for reaching me. It’s around 5 and they’ve already figured out I bolted, have pulled Dan Gold back there from grocery to work the department alone in my place. So he’s the one answering the phone, and tells them I just disappeared about an hour and a half ago. They think this is hysterical.
-I call Jody’s house, looking for Harold. No dice.
-Clif had his baby on Tuesday, says he can’t come.
-Maria first has to make a trip down to pick up Ryan from Hineygate, after the game. By this time (6:30), Jamie is sawing logs, having pounded a number of Bud Lt cans (he doesn’t drink much anymore) and smoking a ton of weed. I’ve killed my six pack, am drinking nothing: “I’d rather not drink anything than drink that cheap shit,” I tell Maria, when she offers Mich Amber Ultra or whatever the hell it’s called.
-Ryan has put on quite a potbelly. Is making something like $16/hr back home, though, he’s in the carpenter’s union. And that’s a huge chunk of change for that tiny hillbilly town.
-Next Tommy calls. They’d been partying this room Roy rented at the Holiday Inn on Lane, but even though there’s something like 11 people in the room with them, he says he’s bored. Maria swore all day she wasn’t going to get him, but she does. By now I’ve found a bottle of peach schnapps, am drinking that on the rocks but also watered down. Two mugs of that and I’ve killed it – was only about 1/4 full. We sit watching other college football games, Ryan and I. It’s like he never left, in a way.
-Maria has no sooner rolled in w/ Tommy that both phones start ringing off the hook: Lisa on line screaming about something so loud we can hear her across the room; Tommy answers the other – “Maria’s answering service, I’m sorry, she can’t take your call right now,” and hangs up.
December 1
Official release date for my 2nd book, One Hundred Virgins.I was furiously scrambling to squeak this out while still in town, and just barely manage to do so.
