Sax and Violins

I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, and they complained about the upped sexual content. I apologize. I figured out what it was. My day is routine. I get up when the baby needs something (which has become nearly clockworkish), generally crash out (Though sometimes I get online for a bit), get up around 7 or 8, go take a walk to the grocery store, either buy a Diet Pepsi, or get groceries for the day (optional: take the baby with), work for a couple hours and tend to the baby, have lunch with the wife, go back to work, start fixing dinner, eat dinner with the wife, tend to the baby, watch a movie or something we Tivo'd, tend to the baby, maybe get some personal writing done, go to bed. That's been the last four months in a nutshell.

Fucking is the only variable. And then this blog entered into it. And now Aili reads it, and we're using it to get excited about sex. Or she is (note to Aili: SNAP). So o course I write about the least routine thing in my life. Of course I do.

Like a cat dunked into water

I have a couple close friends out here, but by the nature of this town, it's never very easy to see many of them, and now with the kid, near impossible. One of my oldest, Sarah, came by for dinner last night. Sarah's been in a couple of movies, and we've always been just friends, and for about two years straight every weekend we went out dancing together. She moved to LA in 2002-ish, and we've only recently reconnected after literally running into each other on the street, and so I thought I should have her over to meet the baby. After she left I got an ear full. And I guess I understand, though I've had female friends all my life, you essentially have to work together, or go to school together to enjoy a solid platonic bond. Otherwise, those sort of friendships are as Chris Rock described, situations where you wanted to date, but ended up in the friendzone. And women know that so when you have a female friend who's attractive it can bring up a lot of issues. Basically, it can make a woman feel like silver or a bronze. But Sarah and I used to work together, and it's just never been there with us. It's kind of strange, too, I can't think of any point in our relationship where I was even thinking about it. Somethimes there's a bell curve effect, where attractions wax or wane, and I can't think of that point with us, though I've known Sarah for about ten years now, so perhaps I literally can't remember.

Sarah knew what was going on and tried to roll with it, but we have a relationship, so it's easy for us to fall into paterns, and then there's my wife. She feels unattractive, doesn't like having sex with me, but sometimes forces herself to. This is easily the worst and tenderest part of our relationship right now. Four months ago, she literally couldn't get enough of my sexin', and that was a little bit awkward for me when she was superpregnant. But I soldiered on. Now it's sort of a damend if you do, damned if you don't thing. I think we both fake how tired we are sometimes. I'm still sort of imprisoned by her, because if I jerk off in the interim, she can tell by my ejaculant. I'm sure everyone wanted to know that. The funny thing is, even though the sex can be rather mechanical, I still get off. My wife can give me a half hearted blowjob, and it works every time. I could return the favor, and have and sometimes if a woman don't want to, she won't, no matter how long you go. It's such a sad comment on me. So anyway, the wife kinda hates Sarah right now, and of course she wanted to have sex last night. She was literally cursing me out in Finnish, it was angry almost scary sex, but for the first time since the baby she had an orgasm. The kind that should have woken the baby, if she wasn't literally biting a pillow (she was however shaking the bed quite a bit). And after she did, I held her as she cried for about fifteen minutes. Last night I had all the baby duties. I kind of want to ask if that was the most intense one she's ever had, but if it isn't I really don't want to know.

And so it begins.

I'm now on the IMDb

The only DVD worth buying for the next couple...

Unexpected

There is evidence that I am sexier than other people

Expected: The baby's due in a week. I haven't had a lot of time. Or sleep. There's a lot I haven't covered, The Departed, fucking in the baby's room, cutting in line while we waited for Departed (the short story, my very pregnant wife asked to sit in the lobby and then we got our pick of the seats. I told her I should get her pregnant more often after that, and then she hit me). Etc. etc. More soon.

Every part of my body is sore

I was in Portland for the weekend. I spent four days helping get my friends Heather and Scott married. I don't know how I cut my right hand (I think it was a bottle top), I know why my feet hurt (new shoes and new blisters), and I'm just generally sore and cranky. Then again, I got to bed at 3:30 last night and woke up still drunk for a morning flight, which - considering the amount of alcohol that was in my system for the last couple days - shouldn't be a surprise.

I got in on Wednesday and went to the bachelorette party. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention. I was the maid of honor. The wife was going to come, but seeing as how she's eight months pregnant she decided to skip it. I felt bad, but she had come out a couple months back. So I was to chaperone the party solo (though I wouldn't have wanted the wife to go... it'd be so bad if everyone else was getting plowed and she had to smile politely). The party consisted of going to two gay bars, the first a more mellow gay themed restaurant, the second the kind that was showing pornos on the TV's around us. I thought I would be surround by ten drunk women celebrating Heathz, but there were only four ladies, a gay man, and myself, and every single person was in a relationship. Still, you get a man drunk and all flirty, and he's happy his wife's out of town.

Thursday some of Scott's friends had arrived so we did the bachelor party. Again, two places, the first for food, the second for booze. I got to spend a lot of time with Scott's bro Joe, and I'd say we became fast friends. Friday was the rehearsal and then the dinner. If it isn't abundantly clear, I got plowed every single night. Totally enjoyed it, but I am not drinking again until the baby pops. There were numerous jokes about whether Joe and I should hold hands during the ceremony.

Saturday was the wedding. It was awesome. I got to give a toast and didn't cry, which I felt like I should have as the maid of honor. It was more fun than anything ever should be. Their gift to the groomsmen were monogrammed flasks, so I loaded Joe and I up with some Glenfiddich, and we kept passing shots to both the bride and groom - Dutch courage saves the day! But the main thing is that I love Scott and Heather very much, and them getting married (of which it has been said I was the conduit... Though that's mostly by me) is just about the greatest thing ever.

I guess I could write some other stuff about the wedding ceremony, about how for the wedding pictures I insisted I lay in yearbook pose, but Scott and Heather and two of my readers, and I just wanted to toast them again, for their friendship and for giving me the honor of being a part of the ceremony and their lives.

Have a beer

Okay. I just got a call from someone I dated briefly when I first moved to Los Angeles, nearly two years ago. She didn't know I got married. That's a fucked up conversation I just had. Time passes so quickly, five years ago the WTC went down, I was living in a basement apartment, dating someone else. I can't even think what I was doing ten years ago - probably heading to college after seeing Prince, actually (actually I just checked, I was off by a year and a couple weeks on that one). But my point is those five years have been the fastest of my life, and the last two have been crazy. But I think she wanted to do something tonight. Things ended... Okay I guess. She was heading to Colorado for some work related stuff for a couple of months, and after a couple of dates, there wasn't the connection there to keep us going with such an absence. When she got back into la there was that flurry of "we should do something" calls, and then nothing and then my wife.

The new house is great by the way. I'd say we're getting close to feeling settled.

Five years ago Autumn called me at four in the morning. She was going to see Radiohead in Germany, and the time difference was so fucked that if we were to talk at all, it was gonna be while I was sleeping. We talked briefly, but I couldn't rouse myself. Heading back to bed, I laid down and realized it was going to take some effort to get back to sleep, as by the time I got off the phone, I had woken up enough to have a conversation.

A couple hours or minutes later the phone rang again. I was slightly annoyed, honestly. Autumn wanted to tell me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I was still sleepy, and couldn't really think about the words. I tried to calm her down, but I had no real idea what was going on, as my brain was already addled from the lack of sleep, and twice being woken up in the middle of the night. And so I went back to bed. But then I couldn't get any sleep, as again I had realized what we were talking about after I got off the phone. I woke up finally to Howard Stern. Everything was nuts on air, and Crazy Cabbie was watching the WTC going down, and I tried to wrap my head around the severity of what was going on. I got up at 7, most of the worst of it had already gone down, but no one knew that, and once peope figured out what had happened and why, no one was sure what would or could come next. I drove into work as my boss (whose wife was born on 9/11) and some of my coworkers were in Los Angeles for the week.

Driving in, it felt like a ghost town. Work was useless. I called my brother repeatedly, but the lines were jammed. He didn't live anywhere near downtown New York, but it'd be a bad day for him or his future ex-wife to be in town. I finally got through later in the afternoon. Everyone was glued to the radio, the few televisions (some which were bought that day), or the computer. The computer was my vice, and information trickled in. Then at 9:45, I left the office and headed over to the Fox Tower. That day it was my job to watch the Mariah Carrey film Glitter.

We went over to the theater, and everyone was acting in that same way of just complete and utter disconnectedness. The town was quiet. You wouldn't hear much of anything. And then we went in and dutifully watched the movie. Now, I own Glitter. I haven't watched it in five years, but there it is.

The rest of the day at work was a joke. I just read message boards and looked at footage of the towers going down of the net. I went to my friend DK's house and borrowed his advance copy of Phantom of the Paradise, because I wanted something to cheer me up. I went to the nearby Fred Meyers, bought a six pack of Bass (which their scanners would often ring up for $1.25) and remember being assaulted by the rows of televisions, playing endless repeats of the towers collapsing.

By that Friday, I saw two guys in the back of a pickup holding on to an American flag hanging awkwardly out of the back of the truck. It took roughly three days for real care and concern to be turned into jingoism and a grotesque patriotism that suggested we should all be proud to be Americans, instead of maybe just lucky or humble. That weekend I also watched Armageddon and King Kong. I, at least, enjoyed the latter.

That girl who didn't know I got married... I don't think it would have worked out had she been around. I think she knew it too. It just never got to bloom, so I don't know. But she did like being spanked, and that just did nothing for me. Nothing at all.

In Absentia

Look, I'm moving. I work, I've got a pregnant wife. The blog has taken the hit. Went to a baptism yesterday with some of the biggest movie geeks in the world. IN THE WORLD. So people were arguing over Superman Returns and the Pirates gross as a kid was getting dunked in holy oil and stuff. The wife is a grumblecake most of the time, but she's got that pregnant glow thing going on. Crazy. End of the month-ish we'll be in a new home. And yet it doesn't feel permanent. We just could do the apartment dwelling kid raising thing. A little more space, a lot more down payment. Kid stuff. I don't even want to talk about it here. It gets to be all consuming.

The taint is the body's Rhode Island.

I once fucked a girl who had a shamrock shaved into her pubes. Must have been a Celtics fan.

Celeb Sightings

The best of the last couple was seeing Kenneth Johnson of THE SHIELD a couple days after the finale of Season 5, but I just saw Jennifer Love Hewitt on Franklin in front of Birds. What does it matter? Nothing. There you go.

State of the Union Undressed

- Home again, Home Again Jiggedy Jig: My drive to work is broken into four parts, with those four parts emphasized on the way home. The first is the leg from work to Olive, the second on Olive to the end of the Warner Brothers lot, the next from WB to the 101, and the last leg from 101 to home. Usually the first two parts are the quickest. Sometimes I get lucky and it's only a 20-25 minute drive (as it is on the way in) other days it's 40, though generally not much longer. Of late the soundtrack to my driving has been You Forgot it in People, but this week has seen some Nick Cave, Radiohead, Explosions in the Sky and The Stooges in the mix.

- I'm Dirt: Speaking of The Stooges , I've been listening to a lot of Fun House lately. It's such a sexy album. It should be noted that Iggy Pop (aka James Osterberg) came from Michigan, and he was inspired by the industrial noises around him at the time. It's interesting to think that the two of the most influential sounds of all time (Iggy and the Motown sound) were born in of all places Michigan. On some level I see a parallel between the two. Listening to Fun House, the paramount of Iggy's career, is like listening to hard passionate sex. "Ooh, I've been hurt / And I don't care / Ooh, I've been hurt /And I don't care / Cause I'm burning inside/ I'm just a dreaming this life / And do you feel it? Said do you feel it when you touch me? Said do you feel it when you touch me?"

- "The undefined ennui" Life is weird right now. As I guess it should be. I've been working steady for over two months now, and I've been in Los Angeles for seven months (a little over the day). The thing I had to accept about the move is that, unlike Portland, it would take a long while to be in the position I was in in Portland: Surrounded by friends, and well connected. Here I have friends, but they're spread out, and not as oft brought together. In Portland I was well liked, here I'm forced to make new friends, and have to essentially audition more. That's the fun of it, though. But, in the move, I had to admit certain things to myself and one of them was that it would probably be a while before I met someone that might be worth considering dating. Though there have been brief flickers here and there, momentary chemistries, the move proved me right, and as I have spent some time struggling to know the city and its locales, I have yet to get to a place that has put me in the right sort of contact. Added to that is that this town is big on money and power, two things I have in relative short supply (I hope to move to a town where one's knowledge of Howard Hawks makes you a God among men), and yet anyone I meet I'd hope wouldn't find me attractive for those things. Though things are looking way up, my circle of friends doesn't include a lot of those opportunities, and even though I'm an incredibly picky dater, it's nice to even have the illusion of an almost relationship to draw upon. As I look back, there's usually someone that if I'm not dating, that I'm circling. Mixed in with it is that my schedule is usually ass backwards, Monday through Thursday night I generally either don't get home until 9 or 10, or get home briefly and get back by 10 or later, whereas my weekends tend to be more open (which has been good as it gives me the time to write, which I always have things to write about).

The big thing is, as I realized while conceptualizing this blog entree, was that life is filled with contradictions, and it's best to just shut up. When you're in a relationship you want to be single. When you're single, you want to be with someone. When you're out sometimes you want to be home, when you're home, you want to be out. As Renton said, I guess the best cure is heroin.

A reflection of my current mood

I have been driving around listening to the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack, generally just listening to track one, and then hitting replay. Normally I am a happy and content person, but today was not a normal day, one filled with a slight sense of melancholy. But my problems are the problems of all people at all times, so I can't report they revolve around anything more than just being in a funk. Though perhaps it's because my mother just got back from visiting her father's grave. As I have essayed previous, he's a man she never knew or met. He died in World War II and left her a war orphan. And she returned home today to her Jack Russell Terrier and otherwise empty house. My father lives in a veteran's home and has for the last couple of years due to the multiple minor strokes he had. And I now no longer live anywhere close to my mom. For much of my adult life, I've had a rough time with my mother, she (like a lot of single children) has some entitlement issues, though my brother has had it worse with her. But over the last two years or so, with my father living as he does, I feel much closer to my mother, and I feel for her. She was worried when she began dating again that my bro and I would be weirded out as she hasn't divorced my father (at this point it would simply be rude), but I've always been supportive, though she's had a run of bad luck with that. More than anything she never wanted to end up alone like her own mother (who spent her elder years living alone in a house in San Diego until she was too old to be left alone and then shipped up to Portland to live in a nursing facility until she died), but that is what fate has provided her, for now. I hope things improve, and I know she has had a rough but powerful week dealing with the memory of her father. Doing something she had to do, but something that couldn't close any wounds.

Like my mom, most of my adult friends have their father issues. Some have dead fathers, others with absentees or fuck ups. I can't think of too many male friends who have talked about their fathers and don't have some onus revolving around their paternal relationships. My entire generation grew up under the (Phil) specter (hair) of divorce, though admittedly, none had it as bad as my neighbors growing up. Their parents divorced around 1984-ish, and the father moved out to Northwest Portland. Being friends I would sometimes sleep over during their weekends with their father, and do some skateboarding around the NW area (I was never a very good skater, sadly, though my brother became a master and still skates). About four years later their father developed cancer, even though he was a jogger, never a smoker, and in good shape. We saw him sporadically as he went through chemo because they thought it was cancer, and maybe it was. If I recall correctly he died in 1988 or 1989, it was before we moved. Still friends with the neighbors (though our friendship, as a later move proved, had more to do with proximity than anything else), my family went to the funeral.

At the time gay was a word used to describe something lame, faggot another word to which to describe someone doing something lame. They were contextless beyond their power to shock. Conceptually, I had no real awareness of homosexuality as more than just something described and a vague awareness of the beginnings of AIDS... hell at that point I don't even think I knew what lesbianism was, though I knew our next door neighbors were two women who lived together, and neither looked like they were husband hunters. I knew something was up with them, but I couldn't put my finger on it. But never had alarm bells rang more clearly than at that funeral. To see so many men. Men with mustaches. Men who didn't come off as 100% manly. Seeing so many of them crying over my friend's father's grave, I knew something was up. The funeral had no real effect on me, I had no emotional attachment to their dad, though he had a pinball game in his basement and I thought that was pretty cool. At the time, I felt sort of bad about being more attuned to the oddness of the event than any sense of grief, but by the time I was fourteen or fifteen (or shit, maybe even the evening of) I put the pieces together. Like a lot of things from childhood, you might not have the name of it, but you know what it is.

I once wrote a line about how sometimes you write things to bury them, and I probably stole that idea from Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood For Love, but unfortunately sometimes I write to purge my emotional state of being, whether that mood is goofy or this. At least you get the free prize with every blog reading. That prize: Cold Sores.

Yes, these are bruises from Flirting. I am enlightened.

The first rule of flirt club is: you don't talk about flirting.
The second rule of flirt club is: you don't talk about flirting.
The third rule is: when someone says "I have a boyfriend" or goes limp, the flirt is over.
Fourth rule is: Flirting goes on as long as it has to.

After those I'm getting bored with the whole flirt/fight thing. This week has been DOMINATED with flirting and flirt talk, or at least those stories have been the most interesting elements of my week. And I should say talking about flirting can become flirting in it's own way. For instance Monday not only did I hear tell of a coworker who was nearly raped into a relationship - he's a successful enough dude that people seemingly are trying to hook it up, but he's also older than I am and the women in his circle have the ticking timebomb baby clock action (note to self, there's an action movie premise in there somewhere) - but I had a guy, whom I've seen around a couple of times, proselytize me with the Leykis spiel. "Dating is a percentage game blah blah blah I tell a girl what we're going to do blah blah blah I took three girls home from this location blah blah blah." On top of that another coworker was (and I guess is) having "relationship issues" and complained that she can't flirt (though she does) and still feel good in her relationship, but that's another thing where this person is obviously younger than me and is thinking about marriage vs. their still half full bag of oats to sow. Somehow, and I'm not saying this like it's a bad thing, I'm a magnet for this stuff. As a writer I soak this stuff up like sock.

To a certain extent this all culminated last night at poker, where not only did I win some change, but I talked to a girl for a while who was giving out much of her personal history, covering religion and exes. It seems that she's a Catholic, and only likes dating Catholics. And she's looking for a man. In Hollywood. Who's honest. Good luck to you, lady. Maybe I could hook her her up with the Leykis fan.

"You've Got a Good Geek Cool Going For You."

I had a girl say that to me a while back (and subsequently stuck it into a screenplay I wrote. I had forgotten that it had been said to me until a friend read the screenplay and said "I would have thought that line sounded odd if I hadn't heard someone say it to you" and then I remembered that it had happened to me. One of those weird moments of life theft and having someone tell you something that happened to you).

No, that's not the whole point of this entry, today is the opening day of RotS, and I had to swing by the Arclight to see if I could get the group I'm going with dinner reservations (the Arclight has a bar and restaurant, to which we planned to get sloshed at). Yesterday two of my coworkers wore Star Wars T-Shirts, one for A New Hope, the other a Sith (he bought a poster and got the shirt, as I understand). Both wore theirs because they felt they couldn't wear them for the next couple weeks, or possibly ever again. The explanation given was the same as in High Fidelity "Don't be that guy wearing the Band T-shirt at their concert. Don't be that guy." So they wanted to show their allegiance without embarrassing themselves. As I went in to the Arclight, there were numerous people dressed in Jedi robes. Not even really good robes, either, but like cloth cut into robes (snobbery in my geek derision). I had to grab a picture on my cell phone, four of em, playing with plastic lightsabers, with another guy dressed as a Trekkie just cause, and a Princess Leia circa ANH. All I could do was laugh.

I guess, and this goes with anything - though I was less spiteful towards the LOTR dressers when I saw all three films back to back to back for the one day marathon - I have a certain amount of contempt for people who dress up for a movie that they haven't seen yet and don't know how it'll be. I guess they're saying they've drank the Kool-aid, but I can imagine nothing sadder, nor more amusing than the thought of one of those dudes strolling out of the screening, sitting down on the corner of the curb and bemoaning the waste of his time, if not his life. Perhaps people of this nature are so pre-sold that the movie cannot be bad, because they can rejigger whatever they see to meet or best their expectations. If that is the case, then what's the point of actually watching the movie?

But, and here's the meat of my point, which I've been meting out, am I a geek still? I mean you enter my place, and it's covered in posters, ahem, framed original one sheets. And little genre stuff, all things considered, though I do have a frame ESB in my kitchen. My place is crammed full of DVD's and books and magazines, with many of those books and magazines cinema centric. I think you can find Andrew Sarris's Auteur guide above my toilet, and a copy of Paulie Kael's Taking it All In a couple feet away. By all definitions of previous that makes me fanatical about movies.

And, to take it even more personal, I was an awkward adolescent. The films that turned me on as a youth were things like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Aliens, the Star Wars films, The Nightmare on Elm St. Films. When I was 14 I bought a laserdisc player. Though I was too large an individual to attract any bullying (I'm 6'3"-6"4" now, and probably was about six foot by the time I was 15), and though never one to hang in geek circles (I didn't play D&D, or anything like that) I spent much of my time in high school biding my time and watching movies. I had friends, but I was more passionate about the films I was watching, and couldn't really share with my peers. But it wasn't until college that I really blossomed out of that shell.

So, okay awkward adolescence, and movie posters on his apartment wall, check, what else? I worked at a video store, could probably recite the majority of Holy Grail verbatim (or at least used to, I haven't been able to sit through the film for a very long tim), and have a large collection of cinema centric T-Shirts and memorabilia (a bar of Soap from Fight Club, etc).

But there's a bunch of catches. I work in the film business and have done so since 99. It's my job. I have had sex, and have had it with multiple partners. I do not live anywhere near the vicinity of my parent's basement, and haven't lived at home since I was 22 when I spent three months doing the no rent thing after college. I can and like to dance; evidence points to me having rhythm. Most of the movie T-shirts and memorabilia I own is because I got it as part of working in the business. I probably wouldn't have half the collection of DVD's that I do if I hadn't gotten a lot of them through my critic work. I guess I've fulfilled the geek dream by turning my passion into my business. I am paid to be involved with movies.

And I look at a lot of my friends, and you know what? They would fall under the auspices of the same geek stigma. Two of my friends (a guy and a girl who are living together) actually played some D&D not so long ago, and both come home from work, crack beers and have been known to play Everquest into the long hours of the night. They are also attractive people, or that is to say, other than the guy wearing glasses (if that itself is a sign of geekery... who's to say), you'd have no idea they were geeks. Other friends in this geek range are married and have (a) kid(s). I know guys who fit under the qualifications of geekery and get laid all the time. Whatever the bad or socially akward stigmas attached to geekery cannot be attached to my friends. And one of the more interesting developments in geekery is that for a while now there are decidedly femme geeks who are not round and splotchy. Much like how my friends who could be labeled geeks are not round and splotchy. Just as I can say for myself that I am not round and splotchy.

But I look at those guys in their poorly made robes and I think to myself that they are dorks. But I would easily brand myself a dork. I just have limits of dorkery. You get me going, and I can rant as long as Knock Off's running time about how great a movie it is (91 minutes, I could do it). I guess, and this is no shock, that there is a class system in dorks/geeks/nerds.

But at some point I think a new label needs to be developed to describe this phenomenon, of the functional dork, the dorks who have no problem meeting members of the opposite (ir in some cases same) sex. Because it's not that I'm a geek dilettante, but there are some elements of this passion that I feel wholly removed from. It's the 21st century, and the world needs to meditate on the nature of geekdom, and all its facets. Then again, I've surrounded myself with the likeminded. Perhaps a regular Joe sees me wearing my Hulk T-Shirt and Kill Bill Vol.2 jacket and thinks "Look, a geek... I bet that guy thinks he's cool, or something." That though ties up my point. There is geek cool. This isn't a contradictory thing, even though (by some definitition of geekery) it should be.