Routine

We’re going old school this morning, like back in the ’90s, or maybe the ’80s, in that brief window where there were writing processors but Gore hadn’t yet invented the Internet.

The only time I really get to write these days is 7 a.m., after Holden gets up, before he whacks his head on the… Hold on.

*

The Internet is down and it’s fucked up my whole morning routine.  I am a clock.  Same thing, every day.  Up at 7 a.m., start the coffee, let the chicken out, change the kid and set him on tummy time (y’know, ’cause he’s still got a flat head), then check my e-mail, blog, and sports sites.  Then write.  But a storm blew through town last night.  A good East Coast kind of storm, with the slashing wind and rain.  Might’ve even heard a little hail in there.  Knocked out the electricity and Internet.  Got light now, but can’t do my routine.

I’m not underplaying this either.  My sister came to visit me when I was still in Miami.  It was a little while after the accident so I think I was walking and stuff.  We rented this movie, The Lookout, a terrific little heist-gone-wrong flick, with an original premise.  Can’t remember the character names (and I can’t look them up because I can’t get on the Internet.  I once asked Dan Wakefield, one of my professors at FIU, who’s, like, really old, how they did research in his day.  He told me this horrific story about having to go to the New York Public Library and filling out cards and handing them to librarians and waiting a long time while these librarians took these cage elevators up to a special floor.  [Cages!]  Seriously, it sounded like a prison labor camp.  Terrifying.  If I can’t find the population of everyone named Bob in Sudan in, like, 8 seconds, I ain’t trying.  I’ll just make that shit up.  8.  8 Bobs.  Done), but the lead's played by Joseph Gorden-Levitt, that kid from Third Rock from the Sun with John Lithgow, and who’s been in some terrific movies, including this one and 500 Days of Summer, even though he’s probably gotten the most exposure for that shitfuck of a film Inception—I don’t claim to be the arbiter of good taste.  OK, maybe I do.  But Inception is a shitty fucking movie regardless and if you like it, you are wrong.  More plot holes than an undergrad/ESL writing workshop.  How the fuck did they get into your dreams?  A box.  A wire.  Plug the wire in, don’t ask any questions.  People who like that movie are the same people who claim to like classical music and Prince.  They like the idea of them.  (“I love Prince!”  Really?  Name one song that isn’t “Little Red Corvette” or “Party Like It’s 1999” or that wasn’t on the Purple Rain Soundtrack.)  Matthew Goode was also in the movie.  The Lookout, I mean, not Inception.   Anyway, the premise of The Lookout centers around Gordon-Levitt, who used to be a hot-shot hockey player in high school but has an accident and suffers brain damage, and so he has to make a list to remind himself what to do every day, like, 1.) wake up, 2.) make coffee, 3.) take shower, etc.   Because without the list, he’d forget to brush this teeth, and my sister was, like, “He sounds like you.”  Not because I have brain damage.  Well, maybe a little because of that.  But mostly, I think, because I do the same thing every day.  Now that I think about it, I should ask her what she meant…

Hey!  Internet’s back on!