Speculation

Pretty big news with Facebook going public.  I was texting with my friend Big Tom, asking him what he thought about it in terms of an investment opportunity.  Don't have that many friends I can talk about possibly purchasing stock options with.  Not even totally sure how it all works, the stock market, bears, bulls and all that, but Facebook (despite my wife's assertion) doesn't seem to be going anywhere (heathen).  I once dated a girl whose father watched Jim Cramer's Mad Money religiously, and that's how he traded, where he got his stock tips and advice.  Jim Cramer said buy, he bought.  Jim Cramer said sell, he sold.  I used to think this Jim Cramer must know something, since my ex's dad owned his own house and traveled a lot.  Then came the crash, and Cramer didn't look so smart.  There was that whole feud with Jon Stewart, which went on for a while.  To Cramer's credit he went on the Daily Show, and Stewart was pretty merciless.  Brutal, really.  Not as bad as the new asshole Stewart tore Tucker Carlson, but you almost had to feel bad for Jim Cramer that night.  He's just a dude with a TV show, who likes to have a little fun with over-the-top shenanigans.  Then again, if you took him too seriously, he might've cost you your house.  But who's fault is that?  (I think my ex's dad kept his house.  Can't say for sure.  We broke up before that.)

I don't do this on my own, investing; I have a guy for that.  It's fun to speculate though, play with money and try to gauge the market, like a real growed up.  We're not talking that much money, but I think I'd like to buy some shares of the FB. Spend enough time on the goddamn thing; I feel like I should be getting paid.

When I was done texting with Tom, I wrote, "Did you ever think all those years ago we'd be talking about stocks?"  To which he replied, quite cleverly, "Yeah.  Chicken stock."

This never ceases to trip me out.  Not just my having cleaned up and joined the ranks of the responsible, but the whole transition, space, time, geography, all of it. Like a character crossing over from one sitcom to another, different program, new network and time.  Was there.  Now here.  "The part of Joe is now being played by..."  I mean, there I was one night, I was just a normal guy.  And there I was the next night, and goddamn, I was still just a normal guy...

There would've been no reason for Big Tom to think we'd ever be talking about stocks, or about anything ever again.  Last time I'd seen Tom I'd attacked him from across the room for not giving me $13.  I'll never forget what he said after he pinned me to the floor (I was smaller then).

"Here," he said, thrusting the $13 in crumpled bills into my hands.  "I had no idea you needed it so bad."

It wasn't a compliment or even a kindly act.  It was pure pity bestowed upon the wretched.  I'd had no claim to that money other than I knew he had it, and I needed it to get high.  He didn't owe me, or promise to "help me out."  He had it.  I needed it.  Therefore, I decreed it should be mine, by whatever means necessary.  Christ, I'm lucky the guy even takes my calls now (let alone plays bass in the band, man).

When I came back to San Francisco after getting my Master's down in Miami, Rich and I had gone to see this drummer I know play up at the Grant and Green.  I moved back and was living with Rich, who, understandably, was skeptical.  I mean, the last time I lived with Rich hadn't gone so well.  Rich would later confess that he was worried some of "the old gang" might be hanging around.  Which seems funny in retrospect, since I don't think a single friend came to his house when I lived there. Simply put, I didn't know anyone anymore.  It had been years since I lived in SF. There were still friends spread over the city and surrounding towns, but there was no hero's welcome.  Taking a break from the show at the Grant and Green, we grabbed a coffee at Cafe Trieste and I ran into Big Tom.  First time I'd seen him since attacking him for 13 fucking dollars.  At least 10 years had gone by.  Where did the time go?

The reoccurring theme this week, hell most weeks, has been nostalgia.  I was talking the other day about how any time looks brighter through the lens of retrospection. I'd like to issue a caveat to that and say, not this time.

My shrink, Doctor Harold Goldberg (doesn't that just sound like a psychiatrist's name?), says I have nothing to feel guilty about.  Of course, I pay him to say that, or at least to make me feel better about myself.  When I run down the list of all the rotten things I did to the people I loved, he says that's nothing unusual; it's pretty typical addict behavior.  Maybe.  But it doesn't make it right, nor does it absolve me of shouldering the appropriate amount of guilt.  I need to carry some of it.  I don't think I bear an unreasonable burden.  But I do shoulder the hurt I am owed.

Anhedonia

"What's it mean?"

"It means you don't derive pleasure from anything," says the Doc.

"That's what I got."

*

Been trying to put a finger on that one for a while.  Or more accurately, how do I answer...the question.  The one that comes after I do something stupid and someone's face twists up like they've just smelled a terrific fart, and they invariably say, "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Now I have my answer.  "I have anhedonia, mutherfucker.  Back the fuck off.  It's, like, an ailment."

Everyone wants to believe his or her problems are unique, that he/she is special.  Or to quote Gordon Gano, "How can I explain personal pain?" 

In my case, I can explain personal pain with a new word I learned today.  Although, I should've known that one already, since I am an "English guy," and when the Doc explained it, I felt like a fucktard.  

"You know 'hedonism,' right?" he said, "and that 'an' means 'non'?  Anhedonia."

Really sounds like the name of a prog metal band, or a crappy Ayn Rand novel. "He wanted to built a freeway on the back of a poor man.  They called it a violation of human rights.  He called it progress.  The posthumous novel by one of the biggest asshole writers of all time.  The eternally boring Ayn Rand.  Anhedonia." Either way, I was glad to know I wasn't just a mopey teenager who turned into a miserable adult.  I am a survivor of anhedonia.  Makes me a goddamn hero, really.  Funny the power of a definition.

Of course, when you're talking about mental illness, we're not exactly dealing with an exact science, are we?  For one, I'm not even sure I believe in that term.  Like calling addiction a "disease."  Convenient.  Just not sure I buy it.  Maybe it's a little too convenient.  Could just be an asshole, right?  Plus, it smacks of victimhood, and no one likes a victim.  Maybe if you are the victim of a bombing or something like that, an attack by a feral ferret maybe.  But not when your main gripe is being sad.

That's what anhedonia means, in essence, being sad.  I remember being in rehab.  It was, like, my 16th trip.  Or maybe it was the 15th.  I don't know the exact number. I do know it was the time I shaved my head because I was afraid I was going to go bald (a reoccurring fear), and so I shaved my head, just to see if I could pull it off if worse came to worse.  If "worse came to worse" didn't mean, "What if I can't get clean this time and have to back to living in a shooting gallery and eating dead mice."  No, my biggest fear was what if I go bald and lose my pretty.  (Fortunately for me, I soon learned, I have a very pleasantly shaped head.)

So I'm sitting on the smoking porch, because that's all you do in rehab: smoke cigarettes and eat candy (and, yes, that is where I got the name for this blog. Actually, I named the blog after the second chapter in my memoir.  Which is how I picked up girls in rehab, by offering them candy and cigarettes.  Junkie girls crave the sugar, and everyone is poor as shit and always mooching smokes.  I, however, always made sure to walk in with a carton of Camels and several bags of Skittles). And it's probably 6 a.m., which is when the smoking porch would open, and I was always out there at 6 a.m., because I could never sleep and used to chain-smoke like a bastard.  And I remember this little old cleaning lady comes out to sweep and dump the ashtrays, and we get to talking, and I must've been bitching, because that is what I do, only in there it's worse, because I am in rehab, without drugs, and now I look like a bald man.  And the finches are chirping with the rising run, and the cleaning lady says, "Don't you wake up just happy to hear these birds?"  And, I'm like, "Fuck no, I don't wake up happy to hear any birds.  Why the fuck would I care about any birds?"  

It took a while.  But I realize the cleaning lady was right.   I don't mean to say I ever wake up happy to hear any fucking birds.  But it is about gleaning satisfaction from the everyday and mundane.  Because that's pretty much all we've got to work with. Very few days are carnivals.  Which is good.  Because I hate loud noises and bright colors.  But I'll tell what I do wake up to, which makes me far happier than any birds ever could.  My boy.  I wake up every morning, early, to my boy crying in his crib, and I go to get him, and even though I am tried as shit and cursing under my breath because it's still dark and I don't know when it happened, when it became an unspoken understanding that Justine gets to sleep in and I have to get up, but I still usually do some goofy entrance to his room, like knocking first or swinging the door open and jumping in because it makes Holden laugh, and he's got this adorable little laugh.  I change him, give him a couple belly farts (because that is what dads do.  Belly farts.  Throw the kid in the air.  Two dad tricks.  You want to be a father, you learn these tricks).  And since it's so early, my screwy brain isn't firing on all cylinders yet, isn't yet able to undermine amelioration, sabotage my best efforts and remind me of something embarrassing I said to a pretty girl in the 7th grade or convince me I am dying of tongue cancer.  Just me and my kid.  And he's smiling at me with big eyes, trusting that I will protect him, and I feel like somebody good.  It's the best part of my day.

*

We all need labels.  Like, Tim Tebow: Superwinner, or Ayn Rand: Fascist Douchy Shitty Writer.  It helps us define our lives, compartmentalize, saves time.

I don't know what the technical term is for why I seem to have a tough time leaving the house or interacting in public, why I don't seem to elicit much satisfaction from the things others seem to get a bang out of, like going a party or to a dinner with more than two people.  Asshole.  Anhedonia.  Doesn't really matter, does it?  They are just words, which we assign meaning to anyway.  And those definitions, like who we are, are always changing.  

A Slight Discomfort

Planned on devoting today's entire post to the worst of 2011.  But in a year in which I got pretty much everything I could possibly want, what's left to bitch about?  Only one thing, the same thing I've been beating you over the head with every chance I get (publishers, are you listening?), the book deal, made doubly frustrating for having successfully scaled that first hurdle, the landing of the agent, as well as making inroads into the second, i.e., impressing certain editors, only to ultimately come up short.  Like dating Talia Shire in Rocky if you aren't Rocky... But what can you do?  I still have a full head of hair and am really really good looking.  I'll survive.

And as far as bad art of 2011, there is only one piece I feel the need to single out. Inception.  Hands fucking down worst movie I saw all year.  Here is my initial review: http://tinyurl.com/3fovefr, in case you missed it.  I recently tried watching it again, thinking maybe I just had my period or something.  I made it through about 7 minutes.  What a bunch of phony baloney nonsense.  Worse than the most overwrought undergrad film major's thesis.  The people who think Inception is a good film are the same people who claim to like classical music and jazz. Classical music is boring, and jazz is the genre of fear.

 

*

I have a hard time with depression.  Not as in "I struggle with it."  I do, but I mean "struggle" more like it's sort of a pussy ailment.  

"What's wrong?"

"I'm sad."

(Pause) "Well stop...doing that, and eat something."

Who the fuck isn't sad?  After childhood, it's just a fact of life.

Most days, I don't really think about it, or if I do, I am feeling so otherwise, that I broach the subject in theory, and it's casually dismissed, like having once been scared of roller coasters or bee stings.  When it returns, full-throttle, it comes with that added shame of having been so bowled over by a mere feeling.  I survived ten years shooting dope on the street, and a high-speed motorcycle crash without a helmet, and now I can't get out of bed because...I'm sad?  Makes me want to kick my own ass.

When I was a kid, Mike Piskorski broke my leg.  I was nine.  We were playing one-on-one tackle football in his backyard.  The game wasn't going last longer than a couple plays if you think about it.  But I broke my femur on the opening kickoff, snapped the fucker right by the acetabulum, the same acetabulum, by the way, that I'd snap off almost 30 years later in that motorcycle accident.  Mike's dad later told my parents that usually after an accident like that between two boys horse-playing he would've just lifted the kid up and said to shake it off, but something told him not to do it this time.  Which is good, because that probably would've fucking hurt.  But that's what I feel like when the depression hits.  Like I should just be able to lift myself up and say shake it off.  Except I know I can't.

Jesus Christ, I sound like Debra Morgan http://tinyurl.com/7lqx8es.

I know there are people who read this blog who have the same problem, and maybe they are empathizing, even thinking that speaking up about depression takes some kind of courage.  But there are probably an equal number of my friends who'll tell me to stop complaining that my vagina hurts (that's always a funny joke), and I agree more with that second camp, even though it's not in my best interest, like poor people in Mississippi voting Republican.  And I really do sorta hate myself for not being tougher on days like yesterday, which was a wasted, worthless day, in which I walked around like an extra on the set of the Walking Dead.  As I post this today, even though I am writing it yesterday (blows your mind, doesn't it?), I am fairly certain the darkness will be gone, and everything will be fine again, and I'll be left wondering what the goddamn big deal was.

There is no tangible enemy with which to do battle.

Nothing you can see, put your finger on.  You are not recovering from a tragedy, the death of a loved one, a horrific accident (like, say, fighting someone from a depressed position on Mustafar).  You are fighting a...phantom menace.  Sorry.  But you are largely fighting something unseen, undefined.  If you have depression, this is pretty much the conversation you can expect.

(Enter Sad Eyes.)

"What's wrong?"

"I'm depressed."

"About what?"

When I got out of the hospital after the accident,  I had concrete goals.  Get out of the wheelchair.  Stop using the walker.  Lose the crutches.  Walk.  I would go to the gym on crutches, and I'd work very hard to get back what I lost.  It was easy, really. One, I'm a gym rat, and two, I could measure progress.

I suppose I should take solace in the progress.  It's not as easily measured as with the physical, but I've made strides in the last 30-some-odd years.  I'm not sure exactly when the switch tripped.  Somewhere around 16, I think.  A day just came where everything got a little...darker.  Back then, it wasn't hours or days; I'd be mired in a serious funk for months, cutting myself off from everybody, holed up in my room with a crippling ennui and scrambled porn.  When I went back to my 20th high school reunion, no one remembered me that way.  They all said I was a quiet kid, so who knows how you project yourself?

At 41, what used to be an albatross, is now a mere bump, a minor annoyance, a slight discomfort.

We often forget how we get from Point A to B.  At least I do.  But that might be because of all the methamphetamine I did.  Watching Holden, who at one and a half is mesmerized by a paper towel cardboard ring, I find myself trying to retrace steps. I once asked my friend and former professor Dan Wakefield, who is, like, seventy-something, what he sees when he looks in the mirror.  He said he still sees a 16-year-old boy.  Which is what I sorta figured. Since I do too.  Maybe I should be grateful for the reminder, the common thread that ties this to that.  Y'know, like stardust and atoms and all that shit.

So many elements come in and out of our lives; I guess it isn't the worst thing to carry a permanent companion around.  Like a tumor.  A benign, moderately sized, but not altogether unpleasant tumor.

Never mind.  I'm going to eat some rare steak and then go lift really really heavy things.

Exceptional

I've done my best this NFL season to refrain from commenting (too much) on my fantasy football team.  And it hasn't been easy.  If the majority of my female readership eschews entries about real sports, how are they going to react to posts about make-believe ones?

Still, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, after a long, hard-fought, grueling and extremely lucky fantasy year, I didn't at least mention in passing that my team, the Angry Pirates, won this year's MFL (Meathead Football League) Title.  (If you would like to know where I got the inspiration for my team name, you can find it at the urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com.)  I'll spare you the details, how a last-minute garbage TD by Darren Sproles cut my lead to less than a point and almost ended the dream until, thankfully (and rather inexplicably), Atlanta Falcons head coach Mike Smith pulled Matt Ryan with less than two minutes left, thus ensuring my minuscule 1.7 margin of victory.

And now, like Tim Tebow, I would like to take a moment to thank God.  Since my team sucked serious balls for most of the year, with my first two picks, Mike Vick and Peyton Hillis, woefully underperforming, and my #3, Rashard Mendenhall, getting traded three games in.  I was the serious beneficiary of Divine intervention most of the year (primarily in the form of sweet-ass scheduling).

(I'd also like to take a moment apologize to Tim, since clearly God was too busy helping my fantasy team win this weekend to prevent his atrocious 4 INT game.)

And now for all my hard work and luck, here is what I won:

Yeah.  That's right.  All mine.  Try not to piss yourself with envy.  

*

Can't say I am not a lucky man.  Some would call it "blessed," and I'd be counted among those who would (http://tinyurl.com/3lgj97r).  This extends far beyond sports.  In fact, when it comes to sports I am generally rather unlucky, at least in terms of the teams I follow.  Yes, I am a fan of the Yankees, far and away the most successful professional team in sports.  Except that I was born in 1970, so I barely remember 1978 and Bucky (Fucking) Dent driving the splintered bat handle into the heart of Red Sox Nation.  I came of age in the '80s, when hair metal ruled the musical landscape, the closest thing to online porn was early morning aerobic programs, and the Yankees were the most successful 2nd place team of the decade. When the Yankees returned to prominence again in the '90s, I was a junkie and watching the baseball wasn't on the activity schedule at the local soup kitchen. (Besides, I would've pawned any working TV anyway.)

In football I followed the 49ers, but again, my timing was off and I got to that party late.  I only became a diehard fan after moving to SF, when Steve Young took over for Joe Montana (and I still maintain, in terms of pure quarterbacking prowess, Young was the superior signal caller).  I guess I was more a fan of Young than the 49ers.  In fact, I don't think the term "man crush" would be out of line.  I remember being in rehab down in LA when I found out Steve Young was retiring.  I immediately checked out, hitched it to 5th and Spring and got high.  (Then again, it's not like I needed a lot of excuses back then.  "Chicken for dinner?  Again? Where's my needle and spoon?!  That's it!  I'm outta here!!)

My entire life has been marked by a certain exceptional quality.  I don't mean that I, myself, am exceptional, except in the same "we are all special, let's make hand turkeys" Kindergarten sort of way.  I am quite ordinary in most regards, clichéd even (http://tinyurl.com/6qhjb9g).  (I mean, take away the searing intellect and wit, movie star good looks, and charming personality, and what have you got left?)  When I say "exceptional," I am talking quite literally.  As in having them made for me.

I don't think it's hyperbole to say I should've died, or gone to prison, or gotten stuck living in Miami.  (Not sure which of those three is the worst.)  If I were more psychotic, I might even be able to believe I've been spared for some greater purpose.  But my medication is finally under control, and I no longer believe I might be Jesus (and for the record, I never believed I was as much as I never had any reliable evidence I wasn't).  Still, as this year, by far my most successful and enjoyable (even without the book deal), comes to a close, I probably should acknowledge these blessings.  Because you never know when all that good luck and fortune might be taken away...

(The far better image option would've been the Far Side classic: "I used to be an important person...until someone said, 'Hey, he's just a cockroach.'"  But I can't find it online.)

In the end, I guess we're all just chasing something in the night...

The Flip Side of Joe Campbell

Had to leave my house Saturday night.  No way around it.  It was another chapter of Lip Service West (http://www.lipservicewest.com/), and I produce the fucking thing, so, yeah, kinda had to be there. The event itself went well, another eclectic round of talented readers, with heartbreaking and hilarious stories about cell phones, douche-bag dates, hunting down a past, and of course rehabilitated junkies, a staple of the series.  That's a bit of a joke.  But not really.  I give preference to ex-addicts, because I know firsthand how tough a road that is to come back from.  It's a story I think needs to be told. Not in an "Oh, I used to be so crazy" kind of way.  More like, it's always possible to find good things inside yourself no matter how dark nights get.

It's not so much I hate people or being out in public.  I mean, it's hardly my favorite thing.  But it's not the people part so much.  It's just that any time I am out in the crowd, forced to carry on conversations with an actual human instead of with myself or a keyboard, I become painfully self-consciously of how socially awkward I am.  Of course, other's can't see what's inside you; I just don't have the best poker face.

Ain't what I'd call a good time.  It's work.

I have a lot of friends who still smoke pot.  I don't smoke pot, obviously.  And even if I could still do drugs, I sure as shit wouldn't be smoking pot.  Not unless I want to feel like everyone is staring at me, thinking how stupid and ugly I am.  Pot is like the Mask; it exaggerates what you already are.  And me, I'm one neurotic mutherfucker.

  

Not sure what makes a person neurotic.  I know a lot of neurotic people.  And it's not quite as cute a condition as Woody Allen makes it seem.  It's draining. Exhauting.  No, I don't expect sympathy.  Neurosis is not high up on the Poor Fucking Me meter.  It's easily dismissed.

"I'm feeling anxious."

"About what?"

"Nothing, really.  Just, y'know, anxious."

Pause.  "Well, knock it off."

My former father-in-law (wife #1, the wife I loved, not the other one) used to frequently tell her these awful stories of burn victims and shit.  He was a nice guy, my father-in-law. My ex-wife was depressed, kinda screwed up.  My father-in-law was trying to say, "Hey, you don't have it too bad.  Look at this poor guy."  It became a running joke with me, long after she was gone, when I'd be hanging with Tom Pitts at the Donut Church, broke, sick, festered with sores.  I'd say to Tom, "Hey, could be worse.  Could be a burn victim."

Saturday night I was surrounded by my friends, supporters, other artists and writers who seem to genuinely like me, with whom I share a common interest and bond, and every conversation I'm having, I'm hoping ends; I just want to get out of there before I say something stupid.  It's a tremendous pressure to perform all the time.

I feel like a child in the Victorian Age.  I should be seen, not heard.

This aversion to being out in public is hardly unique.  Long before Gretta Garbo, some people were just accepted as being jerks.  I heard a comedian do this bit once. "Nowadays, everyone's got some psychiatric diagnosis.  OCD.  Bi-polar. Agoraphobia.  In the old days, you were just an asshole.  'Hey, what's wrong with Bob?'  'Oh, him?  He's just an asshole.'"  Maybe I am just an asshole.

Still, one would think that hanging out with a bunch of your closest friends would be an occasion for celebration and not cause for such anxiety.  One would think. And I am not even talking about the getting up on stage and introducing people part.  Which I've learned to fake enough, sort of like when I give a reading and memorize my piece beforehand, and then stare down at the paper I hold in my hand (dramatic pause, make eye contact, pretend to read).

When I was a younger man, of course, there was the naive belief that this nervousness would pass.  Like my balls dropping, it was just going to happen when the time came.  I spend a lot of time trying to isolate the source of this agitation.  It's like a hobby.  Which I share with my shrink.  I am pretty sure underlying it all is a perceived slight.  Which reminds me of this poem by Tony Hoagland, which is just part of a poem, which I am probably misreading.

"I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies."

Except who is doing the slighting?  Nobody.  It's not real.  It goes back to not getting picked for dodge ball or losing to Wilbur Buggerschmidt in the third-grade science fair, deep-seated shit you can't tackle on your own, which is why you are forced to leave your house high in the hills once a week, travel across town, down to the flats, and pay someone to listen as you try to recall your dreams for 45 minutes ("I don't remember, Doc.  But it was pretty scary, and I think it had something to do with...pancakes.)

Which reminds me of something my friend Matt told me he'd once heard.  "When you're in your 20s, you care what other people think about you.  When you are in your 40s, you don't care what other people think about you.  And when you are in your 60s?  You realize they were never thinking about you."

The fight I carry on, like most wackadoodles, is with myself.  I don't have enemies. None that I know of, none that I give a shit about.  There are probably people who don't like me a whole lot.  Maybe.  I don't know why they wouldn't.  I'm pretty funny and charming in short bursts.  No, this skeevy need that spurs me on to prove the world wrong is entirely self-constructed.  I am the one who is ugly on the inside (just so long as I am not ugly on the outside.  I'd rather be dead and good looking than emotionally grounded and look like Chad Kreoger). 

   

It's like Joe Campbell said (Joe Campbell the author, not Joe Campbell who went to Berlin High.  Then again, maybe he said it too.  We weren't really friends): we are all the hero of our own story.  (At least I think that's what he said.)  And I think it's true.  But sometimes we are the villain too.  

Dropping Hats

Order of Sunday morning status updates across my various social networks:


8:26 a.m.: I am so sick of mental illness (double entendre intended).


8:28 a.m.: "The easiest way to get a reputation is go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter." F. Scott Fitzgerald


8:34 a.m.: Yeah, I'm done going "outside the fold and shouting as a dangerous radical." Holden just said, "Love Dada," and my heart melted. I have been tamed. Where's my 401K?


*


I received some distressing news in the mail on Saturday afternoon.  Not going to go into it much, except to say it was legal in nature (in the broadest sense of the word) and related to my anxiety condition, triggering a massive panic attack.  I get these attacks fairly regularly.  Usually they are health-related (various cancers, etc.), sometimes they event-based, but they always suck.  I can't overstate how bad they suck.  Nor can I adequately explain, logically, something that is brought about by something so often illogical.  


It's funny the amount of sympathy I receive(d) over the motorcycle accident. When I was laid up in Miami with the shattered pelvis, broken back, collapsed lung, etc., hooked up to the medicine machines and pump, everyone came to visit.  They brought gourmet, homemade meals and they stayed long, asked if I needed anything, and they kept coming back.  Their faces betrayed genuine ethos, pathos, and fuck, why not?--logos.  Because most of these friends were in grad school with me.  And I appreciated it; don't get me wrong. Nothing like seeing how much you mean to other people when you've almost died.  But the truth is, I'd take a lifetime of chronic physical pain over the mental stuff. (Fortunately, for me, I don't have to choose.  I get both.)


It's easy to see, regarding the sympathy factor I mean, why the physical trumps the emotional.  You can see a broken leg; you can't see a screwy brain.  I remember watching this comedian do a bit, and he was, like, "These days, everyone's bipolar, or they got ADD or OCD, or they got borderline personality disorder, dissociative disorder, whatever, but it used to be people were just assholes. You'd be like 'What's wrong with Bart?'  And someone would say, 'Bart?  Oh, he's just an asshole.'"  


I get sick of it too, everyone's whining about some psychological ailment.  You see someone's who's always depressed and whinging about not being happy, and it's like this Cracked article: http://www.cracked.com/article_19376_5-scientific-reasons-your-idea-happiness-wrong.html.  Which I agree with, wholeheartedly.  In theory.  So I get even more disgusted with myself when I fall victim to the same faulty, touchy-feely mindset.  I read what I've written above, and I think, What's wrong with that guy?  Oh, him? He's just an asshole.   


But I do panic.  Can't help it.  I have a severe anxiety disorder.  I see doctors for it.  Receive medication for it.  It's the real deal.  And when it is at bay, I look around and wonder what the fuck I was so worried about...  Until the next one strikes.


So I got upsetting news in the mail, and it was very foggy outside, the new house in the SF fogstream, and I became convinced "they" were taking away my money, my house, my wife, my son, and I was going to either end up A.) in prison, or B.) back under the bridge.  Which is where these attacks always go. Because I lived like a hobo in the '90s.  Entirely my fault, mental issues or not. I was a jackass.  I did very bad things.  I got what I deserved.  I know that.  But we got out.  Or rather, some of us did.  Some of the others shot themselves, went mad, took sleeping pills and put plastic bags over their heads.  Some went to jail.  Some disappeared.  But a surprisingly high number of us got out. Which always begs the question: why me?  Why was I so lucky?  When will God realize his oversight and ask for the payback?  Anyway, that should address Status Update# 1.


Then about six minutes later I thought of the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, one of my favorites, and a life-path I followed to a T.  All the trouble I caused, which precipitated this unique brand of survivor's guilt, it was just another cliche in a lifetime full of them.  Even these posts I write now, I'm a goddamn phony.  I went outside the fold, shook an angry young man's fist at an invisible enemy, and as soon as the danger became real I crawled back to the shelter, tired of being cold and hungry, taking solace in the loving arms of the same world I railed against and spat on.  


Status No. 2.


Then my son said he loved me for the first time.


I know, I know, Ol' Mr. Stumpy.  Put the sap back in the tree.  If I was subjected to such schmaltz when I was a younger man, I'd have retched, too. But I am not a younger man.  Not anymore.  I'm just a mentally ill guy, who was in the midst of a wicked panic attack, when his son decided this was the time to give his daddy a kiss and tell him he loved him.


How much fucking better does it get than that?  The answer is...None.  None more...fucking...better.  


3.


I'd gotten up early with Holden.  Or rather Justine did, because I was mired in the funk, having not slept, head not working properly.  And when she passed him off to me, I wasn't feeling any better, my mind taking me to bad places with worse fates.  It was early.  I was down.  Kids are pretty sharp, and I can't hide my emotions for shit (which is going to be a challenge raising a child, I know). But I'm typing away on my laptop, trying to salvage production at least (I work a job-job on the weekends), and he's hanging around, all snot-bubbly, because he woke up with the snot bubbles, and I'm just trying to type and he won't get off my feet.  Holden's got this new habit where he likes to watch TV standing on my feet as I sit, pinching the hell out of them.  


Then it happened.  He looked back and up at me.  I bent down, tried to smile, and said, "I love you, son."  Then he leaned over and kissed me, and said "Love Dada," in the sweetest little kid voice you ever heard.  


My mother talked about this for years, all that "nothing like the love you have for a child," and I'd be, like, Yeah, yeah, so can I borrow the $40 or not?  But Mama got the last laugh.  Like everything else, she was right about this too. Because nothing has ever come my way that made me feel like those two little words did yesterday.  The little hand on mine, the twinkle in the eye.  And hearing my son tell me he loves me.  (Anything makes you feel better than that, and I promise you it is illegal.)


Of course, I tried to get him to do it again when his mother woke up.  And he wouldn't.  He proceeded to spend the rest of the day in "little terror" mode, throwing food off the highchair, pulling the dog's ears, refusing to nap, and every time I said, "I love you, son" and would lean in for a kiss, he'd push my face away.  Or if he was holding a toy, he'd hit me with it, refusing to give me the satisfaction again.  Which made sense.  He is my boy after all.


And how many fathers have sat like I did on a Sunday morning?  The rest of the world asleep, isolated from the cold outside, sitting with your infant son on your lap, and promising not to make the same mistakes your father did with you.  Nothing but good intentions, pure and noble, implemented by the profoundly fucked up...  Saying the same things I do now: I will get it right this time.  And I promise you I will. 


Now who feels like crying with a little Cat Stevens?

Get Set Go: Ordinary World

Continuing our series of awesome bands that haven't gotten their due (http://tinyurl.com/5tgtaen), and stealing a page from my buddies at shitforfuckheads (http://shitforfuckheads.blogspot.com/) (seriously, remind me never to piss these guys off with a shitty record.  Or, rather, don't let them hear anything I did from '91 - '99.  Check out the hatchet job they do on the Stones' Dirty Work.  Hilarious.  And totally true.), I thought we'd kick off this week with Get Set Go and one of the best records you've never heard, Ordinary World.


I am "friends" with Get Set Go on Facebook, and recently, I along with all the band's other friends, received a mass (highly apologetic) e-mail message, looking for help getting their next record off the ground.  Which to me is astounding.  I have no idea how a band this good, original and irreverent, does not have a major label throwing piles of money at them to do whatever the fuck they want to do next.


You very well may've heard of Get Set Go, especially if you watch Grey's Anatomy. I don't watch the show, but thankfully my friend in Miami, C-Love, does, or did, when he heard this gem:

I don't know if this is the original clip, because like I said, I don't watch the show.  But after C-Love turned me onto this song, I had a new favorite band, as this song played on heavy rotation.  So rarely has a song so deftly captured my innermost feelings.  OK.  Not so innermost.  Never been much of a people person.  But even those of you "every day is a gift; that's why it's called 'the present'" types have surely had at least three and a half fleeting shitty minutes where "I Hate Everyone" speaks to you.


If it were just this one song, I'd chalk it up to catching lightning in a misanthrope's bottle and go listen to the Replacements some more.  But after "I Hate Everyone," I went and downloaded the album from which it came, Ordinary World, which proved to be as complete and close to perfect a record as I've ever heard.  I've listened to the band's other songs and albums, and they don't disappoint (most notably "Fuck You [I Want To]"), but I don't have time to review their entire musical catalogue.  In fact I don't have time to even give OW the shitforfuckheads treatment and go track by track.  Because Ordinary World is over 20 songs.  Yet, I am doing all a disservice not doing so. 


One of the strengths of Ordinary World is just how well-cratfted and fucking good every song is on it.  Get Set Go is basically this guy Mike TV.  I mean, he writes it all, sings it all, not that the rest of the band doesn't bring a lot to the table (I know my brother, Josh, has a huge crush on their violin player, Emily).


Anyway, like DJ Lance, let's break it down.  Here are some of my favorite tracks.


Crying Shame


There's that scene in High Fidelity where Rob, Dick and Barry are listing the Top Five Track Ones, Side Ones.  And this would be on mine.  It captures what the record is all about through an economy of language seldom heard in pop.


'Cause I don't want to get a job / I've stolen all I can rob.
I don't know how I will get by.
Something in me thinks / I've had one too many drinks.
I've spent too much time getting high.


I wrote an entire memoir trying to express this sentiment.  It took me 60,000 words; it took Mike TV a couple dozen.  There's always the musical inclination, even an unwritten rock rule to want to kick off the record (like a mixed tape) with a killer, but here's it's just an acoustic guitar and vocal, a little harmony, and it yields more despondency and heartache than Gordon Lightfoot on benzos.  True ache without wallow.  Try pulling that shit off.


Get Thru the Day


Here's the killer.  Get Set Go's greatest asset (besides lyrical acumen) are the hooks that bore into your brain and don't leave.  I am a melody guy.  For me, pop (like commercialism) is not a dirty word.  I like big, catchy choruses.  And when you can do that with some heavy guitar chugging and driving force behind it, all the better.  This song is about every addict's dilemma: trying to find a way to get through the day (tougher than it sounds).  And you don't need narcotics to be an addict.  Addiction is about yearning, still being unsatisfied long after the dregs and lees have been lapped.  Drugs, sex, cigarettes, a goddamn milkshake.  Doesn't matter.  You want more more more. And the shelf-life for satiation ain't shit.


Ordinary World


Like I said, I am highlighting choice tracks, my best of the best.  Which means I am leaving off several terrific selections like the one that comes before this, "One Hundred Locks," which could easily be the single on a billion other records. But here it's like batting only .280 with 25 HRs and 87 RBI for the Yankees; you're batting 7th.  "Ordinary World" has the feel of "Crying Shame" without sounding anything like it.  It tells the story of Peter and Mary, two world-class fuck ups, and I know it makes my brother happy because it has a violin solo. Narratives in rock are not easy.  For every "Bobbie Jean," there are a hundred "Take the Money and Run."  But through the examination of two unrealized lives, Mike TV shines an unflattering light on the bad, greasy skin of an entire generation.


I Hate Everyone


We covered this one above.  But I'll say it again.  So rarely has a song so poetically captured how I feel most every minute of most every day.


Lift Me Up


I don't know Mike TV's life story.  But I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say we've battled similar demons.  I'm basing this simply on paying attention to the lyrics and not being a dumbass.  And whether that's drugs or mental illness, which are usually the same thing anyway, I can't say, but one of the defining characteristics of both is the wildly vacillating between extremes.  You can feel elated by a really good sandwich one minute, and crushed by a parking ticket the next.


So who's going to save me tonight?  It's usually a girl.  The Smiths figured out this winning formula a while ago: pair miserable lyrics with uplifting major open chords.  Get Set Go exploit this dynamic throughout Ordinary World, and it may be blasphemy, but I'll say it anyway: I'll put what Get Set Go does as on par with the best of Morrissey and Marr (the Gods of Emo forgive me). Although "Lift Me Up" is the rare instance where both music and words strike a similar upbeat chord: 


But it's not getting me down 'cause there's a girl /
Spins my world around and it's for sure /
That every time I'm lovin' her / The world collapses under her /
And all that's left is her and me.

Not sure I believe the speaker.  Not sure he believes himself.  But the degree to which we can attain happiness in this life is often dependent upon the degree to which we can swallow our own self-prescribed bullshit. 


Murder by Millions


I saw Daniel Tosh last Thursday.  Fucking hilarious.  Nothing is off limits with Tosh.  Domestic violence.  Osama Bin Laden.  Kids with cancer.  He has this bit where he's like, "If you are one of these people who says 'There's nothing funny about blank,' we can't be friends.  Everything can be funny if the joke is written well enough."  I live in the Bay Area.  There are lots of things we aren't supposed to find funny.  Like when I take the food scraps Justine throws in the compost out of the compost and throw it in the trash just for the hell of it. Because there's nothing funny about global warming.  What I'm trying to say is we live in a sensitive world.  I try to find the joke in everything (albeit with dark, black humor) because if you don't laugh, you'll end up running out your house, screaming down the street, and so, outside of my kid, there isn't much I hold sacred (and Holden is a redhead).  This is all a long about way of saying that some people will see the humor in this song.  And for those of you who don't, we can't be friends.  Oh, and also, BEST CHORUS EVER.  Hook, catch, reel you in.


A Little More / Won't Let Her Go


Part of any album's success is contingent upon song order.  Even in this world of single digital downloads.  Because when you find a truly great (complete) record (admittedly a growing anomaly), it tells a complete story, and here the story is wanting too much, going down hard, and reaching up for those things you love and think can save you but never can.  It's about the shared sickness of the wounded.  One of Mike TV's lyrical gifts is an ability to straddle both worlds, to be both light and heavy-handed, comical and serious.  You never feel like his words are pedantic or didactic, but there is some real fucking weight to them. "A Little More" tackles alcoholism without sounding at all like it's tackling alcoholism.  Which is good.  Because (sincere) songs about alcoholism are practically impossible to pull off (notable exception, "Here Comes a Regular" by the Replacements).  "Won't Let Her Go" is every addict's love song, with the absolutely brutal opening lines:


She doesn't close the door /
As she visits the bathroom /
The sound of flushing water /
Comes a little bit too soon.


Man, I wish I wrote that.


And it gets even better when we hit the end of the song and the lament for days that ain't ever coming back ("When we were young / oh, we were young / and we were everything.")


Ouch.


Die Motherfucker Die


Having studied creative writing in a graduate program, I had the...pleasure...of reading many accomplished poets, Liz Bishop, et al, and I know Billy Collins, Robert Hass, and Sylvia Plath are good poets.  But one of my problems with grad school is I didn't give a flying fuck about "bats o'er a win'ers morn" or whatever the fuck poets talk about.  I am not saying Ted Roethke isn't a great writer, just that I don't give a shit about his subject matter.  And if I don't care what you're writing about, I can't care what you're writing about.  When I first heard "Die Motherfucker Die," I felt like Satan at the end of this Kids in the Hall clip:

At last, a song that speaks to me!  


This is rock 'n' roll.  This is poetry.  My favorite track on the record.


And here is the tune.  Learn the words and sing along.

Like I mentioned earlier, this record was on my mind because I received a message that Get Set Go, inexplicably, doesn't have a label sufficiently backing their next effort.  I normally don't get into social causes.  But this disturbs me greatly.  I see it happening more and more.  Another one of my favorite bands and singers, Brent Best of Slobberbone, recently solicited fans to buy his next record before it's finished.  Basically asking fans to send in their $10 just so he can get the damned thing recorded.  Which I did.  And I also contributed to Get Set Go's Kickstarter project.  Gladly.  Because while god-awful American Idol retreads and tone-deaf retards like Ke$ha have no expense spared, and the same goddamn Katy Perry song gets shoved down my throat daily (slowed down or sped up, it sill sucks), the fact that bands like Slobberbone/Brent Best and Get Set Go are forced to shill for themselves smacks of grave injustice.  One more reason for the motherfuckers to die.


So Candy and Cigarettes would like to do its part.  Here is the Kickstarter site where you can buy Get Set Go's next record, Fury of Your Lonely Heart, and do your part to promote the arts and be guaranteed some brilliance in return. And if you bid enough, the band just might come to your house and get drunk with you.


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/707987144/get-set-go-loves-you-so-much-we-might-explode

My Game

It doesn't take much to throw me off my game.  I had a fine plan for today as recent as last evening.  I'd printed out a copy of the Lone Palm, having recently made changes to my graduate noir novel, including (but not limited to) removing the most antiquated language and lingering details too derivative of Chandler and the 1940s, which I accomplished my (re)placing my story in a darker, alternative (modern noir) San Francisco (as opposed to a "timeless Bay Area City"), and tweaking the love story to add additional tension, and in the process adding depth to my main female character.  Michele (agent) already has a list of 10 -15 publishers we are targeting.  I also had today's blog post topic all picked out, reviewing and pitching the excellent Get Set Go and one of my favorite albums ever, Ordinary World.

Then my phone broke.

Fucking Sprint piece of shit, this like the second time it's happened in the last two months.  Now I need to drive to the Sprint Store, which throws off my routine, and without routine I am flying blind.  And it fills me with dread.  Going to the Sprint Store is as bad as shopping at Grocery Outlet, visiting the DMV, and driving in LA during rush hour, all rolled into one miserable anxiety-producing ball.  First, there are like two Sprint Stores in the whole fucking Bay Area, which means that everyone with a crappy Sprint phone in this heavily populated region crowds this ten-by-twelve store, smelling really bad, and the staff, all three of them, are usually too busy talking to their friends who've dropped by kick it or hang or whatever the fuck it is kids do.  And while I'd like to direct my ire at the Sprint store staff, I can't. Because they are probably getting paid minimum wage, and I'm lucky they even get out of bed and show up to their job at all.  Expecting someone to hop, jump and skip with a smile for $4 an hour (or whatever the fuck the new minimum wage) is a joke, and depresses the hell out of me.  No one on this planet should be making less than $50/hr., not the way this capitalist world is constructed.  But then that gets me thinking about politics, which depresses me even more, since the whole damn thing is so hopeless.

Plus, the kid has developed this new trick of squawking like a pterodactyl, an ear piercing shrill that bores in my skull like a dental drill.  Speaking of which, I need a new fucking dentist, because my old dentist is too far away, and the last time I had my teeth cleaned the hygienist was too hard on my gums, and it sent a mixed message because I care for my gums and I want to treat them well.  So I need to find a new dentist and make an appointment, which I keep putting off, much like I am putting off making a hair cutting appointment.  I can't go to a barber.  You pay $14 for a haircut, and you get a $14 haircut.  No, I have to go to a goddamn stylist, which costs a shitlot more.  But it's my hair, and who knows how much longer I'll have it?  'Cause I am almost 41, and I could go bald any minute.  And then what will I have?  Without my looks, I am just another crotchety bastard with a lousy personality who needs his hip replaced.  Because this hip has really been killing me of late.  I knew this day was coming; they told me.  But I've been able to keep up such a rigorous exercise routine, constantly moving, like a shark so I don't die, that I've been able to stave off the stiffness, the inevitable arthritic advancement.  But it was an impossible pace to keep up.  I can't run a marathon a week, lift six days a week, hit the bag, ride the bike, doing 2-a-days.  There simply isn't time.

And that's what it all comes down to: time.  Tick, tick, fucking tick.  Either speed it up.  Or slow it down.  Like a shitty Adam Sandler movie

                                                       , because it always circles back to art for me, and I can tolerate the deserving getting their due, though it kills me; it's the talentless hacks getting published all the time that eats away at me, which only causes the self-doubt to creep in, because who am I to determine who is talentless and/or deserving?  I'm just a farmboy from Connecticut.  Fuck, maybe I don't have the book deal because I am simply not good enough, never will be.  I am mediocre, commonplace.  I am American cheese and supermarket meats on Wonder Bread, slathered with Miracle Whip.

My biggest fear is that I am an Ordinary Joe.

And now the floodgates have opened, undermining everything I try to get done today: writing, music, fathering.  Even attempting any of it makes me feel like a fraud.

And all because my phone broke.

Damn you, Sprint.  Goddamn you for doing this to me.