Glad to be of Service

Dirty laundry, decaying newspapers,
Chinese take-out boxes, and stained sheets.
Plates stacked under the bed, glasses perched on the nearby table
teetering, waiting to tip and spill and tumble and crunch into the floorboards
“Don’t take them off,” she tells me.
She means my shoes,
and I take her advice.

We slide into bed,
cocoon inside the mess,
and push the trash against the wall.
There’s something poking sharply into my back –
a self-improvement book. “Stupid,” I think.
She takes off her skirt and her blouse and her bra
and drops her panties down past her knees and around the
rainbow painted hiking boots still laced and snug around her little feet.

She smells like cigarettes and magazine perfume and curry, but her lips are soft
and her eyes smile and dance and I can see my own goofy
face staring back: a dirty beard, sunken eyes, greasy hair
and a foolish grin and reasonably straight
whitish-yellow teeth that chatter incessantly
when I’m nervous or when I’m trying
to impress someone.
(They often chatter.)

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Mixtapes: Part 2

Of course, there are many mixtapes I’ve made over the years, and I can’t help but diving back into this topic.

So, let’s take a look at some of my Greatest Hits over the years. I have lost some of my mixes, but they were mostly shitty anyway so I’m not too worried about that.

Gangsta Grande Grillz GRIP GRIP GRIP GRIP – For most of my mixtapes, a bizarre and unnecessarily long title is usually present. This is a 51 song playlist that I made based on news there would be a way to play music at the after party of my sister’s wedding.

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Mixtapes: Part 1

My bathroom reading for the past week or so has been Cassette From My Ex which, coincidentally, was also the last new book I bought. I’ve always had a bit of a propensity for making mixtapes (for this entire piece just know I use mixtape as a synonym for playlist even though there are some differences) or lists of any kind and I purchased the book a few months before my trip to Asia. I guess I was feeling nostalgic about the past (when am I not feeling nostalgic?), and a collection of short stories about music, ex-loves, and mixtapes seemed mighty appealing.

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Hangin’ With The Homies

Today I have a sore ass.

I assume it is because yesterday I went on my first bike ride of the new year and not as a result of some sort of violent sexual assault that happened after I went to sleep last night. I was visiting some friends of mine, so you never know.

We headed to a local bar (local for them, just a bar for me) and had a drink and watched the middle-aged cover band play songs so the middle-aged crowd would have an excuse to sway their hips and lift their feet and move their elbows and hands in the rhythmic motions most commonly known as ‘dancing.’

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A Compulsion For Chaos

So, I’m supposed to start a new weekly editorial series in a couple weeks. I’ll have a platform to write just about whatever I want as long as I can somewhat relate it to film. Or, at least that’s what I’m hoping for, but it remains to be seen if that becomes reality. I have these warped ideas of what I will write about, and it is possible (read: very likely) they will all be denied and I will be forced to resort to writing the same kind of film analysis as the other “film critics” or else be kicked out entirely.

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A Scanner Darkly (2006)

6.5/10

Fear and Loathing? The good kind of insane paranoid cinematic adventure. A Scanner Darkly? Much more tedious. Druggies do love spastically talking until they fall asleep or fall into their next drug induced stupor, and while it can be entertaining for a while to watch someone unhinged from reality, it does get to be a bit grating. These people need too much care and attention and constant babying – which I thoroughly detest. I don’t want to have to baby a person who isn’t a baby or an invalid or elderly or having any good reason for needing to be babied.

We’re not necessarily even talking about just drug users who find themselves in the midst of a bad trip or partiers who find themselves retching up their dinner into a back alleyway corner or, if they’re lucky, a toilet. Let’s also throw those perennial “needy” people into the mix. The people who just can’t seem to function without your help.

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Kicking and Screaming (1995)

8.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

In honor of the college friends in Kicking and Screaming who cannot seem to move on from each other and begin their lives, let’s take roll call for my own motley bunch of loons who are my regular drinking mates and romantic misadventure confidantes. And, unlike the character’s of Baumbach’s debut, they have all (unsurprisingly) led very successful lives upon finishing college.

We tend to have the good luck/misfortune of being referred to by other people as “the guys from Africa” or “the African guys.” Africa was the name of our college house during senior year. The name could be (and often is) misconstrued as something racial, but, in actuality, we were just paying homage to a song we could all agree was awesome – the 80s hit of the same name by soft rockers Toto – and then the name stuck. Go figure.

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The Apparition

And I awake with her in my arms and the bed is soft and enveloping and the room is dark and cluttered and neither of us have any place to be so we let the hours slip by unheeded. Absentminded conversations spin in circles as I hold her and the light flitters in and around the curtains with the rising sun. She stretches out and slips her lips into mine, but I flinch and jerk back as if I had been slapped. No, no, no, I remember this and I fear it. But she just smiles and kisses me again and the pain floods through my body, oozing through every pore.

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Limitless (2011)

7/10

Yes, I know I know I know. Normally I would not be caught dead watching a fucking movie like Limitless. I reserve my “bad movies” to things that have Arnie or Sly or are reaaallly stupid, but I was researching films for my drug article. So, I needed to watch Limitless. And actually it’s not all that bad.

I am surprised. It entertained me. It surpassed expectations. It really was a breath of fresh air. It truly allowed me to experience a different experience. Sometimes, I’ll cry when I look back and realize I won’t be able to see this film for the first time again. One day I’ll kill myself and my last thought will be of Limitless. Before I go I’ll hack into the mainframe and send a copy of Limitless to the owner of every computer in the world. Because it has to be done. Earth must see Limitless.

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Jus’ Some Fools, Thas’ All

These people got no idea who they’re dealing with. There’s a madman in front of them, and they’re too stupid to recognize they’re tap dancing on the edge of a cliff. And there’s a big gust of wind that’s comin’ to blow them right off the edge.

I can tell Charlie’s starting to lose it. He’s got that distant look in his eyes as though he’s watching a movie from all the way in the back of the theater, and he’s been drooling and doing those weird head twitches too. It won’t be long now. He enjoys this shit. He likes the crazy act, the retard act, it’s all fine to him – any which way just to make them put their guard down. And when they do, it’s all over. I’ve seen it before. The guy’s a fucking mental case.

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