I have flashes of Carrot Top playing me in the straight to video version of (this blog).
Another recession, another day off without a reason, without pay. I’m sitting here in a Williamsburg cafe with my laptop and I can’t help but feel like the biggest cliche ever that could easily be found amongst the archives of Stuff White People Like. The place is packed with bearded people younger than me and as of 1:07 in the afternoon, I’m counting 15 other computers around me (11 of them are Mac Power Books), which makes me assume that everyone else is also blogging about their day off. God, that’s discouraging.
@@@
A couple days ago NPR, profiled the French grocery store clerk and blogger Anna Sam who recently published a collection of her entries entitled –bear with me as I don’t speak French, The Tribulations of a Cashier. I’m sure you can take a guess at what the book’s about. Of course it’s inspiring to see someone write the humorous, insightful, observations of having a shitty, mundane job, and although some people are more successful than others, this book’s become an international best seller in 18 different countries with a sequel already out –me thinks squeezing blood out of a turnip, but whatever, at least she no longer has to check out said turnips for the rest of her life.
But insecure me has to make this all about himself again. This book was partially successful because there’s no doubt about Ms. Sam talent as a writer, but also because everyone can relate to going to the grocery store, as in they’re already familiar with its surroundings and chances are, they’ve exchanged at least three or four with a cashier more than once a week. There’s no introduction necessary. Now can you say the same thing about moving a giant canvas of Warhol’s “Last Supper” recreation in camoflauge colors up 17 flights of stairs in the middle of August because it was too big to fit in the service elevator before having to carry it back down said 17 flights without a please or thank you because the wife of the investment banker who bought it threw a giant hissy fit as it conflicted with a Chris Ofili elephant shit smeared painting on the other side of the guest bedroom? Shoot, I hope so.
Still, there’s that fine line between inspiration and jealousy because I’m a petty 12 year old who’s growing more and more resentful of the nine to five, and with good reason. As of a couple weeks ago, before layoffs that sucked the morale out of everyone who was told that we should still be lucky to have a job, everyone at my place of employment got a pay cut that I think my higher ups are hoping will inspire a mass exodus –pity no one else is hiring, otherwise we would have been more than happy to comply. Before that, a GPS was installed in every delivery single truck so our bosses can call us up every time it looks as if we’re going off route. Good times.
And where do I take my angst out on, but the Julie and Julia movie poster at my bus stop every morning. I don’t give it a dirty look because it’s another movie inspired by a blog that I would never read in the first place, but there’s that sinking feeling of only being able to achieve mediocrity while trying to be happy with it as it’s better than where I’m at right now. I have flashes of Carrot Top playing me in the straight to video version of Brooklyn Drinks and Goes Home; or maybe Chris Elliott if I’m lucky.
Maybe I should first try to keep this updated with humorous, insightful observations of my own before worrying about selling the rights and having creative control. In the meantime, this will be a nice outlet as it’s significantly cheaper than therapy and I keep telling myself that this is all research for my upcoming novel. Yep. Five long years and counting.
No one is ever old enough to hang on to their own dreams…(But) some of us are allowed to be a bit more impatient than others.
All we were told was to head over to a JFK Terminal to pick up a dozen or two painting that arrived from Moscow over the weekend. No additional details necessary as they weren’t provided in the first place, but during these hard economic times, Russian Oil Czars (who usually order from galleries in bulk) don’t need to explain themselves as they can easily go to another art trucking company who wont charge as much. From what I was told, Mookies, who have their own warehouse and trucking division around the corner from us, will be more than happy to underbid, even if it means folding a Monet in half just to fit it through someones front door (true story). Footprint on a century old Masterpiece that survived two world wars? No problem! The trucking company who only hires ex-convicts at 10 bucks an hour is still cheaper than the restoration.
My partners, Ohio Frank and Melissa were just as wary for the Anything Goes Wild, Wild West style planning of our day as we loaded our box truck with more than the usual heap of packing supplies (sheet plastic, bubble wrap, cardboard, packing tape and the very sacred soft Tyvek) and headed out for what we eventually found was not a terminal but a creepy, run down reception office on the outskirts of JFK that was no bigger than the back of our 10×10 cab, except with florescent lighting, a giant, unnecessary fish tank with one Siamese fighting fish and an older blond receptionist with a cigarette hanging from her lip. To the right was an unframed Dali collage leaning against the wall.
“Um, I don’t think it would matter to the people here if we handled this without our white gloves,” I thought out loud. Ohio Frank, who has a masters in painting and is in his third week of working here, rushed back to the truck to find some wood blocks or foam to rest the piece on. Melissa, who was quick to pick up on the laxed public smoking ban laws in no mans land, casually started to roll a cigarette.
A giant square of a Russian named Victor carefully opened the door from the back office as to not slam the doorknob into the Dali, handed me a thick list of what we’re suppose to pick up –photocopied images, price value and all. Being one of the few people at my job who doesn’t have an MA in some sort of fine art degree, I handed the list over to Melissa who more than likely has a better idea of what I’m about to put my unprotected hands on.
“Holy fucking shit,” she blurted with her thick Boston accent. “Half a fucking million.” She went on with what I guessed were a list of French Impressionists whom I didn’t recognize along with their value –or at least how much they were paid for at an auction. Amongst the 24 works she loudly announced, here’s what I recognized: “2.7 Million Renoir? Jesus Christ! A Matisse at $325,000? This fucking Dali is over 500 grand!” She quickly snuck a quick puff before putting it out on the tile floor. Victor just shrugged his shoulders, casually mentioned in a heavy accent that the rest of it was in the back office and handed me the aforementioned 8 x 12 Matisse on what looking like slightly bent Masonite, giant greasy pizza thumb on the face and all. For a half second, I envied his blissful ignorance.
@@@
Several hours of carefully lugging a private collection that averaged around five feet by five feet in height and length through a small front door, down a metal grate stairway and into the back of our truck without touching the canvases on anything around us followed. It was sort of like a real life version of Operation the board game, except it really will be your life if you scrape up the side of something worth more than what you’ll ever make in your life –at least that’s what it felt like in my head. Instead of “You’re fired and you own several million dollars to the Russian mafia,” I hear a loud buzzing sound from my grandmas living room on Christmas Eve, which instantly makes my day seem not all that bad.
Sometime around seven at night after safely noting any visible damage, wrapping the paintings airlock tight with sheets of plastic and placing them in a climate controlled room in our warehouse back in Queens, Melissa, Chad and myself finally clocked out and got supper at the local diner that’s usually reserved for payday Friday after work beers. But since we worked through lunch on a Monday, the restaurant with no name (appropriately coined “Coffee, Beer, Sandwich” according to the sign outside), became our reluctant default spot within walking distance. I got a grilled cheese with a pop, Ohio Frank ordered a Guinness and fries while Melissa got a chocolate milk and tuna melt. Too tired to talk, but at least we were happy to be working in the first place.
As we sat there with our half eaten sandwiches and empty bottles without saying a word to each other, I thought about all the people who have impractical college degrees in fine art; how they give us jobs that we never expected in a million years and how despite it all, we still hang on to our goals and dreams that get us through the day just so as long as we’re able to put off our student loan payments.
Ohio Frank comes from a long like of teachers and jack of all trade construction workers who haven’t left Toledo since his family settled there after the Civil War. After only being here in New York City with his girlfriend for six weeks (Elmhurst, Queens to be exact), he’s already saving up for an art studio nearby. Melissa was the first in her family who didn’t get sent off to war and assumes that alcohol tastes like whatever was on the breath of her parents, brothers and grandparents every single night. She simply paints in her bedroom after work.
Me? I just tell people that I’m only here for the adventure, that everything I see is all going in the novel one of these days (or in this case, the blog which from what I gather, now has two readers!). In other words, I’m trying to be content with what’s fallen into my lap, a living that’s become a life which if I’m lucky enough, will be based on a TV show based on the novel based on the blog that wont end with all the main character committing ritual Harakiri.
Hell, no one is ever old enough to hang on to their own dreams, but as we sat there in our booth in an empty diner that’s surrounded by grey, mostly empty, unlit industry with the knowledge that tomorrow would be different but just as physically demanding, some of us are allowed to be a bit more impatient than others.
(These Guys) Can Fuck Off For Inspiring a Wave of Bands Whose Only Instrumentation consists of an iMac and two Dozen Guitar Pedals.
Top Five Songs as of 07/18/09
1) The Menahan Street Band: Going The Distance
If I were ever going to make a play list of the best workout music ever, this song would be the closer (starting with Battles “Atlas” and maybe I’d include some Avail or Fuel For the Hate Game era Hot Water Music). “Going The Distance” is not a loud song with a mid-tempo pace, and it starts off with a xylophone (at least that’s what it sounds like), so it’s not completely machismo as you’re circling that final lap, but its steady build up takes you to the chorus that sounds like a victory march at your next city sponsored parade. It’s also a cover from the Rocky Soundtrack, so of course there’s a “you can do it underdog” feeling as your beat your miles-per-minute time.
2) Cock Sparrer: I Got Your Number
If street punk went the route of catchy –dare I say– pop songs with one of the catchiest chorus’ ever. I’m convinced that if Cock Sparrer weren’t associated with skinhead culture, their popularity would be somewhere between The Clash and The Jam. In all honesty, there’s not a bad song on their debut Shock Troops, that is if you got rid of the “bonus tracks” on any reissue that sounds like a bunch of throwaway Thin Lizzy tracks.
3) Guided By Voices: The King Losers
I could never put my finger on why Guided By Voices have such a blue collar feel to their music. Beer drenched sets? Proud rust best origins who never left their Dayton, Ohio home base? Occasional songs like “A Man Called Aerodynamics,” “The Official Ironman Rally Theme Song,” and, um, “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory?” For me, this song (off the very out of print and hard to find split with Superchunk) represents another side of the Midwest where one has to work with their hands: The constant ways of trying to make ends meet, knowing that you’ll never get any higher than where you are right now on the assembly line, not to mention the constant risk of layoffs. Robert Pollard is self-deprecating and celebratory. “The King Losers” are not just the palookas who help run the nuts and bolts of a manufacturing city, they are also the higher-ups, the paper pushers, the neck ties who don’t know how to change the oil on their car, yet responsible for everyone else’s well being. The lyrics, “They will let you down every time” represents everyone in the full swing of capitalism, as we’re no different from each other in the long run and we’re all going to end up in the same line when it’s over.
4) Animal Collective: My Girls
It’s so easy for me to hate this band: Noise layered upon noise layered upon noise layered upon nonsense for the sake of being unlistenable. Every year, a new round of bloggers write about how Animal Colective have finally released not only their best, but most aceeable record to date (at least since they put out Sung Tongs with their two good songs on it). Frankly, I never got it, which I guess means that I was never destined to be a music writer after all. With that said, “My Girls” is probably AC’s most accessible song to date as I can’t deny their sense of harmony no matter how annoying they try to be, appropriate placement of hand claps and not turning into an unlistenable mess as the song fades out (me thinks there’s a car commercial or three in the works). Not bad, but otherwise, these guys can fuck off for if anything, inspiring the next wave of bands whose only instrumentation consists of an iMac and two dozen guitar pedals.
5) The Pains of Being Pure At Heart: Young Adult Fiction
Worst. Band. Name. Ever. Not only will I never openly wear one of their t-shirts, but I’ll also refrain from bragging about seeing this band live unless if I’m asked. Not because I’ll feel like less of a man, I just hate saying this mouthful of a bandname. I mean, come on. Was “You Broke My Heart Barrista Girl” already taken? How about “Cardigan To Keep Your Tea Time Winter Soul Warm?” Man, I could make up bad band names that sound like they could be on Sarah Record all day. But anyway, “Young Adult Fiction” has that innocents of having a crush on a girl at your local library who wears her moms hand me down skirts while putting books back on the shelf (at least that what I gather). What I love about, um, THIS BAND is that they bring back the 80s-early 90s K/Sarah/Teen Beat/Slumberland (duh!) nastolgia without being too cutesy. Sort of like the best parts of Black Tambourine, early Velocity Girl and nowhere near the first couple of All Girl Summer Fun band releases (puke!). More importantly, this would be a great song to make out to after a second or third date. Just sayin’.
Hiatus! Well They Are Allowed, You Know!
A few years ago when I was trying to get in the good graces of an alternative weekly that in due time I would have been eventually laid off from anyway, a very drunken Listings Editor from said publication approached me at a show, asked me if I wanted to be his roommate and that our Music Editor had just been fired. Hmph. Nothing like a slurry non-sequator to start off a conversation from someone who was probably a King Cobra tall boy away from forgetting this exchange by the next morning.
“Hey, thanks. I’m happy with where I’m at, but I’ll think about it,” which was my polite way of saying, “Your bass player lives on your couch when you’re not on tour (true) and he’ll probably steel whatever’s not nailed to the floor for heroin money (eventually true).” Looking back, I don’t know if I should have felt flattered for the offer or insulted for meeting his very low standards of living. Either way, I ended up booking it to New York City while his band broke up and he relocated to San Francisco.
Anyway, a quick pause followed before a rehearsed “And that’s too bad,” in regards to our now ex-boss. In actuality, this was a long time coming as it was painfully obvious that she never used Microsoft grammar check and had the personality of a deer caught in the headlights, but I kept that all in as I knew they were good friends at the time.
As far as I know, the fired Music Editor, who now live a couple subway stops over from me, is still legitimately creeped out by my presence because I once tried to hit on her at a Mogawi show. While inebriated. In Front of her boyfriend.
I don’t know why all this came to mind other than having way too much time on a slow, slightly hungover Sunday morning. Armed with a Google search and his absurdly long, complicated last name, turns out Listing Editor is now a travel writer who’s about to embark on bike tour of Africa where I’m sure will be nowhere near as exciting as sitting in my underwear, in front of my laptop. I’d have more details on what else he’s been up to, but he wont accept my Facebook friends request for some reason. Douche.
Ah, Journalism. You cruel bitch goddess of a college major. You now rank somewhere between Creative Writing and Bowling when it comes to post-graduate employment relevance. You’ve inspired countless music blogs, college radio internships and bartenders who are looking to go back to grad school. It’s like you practically wrote, directed and starred in Kicking and Screaming –the Noah Baumbach version.
Two out of the five publications that I use to freelance for are no longer in print, one is limping along after they cancelled home deliveries and the on-line data base has been irrelevant since Wikipedia was invented.
So know we’re stuck with this, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. No editor breathing down your neck, a complete freedom to write about whatever you want, no deadline, no paycheck, no credibility, no spellcheck and extended vacations that no one noticed in the first place. Huzah for New Media 2009! Now who’s going to show me how to get Google ads on the side of this thing so I can at least have two nickles to rub together?
It’s hard to have fun with something you want to make a career out of. And when you want to make a career out of a hobby, you’ll do anything to procrastinate it.
I don’t know exactly when it started, but for as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a story teller. Even when I insisted on never reading a book for fun –which was something I didn’t actually do until I was 21, I loved telling a good story. I mean, the best feeling in the world is making a room full of people pay attention and hang on every work that comes out of my mouth and crack up at at my knock out delivery of a punchline. Problem is, I have a low, quiet monotone voice that doesn’t quite capture the attention of a room –doesn’t help that a lot of my friends have the attention span of a five year old. I have a bad habit of rambling on every detail without any point of what I was trying to say, leaving me in one of those awkward moments were a silent room stares at me blankly as they wait for why I took up 20 minutes of their time on a story about, I don’t know, being stuck in traffic. And then there’s my sense of humor whihc can described as somewhere in between Carrot Top and Sinbad.
With that said, I can confidently say that I’m a better writer than a speaker. One of the best lines of advice I ever got was actually from an old Maximum Rock ‘n Roll review for a poorly imitated Cometbus fanzine (not mine) that read how Cometbus‘ remained interesting after all these years is because Aaron Cometbus actually did interesting things –his knowledge of literature, street smarts, uncanny observations and an eccentric cast of characters around him also played a big factor in his popularity. Iggy Scam, who now goes by his real name Erick Lyle these days, didn’t have an educational background –I think he’s a high school drop out, but I could be wrong, but he’s lead a hell of an interesting life as a teenage runaway, activist, traveler, musician and constant hunger for curiosity of the world around him. Al Burian on the other hand, had a relatively stable upbringing along and is just naturally gifted writer, albeit in that neurotically over analyzing sort of way, and goddamn do I hate him for it. Still, Burn Collector is one of those rare fanzines that’s consistently good after all these years and I’m looking forward to his collection of Punk Planet/Heart AttaCk columns that’lll come out one of these years –otherwise, they’ll be lost in the vortex of out-of-print D.I.Y. publications from the mid-90s. Hell, he was the only reason why I still bought Punk Planet years after it lost its relevance.
I have no idea where this storytelling bug developed in me as no one else in my family is a writer, although I guess I do have an uncle (grandmas brother whom we haven’t seen since 1980) who self-published a book on South American politics of some sort; it’s now long out of print and last I heard, he’s a janitor somewhere in Detroit. But still, I came to the conclusion a long time ago, especially after reading Jerffery Eugenidies “Middlesex,” that I’ll never be as good of a writer as those who’ve inspired me over the years. Heck, every time I try to write something on here, I can’t help but feel like a lousy hack. It’s hard to have fun with something you want to make a career out of. And when you want to make a career out of a hobby, you’ll do anything to procrastinate it. I’m 32, I’ve been working one dead end job after another that I’ve never been fully happy with, it’s probably going to be like this for a long time and I just have to be patient. For every Jonathan Safran Foer who was 19 when he wrote “Everything is Illuminated,” there’s a Robert Frost who didn’t achieve literary recognition until he was 45. For every massively overrated Zadie Smith, there’s a John Kennedy Toole who won the Pulitzer Prize in literature for A Confederacy of Dunces 12 years after his passing.
Not that I would dare to compare myself to any of the above, and I’m sure White Teeth’s not as boring and long winded as what I’ve read while browsing through Barnes and Noble. What I’d like to do is start on a collection of dime store detective novels for inspiration, something much easier to stomach than the contemporary mystery/suspense books, or at least what I like to call “airport literature.” Hell, if Harlan Coben can be a best seller….okay, okay, let’s not get too arrogant. Start with the Chandlers, Jim Thompsons, Elmore Leonards and see where it goes from there.
“Sex and The City Without The Fabulous Cocktail Parties and a Lot More Facial Hair.”
I had actually started this blog over a year ago as a means of churning out fictional life of a New York City art handler who’s trying to make ends meet along with his three other drinking buddies with similar degrees in the arts who have to work shitty jobs in order to make ends meet while trying to attain their creative goals. Right. For anyone who knows me and what I do, I wouldn’t have to stretch that far for research, but I had it in my head as the antithesis of Sex and the City without the fabulous cocktail parties and a lot more facial hair.
Unfortunately, I’ve been sitting on this for over a year now without anything to inspire me up until a few weeks ago when it dawned on me that pretending to write a “creative non-fiction” blog through a fictional character would have seemed, I don’t know, insincere. It wouldn’t have felt right to make up the absurd of what I see through this city, this job along with the stories from those whom I’ve met over the years. Besides, blowing off steam through mad shit talking and naming names is a lot more fun than making things up.
The other important factor in said hold up (and I know you all were on the edge of your seats waiting) is that I no longer live in Brooklyn as of three weeks ago. Nothing dramatic, although I can honestly say that I officially got priced out of my neighborhood. Now I don’t know what gets under my skin more: The fact that landlords in my old neighborhood are charging over a thousand dollars a “room” in a section more polluted than the Exxon Valdez shores of Alaska circa 1989, or that the rich kids whom they cater to are renting them up in bulk. Either way, I knew my time was up when a two bedroom apartment right around the corner from my prior residence was available for $3,000 and I didn’t know how to break it to my friend that this was grand theft as she looked at me with what an exciting deal she offered me.
It’s moments like this that make Queens look like a lottery winner. Sure, the commute’s unpleasant and the isolation of not knowing anyone within several subway stops can turn one into a homebody, but the cringe worthy rent is no longer a monthly feeling along not having to share my living space –particularly the shower, with an array of creepy crawlers that I once might have inhaled one of them in my sleep a couple years ago; telling myself it was just a dream kept me from shrieking like a hysterical thirteen year-old girl.
Anyway, it is also false advertising to have “Brooklyn” in the name of a blog that’s written by a guy who now lives in the borrough next over (I thought about renaming this “Queens is The New Black,” but I didn’t want to take up another URL and branding anything “as the new black” already seems dated). “Brooklyn Drinks and Goes Home” is a very sudle nod to the one writer who got me back into reading years and years ago by the name of Ben Hamper –most famously known as the crazy guy who has a nervous breakdown in the beginning of Michael Moore’s (this was all I could find) “Roger and Me.” He also wrote “Rivethead,” which was an autobiography of growing up in Flint, Michigan under the shadow of GM before, working an assembly line, dealing with the monotony of said job (mostly through getting sloshed on his lunchbreak) and eventually having a nervous breakdown –heck, Matt Dillion was suppose to star as a more good looking version of him in the movie adaptation. These days as far as I know, he happily lives in Suttons Bay, Michigan, drinking copious amounts of rum and coke while living on some sort of GM pention, at least what’s left of it. His second book was suppose to be titled “America Drinks and Goes Home” which as far as I know, will come out sometime around never. Not that I knew this title was originally taken from a Frank Zappa song until after I registered the name, but at least to me it’s still my own personal hats off to a guy who made fascinating stories about the small world around him.
So here goes nothing: Another blog that’ll instantly lead to a book deal and an interview with Terry Gross in less than a years time. What Diaryland, Livejournal and Myspace couldn’t do, this will, right? Right!
