Hi, I’m on the road right now.

I’m off to Canada, which is strange because I haven’t even been drafted. Anyways I’m not bringing the computer with me so I’ll write when I get back, which, if all goes well, will be Sunday night.

Every time I travel more than several hours away I end up pondering my own mortality. It just occurred to me that if I happen to die on the open road, this journal will stay up here forever, just like this. On the off-chance that happens I’m putting up a happy picture.

Today’s soundtrack: I was kicked in the belly today and it wasn’t fair play.
Today at 11:02pm: Doctor Mouse Jockey on the ones and twos.


What I recommend you do is this:

- Move to Manhattan
- Get a car (any car will do, doesn’t have to be anything fancy)
- Drive around in the rain while playing Esthero’s “Wish You Away.”

This track is like...a girl you’ve just seen and you can’t believe how beautiful she is, the sound of her voice, her mannerisms, everything, and you fall in love with her right away. You want to live and you want to die.

The first time I heard this song all the best and worst moments I’ve ever had in relationships suddenly came whipping across my field of vision. It was like a Sade moment except Esthero is white.

According to our friend the World Wide Web, Esthero lives in Toronto, which is where I’m headed on Thursday. If my guardian angel is reading this, please let me meet her. Have her T-bone my hatchback with her SUV or something. (Don’t kill me though.)

The Sabumnim pushed us hard today. Fingertip pushups and grueling stomach exercises and holding tortuously low stances until your legs burn and tremble. The people on either side of me gave up several times (admittedly, they’re carrying around a little more weight than I am) which made me want to continue harder.

A graceful, dark-eyed girl with a complicated South Asian name was in class today and she asked me a question I couldn’t answer. I’ve seen her move and I think she’ll pick the art up quickly.

I told you, no? Tomorrow my dojang’s having an open house at seven. Bring sweatpants.

Dammit! Walking up to the garage with a cup of deli coffee and it starts to hail. Little tiny pieces of hail are stinging my face and, more importantly, falling right into the mouthhole I ripped into my coffee lid. I didn’t think it would matter but those little pieces are like tiny ice cubes! They made my coffee cold, crazy quick.

I had to go back to work tonight to finish up some extra renderings. The benefit of the economy being in the shitter is that when you have extra work, you don’t feel sorry for yourself. Even though sometimes I like to go in the bathroom, look in the mirror and say “I can’t work like this...I don’t even know my own kids anymore.”

Anyways it was just me and the cleaning woman up until about 12:30am. If only she was forty years younger, hot and attracted to conflicted fellows dressed in brown. Put that vacuum down, hot mama! Let me sweep you off your feet and we’ll get in my...er...hatchback and I’ll take you to the best dive diner in all of Queens. They let you smoke and the pie ain’t bad.

Today’s soundtrack: No sweeping exits or offstage lines
Today at 11:02pm: Southbound and shivering.


It’s freezing out and my nose is all stuffed up, meaning I am now with only four senses.

T.R.: Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?

ME: I can’t, I’m sure it’s delicious though. Do you have any kleenex?

What a weird evening I had, I’ll get to it in a minute. The day started off un-promisingly: Rather than being awakened by my alarm at seven a.m., I was jolted into consciousness by a nightmare at six.

Had this horrible dream where witnessed my own (obviously revised) birth. It took place in dark forest during a nuclear bombing strike, I’m not sure what country I was in. I came out of the womb slightly larger than a fetus but was unable to speak.

Shit was blowing up everywhere so we had to run immediately after I came out. Like on those nature programs where a zebra gives birth to a little baby zebra, but then a tiger comes around and everyone, baby included, has to pack up and jet. Running and running and dark trees and bomb blasts and fire, then suddenly I’m in my bed in Manhattan, the room dark, the down comforter twisted into an awful mess.

I rolled over and turned on the news-radio, reassuring myself that there was no nuclear war because the traffic guy was talking about back-ups on the Gowanus. You never hear good things about the Gowanus. Whoever the Gowanus Expressway is named after must be getting a hard time of it up in heaven.


ANGEL VERRAZANO: Well well well, if it isn’t Angel Gowanus! Hey how’s that expressway of yours doing?

ANGEL GOWANUS: Shut, up. At least my shit doesn’t cost seven dollars.

ANGEL PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY: Like it matters--face it, Gowanus, you got shafted.

Despite getting up early, I fell back asleep and overslept. I got on the train 30 minutes late but was lucky enough to find a seat. Midway through the ride an elderly black woman got on and I got up to give her my seat but she refused and started reading her paper, standing. I sat back down and read her headlines.

Two of my bosses were giving me shit about how I had to stay late to finish their fucking projects. I know I was tardy. Nevertheless I couldn’t stay late today because Wendy is putting me in her latest film short/exercise and tonight I had to read opposite some women she was auditioning for my counterpart.

At 5:30 I still hadn’t finished the projects, so I told my bosses I’d come back at night and I left shortly after they did.

I get outside The Corporation and it’s already dark outside, fucking daylight savings time. You know they don’t do this shit in Japan? I dunno about Korea though.

I put headphones on and take the train home, listening to “Wild Horses” over and over again.

Back at the house I rip the suit and tie off and cover myself in brown clothing. Wish all clothes came in brown. I hurriedly eat a banana for dinner and head up to NYU.

In the studio audition space Wendy introduces me to an Asian-American actress and a bald black guy whom it turns out I know, from way back.

“Oh shit, [bald black man,]” I say. “What’s it been, five years? You look just the same.” That last line was a lie; he totally looked five years older but I didn’t know what else to say. Back then he was bald ‘cause he shaved his head; now he was bald because God or Allah shaved his head.

Basically my “role” requires me sit across a table from this woman and interact with her. After a few moments I’m supposed to get up to leave, and then we have this smoldering, staring “moment,” and then I’m supposed to stride over confidently and:

- lock eyes with her
- gently, slowly touch her cheek with one hand
- gently do the same with the other hand
- lean in and plant a big fat kiss on her.

The kiss is supposed to be interrupted, though. The second before our lips make contact she is supposed to change her mind and punch me in the chest. (What can I say, it’s not Shakespeare.)

For some bizarre reason, I wasn’t nervous. When the moment came I strode over to her like I’d spent the past two weeks waiting in a Parisian train station for her, and then I looked into her eyes, and gently cradled her face in my hands, and slowwwwly started leaning in.

I focused on her right eye, trying to keep my expression soft and not betray the fact that I was getting alarmingly close to a complete stranger, I mean in a minute I’d know what kind of toothpaste she used. I wondered if my gaze looked real or dead to her. Then our faces came within eight inches of each other and she hit me.

It was kind of a tense moment, so afterwards we laughed a little and Wendy looked at me to see if I (the non-actor) was okay to do it again. “Yeah yeah I’m fine, it’s just that this, you know, closely mirrors my real life...”

After the first actress left a second appeared and I had to do the whole thing again. A Japanese expatriate, she was much more animated and bouncy than the first, even just sitting across the table.

When it came time for our “moment,” I was surprised by how suddenly and surely she became “soft.” I don’t mean physically, I mean she just totally relaxed and created this sort of, like, inviting aura. I don’t know how to describe it.

I strode over, and did the slow-motion face-in-hands thing and leaned in super-slowly, the way Wendy had directed me to. The Japanese girl had a very different sense of timing from the first girl and she let me get super-close, way too close!

T-minus six inches.

T-minus five inches.

T-minus four inches.

T-minus three inches.

T-minus two inches.

I had no fucking idea what to do after two inches, so I parted my lips like I was really going to kiss her. On cue she screamed and buried a fist in my chest, knocking me back.

Interrupted Fake Kissing is the most bizarre thing ever. Of course you can rationalize it with your brain, but immediately after the moment you feel a bizarre mixture of relief tinged with something like guilty disappointment. At least I do because I’m not an actor. I don’t know how these people do this.

Wendy chose the second girl so I’d better get ready to do this again. You know what the funny thing is? Right now I can not for the life of me remember what either of these women looked like.

Afterwards we all went our separate ways on Waverly Place. I walked over to the garage and pulled the car out, figured I’d drive up to the office. Traffic on Park Ave was light and I fairly flew.

The Corporation was dead and dark, just me and the cleaning lady (an elderly Russian). At my desk I was sliding the mouse this way and that while cranking Frank Sinatra singing “Witchcraft” and she stuck her head into my office. Lucky for me she came in a split-second before I was about to start singing along.

I left at 10:30pm but she was still cleaning. After I got home I dropped By Mike’s studio, where he was waiting for some DJ to show up for a shoot. We talked about photography lights for forty-five and then I came home.

Today’s soundtrack: If a double-decker bus, crashes into us
Today at 8:02pm: Eating Japanese fried chicken.


I was supposed to be out in the woods camping yesterday, instead of sitting in a warm apartment in front of the technological marvel known as a laptop. Trip was canceled, done in by inclement weather and my own sneaking suspicions that freezing my ass off in the woods might be surprisingly un-fun. I hope we can go in the spring though.

Through the wall I can hear someone’s cell phone ringing, somewhere in the building. A truck slamming into the pothole outside. My coffeemaker ticking. And through the abject silence, I can distinctly hear the sound of Richard Gere’s career going nowhere.

At the restaurant the food is middling, but the atmosphere is exceedingly comfortable. I finish eating before the rest of the group and secede to the bar to have a smoke. It’s only six feet from the table, ridiculous I know, but laws are laws.

There’s a tall European woman behind the counter. It’s my second time in the restaurant and my second time seeing her. “Ah, so you’re a regular now,” she says.

“Guess so,” I say. Then I order an American coffee, hoping she’ll remember that’s my postprandial usual. Billy Joel used to sing this tragicomic song called “Big Man On Mulberry Street.” Now I’m in a restaurant on Elizabeth (two blocks from Mulberry) and the lyrics come to mind.

Lately I’ve been heedlessly maneuvering the car into social pothole after social pothole, and last week I lost my agent. October’s turning bad on me. Trying to squeeze out extra ounces of sweat in Hapkido to compensate.

By the by if you live in the New York area and have an interest in martial arts, my school is having an open house/class demo on October 30th at 7pm, open to the public. It’s on the corner of Broadway and Howard (one block above Canal) on the 2nd floor. If you’ve been thinking of joining a gym, consider this instead, you’ll never regret it. At the very least you can learn to count to ten in Korean.

Today’s soundtrack: Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away
Today at 9:02pm: Saké at Chibi’s. Sleeeepy.


I need to clone myself because I’m overcommitted. My supposedly freelance gig at The Corporation has kicked into overdrive and I’m basically there five days a week. Leaving me little time for the stuff I really want to do, like

- Trying out for another of Wendy’s short films
- Trying to get a piece into shape for a reading next month at the AAWW
- Two college gigs lined up for November, must prepare
- Need to build kitchen cabinet
- Must bring car in for servicing
- Trying to get to Hapkido three nights a week (and failing)

And what was the other thing...oh yeah, I have to learn how to cook. If I didn’t know any better I’d think my subconscious was secretly trying to poison myself with my own cooking.

So I want clones. I’m getting pretty busy and there’s all this DNA just sitting in my body doing nothing.

If I had ten clones I would send the first three to culinary schools. (French, Italian, Pan-Asian.)

Clone #4 would go to The Corporation to earn rent and steal printer paper and secretly hate my boss. Clone #5 would go to Barnes & Noble to read all day.

Clone #6 would be dedicated to doing all the shit stuff, like picking up the dry cleaning, balancing the checkbook, scrubbing the shower and waiting on lines for me. The line-waiting clone.


CLONE #6: Here, I got you tickets to “The Producers.”

ME: Thanks, but...“The Producers” isn’t even hot anymore.

CLONE #6: Well, sorry. Guess it must have slipped my mind while I was renewing your driver’s license, picking up your packages at the post office and buying more than 10 items at the grocery store.

ME: Hey...are you sassing me?

CLONE #6: I have to go. There’s a sample sale over at Prada.

ME: Wait! We can’t afford Prada!

CLONE #6: Not my problem. Talk to Clone #4.


(Moral of the story: Nothing is worse than getting sassed by a clone.)

Clone #7 would attend multiple language schools. (Korean, Italian, and either Cantonese or Mandarin.)

Clone #8 would be sent to travel the country in a Greyhound bus, looking for a mint yet affordable 1968 Pontiac GTO in some old guy’s backyard. After he got it he would drive to California blaring the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” or “Wild Horses.” Then he would drive it up the Pacific Coast Highway and, with my luck, he’d drive it over a cliff while trying to change a CD.

Clone #9 would be sent to travel the world and the seven seas, taking photographs and copious notes. (Probably I should send him with Clone #7.) He would eat lots of weird foods and listen carefully at cocktail parties and send tons of postcards.

Clone #10 would stay at home and write all day. Write, write, write. I’d let him have absinthe and psychotropic drugs and I’d hire a muse and a masseuse for him.

So with ten clones doing all the work and play, what would I be left to do?

Simple, I’d start researching how to make more clones. Even if it’s not possible I’d still have to try. Like when the genie gives you a wish and you wish for another 10,000 wishes.

Today’s soundtrack: I’ll never be, your beast of burden
Today at 9:32pm: Scarfing Tate.


Hot damn! I just ripped The Rolling Stones’ “Forty Licks.” How hot is this shit, two discs. It’s a gas gas gas.

The other night I was moseying around town looking for night shots. For some reason I wandered into Two Boots on Bleecker Street. See ‘cause my pineapple spot was out of pineapples so I got kind of discombobulated and was walking home empty-handed. I don’t remember what time it was but it was dark out, it was dark.

You know how when you play a fighting game on Playstation or whatever, each character has a “power meter” on the top of the screen that shows how much energy they have? I have a Pineapple Meter and right now it is very, very low. It’s all red, not much green left. That’s not good my friends.

So Two Boots is an atypical pizzeria. They make all sorts of weird and interesting pizzas and it’s just become one of those places where you take your friends from out of town when they ask “Hey where can we get some only-in-New-York type of food?”

I started reading their little delivery menu and was amazed and delighted to see my apartment was in the Delivery Zone. Being in the Delivery Zone is important, there was a whole episode of Seinfeld about it. Most places have a little map on the back of their takeout menu and my apartment is always off the fucking page.

So I folded it up and stuffed it in my pocket. I am improving the quality of my life, one delivery menu at a time.

Today in Hapkido my partner was this biiiiiig Asian guy. I think he’s half-Japanese and half Linebacker. Anyways he’s new and he doesn’t really know his own strength. We took turns taking each other down so now my arms are killing me. He’s the kind of big where like, if we were a cartoon he would accidentally rip my arms off and not notice and later he would walk home with my arms sticking out of his coat pockets. Motherfucker was big.

So now I have all these weird bruises on my arm. Like little cranberries under the surface of the skin. They will go away in two days and I will forget all about them, until the next time I have to work out with Asian Linebacker Guy.

When I got home from Hapkido I was so hungry I was shaking. I threw the laundry in the wash then went through my nightly ritual of agony: What to do for dinner. Do I want to eat alone, do I want to eat with people, should I cook, go out, get delivery.

Wait a sec Two Boots Two Boots! I’m in the Delivery Zone, booyakasha. Their pizzas are named after famous people and I ordered the “Larry Tate.” The “Larry Tate” is a ricotta pizza served with spinach, plum tomatoes and roasted garlic. Also the crust is so good it makes the bread at Cosi taste like stale end rinds. And for a pizza it’s remarkably non-greasy, almost healthy-tasting.

Well...I was all excited when I started writing this entry because I just finished a “Larry Tate.” But now I’ve digested it and my mood’s come back down. There are some heavier things going on besides take-out menus and bruised arms but I’m not in the mood to type it up right now.

Tonight is not a good night for dealing with Larger Issues. I think tonight is a good night for me to clean my desk and maybe shake up a few glasses of frothy orange juice. Then around 11pm I’m gonna walk over to the pineapple spot and see if these bastards have my product yet.

Today’s soundtrack:
Doot doot dootit
doot doot dootit
doooot, dooot
doooot, dooot

Today at 8:42pm: Following Harlem River Drive. Why is this shit so twisty.


Hey did you ever hear that song “Spacemoth” by Stereolab? It’s [7:35] long. I just heard it for the first time today. It’s pretty good, yeah?

Actually the beginning and middle are just okay but I really like what happens to the song around [5:20]. This thing starts happening with the harmony, I don’t know musical terms well enough to describe it, this thing. Radiohead does it, Faye Wong does it too in one of her songs. Do you know what I’m talking about? It makes me see certain colors and I feel something in my guts.

One of the weird things about working at a multinational conglomerate is that everyone refers to continents as if they’re people. i.e. “Africa really wants to move forward with this,” “Europe has been pressuring us to get the ball rolling...” and “If we don’t get this stuff to Asia by Tuesday, we can forget about...” etc.

They’re all out to get you, every last one of them. Don’t fool yourself, it’s just a matter of time. Learn to read between the lines in the meanwhile.


It is our pleasure to serve you. (But one day the shoe will be on the other foot, and when that day comes, boy are you gonna be sorry.)

While supplies last. (After our supplies run out you can go fuck yourself!)

Sorry, we’re CLOSED. (I am at home right now, drinking my face off so I can forget I have customers like you.)

Thank you for your patronage! (If there was no money changing hands here I wouldn’t have to talk to you.)

Please do not touch the display. (The truth is I’m dying for you to touch the display so I can smash your face in with this bowling trophy I keep under the counter.)

Hey so where was I. Right, Saturday night. After the reading Cia and Eggtart broke out and I had to get something to eat. I purposely avoided eating before the reading so I was starvin’ like Marvin. (I swear I didn’t make that rhyme on purpose, I hate you for thinking that.)

In the street there were all these clusters of people who had attended the reading. Some of them approached me and said nice things about the piece, which was flattering. Sometimes strangers freak me out but I feel I acted very normal. They were all in groups but I was by myself.

The thing I’ve found is this: When you perform something in public and people respond positively to it, of course you feel pleased but you also feel this peculiar unease, this weird, discomforting feeling. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know how to describe it. But I understand why famous people like movie stars surround themselves with posses and sycophants.

I walked over to Brooklyn Bagel Café on Fifth and 32nd to get some chow. Figures I’m starving in Koreatown and what do I do? Bypass all the Korean joints and go straight for the chicken sandwich.

I got my sandwich and sat on the stoop outside, trying not to spill my lettuce all over the sidewalk. I spilled some anyway because I was chewing fervently, it probably looked pretty gross.

A group of well-dressed Koreans about my age walked past and then this huge cockroach came the other way. They didn’t notice the roach; they stepped right around it and it started heading towards me, like it was going to gather up my lettuce. I finished the sandwich inside.

Stomach full of chicken I took the elevator up to the Skybar on the 14th floor. It’s small but pretty cool, a rooftop deck in the middle of Manhattan. That’s a photo of the view up above.

At the party I nursed a drink and performed the very important function of holding up the wall with my back. Got into a conversation with this cute girl from Philly. In the first few moments she made an offhandedly clever comment and I liked her right away. On the shallow side I liked her jacket and something about her eyes.

I had to leave early, though. Hapkido shoot early the next morning. I haven’t gotten to sleep in in like, three weeks. Shit is killing me.

At 9:30am on a Sunday any self-respecting agnostic should be asleep. Instead I’m completely vertical and ironing my Hapkido uniform while yawning.

By 10:15am I’m at the dojang, and the photographer is already waiting. “Thank you for arriving on time,” he says sincerely, and I’m not sure how to take that since I’m plainly fifteen minutes late.

Eventually Kendra, my designated “partner” for the shoot, arrives. The two of us get dressed and start warming up on the mats. What followed was an hour of bizarre, slow-motion Hapkido between Kendra and I, choreographed by Betty and directed by the photographer. I kept expecting him to scream “More passion more passion! Give it to me give it to me! Yes yes yes! Love it! Love it!”

While I’ve grown accustomed to grappling with women (physically, not emotionally) it’s ultra-weird in slow motion with some guy named Ari telling you to “show it to the camera.”

I was out of there by noon. Dropped the gear off at the house then spent a couple hours traipsing through Chinatown, photographing more uninteresting buildings.

Handsome Dan a/k/a Pretty Boy Floyd showed up a little after two, photo gear in tow. He set some lights and that weird umbrella-thing up in my living room, then I sat in a chair and followed directions while he shot me with a camera approximately the size of my head.

Pretty simple stuff, my only props were books and a laptop. The whole thing was relatively painless and it was over in thirty minutes. Whenever I have to hold poses my eyes get pretty watery so I’m not sure how the shots will come out. Shady comes home in the middle of the shoot and seems surprised.

Afterwards we wanna get some chow, so I call Eggtart and Cia to see what they’re up to. By coincidence they’re two blocks away (god I love this city). Tired from boy-watching, the two of them swing by to rest while Dan and I run out to pick up some Vietnamese sandwiches. Whaddaya call ‘em, banh mi so.

In due time Mike stops by with beers, and eventually Epak a/k/a Epak Chopra comes through. For an hour or two it’s seven of us sitting around in various states of repose, just shooting the shit and making perverted jokes while the sun goes down on another autumn Sunday. See it’s comfortable like this, just like this.

Today’s soundtrack:
Doot doot dootit
doot doot dootit
doooot, dooot
doooot, dooot

Today at 8:42pm: Following Harlem River Drive. Why is this shit so twisty.


Hey did you ever hear that song “Spacemoth” by Stereolab? It’s [7:35] long. I just heard it for the first time today. It’s pretty good, yeah?

Actually the beginning and middle are just okay but I really like what happens to the song around [5:20]. This thing starts happening with the harmony, I don’t know musical terms well enough to describe it, this thing. Radiohead does it, Faye Wong does it too in one of her songs. Do you know what I’m talking about? It makes me see certain colors and I feel something in my guts.

One of the weird things about working at a multinational conglomerate is that everyone refers to continents as if they’re people. i.e. “Africa really wants to move forward with this,” “Europe has been pressuring us to get the ball rolling...” and “If we don’t get this stuff to Asia by Tuesday, we can forget about...” etc.

They’re all out to get you, every last one of them. Don’t fool yourself, it’s just a matter of time. Learn to read between the lines in the meanwhile.


It is our pleasure to serve you. (But one day the shoe will be on the other foot, and when that day comes, boy are you gonna be sorry.)

While supplies last. (After our supplies run out you can go fuck yourself!)

Sorry, we’re CLOSED. (I am at home right now, drinking my face off so I can forget I have customers like you.)

Thank you for your patronage! (If there was no money changing hands here I wouldn’t have to talk to you.)

Please do not touch the display. (The truth is I’m dying for you to touch the display so I can smash your face in with this bowling trophy I keep under the counter.)

Hey so where was I. Right, Saturday night. After the reading Cia and Eggtart broke out and I had to get something to eat. I purposely avoided eating before the reading so I was starvin’ like Marvin. (I swear I didn’t make that rhyme on purpose, I hate you for thinking that.)

In the street there were all these clusters of people who had attended the reading. Some of them approached me and said nice things about the piece, which was flattering. Sometimes strangers freak me out but I feel I acted very normal. They were all in groups but I was by myself.

The thing I’ve found is this: When you perform something in public and people respond positively to it, of course you feel pleased but you also feel this peculiar unease, this weird, discomforting feeling. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know how to describe it. But I understand why famous people like movie stars surround themselves with posses and sycophants.

I walked over to Brooklyn Bagel Café on Fifth and 32nd to get some chow. Figures I’m starving in Koreatown and what do I do? Bypass all the Korean joints and go straight for the chicken sandwich.

I got my sandwich and sat on the stoop outside, trying not to spill my lettuce all over the sidewalk. I spilled some anyway because I was chewing fervently, it probably looked pretty gross.

A group of well-dressed Koreans about my age walked past and then this huge cockroach came the other way. They didn’t notice the roach; they stepped right around it and it started heading towards me, like it was going to gather up my lettuce. I finished the sandwich inside.

Stomach full of chicken I took the elevator up to the Skybar on the 14th floor. It’s small but pretty cool, a rooftop deck in the middle of Manhattan. That’s a photo of the view up above.

At the party I nursed a drink and performed the very important function of holding up the wall with my back. Got into a conversation with this cute girl from Philly. In the first few moments she made an offhandedly clever comment and I liked her right away. On the shallow side I liked her jacket and something about her eyes.

I had to leave early, though. Hapkido shoot early the next morning. I haven’t gotten to sleep in in like, three weeks. Shit is killing me.

At 9:30am on a Sunday any self-respecting agnostic should be asleep. Instead I’m completely vertical and ironing my Hapkido uniform while yawning.

By 10:15am I’m at the dojang, and the photographer is already waiting. “Thank you for arriving on time,” he says sincerely, and I’m not sure how to take that since I’m plainly fifteen minutes late.

Eventually Kendra, my designated “partner” for the shoot, arrives. The two of us get dressed and start warming up on the mats. What followed was an hour of bizarre, slow-motion Hapkido between Kendra and I, choreographed by Betty and directed by the photographer. I kept expecting him to scream “More passion more passion! Give it to me give it to me! Yes yes yes! Love it! Love it!”

While I’ve grown accustomed to grappling with women (physically, not emotionally) it’s ultra-weird in slow motion with some guy named Ari telling you to “show it to the camera.”

I was out of there by noon. Dropped the gear off at the house then spent a couple hours traipsing through Chinatown, photographing more uninteresting buildings.

Handsome Dan a/k/a Pretty Boy Floyd showed up a little after two, photo gear in tow. He set some lights and that weird umbrella-thing up in my living room, then I sat in a chair and followed directions while he shot me with a camera approximately the size of my head.

Pretty simple stuff, my only props were books and a laptop. The whole thing was relatively painless and it was over in thirty minutes. Whenever I have to hold poses my eyes get pretty watery so I’m not sure how the shots will come out. Shady comes home in the middle of the shoot and seems surprised.

Afterwards we wanna get some chow, so I call Eggtart and Cia to see what they’re up to. By coincidence they’re two blocks away (god I love this city). Tired from boy-watching, the two of them swing by to rest while Dan and I run out to pick up some Vietnamese sandwiches. Whaddaya call ‘em, banh mi so.

In due time Mike stops by with beers, and eventually Epak a/k/a Epak Chopra comes through. For an hour or two it’s seven of us sitting around in various states of repose, just shooting the shit and making perverted jokes while the sun goes down on another autumn Sunday. See it’s comfortable like this, just like this.

Today’s soundtrack:
Sister Luck is screaming out somebody’s else’s name
What a shame.
Today at 9:02pm: Clearing my throat in front of a roomful of people.


Fuckin’ psyched man, some checks finally came in for me on Friday. The Corporation hasn’t paid me in months and these motherfuckers owe me thousands. In the meantime I’ve been slowly burning credit dollars and crying into my canned fish. When I got the checks in the mail I ran to the bank like fucking Carl Lewis. Word up it was like a Nike commercial mixed with Citibank.

On Sunday the name of the game was Humility but on Friday night, the name of the game was All You Can Eat. Eggtart rounds up eight of us and we go for A.Y.C.E. shabu-shabu at this Chinese joint on Mott. It’s called Bingo and it’s next to Wing Wong. Say that loudly on a cell phone if you want white people to stare at you.

Eggtart, Sona and Cia started eating like they were trying to bankrupt the place. I think each girl loaded her dish four or five times. They ate like we were all going to be strapped into electric chairs the next morning. I was too busy guffawing because Handsome Dan and Mars were cracking me up.

Afterwards we headed over to Happy Ending (second weekend in a row) because Deadly Ed Lee was turning 30 and having a party. Haha, I got another member in my club now. Yeah being in your twenties is for suckers, man.

The crowd at the bar was moderate; I wanted to talk to strange girls but was painfully aware that all of us reeked heavily of fish from the shabu-shabu. I talked to familiar girls then left early ‘cause I had to get up early the next day.

Saturday I got up and started working on the short story I was going to read at the AAWW later that night. Tinkering with it, cutting some shit out and beefing up other spots. The hardest part is when you feel like you came up with some funny stuff but then you have to cut it.

When you get it to a certain point you have to read it in front of a mirror with a stopwatch. The time limit for the reading is eight minutes apiece and I got it down to seven. After reading it aloud I realized there were more flaws so I went back to the keyboard. Fuck! It’s already 1:30pm, I’m never gonna make Hapkido. Gotta help Deadly Ed Lee move at 3:30.

At 3:30pm I’m sitting my ass in front of Manhattan Mini Storage on the west side, taking pictures of an uninteresting building across the street.

3:50pm I’m backing a moving van into the loading dock.

4pm we’re loading the truck.

4:20pm I’m driving the truck north on 8th Avenue.

4:37pm we’re unloading the truck.

5pm we’ve loaded the last box into Deadly’s new digs. Thank god for elevator moves. Also Deadly doesn’t have that much shit so this is the fastest Manhattan move I’ve ever done. The four of us shuffle around his spanking new apartment (the building is so new they haven’t even put numbers on the apartment doors yet) and smoke.

There’s always something exciting about helping a friend move. You know, some bullshit about new beginnings and all that. Unfortunately I don’t really have time to reflect on all this ‘cause I have to go home and work on the story some more.

Around 7pm I drive up to the reading in silence and spend ten minutes looking for parking in Koreatown, which is kind of like waiting on a kidney transplant. I find a spot five blocks away and walk.

At the Workshop I say hello to some old faces and sit. The place packs out almost immediately; tonight there are eight open-mikers and seven featured readers counting myself and it seems everyone’s brought a posse. I don’t really have a posse but Cia and Eggtart show up for support.

The reading went well, I think I got the best response I’ve ever received at a reading. Was kinda surprised; wasn’t sure if this story was a keeper but the people have spoken. The AAWW audiences have unwittingly become a benchmark for what I’ll put in the book and what I won’t.

Afterwards Cia and Eggtart break out. Starving, I go for some chow at the bagel joint on Fifth. I try not to eat before a reading because you don’t want your stomach to go crazy on stage. At the bagel joint I wanted to eat outside so I got a chicken sandwich and sat on a stoop, but then this cockroach the size of a small mouse started hanging out so I had to go back inside.

Afterparty at Skybar. Skybar is a small outdoor rooftop bar on top of some hotel in K-town. The Empire State looms above you like that tower in Lord of the Rings. I end up talking to this cute girl named Jen. Actually it was more like her talking and me trying to conceal the fact that I am kind of a dork. The bar scene has always been challenging for me.

Shit I’m gonna have to post the rest of this later, it’s 7:19am and I have to go to work.

Today’s soundtrack:
It's down to me
The way she talks when she's spoken to
Down to me, the change has come
Today at 2:02pm: Eating outside on a stoop.


I am sad to report I had to abort Operation Frenchwoman. Prior to the mission I did some intelligence gathering. Spy photos I acquired, along with the sworn testimony of a trusted field agent who met the subject that night, indicated to me that this wasn’t a mission I should pursue. I’m no King of Diamonds myself but a guy has to draw the line somewhere.

Sucks, I won’t get to sleep in at all this weekend! I had to get up early today (Saturday) because I’m helping a friend move and I’m still trying to get a short story into shape. Tonight I’ll be reading portions of it in front of an audience at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop. I just looked at the latest draft and can’t decide if I like it or not. I guess that’s what audience feedback is for.

Tomorrow I’ve got to be at the Hapkido school by 10am because they’re doing a photo shoot for the calendar. I don’t know much about it but they told me they’re shooting me with K., the girl I worked out with the other day, which is fine by me. I am the token shaved-head Asian, represent represent.

For a short guy with bad skin I seem to be getting shot a lot this month. After the Hapkido thing Handsome Dan is shooting me for his portfolio. He says he wants to shoot in a way that highlights the fact that I am short, see humility is the name of the game my friends.

Not sure what it’s going to entail, like if I’ll have to sit on a Yellow Pages or carry a stepladder around or what. I haven’t spent this much time in front of cameras since my college graduation ceremony.

Last night at the bar I had a conversation with a friend and she was disarmingly honest. “I’m really scared to fail,” she said. I wanted to help her lose that fear but I didn’t really know how.

Today’s soundtrack: I’m not the only one
Today at 3:32pm: falling asleep at work


Oh my god this is so fucking funny. This. Click the link at the end of it, there’s a part two.

Today I did some more work on Project Cannonball and idly wondered what it would feel like to shoot myself in the mouth.


Just finished dinner with Mike and Ji (pronounced “Jee”). Ji is a young Japanese kid, the fourth of Yuka’s four roommates. He doesn’t speak much English but we try to take him around a little. Last night Mike and Shady took him to their Kali school for a workout. (Kali is a Filipino martial art.)

Ji walks behind us silently most of the time, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand anything. Probably doesn’t help that Mike and I have conversations like the following:


MIKE: Yo why is it that whenever people ask a genie for a wish, he fucks it up on them?

ME: Right? Genies always give you some shit they know you didn’t really want. All twisting your words around, so fucking sneaky.

MIKE: That’s so messed up. They’re supposed to be magic.

ME: If I was a genie I would just be mad cool with it. I’d be all “Yeah man you can have whatever you want, a thousand wishes, whatever. I’m a genie, I don’t give you any of that morally instructive bullshit.”

MIKE: That’s totally what I would do if I was a genie. What about you, Ji?

JI: ....

So there’s this guy, right, this psychotherapist. He’s a professional Dating Coach and Newsday calls him “The Love Doctor.” He offers a six-week relationship workshop designed to help you “Get the love you deserve...and keep it!”

It’s called the RelationShop (how funny is that) and purports to teach you how to attract the right kind of mate and “keep” them. At $325 a pop it isn’t cheap, but The Love Doctor offers a money-back guarantee. Can you believe it?

Anyways today I got a phone call: AsianAvenue is sending me to take all six weeks of the RelationShop and write it up. This oughta be good for shits and giggles. I’m picturing a classroom full of ambitious but unattractive people, then there will be me. (I’m basically like the other people, minus the ambition.)

All of us will look around the room and think “Would I date anyone in here? ...Nah, I can do better than this.” But if we could do better than this we probably wouldn’t be sitting in the RelationShop, three bills, a twenty and a five lighter. Good thing it’s not on my nickel. Either way I guess I’d better say goodbye to my next six Thursdays.

Today’s soundtrack: la la la, la...la la la La, la la, la....
Today at 5:32pm: At the AsianAvenue offices, discussing whether there’s a future for Love in a 10-Block Radius


Today at The Corporation they put me on a new project called Project Cannonball. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Well it’s not. These jerks. Going around naming stuff Project Cannonball like it’s all exciting when actually, it sucks my ass.

If I got to run the meetings and choose the project names things would be a little different.


ME: I hereby call this meeting to order. Franklin, how about some coffee over here.

FRANKLIN: Excuse me? Are you out of your mind? I’m Vice President of--

ME: Light with no sugar, chop chop. Make it too dark and you’re fired. Now lessee what’s on the agenda...ah yes...Project Scrotum. Marketing, status report?

MKTG: Project Scrotum is a go, sir.

ME: Excellent. Next...Project Elephantitis Of The Nuts. Jim?

JIM: Project E.O.T.N. is locked and loaded, sir.

ME: Project what?

JIM: Project E.O.T.N., sir.

ME: Say it.

JIM: Project Elephantitis Of The Nuts is good to go, sir.

ME: Excellent. Item three, Project Monkey Sphincter. I’m putting Project Monkey Sphincter on hold until one of you fucknuts in Graphics can come up with a more accurate logo. This doesn’t look anything like a monkey sphincter, it’s way too dilated. This is what a monkey’s sphincter would look like if he was in jail.

GRAPHICS: Yes, sir.

ME: Franklin, where the hell is my coffee. Ah, never mind. I’m putting you on a very special project.

JIM: (chuckling) I bet it’s Project M.R.A.

FRANKLIN: What the hell is that?

JIM: Project Massage Rain’s Ass.

ME: Yes. This is a time-sensitive project and I’ll need you to get on it right away.

Today’s soundtrack: that’s true, yes I do, indeed I do, you know I do
Today at 8:42pm: Disgracing myself at the dinner table.


“Go easy on me, sir,” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

My partner in Hapkido today was K, a slight-framed black girl about my size. I suppose she’s plain-looking but I find her beautiful. She’s got really good kicks and it looks like we go to the same barber.

K. asked me to take it easy because I’d torqued her wrist too much during one of the grappling exercises; since I’m usually the smallest guy in class, I’m used to applying extra pressure. Now that I’m working with someone actually my size I have to recalibrate.

At the dojang we call everyone “sir” or “ma’am,” I know it sounds weird to you but what can you do. I suppose you could come to the school to laugh at us but then I would have to twist you into a pretzel.

I hit the showers around 8pm and walked out the door at 8:15. The streets were dark, it was freezing out and I began to wonder about dinner. After Hapkido, in chow-seeking mode I still reflexively think I should call Eumi, forgetting she moved out of the neighborhood over a year ago.

Phone is blinking, someone’s left a message. It’s Eggtart, speaking quickly and without commas: “Hey Rain come meet us at Joe Shanghai’s a bunch of us are getting together for dinner tonight it’s Canadian Thanksgiving.” I can’t help but chuckle. What will those Canucks think of next.

At Joe Shanghai’s, Cia and I demand an explanation of Canadian Thanksgiving from Eggtart. “It’s about, you know, the Pilgrims and the Indians,” says Eggtart. Both Cia and I remain unimpressed.

So like I realized, I can’t eat shao lon pau in front of chicks. The potential calamity is too great, the risks too high. I mean if Lam and I are chowing down to soup dumplings and I bite into one a little too hard and scorching soup shoots out of my dumpling and directly into Lam’s eye, blinding him and causing him to scream, it’s all good; we’re guys.

Someone sabotaged my shao lon pau anyway. I think the cook intentionally weakened the structure of mine because when I tried to ventilate it, the meat part fell out of the bottom and the dumpling began hemorrhaging soup. I felt like such a spaz.

Have you ever been lonely, have you ever been blue. Don’t answer that, I’m not really asking but Patsy Cline was. You know how even after you press Stop you continue to hear the song? Yeah.

My workaday afternoon was interrupted by a big mystery. Okay so it’s not that big but it’s big to me because my life is empty and I’m dead inside so shut up.

After her party Cia sent us an e-mail listing five peoples’ names, and mine was one. She wrote something like “Are any of you on this list single/available, because last night, inquiries were made.”

I shirked my project and hit ‘Reply’ to demand an explanation. All Cia would say is that one of her French friends was asking about “the Japanese-looking guy wearing a hat,” which would be me. But then she also said the same girl had asked about Handsome Dan, so, so much for that. I wrote another letter of inquiry anyway, signing it “pleure.”

Cia’s next e-mail said:


sorry dan,

the french girl chose rain over YOU!

and rain, "pleure" is "to rain," a verb, not you in French. lol.

What can I say, my French sucks. I only studied it for, er, seven years.

Wait a sec, the French girl “chose” me? Aha, is this how the French do it? Dan and I are just pieces of Korean meat on a menu, huh? Well I, for one, will have absolutely no part in--

“Is she cute?” I asked Cia, at Joe Shanghai’s.

“Yes, she’s cute,” said Cia.

“I don’t believe you.”

Under duress Cia handed over her digital camera, which still contained images from the party. I scrolled through looking for the Frenchwoman. “She’s got red lips, very red lips,” said Cia. Which is good, because no one wants to date a Frenchwoman with green lips.

Aha, I found a picture of her. Dark hair, blood-red lipstick, but it was difficult to tell much in the little LCD. She could have been beautiful, she could have been hideous. Also she was wearing glasses, which might explain why she’d “chosen” me over Handsome Dan. Dan was a male model, for chrissakes. Me, I have as much style as a mailman.

“Would you date someone older than you?” asked Eggtart.

“Absolutely, I’d like to find a nice girl my mother’s age.” I was trying to make Eggtart spit a soup dumpling but my timing was off.

“The French girl is thirtysomething,” they said, and instantly began machinating, colluding and scheming about fixing us up over drinks this weekend.

“Whoa whoa whoa, I haven’t committed to anything!” I protested. I didn’t care if she was thirtysomething, in fact I welcome it, but this was all happening so...fast.

“Oh come on,” said Cia and Eggtart, and it didn’t take much for them to break down my door of reservation. Let’s face facts Rain, as a product in today’s competitive dating market you’re not exactly flying off the shelves.

Besides, my luck being what it is I really have nothing to worry about; the chances of anything actually coming out of this are slim. Perhaps she will have malodorous qualities, or I will be shorter than she remembered, or I’ll get all shy and stand around dumbly while people jostle me at the bar. I’m predicting an anticlimactic climax.

Just thought of something else--hey, do French people French kiss by default? Like right off the bat, instant tongue? The one time I was in Paris the only girl I got anywhere with was Danish. I kissed her because she was pretty and I was into her but I think she was just experimenting.

We kissed under the Eiffel Tower at night. That’s a moment I will never forget but something tells me it’s not exactly underlined in her diary.

I tried to get Eumi’s head into this shot too
but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

Today’s soundtrack: you would know why I ask you
Today at 8:02pm: In fifth gear on the Henry Hudson.


Today I went on a long drive upstate. It was raining and I had more random but inconclusive flashbacks.

In high school, right, my best friend was dating this girl. She and I got along pretty well and sometimes we’d stay up late talking on the phone. My friend and I were so tight it wasn’t an issue.

This girl’s father was an undercover cop, a narc. He told her not to tell anybody what he did for a living, not even her friends because it could accidentally get him killed, but she told me. She told me because she trusted me. I remember being flattered but thinking she was crazy.

Last night I left the bar before 1am. It was Cia’s party for GenerationRice, at Happy Ending. This one suuuuupercute Asian girl walked in but you just knew she was going to be annoyingly difficult to engage. Some girls you can tell right away. I think it’s what happens when a girl has been sought after her entire life.

There was another cute single girl in there but she was somebody’s sister (aren’t they all) and I found out she was only 21. Earlier I tried talking to her for a little but I accidentally called her by her sister’s name and that was that. Sisters love it when you do that.

I left early because I had to get up early the next morning. I didn’t even bother trying to talk to the cute girl two paragraphs up, though Shady took one look and resolved to meet her. I think every guy in the bar who caught a glimpse of her did the same.

(Hours later, back in the apartment, Shady told me he approached her and engaged for all of three seconds before she pulled the ripcord. At least he tried.)

I walked out with John & Jiae. Lam and Tone came outside a moment later and ran into this other Asian girl who was less on the cute side and more on the beautiful side.

Her name was something like Chanaya and she was Indonesian. A real stunner. Turns out Lam and Tone went to high school with her so they spent a few minutes catching up. Then she went inside and all of us left.

Shady staggered in relatively early, I think it was around 3am. I came into the kitchen to get a glass of water. “How was it,” I mumbled.

“Good,” he said. “Met this byooootiful Indonesian girl. Chandra? Chendaya, something like that, I dunno. Got her number though.”

“Did you talk to that cute girl [eight paragraphs up]?”

“Yo man I think I got out two sentences and she just ran away, ran away,” he said. I hate being right.

Overexposure is fun.

Today’s soundtrack: I feel the rain and I hear the thunder
Today at 2:02pm: adding Bounce to dryer load


Good things in my life

- non-dairy creamer
- hapkido
- MP3 technology
- the color brown
- 5-speed Volkswagen Golf
- cell phone
- coffee
- cigarettes
- financially timely roommate
- the 6-train

Bad things in my life

- cell phone (possible carcinogen)
- coffee (long-term ill health effects)
- cigarettes (possible carcinogen)
- poor tv reception
- not making enough to put anything away
- sneaker has begun making squeaking noise
- occasional fits of burning hatred/glum depression
- tangled viper’s nest of cables behind my computer

Happy mini-episodes in daily life

- Josephine (not Ann or Jenny or Mohammed) makes my morning coffee exactly right
- step through turnstile just in time to catch train
- boss tied up all day in meetings
- cafeteria at work serving chicken sandwiches
- skillfully depositing the car into a challenging parking space
- finishing writing a story and happy with it
- pretty girl looks at me and smiles
- vigorously shaking orange juice to achieve frothy texture
- oversleeping

Sad mini-episodes in daily life

- woman at korean deli on 49th makes my afternoon coffee too dark
- watching missed train pull away from me
- tying tie on in the mornings
- boss standing over my shoulder, spouting asinine advice
- sitting next to fat sweaty guy on subway
- struggling writing middle of story and feeling it sucks
- pretty girl looks at me and looks away
- running out of orange juice
- headache from oversmoking
- overcooking/undercooking dinner
- oversleeping

Today’s soundtrack: but there’s no danger,
it’s a professional career
Today at 3:19am: Drinking hot tea and slouching


This weather is killing me. Namesake or no, the constant downpour prevents me from walking. Walking around helps me sleep better and gives me ideas. But I dislike getting wet, it destroys the illusion that I’m living in the future.

People have been getting drenched in downpours since the beginning of time. Since then we’ve put men, women, dogs and several monkeys in outer space but no one is working on the successor to the fucking umbrella.

This LiveJournal thing isn’t too bad, I only had to ban one person. (Church nut.) I had to get off AsianAvenue because I started getting notes from girls less than half my age. The first girl to write me an AA note ever was 21 and then they just kept getting younger and younger. At that rate of progression I would be receiving e-mail from fetuses within several years.

I was reading an article about LiveJournal. Says the average user is a 16-21-year-old female. I’ve caught onto shit late before but this time I’m the wrong gender.

Every half-hour or so I check my ‘fridge, to see if any delicious food has magically appeared there. I’m starving but don’t feel like eating pasta.

Lately a lot of people on LJ seem to be bummed.

My memory is all screwed up. If I was a computer you would take me to the shop. I have a fair amount of RAM--I can multi-task pretty well--but my head’s hard drive (head drive?) is pretty spotty.

Today I remembered (for the very first time) that a neighbor borrowed my Luscious Jackson CD and never gave it back. In 1994. This is the first time that’s occurred to me since I lent her the CD eight years and three apartments ago. I don’t know how or why I remembered that today. Meanwhile my short-term memory is shot; things I’ve done yesterday or in the past month are difficult to recall.

There are several kinds of stupidity. One kind of stupid can elicit laughter, the other kind of stupid is just depressing. My boss is that second kind. I want to seal him in some type of vessel that is leaving here forever. A plane, a train, a submarine, I don’t care. If I won a free trip overseas I would send my boss.

I am eating pasta now. I was going to eat mackerel out of a can but I ran out. Which is a mixed blessing if you ask me.

Just thought of something weird: If I continue eating mackerel, that means right now there is a mackerel swimming around somewhere that will eventually be caught and put in a can and I will eat him. I will take him out of the can and nuke him while I watch “Access Hollywood” and ignore the phone.

But that’s in the future, and right this very second he’s swimming around somewhere in the dark ocean. Swim for it man, swim swim swim. Enjoy life while you can.

It’s also weird that we don’t know where we’re going to go when we die. But I know where that fish is going: Aisle 17 at Pathmark.

Maybe when we die they put us in packaging and some type of creature we can’t conceive of buys us and eats us.

Today’s soundtrack: put on some clothes, shake off your bed
Today at 6:32pm: Me, Jiae and Lam stuck in 7th Avenue traffic. Work in our past, red lights in our present, crepes in our future.


It began this way. After a period of searching Lam found a job, and today he sent Tony and I his work e-mail address.

“Try not to send anything that will get me fired,” he wrote. I guess they screen e-mail at his job.

Tony and I each read this line sitting in our separate offices, me in the 40s, Tone in the ‘50s.

Tony fired an e-mail to Lam almost instantaneously, CC’ing me. Subject line:

“Your AssBlasters.com account has been activated!”

I hit ‘Reply All’ and typed

“Subject: Please renew your subscription to Orientails Magazine!”

I ate lunch in silence at my desk. Fifteen minutes went by and my sandwich went away and my stomach grew a little. Afterwards I opened my in-box to find I had been CC’ed on

“Subject: GayDadsGetaways.com - Your Itinerary”

from Tony to Lam. I hit ‘Reply All’ and typed

“Subject: CockMonster.com order confirmation”

and went out to get some coffee. Work is dull as fuck so you gotta break it up somehow.


In other news, Tony sent me the following list:

Cheating Songs Update


4 songs on feeling bad about cheating:

- Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me - Louie Armstrong

- How Important Can It Be - Joni Jones (50's White Pop Singer)

- I'm So Repentant - Dave's True Story

- Standing In For Joe - XTC

2 songs on feeling good about cheating:

- If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right - Percy Sledge

- Me & Mrs. Jones - Billy Paul

1 song on wanting to cheat:

- It's Alright With Me - Ella Fitzgerald

5 songs on pissed off about being cheated on:

- Think - Aretha Franklin

- Alison - Elvis Costello

- Chick Habit - April March (60's french rock)

- Give It Up Or Let Me Go - Bonnie Rait

- Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing - Chris Issak

2 songs on getting caught cheating:

- One Way Out - Allman Brothers

- Gimmie Three Steps - Lynyrd Skynyrd

1 song on confronting the hussy:

- You Ain't Woman Enough To Take My Man - Loretta Lynn

1 song on forgiving the cheater:

- Poor Side Of Town - Laura Cantrell (Country)

1 song on how empty cheating makes you feel:

- Lyin' Eyes - The Eagles

2 songs on making the cheatee feel better:

- Tell Mama - Etta James

- Learning The Game - The Lemonheads


and my own contributions,


1 song on general complaining about being cheated on:

- Your Cheating Heart - Patsy Cline

1 song about your woman cheating on you with a rich doctor:

- Hide Nor Hair - Ray Charles

1 song on meting out retribution for having cheated:

- Payback - James Brown

1 song on resolving a cheating problem with a pistol:

- Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix

What can we draw from all this? Only two songs have anything positive to say about cheating, and those are both written from the perspective of the interloper, not the cuckold.

Cheating: It will make you feel good, then very, very bad. Generally speaking it looks as if the cheatees end up worse than the cheaters, except for that last one there.

Yeah man, if you’re gonna cheat you better not be dating Jimi Hendrix’s friend Joe. He takes that shit pretty seriously.

Today’s soundtrack: put on some clothes, shake off your bed
Today at 6:32pm: Me, Jiae and Lam stuck in 7th Avenue traffic. Work in our past, red lights in our present, crepes in our future.


It began this way. After a period of searching Lam found a job, and today he sent Tony and I his work e-mail address.

“Try not to send anything that will get me fired,” he wrote. I guess they screen e-mail at his job.

Tony and I each read this line sitting in our separate offices, me in the 40s, Tone in the ‘50s.

Tony fired an e-mail to Lam almost instantaneously, CC’ing me. Subject line:

“Your AssBlasters.com account has been activated!”

I hit ‘Reply All’ and typed

“Subject: Please renew your subscription to Orientails Magazine!”

I ate lunch in silence at my desk. Fifteen minutes went by and my sandwich went away and my stomach grew a little. Afterwards I opened my in-box to find I had been CC’ed on

“Subject: GayDadsGetaways.com - Your Itinerary”

from Tony to Lam. I hit ‘Reply All’ and typed

“Subject: CockMonster.com order confirmation”

and went out to get some coffee. Work is dull as fuck so you gotta break it up somehow.


In other news, Tony sent me the following list:

Cheating Songs Update


4 songs on feeling bad about cheating:

- Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me - Louie Armstrong

- How Important Can It Be - Joni Jones (50's White Pop Singer)

- I'm So Repentant - Dave's True Story

- Standing In For Joe - XTC

2 songs on feeling good about cheating:

- If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right - Percy Sledge

- Me & Mrs. Jones - Billy Paul

1 song on wanting to cheat:

- It's Alright With Me - Ella Fitzgerald

5 songs on pissed off about being cheated on:

- Think - Aretha Franklin

- Alison - Elvis Costello

- Chick Habit - April March (60's french rock)

- Give It Up Or Let Me Go - Bonnie Rait

- Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing - Chris Issak

2 songs on getting caught cheating:

- One Way Out - Allman Brothers

- Gimmie Three Steps - Lynyrd Skynyrd

1 song on confronting the hussy:

- You Ain't Woman Enough To Take My Man - Loretta Lynn

1 song on forgiving the cheater:

- Poor Side Of Town - Laura Cantrell (Country)

1 song on how empty cheating makes you feel:

- Lyin' Eyes - The Eagles

2 songs on making the cheatee feel better:

- Tell Mama - Etta James

- Learning The Game - The Lemonheads


and my own contributions,


1 song on general complaining about being cheated on:

- Your Cheating Heart - Patsy Cline

1 song about your woman cheating on you with a rich doctor:

- Hide Nor Hair - Ray Charles

1 song on meting out retribution for having cheated:

- Payback - James Brown

1 song on resolving a cheating problem with a pistol:

- Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix

What can we draw from all this? Only two songs have anything positive to say about cheating, and those are both written from the perspective of the interloper, not the cuckold.

Cheating: It will make you feel good, then very, very bad. Generally speaking it looks as if the cheatees end up worse than the cheaters, except for that last one there.

Yeah man, if you’re gonna cheat you better not be dating Jimi Hendrix’s friend Joe. He takes that shit pretty seriously.

Today’s soundtrack: psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est
Today at 9:02pm: Me and Shady watching kickboxing tapes.


What Guys Do When Girls Ain’t Around


I like travel, you have the most interesting experiences. Mike just came back from a month of shooting a project in Japan. (He’s a photographer, not a marksman.) Last night we’re hanging out at his studio down the hall: It’s me, Mike, Thomas (also a photog) and Javu (Thomas’s friend from Kenya).

Mike is telling us a story: “So I’m at this club in Tokyo called Milk--Rain you been there, right? It’s just a normal bar, right? Really normal, right? Well check this out--I’m there with a female friend, and she’s like ‘Oh I want you to meet a friend of mine, he’s the DJ here’ so I’m like ‘Okay.’”

“So the DJ comes over--wearing NOTHING BUT A T-SHIRT. No pants, no socks, no underwear, nothing. Just a T-shirt and he’s totally naked below the waist, his schlong is all hanging out.”

“Whaaaaaaat?” says Thomas.

“Get the fuck outta here,” I say.

“Yeah, he’s all hanging out!” says Mike. “Everyone saw him and was like, ‘whoooooaaa’ like all moving away and stuff. But my friend was introducing me so I shook his hand.”

“You sure you shook the right part?” asks Thomas.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Where were his pants? He came to the club with no pants on?”

“I dunno, he probably took them off when he got there,” says Mike. “He likes to spin naked. Also, it turns out this guy is a porn star in Japan.”

“Ahhhhhh,” says Thomas.

“I’ve never seen someone spin with no pants on,” I say.

“Maybe that’s his special trick,” says Thomas. “He can do the scratching thing on the record without using his hands.”

“So anyway,” says Mike, “this guy’s a porn star and he shows me this thing, check it out, I’ll show you. Hey Rain, do this.” Mike holds his hand out in front of him, pinching his finger and thumb together, forming a vagina of sorts. “Do this.”

“Get the hell away from me,” I say.

“Just do it, just do it!” says Mike.

“Fine,” I say, making a vagina with my hand.

“Ohhhhh! Ewwwww!” says Thomas, as Mike takes his two fingers and does...this thing to my hand.

“You see that? You see that? It’s all in the wrist,” says Mike, demonstrating once again. Thomas and Javu crowd around, curious; our kneejerk homo-squeamishness goes away when we realize there’s something of value to be learned here.

“See, most guys do it like that,” says Mike, moving his fingers in a manner I’ve done before. “But that does nothing for the girl. You gotta do it like this,” he says, demonstrating a third time. “And if you wanna get the clitoris, you gotta do it like this.”

“Oooooh,” says Thomas, observing. “Lemme see, lemme see.” Thomas holds out his vagina-hand, and Mike, er, sim-stims him.

“So this guy is showing me this thing,” Mike continues, “and my female friend is standing right there, and the guy says ‘hold out your hand’ and he does it to her hand. And she was like ‘Whoa--that’s pretty good! Do it again! Whoa, that’s pretty good!’ Then I tried doing it to her hand and she was like ‘Nnnnnnno, no, it’s not the same.’

“This guy was really good at it,” Mike continues. “I mean it’s what he does all day, you know?”

“Like this? Like this?” says Thomas, doing it to Mike’s hand.

“Not quite, not quite,” says Mike. “It’s all in the wrist.”

Later I’m hanging out in Annie’s room with Shady, and Mike walks in. “Hey, do this,” says Mike, holding out his vagina-hand. “Shady, do this.”

“Get the hell away from me,” says Shady.

Today’s soundtrack: I guess you always knew it
Today at 9:02pm: Trying to eat condensed milk toast without making a sticky spectacle of myself.


I have fallen into a hole but it’s not so bad. Because Patsy Cline is down here too, and sometimes friends come to visit. Plus I have my books and cigarettes and pens and notebooks and tins of ground coffee.

I like the cheap stuff, like Maxwell House and Café Bustelo. To me the cheap shit is real. The shit you drink from Seattle is not coffee, it’s something else, some kind of unpleasant soup. When I am a father my child will not be allowed to bring such products into the house.

When people used to ask me what kind of music I listened to, I’d say “Everything except Country.” Now I can’t stop listening to Patsy Cline. I don’t know why, maybe it’s a hormonal thing, like I’m going through some sort of second puberty. I think I’m in love with her. Even though I think she’s already dead. She’s dead, no?

I have about 44 of her MP3s. Due to possible MP3 mislabeling, one of them is in question: Eumi’s convinced the version of “Stand By Your Man” I’ve downloaded is actually Tammy Wynette.

I guess I’m not really in love with Ms. Cline if I can’t tell her voice apart from Ms. Wynette’s. And I don’t even know what she looks like. I’d rather not seek her picture out on the internet because I don’t want to get any nasty surprises. Avoiding nasty surprises is a big part of getting older, at least for me.

Okay Eumi was right, I just listened to “Stand By Your Man” after hearing “Leavin’ On Your Mind” and it is definitely not the same woman. It’s still a good song so I’m going to leave it in the same folder.

The four of us are walking back from dinner, through Chinatown. The sidewalks on Mott Street are narrow and some random woman’s walking behind us at about the same pace.

“So last night I went looking through my MP3 collection for songs about cheating,” says Tony.

“How about that Al Green song I hate,” suggests Lam.

“Patsy Cline,” I say. “She’s got lots of songs about cheating, f’you want I’ll burn you some.”

We throw out the names of some other musically-inclined cheaters and cheatees--Lynyrd Skynyrd, Billy Paul, the Allman Brothers. Talk eventually turns to the song “Crazy,” which Tony points out was sang by Patsy Cline but actually written by Willie Nelson.

“I don’t know that song, how does it go?” asks Moonberry. But neither me, Lam nor Tony are willing to sing it. “Well what’s the chorus?” she asks.

“Crazy for trying, crazy for crying, crazy for loving you,” I say, and I say it rather than singing it. MB points out how ridiculous it sounds when recited in a flat monotone.

(Maybe someday I’ll break up with a girlfriend that way:

“Why are you leaving,” she’ll say.

“Because I’m crazy,” I’ll state. “Crazy for trying, crazy for crying, crazy for loving you.” Then I’ll gather my things and put my hat on while she throws crockery at me. Most of it will miss and hit the wall.)

Next MB asks Lam to sing it, but he either doesn’t know it or he’s pretending not to.

“Do you know ‘Crazy’?” I hear Tony ask the random woman who’s walking behind us.

“I know it, but I’m not gonna sing it if you guys won’t!” says the woman. “I was eavesdropping.” She’s older, blonde, had kind of a faded hippie look going on, pushing 40.

We have a little laugh, but then the woman breaks into a few bars. “Crazy...” she sings, softly. “Crazy for lying, crazy for trying, crazy for loving you....”

I thought it was nice that she sang it so I didn’t point out she’d switched up some lyrics. Patsy’s not crazy for lying; she’s crazy for loving you.

Today’s soundtrack: You've never been this far,
you've always been too smart
Today at 8:02pm: Cleaning the kitchen.


Some new store opened in Chinatown, I don’t know what it was but I saw it on the way to the subway this morning. There were people standing in front and two big arches of balloons.

The arches were comprised of red, white and blue balloons tightly tied into helical formations, like patriotic DNA. The image stayed in my head for a minute, then I forgot all about it because the train came and I had to run to catch it.

Work was work. Just when you think my boss can’t get any more annoying, he invents something. In terms of being annoying he really knows how to think outside the box. He should do consulting for people who need to learn annoyingness.

Eight hours later I took the subway back downtown and came out at Canal. Trudged upstairs through the crowds to street level. Stepping onto the sidewalk I saw people, and traffic, and sky. Something caught my eye up in the air, a little multicolored bundle of dots.

It was a bunch of balloons, pretty high up. Red and blue and white. Suddenly I remembered the new store from this morning.

In eight hours my muscles had grown tense, my mind further unraveled, and these balloons had gone from festive decoration to airborne garbage. I think if I hadn’t seen the balloons I would have forgotten that this day even had a morning.

It gets dark early now, around 7pm. I did stuff around the house then went out for a pineapple around 10pm.

I live near Little Italy/Chinatown but I get my pineapples in the East Village. There’s a spot that’s always got the best golden pineapples! I’m not gonna tell you where because you don’t live in the Village anyway so it would be a waste.

I normally walk up Elizabeth Street because it’s nice and quiet but tonight I took the Bowery, which is always filthy. I wanted to see stuff, I guess.

I was rewarded for my choice by seeing piles of things of increasingly alarming content. First was a pile of garbage, nothing new about that. Next I encountered a decent-sized patty of human shit. (Glad I’m not the sucker that accidentally transformed it from a log into a patty. Remember, watch where you walk.)

Finally I came across a human being lying in the middle of the sidewalk, apparently unconscious and wrapped in a pink blanket, just above Bowery and Rivington. I think there’s a rehab center around there, maybe one of them got away.

I got up to CBGB’s, which for you out-of-towners is a little famous hole-in-the-wall live music spot on Bowery and Bleecker. Lots of famous bands got their start there back in the day: The Police, Blondie, The Ramones, et al. If you use the little shithole bathroom in the back you have the distinct honor of pissing in the same spot where Sid Vicious drained his wanker.

Well they still have shows almost every night. As I approached tonight I saw a car pull up, then all these punks got out. I mean “punks” literally, white people with fully-committed haircuts and lots of metal in their face and raggedy clothes and black eye makeup.

The weird thing is their car was like, a brand-new maroon Chevy Cavalier. “The Heartbeat of America.” I just can’t picture one of these punks working in an ice-cream store or wherever and saving his pennies to buy a Chevy Cavalier. I wonder if he bought it because it has a good warranty and gets reasonable mileage.

Two cars up I see tonight’s band unloading their equipment, and they’re punks too.

Punk rock! Punk rock! Punk rooccccccckk!

...Sorry. Anyways this is even funnier: these guys are all in tattered black leather and unloading their equipment--from a forest-green minivan. A fucking Honda Odyssey.

When I was in high school punks were these scary guys who stabbed your cousin’s friend with a screwdriver and beat the shit out of that guy Paul at the bus stop and roamed Avenue A waiting to kick your ass. Granted it was 1988 (Avenue A was actually dangerous, for christ’s sake) but still.

You almost never saw punks in a car and if you did it was, like, a beat-up ’67 Rambler or a fully fucked-up Plymouth Valiant with stickers of upside-down American flags on the trunk. Now it’s the year 2002 and I live in the future and punks drive minivans.

Today Eumi and I were in Wendy’s short film/film exercise.

Wendy writes stories about Asian American people; both of us want to be storytellers. My chosen medium is the printed word but Wendy’s is film. Film is probably better, no?

Wendy is the only one out of all of us going to film school. It is all of our hopes that one day she will become a brilliant and famous director. Then we can all cash in and ride some serious coattails.

The Assistant Cameraperson taking light meter readings off of my intensely reflective head. You can’t tell in this photo but when the sun hits it just right it blinds passing pilots, causing planes to fall out of the sky.

Eumi had a lot of close-ups, which is hard for her because she’s camera-shy. The camera loves Eumi but Eumi doesn’t love the camera. It is a tragic romance between a human being and a Panaflex.

Here I am carrying the battery pack. It is attached to the camera so I couldn’t go very far. With the batteries slung over my shoulder I felt I resembled Chewbacca so I thought I should take an “I am a Korean Chewbacca” photo.

The Panaflex continues to pine.

I crashed on Wendy’s floor in Beijing. If I knew you I would sleep on your floor too. Her Chinese boyfriend broke her name into two distinct syllables, clearly pronouncing it “Wen Dee.” I thought that was kind of cute.

Here it looks as if Wen Dee is making some histrionic directorial gesture, but in fact she is throwing a red pepper in the air and catching it, happily, in the manner of a little girl. I tried to capture the red pepper while it was in the air but I am a hit-or-miss photographer.

When it’s not your turn to carry the battery pack or “act,” there’s a lot of downtime. Luckily MB lent me a copy of “Shanghai Baby.” I’m only fifteen pages into it but so far so good.

Today’s soundtrack: So you run down to the safety of the town
but there's panic on the streets of Carlisle
Today at 8:02pm: Eating real cooking.


It’s nice to have people you can talk to. Yesterday afternon Lam and I sat on a Lafayette Street stoop discussing our take on the human condition, creative blocks, tortured artists, being good versus being bad.

The night before Wendy said she’d heard that whatever your personality is at age nine is the true you. During your teen years you can develop defense mechanisms that accidentally disguise your personality and conceal it from yourself, but eventually you return. Seems to us that shit starts shaking out sometime in your late 20s/early 30s.

This doesn’t bode well for us; at age nine I was an annoying little bastard, and Lam confesses he was pure evil. Mrs. Menin wrote a portentous letter to my parents warning of some kind of future doom for me but it was rather vague. Kind of like the FBI terrorist warnings: We know something bad’s gonna happen, but we don’t know what, or when.

Moonberry’s invited us over for dinner, so afterwards we went to pick up cookies at Café Roma.

Dinner was killer, followed by good conversation and coffee. Moonberry’s tidy, mod-retro apartment took both Lam and I aback; it’s surprisingly inviting, comfortable and well-decorated. The place is practically cinematic, done up in colors, objects and tones Wong Kar-Wai would appreciate.

Cranks out the chow and she’s got a flair for interiors. What can I say, her man’s a lucky guy. Me on the other hand, I expect to receive phone calls like the following:


GUY: Can I speak to Rain Noe, please.

ME: Speaking.

GUY: Mr. Noe, I’m just calling to inform you that you have *not* won tonight’s New York State Lottery.

ME: What?

GUY: That’s right, you haven’t won anything.

ME: But I didn’t even buy a ticket.

GUY: We know. We just wanted to underscore your unluckiness by letting you know you haven’t won anything anyway.

Today’s soundtrack: hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ
Today at 11:52pm: a rarity: having a long chat with an old friend


At work you have to engage in stupid corporate banter. In the hallway this morning I saw Helen picking papers up off the floor.


ME: Need a hand?

HELEN: Not a hand, no. I need a brain. Ha! Ha! Ha!

ME: I haven’t got one to spare! Ha! Ha! Ha!

HELEN: Ha! Ha! Ha!

ME: I hate you.

HELEN: (in a dark voice) I would kill you if no one was looking. I would kill you with scissors.


In retrospect I probably imagined the last two lines, yeah.

Mike’s been away for a month, shooting a job in Japan. Last night I went to pick him up at JFK, and on the way there I had the most beautiful moment.

After veering through the scum, dross and slag of traffic on Delancey I hit the Williamsburg at speed. Everyone was on the outer crossing and I miraculously had the entire inner crossing to myself, for about half the length of the bridge.

Stick, slam. Gas, stomp. Volume, clockwise. Rocketing out of Manhattan across an empty bridge is a rare pleasure and I got it up to 75 by the apex. Panic on the streets of London / Panic on the streets of Birminghammm....

I know 75 is chump change, pussy money to you west coasters, but in the W’burg’s ridiculously narrow lanes bordered by concrete dividers it’s the rush of the week.

I got my comeuppance on the Van Wyck--some douchebag in a Toyota almost wrecked the both of us. 100% his fault. Were it not for my panther-like reflexes we might have blah blah blah. And also blah blah blah.

Tonight I treated myself to pizza for dinner. Not much of a treat I guess but times are tight and I’m tired of eating my own crappy cooking. I try not to eat junk food but pizza is fucking cheap and filling.

Last night I had to go all out ‘cause a friend of mine came in from out of town. She’s from L.A. but I met her in Tokyo and now she lives in Chicago. And is interviewing for jobs in New York. Talk about frequent flier miles.

In Japan I crashed at her place, I can’t remember if she crashed mine. I slept on her floor. Her apartment was like mine, a couple tatami mats and nothing special; but now the law firms she’s interviewing for are putting her up at the fucking Paramount. I wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor in the Paramount, even in the lobby.

Schedule’s finally starting to pick up! Doing a couple college gigs next month (gotta prepare) and participating in a reading this month. Also a film student friend asked me to audition for her short. I don’t think I’ll get the part though, ‘cause when it comes to acting I don’t have much range. My only acting specialty is going into a corporate environment and pretending I don’t hate you.

Last week a photographer friend asked if he could shoot me for a project he’s doing. I told him I’m not photogenic--I’ve got Mike’s test shots to prove it--but he says that’s even better. Says he’s tired of shooting models and making people look good. I guess the idea is to just shoot some regular joes and hey, I’m a regular joe. A little on the emaciated side but whatever.

Early this morning I trotted down the subway steps with my coffee. Ahead of me, instead of the inky blackness of the empty tracks I saw the shiny surface of the train sitting in the station. I understood I was going to miss this train, that I’d never make it through the turnstile in time.

The train took off, and I waited for the next one. On the platform I ran into Shady’s friend Dana. We both had the signs of our little morning commuter routines--she clutched a book to her chest, I had headphones on--but we sat next to each other when the train came and made small talk. You hear about that Korean guy shot up the UN building? Ain’t it a shame.

Today’s soundtrack: Took my girl to the World’s Fair
Today at 8:02pm: the punching, the kicking, the screaming, the sweating


So psyched! At work they gave me a retired G3 laptop, the same body style as my screen-less laptop. So after work I took it to Tekserve to have the screens swapped.

The technician who changed it for me was this hot half-Asian girl. Something very sexy about watching this punk rock girl dismantle my laptop and know exactly what the fuck she’s doing. She had all these cool little tools and she let me watch.

She also had a big picture of her boyfriend up on her desk. In the photo he’s swinging a baseball bat on a grass field. He was neither half-Asian nor hot.

Saturday’s planned Boston trip fell through tonight. Eggtart bailed out yesterday and this evening three others followed suit. I will present the rejections here in a dramatic military-style re-enactment.


ME: Sergeant Shady, is our Boston mission a go?

SHADY: That’s a negative.


ME: Lieutenant Lam, is Operation Beantown five by five?

LAM: Negative.


ME: Major Moonberry, are we ready to mobilize in quadrant 617?

MB: Negative.


ME: You’re all a bunch of insubordinates! I’ll have all of you court-martialed. Gonna sic JAG on your asses.

Tonight I grabbed some chow with Moonberry down at this crepes joint on Grand. Just two screennames getting dinner. Afterwards I dropped her off at her car and the weirdest thing happened. I’m walking down Broome Street when I see this woman up ahead standing in a very dynamic position. Her arms are moving.

I get up close...and see she’s doing Wing Chun in the middle of the fucking sidewalk. It’s like, 11pm or so. Even weirder, the woman is white and looks to be in her late 30s.

As I pass, she sees me looking at her and she stops. I stopped too. I thought it would have been really funny if I got into a Jackie Chan position and screamed “Come on bitch, show me whatcha got.”

Instead I said (very politely) “Are you doing Wing Chun?”

“Yes, sort of,” she said. “Iron Butterfly, it’s related.”

I was about to follow up with another question--or a furious salvo of kicks--but all of a sudden the door behind her opens. A friend of hers whom she’d been waiting for (I assume) comes out and holds the door open for her.

The Iron Butterfly woman greeted her friend but stayed facing me, either to entertain another question or to defend herself against a furious salvo of kicks. I waved politely and continued walking.

I told Shady about the Iron Butterfly when I came home. He says I should have challenged her to a death match.

Just thought of something: Maybe the Iron Butterfly was waiting for that other woman to challenge her to a death match. Perhaps I should have stuck around.

I only went to Hapkido twice this week, but I’ve been pushing it a little too hard. I don’t know where all this energy is coming from. Perhaps I have some pent-up issues? Miscellaneous Korean Rage? Too much coffee? Lack of sex getting to me?

I think I overstretched, my body’s going to hate me tomorrow. I used to just hate it right back but my Sabumnim says this is not the way. I’m not supposed to hate, I’m supposed to flow.

One day I’ll Flow like Mel’s Diner. Then I’ll swing by Tekserve and see if Baseball Boy’s picture is still there.

Today’s soundtrack: what more can I do, oh yeah
Today at 10:02pm: Burning dinner. Fuck!


Sometimes at work my boss starts talking to me and I zone out and hear that Meow Mix song in my head. MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow MYOW myow MYOW myow myow myow...god I love that song. Do you?


BOSS: ...is really what we’re trying to accomplish here.

ME: I understand and will obey.

BOSS: Oh, I forgot to mention. With regards to focus groups--

MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow MYOW myow MYOW myow myow myow

BOSS: ...is really gonna be our main objective.

ME: I understand and will obey.

BOSS: Did you eat lunch yet?

ME: I understand and will obey.

MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow MYOW myow MYOW myow myow myow

I’m over the Rumsfeld-in-Combat fantasy. Today’s fantasy is that someone would come up to me and say “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” and then I throw pepper in their eyes and pistol-whip them with an Italian sidearm and push them into an open manhole. I drank some coffee at the wrong times today so my neurons are all over the place.


Walking down the street, the only thing that really makes me smile is dogs. Specifically, brown dogs. I’m keen on brownish canines, as soon as I see one I forget what I was worried about and feel all happy.

Usually, that is. Today was the first time I’ve ever been jealous of a dog. I mean I love dogs but just look at this motherfucker.

This dog lives better than I do and he knows it, too. Look at him. I said LOOK AT HIM goddammit. Whipping around 212 in a droptop CLK. Smug little bastard giving me that condescending look.

Well you listen to me you little pooch bastard, I am a District Manager and people are scared of me. You hear me? There are 26 people who report to me, what do you think of that. I’m very important.

Can you imagine if I actually was a District Manager? That would be really funny...oh wait a minute, no it wouldn’t. My mistake.

Now that I’m actively trying to participate in society again, I’m finding it harder than I remembered. Logistically I mean. Making plans involving more than two people is a bitch since you have to get everyone’s schedules to jive.

Everybody’s busy in this place. Even a run-of-the-mill schmuck like me has got a million things on the plate, which necessitates the ugly process of editing activities and people. Sometimes people edit me out too; I try not to take it personally but I often fail.

The Toronto roadtrip’s been pushed back a week, we’re leaving on Halloween now. Maybe we can trick or treat on the way up. I’ll put on a hockey mask and ring random roadside doorbells from here to Buffalo. Fantastic way to get shot, yeah? It would be like Jackass without the ratings.

At least Lam and Tony would be watching. They’d get a good laugh out of it until they realized they’re stuck in the car and I was the only one who could drive stick.

New activity on the sched: Camping trip for late October. I don’t know anything about camping but Tony’s an outdoorsman, so Lam and I are just gonna follow his lead. I’m a little worried about getting eaten by bears or shot by hicks. I think the hick thing is scarier though, ‘cause you can reason with bears.

Today’s soundtrack: what more can I do, oh yeah
Today at 10:02pm: Burning dinner. Fuck!


Sometimes at work my boss starts talking to me and I zone out and hear that Meow Mix song in my head. MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow MYOW myow MYOW myow myow myow...god I love that song. Do you?


BOSS: ...is really what we’re trying to accomplish here.

ME: I understand and will obey.

BOSS: Oh, I forgot to mention. With regards to focus groups--

MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow MYOW myow MYOW myow myow myow

BOSS: ...is really gonna be our main objective.

ME: I understand and will obey.

BOSS: Did you eat lunch yet?

ME: I understand and will obey.

MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow myow myow MYOW myow MYOW myow MYOW myow myow myow

I’m over the Rumsfeld-in-Combat fantasy. Today’s fantasy is that someone would come up to me and say “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” and then I throw pepper in their eyes and pistol-whip them with an Italian sidearm and push them into an open manhole. I drank some coffee at the wrong times today so my neurons are all over the place.


Walking down the street, the only thing that really makes me smile is dogs. Specifically, brown dogs. I’m keen on brownish canines, as soon as I see one I forget what I was worried about and feel all happy.

Usually, that is. Today was the first time I’ve ever been jealous of a dog. I mean I love dogs but just look at this motherfucker.

This dog lives better than I do and he knows it, too. Look at him. I said LOOK AT HIM goddammit. Whipping around 212 in a droptop CLK. Smug little bastard giving me that condescending look.

Well you listen to me you little pooch bastard, I am a District Manager and people are scared of me. You hear me? There are 26 people who report to me, what do you think of that. I’m very important.

Can you imagine if I actually was a District Manager? That would be really funny...oh wait a minute, no it wouldn’t. My mistake.

Now that I’m actively trying to participate in society again, I’m finding it harder than I remembered. Logistically I mean. Making plans involving more than two people is a bitch since you have to get everyone’s schedules to jive.

Everybody’s busy in this place. Even a run-of-the-mill schmuck like me has got a million things on the plate, which necessitates the ugly process of editing activities and people. Sometimes people edit me out too; I try not to take it personally but I often fail.

The Toronto roadtrip’s been pushed back a week, we’re leaving on Halloween now. Maybe we can trick or treat on the way up. I’ll put on a hockey mask and ring random roadside doorbells from here to Buffalo. Fantastic way to get shot, yeah? It would be like Jackass without the ratings.

At least Lam and Tony would be watching. They’d get a good laugh out of it until they realized they’re stuck in the car and I was the only one who could drive stick.

New activity on the sched: Camping trip for late October. I don’t know anything about camping but Tony’s an outdoorsman, so Lam and I are just gonna follow his lead. I’m a little worried about getting eaten by bears or shot by hicks. I think the hick thing is scarier though, ‘cause you can reason with bears.

Today’s soundtrack: That’s alright, I still got my guitar
Today at 8:02pm: Watching an incredibly depressing movie from mainland China. Don’t ever move to Datong


I have such random shit in my Bookmarks. Classic muscle cars, some banking shit, the blog of some strange female I’ve never met (nor read, except for that one time), some hotel rooms I don’t remember inquiring about, DMV pages, a link to the Mass MOCA.

Whatchu got in yours? It would be interesting to profile people based on what they had in their bookmarks (discounting the boringly obvious, like porn). They could have a magazine called Celebrity Bookmarks and I guarantee you some asshole would read it. “Let’s see what Tom Cruise has in his bookmarks!”

I can’t lie, that asshole might be me. Sometimes when I get home “Access Hollywood” is on, and I don’t turn it off like I should.

I have dreams about dressing D-onald R-umsfeld up in full combat gear and dropping his ass off in hostile territory. You want a war so fucking bad go fight it your fucking self. Get in there, Donald. Keep your head down.

Everyone knows Saddam needs to go, but an assault on Iraq seems like a ridiculously inelegant and karmically costly solution. We invented psychological warfare, rotating credit and fast food; I have a hard time believing we can’t think of some evil, sneaky shit to get rid of this guy. War seems so fucking 1940s.

Today, a long and unremarkable day. How many more of these can I stand. It starts early, ends late. Just like the exciting days. Something beautifully hopeless about it all, like the last line of Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House.” Next time the woman gives you some shit, download this track, burn it and go take a walk with headphones.