Today’s soundtrack: Moving sidewalks, I don’t see under my feet
Today at 11:49pm: Saying to myself “Someday I will have my locker in that big F-Wing in the sky.”



I know too many people. I’m not bragging, I mean in a city of 13 million it becomes very easy to know too many people. And frankly speaking if I was stuck on a desert island with two fellow castaways--I’d still know too many people.

More importantly, too many people now know I keep an online journal. Which has sucked a lot of the potential entries out of this journal the same way I might suck all the oxygen out of a room by loudly announcing how much I hate your lasagna.

I realize the previous two paragraphs are doing nothing for you as a reader. I would apologize but, ironically enough, I don’t even know you. Maybe.


I got bills up the yin-yang this month. I write checks like the U.S. Government. At my desk it’s a beehive of out-of-control spending, on stupid things like Emergency Room bills and magazine subscriptions and an airplane ticket to Texas.

Tonight I picked Ed and Betty up at the airport. They just came back from Houston where they were finalizing their wedding plans. Picking the pastor, dealing with the invitation-responses and choosing the menu, which amazed me in particular.

Every night for my own dinner I’m like “Okay...Subway, Vietnamese sandwich or the humus joint?” I try to get dinner for $3 to $6 dollars and most nights I can get away with it. On the nights that I can’t I have a backstock of canned fucking fish that I have to eat because it beats the hell out of going to bed hungry, which reminds me too much of college.

If I ever do “make it big”--or fuck, just make this city’s idea of a reasonable salary--the first thing I’m gonna do is throw my fucking can opener away. I hate that damn thing. I hate things that remind me I’m poor. People with money don’t have to eat stuff out of cans.

When the liquid soap runs low in the bathroom my roommate fills the bottle up with water, which drives me fucking nuts. I don’t want to have to do that. You know?

- Yes Rain, I do know. I too earn a pittance.

Well thank you. You and I are brothers in arms and sworn enemies of the rich.

- No Rain, I don’t know. I have far too much money to let such trivialities occupy my time.

Oh, really? Wow, that’s pretty cool. Hey, are you free later? What are you doing? Do you wanna hang out?


Not being able to go to Hapkido is driving me rather nuts. The good news is I think my foot is healing. I drank the disgusting medicine today using my new system, which is this: When mixing the medicine powder, use very little water. You might be tempted to use lots of water to dilute the stomach-churning mix, but that adds up to more gulps and more chances to interrupt the procedure by vomiting the entire mixture onto your roommate.

With just a couple shots of water, yes, the resultant mix is repulsively thick and chalky, but you can slam that shit down like a homicide detective with the black coffee. Not breathing through your nose is key. For lunch I slammed a ham-and-egg sandwich from Maria’s (60 cents) and chased it with the Nasty Medicine Shot. Then I stared at the counter for about sixty seconds before moving.


I got to LaGuardia a little early because I was starving. With a half-hour to kill before Ed & Betty’s plane touched down, I drove to the Burger King off Astoria Boulevard.

I ordered their new Sourdough Bacon Cheeseburger offering into the dented drive-through -- pardon me, drive-thru -- intercom and drove up to the window. The “window” is actually a bulletproof, rotating glass box that you put your money into. 360 degrees later you get your sandwich, with absolutely no chance of sticking a Glock in the cashier’s face and demanding he hand you a “Supersized” bag of cash.

Then I pulled the car in front of a row of houses and spread my pathetic little meal out, with the burger in my lap, a sweaty Coke perched above the radio and a ketchup-laden napkin under the emergency brake for fry-dipping.

The front lawns in Queens are not what you people from out of town think of as front lawns, so the house I was parked in front of was about ten feet away from me. The window was open and I could hear the sounds of a family eating dinner inside. Children’s voices and the clink of silverware. For some inexplicable reason this suddenly made me feel bad about myself, sitting there in my little hatchback with mayonnaise all over my face and messily scarfing a perfectly disgusting burger with my messenger bag staring back at me from the passenger seat.

The majority of meals I’ve eaten in the past ten years has been Party of One and it didn’t start to bother me until recently. Must be some biological clock kinda thing. I need to rip the hormonal glands out of a 22-year-old man and implant them in me so I can continue to live my life. I want no grief, no hassle and a full stomach.


It’s too bad file-sharing is illegal, or I’d recommend you go download Dan Hartman’s “I Can Dream About You” and think about that time in high school when you really liked that girl and at that one dance you tried to talk to her and this song was playing but she wouldn’t have anything to do with you because your locker was in D-Wing, where all the freaks have their lockers and all the cool kids had their lockers in F-Wing. After that, finishing up the semester was pretty damn brutal because you had to see her all the time in Social Studies.

Anyways you can’t possibly relive this experience because the RIAA will sue your ass if you download the trigger.

Today’s soundtrack: When your conscience hits you knock it back with pills
Today at 1:02pm: scarfing ha cheung



I forgot to drink my gross medicine today, and I’m a jerk besides: I’m totally not listening to the doctor. She said no pineapple but I can’t live without it so I bought a big FAT one this morning and stuffed my face. I have not, however, kicked anyone. (Though the night is still young if you wanna go ahead and get too close to me.)



This afternoon I had dim sum with a couple of friends. Last night was the UFC title bout, and in case you didn’t hear, Randy Couture beat Tito Ortiz’s ass, man I can not wait to see that fight. We talked about it excitedly on the way to Dragon Palace.


SHADY: I heard Randy Couture beat Tito Ortiz’s ass last night!

MIKE: Who’s Randy Couture again?

SHADY: He’s the guy who beat Vitor Belfort.

ME: Who’s Vitor Belfort?

SHADY: The guy with all the Christ tattoos.


Shady’s girlfriend, disinterested, tuned out.


ME: Hey who do you think would win, Vitor Belfort vs. Jesus Christ?

MIKE: Hmm.

ME: I think Jesus’s ground skills would tip the balance.

MIKE: He’s got good stand-up fighting skills too.

ME: Plus he could kill Vitor in the ring, just kill him, and then bring him back to life.

MIKE: And kill him again.

ME: Buddha vs. Tito Ortiz.

MIKE: Come on man, Ortiz. He would totally put Buddha in the triangle choke.

ME: Mohammed vs. Randy Couture.

MIKE: Mohammed, hands down.

ME: But by knockout, or submission?

MIKE: Hmm....

Today’s soundtrack: “Rough & Tough” by the Skatalites (feat. Stranger Cole) and “Police & Thieves” by Junior Murvin are currently battling for control of my soul. These days I need to hear an accordion to feel better.Today at 9:02pm: scrubbing the shower



Ten Random Potential Beginnings For Short Stories


1. I didn’t mean to shoot the cashier, it just kind of happened.


2. Up, down. Up, down. The turbulence was enough to make anyone vomit.


3. “I can’t marry you,” she said, throwing a ring in my face. The funny thing was I’d never met this woman before.


4. Motorbikes are meant to go fast, but only in certain conditions. No one’s supposed to hit 135 m.p.h. on a twisty stretch of the West Side Highway, no one without a strong urge to die.


5. Leaving the window open turned out to be a mistake.


6. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the alleyway, he could see for certain what he thought he’d seen a moment earlier: One of the garbage bags was moving.


7. The train pulled out of the station at 1:45pm sharp, carrying every last piece of my luggage. I stood on the platform and watched.


8. Falling wasn’t supposed to feel like this.


9. After slowing for a period the car finally sputtered to a grinding halt, and this time there was no question about it: Every last droplet of gasoline was gone.


10. She turned her head once more, ever so slightly, and I came achingly close to seeing her face.

Today’s soundtrack: police and thieves in the street
Today at 8:02am: Deciding not to go to work



It gets worse and worse. I wish problems could be cleanly solved, like if it was just a simple matter of punching the right face or burning down the right bungalow. But no, this is never the way of things, not these days.

Back in the day you were killed by things like the bubonic plague, and if you had it there was no doubt about it; your arm turning black and falling off was kinda hard to miss, even by a medieval doctor. But nowadays we’re killed by devices more subtle, like high school kids who play Doom or bacteria that evolves. Answers range from elusive to non-existent and problems feed on more problems.

Right now I’d really like to go to sleep and forget everything, but I can’t even do that because my roommate is throwing a party tonight, so as I write this my apartment is filled with cannabis smoke and the raised voices of people who’ve had one Stella too many.

Escapism has always been a big problem for me, but I’ll continue to cling to it. I have carefully avoided getting myself into any situations I cannot extricate myself from, but this gets harder and harder as I get older. Most of the problems I’ve had are the kind you can get away from in a taxi, or in several cases an airplane, but with each passing birthday this becomes more untenable. I feel like at some point I’m going to have to put my John Hancock on something and then it’s all over.


I’m listening to Junior Murvin sing “Police & Thieves,” my new favorite song but even through the headphones I can hear the inebriated tones of the dozen or so in my kitchen and living room. And the smell of pot-smoke is like the idiocy of George Bush, it’s so pervasive that you can’t really get away from it.


I won’t be going to Pennsylvania after all, my foot is still not healed and I think I’m coming down with something so I had to pass. I’m kind of relieved, actually. I’m fucking tired.


Not too thrilled with the direction this city is moving in, but maybe that’s just me externalizing. I don’t know.

I wish I drank.


On Monday I start freelancing for The Germans again. I like them because they pay right away, like I’m a hooker. There’ll be a check handed to me with a precise dollar amount written in crisp Teutonic script and there’s something awfully nice about that.


I don’t want to think anymore. I want to sit on a couch and eat pizza and fried pork rinds and watch bad cable movies.

Hampering this fantasy is the fact that I don’t own a couch, don’t have cable and can’t digest pork rinds. I’m a smack addict without the needle, a writer without a novel, a cowboy without a gun. I need a six-shooter, a horse and a sunset to steer towards.


Things will seem better tomorrow, I’m sure of it.

I just wish these people would get the hell out of my apartment so I could go to sleep.

Today’s soundtrack: the goal slips away
Today at 10:02pm: trying to scare up a date for an upcoming wedding. Houston’s a hard sell



My day began at 7:30am at the DMV, I had to renew my auto registration. The DMV is a miserable place filled with miserable people so I don’t want to talk about that right now. I want to suppress these memories so they can mess my life up later.


Then I went to work, more suppression, but I left early again.

Hey, I’m getting acupuncture to help me quit smoking. It hasn’t completely worked yet (I’ve still got four treatments to go) though it actually has altered the taste of cigarettes. All this just by sticking needles in your ear, who’da thought. If god does exist, human beings must’ve been one of his strangest designs:


G: Here’s the best part about these things! I made ‘em so that if you stick a tongue in their ear they become aroused, but if you stick needles in their ear it reduces the likelihood they’ll commit substance abuse.

ZEUS: And what does this appendix-thingy do again?

G: I keep forgetting.... Ah, I’ll worry about it later.


They say the G-man works in mysterious ways, and U2 says She moves in mysterious ways. It’s Bono vs. the pulpit. Depending on who you are, one of these will take up less space on your hard drive.


My foot still hurts to walk on, so today I went to see Dr. Xu, an herbalist and practitioner of Eastern medicine. She takes Andrew Jacksons instead of health insurance but that’s fine with me.

Dr. Xu is located in a small basement office in one of Chinatown’s many hidden shopping arcades. Following her broken-English instructions, I removed my shoes and socks and lay down in one of her tiny examination rooms. She slathered my foot up in some white pasty stuff and began poking and prodding. “Does this hurt? Or this? Or this?” I shook my head each time.

Thirty seconds later she was poking deep into my sole (which is better than peering deep into my soul, not that she’d find anything in there anyway: “Oh look, some broken dreams, unknown passions and thirty-seven cents in change”) and eventually she found the problem and poked it with her finger. “Yeeeowwwwwww,” I said.

“It is swollen inside your foot. Deep inside,” said Dr. Xu. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then grabbed a bunch of herbs and spices (okay maybe they weren’t spices) and began mixing them up in a cup.

She slathered the resultant brown paste all over the bottom of my foot, wrapped it in plastic and put a heat lamp on it. “Thirty minutes,” she said, disappearing behind a curtain.

I lay on my side, reading “The Warrior Within.” I don’t have a warrior within--if I had to write a book on philosophy it would be called “The Certified Public Accountant Within” or “The Small Whiny Guy Within”--but I’m trying to learn something here.


My cell phone rang, it was Cia. I couldn’t believe I got a signal in the basement.

“Hey I’m in your area,” she said. “I just quit my job! Are you around?”

I love celebrating with my friends when they quit their jobs (we’ve all done it at some point), so I gave her directions to Dr. Xu’s. Five minutes later Cia poked her head through the curtain.

“What is that?” she asked, eyeing the brown, paté-like paste on my foot.

“I dunno. Whaddaya say we get a couple crackers and a butterknife and find out.”

“No thanks,” she said, and sat down to wait while the lamp continued barbecuing my foot.


After thirty, Dr. Xu cleaned my foot off and I was shocked to find, it totally felt better! But then she gave me this disgusting brown potion I have to drink. I don’t know what it’s called but I think most Korean and Chinese people will recognize the smell, I feel like we’ve all been forced to drink it at some point.

Anyway the potion tastes like what you would imagine it would taste like if a monkey who ate bugs was forced to vomit into your mouth. I gulped it down like there was a prize at the bottom and shuddered.


“No kicking for one week,” said Dr. Xu (she’s familiar with martial arts injuries). That’s gonna put a damper on this weekend, I’m off to the woods of Pennsylvania for a Hapkido training weekend. Shite.


Afterwards I wanted to get ice coffee with Cia, but Dr. Xu said no cold beverages (and no sour food, oranges or pineapples! Shit!). So Cia and I went back to my place and I made her an ice coffee while I drank warm water. Then we went and got Vietnamese sandwiches and ate them on a stoop and shit-shot.

It was a nice autumn afternoon out, golden brown and all that. Almost enough to make me forget I had been barred from eating pineapples and have to drink the capuchin-puke smoothie instead. The cruelties of life grow stranger as you get older.


At night we had two hours of rehearsal for the Movie Talkers thingy, luckily at my apartment. Afterwards I ran down to Dim Sum GoGo around 10:30pm to catch the tail-end of Michele’s birthday dinner. In the empty restaurant I sat around the table jawboning with Lam, Tony and Michele while the annoyed waiter hovered and harrumphed.

I had a long day, and I love talking to these guys. We make each other laugh. Trading jokes and fried chicken late into the night, this is the thing that completes my day.

Tomorrow I leave for Pennsylvania. Both Betty and I have injured feet so we’re just gonna be standing around most of the time. I wanted to organize a showdown with the Amish but I guess it’s not gonna happen. Oh well, updates when I get back.


She moves in mysterious ways.

Today’s soundtrack: I cover the waterfront
Today at 4:02pm and 6:28pm: bailing



I left work early today, because--well, because I just don’t care anymore, you know? I took the train downtown and got out of the subway by 4:30pm, intending to go to the dojang at 5pm.

Unfortunately my foot had other plans; ever since I jammed it in sparring last week it’s been acting up, and after I got out of the train it told me we wouldn’t be going to class.


FOOT: I’m not carrying any more weight today.

ME: But there’s only two of you! I need you to carry the weight!

FOOT: Let the ass do it.

ASS: Hey! I’ve been carrying the weight all day!

ME: Sorry, ass, you get no vote.

ASS: Ass Suffrage! Ass Suffrage! Equal Rights! Ass Suffrage!

ME: Oh, please. If I let you vote, next you’ll be wanting to own land.


So at 5pm, rather than exercise, I went down to the diner to have a bacon cheeseburger and show my ass who’s boss. God I love being an adult.

My new Bruce Lee book came in the mail today! It’s the fourth one I’ve got and it’s called “The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee.” I know it’s a cheesy title but I’m super into his philosophies, I’ll save that for another entry.


So I’m sitting in the diner reading and eating and trying not to spill burger juice on the pages. Every once in a while someone walks past the window and I look up. White hipster girl. Old Chinese guy. Attractive woman about my age and height, pushing a baby stroller.

Someone comes into the diner and sits at the table in front of me, necessitating I look up again. It’s the woman with the baby stroller. She’s quite pretty and if I had to guess her ethnicity I’d say half Italian, half Asian.

She sits down, glances at me and smiles a quick smile and I smile back, mostly because I’m reading Bruce Lee and eating a bacon cheeseburger and I got to leave work early today so I’m basically at peace.

The baby starts sniffling so the woman takes her out of the stroller, holds her, talks to her and gives her a couple smooches. The baby stops crying and stares at me. Cute kid, maybe 3 months old, hair all standing up like a neo-natal punk rocker.

“How’s it going, Rain,” says Mohammed (the diner proprietor), walking past. I mumble a greeting through my mouthful of burger while juice from the patty runs down my hand.

The baby takes another look at me. The woman smooches it again and orders an ice coffee, looking somewhat beleaguered.

“Izzit tough having a kid in the city?” I ask.

“Yes,” she confesses, and we start having a conversation.


“So how do you know what the baby wants when it’s crying?” I ask.

“Well, it’s always one of three things: She’s hungry, she’s tired or she’s gone to the bathroom,” Soraya explains.

“So it’s not existential angst?”


Her name is Soraya, and the baby’s name is Tia. Soraya takes her in and out of the stroller intermittently, depending on Tia’s mood.

“Must be tough getting that stroller around, yeah?” I ask. More than once in the subway I’ve helped random single moms lug their stroller up or down the stairs while the baby cried bloody murder.

“Sometimes it’s tough,” she says. “Like today. I live in that building”--she points to a building across the street--“and it has an elevator operator, and he goes home at 3:30 every day. Today I got there at 3:25 and he was gone! So I can’t get upstairs.”

“No way,” I say. “There’s no staircase?”

“There’s a staircase but it’s a fourth-floor walkup, and I can’t carry the stroller up and hold the baby.”

“I live in that building right there,” I say, pointing to my building, which is practically next door to hers. “We’re neighbors. If you need a hand getting the stroller upstairs, I’d be happy to help.”

“Oh, that’d be great, thank you so much!” says Soraya. “I was totally sitting here thinking ‘Now who can I call...’”


We chat for another five minutes while I polish the burger and fries, then we both pay our checks and stand.


ASS: Yay! Time for feet to do the work!

FEET: Silence, ass.

SORAYA: Did you say something?

ME: No!



After unlocking the front door to her building, Soraya takes Tia out of the stroller and starts collapsing it awkwardly. She’s clearly new at this (the baby is only 3 and a half months old), doesn’t have it down to routine yet. I help her fold the stroller, then I pick it up and lead the way up the staircase.

At the fourth floor landing she passes me, holds the baby to one side and unlocks her door, revealing a killer, spacious loft with hardwood floors and late-afternoon sunlight pouring in through the many windows. (My apartment gets less light than the F-train.) A large, Last-Supper-of-Christ-style dining room table stands in one end of the massive living room. The other end is occupied with expensive-looking leather furniture.

I follow her inside, looking for a place to put the stroller. “Right there is fine,” says Soraya, pointing to the corner. I put it down and prepare to leave.

“Would you like to come in and have a drink or something?” asks Soraya. “Some coffee or tea?”


ASS: Nooo! Noooooo!

FEET: Milk, no sugar!


Sometimes freelancers or people like me who work at home get this, this...thing. What it is is that you work in the house by yourself all day while your peers are at work surrounded by coworkers, and you get a little stir-crazy. After a while you want to talk to somebody, anybody, and you start chatting with the mailman or the guy who works the token booth in the subway or a telemarketer. And you get this look in your eye.

I see that look in Soraya’s eyes right now. It’s not quite loneliness, perhaps bordering on it, but more of just a desire to talk to someone.

“Coffee would be great,” I say. I wouldn’t mind sitting and chatting either, and I get the added side bonus of sticking it to my ass.


Soraya’s apartment is gorgeous, the type of loft you dream of living in. Lots of windows, lots of sunlight, lots of space, two bedrooms, huge kitchen, huge bathroom, high ceilings, stamped tin to boot.

She holds Tia while I familiarize myself with her coffeemaker and brew up a pot of Lavazza (the good shit). We sit down at her massive, stainless-steel-surfaced kitchen island and shoot the shit.

Her husband’s a restauranteur, they’ve got a place in France. He wants them to move there but Soraya’s a New York girl. The baby’s brand new and Soraya hasn’t been working for the past few months. Prior to the baby’s birth Soraya was like me, a professional drifter, and she’d spent her twenties in random careers ranging from Art Curator to Financial Analyst.

She asks what I do, but there’s no way I can explain the whole thing. It’s simply not appropriate in casual conversation to tell someone “I’m a freelance industrial designer by trade, ten years in the biz but I write on the side and have aspirations to finish a book and I put up this weird journal site and I’m an assistant instructor at a hapkido school and I’m gonna be in this strange performance art production where I stand on stage and narrate a silent film and every once in a while I do readings at cafes (next one on October 10th) and the occasional college speaking gig.” So instead I said, “I’m a designer.”


We spend remarkably little time on smalltalk, and soon find ourselves discussing where we thought our lives were going and where they actually ended up. It’s nice to talk to peers. Five minutes into the conversation Soraya’s phone rings. “Excuse me,” she says, and picks it up.

“Hello? What? Yes...yes, but, she’s actually a baby,” she says, then hangs up. “Unbelievable,” she says. “It was a telemarketer, asking to speak to Tia. Three and a half months old and they’ve already got her on some marketing list.”

A half-hour into the conversation she gets another phone call, this one clearly from her husband. “What time? Okay, that would be great...well, we’ve still got the lasagna, too...okay....”

That kind of reminds me that I’m sitting here talking to a married woman with a baby and a husband and a future in France and who currently lives on the fourth floor. I am a single, babyless man-boy with a future as an unfulfilled writer and/or a steady gig bussing tables and I live on the second floor. I found rat shit in the stairwell yesterday and realized that somehow I’ve lost most of my forks, I’m down to two.

Soraya hangs the phone up.

“Wow, it’s almost 6:30,” I say, though I’ve got nothing to do at 6:30. “I should be going.” I pick my Bruce Lee book and my cellphone up off the kitchen island.

We exchange e-mail addresses, then she sees me to the door and thanks me again. At this late hour her apartment is still filled with sunlight. She closes the door behind me, smiling.

In the dim stairwell, I head back downstairs.

Today’s soundtrack: Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Today at 8:02pm: definitely not downloading illegal MP3s




The Feast of San fucking Gennaro finally closed up shop. Holy christ. Every year Little Italy turns into what looks like a co-ed prison riot. I wouldn’t mind if there was an actual cultural component to the festival, but it’s mostly boozed-up Camaro pilots from Tenafly with no volume control on their voices.

Speaking of which, my new favorite website in the world is officially Njguido.com. I don’t know if you have to be from the tri-state area or have been brought up with Guidos to appreciate it, but oh my god is it funny. Not to mention fascinating from an anthropological perspective.


After the “Movie Talkers” rehearsal the other day I raced home for Wendy’s thing. She’s written another short she’s sticking me in and needed to shoot some test footage of me for blocking purposes.

Wendy asked me if I wanted to Get Serious. About acting, that is. She says she thinks I could do it and be good at it. Holding me back is a) the fact that I hate actors, and b) the fact that I’d probably have to take acting classes or something, and nothing could possibly appeal to me less.

The idea of taking acting classes is unattractive on multiple levels: everything from the wasted time to the wasted money to the thought that I might actually get in touch with my feelings (yuck) to the people I’d have to be around. I find actors, as a class of people, to be super-uninteresting, self-involved vanity cases.

Of course I’m speaking in generalities here, but that’s the beauty of journaling; when I’m face-to-face with people I have to filter things through a socially-appropriate censor, and the things that come out the other end are polite but only partially true.

But yeah actors and people who are really into their looks are totally annoying. I have no patience for those who require you pay attention to them, based on their supposed inner fabulousness. I think if you want people to look at you, you should be constantly doing backflips or picking your nose or something.

You meet a lot of “actors” in New York. As it turns out, most of them are obligated to read you the daily specials.


The reason Wendy asked me if I want to get serious is because she’s been using me for her little shorts, but she also works with pro actors and it’s becoming obvious I don’t have the training.

As much as I dislike actors socially, most of the ones in regular circulation are, of course, good at what they do, and that something is something I suck at.

I can’t pretend to feel “wonder” or look at a strange girl across a table with loving warmth at an audition, this has been proven. I also can’t pretend I like people when I just want to push them down a staircase, or maybe an escalator that’s going up (because then it would take them twice as long to roll to the bottom. Fun with physics).


So I have to ask myself--why am I doing this? Partially because these were fun and interesting little side gigs, partially to help Wendy out. But when push comes to shove, or more accurately when push comes to “Let your feelings flow across your face--cut, let’s try that again,” I have to say this isn’t my bag.

I told Wendy I’d think about it, but I have a feeling in the end she’s gonna have to go with pros. I don’t want to study the Meisner Technique and I don’t want you to look at me. I want you to read me the specials and let me eat in peace.

Today’s soundtrack: I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to
Today at 6:32pm: in an empty café, reading a book about Bruce Lee



I get to Brooklyn by 5:30pm. My new thing is to be on time, or early. Decided I’d rather be thirty minutes early than thirty seconds late.

The minutehand is facing due south, and our meeting isn’t until it hits due north. With thirty minutes to kill, I park my ass in a café and suck down some horrible, horrible ice coffee.

Williamsburg, man. In my opinion, hipster neighborhoods always have shitty coffee while working-class districts have the good shit. And by good shit I mean good ol’ blue-collar Maxwell House or Café Bustelo, not that fucking frou-frou Starbucks-Timothy’s art-coffee shit. I don’t give a fuck if it’s from Sumatra; I want the shit they serve in god-honest diners and damn your Kenyan Vanilla Roast.


Today’s mission is Wardrobing for the Movie Talkers project. Director Woman a/k/a Juyoung asked me to show up in Williamsburg at 6pm, at which point I’d meet the Art Director and we’d all go to some thrift store so they could suit me up. The following day there will be a photo shoot for the promos. JuYoung apparently has some outrageous costumes in mind.

I get to the corner of Bedford Avenue and North 7th at 6pm on the dot, and find JuYoung standing with a tall, handsome actor-type. Korean by the looks of him, but I later find out he’s Chinese.

“This is Derek,” says JuYoung, introducing us. “He’ll be replacing Jackson.”

“Ah, what happened?” I ask, shaking Derek’s hand.

“Jackson got the callback for The Sopranos,” explains JuYoung.

“I actually went out for that part too,” says Derek. “But I knew I wasn’t gonna get it. The part is for a pothead, and I’m kind of, well, you know...”

“Clean-cut?” I say, grinning, and he nods. As far as Derek’s actor-ly good looks, Banana Republic catalog, yes; drug-addled Rastafarian, no.


We head to some ridiculously hip little boutique filled with old, funky clothes that smell like relatives you abhorred as children. Waiting for us there is Chaeyo, the fashionable young woman who’s the Art Director for the production.

Chaeyo’s picked out some outfits for us to try on, and my heart sinks when I see what they’ve got for me: It’s a fucking dress, dude. Well not really a full dress, it’s more like a long, flowing white overcoat, but it is unmistakably women’s clothing, with a Princess-waist or whatever the hell you call it.

I put the damn thing on anyway because hey, I’m not the director, this is her project and just because I can’t comprehend what she’s going for doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. I look absolutely ridiculous but I model it for them gamely, and thankfully they both agree it looks wayyyyyy too femme.

Derek has it even worse: They tell him he’ll be appearing on stage shirtless, with body paint. Derek blanches at this, pulling his shirt up and checking out his flat but featureless stomach. “Dammit, I’m gonna have to hit the gym harder and produce that six-pack,” he says. “I didn’t know I’d have to be shirtless.”


Next we head over to an even larger boutique, positively warehouse-sized, and it looks like a relief mission for Afghanistan, if everyone in Afghanistan wore secondhand hipster-wear.

JuYoung and Chaeyo spend the better part of thirty minutes picking out potential outfits for us. The four of us head into the fitting room area with a shitload of clothes and I find myself undressing in front of these two women and this male actor guy I’ve just met. Well, whatever. Good thing my boxers are clean.

It gets worse when I see the clothes they want me to wear--they put me in a succession of women’s fucking blouses, some of them sheer for fuck’s sake, and tight, white pants. Then tight, black leather pants. I have to bite my tongue to keep from protesting.

The worst part about thrift clothing is the smell. They always smell like their previous owners. One top I had to put on was made out of a sheer black material and stupid tight. My nipples were sticking out and I smelled like a cheap hooker. I would’ve much preferred to smell like an expensive hooker.


They ultimately settled on a flaming orange Betsey Johnson women’s shirt for me, don’t fucking ask me why. Even worse, the shirt actually appears to be made out of, get this, plastic. I started sweating just looking at it, and putting it on feels like being wrapped in Saran Wrap.

I’m also being suited up in a flourescent-green felt vest.

During the whole try-on procedure I took pictures of each and every outfit because I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I was going to post these pictures up to give you all a little laugh, but having had some experience with cyber-haters I’ve decided this is a bad idea. Embarassing pictures, strangers who hate you and the internet is a bad combination.


Derek got to wear some cool shit, this grey smoking-jacket type-thing, but they ended up putting him in a white leather vest and nothing underneath. We took turns laughing at each other.

The director and the art director are both from Korea so their aesthetic sensibility is different. This immigrant vs. aesthetics theorem was proven to me at a young age, when my mother would occasionally put me in clothing that other kids on the playground felt should be broken in with fists.

Well, whaddaya gonna do. I said yes to the project, and the way I see it everything is the director’s call; I’m just here to help out.


When I got home I took a strong shower, then changed into clean, nondescript brown clothing and felt much, much better.

Today’s soundtrack: each and every day of the year
Today at 2:02pm: filling the meter.



I left the house early, before noon, but after driving over the Williamsburg I realized I’d forgotten to bring the goddamn address of the meeting. People joke about being late to their own funeral but I’m the guy who’ll take the cake, regardless of whether I’m warmer than room temperature.

I remembered the e-mail saying it was across the street from P.S.1. (an art gallery in Long Island City) so I drove to Queens on autopilot and wound up on the right street, but once I got there I had no idea where to go.

After parking the car I was faced with a series of run-down industrial buildings covered in graffiti. A few cracked windows revealed what looked to be artist’s lofts within, judging by the paintbrushes sticking out of a jar by the window and what looked like splattered canvases on the far walls.

I randomly picked a building and entered. The front door was neither secured nor locked. In New York City, an unlocked door is still a relative novelty to me, like a taxi without dents or a chalk outline without the bloodstain. Gotta love artists.


The stairwells were covered in grafitti, but not the doom-portending, desperate grafitti of an actual slum; these were polished burners, the kind that make it into those coffee-table books that first-year art students from Connecticut will eagerly spend their parents’ money on.

I went up a few flights and randomly pulled some doors open, but each led into what appeared to be abandoned (though brightly sunlit) studio spaces. Hearing my empty footsteps echo through the dusty rays of sunlight made me feel I was in one of those virus movies where everybody else is dead. If I had a pizza with me I would’ve eaten it and thrown the crust on the floor just because I could.

After three flights of blank rooms I reached the roof and was surprised to find the door tied open. I stepped out onto the tar, shaded my eyes against the sun and took in the impressive views: On the west side was Manhattan stretched lengthwise, and on the east, what appeared to be a factory complex converted into artist’s lofts, judging by the abundance of yet more polished grafitti. I took a couple flicks and went back downstairs.


Eventually I found the place; it was the third industrial loft building on the block. Today’s production meeting--my first ever “production meeting”--was located in a painter named Kyu-Nam’s studio on the second floor.


[Rain, you idiot, you forgot to mention what the meeting was for. Way to go. Way to write an incomprehensible blog entry.]
Oh yeah, sorry. So remember that reading I did a few weeks ago on the Bowery? No? Well anyways, after the reading a woman approached me, said she liked my “act,” introduced herself as a director and asked if I’d be interested in being in her project. I said yes before I knew what it was. So here’s what it is:

Back in the day in Korea, they had silent movies like everyone else. But rather than add subtitles, they had a live person, a sort of barker, stand next to the screen while the movie was playing and actually voice the dialogue.

These barkers, called byun-sa, also narrated the movie and added their own wise-ass commentary, a la Mystery Science Theater 2000. The barkers became celebrities in their own right; moviegoers developed favorites and would only want to see movies narrated by their preferred barker.

So Director Woman is reviving the format. She got a hold of some old-ass Korean flicks and is putting together a show at a nightclub on the Lower East Side--silent movies projected on-screen and narrated by live, loudmouthed Asian-Americans like me. Guess who got the part of Head Barker.

A couple e-mails later I receive instructions and directions to our first production meeting, out at a painter’s studio in Queens.


The walls of Kyu-Nam’s studio were covered with paintings that looked like this:

I think the style is called “Deconstructivism.” Each painting at first appeared to be an indecipherable collection of disjointed pixels, but after staring for a moment, I was surprised to see city scenes staring back at me. The Hong Kong skyline. A Venetian canal. What looked like Lexington Avenue, up by Hunter College, during rush hour.

JuYoung, the director, and production assistant Su-Hui sat on a well-worn couch, along with Kyu-Nam, a likable, grizzled painter in his 40s or 50s. A coffee table was covered with thick books on art theory, the type that require a working knowledge of French philosophy to get through. (I went to art school, I know the deal.) I sat down and tried to make myself comfortable while JuYoung and Su-Hui went over my resume.


Presently a distinct-looking Chinese-American guy named Jackson walked in. Apparently he’d been cast as another barker (there are three, total, in this production). I can’t quite describe his face, but it’s the kind of face you don’t forget. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, and we introduced ourselves.

“I really, really want to do this project,” Jackson explained, “but I’m waiting on a callback from The Sopranos. Obviously if I get that, I won’t really have the time to dedicate to this.”

“I understand,” said JuYoung.


A few moments later a no-nonsense young woman with glasses walked in, barker number three. I recognized her from a reading we’d done together a few months back. “Tina,” I said.

“Rain,” she said. Small world.


Out of the three of us, I’m the only non-actor. Tina and Jackson apparently auditioned for this. They have headshots and acting experience and one of them went to drama school at Yale. Me, I’m just some schmuck who got through his twenties by being in the right place at the close-to-right time. My acting experience consists mostly of telling my boss I won’t be able to finish the project until next Tuesday.

I’m not sure how I keep winding up in these performance-based projects. Between this and Wendy’s upcoming short, I’ll be working with scripts a hell of a lot for a guy who’s never studied drama or said “What’s my motivation?”

Never said it out loud, anyway.


I am a sham and a fraud. And somehow, despite this, I feel okay with things.


The performance is going to happen in late October, on Halloween weekend. I’ll keep you posted in case you’re in town and decide not to dress up like Cyclops and terrorize the neighborhood kids this year.

Today’s soundtrack: tu giochi al baseball
Today at 10:02pm: Remaining silent while a friend cries



I didn’t go to work on 9/11. Then again I didn’t go to work on 9/10, or 9/9 for that matter. Slow week at The Corporation and I’ve got better things to worry about besides.

Bit off more than I can chew, I’ll tell you about it later. Soon. When I find the time to type.

Fuck money, I want more time.

Today’s soundtrack: when I report to work, I have to wear my uniform.
Today at 8:02pm: Explaining to a Japanese photographer that I am not Japanese.



Yuka and her sub-magazine, Educated Community, sponsored an art show at the Agnes B. store in SoHo. It was called “Bake Sale” and featured huge, LP-sized cookies that local artists painted on with food coloring. Yuka had one of her assistants, a genki Japanese kid named Ken, dress up as Cookie Monster. It was pretty weird.

I haven’t been out to a scene-y place in ages but the faces were the same, even when they weren’t. Hip is as hip does.

You know what I’ve been missing? Nothing.

Today’s soundtrack: I wanna know your plan.
Today at 8:02pm: At hapkido, doing leglifts until I feel certain I will vomit.



A friend-of-a-friend recently visited from Paris. After walking around for a spell, she observed that midtown looks like it’s packed with hookers.

New York’s anti-smoking laws dictate smokers stand outside in front of buildings and puff their little hearts out (literally). In Paris, apparently the only women who stand in front of buildings and smoke are whores. But here it’s well-heeled women who work in marketing and lead fashionable, stressful, carcinogenic little lives.


During my afternoon break today I stretched my legs in front of The Corporation. Standing stupidly with a cigarette in my mouth and fighting the urge to rip my tie off and use it to choke a random fellow employee. I bet if I did it no one would be shocked or try to stop me, they’d all just stand around and nod solemnly while the chokee drew his last breath, crooked fingers grasping skyward in vain.

Anyways I’m standing there on the Park Avenue sidewalk and this guy who looks exactly like Captain Kangaroo walks up. Wearing some type of outfit with a badge and a hat.

He stops, looks at me, and instantly says “Rain.” (For those of you new to this journal that’s my name, not some unsolicited weather prediction.)

I fight the urge to run and look at him carefully. “Murph,” I say.


Back in college I started turning out these crappy articles for the school paper, which more or less began my side career in writing. I wasn’t really qualified to write but it was an art school; I was in high demand because I actually knew what an adverb was and showed up for work without paint all over my fingers.

On campus there was a security guard named Murphy whom everyone used to make fun of. Nothing evil about the man, he was just, for lack of a better term, a doofus.

Anyways in my pre-graduation sign-off article I wrote about the things I’d miss about college. “Most of all, I’ll miss Murphy,” I wrote at the end. It was intended to be, like me, mean and sarcastic for no good reason.


Nine years after the printing machine spit that article out, here’s the man himself, Murphy, standing in front of me in midtown Manhattan, maybe forty pounds heavier. In 1994 he looked like a skinny version of Captain Kangaroo and, well, now he just looks like Captain Kangaroo.

“Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain,” he says, breaking into a toothy grin. “About ten years ago you wrote an article in The Prattler. I’ll never forget it, I cut the article out and saved it. ‘Cause at the bottom you wrote ‘But most of all I’ll miss Murphy.’ You remember?”

“I remember,” I say, wearing a decent and upstanding expression. Murphy’s still a security guard of some sort, judging by the uniform.

“I told myself if I ever saw you again I’d ask you about it, and here we are. Now was there a professor named Murphy, or was that me?”

“No, there was no professor named Murphy.”

“No kidding,” says Murph, standing back and giving a little laugh. “So that was me! Why me?”

I realized he didn’t realize I was being sarcastic, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him. “Because, Murph,” I said in what I hoped was a jovial tone. “You were the security guard everybody knew.”

“I was?” he said, and gave another little laugh. “Hey, you know, I know all about that hole you guys cut in the fence.”

“The one by the White Castle?” I asked. “We got tired of climbing the damn thing.”

“I knew you kids wouldn’t walk around the fence to get back to campus,” he says. “What a war zone.”

“Forget about it, it was like Beirut,” I say. (Back in the early ‘90s my school, Pratt, was in a part of Brooklyn that was considered Fully Fucked-Up. There was a fence around the school but people were still getting shot, raped, stabbed, you name it. Boy those were some good times.)

“Like Beirut, hahahah! I’ll tell ya, whenever I had to check the buildings on Ryerson I always made sure I had this.” At this point Murphy reaches into his jacket and I almost took a step back, certain he was about to spray me with automatic fire and disturbing cackles.

His hand came back out holding a little flashlight, which he turned on. He hunched behind it like a cartoon spy and flicked it around furtively. I realized he was making a joke.

“Hahahaha,” he said.

“Hahahaha,” I said. Then Murphy the Midtown Security Guard shook my hand and walked away.

I wished one of my coworkers had watched the whole exchange. “Bet you didn’t know I knew Captain Kangaroo,” I’d say, nodding smugly. “I’m down with Mr. Greenjeans too. He’s my bitch.”