Today’s soundtrack: The screech of brakes and lamplights blinking, that's entertainment.
Today at 8:02pm: spinning



“Thank you for calling The Corporation!”

- “If you’d like to sodomize one of the ex-cons from our cafeteria staff, press one!”
- “To urinate in the Vice President of Marketing’s mouth, press two!”
- “To commit a fabulously complicated double homicide using a window-washing scaffold on the 34th floor, press three!”
- “To have me, the operator who recorded this message hunted down and killed by professional assassins because you don’t like the sound of my goddamned voice, press four!”
- “To have psychotropic drugs injected directly into your left ventricle, press five!”

I have a headache.

A crippling moment of indecision on the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk leads to missed taxis, unfinished cigarettes and a slow boat to China.

One of those days where you feel like if you came home and found a loaded pistol on your desk it wouldn’t be too difficult to pump a couple rounds into the wall, or your neighbor’s mailbox, or maybe even that small space with no hair right behind your own ear.

I’m sick, I’m coming down with something. One of those sneezy motherfuckers on the subway launched a virus into the air and despite me holding my breath for as long as I could, the airborne particles somehow found their way into the lining of my lungs and commenced their nefarious acts of replication. End result being I had to leave work early today to come home, shed clothes and lie in my bed staring at the ceiling.

I dislike feeling bad. But I very much like listening to “Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios” (“Picasso Visits The Planet Of The Apes”) by Adam and the Ants. British New Wave is over twenty years old and still good. In contrast I am over thirty years old and no longer very good.

“That’s Entertainment” by The Jam is some good shit.

Crashlanded U.F.O.’s, lost aliens and pizza. I am taking some type of flu medication I found in a cabinet. Headache still here though.

Something is spinning very, very fast. I can hear it. If you would just listen you could hear it too.

Help me, I am trapped. A heavy bookcase fell on me and now I am pinned at my desk and can just manage to reach the keyboard with one hand. That is why I haven’t been writing much lately. Definitely not because I’ve grown morose and uncommunicative from catching wind of events too horrific to recount or even think about.

Yes it is because I am trapped under many books. First I tried to e-mail, then IM for help but no one is on. I shouldn’t have gotten all these books. Next time I buy a book I will give it away or sell it immediately after I finish it so that it cannot sit patiently on a shelf waiting to pin me to my desk with its brothers and sisters. In elementary school they told me books were good for me and goddammit they fucking lied.

She called me and told me she had become a junkie. I tried to listen and not freak out. I asked her if she was turning tricks or knocked up and she said no. Then I told her I thought that put her in the top 10th percentile of junkies and she laughed a little.

Later we met up and I saw her for the first time in a long time and I now know there is nothing funny about being hooked on nasty fucking drugs. A guy put marks on her too. I felt very, very bad feelings welling up inside me when I saw that.

I tried to help but I can’t do much. I tried but I just can’t do very much. I felt like an asshole. It’s like the time I called tech support and when I got to the second part of my troubleshooting question the tech guy said “Sir I’m afraid that’s outside the boundaries of the support I can provide.” But I think my failure to provide adequate support was less eloquent. There is something decidedly unbeautiful about everything.

I remember one time sleeping with a girl I was involved with. We were asleep and wrapped around each other. She kept waking up with a start--she was having nightmares that kept waking her up. Bad nightmares I think. So every time it happened, I immediately tried to hold her tight and stroke her hair, you know? But it didn’t work; she kept having them.

No one is coming to get this bookcase off of me. I am going to lie here a little longer and then I will try to move it again.

Today’s soundtrack: The spotlight's hitting something that's been known to change the weather
Today at 9:42pm: Staring at sixty pairs of eyes staring at me.



The reading was, not quite a disaster, but it didn’t go well. I was the first guy to go up after the MC and after I read my first few sentences, unbeknownst to me, the mic started dropping out. Which means by the time I got to the end of the story I had a couple people near the front of the stage nodding, and the rest of the room just kind of blinking at me.

People started talking in the middle of my piece, which is never a good sign. Well, whaddaya gonna do.

I think we all know the true key to success is to just lock yourself in the bathroom even though there are other people waiting and point at yourself in the mirror and say “Stop crying--stop crying, Nancyboy” and slap yourself a couple times and then go out to that bar by Central Booking and have one drink too many and pick, then lose, a horrific fight with recently released bikers. I mean we’ve all been there, right?

You win some, you lose some. Unless there are recently released bikers involved, in which case you pretty much always lose. Brass knuckles vs. scrawny writer’s rage, you do the math.



The AAWW is having a “Recollections” event this coming Saturday and I think I will go. I will either read the same piece I did at the Wong thing, to see if it has any merit when actually read aloud, or I will write something new--and this time, rather than write from the heart I will write it from the liver or maybe the pancreas. The pancreas sounds good.

I don’t even know what the pancreas does. It just sounds like something you make fun of a person for being born without.

Yyyyyyyyeah. Doing well. Really, really well. I’m hot this month.

Hot like a tamale fart.

Well, I’ve almost finished the story. I wasn’t sure if my piece would suck or not so I’ve held off on inviting anyone, but I figure what the hell, I'm an "undercard bout" anyway. So if you’re in the NY area tonight:

Today’s soundtrack: Oh, it’s a long, long while
Today at 3:02am: trying to decide if the carpal tunnel is really worth the payoff



So this Friday I’m doing a reading down at the Silk Road Teahouse in Chinatown. It’s a benefit for David Wong. In terms of the other performers it’s not exactly my crowd, everyone else seems kind of hip-hop-style.

I’ve been pretty nervous because I figured I better come up with something specifically for this event but I haven’t been getting any ideas. David Wong is in some serious shit so I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to show up and read one of my ordinary silly little stories.


Well late last night I finally got a story idea. I banged a couple paragraphs out lickety-split, trying to ride the wave, but all I got was a few good spurts of creative energy before it went away.

This morning as soon as I got out of bed I pulled up the file and began adding to it. Writer’s trick #1. You’re more in tune with your subconscious when you first wake up, you know that? Very close to the dream state, far closer than you would be around, say, lunchtime. Anyway I managed to squeeze out some strings of character dialogue but I still haven’t found the crux.

I need the crux, where is the crux. Sometimes it’s at the bottom of a cup of coffee, or between a pair of headphones, or lying on the sidewalk somewhere between Canal and 14th Street. But I couldn’t find it today.


Writer’s trick #2, distract yourself with other projects. Tried that in the afternoon and came back to the story afterwards. A few more lines of dialogue spilled out of me but it wasn’t enough and the crux was still nowhere to be found.


Writer’s trick #3, engage in arduous physical activity to stimulate endorphins et cetera. Went to Hapkido in the evening, sweated my ass off, came back. I got maybe three sentences.


Writer’s trick #4, go for a long walk through the city with headphones on when it’s dark outside. This usually does it for me.

So I went for my long walk, almost two hours but it didn’t work. In terms of connecting with my subconscious I wasn’t getting any reception. I think it might be ‘cause I’m not feeling so hot about a lot of other things right now so Worry is taking up too much of my RAM. I need more RAM.

I also needed a pineapple, so I walked up to my usual spot in the Village. I go up there all the time, and maybe two or three times a year they’ll be out of ripe pineapples. Well today was the day, so I walked out of there with nothing.

Then I headed over to Café De La Universite on University Place ‘cause it’s the only joint that serves decent decaf. I haven’t been there for a while. When I got there it was painted a different color inside and there was some counterwoman I didn’t recognize and she told me they didn’t have decaf. Can’t catch a break today.

So instead I sat on a fence on Washington Square Park East and had a cigarette and watched the occasional car pass. I was listening to Jackie Gleason’s “Blue Velvet” and I almost took a picture of the street to show you but then I realized, it was the music I was listening to that made the scene pretty. If I snapped that shot and put it up it wouldn’t have looked the same, not one bit.

Mostly I sat on the fence and felt bad about myself.


What do I have to feel bad about? Well, I can’t relate to people and I’m all alone in the world I’m filled with hatred and cookies and boo hoo hoo. Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo.

On top of which I’m barely making the rent, I’ve got no dough for my bi-yearly overseas jaunt and my life is turning into that song “Spread Your Wings” by Queen. Not a good month for my psyche. I think my soul actually left my body sometime last week. My soul is on vacation in Greece.


So a few months ago I got published in this short story anthology. Well I just read a review of it online. The reviewer called my story “contrived” and continually referred to me as “M. Rain Noe.”

If she thinks the story’s contrived, okay fine, but for fuck’s sake it’s “N. Rain Noe.” Jesus. She writes my name like five times, too, “M. Rain Noe” this and “M. Rain Noe” that. I’m just sitting there frowning at the screen thinking this won’t do, this won’t do.

I wonder if she says “N. Night Shyamalan.”

Contrived. Sigh.


I just got a postcard from my soul. There’s a picture of the island of Mykonos on one side and on the other it says “Wish you were here,” “Am having a great time” and “I may be staying here a little longer than I thought.”

Okay so I made the whole thing up. I’m a hack.


Writer’s trick #5, stay up late because when you get tired all sorts of weird doorways to your subconscious start opening up and sometimes it unlocks the writing.

So, I’m waiting.

And waiting.

I’ve got two versions of “September Song,” one by Django Reinhardt and one by Willie Nelson. I can’t decide which one I like better.

Oh, this is hopeless. I’m going to bed.

Today’s soundtrack: around the world, around the world
Today at 1:32pm: hustling through Barnes & Noble



Today’s Missions:

1. Saysi’s audition
2. Acquire Bruce Lee books
3. Meet Cia for lunch
4. Help Wendy out at her “Directing Actors” class
5. Restore justice and cosmic balance to the universe (time permitting)


1. Saysi’s audition

I got to the NYU building where the auditions were at 1pm on the dot. In the lobby I ran into the supercute lesbian friend of Wendy’s. “Hey, I know you,” she said.

“Hi Angela,” I said. “Do you know where Saysi’s audition is?” (They’re all Tisch students together.)

“Yeah, it’s on the fourth floor.”

I took the elevator up to 4 and followed the signs to the “green room” (which was actually white, go figure). I walked in to find a physically attractive but high-maintenance and frosty-looking Asian girl sitting on one of the chairs.

“Hi, is this Saysi’s audition?” I asked her, unsure if I was in the right room.

“This is the audition for DDR,” she said icily, using the name of Saysi’s film. I wasn’t sure if she was being unfriendly or if that was just the way she talks.

Saysi bounced into the room a moment later, super-energetic and smiley. “Hi Rainnnnnn,” she said and led me to the audition room. She’s so cheerful it’s impossible not to like her.


The auditioning room was small and had a single table near the middle, like an interrogation room. Saysi and I sat opposite each other at the desk.

The whole room was painted black, so I kind of felt like I was being interviewed for a job in Hell. (“How do you feel about Eternal Damnation, Mr. Noe? Are you allergic to brimstone? Do you like working with sinners? Would you feel comfortable delegating tasks to imps?”)

A videocamera in the corner recorded the whole thing, which was basically Saysi chatting me up a bit and then me reading the lines a couple times while she offered minimal direciton. Then it was over.

I have no idea if she wants to use me or not, I guess if she does she’ll call. If she doesn’t I guess I’ll have to give up on these crazy dreams of being a big, big star and move back to the farm in Iowa. Oh wait a second, wrong fantasy. I’m a writer from New York, goddammit.


2. Acquire Bruce Lee books

Afterwards I walked up to the Barnes & Noble to see if they had any Bruce Lee books. I gave one of mine away so I have to replace it, plus I finished the new one I’d bought.

Ten minutes later I walked out of there fifty bucks lighter and 868 pages heavier. “The Tao of Gung Fu,” “Jeet Kune Do” and “Artist of Life.” Both the cashier and I told each other to have a nice day, but deep down inside I think we both knew that neither of us meant it.

“Here’s your change. I am completely ambivalent about whatever may happen to you today or for the rest of your life.”

“Thank you for giving me my change, and that only. Your fate and your future concern me less than the geometry problems I encountered in high school.”


3. Meet Cia for lunch

Cia made me a sandwich! The soppressata and mozzarella was from Di Paolo’s in Little Italy but Cia assembled the sandwich herself in her own kitchen. She’d requested I make her a CD and this was my payment.

We sat and ate her sandwiches on the windowsill in front of the Prada store on Broadway, which used to be the SoHo Guggenheim. It’s nice to sit there because the windowsill is wide and the security guards have better things to worry about, like keeping an eye on the $8,000 alligator leather jackets inside.


4. Wendy’s “Directing Actors” class

I didn’t know what to expect from Wendy’s “directing the actors” class, but it definitely wasn’t this.

The way it works is this: A classful of graduate film students, mostly in their 20s and 30s, take turns using two actors in a scene of theirs. The professor, an acting teacher (who’s worked with Woody Allen, I’m told, presumably as a measure of credibility) observes how the “directors” communicate with the actors and offers criticisms.

I had to do two scenes. The first was challenging and the second was, well, interesting. Both were from Wendy’s script.

For the first scene I played a doctor who was supposed to be coaxing a scared child into laughing, using only the dialogue given in the script and my facial expressions. It was fucking hard. I tried incorporating the input given to me by both Wendy and the acting teacher.

As they tweaked and adjusted the ridiculousness of the situation I started to get really self-conscious and did a bad thing--I stopped in the middle of the scene and started laughing at myself and said “I can’t do this,” causing the entire room to groan and yell “Oh come on” at me. After that I felt pretty stupid and did my best to bang out the scene.

I felt bad because I realized my own insecurities were jamming Wendy up so I vowed not to do that again. Which, as it turns out, came in handy for the second scene.


For the second scene Wendy took me to an empty room and introduced me to an actress named Chae-Su, who was supposed to play my wife. Wendy handed me a few pages of script. It featured me and my “wife” talking and snuggling and then I was supposed to cry at the end. Ah, fuck.

“Uhhh, Wendy?” I said, hoping to get some miracle tips.

“Don’t worry about the crying,” she snapped. “We’ll worry about that later.”

“Chae-Su, meet Rain. Rain, meet Chae-Su,” said Wendy. I shook the woman’s hand.

“Now in this scene the two of you have to be physically intimate,” Wendy explained, “so you need to get comfortable with each other’s bodies. I have an exercise you can do if you’re both willing.” The woman and I both nodded.

“Stand up and face each other...that’s it...now Rain, take Chae-Su’s right hand...good...now start tracing the lines on her palm with your finger.”

I did as instructed and noticed Chae-Su’s fingers were trembling. Since she was a pro actor I figured this had less to do with nerves and more to do with the cup of coffee she’d walked in with. But then she squirmed and pulled her hand away and suddenly I felt like a freak. Holy cow, this was like high school all over again.

“Sorry, ticklish,” she explained.

Wendy continued feeding us the exercise. “Okay Rain, start massaging her hand then...good...now move higher...higher...start rubbing her shoulders, yes, that’s it...

“Chae-Su, now you. Start rubbing Rain’s arms. Good. Higher...higher...

“Rain, work your way up the body...put your arms around her...touch her hair, cradle her head....

“Chae-Su, put your arms around him...closer, good, that’s good....”

By the end of the exercise we were as physically close as we could be without me having to buy her dinner. We both sat back down and I noticed something interesting--the automatic force field that strangers in New York (or probably anywhere) put up when sitting in close proximity was pretty much gone. Wow, it worked. Maybe I could try this out on the subway to make everyone else more comfortable.

Then rehearsal for the scene began in earnest. Chae-Su had to sit on my lap and kiss my head while we murmured some dialogue to each other as couples do. Then she gets up to silence a boiling teapot but I pull her back onto me, get all weepy and we continue talking.

We tried it a couple times and Wendy seemed happy with it, so the three of us went back into the classroom where everyone was waiting. Chae-Su sat on my lap and I put my arms around her and leaned my head on her, trying to forget there was a dozen eyes trained on us. I also noticed that Chae-Su’s nose was freezing.

After our first attempt, both the acting teacher and Wendy began feeding us direction. During these interstitial moments Chae-Su kept her hands in contact with me, rubbing my knee and so forth to keep the vibe. I know I should have been doing the same but I was pretty nervous and felt like I might do something wrong so I kept my hands on the couch.

After the second or third take Wendy was satisfied, then Chae-Su and I disengaged and collected our things. The class turned their attention to the next set of actors and director. I pulled my sweater on and walked out and did my best to feel normal.


5. Restore justice and cosmic balance to the universe

When I got home I put my superhero costume on, but then I got hungry so I took the mask off and ate the rest of Cia’s sandwich. Then I started to get a little sleepy so I took the cape off and lay down for a little while. Then I decided to check my e-mail and well, before I knew it it was dark out. And I am damn sure not going to fight crime when it’s dark outside.

Today’s soundtrack: we’re gonna rock on to Electric Avenue
Today at 1:02am: Don’t ask.



I like spending Sunday mornings on my back, and by that I mean unconscious and in my own bed. But this particular Sunday found me on my back fully-dressed and wide awake on the floor of Wendy’s West Village studio while she lurked over me with a DV camera. A Polish woman crouching next to me fed me lines.

Wendy’s shooting some test footage for her short. I’m not sure exactly how it works but apparently she screens this initial footage for her classmates and professors, who offer suggestions and criticisms before she breaks out the actual Panaflex and starts buying cans of film.

The script calls for me to deliver my lines while lying flat on my back completely dazed, which, luckily for me, is not much of a stretch from my working personality. (Interesting thing about Wendy’s scripts--this is the second time I’ve been in a film of hers where a female character knocks me down. Wonder what’s lurking in her subconscious.) I follow Wendy’s directions, put my eyes where she wants me to put ‘em and deliver my lines.

The Polish woman is extraordinarily insecure, even for an actress, and flubs her lines several times, requiring I remain on my back for an extra four takes or so. Hardwood is not comfortable and for a moment I recall Japan, where I seem to remember having slept on a lot of floors.

Katja apologizes for having “coffee and cigarette breath”--as Wendy experiments with the angles, she directs Katja to put her face closer and closer to mine, until eventually we’re an inch or two apart and for a moment I worry she is going to lick my face.

I don’t really like being around people so the forced intimacy requires I disconnect something in my psyche. Internally I fumble for the cord and pull the plug.

Wendy moves lower with the camera. “Closer,” she directs, and now Katja is so close to me that she actually gets blurry. I got out of bed early for this.

“Action,” says Wendy.

“Are you okay?” asks a blurry Katja, searching my face for something.


Before Katja got there it was just me and Wendy, and she ran me through some techniques that I guess directors run through with actors.

“Okay, lie down,” she says, and I assume the position. “Move your arm a little more to the side, yeah that’s it. Not symmetrical.

“Okay now this time before you say the lines, think of [such-and-such]...okay that was good...now this time pretend that you’ve just [done so-and-so]...okay, good...now this time pretend that you’re all [such-and-such]...okay, great.”

The difficulty of some of the things she asks me to do make me appreciate what an actor’s talent is. I still dislike them as a class of people, but at least I understand their job is a little more difficult than I’d thought.

The end of Wendy’s script calls for me to cry, I still haven’t figured out how I’m gonna pull that one off. I suppose if I was an actor it would be easy--I could just picture being at a party where I wasn’t the center of attention and no one told me how fabulous I was and that would do it.

Then again, for someone who’s uncomfortable with this world I seem to be saying yes more than I’m saying no. Wendy introduced me to a fellow film student of hers named Saysi, who asked me to audition for something on Tuesday. She seemed cool so I said yes, we’ll see how that goes.

The great part about not being an actual actor is that if the project looks like it’s going to be an actor-filled hassle, I can just say no and spend my free time doing what I’m doing now, which is tapping on plastic squares to make words. I’ll go to the audition for shits and giggles, it’s just student stuff anyway.


Sunday afternoon we had rehearsals for the Movie Talker thing. It’s stressful for me because I rewrote parts of the script but the other actors are not reading the lines the way I intended them. Some of the stuff I’d written is intended to be funny, but a lot of the jokes are timing-based and their sense of comic timing is...different.

I’m just not a person who enjoys working with other people. Given a choice between a shooter on a firing squad or a hitman, I’d choose hitman every time.


Rehearsals ended around 4:30pm, and then I headed up to The Corporation. There’s a big project due Monday morning. I should have been working on it all weekend but I couldn’t bring myself to go to the office.

I clock in at 5pm, roll my sleeves up and get down to work. I put 80s pop trash on the stereo, roll the knob up to 10 and break it off.


By 1:30am it’s becoming obvious that the project is not going well. I’ve already spent more hours here today, on a Sunday, than I do during a normal business day.


By 2:30am I advance the project into its final stage and see the light at the end of the tunnel.


By 3:30am I uncover a massive technical error that runs through all of the drawings I have so laboriously slaved over.

I have two options: I can start over again, which means I will be here until people start showing up for real at 8am, or I can just throw a coat of paint on it and hope no one notices. My boss will notice, but there’s a chance he’ll be too distracted with other projects to give a damn. There’s also a chance he will delete my number from his speed-dial and begin interviewing people for my position.

Well, late-night decision-making being what it is, I decide I Don’t Give A Fuck. I even say it out loud to reinforce my decision as I hit the ‘print’ button. I just don’t care anymore, and you can’t make me.


At 4:12am I put the completed and flawed project on my boss’s desk, then lock up and take the elevator downstairs.

The security guard at the front desk is different than the one who was there when I walked in. I hate that. If I’ve spent enough time in the office that there was a fucking shift change, well that’s too damn long.


Midtown is dead at 4:15am. It’s all dark, shiny and silent skyscrapers and there aren’t even any taxis. I take the 6-train home, dead-tired and feeling like Mel Gibson must’ve felt after he finished shooting Braveheart.

There was no one on the six so I took a picture of myself. I told myself it would be a reminder to find a way out of this “career.”


A few hours later I was in bed when my phone awakened me. Anyone who calls me at 8:12am on a Monday morning can wait so I let the machine pick up.

It was my boss. “Rain, if you’re there please pick up,” I heard him say. The tone of his voice was neutral, perhaps a little hurried, but I could chalk that up to his morning coffee. I flipped my pillow over and tried to remember what I was dreaming about until he hung up.

A second later my cell phone rang. I stared sleepily at the ceiling and waited for it to stop ringing, because if you wait long enough, it always does.

Today’s soundtrack: dig this, everybody plays the fool
Today at 2:15am: staring at the monitor in disbelief



I am filled with despair, worry and an overgenerous portion of Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookies.

I just lost the gut and now I’ll be getting it back again. My metabolism is faster than the 5-train. I’ll go from gut to six-pack and back again before you can add your Flex Points up.


I’m reworking the script for the Movie Talkers thing and I just can’t get it to flow. I’m also doing a reading this Friday and I have no idea what the fuck I’m gonna read and I’m almost afraid to invite people. I wanted to write a new piece for it but right now I’ve got less flow than an ovulating woman. I’m a lo-flo showerhead that dribbles lukewarm water on your disappointed head.


Tonight is Saturday. My Sunday looks ugly and I’ve got Schedule Stress. Tomorrow morning Wendy’s shooting me for her latest film exercise. In the afternoon, rehearsals for the Movie Talkers thing. In the evening I’ll be at The Corporation, probably until the wee hours, to finish up a project that’s got to go out the door Monday morning. I’m dreading tomorrow. Sometimes I wish the sun would go down and stay down.

I start talking to myself when I can’t get the script to flow. “It’s obvious I require cookies,” I say, thinking that’s going to fix the problem. When it doesn’t you dig up some old Stevie Wonder tracks and listen to them at a volume that destroys the spirit of New York City’s “Quality of Life” campaigns. Or you write a journal entry where you can’t keep the pronouns straight.


Was on the phone for about an hour with Betty, who’s on my back about getting back into the dojang. For a while there I was going hardcore but then I fucked my foot up and eased up a bit.

Now the foot’s totally fine (Dr. Xu is a fucking magician) and Betty wants me back in there. I was starting to get discouraged about teaching the new students and Betty could tell. You know how sometimes you feel you can’t make a difference? You ever stand on a curb and watch the traffic whip past and think, if I stepped in front of this oncoming taxi, what would really be different tomorrow? You ever be doing like, ninety on the West Side Highway and think Hey what would happen if I suddenly yanked the steering wheel to the left?

My head hurts, I oversmoked today. You get stressed out that you can’t quit so you smoke more. It couldn’t possibly make any less sense.

They should do a series of anti-smoking commercials where they show people committing extremely kinetic acts of suicide while smoking. Guy jumps off a building with a lit Camel in his mouth. Guy sucking on a Dunhill steps in front of a speeding taxi. Man at a table lights a Marlboro, then moves it to the side of his mouth to make room for the barrel of a shotgun.

I despise the smell of it and sometimes when I exhale I see a skull and crossbones in the cloud. And yet I...can’t...quit. I want to hit CTRL-Q but I can’t even find the keyboard.


Goddammit. Quick, make a list:

Ten Motown Songs Without Which The World Would Be Even More Of An Awful, Terrible Place


“Everybody Plays The Fool” - The Main Ingredient
“If I Can’t Have You” - Etta James & Harvey Fuqu
“Baby, Baby, Baby” - Aretha Franklin
“I’m Your Puppet” - James and Bobby Purify
“This Old Heart Of Mine” - The Isley Brothers
“Tighten Up” - Archie Bell & The Drells
“Come Get These Memories” - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
“The Want Ads” - Honey Cone
“One Way Ticket” - Aretha Franklin
“I Can’t Help Myself” - The Four Tops


I’m partial to the Isley Brothers track. I stumbled upon a vinyl 45 of it at that Tower Records on Broadway around 1986, when it was actually Tower Records and I played it so much that even after I put it back in the sleeve the record continues spinning.

I have a grab bag of Motown tracks that saw me through high school, two countries, three colleges, four apartments and a shameful number of exes and that song was always near the top of the pile when I felt uncomfortable and needed to hear music that would make me feel comfortable.

Aretha Franklin has two tracks on the list, that’s no accident either.

It would be cool if they invented an MP3 player with a monitor hardwired to the brain of a psychic, and every time you played a song it would show you moments in your life when that song was playing. I would get that bald chick from Minority Report and hook her up to my MP3 player on slow evenings.


Well, I’ve succeeded in giving myself a massive headache. I am going to go lie down and fall asleep. You start out free and then you become less and less free, but everytime you fall asleep you are truly fucking free. Free like an AOL CD.

Today’s soundtrack: extra extra, read all about it
Today at 8:02pm: staggering



Hi, I’ve been buried and I just clawed my way out of the rubble of freelance work. Not fully, I’ve still got another deadline for Monday. I am sleep-deprived and delirious as I write this.

I just spent three days working for The Germans (an activity I will henceforth refer to as Deutschmania) and let me tell you, they really get their money’s worth out of you. Last night I went to bed at 4am and woke up this morning at 6am to finish the project. The only thing that made it bearable was that I managed to, er, acquire an MP3 of Honey Cone’s “Want Ads.”

Honey Cone, Honey Cone. Motown is its own thing, a lonely and beautiful animal. I realize I am an old man of sorts because I routinely refer to the stuff they play on the radio these days as “crap.”

“Want Ads” hit the charts in April of 1971, four months before I was born; I’m convinced I heard this song in the womb.


On Day One of Deutschmania I got to see their new office space, a ridiculously huge and sun-filled loft on Astor Place. It’s so big you can see it from outer space. I’m not good at estimating but I’d say it was about eleven square miles. If they poisoned you at one end of the loft and left the antidote on the windowsill at the other end, you’d be fucked.

Although the office is spic-and-span and well-appointed, I was surprised to find they’re still running Apple’s System 9, like a bunch of savages. “System nine!” I wanted to shout. “Why you people are no better than barbarians!” Then I would put my foot through the monitor and scald the male receptionist with a well-aimed cup of coffee. Sometimes I wish I was an out-of-control movie director.

But seriously, though. If you still use OS 9 you might as well stop eating with utensils and never shower again.


Yesterday was Day Two of Deutschmania. I let go of the mouse around 5pm to take a break. The firm’s matriarch, an older, detail-oriented and constantly worried-looking German woman, was out for a meeting and wouldn’t be back ‘til 7pm.

With two hours to kill I stumbled down Broadway, exhausted and wondering if my eyes were bleeding. Checked my phone messages and returned a call to Wendy.

“I’m actually in your neck of the woods,” I said, stopping at the corner of Waverly. Wendy goes to film school at NYU and in that neighborhood, they probably own everything from the sidewalk under my feet to the rooftop holding the antenna through which my cell call was being routed.

“Oh really? Come meet us at Café Reggio,” said Wendy. She neglected to mention who “us” was but I was too tired to care. I trudged over to Macdougal Street like a lame horse limping into the home stretch.


Last time I was at Café Reggio, you could smoke inside and they were filming a David Schwimmer movie, which makes it maybe eight or nine years ago. (I know, I know, some of you are going “There’s no such thing as a David Schwimmer movie.”)

Walking inside I saw the café was completely unchanged, except there was something strange in the air--fresh oxygen--and no ashtrays to be seen. Wendy and three filmmaker friends, all female, were sitting at the “nook” table, wedged into a closet space by the bathroom.

Wendy’s three friends--one of whom is the cutest lesbian I’ve ever met--were clearly artists, judging by their scruffy looks, low-maintenance style and complete lack of fashion pretension. I like people like this, or differently put if I have to be around people I’d prefer they were people like this.

No one looked up or said hello when I joined the table, sparing me the obligation of having to introduce myself or make small talk. Relieved to have dodged yet another social burden, I ordered a tea and took a load off at the next table, seeing as the “nook” table fits only four on a good day. The café’s phone is also mounted on a wall in the nook, so the waiter occasionally reaches over your head to take a delivery order.

I let Wendy catch up with her friends unmolested while I had a staring contest with my tea. (I won, the tea blinked.) My ass began slowly fusing with the chair on a molecular level while I tried to rid my head of work issues and relax.

“The reason I called is I want to introduce you to one of my film professors,” Wendy said to me during a slow spot in the conversation. “Can you come into our class on Tuesday to do some acting exercises in front of the class?”

I wanted to tell her I hate actors and therefore would have to begin hating myself even more, but I was so tired I would’ve agreed if she’d said “Can you come into our class on Tuesday to be roundly sodomized by a voracious group of professional clowns?”

I guess some part of me is curious, which is really why I said yes. After all, the worst thing that can happen is I can make a complete fool of myself in front of a roomful of people while being roundly sodomized by professional clowns.

I wonder what the therapy bill would look like for that one.

Not to mention the attendant psychosomatic ailments. I bet my butt muscles would clench up every time I saw Ronald McDonald or Placido Domingo, one of the two.


Jesus, where am I going with this entry. I don’t know if these sentences are making much sense, I’m running on very little sleep right now. But I feel compelled to write ‘cause I’m fucking stressed out. I used to think it was severe workloads that brought stress on but now I think it’s the increased people contact that comes with severe workloads.

Tonight we had rehearsals for the Movie Talkers thing and I started thinking about actors and what they represent. And wondering, why do I dislike people so much?

[insert boring explanatory interlude below]

In high school my lacrosse coach sat me down in the lockerroom for a heart-to-heart and an apology after he’d roughed me up for doing something I thought insignificant.

“The things you don’t like about other people are the things you don’t like about yourself,” he told me, and I’ve never forgotten it. I know that statement sounds obvious to you now, but to a 16-year-old virgin, stuff like that changes your little virgin paradigms.

A couple weeks later I lost interest in going to class, and later that month I lost my virginity. It was, on balance, a good semester.

So I guess the answer is, I dislike being around people because I am people.


I’m going to bed now. I know in two weeks I’m going to read this entry and be like “Who the fuck wrote this?” But I don’t care because I’m going to bed.