Today’s soundtrack: Every -ist and every -ism, thrown my way to stay

Today at 12:42am: somewhere under the East River



At midnight I’m underground in Flushing, waiting for the 7. There’s maybe a dozen of us scattered across the platform, in various states of wakefulness, with me anchoring the low end of the spectrum; I can barely keep my eyes open. I’ve picked up a lot of freelance lately, and the additional requisite CPU activity is taking its toll.

After twenty minutes of me leaning on a beam the 7 finally pulls into the station. Flushing is the last stop on the line so the train is filled with people coming from the city. Doors open, they spill out, we straggle in. The train will leave the station the same way it came in, headed back towards Manhattan. It goes back and forth all day like mass-transit ping-pong.

I sit heavily. The train doors are still open; it won’t leave for a few more minutes. A tall, thirtysomething Korean couple walks on and sits across from me. The man has his arm around the woman but removes it as they sit.

Within minutes, they are arguing. I’m so tired I don’t even reach for the headphones, I just try to avert my gaze.

I can’t speak Korean, but I observe their conversation going to hell by listening to the tones of their voices. Excerpt:


MAN: [something innocuous.]

WOMAN: [cold response.]

MAN: [something snippy.]

WOMAN: [mild accusation.]

MAN: [defensive.]

WOMAN: [strong accusation.]

MAN: [defensive and irritated, suffixed with a question.]

WOMAN: [incredulousness. Counter-question, in a loud, confrontational voice.]

MAN: [counter-incredulousness.]

WOMAN: [string of uninterrupted and vehement bitching.]

MAN: Tsh! (gets up and walks out of the train in a huff, without so much as a backward glance. He’s gone.)


Now alone, the woman tightens her face up and seems to be looking at me, as if daring me to notice what had just happened. I keep my eyes glued to the “Poetry in Motion” adverts. Something about a rose petal, and this one rhymes.

The woman is visibly agitated and/or furious. Koreans are like Porsches when it comes to rage; they can go from 0-60 in like five seconds.

The train doors shut, so apparently Moneygrip isn’t coming back. As the train jerks into motion, the woman begins moving erratically but in a barely perceptible way. You know how people have little rage tremors when they’re angry but trying not to show it? Like that.

I steal a look at her face. Her mouth is screwed shut like she’s gritting the hell out of her teeth. For some reason this whole thing is making me feel bad so I look away.

Two stops later I look up in surprise--the man is back. I guess he snuck back on the train, maybe at the other end of the car, before the doors shut. Clever bastard! If I was the type to fight with a girlfriend I’d be writing this one in my notepad and putting a star next to it.

He sits next to the woman and looks at her plaintively. His eyes are mischievous, as he’s just pulled one over on her. But arms crossed, Honeydip’s not having it.

They continue arguing, right where they left off. I slip the headphones on and listen to Morrissey. The couple, they keep moving their mouths but now I can’t hear a damn thing.

At Junction Boulevard a trio of thugs get on the train. Loud and boisterous, I can hear them over the headphones. They sit near the couple and spread out, taking up enough room for six.

The couple stops arguing; their dynamic changes completely. The guy is now quiet and peeping the thugs out of the corner of his eye. The woman seems to shrink behind her man. The thugs are yelling stuff at each other, excited about something. Morrissey tells me the printed word may kill me.

The couple gets off at 74th Street. The guy has his arm around the woman again as they walk down the platform.

At Queensboro Plaza I switch to the N-train. I sit in one of the seats that’s rotated 90 degrees, actually facing the direction of travel.

Three girls, either Italian or Latina get on and sit in the bench right in front of me. All three are pretty overweight and don’t seem very confident, so I’m guessing they’re not from here. They seem nervous.

Across from them, two drunk white guys are lounging. One guy looks like he’s gonna throw up. The other one looks like an uglier version of Joaquim Phoenix (if that’s even possible). He gets up, walks over to the girls, gets down on one knee and starts rapping to them. I had the headphones on so I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could tell by his face he was trying too hard. The girls seem nervous but disinterested and after a moment he goes back to his seat.

At Union Square the drunk guys get up to leave, and Joaquim approaches the girls again. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but as the doors open he finishes his soliloquy, then reaches out and touches one of the girls’ breasts before stepping out of the train. The girl looks shocked, and remains frozen even after the doors close.

The train pulls out of the station, then the girls explode into confused and angry chatter. Two of the girls are looking out the window to spot the guy, but the one who got groped just looks stunned. I feel bad for her. It happened pretty fast. I was just sitting there watching the whole thing, like it was on TV.

A lot of times I go walking around the city or riding the trains and I see things happening five feet in front of me, but it’s like I’m not even here.

I am someplace else. Dying to write the words I can’t.

Today’s soundtrack: you’re gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound
Today at 3:02pm: it’s rude not to shake hands, so I shake his hand



I like giving people directions. I don’t know when it started, but lately I find myself crossing the street and approaching map-peering tourists that are clearly lost. If you ever wanted directions you would love the ones I gave you because they are clear, succinct and accurate. “Go two blocks, make a left.” “Go a block south to Canal, make a left, then make your second right.”

Most people are thankful, but some people don’t want my directions. They clutch their maps tight and look at me with actual fear, as if all the rumors they’ve heard about New York are true and I’m going to pistol-whip them before taking their sneakers. But I push my directions on them anyway. “That’s north, that’s south,” I say, pointing to each. If they don’t wanna tell me where they’re going, fine; but at least I oriented them.

So I’m used to approaching people, not so used to people approaching me. Yesterday I’m down in front of the diner on my coffee break, knocking off a smoke and officially neglecting my duties as Photo Studio Manager. It’s an all-day shoot (of a Satan-worshipper, of all things) and I figure they can do without me for fifteen. Anyways this kid comes up to me, maybe early twenties. Dressed down. Crew cut, intense look.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says, getting right up in my ear. “I’m taking a survey for my school.”

At a glance I figure he’s not a threat. “Sure.”

“What do you think happens to you after you die?”

I think about it. Ten seconds passes. A breeze blows smoke from my cigarette into the kid’s face, but he doesn’t blink.

“I don’t think anything happens,” I finally say. “I think you die, then that’s it.”

The kid scribbles something into a notepad and shakes his head. “I’ve been getting a lot of those today,” he says. Which I thought was odd, because I noticed the notepad was blank; he was scribbling on the first page. “Maybe it was different before 9/11, or what’s going on over in Iraq. Some people think nothing happens to you when you die. But after you die, that’s an eternity, right? You’re stuck in eternity, don’t you think?”

Now I’m suspicious. “What school?” I ask.

“What?” he says, even though he heard me.

“What school do you go to?”

“West Point,” he says, and suddenly he looks uncomfortable. “I have something for you,” he says, quickly changing topic and pulling something out of his bag.

It looks like a wallet with twenties sticking out of it, but as he presses it into my hand I see it’s just a photorealistic brochure that’s been cut and designed to look like that. I open it up. There are multiple-choice questions inside.

“Thank you for taking the time,” he says, and walks off without another word.

I put the cigarette back in my mouth and start reading the questions.


- Do you consider yourself a good person?
- Have you ever stolen anything?
- Where do people go after they die?
- If someone tells you they are a thief, do you think they are a good person?


I flip to the back, and see a passage from the Bible. The numbers, the colons.

I look after the kid, but he’s long gone. You know, if he wanted to talk to me about God he could’ve just said so. Survey. Sheesh.

I think about the people who don’t want my directions. When I see them with a map I tell them which way north and south is anyway, because I assume they need them. Maybe the kid figured he’s doing the same thing. Maybe he can see my soul and my soul is holding a map, so he figures he’s orienting me. I dunno.

After I finish my coffee I’m about to head back to the studio, when I realize the irony of what’s just happened. Up at the studio, today’s shoot is for a spread in a certain prominent New York newspaper. The subject is a certain Satan-worshipper (I can’t say anymore for fear the client may read this).

I didn’t think anything of it when they told me; I don’t care if you worship Elmer Fudd. I’m not the religious type, and my crazy attitude is that people should be able to worship whomever they want, or not at all. It’s just odd to be getting visits from both sides of the fence today.

Today’s soundtrack: “Sleepwalk” (Stray Cats version)
Today at 12:02pm: standing on line at the corporate cafeteria, clutching my vegetables



Bachelor Cooking update: We shot episodes three (in December) and four (last month), and my hard drive dispute has finally been settled. I just got a new one with the proceeds and should be able to edit by next week. Will post it soon as it’s ready.

But, WARNING: Judging by the tapings, three and four might kind of, well, suck.

I have a pathological fear of doing things that suck. It’s why I haven’t finished writing the half-dozen books I’ve tinkered with over the years. It’s a terrible trait for a person in a creative field and I’m trying to get over it. Especially now with the Fellowship I have to crank it up a notch. Bite the bullet. Get in the zone. Pull the trigger. Mass my troops. Shine my frogs.

(I don’t know what “shine my frogs” means, I just made it up.)

Even if I wanted to, I feel like I can’t put Bachelor Cooking down, like there’s people waiting for it. So I’m just gonna have to suck it up (no pun intended) and post what may be a substandard product. Well, Conan O’Brien sucked regularly for the first two years, right? And while Logan’s no Conan and I’m no Max Weinberg, maybe we can still aim high. Or at the very least maybe I’ll actually learn how to cook.

“Logan’s no Conan.” I like the sound of that, if I had a band I would name it that. Live, at Brownies - Logan’s No Conan.

Midtown Manhattan is huge in terms of density, but not all that big geographically. Maybe three or four delivery zones. If you dropped a small bomb in the area you’d take out hundreds of name-brand corporations.

So when Francis got a job in midtown, I was unsurprised to find it was two blocks from The Corporation where I freelance. Everyone in midtown is two blocks from me.

New hard drive in hand, I traipse over to Francis’ new gig on coffee-break time. Gotta pick up the Bachelor Cooking footage.

My corporation’s got the nicer lobby, but Francis’ corporation is on the 27th floor. (I’m on lowly Six, along with fucking Supply Chain Management and roving gangs of hooligans.) It’s a post-house. I didn’t know what post-houses were until Francis told me: They’re video editing companies, and for some reason they’re always palatially nice. I’m talking like, one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

The elevator doors open on 27 and sure enough, it’s beautiful and spacious. There’s actual sunlight streaming onto hardwood floors. Pottery Barn couches. I hear angels singing. Unicorns are frolicking by the copy machines.

“Can I help you?” says the blond receptionist.

Yeah you can help me...please let me live here. “I’m here to see Francis Oh,” I say.

“One moment.” She hits her intercom-thingy. “Francis? Someone is here to see you.” Francis then sticks his head out of a doorway not ten feet from where the receptionist is sitting. Corporations, man.

The office Francis commands is even nicer than the last one I saw him in, down in the Flatiron. (That one had a kitchen bigger than my entire apartment.)

“Nice place,” I say, looking around. His office is big enough to play fucking badminton in. A comfortable couch lines one wall. Huge windows look out on the skyscrapers of midtown.

“This place? S’a fuckin’ dump,” says Francis, loud enough for anyone in a thirty-foot radius to hear. That’s why I like Francis. “So what are you doing at work today?”

“Drawing bottles,” I say. (I’m an industrial designer, ten years in the biz. Bottles my specialty.)

“Fuckin’ drawing bottles,” he laughs.

“Well what the fuck are you working on?” I ask.

“Uh...I’m cutting a commercial for Subway.”

“What, the sandwich chain?”

(Sheepishly) “Yeah.”

“So what the fuck are you laughing at? I’m drawing bottles, you’re doing fucking sandwich commercials.” We have a grim little laugh and it becomes clear that yeah, maybe life didn’t turn out like we thought it would. But there’s still time, yeah?

I take the elevator back downstairs and cut through two blocks of sidewalk traffic.

Back in my windowless office--I share a space with the plotter and a bunch of file cabinets--I toil away at The Corporation’s latest. For hours. And hours. Next to me on the desk is the hard drive filled with the Bachelor Cooking footage, just sitting there while I earn the rent. But later I'm going to shine my frogs.

http://www.mybigball.com/home.html

The "class" one was pretty funny, and "swim meet" had me crying.

---

Thanks to everyone for the well-wishes!

Today’s soundtrack: I know when to go out, I know when to stay in
Today at 2:22pm: saying “holy shit” into the phone



Today was like the good ol’ days: jampacked and hectic.

The alarm goes off at 6:15am. Face buried in the pillow, I start doing the Morning Math--“If I sleep for another hour and move the post office stop to 10:30, I can still make my 8:30 meeting....”

Instead of getting out of bed I continue scheming on ways to get more sleep. And then, of course...I fall back asleep. Snoring in algorithms.

My 8:30 meeting is super-important, because it’s with a potential intra-Corporation client, and I need her money. Must impress.

After falling back asleep, I have a nightmare. Roll nightmare:


I awaken, roll over and see it’s 8:23am. “Fuck! How could I do this! I told them I’d be there no matter what!”

I curse myself because I was fucking awake at 6:15am but I blew it anyway. “Nice going, Rain. You finally get some work and you piss it away.”


That snaps me awake for real, and I snatch my cell phone up to see it’s...7:10am. Phew. I jump out of bed like there’s snakes in it and get dressed.

I make my meeting at The Corporation on time, which is killer. What’s better than failing at something in your imagination, then succeeding at it in real life? I feel great.

The new client is right up my alley; she gets down to brass tacks with a minimum of bullshit, and the deliverables are perfectly clear. I like this lady. Assignment acquired.

I’m only in the building for twenty minutes or so, then I’m back on the sidewalk. Feels weird to walk out of The Corporation at 9am, but I only came up here for this one assignment; today my dance card is full.

Back at the house I work on the legal-document freelance gig I picked up. It’s far from fun, but working at home I get to listen to the JB’s as loud as I want.

By 10:45a I pack up the latest 12 CDs I’ve sold on Amazon and run ‘em over to the post office on Doyers. I am a regular here now. I used to use the post office in SoHo because I thought it was nicer, but the clerks there are slow and the customers are annoyingly-loud SoHo cellphone types who always want to borrow my pen. Get your own pen, Sergio. The Doyers branch is dirtier than an alleyway, but the customers are mostly quiet FOBs and the line moves like it’s nobody’s business.

When I get out of the post office it’s snowing. I walk up to Union Square to see a movie. Not by choice, it’s an assignment.

Using the proceeds from the last college gig I did, I enrolled myself in a playwrighting class. Many people would say this isn’t smart, since I’m a Toyota or two in debt, but if I don’t try to advance my “art” then I might as well be dead.

This week’s assignment for the class was to see Sideways and write a review of it. The class is tonight and I forgot to see the movie, but luckily it’s still playing at Union Square. At 11:45am I’m the first person in the theater and I get the best seat in the house.

NOTE: PLEASE SKIP THESE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN SIDEWAYS.

The movie was a fucking drag. If it wasn’t the fact that some parts of it brought me warm memories of Sonoma I might’ve fallen asleep.

It was well-acted, but if I’m gonna sit and watch people complain for two hours they’d better be damn funny. The only scene that hit me was when Miles is in a tuxedo at the burger joint all by himself and he breaks out the ’61 Cheval Blanc. In that moment I was finally able to relate to him. And the “second chance” ending, while not quite the Linklater “it’s up to you” ending, seemed like a good way to go.

I walk out of the auditorium and into the third-floor lobby. The large windows look out on Broadway and 13th Street, and I’m treated to a view of a total whiteout. Snow is blowing around like the end of the world. The streets are all icy and fucked-up.

There’s a message on my phone. It’s the Writer’s Workshop. I figure they’re calling me to tell me tonight’s class is canceled.

But no!

I call back, and they tell me I won the Fellowship!

Holy shit!

(It’s a fellowship for aspiring authors. They set you up with publishing contacts and help nurture your book into a finished product. I had low hopes. I’d applied in the past and been rejected, and once I was even beaten by my own agent.)

I can’t fucking believe it! What’s better than failing at something in real life and then succeeding at it later in life.

Outside the theater I can’t even feel how cold it is because I’m so excited. If I had a lot of friends I would call them all up and tell ‘em, but I only ended up calling one person. And now I’m telling all of you.

What a good week! Work at The Corporation picks up, now this. Next week will be even better.

Back at home I switched back and forth between working on Corporate stuff and the legal docs. I bought myself an apple (the fruit, not the computer) as a reward and took a little fifteen-minute do-nothing break. Man. Last week I was sitting around my apartment all depressed, wearing flannel shirts and listening to Steely Dan and the fucking Eagles. Shit’s starting to pick up.

I ate a budget “linner” (what “brunch” is to breakfast & lunch, “linner” is to lunch & dinner) then walked up to the Workshop for the class. So far the play I’m working on in class is like my life--a bunch of disjointed scenes with no arc, theme or readily discernible plot. And I can’t decide if the protagonist should win or lose.

Couple posts ago I said “A change is coming soon.” I wasn’t talking about the Fellowship, because I had no idea at the time; I was referring to the forthcoming launch for hipstomp.com. It’s in the works. Initially it won’t be much different from what you see here, but the plan is to blow it out in future.

After class it was late, maybe 10p, and the cold had grown bitter. I took myself out for a bowl of steaming hot pho. I mostly eat alone these days. Sitting there I tried not to think about Miles and the ’61 Cheval Blanc. It’s a hell of a thing to win a bookwriting fellowship immediately after watching a movie about a failed novelist. Well, it’s just a movie, right?

A change is coming soon.

Today’s soundtrack: the dawn rise, behind the home for the blind
Today at 1:02pm: enjoying delicious corporate sandwiches



I feel bad for the guy who invented the ski mask. He tried to come up with a better way to keep skiers’ faces warm, and all he ended up doing was enabling a legion of robbers, thugs and gunmen. Nice going, Ace.

You know what’s amazing? That there are companies still trying to sell them (in bright colors, no less) as if it’s still a benevolent product that hasn’t been co-opted by society’s worst. What skier wouldn’t want to wear this:

Come on. If this motherfucker walked into a ski lodge everyone would hit the floor and hold up their watches and rings. It’s more diamond-thief than black diamond. I see this guy coming and I’m thinking home invasion.

I bet the same inventor also came up with the ice pick, the box-cutter, the chainsaw, pepperspray (originally envisioned as a condiment) and those really long screwdrivers thugs were using to mug people on the subway back in the ‘80s. Everyone’s glad those days are over, because what’s worse than having to give your wallet to some guy brandishing a fucking Philips-head. You get a Glock shoved in your face, you’ve got a story. Mugged with a tool, not so much.

The Corporation called me back! Work, baby. I’ll never complain about working for the man again.

Remember Morris the Cat? “He’s finicky, he’s finicky about what he eats...” Well let Morris see what starvation’s like, then see how finicky the motherjumper is. That cat’ll be eating shit on a stick and asking for seconds.

Tonight I gotta pull a wingman job for a buddy of mine. The spot we’re going to is poison--friggin’ Mannahatta, for chrissakes, and even worse, it’s a Friday--but it’s a good friend. When you get the call from a good friend, you don’t question, you just strap your helmet on and go.

Here’s to hoping tonight I can “bring my A-game.” (I’ve been back at The Corporation for two days and I’m already thinking in meetingspeak.) Lately I’ve been so socially awkward it’s not even funny. Last night I went out with a group of old friends. Old friends, for chrissakes, and I still found myself fumbling around the TelePrompTer.

It’s still early, so I have two hours to “get in the zone.” There was a point where I didn’t mind talking to large groups of complete strangers in loud bars and I even looked forward to it. Trying to remember what that felt like.

Well, I’m not going there for me; just gotta suck it up and do a good job. You know why?

Because “We’ve got the teamwork to make the dream work.”

Because “Your attitude determines your altitude.”

Because “There’s no ‘I’ in team.” (Although there is an “I” in “Rain,” as Tony pointed out.)

Guess I better prepare some index cards with smalltalk fall-back.

Topics:

- Morris the Cat
- ski masks
- meetingspeak
- really long screwdrivers

It’s gonna be a good night, my friends.