Today’s soundtrack: “Grooving My Girl” - Richie Spice (check it out, trust me)
Yesterday at 2:02pm: two kinds of shooting



Nighttime in Manhattan and it’s pouring. I come out of Tiny’s Giant Sandwich shop on the Lower East Side and hear polka music coming out of the sidewalk. Apparently some kind of basement-level club, bar or...polka den, I don’t know.

Gotta love New York, even if I don’t gotta love the Lower East Side.

Now it’s dark and rainy, but yesterday was different. Sunny day and I’m sitting in my apartment trying to concentrate on the task at hand (either masturbation or writing, I’ll let you guess) but having trouble concentrating because of all the gunshots. Outside my window, up on the roof.

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Silence.

BLAM

More silence.

BLAM BLAM BLAM B-BLAM.

Earlier in the week my girlfriend was in town, and before she got on a plane and flew away we passed a construction crew loitering around a large orange crane up the block. (This is related to the gunshots, stay with me.) We slowed our pace while I stared longingly at all the construction materials they were preparing to hoist up to the roof.

If things were slightly different I’d gladly be a construction worker. It’s honest, hard labor absent of the psychological agony that comes from being a writer--or trying to, anyway--and sitting in front of a blank screen while your fingers remain motionless on the keyboard. But maybe that’s a grass-is-greener kinda thing. Maybe the physical agony of erecting buildings is worse than like, improperly using an adverb.

Anyways I was wondering what they were building up on the roof. Days later huge film trucks showed up to take over the block and I had my answer: Movie stuff. Props, probably fake rooftoop stairwell triangles and the like.

So yesterday I come home and there’s a grizzled film P.A. or Key Grip or whatever sitting in a folding chair in front of my door. Film crew people scurried around, pushing carts loaded with shit back and forth.

The guy in the chair leaned to the side (but didn’t get up, the lazy bastard) so I could get inside my door. I was close enough to check him for lice. “What’re you guys shooting,” I asked.

“‘Sixteen Blocks,’” he said.

“Izzat a feature?”

“It’s a feature.”

“Anybody big?” I asked.

“Bruce Willis,” he said, clearly bored with the conversation.

“No kidding,” I said. “Is he up there now?” I said, pointing to the roof where all the action was taking place.

“Yeah, I think so,” the guy said, in a I-really-don’t-give-a-fuck-so-why-don’t-you-stop-asking-me-questions tone of voice. But fuck that, he’s sitting in front of my door.

I know people say he’s played out, but I’m a huge Bruce Willis fan, have been ever since Moonlighting. I wanted to be David Addison. When I was growing up that show provided my only concept that there was a city on the other side of the country called Los Angeles. (Not because that was where they shot it, but because that was where it was set.)

So I get upstairs and google “Sixteen Blocks” to see what it’s about. Buddy-movie/cop-drama/action flick starring Willis and Mos Def. Bruce plays an aging cop assigned to transport a witness a mere sixteen blocks from the cop-house to the courthouse at 100 Center Street (an actual, existing courthouse). En route, mayhem ensues.

And apparently, sorry for the spoiler, at some point there’s a gun battle on a rooftop. It’s either a very long gun battle or someone up there is fucking up their lines and necessitating multiple takes, because they’re letting off with a pistol like every five.

From my window I can see the edge of the roof but none of the action.

BLAM

BLAM

BLAM.

Go get ‘em Bruce.

(Thirty minutes later)

BLAM BLAM

BLAM BLAM

BLAM BLAM BLAM

I’m this close to leaning out my window and screaming “Hey John McClane, how ‘bout using a fucking silencer?”

If my girl was here we’d lean out my window and use well-aimed frisbees to ruin the scene.

“Ready, babe?”

“Throw!”

“Throw!”

Bright orange frisbees disappear over the wall. A moment of silence, then the sound of someone screaming “...CUT!”

High-five.

I’ve been editing for Theme Magazine, and now issue #2 is on the stands!

This issue’s theme is “I Live Here” and features interviews with Kyoichi Tsuzuki (the photographer who did Tokyo Style), artist David Choe of San Jose (whom Giant Robot readers will recognize as the guy who spent time in Japanese jail), Shinjuku street photographer Daido Moriyama, Indonesian pro surfer Rizal Tanjung, and my favorite, photographer Norio Matsumoto, who lives in a fucking self-made igloo on a glacier in Alaska. And you thought you were all alone in the world.

With coverage from Tokyo, Shanghai, Bali, New York. The photography and visuals in this mag kicks ass, and I have done my damnedest to whip the editorial into shape. Publishers John Lee and Jiae Kim have done a killer job sniffing out interesting stories. Check out Theme at your local Barnes & Noble, or click here.

Today’s soundtrack: I saw you walking down the street just the other day
Today at 8:02pm: my deadlines won’t stay dead. They keep getting up and running around



Life is starting to seem silly to me again. You know? Spending all day and a chunk of night at The Corporation, then hustling home but it’s already dark out and you’re tired, it’s too late man, you missed your energy cycle. You wasted the best hours of your day under fluorescents with a mouse in one hand and a phone in the other. You’re only on this Earth for so many years, and you can only get what you want in short fits and spurts.

I come home to a dark, empty apartment carrying my dinner by its handles. Years ago I used to cook but nowadays it’s deli takeout, every day. Guy who owns the deli, I’m putting his kids through college. I turn on the lights, the stereo and the nuke.

Karada ga kawatta’n da, she’d said, or something to that effect. This was the girl I was dating in Japan, after I’d not seen her for months and then gone back. Couple years before 9/11 I think. During those months I was going to Hapkido a little more, and one of the first things she’d said to me when we saw each other again was Your body has changed.

I’m not a big guy at all, so the difference between me exercising or not exercising is just a couple pieces of salami here or there. Maybe half a sandwich, something barely perceptible. The kind of thing only a girlfriend would notice. Which is precisely my point.

Been thinking about the original Star Wars--remember that one? Han Solo picks up Luke and Obi-Wan and drives them to the Death Star, but you never really see much of what happens on board the ship. Here’s my best guess:

I want to write more but I’m, so, busy. I need a personal assistant, an intern or a manservant. Or a butler. Be my butler. Buttle for me part-time.