The Soul's Lone Drinker and His Jukebox of Sad Songs

Somewhere inside the soul of every twenty-something male, beyond any social statistics and character interpretation, there remains a quiet man drinking alone at the bar. He never says a word, but he lets you know he's there by spending all of his eternal dollars on drinks and dropping all of his endless spare change in the jukebox of sad songs. And you only hear the music when the usual noise around you leaves your head and you find yourself in hospitals, funeral homes and other places you swear you're not going to revisit for a season, but, somehow, you return every single year.

The King, The High Court, The Two Sons & The Queen

"The King, The High Court, The Two Sons & The Queen"
an epic tragedy in seven sentences by jake kilroy.

There was a great king who ruled the land with a fair, reasonable and just fist. His family and kingdom adored him, but his high court grew jealous and obsessive, so they plotted against him and, several nights later, murdered him when we went into the garden one night, which he often did to think. The high court took over and the meanest and most murderous traitor of them all became the new king, and he ruled the land with cruel tyranny. But then the only two sons of the king plotted against the high court and murdered the false king in the garden when he came to ask the dead king for advice one late night. The high court were then all hanged. Sadly, the two sons fought over which one of them would be king and they killed each other at the same time in a sword fight. The Queen mourned the loss of her family by becoming the greatest ruler of the land.

"The Languishing Art Of The Breeze"

"The Languishing Art Of The Breeze"
lazily written on a busy summer day indoors by jake kilroy.

The languishing art of the breeze;
so cool and sweet,
full of rhyme and repeat,
as familiar as the taste of memories,
like rusty, old dreams and no projector -
'tis just you asleep in the theater,
waiting for your flame to wake you,
so you can drive your car
on summer afternoons
with the wind riding wild with you
and your regrets flying out of the exhaust,
until your stereo doesn't play,
until your heart doesn't work,
until this poem doesn't make sense.

Mario's Full Name

Wait a minute...if his name is Mario, and him and his brother are referred to as the Mario Brothers, then that means his full name has to be "Mario Mario," right?

The Lost Poems of Robert Frost

In The Lost Poems of Robert Frost, there are many, many, many, many, many poems about snow as well as many, many, many, many, many poems dedicated to Jason Kornfeld. Here's one that let's just say I found and leave it at that:

"Snow: Limerick #457
by Robert Frost
Come look at me and my snow!
I've got so much snow to show!
It's so pearly white
and pretty at night!
I hump it until it glows!

Bring On The Traffic: Volume One

I think I've just figured out how to keep track of blog stats, so I've decided to try to make this blog the most read blog ever. I will attempt to achieve this astounding feat by periodically including totally fun sentences that are lazily jam-packed with exciting keywords.

My first attempt:

Jesus Christ was a magic ninja who fought athiest pirate zombies with the help of big-tittied blondes with nice butts that used smartphones, dirty jokes and facts about Batman 3 to blow up the enemies, who probably engaged in Inception ending debates.

Is This What Heartache Feels Like?

My heart is broken. Or at least I think it is. I don't feel good, that's for sure. I feel like my heart has been ripped in two. It was once whole, but now, tragically, it is not. Is this what heartache feels like? My heart feels like it was thrown into a blender and chopped up only to have those little bits left mashed up by high heels on a cheese grater. I feel terrible. Is this what all those songs in the 70s were about?

Fuck, honestly, I should go to the hospital or a clinic or a back alley shaman. What happened was that I ate at this killer Italian restaurant tonight and had a whole lot of potato dumplings in this tasty vodka cream sauce with a few glasses of red wine and then later had Del Taco. The classy food is mixing with the cheap food, I think (but I'm no scientist), and it's breaking my heart. It's clogged or jammed or all kookily built. My heart is malfunctioning, you know, where it's not pumping the right amount of blood properly or something (I don't know, again, I'm not a scientist). The whole system of my heart seems broken. The heartache is too much for me. It's like heartburn is dry-humping a carpet of my chest and the static electricity is shaking the walls of my heart house. I don't wanna die, because that would, well, suck, but, if I did...I admit, that was a pretty killer two meals to go out on.

Or maybe I'm just being too literal these days. Literally.

Also, how often do you think hypochondriacs that like romantic movies diagnose themselves with broken hearts? Is it a lot? I bet it's a lot.

I Wouldn't Believe Me

I can't even begin to figure out how I (25-year-old Jake) would explain to 19-year-old Jake (who loved Mean Girls, by the way) what has happened to Lindsay Lohan over the years. There's just no freakin' way 2004 Jake would believe any of it. 2004 Jake would have an easier time accepting the whole space-time continuum and time-traveling escapades of 2010 Jake than the future massive, epic decline of Lindsay Lohan.

The Truth Of The Matter

Merry fragile hearts in merry fragile cages in merry fragile people in one big fucking tornado of a world.

My Drive Home With Hank & Elvis

Last night, in Big Bear, I pulled up next to a small food and liquor shop that could've easily been built half a century ago and left there to adapt or evolve. I placed a cherry soda and a five-hour energy deal on the counter and then rummaged through my pockets for wrinkled dollar bills.

"Camping?" asked the lady.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, was camping. On my way out now."

"Long drive?"

"Not too bad. But hopefully this combination here explodes my brain and keeps me from falling asleep at the wheel."

"Yeah, these things kick ass," she said, holding up the five-hour energy shot.

I paid and she handed me my receipt.

"Have a good drive," she said.

"Have a good night," I replied, exiting the small shop.

There was a brief pause, and then I returned.

"Hey, how do I get home anyway? The 38's that way, right?"

I was off to a bad start, sleepy and not entirely sure how I came into the quiet town because I was sleepy then too.

But, soon, I was on the road, driving in total silence, taking in the lake and the surrounding community. And then I was on an open road with mountains in every distance.

Before long, I was on the winding, descending mountain road and I put on exactly what suited the drive: Hank Williams.

Hank Williams died in the back seat of Cadillac, but he was immediately reborn as the patron saint of men and their long, thoughtful drives of dirt roads, mountain roads and back roads. Wherever there is a man with too much time to think about his follies (whether it's been drugs, dreams, women or any other vice), Hank Williams can always be there alongside. But he doesn't really act as music. The men on these drives don't really listen to Hank. Instead, the men lull a daydream tune at the wheel and Hank works his old country voodoo. Without even being there, Hank's voice and guitar are lending themselves to the restless prairie sounds of any man sleepy enough to wonder what he's doing with his life.

I sped through the mountain roads at a reckless speed, zooming on the "lost highway" that ol' Hank was maybe singing about.

Hank sang as I drove through the forest that looked like the one they took John Turturro to die in Miller's Crossing. Hank gave me chills then, as a whole lot of his songs are about returning to Heaven.

He sang a song about lost love (which is the other thing he mostly sang about) as I drove towards the glowing red hills of California. Once I zoomed by a few truckers, I broke onto the stretch of highway that was a gleaming, almost unsettling orange. And then Hank played a song about leaving town.

And it never felt like it was the 21st Century.

See, if I ever become outrageously stupid wealthy (by way of hard work or a cocaine and hooker empire, I'd like to indulge in some kind of classic car collection, it won't be because I know a lot about cars. In fact, if my car was ever to break down with a hot lady in it, I've put put more work into coming up with an excuse than actually figuring out how a car engine works. No, I want a classic car collection to time travel in the weakest way (however, it should be noted that I want to time travel more than anything else).

I'd buy a rickety pick-up truck and listen to Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. I'd buy an old jalopy and listen to Cab Calloway, Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington. I'd have an slick Cadillac with fins and I'd only listen to Elvis Presley, Perry Como and the other sputterings of new rock 'n roll. I'd try to be at every beginning and every end of the 20th Century. There'd be a car for each decade and style.

Hank finished up his set around the time I made it past the first chapel in the lowlands town, near the clean cut of the mountain road bridge.

The neon lights of open gas stations and closed grocery stores hummed and buzzed as I decided to go with Elvis as the next co-pilot.

And, I tell you, there's something spectacularly different about the way that Elvis croons his songs about lost love. His songs were playful flirting. The King knew what he was doing. How Elvis died of everything from high blood pressure to liver damage and not from a billion STDs is totally fucking beyond me. Elvis should've died in the middle of an orgy from exhaustion. Seriously. Have you listened to his songs? I feel like I'm eavesdropping on a dude making a booty call on some of them. However, they're really goddamn good.

But it was quite the clash to the dreary but understanding lonely heart of Hank Williams. The lonesome cowboy spirit of ol' Hank comes from this weird place in the hearts of men where heartache isn't sympathetic. Instead, it's empowering. It's this lone streetlamp glowing in the dead of night near a familiar porch of the heart. There's something almost nostalgic about heartache to Hank and his gang of lover loners or loner lovers. Imagine every lone wolf strumming a guitar and howling at the moon a girl's name they miss.

But, Elvis...man, that guy sang about loneliness like he was trying to relate to Hank or like his timing was all off. Hank might be dedicated to the same girl for years and started really missing the girl when she walked through the local chapel with a different man. Elvis sings about loneliness like he hasn't scored tail in a day or two.

But inspiration comes from all different strokes of luck and heart string plucks. Elvis sang about the abundance that love can provide. Hank sang more about the absence. Either way, Elvis was a much better call as a closing act, because the neon lights of the small towns I raced through didn't seem like Norman Rockwell drained his paintbrush in the nostalgia we all find in it. Norman Rockwell, and later Elvis, painted America in a way that appears endearing and real. They sang about small town America like there wasn't something to be had, not that there was someone to be had.

Finally, I made it onto a big freeway and sped home. The car dealerships and mall plazas didn't resonate any kind of feelings in me. They were just there.

I soon found myself in Claremont and thought of the time that my pals Rex and Sarvas drank and slid down the stairs of our friend Emily's dorm hall where she was a RA. And, suddenly, I felt nostalgic again as I was edging closer to home. To remember a time so precise, after forgetting it for so long, stirs you around in a rather peculiar way. You feel homesick for a time instead of a place and you think you could've done it better given a second chance, though you did it great the first time. Nostalgia just eats at you when you can't spend your weekdays doing whatever you want anymore. When you're old enough to have a real job, but not established enough to have weeks off from work. Nostalgia puts a dizzying smile that you're unsure of when you're not quite sure where you are in it all.

"Hard Headed Woman" was on when I got lost.

Elvis played "Surrender" as the amusement park fireworks went off in the distance.

"Can't Help Falling In Love" came on and I turned it off because of too many memories.

Soon, I was home with a dog waiting for me, and I felt so very precisely at home, comfortable and reassured, that I had as stupid of a grin on my face as my dog did when I finally took him for a walk so he could see what the world outside of the house had to offer him after being cooped up in the backyard.

Aging Novelist

When I type on my laptop in bed with my dog asleep next to me at night, I feel like an aging novelist who wants to make a big comeback.

Silence & The Saxophone

"Silence & The Saxophone"
a new wave old world story told somewhere in the middle with way too much narrative by jake kilroy.

The saxophone played a dull tune, as the brass tones crawled out of the stereo and sprinkled the room in a lulling, sleepy sound.

Each melodic and pensive note of the instrument seemed to slump majestically around the living room, sliding up his sleeves or down the slender legs of the woman on his couch.

"The bitter end," he mumbled, dragging on a cigarette, sitting in the window with one leg in the room and one leg hanging over the brick, watching the many people below in the streets. Sun was setting and a piercing orange glow swathed the city's buildings in its own brass tones.

The record turned in place and the music came careful and scratchy, as the needle drifted and bounced along like an old car on a dirt road. There was a soft piano along with the brushing strokes of a lounging drummer to accompany the saxophone on its liquid-like rolling of golden music notes.

"Are we going out?" she asked with a brutal sigh. Her red nails cut through the pages of the magazine as she flipped through each article aimlessly, not reading anything, never taking in a thing. "I didn't wear an evening gown just to have it wrinkle, you know."

His eyes hung on the city like his eyelids were nailed to the stucco wall.

"That dress looked fine in the hamper anyway," he said in something only just barely above monotone.

"No, it didn't," she said, a tremor of angst shaking the bottom of her throat. "It looked its best when I was at that party in the Hamptons."

He snickered and sneered, as his eyes closed and opened lazily.

"Nobody looks good in the Hamptons. Everybody looks like an asshole," he said, pinching the filter of his cigarette and drawing thoughtfully.

"Right. Everybody looks like an asshole. Says the guy who doesn't leave his apartment," she said, closing the magazine and opening her stinging eyes. "What are you so afraid of out there? That everyone won't appreciate you? Well, I've got news for you. Nobody out there has ever heard of you or your art."

He shrugged. "It's probably for the best."

"So what are you going to do instead? Sit here and listen to this naptime bullshit?"

He shrugged again and gave a response that resembled a word jumble. "Maybe."

"Why?" she demanded, flicking the needle off of the record. "We were invited to a great party. Great people will be there. There'll be great music, great food, great fun. What do you have against great?"

"Great ain't productive. Lowly, spastic, pathetic crying for help is," he replied, knowing that even his answer was total thoughtless, inconsiderate bullshit. But that's what most fights were. Words always got in the way of actions, cutting up the tempo of their dance so it always felt cluttered and clumsy.

The living room always felt like it was too wordy, but it wasn't what they were saying. The space between them felt like it was stacked with the words not being said. Every room felt stuffy with the thin oxygen of unsaid sentences. And it slowed the pace of their stories, making their lives seem clunky to each other.

"That's stupid. And empty. That is the absolute absence of real art. That's why you're not who you say you are."

"That's what everyone says about great art."

"Great, ravenous art is for crows," she said tossing her arms up and letting them come down heavy. "Every crow wants to be a raven. Every stupid artist wants to torture themselves and barely just get by, always wanting more, but always acting like they don't."

"Yeah?" he asked, grinning, now finally looking at her.

"Yeah, and at least the swans and songbirds have truth," she said, as her hands slipped onto her hips.

He sluggishly lowered his head back to the street as she swayed to the bathroom to freshen up.

"Baby, there ain't one true thing about what you've got on," he said, finishing his cigarette and throwing it upwards with a snap. "Even that necklace is fake."

There was a lowly silence that would've been filled by the saxophone, but instead was meagerly stuffed with the breaking of hearts and wills.

"What? But you gave me this," she said with long, timid pulls on each word.

"Right, darling, and like I always say, a fake for a fake."

The heavy silence returned.

"Fuck you," she said finally.

"Ah," he said with a lights in his eyes that resembled swinging light bulbs. "There's the truth they talk about in movies."

"Fuck you," she repeated.

"Keep 'em coming, sweetheart, I'll tuck those fiery words nearby and save money on heat."

"Fuck you!" she yelled and threw the necklace at him, but missed and hit the window. The necklace sang a dazzling sound and then fell to pieces on the floor. Seeing the necklace explode threw her into a fit. She immediately found her arms dragging across the bathroom counter, spilling the pills, the perfume and the glass containers of nothing that she had come to admire.

"I'm going out and I hope I see you on the way home stuck under a trolley," she bellowed, shaking her way into a thick, fashionable coat.

"You won't, since I walk everywhere," he said casually, once again, letting his arms slide into a shrug. "I don't have to rely on anybody. Enjoy your evening of crying on shoulders and asking for donations from criminals posing as gentlemen. Let me know how white their cuffs are. Tell me how their buttons taste and where exactly they plan on breaking your heart."

"You're going to die alone," she said with words that sounded like bricks hitting the bottom of a construction site, each one landing as loveless as possible with stark echoes.

"Yeah, but not tonight. Sweet dreams, honey. You're gonna get lost out there in that forest of concrete and steam. You'll probably starve to death if somebody doesn't feed you with a silver spoon."

She screamed and closed the door. He listened to her stomp down the stairs. She yelled all the way down, floor by floor, and kept yelling once she was on the street. She looked up and saw him sitting at the window, one legging swinging enthusiastically. He saluted and she scream a final curtain call growl before slinking into the back of a cab.

He watched the yellow disappear into the black streets of a dying orange glow, and then stood up to put the needle back on the record player. He got a glass from the cupboard, filled it and then sat back down on the windowsill again to light another cigarette. With a pillar of smoke climbing the crisp air of evening, he looked towards his bedroom and wondered if he should change into a tuxedo.

Cowboy Saloon

If I could play the piano, I feel like I would, in less than a week, turn my home into a rickety cowboy saloon.

Jake & The Bank Employee

BANK EMPLOYEE: What can I do for you?

JAKE: I lost my wallet last night, so I'm looking to replace my debit card.

BANK EMPLOYEE: Ok, I just need to verify some information. When is your birthday?

JAKE: May 10th, 1985.

BANK EMPLOYEE: And what is your social security number?

JAKE: ***-***-****

BANK EMPLOYEE: Ok, and where was the last place you used your card?

JAKE: I think it was...Mulligan's.

BANK EMPLOYEE: What did you last purchase with your card?

JAKE: Drinks.

BANK EMPLOYEE: And what was purchased before that?

JAKE: Drinks.

[long pause as BANK EMPLOYEE reads the computer screen]

JAKE: I imagine you can kinda guess what happened here.

World Cup Drinking

I went drinking for the World Cup yesterday and I woke up this morning with dirt in my hair, cuts on my hand and my wallet missing.

Truly a tremendous start to the week.

Why, Hello Everyone

In an attempt to seem like less of a quiet weirdo at work, I have started saying "Hey" to everyone I pass by or encounter in the hallway, parking lot or break room.

However, I'm almost certain that this effort is only making me seem like more of a weirdo.

Heehee

That is all.