Showing posts with label Other People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Other People. Show all posts
Friday, June 19, 2015
Jon Stewart's Speech about Charleston
When the same piece of content shows up in a social feed, it's very easy to get sick of it and react to abundance rather than content. And it's very easy to be the person who smugly LOVES typing "slacktivist," when sharing an opinion piece online is very clearly not the same thing as participating in a live protest. The point is, this is a 5-minute speech that articulately observes the total sadness of what may be an endless, worsening cycle. Liberal, conservative, whatever—it would be nice to stop hearing about Americans killing Americans in great numbers. Hell, it'd be nice to stop learning that Americans are killing Americans in small numbers. Even more so, it'd superb to hear about people killing people beyond borders, but that's why world peace makes the most timeless toast, because evil will always exist. There will always be horrifyingly violent lunatics. But if there's a chance to at least converge and discuss what is an institutionalized problem of racism, there is potential action. Stopping global terrorism may be a fight without end, but domestic terrorism offers steps, even if it's as simple as changing street names and flag policies.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
The Unbelievable Day of Grant Brooks
"The Unbelievable Day of Grant Brooks"
a jovial take on the life of the surfer poet Grant,
if it was hastily written by Kurt Vonnegut.
by Jake Kilroy
Grant shifted his toes in the sand like drunk soldiers on sloppy patrol. In fact, Grant looked like a squadron leader with his mustache. A boastful brute napped above his lip. Grant could keep quiet for hours, and passers-by would listen to what his mustache had to say, if it came down to it.
It hadn't (not yet at least!), but that's the kind of respect Grant's mustache commanded. The ample forest above his smirk caught the wind that jogged up the coastline with its fat, heavy breaths. He sucked in the sweet air of the world and then he pushed it out. Grant was talented, but this was basic breathing. You, delightful reader, are too easily impressed.
The beach was quiet. It was the afternoon and only three were on the beach: Grant, his dog, and that trifling wind. The locals were asleep and the tourists weren't there yet. It was Heavenly. Or if you're the type to hate sand in your shoes, it was Hell.
Grant was the first type. The good type. He was a man with a plan, and that plan was to sit on a beach on a beautiful day. There's no better type, really.
That's why bad men are given prisons and good men are given beaches.
God made it this way so men would value the sun and the moon, so that it would become a universal understanding that to lose time is to lose life, and then where would a living man be? Up a creek! But still to this day, nobody's discovered the creek that gives everyone so much damn trouble.
Benson, the dashing rogue that was half dog and half dog, bonked his way through wave after wave. The sun poured over him like lemonade. He was also the good type.
The bad types of dogs are hard to spot. They aren't the ones that bark at the mailman. Those are also the good types, since they make it clear they don't trust government messengers. Actually, the bad types of dogs might just be cats. Cats are mercenaries. And then hamsters are hippies, ferrets are junkies, and so on. People aren't the only ones with society. That's their biggest problem—they think they are.
In a pile next to the lone star of the dune was enough Batmans to form the world's greatest army. It was grand. A pile of comic books is the closest thing a civilian can have to a harem.
Grant's shirt said Big Tits, Small Government, and he had more to say on top of that.
"Benson!"
The dog bounded out of the ocean. He looked like the world's only furry sea creature, the way his tongue flapped around like a tentacle. Benson made it to the man he called dad in a language only canines have the determination to speak.
And then there came a rumbling.
It was the only thing to ever quiet the damn gulls.
Grant looked up. The sky was as bright as it was when he arrived, and then the sun disappeared. In its place was a spaceship. An unpolished junkyard piece. A bluish-gray disc that had either come from another dimension or from being kicked down the whole of an astroid field. Campbell's Soup could've sponsored its launch.
It floated down with the grace of a paper airplane filled with thumbtacks. It did everything post-WWII Americans expected it to: hummed, beeped, blooped, jabbered, the whole deep-space nine yards.
Grant, who had never seen a spaceship before, wasn't having any of it. It was dirty and noisy. He stood up and brushed himself off.
"Now what's this shit?"
Blue lights swirled. The ship coughed up a few measured exhales. The door dropped as slow as a half-hearted apology. In its frame stood two dark green aliens—one tall, one short. They waited for applause. Or maybe horderves. Neither came. It was only Grant, Earth's most respected and only host, and he still wasn't having it.
The two aliens scurried down. They moved like octopuses who dabbed all their puckers in some bad speed. They looked tired, but they forced confidence. It was the only time in history anyone had ever hoped for a nosey photographer.
"Now, listen," said Grant gently, "before you launch into some wild spiel about me taking you to our leader, it's my day off and I don't know the guy. He lives on the other side of this country, and I'm not even sure he follows me on Twitter. Besides, he's only got this country under his belt and maybe a good number under his shoe. The rest have their own leaders. I don't know them either. They live even farther, and I know they don't follow me on Twitter. Now...what can I do you for?"
"We're here for the dog," said the taller alien.
What a thing to say!
"This dog?" said Grant, pointing at Benson, who rolled around in the sand, taking just enough notice of the aliens to pass the final.
"Yes, that dog," said the shorter alien.
Grant's eyes wobbled. He clicked his tongue and crooked his neck and put his hands on his hips and then he said this: "Well, you can't have him."
And that was that.
The aliens were confused. "But we've come from so far, and we aren't even invading," said the taller one.
"Listen, I don't care if you came from Timbuktu or Mars," said Grant.
"It wasn't Mars," said the shorter one.
"And it sure as hell wasn't Timbuktu! Let me finish, little man."
"We aren't men," said the shorter one.
"Dude. On your planet, is it customary to interrupt another human being?" asked Grant.
"We don't have human beings on our planet," answered the shorter alien.
This made Grant laugh. His laughter was the good kind. It sounded like a flute that could dance. They don't have those kinds of flutes on Earth. They might not even have them where the aliens came from. His laugh was unique. It tickled the air, and it could make a girl go weak in the knees. Hell, it could make a skeleton go from wallflower to prom king too.
"Alright, well, you got me there," said Grant. "But you still can't have Benson."
So the aliens' shoulders sagged. It was a sad day for them. They'd have to slump into their spaceship (a lonely deal, no matter what species you are) and get in trouble at their jobs back on their planet, once called Smeenok, now known as Hyperbase. They changed the name because it was flashier. No matter where you travel, someone has something to sell.
"But do you not wonder why we want this dog and—"
"No, I don't wonder why you want Benson. Of course you want him. He's Benson! He's been with me through four houses and a dozen couches. I finally taught him how to play NBA2k, and Bridget's got him on Pinterest now. He's perfect."
"But he's destined for—"
"Destiny's the universe's way making it look like it has 20/20 vision. I'm not buying that philosophy, and I sure as shit ain't selling this dog."
"But—"
"Look, you seem like nice enough dudes, but...you can't always get what you want. I mean, come on...right?"
Grant and the aliens shook hands (were they hands?). He wanted them to be happy. He also didn't want to start a galactic war on account of bad manners.
"Good luck though."
The aliens nodded. Their shoulders sagged (were they shoulders?). Disappointment is a universal language because math is a universal language. It's just always a ratio of 0 for 1.
The spaceship drifted into the wild west of stars, sluggish in its exit. Grant understood. Who would want to leave Earth? It has dogs, Dylan, hip hop, and slow-motion videos of cheetahs running.
Oh. And breakfast burritos.
Grant picked up his belongings and turned to Benson. "You earned a burrito for once. Thanks for not leaving the planet."
They walked toward the parking lot. Benson nuzzled his face into Grant as he trotted.
"But don't forget," said Grant. "I could always decide to eat you one day."
And so the story ends here. Or at least this particular one. Master-commander and destined dog have other adventures, don't worry. But we don't have time. This is just the one about the beach and the aliens. Have a good day. How could you not? You're on Earth!
a jovial take on the life of the surfer poet Grant,
if it was hastily written by Kurt Vonnegut.
by Jake Kilroy
Grant shifted his toes in the sand like drunk soldiers on sloppy patrol. In fact, Grant looked like a squadron leader with his mustache. A boastful brute napped above his lip. Grant could keep quiet for hours, and passers-by would listen to what his mustache had to say, if it came down to it.
It hadn't (not yet at least!), but that's the kind of respect Grant's mustache commanded. The ample forest above his smirk caught the wind that jogged up the coastline with its fat, heavy breaths. He sucked in the sweet air of the world and then he pushed it out. Grant was talented, but this was basic breathing. You, delightful reader, are too easily impressed.
The beach was quiet. It was the afternoon and only three were on the beach: Grant, his dog, and that trifling wind. The locals were asleep and the tourists weren't there yet. It was Heavenly. Or if you're the type to hate sand in your shoes, it was Hell.
Grant was the first type. The good type. He was a man with a plan, and that plan was to sit on a beach on a beautiful day. There's no better type, really.
That's why bad men are given prisons and good men are given beaches.
God made it this way so men would value the sun and the moon, so that it would become a universal understanding that to lose time is to lose life, and then where would a living man be? Up a creek! But still to this day, nobody's discovered the creek that gives everyone so much damn trouble.
Benson, the dashing rogue that was half dog and half dog, bonked his way through wave after wave. The sun poured over him like lemonade. He was also the good type.
The bad types of dogs are hard to spot. They aren't the ones that bark at the mailman. Those are also the good types, since they make it clear they don't trust government messengers. Actually, the bad types of dogs might just be cats. Cats are mercenaries. And then hamsters are hippies, ferrets are junkies, and so on. People aren't the only ones with society. That's their biggest problem—they think they are.
In a pile next to the lone star of the dune was enough Batmans to form the world's greatest army. It was grand. A pile of comic books is the closest thing a civilian can have to a harem.
Grant's shirt said Big Tits, Small Government, and he had more to say on top of that.
"Benson!"
The dog bounded out of the ocean. He looked like the world's only furry sea creature, the way his tongue flapped around like a tentacle. Benson made it to the man he called dad in a language only canines have the determination to speak.
And then there came a rumbling.
It was the only thing to ever quiet the damn gulls.
Grant looked up. The sky was as bright as it was when he arrived, and then the sun disappeared. In its place was a spaceship. An unpolished junkyard piece. A bluish-gray disc that had either come from another dimension or from being kicked down the whole of an astroid field. Campbell's Soup could've sponsored its launch.
It floated down with the grace of a paper airplane filled with thumbtacks. It did everything post-WWII Americans expected it to: hummed, beeped, blooped, jabbered, the whole deep-space nine yards.
Grant, who had never seen a spaceship before, wasn't having any of it. It was dirty and noisy. He stood up and brushed himself off.
"Now what's this shit?"
Blue lights swirled. The ship coughed up a few measured exhales. The door dropped as slow as a half-hearted apology. In its frame stood two dark green aliens—one tall, one short. They waited for applause. Or maybe horderves. Neither came. It was only Grant, Earth's most respected and only host, and he still wasn't having it.
The two aliens scurried down. They moved like octopuses who dabbed all their puckers in some bad speed. They looked tired, but they forced confidence. It was the only time in history anyone had ever hoped for a nosey photographer.
"Now, listen," said Grant gently, "before you launch into some wild spiel about me taking you to our leader, it's my day off and I don't know the guy. He lives on the other side of this country, and I'm not even sure he follows me on Twitter. Besides, he's only got this country under his belt and maybe a good number under his shoe. The rest have their own leaders. I don't know them either. They live even farther, and I know they don't follow me on Twitter. Now...what can I do you for?"
"We're here for the dog," said the taller alien.
What a thing to say!
"This dog?" said Grant, pointing at Benson, who rolled around in the sand, taking just enough notice of the aliens to pass the final.
"Yes, that dog," said the shorter alien.
Grant's eyes wobbled. He clicked his tongue and crooked his neck and put his hands on his hips and then he said this: "Well, you can't have him."
And that was that.
The aliens were confused. "But we've come from so far, and we aren't even invading," said the taller one.
"Listen, I don't care if you came from Timbuktu or Mars," said Grant.
"It wasn't Mars," said the shorter one.
"And it sure as hell wasn't Timbuktu! Let me finish, little man."
"We aren't men," said the shorter one.
"Dude. On your planet, is it customary to interrupt another human being?" asked Grant.
"We don't have human beings on our planet," answered the shorter alien.
This made Grant laugh. His laughter was the good kind. It sounded like a flute that could dance. They don't have those kinds of flutes on Earth. They might not even have them where the aliens came from. His laugh was unique. It tickled the air, and it could make a girl go weak in the knees. Hell, it could make a skeleton go from wallflower to prom king too.
"Alright, well, you got me there," said Grant. "But you still can't have Benson."
So the aliens' shoulders sagged. It was a sad day for them. They'd have to slump into their spaceship (a lonely deal, no matter what species you are) and get in trouble at their jobs back on their planet, once called Smeenok, now known as Hyperbase. They changed the name because it was flashier. No matter where you travel, someone has something to sell.
"But do you not wonder why we want this dog and—"
"No, I don't wonder why you want Benson. Of course you want him. He's Benson! He's been with me through four houses and a dozen couches. I finally taught him how to play NBA2k, and Bridget's got him on Pinterest now. He's perfect."
"But he's destined for—"
"Destiny's the universe's way making it look like it has 20/20 vision. I'm not buying that philosophy, and I sure as shit ain't selling this dog."
"But—"
"Look, you seem like nice enough dudes, but...you can't always get what you want. I mean, come on...right?"
Grant and the aliens shook hands (were they hands?). He wanted them to be happy. He also didn't want to start a galactic war on account of bad manners.
"Good luck though."
The aliens nodded. Their shoulders sagged (were they shoulders?). Disappointment is a universal language because math is a universal language. It's just always a ratio of 0 for 1.
The spaceship drifted into the wild west of stars, sluggish in its exit. Grant understood. Who would want to leave Earth? It has dogs, Dylan, hip hop, and slow-motion videos of cheetahs running.
Oh. And breakfast burritos.
Grant picked up his belongings and turned to Benson. "You earned a burrito for once. Thanks for not leaving the planet."
They walked toward the parking lot. Benson nuzzled his face into Grant as he trotted.
"But don't forget," said Grant. "I could always decide to eat you one day."
And so the story ends here. Or at least this particular one. Master-commander and destined dog have other adventures, don't worry. But we don't have time. This is just the one about the beach and the aliens. Have a good day. How could you not? You're on Earth!
Friday, January 17, 2014
Reading is Everything
"Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss."
- Nora Ephron
Monday, December 2, 2013
Manboy & Boss: An Excerpt
Author's Note: The characters of Manboy and Boss were created by Chase Menen ("Manboy") and Chase Ruiz ("Boss"). This piece was intended for a radio show interview with Jake Kilroy and Scott Barman that never materialized.
The following is an excerpt from "Chapter 14: The Mean Ol' Jungles Of India," from the soon-to-be-published autobiography Manboy & Boss.
“Boss, I think I have jungle fever,” Manboy croaked.
Now, in my heyday, I was quite a ladies man, often bopping with the best of the players, so I naturally assumed he meant he was after the chocolate babes. As it turns out, jungle fever is what the locals called getting a fever in the jungle, which, granted, makes more sense.
After several confusing moments of Manboy making choking motions and me bustling through my mental rolodex in the game of what I presumed to be charades (“Halle Berry? Beyonce? Rosario Dawson?" I bellowed, though, to be fair, the latter is a halfie), I finally realized my beautiful mocha man was dying beneath a canopy of birds that truly, no matter how many rocks I hit them with, wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
“Manboy!” I cried, hoping my face wouldn't become the waterfall I knew it could be, though, honestly, I hadn't cried since the ending of Hellboy.
My dear assistant, who had come to save my life on several occasions (including repeated instances of me falling overboard), was now asking – nay, begging – for me to return the favor. His face darkened as he made frantic motions that I believed to be obscene. As I considered fulfilling Manboy’s strange last request of indecently pleasing him, it became quite obvious that he was, in fact, mimicking the action of a hypodermic needle in his satchel.
In his bag, I found the needle, but not after rooting through Manboy’s other belongings, which included several bananas, a pouch of opiates, two severed yet preserved monkey hand-wands, and a surprisingly pristine copy of the novella Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Taking the medical instruction I received from that one Pulp Fiction scene, I jammed the needle into Manboy’s chest, a move that he later explained nearly killed him, since I was only supposed to treat it like a vaccine shot. He gave me a book of medicine the following Christmas, an item I’ve come to cherish but have never so much as glanced at. Sorry, Manboy, those Dan Brown epics aren’t going to reread themselves.
Once the medicine coursed through his lanky, dark body, Manboy sprung up, alive and excited. He hugged me, visibly grateful for my saving his life, though, due to the manner that I injected him with the medicine, he immediately complained of chest pains and collapsed.
When he awoke a day later in what I thought was a dilapidated hospital but turned out to be an upscale roadside café, Manboy said, “Boss, you are good man.”
To which, I answered, “And you are a good Manboy,” and then patted him on the head.
The following is an excerpt from "Chapter 14: The Mean Ol' Jungles Of India," from the soon-to-be-published autobiography Manboy & Boss.
“Boss, I think I have jungle fever,” Manboy croaked.
Now, in my heyday, I was quite a ladies man, often bopping with the best of the players, so I naturally assumed he meant he was after the chocolate babes. As it turns out, jungle fever is what the locals called getting a fever in the jungle, which, granted, makes more sense.
After several confusing moments of Manboy making choking motions and me bustling through my mental rolodex in the game of what I presumed to be charades (“Halle Berry? Beyonce? Rosario Dawson?" I bellowed, though, to be fair, the latter is a halfie), I finally realized my beautiful mocha man was dying beneath a canopy of birds that truly, no matter how many rocks I hit them with, wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
“Manboy!” I cried, hoping my face wouldn't become the waterfall I knew it could be, though, honestly, I hadn't cried since the ending of Hellboy.
My dear assistant, who had come to save my life on several occasions (including repeated instances of me falling overboard), was now asking – nay, begging – for me to return the favor. His face darkened as he made frantic motions that I believed to be obscene. As I considered fulfilling Manboy’s strange last request of indecently pleasing him, it became quite obvious that he was, in fact, mimicking the action of a hypodermic needle in his satchel.
In his bag, I found the needle, but not after rooting through Manboy’s other belongings, which included several bananas, a pouch of opiates, two severed yet preserved monkey hand-wands, and a surprisingly pristine copy of the novella Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Taking the medical instruction I received from that one Pulp Fiction scene, I jammed the needle into Manboy’s chest, a move that he later explained nearly killed him, since I was only supposed to treat it like a vaccine shot. He gave me a book of medicine the following Christmas, an item I’ve come to cherish but have never so much as glanced at. Sorry, Manboy, those Dan Brown epics aren’t going to reread themselves.
Once the medicine coursed through his lanky, dark body, Manboy sprung up, alive and excited. He hugged me, visibly grateful for my saving his life, though, due to the manner that I injected him with the medicine, he immediately complained of chest pains and collapsed.
When he awoke a day later in what I thought was a dilapidated hospital but turned out to be an upscale roadside café, Manboy said, “Boss, you are good man.”
To which, I answered, “And you are a good Manboy,” and then patted him on the head.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The Suffering
"Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be. We cannot be created for this sort of suffering."
- John Keats
Thursday, November 7, 2013
The Idiot Culture
"We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot subculture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."
- Carl Bernstein
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
The Mysterious Ride of Chase Menen
"The Mysterious Ride of Chase Menen"
the crucial account of the curious jack-of-all-trades Chase,
if it were hastily written by Neil Gaiman.
by Jake Kilroy
In the old country of Mexico, there is an older country still. It twists and crawls at night, and it cannot be found in the day. Any traveler would have to focus to see the shadows within the darkness, but, even then, that would not be enough to give the land an honorable name.
Somewhere beyond the reach of the locals, but close enough to hear each child sleeping in bed, there are creatures of colors from dreams and nightmares. They growl, they gnarl and, worst of all, they laugh.
The land, divine and broken, has an oral history that has only ever been recited in the jungle of shadows that are only seen out the corner of an eye, while the most truthful poems are only to be found in ancient cemeteries. And, yet, the roadside shops of La Misión open and close each day without terror or notice.
Most had been locked up at sunset, with the shopkeepers going home to their families, taking the dirt paths that would always lead to them to a hearty supper and cold ale.
A thick scoop of black pressed itself against the hills and over the town, as night didn't fall as much as it splashed like a cannonball across the long, anomalous valley. The lamps of the living rooms were kept aglow, this was true, but the only shops left with life in them were the liquor store and the restaurant of choice, Maganas.
The sounds of the valley were atmospheric and quaint. Dogs barking, mariachi on a radio, and the symphony of crickets giving up on harmony. But a new sound slathered its greasy, beautiful noise across the only paved road leading into the small, moonless town of La Misión.
A motorcycle.
Chase Menen rode his motorcycle through the curves of the country. It was the only sound between the graves and the heavens for him. White stars and yellow lights dotted the bruised landscape, and his figure, pattering coolly along the slow carving of the hillside, was the only thing that moved. The silhouette of curious men and women watched him from behind the pale curtains and iron bars of their houses.
But no one spoke or hailed his arrival.
He pulled up to Maganas, greeted the employees warmly, especially the bartender David, and ordered his meal. After a few strong laughs, Chase stepped into the cool wind of the valley.
Chase lit a Marlboro Red, snuck a drag, and, in an instant, the world went black. Well, not exactly. He at least had the stars. Behind him, the inky details of the restaurant whispered not a word. There was not a soul, not a sound, not a thing. He withdrew the cigarette and watched the town with a thin tickle in his throat. The town was there, just as it had always been. But the air now tasted stagnant, as if he were taking deep gulps of an old house's damp attic. The windows of every home were dark, and not even a dog barked in the emptiness of the blackout.
His eyes adjusted, and the earth came back to him in purples and blues. His glare moved from one end of the road and to the other. There was no breeze in the fresh pelt of midnight. The nothing was complete.
"Huh," he said.
A boom erupted in the distance, and it came to echo throughout the valley. The splattering of an engine, one that belonged to another motorcycle, coughed a death so loud that Chase touch his ears to check for a wound.
The motorcycle rolled into town like slow lightning. It materialized from Chase's right, from the bridge he had driven over since he had been old enough to speed. The brutal racket of the motorcycle seized his nerves, as the vehicle barely made it to the front lot of the restaurant.
Then the stranger stepped off and undid his helmet, hurriedly dropping it to his side. A long top hat popped out from underneath it, along with shaggy hair the color of ash and soot. The rider's skin swirled in the light of the stars, moving even, as if snakes of melted seaweed and pasty white soap coursed through out his rangy limbs.
Chase blinked and corrected his eyes, and the skin looked ghostly yet ordinary in the fresh beat of his pupils. The stranger dressed in peculiar clothes that looked formal and ill-fitting. He was a long pile of scarlets and ebonies.
"In my haste, I must confess, I am without guidance," said the stranger excitedly. "Am I correct to assume you have been charged with the title of town mechanic?"
The phrasing had rattled Chase's head for a moment, but his wits returned with a swing.
"Oh, no, I'm just cruising through, picking up some food," said Chase. "That's a gorgeous bike though."
The stranger seemed confused. His eyes idled.
"What trade has claimed you as its own?" asked the stranger.
"I'm an engineer," said Chase.
"Ah! Splendid, splendid," said the stranger. "And that is your conveyance over yonder?"
Chase turned to see his motorcycle still parked in the dirt.
"Yep," said Chase, "that one's all mine."
"And it is a grand contrivance at that! So you have crafted your fingers as tools then," said the stranger. "I could use that toolbox of a hand, you see, as this perilous machine has lost its livelihood."
"What's the matter?" asked Chase.
"The matter is that it runs on knowledge," answered the stranger, "and I am too tired to teach it anything, lessons or otherwise."
"Right on," said Chase.
Chase took a long drag of the cigarette in his mouth, and put it out, stepping toward the unfamiliar motorcycle. As he approached the wheeled machine, the metal changed in each of his steps. It was a red that he had only seen the first time he accidentally cut himself. He remembered it looking like a river of jewels coming out of him. He stepped closer to the bike, and the colors came more quickly; the blue of skies above churches, the green of a field he made love in once, the brown of a girl's eyes that he had only ever seen dance in his dreams of South America.
His eyes strained from the spectrum. When he finally touched it, the motorcycle was nearly pellucid, and it burned. Like running a cold hand under hot water, the sensation was cruel.
"You built this yourself," said Chase with distraction.
"No, truly, I wish I could bestow credit for it upon myself, but when you are in the position that I'm often found in, you have created and destroyed enough to simply leave things be. There are others who will build. There are others that enter the world in search of destinies, and they remain despaired until their heart has been given purpose. To even tinker on a machine such as this...it makes their very pores glow. I would take that away from no man or creature."
The engine stirred, almost with a breath of its own, as Chase's hand, strained and tense, dragged across the hide of the machine. It rumbled faintly.
"I've been working on bikes for a long time," said Chase, "and I've never seen something like this."
The stranger stepped forward, a thinly stretched smile cutting his face.
"Go on," whispered the stranger.
"I've been from here to India, and I've fixed up some of the wildest things not cooked up by a god, and this doesn't come close to anything I've found on the road."
"Tell me, young traveler," said the stranger with a peculiar intensity, "what is it you most want from the road?"
"I want to ride my motorcycle through the Middle East."
"Ah," said the stranger with a harsh tone of thrill. "A very brave charge but what do you most want tonight by dawn?"
Chase considered this, and his pupils swam through the murky waters of honesty.
"I could use a good surf right now," said Chase.
"Good," said the stranger with the coo of a hungry bird.
Chase noticed a small pack of tools tied to the seat. He unwrapped them and tinkered with the engine, all while the stranger posed questions and gave him conversation like a supple fruit that he could not stop eating. He could find nothing wrong with the motorcycle, though the stranger's demeanor had become more confident than curious.
"Now open the gas tank," said the stranger.
The stranger extended his arm, and a tool Chase had never seen before slid out of his sleeve and into his hand. Chase took the tool from the stranger and held it. The tool looked like a cross between a screwdriver and a wine opener, and it was heavy. But it fit into the lock of the oddly shaped tank. Chase removed the cap.
As if all the words he had said these last few minutes had been looming above him in the stationary air, Chase thought he heard his voice in tiny bits float downward by his ears and into the gas tank. Stunned, he stood up quickly and looked at the stranger, who leaned forward, scooped up the cap, and tightened it.
The stranger smiled knowingly. "That may have seemed all too easy to you, but it takes one with a great love for motorcycles to do it."
"I don't even know what I did," said Chase.
A moment of wordless echo seemed to pass between the canyon of the motorcycle riders.
"You know," said the stranger, "you aren't possessed with demand and desire like the others I encounter. They drag questions and requests. You carry observations and interests."
"Yeah, I guess that's true," said Chase.
"Well, no questions will get you no answers, but you have the immaculate glimmer of a wayward philosopher. So I will tell you," said the stranger. "There is a rumor that, every year, two motorcycles race across the world."
"Oh, yeah? What's the name of the race?"
"It has no name."
"Who competes?"
"There are no names for the two racers, but many are given," explained the stranger. "Good and Evil. Life and Death. God and The Devil. The battle, the race, the everything must go on, you see."
Another motorcycle suddenly wailed in the darkness. The bridge illuminated with a ghostly headlight, and the new banshee rider cried out in a mad bellow, poisoned with a feverish glee, flying by the two.
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooow!" was the wild cry of the unknown.
Chase laughed.
"And there goes the other," said the stranger.
"Damn," said Chase, a gleaming smile decorating his chin.
But a sweat drew itself out of him then. His smirk deepened into an unfamiliar bite of the lips. His bones went cold, and the world unveiled itself to him, in truth and in logic. He breathed with patience, watching the lone light of the valley, besides the shower of stars above, pass as wild and easy as it had arrived. No fear drove his mouth to ask the million questions that devoured his tongue. Instead, he slowly turned his head and asked the one thing he wanted to know more than anything.
"So which one are you?"
The stranger showed him something that resembled a smile, as he buttoned his helmet. His mouth was a treasure chest of mismatched teeth. Chase had not noticed it before, but it had the unmistakeable quality of a hastily built fence, as if each tooth belonged to that of a different animal. How the mouth was able to close without gashes or cuts was beyond his mastery. The mechanics of it were other worldly, a terrible gift on display in the haunted museum of La Misión.
Finally, the stranger answered.
"I am the one who is losing."
The stranger threw himself atop the motorcycle, started the engine, and rolled it by Chase, back toward the road.
"In my many thanks, I would give you this," said the stranger. "Consider it a token for putting me back in the race. Chew the earth and rinse your mouth with the unknown, and you will get what you most need from this world."
He thrust out his hand and dropped the object in Chase's palm. It was a necklace of dark twine with an emerald oval looped into the thin rope.
"You carry moonlight with you now," said the stranger. "Rouse the tides and award your starved soul a feast."
With an enormous blast of color from the tailpipe, the sound rang throughout the valley. Chase could only describe it to himself as the sound of every war's first gunshot fired at once...
And so the stranger's motorcycle leapt onto the only paved road out of town and barreled out of the valley. The asphalt seemed to slide and careen beneath the weight of the spinning tires. A howl, not of man or animal, bestowed itself upon the chilly Mexican landscape.
Chase examined the necklace. His fingers, coarse from honest work, drifted over the surface. It was perfect in his smoothness. When he shook it, he heard the modest crashes of water inside.
The world returned with a call, and he looked up. The houses were aglow once again, and he turned to see the cook gesturing to show his food was on the tiled counter. He stared at the length of the road, but no cars or trucks crossed it, nor the demons or angels he suspected he might accidentally encounter.
He rode home, his quesataco stuffed into the pocket of his brown leather jacket. The house was as he left it, partially lit. His plan to turn on every remaining lamp in the house became him standing on the wall of the patio smoking a cigarette and listening to the ocean, as it purred against the dim house.
Chase picked up the beautiful stone that one of his younger cousins had discovered on the beach and left in a seashell last Christmas. He rolled it in his hand and felt its tiny curves.
After a cigarette, Chase climbed into his wetsuit and tied the necklace around him. There was a small but noticeable hole at the bottom of the oval, yet no liquid escaped. He tilted the gloomy green canister and still no water leaked from the necklace. It was curious.
He picked up his surfboard and walked to the water's edge with the small stone in his fist and the necklace hanging off his chest. The world was still, but not as silent as when the stranger had arrived. Cars passed in the distance, and the water coughed and crashed. After a long thought, the board and the surfer entered the sea.
After a comfortable paddle and several dips beneath small, easy waves, Chase sat upon his board. He laid the stone in his mouth and drank from the necklace. The water carried a sugary taste as he swirled it across his gums.
A wave rolled beneath him like a quiet, slow-waking beast.
The coastline's lone surfer watched the sky sparkle above him with the bare light of the stars, and the jewels of the coastline, a confetti of porch lanterns and highways lamps, snuck upon the world with a cluster of yellow that gave the cliffs a broken-tooth grin.
Chase gargled the sweet flavor a final time and then spit the stone into the ocean. It sank, and as it did, a stormy pale blue burst from the stone like glowing tentacles. The contorted arms spread out until the surrounding water looked sprinkled with every shade of blue oil paint.
And then—the waves came. A set of translucent hills, swimming with the pace of great aquatic creatures, dazzling and featureless, rolled their way toward Chase, who lowered himself and began paddling forward, in anticipation of the Poseidon's playful challenge.
A magnificent lust blazed in the young man now, as his hands carved out the cold ocean water that warmed with each stroke. His fingers lightened, and the water's temperature reminded him of pool parties from his youth, when summer was endless and time was motionless, and he was free.
The bountiful laughter could be heard along the shore for miles, loud and exuberant, his eyes radiant and his heart triumphant. Blue, the color of boyhood and sea and sky alike, swallowed the darkness around him, piercing and welcomed. For this moment and beyond now, all was hope.
the crucial account of the curious jack-of-all-trades Chase,
if it were hastily written by Neil Gaiman.
by Jake Kilroy
In the old country of Mexico, there is an older country still. It twists and crawls at night, and it cannot be found in the day. Any traveler would have to focus to see the shadows within the darkness, but, even then, that would not be enough to give the land an honorable name.
Somewhere beyond the reach of the locals, but close enough to hear each child sleeping in bed, there are creatures of colors from dreams and nightmares. They growl, they gnarl and, worst of all, they laugh.
The land, divine and broken, has an oral history that has only ever been recited in the jungle of shadows that are only seen out the corner of an eye, while the most truthful poems are only to be found in ancient cemeteries. And, yet, the roadside shops of La Misión open and close each day without terror or notice.
Most had been locked up at sunset, with the shopkeepers going home to their families, taking the dirt paths that would always lead to them to a hearty supper and cold ale.
A thick scoop of black pressed itself against the hills and over the town, as night didn't fall as much as it splashed like a cannonball across the long, anomalous valley. The lamps of the living rooms were kept aglow, this was true, but the only shops left with life in them were the liquor store and the restaurant of choice, Maganas.
The sounds of the valley were atmospheric and quaint. Dogs barking, mariachi on a radio, and the symphony of crickets giving up on harmony. But a new sound slathered its greasy, beautiful noise across the only paved road leading into the small, moonless town of La Misión.
A motorcycle.
Chase Menen rode his motorcycle through the curves of the country. It was the only sound between the graves and the heavens for him. White stars and yellow lights dotted the bruised landscape, and his figure, pattering coolly along the slow carving of the hillside, was the only thing that moved. The silhouette of curious men and women watched him from behind the pale curtains and iron bars of their houses.
But no one spoke or hailed his arrival.
He pulled up to Maganas, greeted the employees warmly, especially the bartender David, and ordered his meal. After a few strong laughs, Chase stepped into the cool wind of the valley.
Chase lit a Marlboro Red, snuck a drag, and, in an instant, the world went black. Well, not exactly. He at least had the stars. Behind him, the inky details of the restaurant whispered not a word. There was not a soul, not a sound, not a thing. He withdrew the cigarette and watched the town with a thin tickle in his throat. The town was there, just as it had always been. But the air now tasted stagnant, as if he were taking deep gulps of an old house's damp attic. The windows of every home were dark, and not even a dog barked in the emptiness of the blackout.
His eyes adjusted, and the earth came back to him in purples and blues. His glare moved from one end of the road and to the other. There was no breeze in the fresh pelt of midnight. The nothing was complete.
"Huh," he said.
A boom erupted in the distance, and it came to echo throughout the valley. The splattering of an engine, one that belonged to another motorcycle, coughed a death so loud that Chase touch his ears to check for a wound.
The motorcycle rolled into town like slow lightning. It materialized from Chase's right, from the bridge he had driven over since he had been old enough to speed. The brutal racket of the motorcycle seized his nerves, as the vehicle barely made it to the front lot of the restaurant.
Then the stranger stepped off and undid his helmet, hurriedly dropping it to his side. A long top hat popped out from underneath it, along with shaggy hair the color of ash and soot. The rider's skin swirled in the light of the stars, moving even, as if snakes of melted seaweed and pasty white soap coursed through out his rangy limbs.
Chase blinked and corrected his eyes, and the skin looked ghostly yet ordinary in the fresh beat of his pupils. The stranger dressed in peculiar clothes that looked formal and ill-fitting. He was a long pile of scarlets and ebonies.
"In my haste, I must confess, I am without guidance," said the stranger excitedly. "Am I correct to assume you have been charged with the title of town mechanic?"
The phrasing had rattled Chase's head for a moment, but his wits returned with a swing.
"Oh, no, I'm just cruising through, picking up some food," said Chase. "That's a gorgeous bike though."
The stranger seemed confused. His eyes idled.
"What trade has claimed you as its own?" asked the stranger.
"I'm an engineer," said Chase.
"Ah! Splendid, splendid," said the stranger. "And that is your conveyance over yonder?"
Chase turned to see his motorcycle still parked in the dirt.
"Yep," said Chase, "that one's all mine."
"And it is a grand contrivance at that! So you have crafted your fingers as tools then," said the stranger. "I could use that toolbox of a hand, you see, as this perilous machine has lost its livelihood."
"What's the matter?" asked Chase.
"The matter is that it runs on knowledge," answered the stranger, "and I am too tired to teach it anything, lessons or otherwise."
"Right on," said Chase.
Chase took a long drag of the cigarette in his mouth, and put it out, stepping toward the unfamiliar motorcycle. As he approached the wheeled machine, the metal changed in each of his steps. It was a red that he had only seen the first time he accidentally cut himself. He remembered it looking like a river of jewels coming out of him. He stepped closer to the bike, and the colors came more quickly; the blue of skies above churches, the green of a field he made love in once, the brown of a girl's eyes that he had only ever seen dance in his dreams of South America.
His eyes strained from the spectrum. When he finally touched it, the motorcycle was nearly pellucid, and it burned. Like running a cold hand under hot water, the sensation was cruel.
"You built this yourself," said Chase with distraction.
"No, truly, I wish I could bestow credit for it upon myself, but when you are in the position that I'm often found in, you have created and destroyed enough to simply leave things be. There are others who will build. There are others that enter the world in search of destinies, and they remain despaired until their heart has been given purpose. To even tinker on a machine such as this...it makes their very pores glow. I would take that away from no man or creature."
The engine stirred, almost with a breath of its own, as Chase's hand, strained and tense, dragged across the hide of the machine. It rumbled faintly.
"I've been working on bikes for a long time," said Chase, "and I've never seen something like this."
The stranger stepped forward, a thinly stretched smile cutting his face.
"Go on," whispered the stranger.
"I've been from here to India, and I've fixed up some of the wildest things not cooked up by a god, and this doesn't come close to anything I've found on the road."
"Tell me, young traveler," said the stranger with a peculiar intensity, "what is it you most want from the road?"
"I want to ride my motorcycle through the Middle East."
"Ah," said the stranger with a harsh tone of thrill. "A very brave charge but what do you most want tonight by dawn?"
Chase considered this, and his pupils swam through the murky waters of honesty.
"I could use a good surf right now," said Chase.
"Good," said the stranger with the coo of a hungry bird.
Chase noticed a small pack of tools tied to the seat. He unwrapped them and tinkered with the engine, all while the stranger posed questions and gave him conversation like a supple fruit that he could not stop eating. He could find nothing wrong with the motorcycle, though the stranger's demeanor had become more confident than curious.
"Now open the gas tank," said the stranger.
The stranger extended his arm, and a tool Chase had never seen before slid out of his sleeve and into his hand. Chase took the tool from the stranger and held it. The tool looked like a cross between a screwdriver and a wine opener, and it was heavy. But it fit into the lock of the oddly shaped tank. Chase removed the cap.
As if all the words he had said these last few minutes had been looming above him in the stationary air, Chase thought he heard his voice in tiny bits float downward by his ears and into the gas tank. Stunned, he stood up quickly and looked at the stranger, who leaned forward, scooped up the cap, and tightened it.
The stranger smiled knowingly. "That may have seemed all too easy to you, but it takes one with a great love for motorcycles to do it."
"I don't even know what I did," said Chase.
A moment of wordless echo seemed to pass between the canyon of the motorcycle riders.
"You know," said the stranger, "you aren't possessed with demand and desire like the others I encounter. They drag questions and requests. You carry observations and interests."
"Yeah, I guess that's true," said Chase.
"Well, no questions will get you no answers, but you have the immaculate glimmer of a wayward philosopher. So I will tell you," said the stranger. "There is a rumor that, every year, two motorcycles race across the world."
"Oh, yeah? What's the name of the race?"
"It has no name."
"Who competes?"
"There are no names for the two racers, but many are given," explained the stranger. "Good and Evil. Life and Death. God and The Devil. The battle, the race, the everything must go on, you see."
Another motorcycle suddenly wailed in the darkness. The bridge illuminated with a ghostly headlight, and the new banshee rider cried out in a mad bellow, poisoned with a feverish glee, flying by the two.
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooow!" was the wild cry of the unknown.
Chase laughed.
"And there goes the other," said the stranger.
"Damn," said Chase, a gleaming smile decorating his chin.
But a sweat drew itself out of him then. His smirk deepened into an unfamiliar bite of the lips. His bones went cold, and the world unveiled itself to him, in truth and in logic. He breathed with patience, watching the lone light of the valley, besides the shower of stars above, pass as wild and easy as it had arrived. No fear drove his mouth to ask the million questions that devoured his tongue. Instead, he slowly turned his head and asked the one thing he wanted to know more than anything.
"So which one are you?"
The stranger showed him something that resembled a smile, as he buttoned his helmet. His mouth was a treasure chest of mismatched teeth. Chase had not noticed it before, but it had the unmistakeable quality of a hastily built fence, as if each tooth belonged to that of a different animal. How the mouth was able to close without gashes or cuts was beyond his mastery. The mechanics of it were other worldly, a terrible gift on display in the haunted museum of La Misión.
Finally, the stranger answered.
"I am the one who is losing."
The stranger threw himself atop the motorcycle, started the engine, and rolled it by Chase, back toward the road.
"In my many thanks, I would give you this," said the stranger. "Consider it a token for putting me back in the race. Chew the earth and rinse your mouth with the unknown, and you will get what you most need from this world."
He thrust out his hand and dropped the object in Chase's palm. It was a necklace of dark twine with an emerald oval looped into the thin rope.
"You carry moonlight with you now," said the stranger. "Rouse the tides and award your starved soul a feast."
With an enormous blast of color from the tailpipe, the sound rang throughout the valley. Chase could only describe it to himself as the sound of every war's first gunshot fired at once...
And so the stranger's motorcycle leapt onto the only paved road out of town and barreled out of the valley. The asphalt seemed to slide and careen beneath the weight of the spinning tires. A howl, not of man or animal, bestowed itself upon the chilly Mexican landscape.
Chase examined the necklace. His fingers, coarse from honest work, drifted over the surface. It was perfect in his smoothness. When he shook it, he heard the modest crashes of water inside.
The world returned with a call, and he looked up. The houses were aglow once again, and he turned to see the cook gesturing to show his food was on the tiled counter. He stared at the length of the road, but no cars or trucks crossed it, nor the demons or angels he suspected he might accidentally encounter.
He rode home, his quesataco stuffed into the pocket of his brown leather jacket. The house was as he left it, partially lit. His plan to turn on every remaining lamp in the house became him standing on the wall of the patio smoking a cigarette and listening to the ocean, as it purred against the dim house.
Chase picked up the beautiful stone that one of his younger cousins had discovered on the beach and left in a seashell last Christmas. He rolled it in his hand and felt its tiny curves.
After a cigarette, Chase climbed into his wetsuit and tied the necklace around him. There was a small but noticeable hole at the bottom of the oval, yet no liquid escaped. He tilted the gloomy green canister and still no water leaked from the necklace. It was curious.
He picked up his surfboard and walked to the water's edge with the small stone in his fist and the necklace hanging off his chest. The world was still, but not as silent as when the stranger had arrived. Cars passed in the distance, and the water coughed and crashed. After a long thought, the board and the surfer entered the sea.
After a comfortable paddle and several dips beneath small, easy waves, Chase sat upon his board. He laid the stone in his mouth and drank from the necklace. The water carried a sugary taste as he swirled it across his gums.
A wave rolled beneath him like a quiet, slow-waking beast.
The coastline's lone surfer watched the sky sparkle above him with the bare light of the stars, and the jewels of the coastline, a confetti of porch lanterns and highways lamps, snuck upon the world with a cluster of yellow that gave the cliffs a broken-tooth grin.
Chase gargled the sweet flavor a final time and then spit the stone into the ocean. It sank, and as it did, a stormy pale blue burst from the stone like glowing tentacles. The contorted arms spread out until the surrounding water looked sprinkled with every shade of blue oil paint.
And then—the waves came. A set of translucent hills, swimming with the pace of great aquatic creatures, dazzling and featureless, rolled their way toward Chase, who lowered himself and began paddling forward, in anticipation of the Poseidon's playful challenge.
A magnificent lust blazed in the young man now, as his hands carved out the cold ocean water that warmed with each stroke. His fingers lightened, and the water's temperature reminded him of pool parties from his youth, when summer was endless and time was motionless, and he was free.
The bountiful laughter could be heard along the shore for miles, loud and exuberant, his eyes radiant and his heart triumphant. Blue, the color of boyhood and sea and sky alike, swallowed the darkness around him, piercing and welcomed. For this moment and beyond now, all was hope.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
The Sporting Pleasure of Chase Ruiz
"The Sporting Pleasure of Chase Ruiz"
a careful observation of the sure-bet gambler Chase,
if it was hastily written by Ayn Rand.
by Jake Kilroy
His eyes pulsed, surveying the great crop that was the world before him. He was the beginning and the end of the existence he allowed himself. There was control in his breaths. His lungs were clean and machinelike, fitted exquisitely for a hardworking man with a healthy routine that had already seen his skin leak sweat and his muscles ache from the morning's fitness. School would be later, and he had already done his running, lifting, and ab-ripping as well as the heavy breakfast he had cooked and finished before showering.
Now, clean and dressed, Chase Ruiz felt solace sweep over his property.
The roommate's dog, Danny, feverishly spoiled his canine nerves by sprinting around the backyard. Chase watched the creature lose energy like a propeller run aground, as the animal came to a slow, panting halt, broken and exhausted. Chase shook his head with his hands clasping each other like jacket hooks behind him. He had seen people like this, men and women killing what was left of them every day. This was not, and would not be, a life for him, nor was it what he would sufficiently deem a life. There was no brilliance or courage to a speed that had the confidence and reckless quality akin to teenage sex. Chase was aptly promised what came to him, for he growled at the helm of his future, aware that the system could always work in his favor if he was willing in body and spirit.
In the most wholesome terms of observation, Chase Ruiz was a patient man. A statuesque individual, crafted against cause and effect, in order to meander through, at his cautious leisure, what stresses he would handle and what loves he would cultivate, he sought a life beyond life; a sanctity that was, profound, almost criminal, in its elegant isolation of one. More importantly, he understood human beings. Whether it was at the clinic or at a party, he witnessed what people could do for him if he remained aware with a beastly anticipation of their actions.
Some, most of them competitors, though often novice, called him a swindler.
But that would be the iron being tested, as credit is due to swindlers. In Chase's experience, swindlers, dapper and earnest in the bending of reality or environment, typically earned their keep with boiling blood and rocklike firmness. Thieves, on the other hand, are cheap shots, played out like sneaky fools on stage, browsing society in the shadows, afraid to stroll and be important to those who matter; a scavenger, stealing to either beg another day or pay tribute to his wayfarer ego at night.
Swindlers, though, attended dinner parties and laughed in the home of the host. They had the striking ability to sit near the head of the table and rouse laughter without the wager of doubt coming to fruition until the right information had been lifted and illuminated from one's sloppy pocket mouth. Society trusts swindlers because they operate within a system. They work until their nerves have been compounded and beaten, only to be made victorious, simply by enduring the fate of destiny, a glory that can be made tragic by the populace's tendency to call it something it is not and has never been.
Chase considered this and then shifted to his dining table to taste his coffee. It was still hot, but he drank it with fulfillment. The steam whipped at his gums for a moment, only for him to lick his lips and be done with the sensation. He turned the page of the newspaper, noticing a picture of hulking athletes colliding into one another. A dull smirk drew itself across his face, pressed with strong features and a cunning disposition, as his gaze paraded down the black and white steps of the printed words. He had once again done well in fantasy football. It was of no consequence for his pride, however. There was barely an acknowledgement beyond the lull in his movement.
He just wanted to know that he could and that he was.
From outside, birds called for each other, filling the house with song; an arresting testament to what lay beyond the windows that stood behind him, over his frame, tall and complete, offering little help besides passing rays of sunlight in the quiet mornings he had grown used to with the roommates at work.
His lunch plans were quickening their pace to his doorstep, and he knew that giving way to a distraction now would take an afternoon to right. With his brow furrowed over the sports page like a church's awning, he called his lady.
"I was just been thinking of you," she answered, the tone soft and expectant.
"You know why I'm calling you now," he said, his voice not bored, nor uninterested or annoyed; simply there, abundant in presence.
She sighed, feeling surrounded and outnumbered.
"You can't do lunch, can you?"
"No. There is work to be done."
"Fine," she breathed.
"Good."
"There's no point to suggest Chipotle, is there?"
"No, not today," he told her, licking his thumb and moving to another page of the periodical. "I had chili and coffee for breakfast. Pushing myself today would be of no use."
"Then I will call up the girls. Maybe there's time to do brunch. Will you..."
"I will be busy until I am done."
"Yes...I know..."
The line lingered and demanded attention.
"Do you have the games out?" she asked him, finally.
"Listen, I want you to have a nice time with your friends. Drink mimosas, celebrate life, and then come home to me. Later. Tonight. I will make sure I am done with work then, so that you and I can give each other what the world owes us after a long day."
Her teeth creaked in a smile over the phone. Chase could hear her lips move.
"Well, then I'll be there," she replied, an amused lilt cheerfully escaping her words. "See you tonight."
"Wonderful. I will see you this evening."
He set the phone down and closed the newspaper.
His girlfriend was accurate in her remarks. Spread out across the table like a feast, erupting in color and tantalizing his fingers, were board games, video games, and sports equipment. Encircling the thorough study in fun were books, heavy and complete, stacked to a poetic height, as they cast curious shadows of towers over the activities.
Chase perused the text of each sport and recreation, studying their rules and philosophy with the precision he had taught himself in high school and sharpened in each level of higher education. The hobby had started with small words and big implications from a drunkard, upset in a card game that had whittled itself down to two players one Saturday evening. Chase had built his city of chips, and business was cruel to the other sporting architect, but this was capitalism and it has never been for everyone. The other player accused Chase of cheating, but there was as much as truth to the gentleman's words as there was sobriety to his rolling pin eyes.
No, Chase had not acted the part of a cheat this time; he had just been more aware of the holes in the game. What magnificent rage will burn through a losing hand's entire body if the desperation sets in. To keep the man's temper healthy and his car without slashed tires or flames atop, Chase suggested one last hand for all the money on the table. The large man's eyes set upon Chase with cruel brilliance, shining light above a maddening sneer. Chase, however, shrugged and mumbled a few meaningless words to show that he was thoughtful, not mute.
Unsurprising to no one in the room but the scoundrel at the other end of the green felt, Chase won the last deal and collected the money with an efficient sweep of his arm. He pulled up his bag, pushed in his chair, and shrugged again, clearly, quietly, and sufficiently insulting the man.
"Better luck next time," Chase said, addressing the man with an indifference that registered on the sauced brute like spit. The man, livid and deranged, shot up, but the others eased him down.
Once the loose-tongued individual registered a few more uneasy breaths, Chase put out his hands and answered the furious card shark, shaking with anger now, in range of the victor's mocking glare, "Sorry, bro."
In the car, Chase put on Glassjaw and sped onto the highway before the glassy-eyed gambler could reach the back lot and torch his Scion. Maybe even with him in it.
Not long after that evening, Chase took up reading all that he could about card games. He attacked all that his brain could accept before his head would spin, and he would smoke hookah in the backyard to relax. Insatiable and determined, he devoured the etiquette of croquet, taking notes of the gaps in the rules and creating a bribery system. He studied every potential friendly weekend suggestion, from volleyball to Scrabble, carefully constructing the mannered persona of a sporting player, with an intense knowledge of sports and games, shelved between the meticulous and questionable guidelines he had come to recite without hesitation in the shower upon waking every day.
With a long inhale of the fresh air that wafted through the open sliding door, he picked up the mug and finished his coffee, considering the long road ahead of him and the opportunities at every turn; surefire in the efforts of expanding his reach in all direction but backward. He found his daydreams to be madness at their most difficult, but, at times like these, they were pornography for the soul.
Shaking his wrist clear of all verbiage that haunted his tendons prior, Chase wrote what he imagined he would memorize as a nightly prayer, declaiming them even years from this clear day, this brief genesis in history.
Building empires is fine work if you can stomach the dust and the blood. If both ingredients are in one's appetite, then all that holds back the kingdom is the choice of crown. And the most glorious king of brutality and benevolence chooses both jewels and thorns.
Amen.
a careful observation of the sure-bet gambler Chase,
if it was hastily written by Ayn Rand.
by Jake Kilroy
His eyes pulsed, surveying the great crop that was the world before him. He was the beginning and the end of the existence he allowed himself. There was control in his breaths. His lungs were clean and machinelike, fitted exquisitely for a hardworking man with a healthy routine that had already seen his skin leak sweat and his muscles ache from the morning's fitness. School would be later, and he had already done his running, lifting, and ab-ripping as well as the heavy breakfast he had cooked and finished before showering.
Now, clean and dressed, Chase Ruiz felt solace sweep over his property.
The roommate's dog, Danny, feverishly spoiled his canine nerves by sprinting around the backyard. Chase watched the creature lose energy like a propeller run aground, as the animal came to a slow, panting halt, broken and exhausted. Chase shook his head with his hands clasping each other like jacket hooks behind him. He had seen people like this, men and women killing what was left of them every day. This was not, and would not be, a life for him, nor was it what he would sufficiently deem a life. There was no brilliance or courage to a speed that had the confidence and reckless quality akin to teenage sex. Chase was aptly promised what came to him, for he growled at the helm of his future, aware that the system could always work in his favor if he was willing in body and spirit.
In the most wholesome terms of observation, Chase Ruiz was a patient man. A statuesque individual, crafted against cause and effect, in order to meander through, at his cautious leisure, what stresses he would handle and what loves he would cultivate, he sought a life beyond life; a sanctity that was, profound, almost criminal, in its elegant isolation of one. More importantly, he understood human beings. Whether it was at the clinic or at a party, he witnessed what people could do for him if he remained aware with a beastly anticipation of their actions.
Some, most of them competitors, though often novice, called him a swindler.
But that would be the iron being tested, as credit is due to swindlers. In Chase's experience, swindlers, dapper and earnest in the bending of reality or environment, typically earned their keep with boiling blood and rocklike firmness. Thieves, on the other hand, are cheap shots, played out like sneaky fools on stage, browsing society in the shadows, afraid to stroll and be important to those who matter; a scavenger, stealing to either beg another day or pay tribute to his wayfarer ego at night.
Swindlers, though, attended dinner parties and laughed in the home of the host. They had the striking ability to sit near the head of the table and rouse laughter without the wager of doubt coming to fruition until the right information had been lifted and illuminated from one's sloppy pocket mouth. Society trusts swindlers because they operate within a system. They work until their nerves have been compounded and beaten, only to be made victorious, simply by enduring the fate of destiny, a glory that can be made tragic by the populace's tendency to call it something it is not and has never been.
Chase considered this and then shifted to his dining table to taste his coffee. It was still hot, but he drank it with fulfillment. The steam whipped at his gums for a moment, only for him to lick his lips and be done with the sensation. He turned the page of the newspaper, noticing a picture of hulking athletes colliding into one another. A dull smirk drew itself across his face, pressed with strong features and a cunning disposition, as his gaze paraded down the black and white steps of the printed words. He had once again done well in fantasy football. It was of no consequence for his pride, however. There was barely an acknowledgement beyond the lull in his movement.
He just wanted to know that he could and that he was.
From outside, birds called for each other, filling the house with song; an arresting testament to what lay beyond the windows that stood behind him, over his frame, tall and complete, offering little help besides passing rays of sunlight in the quiet mornings he had grown used to with the roommates at work.
His lunch plans were quickening their pace to his doorstep, and he knew that giving way to a distraction now would take an afternoon to right. With his brow furrowed over the sports page like a church's awning, he called his lady.
"I was just been thinking of you," she answered, the tone soft and expectant.
"You know why I'm calling you now," he said, his voice not bored, nor uninterested or annoyed; simply there, abundant in presence.
She sighed, feeling surrounded and outnumbered.
"You can't do lunch, can you?"
"No. There is work to be done."
"Fine," she breathed.
"Good."
"There's no point to suggest Chipotle, is there?"
"No, not today," he told her, licking his thumb and moving to another page of the periodical. "I had chili and coffee for breakfast. Pushing myself today would be of no use."
"Then I will call up the girls. Maybe there's time to do brunch. Will you..."
"I will be busy until I am done."
"Yes...I know..."
The line lingered and demanded attention.
"Do you have the games out?" she asked him, finally.
"Listen, I want you to have a nice time with your friends. Drink mimosas, celebrate life, and then come home to me. Later. Tonight. I will make sure I am done with work then, so that you and I can give each other what the world owes us after a long day."
Her teeth creaked in a smile over the phone. Chase could hear her lips move.
"Well, then I'll be there," she replied, an amused lilt cheerfully escaping her words. "See you tonight."
"Wonderful. I will see you this evening."
He set the phone down and closed the newspaper.
His girlfriend was accurate in her remarks. Spread out across the table like a feast, erupting in color and tantalizing his fingers, were board games, video games, and sports equipment. Encircling the thorough study in fun were books, heavy and complete, stacked to a poetic height, as they cast curious shadows of towers over the activities.
Chase perused the text of each sport and recreation, studying their rules and philosophy with the precision he had taught himself in high school and sharpened in each level of higher education. The hobby had started with small words and big implications from a drunkard, upset in a card game that had whittled itself down to two players one Saturday evening. Chase had built his city of chips, and business was cruel to the other sporting architect, but this was capitalism and it has never been for everyone. The other player accused Chase of cheating, but there was as much as truth to the gentleman's words as there was sobriety to his rolling pin eyes.
No, Chase had not acted the part of a cheat this time; he had just been more aware of the holes in the game. What magnificent rage will burn through a losing hand's entire body if the desperation sets in. To keep the man's temper healthy and his car without slashed tires or flames atop, Chase suggested one last hand for all the money on the table. The large man's eyes set upon Chase with cruel brilliance, shining light above a maddening sneer. Chase, however, shrugged and mumbled a few meaningless words to show that he was thoughtful, not mute.
Unsurprising to no one in the room but the scoundrel at the other end of the green felt, Chase won the last deal and collected the money with an efficient sweep of his arm. He pulled up his bag, pushed in his chair, and shrugged again, clearly, quietly, and sufficiently insulting the man.
"Better luck next time," Chase said, addressing the man with an indifference that registered on the sauced brute like spit. The man, livid and deranged, shot up, but the others eased him down.
Once the loose-tongued individual registered a few more uneasy breaths, Chase put out his hands and answered the furious card shark, shaking with anger now, in range of the victor's mocking glare, "Sorry, bro."
In the car, Chase put on Glassjaw and sped onto the highway before the glassy-eyed gambler could reach the back lot and torch his Scion. Maybe even with him in it.
Not long after that evening, Chase took up reading all that he could about card games. He attacked all that his brain could accept before his head would spin, and he would smoke hookah in the backyard to relax. Insatiable and determined, he devoured the etiquette of croquet, taking notes of the gaps in the rules and creating a bribery system. He studied every potential friendly weekend suggestion, from volleyball to Scrabble, carefully constructing the mannered persona of a sporting player, with an intense knowledge of sports and games, shelved between the meticulous and questionable guidelines he had come to recite without hesitation in the shower upon waking every day.
With a long inhale of the fresh air that wafted through the open sliding door, he picked up the mug and finished his coffee, considering the long road ahead of him and the opportunities at every turn; surefire in the efforts of expanding his reach in all direction but backward. He found his daydreams to be madness at their most difficult, but, at times like these, they were pornography for the soul.
Shaking his wrist clear of all verbiage that haunted his tendons prior, Chase wrote what he imagined he would memorize as a nightly prayer, declaiming them even years from this clear day, this brief genesis in history.
Building empires is fine work if you can stomach the dust and the blood. If both ingredients are in one's appetite, then all that holds back the kingdom is the choice of crown. And the most glorious king of brutality and benevolence chooses both jewels and thorns.
Amen.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The Fantastic Dinner Party of Scott Barman
"The Fantastic Dinner Party of Scott Barman"
a tender yet quaint pull of the eyes about the musician host Scott,
if it were hastily written by Ernest Hemingway.
by Jake Kilroy
It was warm and a breeze came, so the windows were left open and the sky looked like it would be the great death that many soldiers drink to. The lights glowed in the garden and in the distance Scott heard the cars go by but they were not the guests. The guests would come later, after he had taken down shots of cool liquor like a sniper lowering the count of enemy troops.
He put on his black shirt and navy jacket and adjusted the radio to bring music to the room. It would be a long night and he felt energy in his bones coming to him now, finally, after a long day of preparing the food.
The air smelled of summer, but this was not enough. He had always loved the smell of coffee, even as a boy, when he would play in his metal band. He no longer saw those friends, but this was life. This was the torrid sea forever pushing us into the horizon. He lit a large candle in a vase filled with coffee beans and it was good and sweet and honest.
There was loneliness in the house. It had been there, truly. But tonight was the end of that. The women would fill his home with mirth and conversation and his bed would be full and he would be happy. A man does not need much to endure, but a bed of women has hurt no musician in this life.
He arranged his instruments and was careful of his selection. The piano can break a woman's heart more quickly than a ruined marriage. The guitar can be as tactful as a gun and it carries the boom of a Lazarus Pit. His orchestra pieces made up a militia and he was its captain.
He was a man with means, which is a god to many. To the restless and willing, a god is a man with all the control he can imagine, and the truest music is the sound of mutilating and mangling the nerves. It is a beautiful sound to those with ears that can bare it. This was a country of gods. He knew that.
He brushed his teeth and listened to the bossa nova. When he was done, he called the girl.
"Hello?"
Her voice was soft.
"Hello."
"Is everything ready?"
"Everything is ready. I've poured the wine."
"We aren't the lovely type, you know," she said. He voice came excited and feline in its calm.
"You are who I want."
"All of us?"
"Yes."
"You are ambitious."
"I am a lot of things, but I am no coward."
"I'll have to consider the wine."
"You'll have some."
He put down the phone. That was enough. He would save his muscles for the lovemaking.
The smell of coffee and the taste of mint exhausted him with memories. He had thrown dinner parties before and the familiarity weakened him with beauty. The breath of warm lasagna coughed from the oven was not new. He was a man of family and of friends. There had been great laughs in his kitchen and sublime foreplay in his bedroom. There was the quality of an aristocrat to his tongue and the fury of a drunk to his blood. There would be no reason to not be welcomed in his home if one was of good faith in manners and an interest in dice.
The table blazed like a holiday. He watched the flames move in the breeze and he remembered the nights of his youth, when he was a college student studying music in the northern country. The sonatas he had written then as a young man in the city, the ones that had no place for the world but in the ear of a sleepy girl who had stayed the night, they came to him now.
He would go to the cafes that needed tending to and order sandwiches that were in desperate need of care and drink like a man with nothing to prove but honor and he would wait for the sun to go down to find hope or lust at a party near campus.
He had loved the darkness then as he did now. It was only after dinner he could resume his thoughts. The day would often prove useless and lost to the drought of time. He would bury himself in legal work or swim until the sun was no longer above him. At the pool he would watch the women, but they were often not what he was after. There would be a young white woman at the pool on stray afternoons, and it would stir his heart, but that was all.
In the kitchen now he sipped the wine and cut himself a pepper to enjoy with his glass before every appetite within his strange and serene body took him in the promised bellows of exceptional manhood. He would wait for the guests and he would give them everything he had in him, no matter how wild or sincere.
He took out the sheet of garlic bread and dropped it on the counter of scattered knives and forks. A crash of silver sounded from below the dish. The garlic bread was burned. The edges crumbled like ash. It spoke of gross poetry like a log in the hearth of the fireplace that his mother never let him use when she was out of town. This was not a surprise to him. He knew he would be a wealthy man that could set sail and live his life at sea eating fish and drinking port if only someone would pay him to burn garlic bread.
It was the truth and that is all that matters to some. It should matter to most but men are often too proud to take their blows like the prizefighters they boast to be in bars at last call. What should be nothing is everything to a liar. It is worse when the only person in the bar is the bartender. Not even the mirrors talk to the loudest scoundrel.
His friends would always talk about the garlic bread as if it had never been the grand curse that it came to be in his formidable years of cooking. It haunted him from his earliest days as a host. The wine, the women, the whipped cream had always been to his preference, but the garlic bread would laugh in the freezer and then cackle in the oven. A bare brutal beating would come from his compatriots, but they were at least true and loyal, and that is all a man can ask of his friends and lovers.
The door rattled with knocks now and he heard the squealing and giggling of his guests in the courtyard on the other side. He opened the cabinet beneath the sink and dropped the mangled sacrifice into its usual temple and closed it. There would be no garlic bread this evening. There would be wine and sex and lasagna but the garlic bread had played it's part in the death of a quiet chef's reputation. He wanted the women and there would be no fool left in the kitchen.
He brushed his blazer, moved a hand through his hair and surveyed his teeth in the mirror of his dining hall before he answered the door. He turned the knob and the night was tempered with glory.
"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii," he said.
A half dozen Asian women in black dresses stumbled into his house with fervor and eagerness. They passed Scott and removed their coats and kissed his cheek and showed the white teeth they couldn't hide in their red cheeks any longer. They had arrived in a cab and he closed the door. He would drive them home in the morning, after a swim in the nude with good sunlight and iced tea.
"Who wants wine?" he asked.
Each woman showed him the bottle of wine they brought with them. They still howled like their throats tickled with exotic feathers in each breath. They had the same notions as him and they might have been even more riddled with the dreams that we so often find pretty before sleep in a bed alone for one night too long. These women were the last thoughts he would have on his deathbed, he surely knew.
"Very good," Scott said. He pointed his finger in a quick jab and made an elegant sound. "Mmhmm. Very good indeed."
a tender yet quaint pull of the eyes about the musician host Scott,
if it were hastily written by Ernest Hemingway.
by Jake Kilroy
It was warm and a breeze came, so the windows were left open and the sky looked like it would be the great death that many soldiers drink to. The lights glowed in the garden and in the distance Scott heard the cars go by but they were not the guests. The guests would come later, after he had taken down shots of cool liquor like a sniper lowering the count of enemy troops.
He put on his black shirt and navy jacket and adjusted the radio to bring music to the room. It would be a long night and he felt energy in his bones coming to him now, finally, after a long day of preparing the food.
The air smelled of summer, but this was not enough. He had always loved the smell of coffee, even as a boy, when he would play in his metal band. He no longer saw those friends, but this was life. This was the torrid sea forever pushing us into the horizon. He lit a large candle in a vase filled with coffee beans and it was good and sweet and honest.
There was loneliness in the house. It had been there, truly. But tonight was the end of that. The women would fill his home with mirth and conversation and his bed would be full and he would be happy. A man does not need much to endure, but a bed of women has hurt no musician in this life.
He arranged his instruments and was careful of his selection. The piano can break a woman's heart more quickly than a ruined marriage. The guitar can be as tactful as a gun and it carries the boom of a Lazarus Pit. His orchestra pieces made up a militia and he was its captain.
He was a man with means, which is a god to many. To the restless and willing, a god is a man with all the control he can imagine, and the truest music is the sound of mutilating and mangling the nerves. It is a beautiful sound to those with ears that can bare it. This was a country of gods. He knew that.
He brushed his teeth and listened to the bossa nova. When he was done, he called the girl.
"Hello?"
Her voice was soft.
"Hello."
"Is everything ready?"
"Everything is ready. I've poured the wine."
"We aren't the lovely type, you know," she said. He voice came excited and feline in its calm.
"You are who I want."
"All of us?"
"Yes."
"You are ambitious."
"I am a lot of things, but I am no coward."
"I'll have to consider the wine."
"You'll have some."
He put down the phone. That was enough. He would save his muscles for the lovemaking.
The smell of coffee and the taste of mint exhausted him with memories. He had thrown dinner parties before and the familiarity weakened him with beauty. The breath of warm lasagna coughed from the oven was not new. He was a man of family and of friends. There had been great laughs in his kitchen and sublime foreplay in his bedroom. There was the quality of an aristocrat to his tongue and the fury of a drunk to his blood. There would be no reason to not be welcomed in his home if one was of good faith in manners and an interest in dice.
The table blazed like a holiday. He watched the flames move in the breeze and he remembered the nights of his youth, when he was a college student studying music in the northern country. The sonatas he had written then as a young man in the city, the ones that had no place for the world but in the ear of a sleepy girl who had stayed the night, they came to him now.
He would go to the cafes that needed tending to and order sandwiches that were in desperate need of care and drink like a man with nothing to prove but honor and he would wait for the sun to go down to find hope or lust at a party near campus.
He had loved the darkness then as he did now. It was only after dinner he could resume his thoughts. The day would often prove useless and lost to the drought of time. He would bury himself in legal work or swim until the sun was no longer above him. At the pool he would watch the women, but they were often not what he was after. There would be a young white woman at the pool on stray afternoons, and it would stir his heart, but that was all.
In the kitchen now he sipped the wine and cut himself a pepper to enjoy with his glass before every appetite within his strange and serene body took him in the promised bellows of exceptional manhood. He would wait for the guests and he would give them everything he had in him, no matter how wild or sincere.
He took out the sheet of garlic bread and dropped it on the counter of scattered knives and forks. A crash of silver sounded from below the dish. The garlic bread was burned. The edges crumbled like ash. It spoke of gross poetry like a log in the hearth of the fireplace that his mother never let him use when she was out of town. This was not a surprise to him. He knew he would be a wealthy man that could set sail and live his life at sea eating fish and drinking port if only someone would pay him to burn garlic bread.
It was the truth and that is all that matters to some. It should matter to most but men are often too proud to take their blows like the prizefighters they boast to be in bars at last call. What should be nothing is everything to a liar. It is worse when the only person in the bar is the bartender. Not even the mirrors talk to the loudest scoundrel.
His friends would always talk about the garlic bread as if it had never been the grand curse that it came to be in his formidable years of cooking. It haunted him from his earliest days as a host. The wine, the women, the whipped cream had always been to his preference, but the garlic bread would laugh in the freezer and then cackle in the oven. A bare brutal beating would come from his compatriots, but they were at least true and loyal, and that is all a man can ask of his friends and lovers.
The door rattled with knocks now and he heard the squealing and giggling of his guests in the courtyard on the other side. He opened the cabinet beneath the sink and dropped the mangled sacrifice into its usual temple and closed it. There would be no garlic bread this evening. There would be wine and sex and lasagna but the garlic bread had played it's part in the death of a quiet chef's reputation. He wanted the women and there would be no fool left in the kitchen.
He brushed his blazer, moved a hand through his hair and surveyed his teeth in the mirror of his dining hall before he answered the door. He turned the knob and the night was tempered with glory.
"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii," he said.
A half dozen Asian women in black dresses stumbled into his house with fervor and eagerness. They passed Scott and removed their coats and kissed his cheek and showed the white teeth they couldn't hide in their red cheeks any longer. They had arrived in a cab and he closed the door. He would drive them home in the morning, after a swim in the nude with good sunlight and iced tea.
"Who wants wine?" he asked.
Each woman showed him the bottle of wine they brought with them. They still howled like their throats tickled with exotic feathers in each breath. They had the same notions as him and they might have been even more riddled with the dreams that we so often find pretty before sleep in a bed alone for one night too long. These women were the last thoughts he would have on his deathbed, he surely knew.
"Very good," Scott said. He pointed his finger in a quick jab and made an elegant sound. "Mmhmm. Very good indeed."
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The Long Night of Jackie Jones
"The Long Night of Jackie Jones"
a borderline obnoxious five-chapter story about the photographer Jackie, if it were (quickly and lazily) written by Charles Bukowski.
by Jake Kilroy
Chapter I: Hot Night
I got home late from the newsroom. It was dark but pretty. The sky was still there, so I hadn't died on the way home. There was music on somewhere. My studio was still and hot, but what else do Americans expect from their bedrooms in the summertime? People want to come home to a disaster or flowers, and they never learn it's nothing but a room. There are a hundred rooms on the block. Why would any of them be different from the others?
"All these weddings and no assistant," I cursed with salty gums. I had hoped my work would've done itself in hours ago.
Chapter II: Sure Enough, Here
The clock was a sloppy mess, hands everywhere. Or maybe it was the heat. Maybe Dali was right about clocks. Maybe Einstein was right about time. Maybe I was right about nothing. At least here was cold beer in the fridge. It would be a long night, but that's the only kind I've ever had.
"All these weddings and no assistant," I mumbled again, waiting for the air to come on. The air was staler than the bread I begged for when I was a rotten youth.
I set my bag down and considered my computer. Lurking in it were brides and grooms and the terrible aches of the future. How had so many deadlines come knocking at my door to let themselves in? Why was I always at the Orange Circle taking photographs of sunlight?
Ah. So I'd have something to hold onto when the darkness and wine came later.
Chapter III: Sacrilege of the Photographer by the Writer
Hours later, I had a headache and my pajamas on. There were photos everywhere with memories nowhere to be found. They let me drink at these weddings, and they shouldn't. I'd be a mess if there weren't other messes. I can blend into a crowd. It's not that hard. All you do is stand tall and micmic the others. This is why sheep get eaten by wolves. They try to show off.
Individuality will get you killed. Conformity will get you married. The irony will get you grinning. But, ideally, in the back of your mind, you also see yourself smiling in front of a firing squad.
Joe Purdy came from the small radio I keep by the window. His answers made sense, but I had no questions I could ask this late after so much work with words. I nearly drowned in the wine bottle that watched over me like a concerned friend. These were troubling times, but I was in no mood to be anything else than drunk and glorious at photo editing.
So many lovers, so many meadows, so many holding hands with daylight glimmering until nausea sets in later, often around midnight. Then I will go to bed, convinced that I am the reason these people even love each other. The artist with the loaded gun, bullets flying out (months later, after I've touched up the colors), here now in the foxhole of her room, waiting out another summer of engagements, weddings, and babys being goddamned babies, drooling on themselves, like I will one day when I have finally given up the camera for good.
Chapter IV: When You Finally Give into Everything You Want and Your Body is Silent
When the slurs finally came to my mouth, the empty room felt like another person. It sheltered me and kept me company. I wasn't lonely, though every strong-hearted person says that, whether they mean it or not. I can be mean or not. Whatever suits the mood suits me. There's nothing to do about the world if it doesn't feel like it.
Around 2, I called Celeste. She didn't answer. It was just as well. I had seen New Girl GIFs online, and my only intention was to giggle with her for 45 minutes, or until one of us lost breath and fell asleep. These were the nights, and we welcomed them.
The sun was still gone, and I was still awake, but we would both be changing soon. What lousy creatures night owls are, with their broken eyes and their busted hearing. So I called a man. His name was in my phone as "Robert, M.D." I didn't remember him. I remembered what I had that night. But you can't make a house call to eight vodka tonics and a handful of vicodin.
Robert answered without any tone of drink or drug. He was asleep.
"Hello?" came the groggy voice.
"Hi, is this Robert?" I chirped.
"Who is this?"
"Are you a doctor?"
"What?"
"Are you a doctor?" I repeated, slower this time. This brute was a drag.
"I'm a maitre d'. Who the fuck is this?"
"So you're not a doctor," I moaned in distress, this time making sure to roll my Rs like the bad girls from high school had taught me.
"Who. The Fuck. Is this?" he growled like a monstrous beast from Hell.
"Your worst fucking nightmare."
I hung up. If he wasn't going to give me the time of a day, I didn't see any point in giving him the time of night.
I wondered what Kristen was doing.
Chapter V: The Devil's Play Things
I tried to do the math to figure out if Kristen was just going to bed or just getting up, but the numbers might as well have been sworn enemies. I can count cigarettes, and I know what radio stations play the right songs, so I stopped. It was enough math.
I went back to the computer. I had enough of weddings. There was more to life. There was more to the world. The problem wasn't the system. The problem was me. I had made a living taking pictures of happiness, and they weren't me. I was happy, and I've been happy. But happiness to me is free booze and a dance floor. I don't need a whole goddamned society telling me otherwise.
Still, I suppose there is always something left, even at night. The fears and the anxieties come out of the darkness swinging at you. The problem is that it requires a choice. Step back, swing back, or die. I decided to find a man, to find sex. I was bored, and I was hungry, and it was more work for me to make a sandwich at this hour.
I took down the last of the last bottle, unable to read labels anymore until rest. So I went to the window. I wasn't a beggar, but I wondered. Where were the machines of sex? Where were the men, soldiering on as nobodies in their great lifelong campaign of nothing? Where was the entertainment for a young woman hellbent on everything? They were supposed to be ready and willing and eager to ruin.
So here I was, a woman, empty and coarse, relentlessly pursuing a dream, any dream.
And then the young man dropped off the morning paper. His eyes lured up to my window like a catfish with his mouth caught on the grime of the hook. I grinned, starved for attention and sweat. He, on the other hand, gulped so loud it should've woken the neighborhood. He set down his bike, and I walked to the door to unlock it. There is never a need in this world to be impolite. Always be a good host. It will be repaid in the afterlife.
a borderline obnoxious five-chapter story about the photographer Jackie, if it were (quickly and lazily) written by Charles Bukowski.
by Jake Kilroy
Chapter I: Hot Night
I got home late from the newsroom. It was dark but pretty. The sky was still there, so I hadn't died on the way home. There was music on somewhere. My studio was still and hot, but what else do Americans expect from their bedrooms in the summertime? People want to come home to a disaster or flowers, and they never learn it's nothing but a room. There are a hundred rooms on the block. Why would any of them be different from the others?
"All these weddings and no assistant," I cursed with salty gums. I had hoped my work would've done itself in hours ago.
Chapter II: Sure Enough, Here
The clock was a sloppy mess, hands everywhere. Or maybe it was the heat. Maybe Dali was right about clocks. Maybe Einstein was right about time. Maybe I was right about nothing. At least here was cold beer in the fridge. It would be a long night, but that's the only kind I've ever had.
"All these weddings and no assistant," I mumbled again, waiting for the air to come on. The air was staler than the bread I begged for when I was a rotten youth.
I set my bag down and considered my computer. Lurking in it were brides and grooms and the terrible aches of the future. How had so many deadlines come knocking at my door to let themselves in? Why was I always at the Orange Circle taking photographs of sunlight?
Ah. So I'd have something to hold onto when the darkness and wine came later.
Chapter III: Sacrilege of the Photographer by the Writer
Hours later, I had a headache and my pajamas on. There were photos everywhere with memories nowhere to be found. They let me drink at these weddings, and they shouldn't. I'd be a mess if there weren't other messes. I can blend into a crowd. It's not that hard. All you do is stand tall and micmic the others. This is why sheep get eaten by wolves. They try to show off.
Individuality will get you killed. Conformity will get you married. The irony will get you grinning. But, ideally, in the back of your mind, you also see yourself smiling in front of a firing squad.
Joe Purdy came from the small radio I keep by the window. His answers made sense, but I had no questions I could ask this late after so much work with words. I nearly drowned in the wine bottle that watched over me like a concerned friend. These were troubling times, but I was in no mood to be anything else than drunk and glorious at photo editing.
So many lovers, so many meadows, so many holding hands with daylight glimmering until nausea sets in later, often around midnight. Then I will go to bed, convinced that I am the reason these people even love each other. The artist with the loaded gun, bullets flying out (months later, after I've touched up the colors), here now in the foxhole of her room, waiting out another summer of engagements, weddings, and babys being goddamned babies, drooling on themselves, like I will one day when I have finally given up the camera for good.
Chapter IV: When You Finally Give into Everything You Want and Your Body is Silent
When the slurs finally came to my mouth, the empty room felt like another person. It sheltered me and kept me company. I wasn't lonely, though every strong-hearted person says that, whether they mean it or not. I can be mean or not. Whatever suits the mood suits me. There's nothing to do about the world if it doesn't feel like it.
Around 2, I called Celeste. She didn't answer. It was just as well. I had seen New Girl GIFs online, and my only intention was to giggle with her for 45 minutes, or until one of us lost breath and fell asleep. These were the nights, and we welcomed them.
The sun was still gone, and I was still awake, but we would both be changing soon. What lousy creatures night owls are, with their broken eyes and their busted hearing. So I called a man. His name was in my phone as "Robert, M.D." I didn't remember him. I remembered what I had that night. But you can't make a house call to eight vodka tonics and a handful of vicodin.
Robert answered without any tone of drink or drug. He was asleep.
"Hello?" came the groggy voice.
"Hi, is this Robert?" I chirped.
"Who is this?"
"Are you a doctor?"
"What?"
"Are you a doctor?" I repeated, slower this time. This brute was a drag.
"I'm a maitre d'. Who the fuck is this?"
"So you're not a doctor," I moaned in distress, this time making sure to roll my Rs like the bad girls from high school had taught me.
"Who. The Fuck. Is this?" he growled like a monstrous beast from Hell.
"Your worst fucking nightmare."
I hung up. If he wasn't going to give me the time of a day, I didn't see any point in giving him the time of night.
I wondered what Kristen was doing.
Chapter V: The Devil's Play Things
I tried to do the math to figure out if Kristen was just going to bed or just getting up, but the numbers might as well have been sworn enemies. I can count cigarettes, and I know what radio stations play the right songs, so I stopped. It was enough math.
I went back to the computer. I had enough of weddings. There was more to life. There was more to the world. The problem wasn't the system. The problem was me. I had made a living taking pictures of happiness, and they weren't me. I was happy, and I've been happy. But happiness to me is free booze and a dance floor. I don't need a whole goddamned society telling me otherwise.
Still, I suppose there is always something left, even at night. The fears and the anxieties come out of the darkness swinging at you. The problem is that it requires a choice. Step back, swing back, or die. I decided to find a man, to find sex. I was bored, and I was hungry, and it was more work for me to make a sandwich at this hour.
I took down the last of the last bottle, unable to read labels anymore until rest. So I went to the window. I wasn't a beggar, but I wondered. Where were the machines of sex? Where were the men, soldiering on as nobodies in their great lifelong campaign of nothing? Where was the entertainment for a young woman hellbent on everything? They were supposed to be ready and willing and eager to ruin.
So here I was, a woman, empty and coarse, relentlessly pursuing a dream, any dream.
And then the young man dropped off the morning paper. His eyes lured up to my window like a catfish with his mouth caught on the grime of the hook. I grinned, starved for attention and sweat. He, on the other hand, gulped so loud it should've woken the neighborhood. He set down his bike, and I walked to the door to unlock it. There is never a need in this world to be impolite. Always be a good host. It will be repaid in the afterlife.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
R.I.P. Elmore Leonard: Dutch's Lesson
Elmore Leonard, once called "the Dickens of Detroit," passed away today. He was 87 years old and indefinitely rad as hell. Born in New Orleans and raised in Detroit, Leonard aimed to be like Hemingway if he had a sense of humor. He penned some of my favorite crime novels (Get Shorty, Out Of Sight, The Hot Kid) and my favorite pulpy western stories (3:10 To Yuma, Saint With A Six-Gun, Man With The Iron Arm), and they all contained honest, jivey lowlife dialogue. It was pitch-perfect realistic, but it was silly and violent at the same time. It was so spot on that prisoners used to write him fan letters.
He was one of the first real writers I started reading as a kid, and his take on wild characters intertwining in some big crazy deal influenced me and what I wanted to do when it came to telling stories.
Anyway, out of respect to "Dutch," here's Elmore Leonard's essay about his 10 rules of writing...
"WRITERS ON WRITING; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle"
3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said"....
...he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''
This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use ''suddenly'' tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories ''Close Range.''
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's ''Hills Like White Elephants'' what do the ''American and the girl with him'' look like? ''She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.'' That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
And finally:
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.
He was one of the first real writers I started reading as a kid, and his take on wild characters intertwining in some big crazy deal influenced me and what I wanted to do when it came to telling stories.
Anyway, out of respect to "Dutch," here's Elmore Leonard's essay about his 10 rules of writing...
"WRITERS ON WRITING; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle"
by Elmore Leonard
Published: July 16, 2001, New York Times
These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.
1. Never open a book with weather.
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2. Avoid prologues.
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ''Sweet Thursday,'' but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: ''I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2. Avoid prologues.
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ''Sweet Thursday,'' but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: ''I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''
3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said"....
...he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''
This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use ''suddenly'' tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories ''Close Range.''
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's ''Hills Like White Elephants'' what do the ''American and the girl with him'' look like? ''She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.'' That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
And finally:
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)
If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.
What Steinbeck did in ''Sweet Thursday'' was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. ''Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ''Lousy Wednesday'' another. The third chapter is titled ''Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th chapter ''Hooptedoodle 2'' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: ''Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.''
''Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.
Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.
If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.
What Steinbeck did in ''Sweet Thursday'' was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. ''Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ''Lousy Wednesday'' another. The third chapter is titled ''Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th chapter ''Hooptedoodle 2'' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: ''Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.''
''Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.
Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
How To Record Music
"I'd been living in Los Angeles for about a year and a half, just being a drunk, getting fucked up every night and doing horrible shit, and I'd finally gotten sick of that new car smell. So I bought this great house in Virginia and told everyone I was building a studio in the basement. It was literally a basement with sleeping bags on the walls!
It was all about just settling into the next phase of your life, that place where you can sit back and relax, because there had been so much crazy shit in the past three years. At that point, it was me, Taylor, and Nate, and we were best friends. It was one of the most relaxing times of my whole life. All we did was eat chili, drink beer and whiskey, and record whenever we felt like it.
We'd have a barbeque every day after recording.
When I listen to that record, it totally brings me back to that basement. I remember how it smelled and how it was in the spring, so the windows were open, and we'd do vocals until you could hear the birds through the microphone. And more than any other record I've ever done, that album does that to me."
- Dave Grohl, on There Is Nothing Left To Lose
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Give Me Something That Says...
Take a look at this jacket.
Ignore the hoodie underneath. It's that dirty golden beast I'm telling you about. It's an unremarkable piece of clothing, except that I don't buy clothes all that often. So it's easy for friends to notice new threads. One day, soon after I purchased said jacket, Rex, Scott and I were cruising around Orange, and Rex noticed the jacket in my backseat. He asked about it. I told him I went into the store and said, "Give me something that says...it's back to school night in Anaheim Hills." Rex and Scott then followed up with their own "Give me something that says" lines about the jacket (which looks significantly less twenty-something attire without a hoodie). The one-liners continued the rest of the day, and then we moved it to Facebook.
Anyway, I was going through some old jokey threads on Facebook and found one of me, Rex and Scott talking about the jacket, and it made me laugh. We never really discussed the dopey, but somewhat manly, suburban husband-father character we are all describing in said jacket. But it's like a guy who's stuck between North County and South County and keeps trying to impress people but doesn't really get it. He goes into the store, tries to explain to the clerk what kind of a jacket he's looking for, and she doesn't understand. Finally, he puts his fingers thoughtfully to his lips and figures out exactly how to describe the jacket he wants.
Jake: "Give me something that says...Orange County Wine Tour."
Rex: "Give me something that says...I like to feed my dog a healthy mix of wet and dry foods."
Scott: "Give me something that says...I own stock in the Sharper Image."
Jake: "Give me something that says...I attend BBQs to passive-aggressively tell the host how to barbecue."
Rex: "Give me something that says...I don't play golf to get away from my family. I play golf because I enjoy it."
Jake: "Give me something that says...I defend Michael Bay movies at dinner parties."
Rex: "Give me something that says...It's pretty obvious that breakfast is the most important meal of the day."
Scott: "Give me something that says...I get a 15% discount at Coco's on a regular basis."
Rex: "Give me something that says...My Ford Taurus is cool, but I'd certainly rather drive a convertible Miata."
Jake: "Give me something that says...Attending a boat show is on my bucket list."
Rex: "Give me something that says...I'm really looking forward to tennis sweater weather."
Scott: "Give me something that says...My Ford Taurus has personal seat warmers."
Rex: "Give me something that says...This looks perfect with my khaki shorts."
Jake: "Give me something that says...Friday night with the family at Claimjumper."
Rex: "Give me something that says...Hey guys, this is my new, attractive, and significantly younger girlfriend."
Jake: "Give me something that says...The wife finally let me out for a poker game with the guys."
Rex: "Give me something that says...I encourage carpooling."
Jake: "Give me something that says...Middle management is the place to be."
Rex: "Give me something that says...I'll just have a club soda."
Jake: "Give me something that says...I'm a meat and potato guy, but I really, really like salad."
Rex: "Give me something that says...They just don't make snow shoes like they used to."
Jake: "Give me something that says...I like to talk about the wild car I owned in my twenties more than the fiscally responsible car I own now."
Rex: "Give me something that says...Yes, actually, I do have life insurance."
Jake: "Give me something that says...Yeah, I've seen a TED Talk or two."
Rex: "Give me something that says...The Charleston is my go to dance move."
Jake: "Give me something that says...I own hiking boots, but I don't know any good trails."
And there you have it, for whatever reason.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Fashion Pit: Volume II
It may not surprise you even a little bit that the man in this photo isn't the most fashionable person around:
And the conversation goes like this: Jake gives Sara an outfit theme, Sara dresses according to her own interpretations, Jake goes to bed feeling accomplished, Sara goes to bed feeling charitable, and then everyone does jump high-fives in dreamworld.
Anyway, here's more mumbo-jumbo from me and fashiony fashion from Sara. Woo!
Romantic Cabin Getaway
Sara: I wanted to look and feel cozy in this outfit, since I pictured being snuggled up by a fire with this theme. I had just gotten these new floral nail polish stickers, which I also felt conveyed "romantic." Add a floral scarf and boom - double romantic.
Jake: When the city becomes too much, as it always does, there's the turn of a key and the burn of some rubber, and suddenly, before your weary eyes, there's the highway. America spits out the asphalt like an endless trail for the manic, and then, like the waves of the ocean, mountain roads rise and crash, curving around the great still rocks of the earth. Finally, after enough soulful laughs and shared childhood stories, there's a cabin. There, within dark wooden fortress walls, coffee has never tasted better, blankets have never felt softer, and VHS movies have never seemed more reasonable after the millennium. The fireplace never shuts up, the sky refuses to end, and the bed swallows both romantics whole. You giggle until you're sick and worship mornings for a new view after you've done all you can handle at night. Plus, there's often puzzles.
Safari Love
Sara: Animal print is by far the easiest thing for me to come by in my closet. I had three items come to mind immediately when Jake gave me this theme, but then he threw the word "tan" or "khaki" somewhere in his description, so I quickly narrowed it down to this neutral color palette.
Jake: Between roars and growls, there remain the most penetrating colors for the eyes to behold while the ears take in the wind and the beasts. Above, there's a blue as soul-piercing as a cavern lake. Before, there's a gold as dazzling as a museum statue. Around, there's a green unseen since childhood books. Inside, though, there's a red as beautiful and immaculate as velvet. The red beats and swells and rolls and dances and waves until its exhausted from the nostalgia, the desire, the very impossibility of it all, and the world opens up on the great plains.
Pop Art Gallery Opening
Sara: High bun, (faux) leather skirt, blazer, funky tights, and a pop art-ish necklace were what I threw together for this one. I had high hopes of looking incredibly edgy and sophisticated, with a dash of arrogance.
Jake: You haven't always understood art, but you've always been relatively sure of what you've liked. So a gallery opening that celebrates the dots of old comic book artists and the ransom-like cutouts of black and white magazines has beckoned you like a dinner party of prophets and magicians. You've stumbled into the promised land of pop culture and everyday life interpretted by thin-mustached and tremendously bearded artists. Paintings show women in robes holding coffee and sketches give you a cigarette pack with lethargy. You've forgotten the French names you learned in college, as you catch the woman with folded hands and eyes like temple caves. She's in charge, and she can give you the backstage that's only found when it's passed mouth to mouth. She's spent years turning down artists, she's lived lifetimes before you even considered setting foot in her joint, and she'll go home last, but she won't ever be least.
Winter Wonderland Apocalypse
Sara: I thought to dress in grays, whites and blacks in order to blend in with what I can only imagine would be a barren, ashy and desolate landscape. The shoulders of my sweater have black gems on them, which, in my mind, emulated armor and would help keep me safe in the post-apocalyptic days. It also gave me an excuse to wear my favorite winter coat that hardly makes it out of my closet (thanks, Jake!).
Jake: Winters can always feel like the end of the world, but they don't have to be nuclear. Maybe Christmas made your heart grew three sizes one day. Maybe you didn't know you had a peanut allergy and ate all that peanut brittle. Maybe the Christmas tree gave you everything you ever wanted and there was no point in going on. Still, there's that slight chance that the apocalypse came and went and the only thing that stayed was winter. Who said a new ice age would be bad? That's a lifetime of sledding and building snowmen and calling out for work. Just watch out for them black ice road warriors.
CEO's Wife at Happy Hour Trying to Downplay the Extraordinary Wealth
Sara: Oh man, I loved getting this one. I love the theme way more than I love my outfit. I suppose I tried to look like I was wearing somewhat designer pieces (Chanel-eque necklace, suede boots, and a fancier top) and then dressed it down with jeans. (As opposed to metallic snakeskin leggings?!? I'm not exactly sure what would have made me look loaded as opposed to downplayed). I tried though.
Jake: It's the look that would cost you something fierce, and it's the woman who could ruin you in the least poetic way your wasteland brain's ever imagined. You've put off oil changes and thinned out birthday gifts, all because you couldn't swing a raise in the slow-day wreckage of the cubicle farm. Money's tight, and your wallet's been tighter, and now here, in the unbearable light of some joke of a restaurant, the man who's closest to owning you struts up with the glorious woman he's seen every angle of, all while you put in the hours after sundown. And you can feel it in the tiny sharp fibers of your bones that she knows they're too well off to be in a place that serves mozzarella sticks. You can tell she left her best clothes in the walk-in closet that you'd take over your own studio apartment as an accommodating place to live. But you don't say anything. You not only can't believe the clothes, but, more importantly, you can't stop the stare. And that's when your stupid beer comes.
Well, there you have it, the combination of style and steez, wrapped up in five outfits/outpourings. Til next time. Woo!
However, it may truly surprise you that he has extraordinarily fashionable friends. Once again, enter Sara. You may know her from the Glitter + Grace blog or remember her from the first installment of Fashion Pit. Now, while Glitter + Grace is like that sweet-natured popular girl in high school movies with all the right clothes and The Cobblestone Address is like the mouthy drunk burnout doing doughnuts in the school parking lot, they're somehow able to meet in the cafeteria of the blogosphere and have a conversation.
Anyway, here's more mumbo-jumbo from me and fashiony fashion from Sara. Woo!
Sara: I wanted to look and feel cozy in this outfit, since I pictured being snuggled up by a fire with this theme. I had just gotten these new floral nail polish stickers, which I also felt conveyed "romantic." Add a floral scarf and boom - double romantic.
Jake: When the city becomes too much, as it always does, there's the turn of a key and the burn of some rubber, and suddenly, before your weary eyes, there's the highway. America spits out the asphalt like an endless trail for the manic, and then, like the waves of the ocean, mountain roads rise and crash, curving around the great still rocks of the earth. Finally, after enough soulful laughs and shared childhood stories, there's a cabin. There, within dark wooden fortress walls, coffee has never tasted better, blankets have never felt softer, and VHS movies have never seemed more reasonable after the millennium. The fireplace never shuts up, the sky refuses to end, and the bed swallows both romantics whole. You giggle until you're sick and worship mornings for a new view after you've done all you can handle at night. Plus, there's often puzzles.
Sara: Animal print is by far the easiest thing for me to come by in my closet. I had three items come to mind immediately when Jake gave me this theme, but then he threw the word "tan" or "khaki" somewhere in his description, so I quickly narrowed it down to this neutral color palette.
Jake: Between roars and growls, there remain the most penetrating colors for the eyes to behold while the ears take in the wind and the beasts. Above, there's a blue as soul-piercing as a cavern lake. Before, there's a gold as dazzling as a museum statue. Around, there's a green unseen since childhood books. Inside, though, there's a red as beautiful and immaculate as velvet. The red beats and swells and rolls and dances and waves until its exhausted from the nostalgia, the desire, the very impossibility of it all, and the world opens up on the great plains.
Sara: High bun, (faux) leather skirt, blazer, funky tights, and a pop art-ish necklace were what I threw together for this one. I had high hopes of looking incredibly edgy and sophisticated, with a dash of arrogance.
Jake: You haven't always understood art, but you've always been relatively sure of what you've liked. So a gallery opening that celebrates the dots of old comic book artists and the ransom-like cutouts of black and white magazines has beckoned you like a dinner party of prophets and magicians. You've stumbled into the promised land of pop culture and everyday life interpretted by thin-mustached and tremendously bearded artists. Paintings show women in robes holding coffee and sketches give you a cigarette pack with lethargy. You've forgotten the French names you learned in college, as you catch the woman with folded hands and eyes like temple caves. She's in charge, and she can give you the backstage that's only found when it's passed mouth to mouth. She's spent years turning down artists, she's lived lifetimes before you even considered setting foot in her joint, and she'll go home last, but she won't ever be least.
Sara: I thought to dress in grays, whites and blacks in order to blend in with what I can only imagine would be a barren, ashy and desolate landscape. The shoulders of my sweater have black gems on them, which, in my mind, emulated armor and would help keep me safe in the post-apocalyptic days. It also gave me an excuse to wear my favorite winter coat that hardly makes it out of my closet (thanks, Jake!).
Jake: Winters can always feel like the end of the world, but they don't have to be nuclear. Maybe Christmas made your heart grew three sizes one day. Maybe you didn't know you had a peanut allergy and ate all that peanut brittle. Maybe the Christmas tree gave you everything you ever wanted and there was no point in going on. Still, there's that slight chance that the apocalypse came and went and the only thing that stayed was winter. Who said a new ice age would be bad? That's a lifetime of sledding and building snowmen and calling out for work. Just watch out for them black ice road warriors.
Sara: Oh man, I loved getting this one. I love the theme way more than I love my outfit. I suppose I tried to look like I was wearing somewhat designer pieces (Chanel-eque necklace, suede boots, and a fancier top) and then dressed it down with jeans. (As opposed to metallic snakeskin leggings?!? I'm not exactly sure what would have made me look loaded as opposed to downplayed). I tried though.
Jake: It's the look that would cost you something fierce, and it's the woman who could ruin you in the least poetic way your wasteland brain's ever imagined. You've put off oil changes and thinned out birthday gifts, all because you couldn't swing a raise in the slow-day wreckage of the cubicle farm. Money's tight, and your wallet's been tighter, and now here, in the unbearable light of some joke of a restaurant, the man who's closest to owning you struts up with the glorious woman he's seen every angle of, all while you put in the hours after sundown. And you can feel it in the tiny sharp fibers of your bones that she knows they're too well off to be in a place that serves mozzarella sticks. You can tell she left her best clothes in the walk-in closet that you'd take over your own studio apartment as an accommodating place to live. But you don't say anything. You not only can't believe the clothes, but, more importantly, you can't stop the stare. And that's when your stupid beer comes.
Well, there you have it, the combination of style and steez, wrapped up in five outfits/outpourings. Til next time. Woo!
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Fashion Pit: Volume I
It will almost certainly come as no surprise whatsoever when I describe myself as "not all that fashionable." When once asked to describe my personal style, I chose, "These are my clothes. Watch me wear them." I actually own a full wardrobe, and I've purchased/received a substantial number of clothing items over the years, yet I still wear the Operation Ivy t-shirt I bought in high school about once a week. I see the appeal of fashion, or I at least see the fun and fulfillment in swapping style tips and trying out new looks. However, I've yet to understand catwalk shows where outfits look like they were made by some out of touch designer's hipster nephew that read way too many sci-fi paperbacks as a kid. But, truly, what do I know? I'm most comfortable in blues jeans and a plaid shirt, I've only written one fashion essay in my life, and, at some point, I looked liked this:
Enter Sara. Sara, for those of you who don't know, writes the popular stylish and thoughtful blog Glitter + Grace. She has come to be the closest thing I have to a fashion guru in my life. Her nail polish shelves are a work of art, she does DIY clothing projects, and she's also one hell of a ping pong player. Over time, she's explained the world of fashion to me, just as, in trade, I've explained to her why I swear so much.
Anyway, I told her how extraordinarily well she dresses, and she said she dug my writing, so we decided to do a project together with each person contributing one skill (Sara - fashion, Jake - nonsense). This essentially became me texting Sara a theme (which, I agree, seems suspiciously close to being a totally random phrase), and then her dressing in an outfit according to her own interpretation of said theme/borderline gibberish. So, without further adieu/rambling, here's Sara's radical style and my unholy delirium.
"Librarian Out on the Town"
Sara: I used this as an excuse to wear a pencil skirt I never get to wear anymore. A button-up cardigan also seemed like a librarian thing to wear. To add the "out on the town" part and avoid total costume librarian look, I wore my hair down and threw on some high-heeled boots.
Jake: In the wretched head of every forlorn bibliophile, there's a gorgeous daydream of a woman. It's the librarian who loves Jose Cuervo as much as she does Thomas Pynchon, loves Jack Daniels as much as Jack Kerouac, and hates James Joyce as much as she hates Jager. It's the girl that's had enough of the late fines, staff meetings, and lanky stoners who just want books on "growing." She's South County vixen meets North County sweetheart, and she secretly has a heart that's like an old Cadillac, pristine and gentle, with a roar that could destroy every boy in town.
And, well, that's it for now. But there'll be a second volume, maybe a third, and who knows after that? Sara's been a real sport, but she might call this thing quits once we finally reach phrases like "pomegranate dreamscape" and "time-traveling mistress." Also, if you're wondering why Sara looks like a bobble head in those last two photos, it's because I took them, and I'm, like, 8'9". But, other than that, style it up, people.*
*That's something fashionable people say, right?
Needless to say, I haven't always been the most in tune with the style scene. In recent times, I've at least learned how to cut my hair.
Anyway, I told her how extraordinarily well she dresses, and she said she dug my writing, so we decided to do a project together with each person contributing one skill (Sara - fashion, Jake - nonsense). This essentially became me texting Sara a theme (which, I agree, seems suspiciously close to being a totally random phrase), and then her dressing in an outfit according to her own interpretation of said theme/borderline gibberish. So, without further adieu/rambling, here's Sara's radical style and my unholy delirium.
Sara: I used this as an excuse to wear a pencil skirt I never get to wear anymore. A button-up cardigan also seemed like a librarian thing to wear. To add the "out on the town" part and avoid total costume librarian look, I wore my hair down and threw on some high-heeled boots.
Jake: In the wretched head of every forlorn bibliophile, there's a gorgeous daydream of a woman. It's the librarian who loves Jose Cuervo as much as she does Thomas Pynchon, loves Jack Daniels as much as Jack Kerouac, and hates James Joyce as much as she hates Jager. It's the girl that's had enough of the late fines, staff meetings, and lanky stoners who just want books on "growing." She's South County vixen meets North County sweetheart, and she secretly has a heart that's like an old Cadillac, pristine and gentle, with a roar that could destroy every boy in town.
"French Girl Car Wreck"
Sara: Look disheveled while still looking chic. Gave me the chance to wear a hat for once.
Jake: Not quite the drunken rage monster that a "train wreck" is, a "car wreck" is a girl who dents, but doesn't destroy, the evening. She's the one who takes over the stereo, but doesn't break it. She can down wine, cheese, and a baguette so fast that it turns a picnic into a festival. She creeps around men's apartments, purring over her shoulder, usually wearing a top, rarely dawning a bottom, and all she wants to do during the day is lounge around and listen to her native land's songs and her nearest man's words. At night, her eyes glow and she disappears into a crowd to turn heads and ruin lives.
"Cream Soda Jazz"
Sara: Went with a cream sweater, neutral colors, and a "jazzy" crystal-y necklace. Pretty basic.
Jake: There is such a thing as a girl who loves jazz without carrying the blues in her soul and her heart on a sleeve, and behind that sultry minx is a man who has beat himself better and badder than any other brawler there that's taken a dive swing at him. It's a cool, slow molasses life for the world of the trumpet lull and the martini-sipping heartbroken. So when an innocent girl comes in with a style that's soft with grace and firm with manners, a smile from her could light up the room and put out all the cigarettes for good.
"Croquet Espionage"
Sara: Upon asking my friends for their interpretation of this look, I was told stripes and blazers. So the stripes were for the preppy part, the blazer was for the spy part, and the rest was just because I wanted to wear those red tights.
Jake: Not every spy has charmingly destructive hobbies like drinking themselves to death or racking up STDs. Some spies have a sense of laughter and culture, and maybe, between the theater outings and charity events, they play croquet. If every move can end up in a shot at the head or saving the world, what secret agent wouldn't want to come home, drink wine, listen to bossa nova, and play croquet? Even the wild and the cunning need freshly cut grass, sunshine coming through the trees, and a game for ladies and gentlemen.
"Sunset Cruise"
Sara: Scanned my closet and my eyes landed on the first color that screamed sunset: those pants. The picture hardly captures the neon nature of them. Then, in an attempt to achieve the look of a 65-year-old frequent cruise-goer, I thought that animal print and gold metallics (belt + shoes) seemed appropriate.
Jake: With the colors of the horizon ringing out the colors of a bonfire, a boat could lurk in the harbor or a car could speed down a seaside road, and there would surely be a girl in either mode of escape hellbent on looking good in a summer outfit. If not, why bother?
And, well, that's it for now. But there'll be a second volume, maybe a third, and who knows after that? Sara's been a real sport, but she might call this thing quits once we finally reach phrases like "pomegranate dreamscape" and "time-traveling mistress." Also, if you're wondering why Sara looks like a bobble head in those last two photos, it's because I took them, and I'm, like, 8'9". But, other than that, style it up, people.*
*That's something fashionable people say, right?
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
My Life, According to Jason K.
"I envision your mailbox overstuffed with spam mail leaking out of it. Then you grab that pile, walk inside, throw it on the Christmas tree-sized pile in middle of the living room, blast Dylan, get high, and play air guitar like Hendrix. I'm also sure you have a closet full of facial hair wigs because yours has changed throughout the years in most photos. I'm onto you man." - Jason K.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
This Is Our House
It's probably not that much of a surprise that I don't have Instagram (or Reason #32 to get an iPhone, as Grant calls it). However, Instagram recently started doing web profiles, meaning that creepo dumbphoners, such as myself, can finally see everyone's pictures of sunsets, food, and food in sunsets. Well, I took some of my friends' photos and put together a pictorial of the Romelle House. So, without further ado, this is where I live with neat people and have all sorts of fun.
These are our Chases.
This is our living room.
This is my bathroom.
This is our drink cart.
This is our backyard from one angle.
This is our backyard from another.
Photo Credit: Italian Dog, Sleeping Kitten Pals, and Backyard Spread by Sarah. Chase On Chase Action, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (In The Living Room), Endless Bummer, Basement Out Of Time, and Summer Croquet Slurs by Brittany. Foozball Table Immaculate by Adriana. YoloHanSolo by Grant. Drink Cart Fury by Jessica. Too Many Shelves of Books by Regina. Winter Wine by Rex.
This is our dog.
These are our kittens.
This is our basement.
This is our foozball table.
This is our fridge.
These are my books.
This is how we spent summer.
This is how we're spending winter.
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