| This time last year |
[May. 5th, 2009|12:58 am] |
It's my birthday. I don't mind getting older, I just mind getting older without getting wiser. Or at least without being able to put and new-found wisdom to use. And what I mean by that is that apparently "knowing" is not half the battle. It just means that you know what kind of dumb stuff you are likely to do before you do it--because you've done it before.
I think it is time to reference Kurt Vonnegut's "Timequake", in which on February 13, 2001, everyone and everything, is sent smartly back to February 17, 1991. Everyone and everything is forced to live through that decade of life again without being able to change a thing, though they can remember every horror or buffoonery that is going to occur. Someone who dove head first into and empty swimming pool and breaks their neck has to embark upon and complete that action knowing full-well the tragic outcome in store.
I feel that the longer I am alive, the more I find this to be a pretty accurate description of non-time-quaked life. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't room for some pleasant or unpleasant surprises. Some things have changed, and some things have stayed the same. Here is a list of 10 things that have either changed or stayed the same since my last birthday:
1. As I was last year, I'm still impressing references to Kurt Vonnegut, particularly "Timequake" and "Slapstick", upon people in the event of even a smidgen of conversational relevance. For instance: recently my sister's fiance was eating a piece of cold pizza for breakfast, and my step-father noticed it. "PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST?" he said "HA! BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!". The fiance said nothing. I said "Actually, a Martini is the 'breakfast of champions'. At least according to the book."
I also still reference something that Darrell Morris, perhaps the greatest fiber-artist of all time, said when I was in his class my first year of college: "Art isn't the way to the party, it IS the party." When I went to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry last week I was dazzled by the awesome props in the display cases and declared "Man! Doing props for something like this would totally be the party!" Unfortunately, I feel as though my current life is neither the party or the way to the party, but instead is the way away from the party.
2. I'm still not famous, despite being on national television. In the early part of 2008 I got on stage in a bar and furiously stabbed balloons all over my body in a frenzy. Someone in the audience video taped it and then posted it on YouTube. Way on the other side of the world someone had a job looking at weird stuff on YouTube that could maybe be put on real TV--in a remount of some show from the 70s called "The Gong Show". Only this time it was being called "The New Gong Show with Dave Attell." Last year I didn't really know what The Gong Show was, but I had heard of Dave Attell because a friend of mine (who sadly I never see any more despite the fact that she has a May 6th birthday and that on two previous May Fifths or Sixes we got tied up and beaten-the-crap-out-of by a fellow who paid us lots of money to let him do it) had developed an unhealthy interest in Dave Attell from watching a show in which he wandered around all night talking to drunk people. My friend enticed Mr. Attell, via the internet, to meet up with her in New York and have sex with her in a taxi-cab after one of his shows.
Somehow that played a significant part in my agreeing to make a appearance on The New Gong Show with Dave Attell after I was wooed by someone who had seen my act on the internet. And despite the fact I was assured that I would not get "gonged" because I was, in this act, a sexy lady in a bikini, I ended up being "gonged" by a dog puppet who said "Dave, do you really have to have all of your one night stands on this show?"
But, even though it was just a dog puppet, there was something humiliating about getting "gonged", and maybe that's why I haven't been able to come up with any new acts in the last year. It also might be because last year I agreed to do a striptease with my boss in a show, even though it was clear to everyone except me that my boss was just trying to find an excuse to do a strip tease with me.
3. But whatever the reason, since my last birthday I have ceased to be an up-and-coming burlesque performer. I did, however, go to Europe and perform in a piece with the woman that I have been entangled in a multi-year, painful, almost-but-not-quite-requited love with. In the act our wrists are tied together by a couple of feet of rope, and we try to get away from eachother, but we can't, so instead we give each other hateful looks and try to pull our arms out of their sockets. But wait--there is a surprise ending: we magically find scissors stashed under out chairs and cut the rope. And at the last minute we grab each other by the wrists, fall back in our chairs, and cling desperately to each other as the last chords of the song die away. After we performed the act in Berlin someone approached me and said "I liked your act with za string. Is it about za lesbian realtionship?"
4. Last year on my birthday I was in love with that same woman, and the fact that she came to my party made my day--despite the fact that a month earlier I had sworn I was cutting her out of my life once and for all after she told me that actually she had decided that she couldn't date me because she was too scared of ruining our wonderful friendship. This year she is not attending my birthday party because I have sworn that I have cut her out of my life once and for all after she, about a month ago, told me that she actually can't date me because she is too scared of ruining our wonderful friendship. On my birthday two years ago my family and I dressed up as zombies and walked around in the graveyard. I was still in love with that woman, but she was in Costa Rica trying to find herself on my birthday. A week before she left she told me that she did want to date me, but then the day before she left she wouldn't let me kiss her good bye. "I can't". she said. I never quite knew what that meant, but I'm pretty sure it meant that she didn't want to ruin our wonderful friendship.
5. But despite the fact that my romantic situation is exactly the same fruitless crock of shit (Kurt Vonnegut reference) that it was a year ago, I now, thanks to my diligent study of the works of William Shakespeare over the last year, can describe the situation thus:
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.
Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.
Somehow I have resisted sending her that sonnet via Facebook or whatever. Let's see if I can say the same thing next year.
6. A difference from last year: the porch on my childhood home is now complete with a front railing after being without one for 20 years. 21 years ago my father was laid off from his job with the Civil Rights Department and decided to upgrade our porch. He tore the old one off and started to put a new one on. But then at the last minute he got a new job with the state's Child Protective Services and became so busy he didn't have time to finish the porch. So, it looked like a porch with missing front teeth for 20 years. But then a series of event occurred. First of all, America became a corrupt capitalist society in which doing things as cheaply as possible was the highest priority. Then, people stopped wanting to make cars in America. Then, the Motor City fell on even harder times. Then Jennifer Granholm decided to give the film industry a tax incentive to make movies in Michigan. Then a location scout for a movie called "Betty Anne Waters" starring Hilary Swank found my dad's house and thought is would be perfect to use as Betty Anne Water's house. "Betty Anne Waters" is the story of a woman who becomes an attorney after her brother is wrongly imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit--and she gets so busy being an attorney that she doesn't have time to take care of her house. And it gets very cluttered, like my dad's house was. The set decorator used his clutter as inspiration, but then boxed up and moved all of his clutter out and replaced it with fake clutter that they purchased and placed around carefully. When they were done shooting the movie, they took all of their fake clutter and put all of my dad's clutter back exactly where it had been. But, they also added a railing to the porch, which apparently took under three hours to do.
The Bollingers, our neighbors from across the street made a very big deal about how they had been waiting for 20 YEARS for that porch to be finished. They also made it clear that they hoped that the people making the movie would decide to wash our windows, because they had also been waiting for 20 years for THAT to happen! At first this made me mad but then I remembered that my father's favorite hobby has always been making fun of the Bollinger's for being fat, and somehow it seemed fair. During my childhood he liked to call them the "Bowlingballs" and gloated joyously every time the Schwann Ice Cream truck appeared in front of their house to make a special delivery of fine frozen treats to re-stock their basement freezer.
My father lives primarily on large piles herbs and supplements. Somewhere at the bottom of these piles is also a significant portion of food, but that seems only to act as a kind of baby-buggy in which the supplements ride into his mouth.
7. I have adopted some of my father's eating habits in the last year, primarily a daily consumption of a strange concoction of mystery herbs known as "Nu-Plus". "Nu-Plus" was a product made by a triangle-scheme supplement company that I mother had a brief flirtation with about 15 years ago. Although "Nu-Plus" for her was just a phase, my father has developed a lifetime commitment to it. Recently he found a fellow in town named George who has a store called "Ancient Formulas" who is able to make home-made "Nu-Plus" that he sells to my father for a quarter of the price, and then my father gives it to me. The last time I visited my father we went to "Ancient Formulas" to pick up the most recent batch of "Nu-Plus", and the only other costumer in the store was a fellow with the most enormous goiter I have ever seen.
I seem to live primarily on "Nu-Plus" these days. Every day I mix it with protein powder in a big purple mug from which I spoon-feed myself this delicious slurry. If you approach this mug in its permanent habitat on my desk and look inside it you will see that it resembles a barnacle-encrusted cave.
8. I now weigh I weigh 95 lbs. I also now have big veins that stick out all over my forearms and my hands and knees seem to have gotten bigger. I also now have dark brown hair. I dyed it, and I hope very much that the decision to do so had nothing to do with the fact that my unrequited love only seems to date brunettes. I also have the desire to get guns tattooed on my chest--which I fear may have something to do with the fact that my unrequited love only seems to date tattooed chicks--but really suspect that it has to do with the fact that last summer I was struck suddenly with a love of hip hop that hit me like a bolt of lightning.
9. My sister got engaged this year and I interrupted her fiance's proposal by rapping. It was a beautiful August day and the two of them were sitting on the glider on the porch. I wandered over, whistled a couple bars of intro music, and then started rapping "rubber band man, WILD as the taliban, NINE in my right FORTY-FIVE in my other hand! I'm a troubled man, I always in trouble man, worth a couple hundred grand, Chevys all colors, man." But somewhere in there I trailed off, turned on my heel, and walked away because I noticed that the fiance had his arm looped around my sister's neck and was holding something that appeared to be a ring in close proximity to her face. And she was looking at it with the baffled expression that people frequently have when their pets present them with decapitated rodents.
10. These days I am unable to stop rapping. I am also unable to stop making puppets. For instance, when someone says "whatever you want" I say "Stacks on deck, patron on ice, we can pop bottles all night, baby you can have whatever you like. yeah. Late night sex so wet so tight, I'll gas up the jet for you tonight and baby you can go wherever you like". When someone says they are spending money I say "you're BLOWIN that celery." When someone says anything about either pants or dancing I say "I can't dance cuz I keep a big knot in my PANTS".
When someone says "Can you make some puppets for me?" I say "Sure."
When someone else says "Can you make some puppets for me?" I say "...Sure."
And when someone else says "Can you make some puppets for me?" I say "......Sure." |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mechaniquemary's journal