balding angrily

I know, I know. I promised you three updates-a-week. It’s just that I’m arthritic in my left hand from imagining I’m a rock god. And I spent two days last week mailing a short story manuscript to literary journals. And nieces have to be enterained. And close-up pictures of Olympic bulges don’t look at themselves, you know. I’m busy! Get off my back, willya?

Tomorrow J & I will be on a jet plane to see NYC. I’ll try to post when I get back, but I can’t make any promises. Please don’t give up on me.

New York, New York, a wonderful town

The Bronx is up but the Battery’s down

The people ride in a hole in the ground

Julia Fordham sings a song called “Porcelain.” The opening lyrics go:

I am very, very much in like with you

I hope that it’s enough ‘cuz it’s all that I can do

‘Cuz you treat my skin like porcelain

Rare and special porcelain

I just completed a short story. One of the characters in it says, “[My daughter] is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That sounds so pat, I know, but that’s how it is.” I’ll get to why that’s important later in this post.

I dated a lot of crummy guys before Jerry. One of these guys - let’s call him Jim 2 because he was the second-in-a-row of Jims - I dated him for a time long enough that the relationship couldn’t be considered insignificant. This guy introduced me to Julia Fordham. And when Ken 2 played this song for me, he said, “I love it because I relate to the idea of being in ‘like’ with someone…not really loving someone…but liking someone enough to prolong the relationship.” That description there is basically why I label him “crummy.” He liked me enough to prolong the relationship, but he wasn’t in love with me. I wasn’t in love with him either, but what does that matter?

Now contrast that relationship with Jim 1. Jim 1 was the only other guy besides Jerry that I have loved. He treated my skin like porcelain. He was gentle, loving, and he made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe. The only reason we’re not still together is that I was very immature.

After Jim 2, I went through a period of depression that lasted for about eight months. It wasn’t just that I was sad because of the breakup. It was more that I began to see dating and relationships in purely statistical terms.

• If I could only date, say, 3-5% of the male population - the portion of the male population that is gay,
• And then I eliminated the portion of that 3-5% that isn’t within a certain age rage,
• And then I eliminated the portion of that portion outside a certain geographic distance,
• And then I eliminated any one that I couldn’t get along with (which is a very large group)…

Well, that’s a tiny, tiny sliver of guys that I could possibly meet and fall in love with. That thought drove me into depression. I’m not being flippant here; I cried nightly.

Eventually, I started living with that statistical reality, and I began to think, “Hm. So, it’s very, very unlikely that I will meet someone to fall in love with or marry. If that’s the way it’s going to be - if I’m going to go to my grave as a single person - I better start getting used to it. I better start being happy being single.”

And I did. And I started to really love being single. I relished my time alone and sleeping diagonal-wise on a Queen-size bed. I spent all day Saturday in my underwear eating ice cream and watching The Lord of the Rings. There were weekends when I didn’t leave my apartment or shower or shave or talk to anyone or think a novel thought. I LOVED it.

And then I met Jerry. And we both had a hell of time giving up our personal space.

But he treats my skin like porcelain. And he’s loving and gentle. And he makes me laugh until I can’t breathe. And that’s what I mean when I say that Jerry is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. There’s no poetic, non-clichéd way of putting it. All I can do is quote a song.

Looks like another one of my hopes for future tech is one step closer to coming true.

I heard a podcast this week that blew my mind. With a finite number of types of things - quarks, protons, whatever - in an infinite universe, eventually the universe will have to repeat combinations of these types of things. And it will have to do so an infinite amount of times.

This is how physics and mathematics professor Brian Greene puts it on Radiolab. Imagine Imelda Marcos has thousands of floral print blouses, thousands of pairs of shoes, thousands of linen jackets, etc. Huge numbers, but finite numbers. She won’t go buy more items of clothing, and she never wants to wear the same outfit twice. Given an infinite number of days of her going to her closet to pick out an outfit, she will eventually have to repeat. And eventually she will have to repeat every outfit an infinite amount of times.

According to Brian Greene, what this means is that in our infinite universe - and the current thinking is that it is infinite - there are an infinite amount of mes out there typing exactly what I’m typing. And moreover there are an infinite amount of mes out there that are typing exactly what I’m typing, but with socks on. And moreover there are an infinite amount of mes out there that are wearing socks, but typing something brilliant. And moreover there are an infinite amount of mes out there that are wearing socks, typing something brilliant, and living in a palatial estate with a strapping cabana boy.

You go, me.

When I sit down to write something, I usually just start writing. Tapping on the keyboard shakes something loose in my head - an anecdote, a conept I’ve been turning around in my head. But sometimes, like now, it doesn’t. Times like now there’s nothing swirling in my head.

And I’ve noticed that times like now correspond to times when I’m working out regularly. It’s like I’m burning thoughts instead of calories. If this is true, it would suck big time. In order for me to feel the best about myself, I have to work out. When I go through long stretches of no exercise, I start to get snippy and gloomy. (And constipated.)

So if, in general, I’m either:

1. creative and gloomy (and not shitting), or
2. happy and blank (I wonder if Forrest Gump was a proud shitter.)

Then what do I do with that information?

Well, at least I was able to pull this post out of my ass. Now I have to worry about tomorrow.

It’s not that I dislike Ben Stiller; it’s more that I don’t like when he plays a “character.” Flirting with Disaster. There’s Something About Mary. Meet the Parents. Along Came Polly. (Yes, I saw it.) I like him in those because he’s just being funny-man Ben Stiller.

However, there’s this other Ben Stiller. Zoolander. Dodgeball. Tropic Thunder. Starsky & Hutch. He does this weird parody of nothing at all. In other words, it’s like he said, “Okay. I’m going to REALLY skewer Person Type A with this caricature. It’s going to be REALLY funny, and people are going to REALLY laugh because they’ll be thinking, ‘I totally know that person!’”

Except Person Type A doesn’t exist. Never did. So when you watch Stiller doing his schtick, you’re thinking, “What is this exceptionally unfunny, unlikeable character he’s doing?”

That’s what I thought until last week. There is a guy at the gym, a new guy, that has made me re-think everything. He has the Ben Stiller “Look at my funny Jersey wig” hair. He wears a muscle shirt that clings to a gut made prominent by a swayback. He wears 70s style basketball shorty shorts. He bobs his head while sucking on his bottom lip and plays air drums in a way that might have been cool at a Van Halen concert in 81. His grunts are obnoxiously loud when he lifts. So much so that a girl walking from his vicinity passed me and rolled her eyes.

And I can’t look away. I HAVE to watch him. I’ve never seen a living, breathing caricature before. Sure I exaggerate most of my stories for comic effect, but I’m not exaxaggerating this time. I swear! I keep staring at him thinking, “Surely he must be a method actor, and he’s adopted this Ben Stiller parody-of-a-parody-of-nothing-at-all for some role he’s playing. Surely.”

As usual I’m jumping on a bandwagon three years after it’s been tooling around the country. I’m a new Guitar Hero addict. I bought it two nights ago, and I’ve played it for three hours each night. Even Jerry’s played! And he doesn’t play video games.

As I said before, the whole joining gene skipped me. I’ve been thinking about this because I’m trying to get into my own kid head in order to write a character. It’s really tempting to write a character based on archetypes one sees on tv. Kids are precocious and verbal. They crave the attention of grown-ups. They crave attention from anyone.

That was never true for me. I was always quiet, always to myself, always a non-joiner. The trope is that a kid doesn’t want to be picked last to be on a team. I didn’t want to be picked at all. I didn’t want to be on the team. Over time, this was read by my classmates as an attitude of superiority. And in time, I thought, “Why not? Why not act superior? Why not be superior?” I’m not saying I am, as that attitude doesn’t really carry in your adult life. Unfortunately, we - humans - are a social bunch, so the guy that acts above it all doesn’t get very far.

So, yeah. Guitar Hero. Rock on!

The other night, when I wrote the last post, I was working through something in my head.  See, I’ve been listening to a lot of Broadway lately - Sondheim’s human pie making duo and Sondheim’s artist with connection issues.  I go through these phases.

The other night I interrupted my scheduled showtunes with a little torn-stalkinged bad grrrl, and it hit me.  Why hasn’t someone snatched up the Garbage songbook for a Broadway production?  The theatricality is already written into the songs.  If Broadway can turn out shitty productions of Abba and Billy Joel songs, why not Garbage?

The challenge in making it a good show would be eliminating the broad from the Broadway.  I’d argue that the only truly great rock Broadway show was Hedwig and the Angry Inch*.  And it wasn’t even on Broadway; it was off. Every other rock Broadway show ends up sounding silly because they cast Broadway warblers to sing rock songs.  And they orchestrate the songs to a Broadway sensibility.  This is a mistake.  Hedwig was different because Hedwig sang hir own songs with hir own four-piece band.  Sure, that’s a strange argument because Hedwig is a fictional character, but I think the argument still stands.

So what I propose is this.  Get Shirley Manson to sing her own songs as a kind of Greek chorus.  Or get some other angry rock goddess to sing Garbage’s songs.  (Just not Alanis Morissette, please.)  I suppose it’s not going to happen for the same reasons it’s impossible to get a movie completed.  The costs of producing a modern musical are through the roof, and the chances of producing a hit are so slim.  And in order to get Shirley up there, I would think they’d have to produce a big musical.

Ah well.  Until my Garbage musical comes to fruition, I can cross my fingers that Aaron Sorkin won’t screw things up with his Flaming Lips musical.  That is if it ever gets off the ground.

 *I’d argue that Jesus Christ Superstar really isn’t a rock musical; it’s really a symphonic musical with rock-style singing.  And yes, I think Jesus Christ Superstar is a great show.

Jerry and I went to Avenue Q two weekends ago. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a Broadway musical featuring cussing and sex-having puppets. We fell in love with the soundtrack when it came out and jumped at the chance to see the travelling version. So we walked in to the plaster sculpture-bedecked theater, and a group of four white-haired, smallish walker-operators sat behind us. Every time one of the puppets smoked a joint or assumed a mutually beneficial oral-pleasure position, we shrank into our seats thinking about our grandmas judging us.

In the midst of Avenue Q, when we weren’t shrinking into our seats, we were laughing loudly. And so was the girl next to us, who was the most straight-laced looking woman of thirty-two I’ve ever seen. The venue is in Fort Worth, and going to Fort Worth is just a strange experience. They have three world-class museums, a kickin’ downtown nightlife (which Dallas struggles to match), the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, and a population that skews grey. In Dallas, you’ll see lots of faux. In Fort Worth, you’ll see lots of mix - genuine mix.

When the skinny, straight-haired, severe woman sitting next to me turned to me, I was thinking, “Dallas Uptight.” Instead she turned out to be “Fort Worth Delightful.” At half-time she introduced herself to us, and in the second half she laughed loudly and jabbed me in the side with her elbow. Meanwhile, her boyfriend looked VEEEERY uncomfortable. That’s what you get when your girlfriend drags you to a musical with puppets doing it doggy-style. And then she spends her free moments talking the two queers next to her.

We’re going to New York for Labor Day, and we’re going to see Spring Awakening and eat expensive food. We’re going to miss our travel companions, Jen-An and Owen. They moved to Los Angeles and left us lonely.