If you haven’t noticed, I don’t write about anything anymore that has to do with my life. I write whatever comes to my head. I suspect that most of it is bad, and that the only reason I’m doing it is because I am no longer able to write about stuff which even vaguely matters, and that this is my way of coping.
I do not know why the caged bird sings. There is no hope. The only thing you can do is fall out the window and hope you fall on a soft shrub, and maybe that you don’t break your femur.
The caged bird sings because there is no music, and he wants to create some. He sings songs by Prince like “Pussy Control” and songs by Ben Folds Five whose names he doesn’t know. He sings them loud and clear, often in the morning when his masters are still sleeping. When they yell at him he changes his tune to something more upbeat, like “Charm Attack” by Leonna Ness. He is a sucker for female lead singers.
On Fridays he sings classical songs, usually Chopin and sometimes Beethoven. On Saturday he sings 80’s hair rock , namely Guns ‘n Roses and Van Halen. Despite the fact that he always sings “Patience” by Guns ‘n Roses, it is not his favorite song. He only sings it because it has a whistling solo. His favorite song is “My Michelle.”
On Sunday, the bird is silent for the first part of the day. He is letting the Lord rest. The Lord is the only person he lets rest. At exactly 12:01pm (there’s a clock across the hallway from his cage) he lets out a blood-curdling scream. He screams as loud as he can for five minutes, but no one in the house ever notices because they are all still at church. Sometimes he cries and laments his fate to be locked in a cage for the rest of his life. He sings the first 15 seconds of “Coming Down the Mountain” by Janes Addiction followed by the middle 45 seconds of “Rudy Can’t Fail.” He mimics the sound of Joey Ramone; he hates The Ramones.
When all is said and done, the caged bird sings for himself. He sings to annoy his owners, and he sings because he likes the sound of the chorus in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He will never sing David Bowie, because he would consider that sacrilegious. Not because David Bowie had weird hair or because he was gay, but because he wouldn’t be able to do him justice. Once he broke into “Life on Mars” before he realized what he was doing but then quickly stopped, ashamed of himself. That day momma did not smack the cage with her broom.
In two years, the caged bird will die. He will have sung 5,777 songs. His family will bury him in the plot of earth just in front of the house, and after school one of the children will put stepping stone on his grave to prevent the armadillos from digging him up. In just two more years, he will be all but forgotten with the addition of a new family pet, a ring-tailed lemur that stowed away on a ship from Madagascar to Singapore by hiding beneath a trash can.
This entry was written by , posted on January 19, 2010 at 11:53 pm, filed under Writingz and tagged i know why the caged bird sings, maya angelou, party, your mother. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
This entry was written by , posted on January 18, 2010 at 4:09 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged barry sevig, cutie, OMG, party. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
When I’m doing no cool shit for this website, it’s good to have a roommate who’s constantly doing cool shit for this website. Even if he’s not doing cool shit for this website, but rather his own website of even cooler shit that’s going launch some time this spring.
Cool shit.
Song of the day (shit is ridiculous):
This entry was written by , posted on at 12:45 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged Alaska, beard, beard competition, beard off, california, oregon, party, road trip, wetzler. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
When I have a layover in a airport, I almost never leave the terminal due to the hassle of having to go through security again and a sinking fear that for some insane reason they won’t let me back in. “Excuse me, Sir, but you already went through security back in Seattle. You can’t go through it again. You’re going to have to stay here in Anchorage for the rest of your life and get married to a moose.”
But today I left the terminal, and it was glorious. Zero degrees Fahrenheit glorious. I haven’t felt this kind of cold since I lived in Minnesota, when after swimming at the local pool my hair would freeze before even getting back to the car. Here I blew my nose and a few seconds later felt the snot was frozen in my beard. If it wasn’t for the down Holden jacket my friend Pete so generously loaned me I would most surely be dead in the parking lot right now. This is not a joke. Tomorrow the front page of the Anchorage Daily News would read, “Stupid-ass tourist dead in parking lot for being an idiot.” It’s fucking cold here.
Snow nipple
Well, one more flight and I’m in Barrow. I have already braved the zero degree weather here in Anchorage, so I’m now more confident I’ll survive the two block walk from the airport to my hotel. I’m not sure about the darkness, though. I’m really not sure about the darkness. I’m surprised by how light it is in Anchorage right now. Except for all the snow on the ground this could easily be Seattle. I assumed after working this summer in Cooper Landing that it would get as dark during the winter as it was light in the summer, i.e, perpetually hover between darkness and a sort of penumbral gloom. This, I am glad to note, is not the case. Things are happy here in Anchorage. Cold, but happy. The light is stronger than the dark.
Puffy Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on December 19, 2009 at 5:20 pm, filed under Alaska, Travels and tagged anchorage, barrow, freezing, holden outerwear, party, ted stevens. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I met a girl named Becky at the Cha Cha Lounge two nights ago and more or less became instantly enamored. She was from Challis, Idaho, and we talked until the bar closed and she and her two friends had to leave. I may never see Becky again, which is why I have written this memoir:
I just Google Mapsed Challis, Idaho. It’s somewhat close to a town called Chilly, Idaho. It’s a small town place built upon the hearts and minds of upstanding Americans. Real, hard-working Americans like you and me. People we can identify with. People we can believe in. It has a baseball field where every Easter the 4-H club holds their Easter egg hunts. Do you remember last year when little Billy Ripkin got lost in the rose thicket looking for the golden egg? Oh, how he cried and cried. He must’ve cried for three hours until someone finally shut him up with an icecream sandwich.
And then there’s Becky. The light of my life. A smile that could bring the strongest, toughest man to his knees. The kind of smile that can only come from a small town like Challis, Idaho, where it can’t be corrupted, tarnished and stained by the big city. Growing up, Becky wanted nothing more than to get out of Challis and see the world. She wanted to be a city girl. Her parents prayed that it was just a phase — who would milk Goerta after she was gone, what with Tommy working 12+ hour days at the meat processing plant?–but when she talked to her daddy about going to the big city he know deep in his heart that it wasn’t just a phase. He saw the glimmer in her eyes, a glimmer he had only seen once before — when he asked his wife Evelyn to marry him.
Becky finally made it to the big city. From Challis it was a 13-hour drive, up into Montana through Missoula then into Washington through Spokane on I-90. Her daddy brought her because he knew it might be the last time he saw his little girl for a while. That smile, so full of life. Those eyes. He knew she was fated to leave Challis when she got her tattoos. That was the first sign, the biggest sign. Sure, people in Challis got tattoos — people got them all the time — but not tattoos like this. On her right wrist she had a few words from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Man is the cruelest animal.” On her right abdomen she bore the Arabic transcription for the word, “Rain” and on her left bicep a small angel which she had seen in a digital reproduction of the sistine chapel during her junior year art class. These tattoos told her daddy she would not last long in Challis, but the presentiment did not make it sting any less when he finally dropped her off in Seattle and turned the car back around for Idaho.
Now Becky is doing just fine. She hasn’t forgotten about Challis, Idaho, but a little part forgets every day. She doesn’t notice the things she forgets. One week her brain stopped remembering what it used to smell like on her parents porch when the spring thunderstorms would roll in over the Sawtooths from the west. The next week it was the name of the street of the pool where she used to take swimming lessons as a child. By the time she went back for Christmas, the first winter after she had left, she barely remembered how to milk Goerta. Worst still, she didn’t want to milk Goerta.
Who’s to say whether life is better in the big city or in the wide-open country? To each man, or in this case woman, her own. Becky might have forgotten how to milk the heifer whose milk helped her grow from a little girl into a strong woman, put part of her, somewhere deep inside, will always long for Challis. Her daddy is waiting for the day when it happens. He knows part of her longs to roam free, longs for a freedom that can’t be found in the congestion and crowds of the city. He knows her life was not meant to be centered around sewer grates and honking horns, but rather the whisp of the fall wind in the wheat and the fresh patter of a summer drizzle, when it seems God himself is willing the corn to grow higher and higher. The tattoos did not change Becky; the city cannnot change her either. Just as every spring the storms come in from the West, from north of Ketchum and into the Salmon River Valley, one day Becky will come from the west too. She will come home, and she will stay. Because she has not forgotten her daddy. She has not forgotten her soul.
This entry was written by , posted on December 17, 2009 at 4:47 pm, filed under Capitol Hill and tagged becky, bimbo's cantina, Capitol Hill, cha cha loung, challis, girls, nightlife, party. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Last year, if you recall, during the master cleanse days, I was sober for a month and a half. Then one night I started to drink. It was because I was interning for The Stranger and writing for the music and nightlife blog and I was convinced that in order to write cool posts I needed to go out to the bars and drink. So I went out to Pioneer Square and I got one beer and then I took the ferry back to my parents’ house and wrote a blog post that was entirely underwhelming. Then about a week later I went to Linda’s with Barry and Darren where we were later met by Zack. We drank about six pitchers, though I drank probably two thirds less than everyone else because I was trying to drink as slowly as possible. Then we went to The Cha Cha Lounge and drank what must’ve been at least another four pitchers. By this time Darren had a euphoric expression on his face that looked like he had just been injected with horse tranquilizers, Zach was smoking cigarettes at regular intervals and Barry was, well, more or less the same.
Then about a week later I blacked out.
This is how it always happens when I start drinking again after a period of sobriety. I ease back into it: one night I’ll have a drink or two, the next night I’ll get tipsy and the night after that I’ll get completely shit-faced and wake up feeling guilty and nauseous. I can’t just stay at the one or two drink stage or even the tipsy stage. I need to feel what will happen when my body is pushed to the very upper limits of its ability to process alcohol. I need to feel what it’s like when my liver starts to grimace with pain and what it feels like to be wretchedly hungover. My body just needs to know.
Right now I’m entering that curious stage again. I’ve been sober for about three weeks and I’m bored out of my skull. I’m entertaining the thought of drinking tonight. I probably won’t, but I’m entertaining the idea. I want to have a few drinks because I think it might make my life more fun. I think it might lead to decadence and meeting loads of pretty girls. I think it might lead to the kinds of good times you see in the movies.
Which, of course, I know is not true.
All I need to think about right now is my history. Drinking has almost never lead to unexpected awesomeness for me. Granted, it HAS a few times, but far more often it has lead to unexpected awfulness. It has rarely lead to meeting strange and beautiful women that find me attractive; women seem to find me far less attractive when I’ve been drinking.
So there you have it. As much as it sucks, sober is the way to go. Better to be bored out of my skull than wallow in my self-loathing. Better to not expect to meet strange and beautiful women at all than to get my hopes only to have them dashed time and time again. Better to keep my head on my shoulders.
Right?
This entry was written by , posted on December 11, 2009 at 10:41 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged alcoholism, blackout, drinking, party, partying. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Reservations encouraged.
This entry was written by , posted on December 7, 2009 at 1:55 am, filed under Uncategorized and tagged judy blue eyes, mcdonald's, party, ratatat, whistler. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
This entry was written by , posted on December 6, 2009 at 8:43 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged alpental, party, red bull, summit at snoqualmie. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
This entry was written by , posted on November 21, 2009 at 1:58 pm, filed under Chipotle, The Bark and Marry, Uncategorized and tagged eastlake, new moon, party, rob dyrdek, seattle, twilight. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
We are nearing the gloomiest time of the year. For a few weeks, the sunset will hover right around 4:18pm in the afternoon. This is early. Not as early as some places (Bellingham), but still pretty early. To combat the gloom, I have provided a least of guaranteed pick-me-ups that can be utilized as needed:
1) John Williams, Theme from “Last of the Mohicans”
I mentioned this one yesterday, but I will mention it again today. If you’re feeling down, or un-motivated, and you WANT to feel like you could wrestle a saber-toothed tiger, listen to this song. It doesn’t get old.
2) Odwalla, C Monster or B Monster
C Monster if you’re feeling sick or like you might be getting sick. B Monster if you want large amounts of vitamin B and therefore large amounts of energy.
3) Exercise
Yesterday I was sitting in my apartment, wondering what it might be like to jump off the balcony, when my friend Ryan called me to go skateboarding. After skateboarding I felt like a million dollars (Canadian dollars). You need exercise because you need to get your metabolism going and because your lungs were meant to pump oxygen — not stale, indoor apartment air. You also need exercise because you’re fat.
4) A nice, sober chat with an animated friend
If you don’t have energy, steal it from someone else. A little social contact with a friend more animated than yourself will do the trick. Find a cozy coffee shop or a low-key eatery and talk at length about one to two topics you’re both passionate about. If you can’t find something you’re both passionate about, talk about something your friend is passionate about (he/she will be more animated). Suggestions: Is Paris Hilton sexually attractive?, Is it cool to “hate” Starbucks?, What would Bill Gates look like naked?
5) Stretching
See: exercise.
6) Retail Therapy
Sometimes it really, really works. Just make sure you buy something you like. If you buy something you don’t like, you will feel even gloomier than before. And there’s nothing worse than retail depression.
Today, the only one of these I’ve applied so far is number one (I’ve listened to “Last of the Mohicans” seven times). However, I hope to apply all six, or at least all six excluding “Retail Therapy,” due to the fact that I hate shopping.
…And when all else fails, drink a beer!
This entry was written by , posted on November 15, 2009 at 4:21 pm, filed under Morning Coffee Break, seattle and tagged party, rain, seasonal affective disorder, seattle. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.