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10.10.2002
WE HAVE MOVED TO THE ALL-NEW AND EXCITING
Please go there now: http://www.king23.com/
There is nothing more to see here. Thanks!
11:26 PM
FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS
The weather is perfect, and my lady and I have moved into a huge and mostly beautiful apartment. I would call the place “vintage” if it weren’t for all the brand new refinements in the kitchen, every last one of which is an object lesson in the shoddiness of both craft and materials they use today when they want to save a buck. Oh well – good times. I am still unemployed, though. I’ve been teetering between fits of unworldly laziness and bursts of working hard at little domestic chores (laundry, cleaning, etc.). I’m also learning to be a submissive manservant, and to that end I plan I buying a little bell that my lady can ring when she requires anything.
I am perfecting the percolated cup of coffee, which takes a surprising amount of talent, intuition, grit. Not only do you have to measure the right amount of grounds, ,you have to find that 20-second window where the brew is “just so”: a minute too long, and the coffee will be too bitter to drink; a minute short and you end up with a disappointing, weak-ass cup. Art and Science.
The remainder of my time is wasted writing a novel under my pseudonym “Thomas Shade”. It is a disaster tentatively called Forgive Us Our Debts, and it’s going nowhere – at about 2 pages a day. I envision it as a 1000 page screed that I’ll self-publish (make it look like a cheap romance novel) and sell door to door, and at checkout lines at supermarkets.
We still haven’t heard from Matt, who underwent a $15,000 operation on his pinky finger a couple of days ago. He damn near sliced the little thing off with a tiny sake pitcher at work last week.
Our prayers are with him. And with the Minnesota Twins.
10:27 AM
9.09.2002
FAT CITY, ALL THE WAY
A few weeks ago, I joined the ever-expanding ranks of America’s heroic unemployed; I was laid off from my more-or-less miserable job, an act that brought a quick and decisive end to my internal hem-and-haw about whether or not I should throw in the towel and move on to greener pastures. The decision was made for me, which was unfortunate in that it didn’t afford me the smug satisfaction of walking away and saying, in purely professional terms of course, “blow this taco-stand”. However, getting laid off does entitle one to a hidden little gem of our great Civilized Society: Unemployment Insurance, a.k.a. The Dole, Easy Street, Fat City, or Daddy’s New Pair of Shoes, as I’ve heard it called.
The Unemployment Office was laid out just as I had imagined, with all the standard design elements common to government offices: a geometric, institutional grid of white tile, blaring fluorescent lights, and gray industrial carpet – a sort of Feng Shui of dull misery and lack. I spent a lot of time waiting in uncomfortable plastic chairs, the kind designed to be stacked vertically or hooked together at the sides to create claustrophobic rows, so you can bump elbows with the (mostly) unwashed masses and easily read whole paragraphs of their horrid spy and/or romance novels.
After filling out all the requisite forms, I was led to a computer where I signed up for the Illinois Skills Match program – an interactive database that allows the unemployed to list their skills and, theoretically, match them with job openings. I was prompted to “pick any skills that MIGHT apply” to me, and I took the word “might” as a license to go – how do you say – ape-shit, checking any and every skill that even remotely tickled my fancy: art director, TV script-writer, sculptor, painter, multi-media artist, bread-maker, editorial cartoonist, master of ceremonies, stand-up comic, etc. I mean, if the State offers me a job sculpting busts of fine-suited, important men or writing jokes for fundraising dinners, that’s almost as good as winning the lottery. Why not?
At the computer next to mine, a man was beginning to boil over into a full-blown tantrum. He was nervously running his hands through his hair, exasperated, muttering obscenities under his breath, trying to get me to agree with his whispered proclamation that this is fuckin’ bullshit! I nodded distractedly, and he waved over the little Mexican woman who was assisting people with their computer problems.
“They don’t have my skill listed here.”
“Well, what did you do?”
“I was an actuarial trade assessment coordinator…. I …. I worked on the trading floor….”
“So you were a floor clerk?”
“No…. I worked…. I worked on the trade floor…. I predicted the valuation of stock options….”
“I don’t understand what you did – what skills did you use?”
Veins bulged in his forehead – “MATH! My skill is math, OK? I used math to determine the eventual value of stock options….” He was teetering on the verge of tears as she patted him on the shoulder and told him to calm down, which only deepened his rage.
I could tell that he was one of the noveau riche who had his parade pissed on when the Great Bubble of the New Economy burst. There were several of his kind there, chatting on cell phones and drinking expensive cups of coffee, visibly annoyed that they couldn’t just hire someone to sit in these uncomfortable chairs and fill out the idiotic forms for them. And they were dressed like they were headed down to the beach to get sunburned and drunk: flip-flops, old T-shirts, shorts. Their appearance did not in any way suggest the concept of Suffering.
I am back in uncomfortable chairs, waiting for the face-to-face interview, and a jittery young man sitting next to me asks if it’s my first time here. I nod. He leans in closer and says he’s heard that a lot of people get denied benefits – is it true? I reply that I don’t know, I haven’t really heard anything about it. In fact, my only hard information about going on The Dole came from my friend Rick, a copywriter who recently lost his job. To Rick, being eligible for State money was akin to hitting the jackpot.
Rick is my model for what this trip is all about. He spends his days wailing on guitar in his basement, going to the movies or out for sushi, and generally just “kickin’ it”. “WHAT RECESSION?” written in big white letters on his torn T-shirt, and beneath the letters a crude drawing of a fist with the middle finger proudly raised. As he explained to me when I lost my job, in his familiar, good-time drawl, “You gotta enjoy these times, man. It’s not often in life when a man is truly FREE.”
Right on, Rick. I’ll be coming around this afternoon with a sixer of Corona and my cheap electric guitar, and after we scan the want ads we can turn the amps up all the way and lose ourselves in the heavy buzz of Black Sabbath chords, and act as men should. Which is to say: slightly drunk and unemployed, and truly free.
2:08 PM
8.12.2002
How The End Will Come
I think it was Dostoevski, in The House of the Dead, who said something like: man’s main advantage is the ability to get used to anything. He might not have called it an “advantage”, now that I think about it. But I’m not really thinking about it; I am thinking of the lady who served me my omelet and toast early this morning / late last night. SHE must be used to anything, what with those crazy screaming Poles all night long. She prolly clocks out with the sunrise.
The hot eggs and black coffee made sweat bead up on my forehead. Matt says he wouldn’t be surprised if this lady was at Altamont. Or Woodstock. Or the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan blah blah blah. He plugged in a guitar and the folkies ran for the hills: Too Much Noise! She has long straight hair and her face and body are tight and weathered – kind of that Iggy Pop look: tough, gaunt, with weathered skin pulled back over skeletal features, a leather shell cured with years of high volume and sex and cigarettes and drugs, and a lot of late nights.
P.S.: a loud electric guitar doesn’t make the nut anymore. Not alone, just by itself. People forget that at the time it was a real STINKING NOISE. Easy to look back through the soft mesh of Steely Dan, Steve Miller, etc., and see Newport as a real Clarion Call. Well…. Nothing against those fine musical fellows….
I watched The Strokes on Saturday Night Live and thought, “Gee, what a swell band.” And then, as the song wore on and I looked at them, it hit me that they’re merely the Stray Cats of our time; a dumb retro joke that might make you tap your foot a little, but in the end is really no more dangerous than the Swing Renaissance….
DOESN’T ANYONE ELSE SEE THIS?? There’s a crack in the sky, a black line running up from the ground like a black searchlight at rest; Aurora Borealis in reverse.
Check the radio news…. Baseball scores, traffic jams, rumors of war.
Listen: I am riding in a rumble seat with a transistor radio tied to my head. My hands and feet are bound with rope. The driver keeps yelling back to me in an incomprehensible tongue, pointing at the sky; parachutes like blooming flowers and fighter planes. Sound of metal scraping across stone.
I am back at home. My friends have arrived. The voice on the radio announces that the end will come by sunrise – Armagedd-----…… Static, followed by crackling old jazz – like Armstrong, but sloppier. The band is stumbling over each note, trying to catch the rhythm….
Someone looks at a clock: 3 AM: not long now. LET’S GET STINKO!
Pills are passed around, and a bottle of strong homemade alcohol. “I’ve been saving it….”
And at Dawn, when God reveals Himself in the fullness of His splendor, I will lift my head and wave slowly, blinking through bloodshot eyes. And it had better be a stinking noise, and I hope to run for the hills, just like at Newport when Bob Dylan blah blah blah.
10:22 AM
7.12.2002
A Brief Political Rant
Is anybody else tired of all this crap about “thank God Bush is in charge” or “he’s a man with integrity , principles” blah blah blah? I am. And he might be a man with integrity and principles, but do you really think he could sit across the table from Charlie Rose for an hour and just riff, without a script and without Charlie having to walk on eggshells, and come across as anything but a piece of corrugated cardboard with an expensive suit and an "aw-shucks" kind of Southern Charm? I doubt it. And I even kind of like the guy in a perverse way – he’s probably not a bad guy to bend an elbow with down at the roadhouse. Which is fine, as far as a good old boy down the road goes, but when it comes to Leader of the Free World, Most Powerful Man on Earth, etc., I think I’d prefer a bit more of a philosopher king – someone with a little more tact and political grace. He and his cronies just seem a little queer for war, like they wouldn't think twice about blowing the whole world to smithereens to prove a dumb, macho point.
He has gotten a little looser in public, though, and he doesn’t stutter or blink as much as he did on the campaign trail, when he was blowing that “I’m not a Washington insider” rap up everyone’s ass. Maybe I’m old-fashioned or out of touch, but when your Daddy was head of the CIA, rode shotgun through the Reagan years, and climbed into the driver’s seat when, by law, ol’ Dutch had to step down, you’re not exactly out of the political orgy in D.C.
So, no, I’m really not that thankful that ol’ GW is minding the store. Since he took the helm the world has sort of gone straight to hell: Fear, War, Mutterings of Untold Tragedy, Disaster, Apocalypse, Recession – and Lee Greenwood is on the fucking Pop Charts again! These are indeed dark times.
Lest anyone accuse me of staging some kind of comeback pep rally for that old Wooden Indian, Albert Gore, let me say that although I think W needs to be replaced in Ought-Four, Gore obviously isn’t the man to do it: that dog don’t hunt, as we saw the last time around. Only a total inept could blow a race like that, coming from the White House that presided, loosely, over eight years of economic big tits and swingin’ dicks, as I once heard it called; a fairly long period of relative peace, money, employment, etc. No wonder the President was messing around with young tarts on the job – he had the time to do it.
I don’t know. It really doesn’t look all that good. There don’t seem to be any serious contenders on the horizon, and unless Bush gets tangled up in a true political disaster of Watergate proportions, nobody with a Republican badge is going to get the nod, and nobody’s gonna go for Gore again.
As of today, I’m officially endorsing that egghead Ken Wilber, who seems to me to be a true Man of Reason. And I’d like to see Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne in his cabinet and Chicago Cubs announcer Pat Hughes as his spokesman.
Come on, people – let’s get it together. Let’s raise our voices in unison and proclaim ENOUGH OF THIS RIDICULOUS BULLSHIT! WHO WANTS PIE?
11:48 AM
7.11.2002
Quiet Riot
I haven’t had a cigarette since I was in my Twenties. That was only 11 days ago, actually, but I think it’s gonna stick this time. Still, I come home from work every night and fight off the dumb habit of lighting one up. It’s hell getting old. Yeah.
This year my good friend and roommate Matt and I each had Golden Birthdays at the end of June – he turned 27 on the 27th, and I turned 30 on the 30th. Our ladyfriends pulled off this really bizarro, and ultimately incredibly successful surprise party. And I didn’t think people actually had surprise parties; you know, where someone rambles home, opens a door lazily, and is suddenly greeted by a cheery group of folks yelling “SURPRISE!”, with bells and whistles and party favors, balloons and streamers. It was all quite overwhelming, especially since Matt and I had just spent over two hours in the sensory deprivation tanks on Lincoln. But the ladies set the whole thing up – hair cuts followed by a couple of hours in the tanks – just to get us out of the house for enough hours to allow all our slack-jawed, lackadaisical friends to converge on the scene and get into character.
We were amazed. Nate came up from Carbondale, with Jason in tow – Jason, who I haven’t seen in Chicago for a few years, probably not since the summer of 1999, when the last Flaming Lips record came out and the world seemed awash in really strong acid and great music. . . Then, much later in the evening, old Jade arrived – Jade, who lives in Florida and only passes through these parts once in a great while. It was a strange and wonderful time, and probably the best birthday present that I’ve ever had. Props to Megan and Olga for pulling it off, and for caring enough to try it in the first place.
But now I’m wondering in a sort of half-assed way where all the time went, wondering whether my dumb “elongated adolescence”, as Matt calls it, was worth the hassle. In the late 90’s, after graduating from college, rather than bursting headlong into the American Workforce, I fell in with a group of ne’er-do-wells whose idea of a pleasant weeknight was to load up on LSD and light off Mexican fireworks in the living room. No, that’s not fair; they were actually reasoned, friendly men and women, who would occasionally steer afield of a few social mores in order to serve the Greater Good, which for us was the uncompromising Celebration of Human Life. And in return, I believe, Life has taken care of me. To wit: during that time, say, the end of 1997, the New Economy was bursting at the seams – High Times all around, with the Dow cruising towards 15,000 and untold numbers of young men about my age becoming multi-millionaires, riding on the outer edge of the Great Bubble. Meanwhile, I was making sandwiches in a Jewish deli, pulling in about $135 a week, and having the time of my life.
A graph of my net worth over the last decade would look like a chart of the Dow Jones flipped upside-down. For example, this week the stock market hit its low for the year, and I received the biggest paycheck I’ve ever seen. It’s also a hell of a time to start investing, I think. What I’d really like to do is go crazy and buy a few thousand shares of some nearly bottomed-out company (Worldcom?) for, like, 17 cents a share, and sit back and watch as the controversy gets resolved and the stock slowly climbs back to just over the $100 mark. Now that’s where a guy could make some money… And I don’t really know anything about it. But I’ve sort of already bet all my chips on the idea that I’m an accidental Genius, so….
Yes. I was going to get into a rant about Quiet Riot. Remember “Metal Health”? God, that was a huge record – and ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ was really one of the dozen or so rock anthems that defined my youth. But did you know that Quiet Riot has been pumping out albums, more or less with great regularity, since 1977? That’s 25 years.  They’ve been putting out albums since I was 5 years old – a toddler. And suddenly, seeing on their website that they’ve got a new one coming out, I don’t feel so old anymore. I mean, Kevin Dubrow’s got to be at least – what – mid-Forties?
OK. Wait a second…. Were both of their big hits – “Come on Feel the Noize” and “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” – simply covers of old Slade tunes? Can that be possible? Why do I suddenly feel cheated? Quiet Riot – a cover band?! My head’s swimming, and I’m dying for a cigarette, and I’ve got to go to bed. Like I said, it’s hell getting old.
P.S. Quiet Riot is playing in DeKalb on the 25th of this month, if anybody wants to go. And on August 1, they’re playing at the South Dakota State Fair, where I saw my first real rock concert in 1984: Huey Lewis and The News.
It really is hell getting old.
1:13 AM
6.25.2002
Air-Conditioned Nightmares
All this week – the last week of my 20’s, as a matter of fact – I’ve been having a series of really strange dreams. Two nights ago, I was in the Cubs dugout with Don Baylor, spitting tobacco onto the dirt floor; I woke up drooling and spitting all over myself. Last night I watched an enormous hurricane sweep across the plains of the Midwest, followed by thousands of black tornadoes.
I’m not sure what any of this means; it might be because I’ve been sleeping on the living room couch, under the cold hum of an air-conditioner, and the strange, unnatural temperature of the air is affecting the chemicals in my brain. I don’t know if I trust air-conditioners – I’ve been waking up with a sore throat, as if I’ve been breathing cold, toxic air all night. But now that we’ve got half the apartment cooled to a comfortable chill, it’s hard to ever shut the thing off. And the rest of the house is a miserable, humid mess.
God, the weather is dumb here: we spend nearly all summer in a sweltering, dusky funk, followed by a freezing, gray death-march from November to March. There are about a dozen really pleasant days around May, and another week or so of perfect temperatures sometime in October.
I am trying to remember why I stay here; it must be some kind of habit. And my ancestors, most of whom came from Scandinavia and settled in the middle of Minnesota, must not have realized that there were places on Earth where the weather was generally pleasant, and I must still be running that old-school genetic Operating System.
10:52 AM
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