End of the YEAR review: 2004
WARNING: I�ve been drinking all night, so I bet I�m gonna ramble.
This morning I awoke in the middle of a serious dream by somebody pounding on the front door. They pounded with such force and velocity that I thought the SWAT team was here. The noise level was so extreme that I actually bolted out of bed, awakening with a startled shout.
Since we live on the second story of a two-story house, we have an intercom for the front door. I got out of bed and pressed the button.
�Hello?�
�It�s just me,� said the voice through the intercom, which turned out to be my landlord. �I just wanted to let you know that I�ll be working downstairs. No need to come down.�
�So you woke me up,� I answered, �to tell me that I don�t need to get up?�
That was the beginning of my day. Since I had awoken so violently, I couldn�t get back to sleep. Eventually, I gave up to read and drink coffee. Whilst doing so, I was reminded that Flogging Molly were playing that night at a club that was much too small to host Flogging Molly.
The reason they were playing this night was a thank you of sorts. Apparently, before they got famous, they rarely played outside their own town. Playing in San Jose gave them the confidence to become the supergroup that they are now.
I�ve seen some of these shows before they became such superstars. I�m happy that they achieved what they did, but I also don�t want to go to the X-treme sports competitions they play now. The idea of seeing them in a small club that focused on the alcohol rather than the band appealed to me. So when I found out that special scenester tickets would be available at a secret meeting, I was ready to go for it. As many times as I�ve seen the band, they�ve never disappointed.
The day that the golden tickets were made available was the same day I discovered my bank account emptied by a wannabe criminal. Obviously, I didn�t get my tickets.
Anyhoo, after the rude awakening from the landlord, I checked the mail. I had a notice from the people in charge of my student loan. When I opened the letter, I saw that they accused me of being delinquent on my payments with all kinds of statements about how much trouble I was now in. I panicked.
I knew I had paid these people. But with the problem of my stolen checks, I figured my bank decided not to honor the one check I actually wrote. I checked my account online.
The student loan company had cashed my check a week previously. So I called them, and after fifteen minutes of Musak, I finally got a real person. I explained that I was upset that they were calling me delinquent, when they had cashed my check a week prior.
�We did receive a payment from you, but it was two cents short,� the operator said.
At first I couldn�t say anything. That didn�t last for long. �First of all,� I said, �I called you people when my bag was stolen, and that was the amount I was told to pay. But I want to get this straight. You sent me this threatening letter because I was two cents shy?�
�Yes,� the receptionist said simply.
�You spent 37 cents on a stamp to complain about two cents?�
�Yes, sir�
�Ok,� I said, �I know that you�re just an employee and don�t deserve abuse for policies that you had nothing to do with, but you�re gonna get it anyway. Sorry. Do you realize how fucking stupid this is? You�re harassing me over two cents, and two cents that comes down to an employee error. I mean really, did you think I was trying to cheat you? Did you think I had some plot to short-change you by two cents every month, saving me, oh, I don�t know, about three bucks by the time I pay you off?�
�Well,� the receptionist said, �we can�t make exceptions for one person, or else we would have to make exceptions for everybody.�
So that was my afternoon. Of course, it was shortly thereafter that somebody reminded me about the Flogging Molly show. The show was long-ago sold out. I had been told that 50 tickets would be sold at the door, starting at 8 P.M.
I was working until nine.
After the bookstore closed, I looked at the stamps we had behind the counter. The only ones we use are for cashing checks, but there are a number of other stamps sitting around for no discernable reason. I took the stamp that said �DISCARD� in quarter-inch letters and stamped it on my inside right wrist.
I went home, drank two pint glasses of Jack and coke, telling my roommate about my plan.
�I don�t think it�s gonna work,� he said. �They�re pretty on top of these things. I know somebody who did the transfer thing, and they caught her because the image was upside down.�
�Yeah, so what?� I shrugged. �Then I don�t get in. At least I tried. What are they gonna do, beat me up?�
He thought about it for a minute. �They might,� he said finally.
I got to the club about ten minutes before Flogging Molly started their set and stood outside talking to other people milling around the door. You could hear the singer start talking on the microphone.
I joined the crowd of people swarming inside and flashed my stamp, pulling down my gloves. My hope was that it would be too chaotic for the bouncer to notice my forgery, but he grabbed my arm as I walked past him, saying I needed to get the stamp reapplied. I showed my stamp to the woman working the door. She grabbed my wrist and squinted, staring at ink.
A long time ago I was in a Denny�s, restaurant and for some reason, I decided that I wanted a White Russian, predating my coolness factor by over ten years before The Dude from The Big Lebowski. The waitress looked at me coolly, and asked my age.
�Why, I�m 21,� I said. She asked for proof, and I pulled out my ID, an ID that clearly stated that I wasn�t old enough to drink, and in fact, would be a long time before I could. She studied this for a while.
There are two possibilities on what happened next. Either she couldn�t read, even with that red stripe on my license saying I wouldn�t be old enough to buy liquor for two more years, or she didn�t want to argue. I got my drink.
And tonight, this woman at the line stared at my stamp, scrutinizing it. I awaited my beating. Finally, she grabbed her stamp, which looked nothing like mine, and pounded it over my forgery, waving me inside. I spent the rest of the night looking like an over-excited Muppet, with mouth wide open in a huge smile.
God, sometimes I love being fearless.
And that�s the segueway into this year-end roundup. In between a lot of annoyances, sometimes something very cool happens. But let�s start with the basic list.
So between December 2, 2004 and January 1, 2005, I...
- Read 12 books.
- Spent $46.47 on the books I read during this period
- Bought five more books.
- Received two as gifts.
- Had four books stolen.
Which means for the year, I...
- Read 164 books
- Spent $530.91 on books that I read this year.
- And I have 35 to go.
This also means that since I started this stupid project, I�ve read 544 books.
And yet I still have 35 books to finish.
In the meantime, I wrote 160 pages of �reviews�, single-spaced, in ten-point type. That�s 119,336 words. Last year I wrote 129 pages and read 171 books. Before that, it was 146 pages, and 209 books.
So I read less and wrote more. I don�t know what to think about that.
But nobody cares about that, let�s get to the awards. As usual, I�ve picked seven of the best and worst. I have no idea why I picked that number. I think the first year-end round up I did, I was on my seventh drink. Anyhoo, as for the best...
- 7: William S. Burroughs, �Queer� Actually, the fact that this made the top of the list shows that the things I read this year weren�t very memorable, as this wasn�t anything super great. But it was better than a lot of the other things I read.
- 6: Ernie Pyle, �Here Is Your War�
I love it when you endlessly hear about how great somebody or something is over and over through the years, and then when you finally get around to checking it out for yourself, you discover that the people who gushed and praised were actually right. This has happened for perhaps three things in my life. This was one of those things. - 5: Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, �Last Chance to See�
A �who will save the poor animals� book that, in the hands of any other writer, would probably irritate the piss out of me. Funny, interesting, and sincere, this book just makes me sadder that, one, Adams is dead, and two, Disney is in charge of the Hitchhiker movie. - 4: Lemony Snicket, �A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room�
I could have put any or all three of the books that I read from this series on here, but the whole repeated theme of �Meanwhile, back at the ranch� still makes me laugh out loud just by thinking about it. Thanks to Arlette for introducing me to these, as I bet I never would have started reading them on my own. - 3: Antonino D�Ambrosio (Editor), �Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer�
Another nice surprise, as I got this for free from Maximum RockNRoll for review. Being only a mild Clash fan, and not caring at all about Strummer, I probably wouldn�t have bought it even if it had came into the store, which it hasn�t. This is simply a great piece of rock journalism, and the fact that it�s an anthology with about a dozen different writers makes it even more surprising that it�s this good. - 2: Alan Moore, �Promethea � Book 3�
This series made the top seven list last year and I almost apologized for including it, because it was a graphic novel instead of an actual �book.� I�ll never do that again. Now that he�s written an actual prose novel, he can stopped being referred to as a funnybook writer. I read his novel. This was better. - 1: Tom Robbins, �Villa Incognito�
I was reading this in Hawaii, silently freaking out because of the money I was spending that I didn�t have. I was spending so much money because I was sure that once we got back, Arlette would dump me, and I wanted what could very likely be our last moments together to be fun and memorable. So during all this, Tom Robbins made me forget about my world crashing all around and made me laugh. What a great fucking book.
I also want to plug Brian Michael Bendis. I read a shitload of his graphic novels this year. All of them were at least pretty good, and some were downright amazing. The fact that he produced such a large volume of great stuff is amazing in itself.
But I know, we�re all mean-spirited bitter people and you don�t want to hear about the good things. You want disaster. You want tragedy. You want putrid, ugly vileness. Well, I read plenty of that too. The worst of these were...
- 7: Thomas M. Disch, �The Prisoner�
I�m sure taking a surreal story line from a television show and transferring it to another medium isn�t easy. But it shouldn�t be this much of a mess either. - 6: Carl Jung, �Dreams�
I wonder what Jung would conclude about my personality when I say that his book on the nature of dreams put me to sleep. I suspect it would be that I�m somewhat of an asshole. - 5: Dee Dee Ramone (with Veronica Kaufmann), �Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones�
Poorly-written memoir by a self-important drug addled obnoxious dumbass. Even more of a disappointment because it was a subject I was interested in � the exact opposite of that book on The Clash. Funny how things work out, huh? - 4: Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, �Beerspit Night and Cursing�
A nightmare for people who like to copyedit. Or for people who like to drink. Or read. Or write letters. Or hope to find something interesting. - 3: Thomas Steinbeck, �Down to a Soundless Sea�
Sometimes it�s better to try and find your own path, Thomas. I�m sure you know that you�re only getting published because of the name recognition factor, right? You can use that same angle to sell real estate. Get working on it, because I don�t want to see another book by you. - 2: Henry Rollins, �Smile, You�re Traveling�
And as long as I�m addressing authors personally, Henry, you know that the only reason you�re getting published is because you publish the books yourself. - 1: Audry Lynch �Steinbeck Remembered�
So for the first time in three years, Kerouac didn�t make the top of my list. There�s a reason � the only thing I read by him this year was an anthology, and the parts that sucked then were the same parts that sucked now. Saying so would be repetitive, even though I just said it. In any case, there were things in that anthology that were good, so he was spared from my wrath.But I�m supposed to be talking about this book. I�m protective about things that I like, and I like Steinbeck. So does this lady. Why she decided to besmirch his name by attaching it to this project, I just don�t know. The author bio says she resides in this area. If she�s still alive and I happen to run into her, I�ll ask her. And if she�s dead, and you know where her grave is, I�ll go spit on it.
I don�t know. I look at the list, and aside from Robbins, Moore, and Snicket, I don�t have any real enthusiasm over the majority of what I read, positive or negative. You know, this year went by faster than any that I can remember, and I�m old. But I�m old to a point where I have a lot to remember, and not where I�m forgetting everything.
This is probably due mostly because of the whirlwind I had with Arlette. She was such a major part of my life, for good and for ill, that I think it was hard to have any emotional ties for much of anything else.
Some of that passion is starting to creep back toward other things. After all, it�s now February, and I�ve finished thirteen books � four of which I absolutely loved, and one that I fucking hated.
I rather like this. We�ll see if I can actually find something to say about them. In the meantime, thanks for reading and supporting me.
Even if I can�t get you bastards to buy anything.
