R. John Xerxes Pich� (editor), �Blister Packs�
Another book sent to me by Maximum RockNRoll for review, that makes three books they�ve sent which I�ve read and haven�t written about. Perhaps I should write the review first before posting this blog, but... I don�t wanna. I�ll get to it.
This was sent at the same time as that book I mentioned in the previous entry, almost as an apology for making me read something so lame. A collection of short stories by the literate punk rock scenesters (though I hadn�t heard of any of them), it worked similarly to any given compilation album; some pieces were great, others were crap, and some you just know were only on there because they were friends with the person putting them out.
But the review needs to go in the magazine, not here, so that�s all I have to say about it. Still, given that this is a collection of short stories, and I sometimes try to tie the book into my own personal life with this site, I may as well give you a few small anecdotes.
See, as long as some of these entries get, I don�t mean to make you think that there is no self-editing. I�m remarkably lucky that I�m able to write the majority of these entries with little editing. (Yes, yes, make your jokes. Who�s a funny little monkey? You? I think it is!) But what I mean is that I�m able to keep the narrative going for the most part that�s going straight from my brain to my fingers, which are nearly fast enough on the keyboard to keep up. Things that I edit out usually happen before they are even written, with myself realizing that things have gone on far enough, and knowing my penchant for tangents, I conveniently leave them out.
But there are a few things I remember after I post which I sometimes regret omitting. I suppose now I can play catch-up.
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While talking about the tour immersed in tourism, I left out one little caveat with our hippy tour guide at Iolani Palace who was obsessed with dancing.
At one point we entered a room with a tiny bed and she stopped to turn to us as a group. �Let me ask you something,� she said with her breathy, awe-inspired voice. �How do you wake up in the morning?� She pointed at one person in our group.
�Alarm clock,� he answered. The next four people said the same thing. One would figure that was enough to make her point, but she continued to ask every single person on the tour, apparently not willing to be accused of taking an inaccurate sample size. My accompaniment, who doesn�t want to be mentioned by name on this site any longer, got nervous as she approached our end of the line, and blurted out �ALARM CLOCK!� when she pointed at us to circumvent anything I might say.
Actually, this was fortunate, as I was honestly still thinking what I could respond with that would be either the funniest, or most shocking, or both. I believe I had it down to �I have a cow that kicks over a lantern which subsequently burns down the city,� or �How do I wake up in the morning? Usually naked and with an erection.�
In any case, the guide took �alarm clock� as the answer for both of us, and continued with the point of the story. �This room is where the Prince slept, and each morning, one of the servants would enter through this door,� she said.
She opened the double doors for emphasis, walking toward the windows. �And as the servant entered, he would be singing the history of his family, beginning with the first ruler of Hawaii, and all the descendents thereafter. And as he listed all these names and their accomplishments in song, speaking of their accomplishments, he would open the shutters, letting the room fill with light, reminding him of the responsibility he had to his heritage.�
She stopped and smiled at us all beatifically. �Don�t you think that�s a wonderful way to wake up in the morning?�
Uh, no, actually. What it sounds like is a nagging parent waking you up yelling, �so, are you gonna get a job today? You know, your grandfather at your age slaughtered the Polynesian army by this time in the morning, and still had time to go catch fish for the nightly feast. I swear, you�re just like your father, except he at least had the decency to show up when the servants made breakfast.�
And you know, even if you liked the Family Lineage Song, how long would it take before you were absolutely sick of it? I picture the doors opening, the servant entering with a song, and the prince leaping out of bed. �Yes, yes, I�m up! I�m up! Yes, big family legacy to live up to, I know, you can stop, thanks! By the way, I can�t help but notice that you give a rather short version of Uncle Herme-meme,� (all Hawaiian language sounds like somebody with a severe stutter who also happens to have the hiccups) �who, while is probably already up and being productive, is usually fucking the cattle by noon.�
And really, how did this song go? Was it like that 88 lines about 44 women? Did every relative get equal time? Did it have a part where the music cut out like REM, so everybody could shout LEONARD BERNSTEIN!
I�m not about to go back to the place to find out.
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Awhile back at the club, one of the regulars asked me to dance with her. I don�t dance. I can�t. Look, I�m perfectly willing to make an ass out of myself, and have done so on many occasions, but if I�m flailing around like an idiot, you need to be doing the same. Instead, what happens is the woman dances quite sultrily, looking all hot, and I simply look like a bigger tool next to her.
It�s not fair, because nearly all women can dance and make it look sexy, while all guys look either gay or drunk. Part of the reason is all those curves, which you girls can rotate around and make it look like you know what you�re doing. Men look like they�ve lost a vertebra or suddenly realized they can�t breath above water, flapping their arms around wildly, mouth agape.
I used to say all women could dance and make it look sexy, until I went to see Al Green in concert, whereupon the woman in front of my seat stood the entire time doing the white man�s dance worse than any white man I�ve ever seen. And I work in a nightclub. So, every woman can dance and make it look sexy except for whomever had the seat in front of me at the Al Green Concert.
To circumvent the dance question, I�ve adopted a standard line when asked. �You know that pole that strippers use?� I say. �I�ll be the pole.� That�s usually enough to make the girl get embarrassed, while still making me look confident instead of the painfully shy and awkward person I really am.
Well, I was called on it. And I think I was much more embarrassed than any kind of feet stuck to the floor, torso swaying, arms flailing behind me, white boy got no rhythm dance that I could have done.
It probably didn�t help that I suddenly had two poles for her to swing from.
Wow. Two erection jokes in one entry. Lucky you!
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When I made the trip down to San Jose, Oakland, and the fancy trust dinner in November, I left out the next day, whereupon my aunt dropped myself and Luva off at a Bart station so she could return to work.
Due to the scheduling of events, I had no choice but to carry my bag with my suit ensemble, as well as a bag with 45 pounds of vinyl in a shoulder bag that was now without a strap and a huge flat cardboard wrapped framed poster of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, which my former boss at the bookstore tried to mail for me but decided against it when the postage turned out to be a hundred dollars because of the size.
I maneuvered all this baggage through Bart escalators and cars, finally dropping off the majority of my stuff with Luva at her work. I took the poster down to the post office to confirm the price, which they did indeed want a hundred dollars to ship. But, they explained, it was close to the size where it would meet regulation shipping, and all I needed to do was trim down the edges.
I carried the huge box around Downtown San Francisco, searching through various drugstores to find packaging tape and some scissors and finally parked myself in the middle of Market Street. I took out the two dollar safety scissors I bought, being the only ones I could find for a reasonable price, and began working on the cardboard to bring down the size.
Of course, I had parked myself between a shoeshine booth surrounded by small cardboard signs demanding money if you stopped at looked at anything, and the guy with the huge placard demanding that everybody stop with all the illegal fornication. Subsequently, I got a lot of passerby who were suddenly very interested in my project. A couple stood just behind me watching me whittle away at the cardboard, trying to trim down the width and length.
�Can I help you?� I finally asked.
�Oh, no,� the man replied. �We were just wondering what you were protesting.�
�Postal regulations,� I responded.
After an hour of trying to cut through thick cardboard, I finished repackaging the entire thing and sat down, tired, overheated, hungover, and out of breath, arm hanging over the top of my box. A guy in a stylish trench coat and tie walked by sipping his coffee and dropped 35 cents on top of my bag.
I kept it.
And the repackaging worked. The postage fee went from over a hundred dollars for shipping, down to nine dollars and 78 cents.
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It�s been a while since I�ve mentioned my father, who is slowly recuperating, but still has setbacks. For some reason, his right hand swelled up to nearly a fourth larger size than his left, and since his hospital visits are free, the doctors don�t seem all that interested in investing a lot of time trying to figure out what�s going on. Instead they merely prescribe more pills, which he hates taking.
I�ve been so busy with other things that it�s difficult to try and plan any kind of excursion, and besides, he�s not an easy man to plan for. He�s not interested in anything that costs money, but he�s not active or healthy enough to do any of the free island outings. About the only thing that we�ve been able to do together are outings to the local cheap-o movie theater. It�s close enough to both of us so we can get there quickly, spend two hours together, and then I can drop him off and go to work. It also has matinee prices of 50 cents per ticket. That�s cheap enough where it doesn�t seem to him that we�re being wasteful with money, though he doesn�t really have any interest in movies.
I on the other hand, love this place. A weekday matinee isn�t terribly filled with people and the theater, surprisingly enough, isn�t a total dump. It�s too bad my mom doesn�t live here, because she and I often enjoyed going out to see a show, even if it was one we suspected would be lousy, just so we could spend some time together. And she�s a little more open-minded about movies. I still wouldn�t be able to get her to go see a zombie movie (though I was this close to getting her to go see Bubba Ho-Tep on her birthday), but I did go with her to Batman Begins and X-Men 2, both of which she liked.
But I digress. My father doesn�t even know anything about movies. No favorite actors, no opinions on genres, complaints about movies that are too long or too loud. Over the years I�ve tried to show him things that I liked, trying to figure out his tastes.
Brazil and O Brother, Where Art Thou? were too confusing (Remember, this is a guy who had brain cells swell and burst, so it�s a valid complaint). Spider-man 2 was �interesting,� but he got tired of all the fighting. He was noncommittal about The Corpse Bride but hated the Wallace and Gromit movie. Two days ago, I suggested Walk the Line.
After explaining what it was centered around, he was still indifferent. �Well,� he said, �I did always like Johnny Cash�s music,� (which was surprising for me to hear, as I�ll I remember him ever listening to was classical) �but he�s such a fundamentalist Christian, and that just turns me off.�
�Well, actually,� I said, �he�s dead. So it�s safe to say that he was a fundamentalist Christian.�
I guess that logic worked, as he agreed to go. And like I said, one of the reasons he�s willing to go here is because it�s cheap. But I also know the only way places like this survive is through concession sales with popcorn and soda and the like. Their prices are cheaper than the first-run theater I went to with my mom, and I�m happy to do my part to keep them in business.
Jeez, that�s a whole lot of back story. Anyway, with him knowing about the problem I�ve had with my car, what with the bumper getting plowed into and somebody breaking into it with a screwdriver and removing all my personal items, both of which are expensive enough for me to not be able to take care of while still cheap enough to not cover the deductible needed from my insurance, he said he�d like to pay.
How pathetic are you when somebody feels the need to cover your 50-cent ticket?
Don�t answer that.
He bought the tickets. I went, as usual, to the concession stand to get the large popcorn and soda. That, he let me pay for.
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Finally, thanks to Idiot-milk who sent me burned CDs to play at my punk rock DJ night. She also included a huge box filled with candy and random crap like silly putty and a Pokey figure from Gumby fame. There was also enough Girl Scout related items that if our house got raided, I�d probably get some serious interrogation.
She said she couldn�t notice that I�ve had �a time� lately, and sometime receiving random crap helps. She was right. And though I�m not much of a sugar person, I ate every last bite-sized candy bar and an entire bag of jolly rancher jellybeans in the span of seven hours.
It�s impossible to feel sorry for yourself while eating a fuckload of candy and listening to James Brown. The only thing is, I may now have to break my other collarbone just for weight-loss purposes.
