Just A Really Nice Moment

 I was driving the tots to their respective schools this morning -the 8 yr old goes early for gymnastics, and the 3 yr old can be dropped off at daycare at 8m -when they started singing a song from the recent Disney movie, Turning Red. Well I hopped on board and started singing and they started booing me which only made me sing louder...when George Benson's version of This Masquerade came on the radio. So I turned it up and sang along despite their protestations. 

And for some reason it was just great. The kidding with the kids and the great guitar and voice of Benson on that opening two chord vamp was...just great.

And while I usually hold myself in low regard, I started to think about when I first got into that song, probably around 1996. I remember renting a cassette from the School of Music library at Ohio University and trying to play from the sheet music. And while I'm no jazzer of any repute, I listened enough to be able to appreciate it, and dammit that oughta count for something.

Why Plan For the End of Life When You Don't Die?

One of the benefits of rising at 4:40am everyday is getting KQED on the drive to the gym.

Michael Krasny is a great host and a better interviewer. And he's  an Ohio University graduate I might add.

This morning the topic was end of life care. You can listen here

Well this doctor, a very patient and intelligent sounding fellow, used this word I love: finite

I love that word.

He said our lives are finite.

Now most of you don't believe that shit for a second. Much less two seconds. No most of you believe that we are eternal. You equivocate on death. Yes, you. If you ask me to define death I do it thusly: the cessation of (individual) life.

I get it. Death reeks of finality. Stinks to high heaven (pun intended).

Now you'll come at me with some talk of "oh earthly death and earthly material matters and oh well all of that is fine to plan for: get a will in order, yadi yada."

But how in the name of cognitive dissonance can you plan for your death when you don't die?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. 

You might know it as John 3:16

I sense no cessation in "everlasting life."

My wife tells me that cognitive dissonance is easy to get around. You just add new beliefs. Or one can rationalize beliefs.

But my thesis is that hypocrisy is unhealthy. Equivocating in letter, spirit, action is unhealthy. Hypocrisy is insidious, it festers. I believe there are collective hypocrisy effects as well. The collective belief that we are eternal has physical, material implications.

To be continued

The 505 - Norman Mailer

ENL 505 - Stylistics
Norman Mailer Assignment

It was just a college relationship in the big scheme of things. A million begin and end every day. But a big scheme of things needs details to matter at all.

Shannon was drunk again but Patty was just as drunk. Mitchell was the third wheel for a while but he loved to drink. Shannon and Patty rode their bicycle of booze all the way to the end of a night that involved stumbling, fighting with calls of “fucking whore” and “fucking asshole,” and the kind of gutless attempt at sex that can only be committed by people so desperate for some version of love or attention or mattering that they are willing to drunkenly fumble around till one pukes out a window and the other urinates the bed.

One time, Carrie, Patty’s roommate, flat out told Shannon that Patty was lying to him, that she’d been calling Josh all summer long and talking to him. Shannon had drank more than a few beers and so told Carrie that he was going to break up with Patty. He drove Carrie home and after he parked, they talked from the front seat of his car about Patty - the kind of person she was, and how it hurt them both. Carrie looked at Shannon and wanted to take a petty revenge on Patty by fucking Shannon, right there in the car if need be. Shannon let it go because he knew, just hours after saying he would break up with Patty, that he couldn’t do it. Even when Patty admitted talking to Josh, through his tears and the anguish in his heart, he couldn’t do it. Patty never even got mad at Carrie because she knew the relationship would never be in danger, Shannon being the way he is. Besides, Patty had to take friends any way she could get them, even backstabbing ones, on account of her fears.

Another time Patty slapped Shannon so hard on his face she left a purple-black bruise like a jellyfish covering his cheek. Patty had played high school softball and tried out for OU but said something about the coach playing favorites or being committed to the scholarships. She had a good arm, so it hurt. But there was nothing he would do, Shannon being the way he was, other than suffer it.

The heavy drinking and fights were almost nightly and the screaming bothered Patty’s roommates. One of the roommates, Rebecca, had been calling home, telling her father it was getting in the way of her doing her schoolwork. At one point, they were in couples therapy at the school’s counseling center. This was before the first break-up. Per the plan drawn up by the therapist, Patty agreed to limit the drinking on weekdays and they both agreed that before even going out to the bars, to come home after a pre-established number of beers. Shannon, excitedly and honestly, expected Patty to abide the plan they’d worked on with the therapist. Then one weeknight out, Patty starts flirting with a guy right in front of Shannon, smiling and bumping his hip as they all played pool. When Shannon said, “it’s time to go, you remember the agreement,” Patty just said, “I changed my mind,” as if she’d told a waiter she wanted the soup instead. Shannon couldn’t fathom what she’d done, what she’d said. Her roommates were there and saw it all go down. Before Shannon left alone in shame, for some reason he felt the need to tell them “I’m not a bad guy.”
            In one sense, it was the beginning of the end, but in the big scheme of things, there never was a beginning to have an end.

***

Word Count: 618

Write: For this assignment, take a brief piece (500-750) you have written and revise/ write in the style of the featured author. In other words, revise so as to mimic the style

of the featured author. You can, as well, compose a brand new piece in this style.

Style: Norman Mailer (specifically, The Executioner’s Song)

Commencement Season

It is Commencement Speech season so…

...Graduates, parents, grandparents, faculty, administrators, siblings, future students, and pets I welcome you to the 2015 Commencement for Our Sister of The Worthless Miracle College!

Please turn your iphones to blare and feel free to tweet, facetime, snapchat, Facebook, and even Myspace…anything to draw the attention away from me. Because if the honoraria is any indication of my worth, then you might as well YouTube some skateboard fails right now. And by the way, how am I not getting an honorary degree today. Did you run out of tassels or something? Just give me a PhD and a parking sticker and we’re all good here.

Before I go any further, like on to a real school, I want everyone to stand and give a hand to the graduates today.

[applause]

Thank you, thank you, they’ve earned it don’t you think? I mean who else could have not been employed for 4 years. Ok, that’s enough, we don’t want them to get bigger heads. It already looks like a Southpark episode down there.

[motions to graduates]

As an alum I am so proud to be back here today; It brings joy to my heart to come back to the place where I learned so much about life: about how to throw up so the RA’s won’t hear me, or replacing bong water without the RA’s seeing me, and something from Psych 101.

I know you graduates will come to appreciate this place too. Your time here will be the best years of your life, mainly because your parents were paying for it. But you will look back upon these four to seven years with great fondness and little money, and maybe even an STD.

But commencement means to begin. We are here today because you are creating a new beginning; A new life with new challenges, like paying your car insurance, and not passing out when you see your first student loan bill, or going on a date that costs more than a twelve pack.

But you can do it. You have been given tools through these four years here. You learned to pick the RA’s lock, steal cutlery from the cafeteria, drink your weight on Saturday afternoons then throw it up on Saturday nights. You’ve got talent! But be forewarned, there will be doubters, naysayers who remember the time you did the walk of shame in different colored socks, or the time you made out with the statue on college green, and how about the time you tried to do a keg stand and fractured your tongue. But just let the haters hate graduates. You’ve got work to do.

Well, as soon as you find a j-o-b, you’ve got work to do. Which will be another challenge. It’s tough out there even though your resume is stacked with obfuscation, duplicity, and other big words. And even though you interned at Gigawhat?! Media last summer learning how to roll joints, fart on cue, and edit cat videos, you could still have a tough time finding g a job. But you will persevere graduates. Did you give up when you failed that BIO exam? No, you bribed the TA with pot brownines and a handy. That my friends is called moxy. Did you give up when Judiciaries put you on probation for imitating a campus police officer at the sorority house? Hell no, you forged a letter from the Sorority president and got back to work on the force. That’s taking the initiative friends! You’ve got what it takes to get a job.

Now you could skip all that and go to grad school but seriously, how many more brain cells can you kill? Graduate school partying makes undergrad look like pin the tail on the donkey. Only in grad school the donkey is real and you literally have to pin a diaper pin to the donkeys testes, while on ecstasy. But maybe you will go to grad school to get more skizzills. It may be good for you to delay something beyond a text that isn’t returned in 2 nanoseconds. You kids and your damn phones…hold on a sec

[gets call on cell]

“Ha ha, yeah right, no hey I’m actually giving a speech here, can I, no not the rotary club, but can I call you back, oh but hey send me those pics, the naked ones. Kay, bye”

[ends call]

Where was I? Keg stands? No, no delaying gratification. You can do that too. When you came here 4 years ago you were a snot nosed punk with dreams of grandeur and a bad haircut. Look at you now, you’ve got a nose ring and a stupid looking hat on and last night you dreamed you came, laude. You can do it graduates. 

And you’ve got support! Parents will you support them?

[raises hands – applause]

Trust me, they’ll support you. “But you’ll have to move to the basement on account of Nanna moving in. And you’ll have to help with the chores and chip in for food and bills and mow the lawn and walk the dog and not eat any of dad’s pickles, you know he loves those pickles. Oh and can you stop and get some bunion cream from target on the way home.”

What I’m saying is, buck up, get out there, take some chances, take some risks, live a little; you don’t need support, you need backbone. And you’ve got it. Because I saw you steal it from the gross lab.

So take that stolen backbone and get out there and make your mark on the world. Don’t settle, unless they just have too much evidence against you, don’t take no for an answer, unless there’s a restraining order, don’t give in to fear, give in to your lack of talent though, otherwise you are just wasting your valuable time.

And time is so precious. I mean think back about the last 4 years and how fast it has gone by. Seems like only yesterday you got buzzed on two beers and knew absolutely nothing about sociology or physics. The time has flown by and you can now drink a 12 pack before the game and wax poetic about the Kardashians. Don’t let it slip away graduates. You’ve got to grab life by the balls, and I know you can, because I saw you do it in the gross lab. 

I’d like to end with a little story. It was my junior year and I had a crush on Jamie Lee who lived across the quad. I’d heard that she had broken up with her boyfriend so I asked her out. She laughed in my face and mocked my acne. But you know what, I got some clearasil, worked out all year and then saw her at a party senior year. I said “remember when I asked you out and you laughed in my face?” She said “I do and this is my boyfriend Hans from the hockey team who will now commence to beating the shit out of you.” And Hans did beat the shit out of me. But you know what, I met my future wife, a nursing major at the time, in the emergency room when they put my nose back on, so it all worked out.

And it will all work out for you graduates. As soon as you put your damn phone down…

[dials out]

“Hey I just got those pics. Send me the other ones, with the mules and the twins.”

[thunderous applause]

Comedy Writing Secrets by Mel Helitzer

I am enjoying Comedy Writing Secrets by Mel Helitzer. He taught a comedy writing class at one of my alma maters, Ohio University.

There are some assignments in the book like:

Change, add or delete one letter from the following words and create a definition.

Foreplay
Sarcasm
Inoculate
Hepatitis
Libido
Ignoramus

I came up with:

Fourplay – getting ready for an orgy

Scarcasm – adding insult to injury

Dinoculate – vaccinate a T-Rex

Shepatitis – dog disease

Glibido – a desire for phony retorts

Ignoranus – don’t mind the asshole

Or what is called a simple-truth gag (playing on literal meaning).

For the following:

Are you free tonight?

                No, twenty bucks an hour or $50 for 3.

                Call me Shannon tonight.

                Close, I’m dirt cheap tonight.

                No but we can base it on a sliding scale.

                But I’ll be back in prison in no time.

               

My girlfriend was faithful to the end.

                I just wish she would have been faithful at the beginning.

                Yeah, the end of the bed.

We never serve women at the bar.

                Unless they have a net.

                You have to order them at a table.

                We’re not cannibals you know!

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

                So Jesus  is beside himself.         

Judge: The court awards your wife $200 a week for support.

                The Tony awards would have been much more.

What you got?