This Is Some Glamorous Sh*t, Y'all.

     The following is an excerpt from my book, Making Sh*t Up: An Improvised Life, which no, I still haven't finished and, yes, I am trying to finish. Except that I've been binge-watching all eight seasons of 24, and even for me that's unhealthy. But it does explain why I haven't posted in a while. I'm almost done, I swear. With 24, I mean. Not the book. I'm pretty far along with the book, and what follows is, I hope, a fairly representative sample. Which means that you can basically decide right now whether you want to read it or not. Provided I finish it. Fuck, I'm rambling. Here's the excerpt:

     The first commercial I ever did I was dressed up as a giant green number 5. No shit. The Texas Lottery was launching a new game – or, as some would state it, a new way to take money from desperate people who had a better chance of being struck by lightning while being mauled by a grizzly than they had of winning the lottery. The game was called Pick 3, and some ad guys in a room somewhere, who drank way too much coffee and probably never liked actors, thought it would be a capital idea to dress ten people up in giant, foam-rubber Gumby costumes shaped like numbers. I was the fifth of those people.

Like so. Except I was Number 5. Also, I'm not black.

     I think we shot the commercial on the stage of The Majestic Theater in Dallas. I also thought the Majestic had not been paying its utility bills, because the A/C was off, and it was summer, and I was in a black unitard and wearing a huge foam costume that sealed in, rather than ventilated, heat. I later learned that the producers turned off the air conditioning because it was too loud, and it interfered with the recording of our dialogue. That there were ten of us in suffocating costumes, in an old theater in the middle of a sweltering summer, with no conditioned air, seems not to have bothered – or even occurred – to the director, producer, and ad agency folk. At least, not until a couple of the female numbers started to pass out from heat exhaustion and dehydration.

     I was the “spokesperson” for the spot, which meant I had the most lines. There weren’t many, as this was only a thirty second commercial. But I found it difficult to concentrate, suffocating as I was and about to drown in my own sweat. People who work on commercials very often have to solve problems on the fly, because when ad agency guys think up the crazy shit they want actors to do, they rarely pause in their brainstorming to consider potential problems. Example: Once we all got into our costumes (no easy feat), we soon discovered that mine had a problem. Picture the number 5 in your head. See that straight line across the top? That was resting on top of my head, and my face was poking out in the side wall of the 5. Except the costume was made of foam rubber, and so the top line of the 5 drooped on either side, making me look like a very depressed and sad number. What was needed was something to place on the inside of the top of my costume that would keep the foam rubber straight and true.

     Somebody’s ingenious solution? Glue a piece of two-by-four inside the top of the costume. And it worked.  The top of the 5 stayed straight and true. The problem (only for me, and nobody else) was that the two-by-four now rested on my head. And the costume weighed in excess of twenty pounds. And I wore that costume for ten-plus hours. I still have a groove in my head, in the shape of a two-by-four.

     I wasn’t the guy who got the worst of it that day. The dude who was Number 0 was asked by the director if he’d be willing to try a cartwheel across the stage – because what’s funnier than a cartwheeling 0? As we all wanted to make the director happy (because a happy director might remember you for his next commercial shoot), our intrepid number 0 said yes, he could absolutely do a cartwheel across the stage. So the camera begins to roll, and 0 takes a couple of halting steps (range of motion in these costumes was a joke), and begins a cartwheel, realizing too late that his arms are forced forward because of the costume, and he cannot get them over his head, and so what hits the stage is not his hands but the top of his skull. For one awful second he was frozen in that upside down position, before collapsing in on himself like a jelly donut with its filling suddenly, violently sucked out of it. Many hands rushed to the stage, to see if 0 was still alive, which would determine whether they gave him medical treatment, or whisked his corpse away to a rock quarry somewhere far out of town.

     0 survived the incident, and I think the first half of his failed attempt at a cartwheel actually made it into the final spot. I lost five pounds (mostly water), and required an IV drip to rehydrate, two numbers went down with heat exhaustion, and 0 sustained a mild concussion. All in the name of a lottery commercial.

     See? This shit is as glamorous as you think it is.

This Idea Is So Awesome, My Brain Just Exploded

     Okay, you guys. Hear me out. So, last night, I'm watching the finals in the Men's Snowboard Cross. It's my first time ever seeing this sport, and I literally couldn't look away. In case you never heard of it, Snowboard Cross is a race between six guys on snowboards, on a track that twists and turns, and has bumps and jumps, and it's like NASCAR but without the air and noise pollution. It's also like NASCAR, in that there is the potential for tremendous crashes, that can send snowboarders careening off the side of the mountain into a whole other part of Russia, where they don't even know the Olympics is going on, and they're just toiling away in their little village, and it's cabbage soup again for dinner, but then some dude dressed like a cosmonaut falls out of the sky, and they don't know if he's an actual cosmonaut or a space alien, so they club him to death with farm implements, just to be safe.

     And THAT got me thinking:

THIS

PLUS THIS

EQUALS

     Think of the potential, you guys. How do you make a badass sport even more badass? Medieval weapons. Plain and simple. There's already the element of danger in snowboard cross; now we're going to add the element of "whoever makes it to the bottom alive, wins." It would be just like if Shaun White starred in Rollerball - but the ORIGINAL Rollerball, not that crappy 2002 remake starring LL Cool J and the guy who played Sayeed in Lost. The commercial potential alone would be enough to smack the UFC in the nuts - with a medieval weapon, no less. Who wants to watch nearly naked men roll on the mat with each other, when you can tune in to see American snowboarder Trevor Jacob catch huge air, AND crack his Latvian opponent in the back of the head with his Adidas Skullcrusher Mace, on his way to glorious (if a little bit bloody) victory? Seriously, is that even a question?

     The 2018 Winter Games will take place in South Korea. I'm already lobbying their committee to give this idea some serious consideration. Also, I speak a little Korean, but not much past "I'll have a chocolate donut with sprinkles," or, "What was that shit? It burned the hair out of my nose." But I'm not going to let that slow me down. This is the kind of inspired idea that comes along once in a generation. Or maybe also comes along after not enough sleep, and way too much liquor. Which may or may not also have been mixed with Xanax. 

     USA!

     

An Open Letter To Jack Bauer.

This is NOT an actual photo of me. This is a photo of Jack Bauer. I do, on occasion, stand like that, though. Just not with a gun. Usually I'm holding a latte. Or the remote.

     Dear Jack: I hope this correspondence finds you well. Probably not, though, since at the end of season 8 of 24, you were a fugitive from, like, everybody.  I think even the Amish are after you, at this point. And, if the rumors are true (and by "rumors" I mean the ads for the new season of 24 that aired during the Superbowl, which was lame as shit because the Broncos didn't bother to show up and Seattle spanked them like little babies, and I hope you didn't bet on the Broncos, though you were probably too busy running around and chasing bad guys, and I don't even know if they BET on American football over there), then you are still a fugitive, and you're in London. I'm sorry I rambled a bit, back there. The Broncos just really pissed me off.

     But that's not what I'm writing about, Jack. I'm writing to tell you that, this time around, you need a real partner. I don't know what's about to go down in London, but I want to be there when it does. And please don't let my very minimal military experience, or my complete lack of knowledge about field operations for CIA, or the fact that it took me literally years to figure out what CIA stands for, or the fact that you are a fictional character in a highly-stylized and mostly improbable action drama disqualify me. Please, Jack, hear me out before you blow me off (or blow me up; you do that to people). I think, as partners defending the world from evil, we'd be a great team. For example:

     *You are a highly skilled covert actions operative, with years of experience in the field, in everything ranging from espionage, counter-intelligence, tactical communications, weapons training, demolitions, and hand-to-hand combat. Whereas I know how to walk down a street in Mexico in the middle of the day while really, blindingly drunk, remove a passing woman's straw hat, invert it, and throw up in it without messing up my flip-flops.

     *You are a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules. I once fired a cannon. Not real one, though. It was at an amusement park. I was really disappointed when I found out it was a fake cannon. And, I also don't play by the rules, but mostly because I don't understand them.

  (Like the Chinese board game "Go," which is supposed to be easy to learn, but turns out to be so complicated that all the armies in Asia used to require their generals to play, plus the only time I ever did play it, I thought the board pieces were actually black and white M&Ms, and only after I'd swallowed a dozen of them and my friend was yelling at me in Chinese did I realize my mistake, except I didn't know how to say "I'm sorry" in Chinese, and I also didn't know how to say, "Where the hell is your bathroom, my colon is unhappy." Board games are stupid.)

     *You know how to hot-wire a car. I know about Hotwire.com, where we can book not only flights and hotels, but also rent cars, instead of stealing them. Have you ever tried that, Jack? Have you ever tried just renting a car, instead of busting out somebody's window, lowering yourself down below the level of the dash where the camera can't see what you're doing, and all of a sudden the car just starts up? That is bullshit on steroids, Bauer.

     *We are the same age. Well, I mean, I'm not sure how old you're supposed to be. But the guy who plays you is the same age as me. Okay, yes, he's probably in a little better shape than me at the moment. And yes, I know it's not good when your left arm goes numb after climbing one flight of stairs. Clearly, I need to work on my cardio. My point is, Jack, I feel your pain. (I probably don't feel it for as long as you, though, because I keep a flask on my elliptical. Don't judge me.) We are two hard-charging, rules-not-understanding, experienced middle-aged badasses. Except for the part where I'm not really that much of a badass. And the part where you only exist in television.

     But it doesn't matter. I'm ready, Jack. I'm ready to be your partner in bad-assery. I just need a ticket to London, a gun, some whiskey, my anti-depressant meds, and my reading glasses. Oh, and I need to check my blood pressure every day, usually in the evenings. And seriously, have you ever taken a piss in your life? I mean, I can't go 24 minutes without paying the water bill, so we're gonna need some regularly scheduled breaks in our crime-fighting. Do I need immunizations from Black Death before I come over there? Is that even still a thing, or was that back in, like Game of Thrones days?

     You know what? Fuck it. You've been doing fine without me so far, man. I'd only slow you down. Plus, I have to stop typing now. I'm winded.
   
   
   

     

     

Blog, Motherfu*ker!

Yeah. Okay. You got it.

     I don't blog every day. I have a firm belief that, when you write, you should actually have something to say. By this I mean, you should have a particular subject in mind, on which you have thoughts, deliberations and, yes, opinions. And I don't have that every day. Because some days - most days, in fact - my bandwidth is occupied merely with the sometimes daunting task of existing. Should I get out of bed? Should I shower? Should I eat? Should I shit-can all of that in favor of watching every season of 24, in my pajamas, and only get up from the sofa to go to the bathroom? Should I see just how far I can push my bladder, and try to watch every season of 24 BEFORE I go to the bathroom? Is that even a worthy goal to pursue?

     You see my point?

     I could jump on here every day and literally just write down all the shit that was jangling through my head. The problem with that is, that's not saying anything. The other problem is, if I did that, some of you would require psychotherapy every bit as intense as what I'm getting now. You'd also probably need medication. You'd also probably get a restraining order against me. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "All good writing is swimming under water, and holding your breath." I can't hold my breath that long. Not yet. And until I can, I'm not going to post here every goddam day, just to put words in the ether; there's enough words out here already, most of them not worth our time. 

     My belief is, if you're coming to this space, you think it's worth your time. Hopefully, you think it's worth your thought. I like making you smile, or giggle, or laugh out loud, or spew yogurt all over your iPad. Sometimes I feel the pressure of needing to put another post up, because I'm afraid if I go too long, you'll get bored and go back to watching videos of kittens being cute, or listening to lectures on animal husbandry, or reading anything by L. Ron Hubbard. (That last one keeps me awake at night.) But you need to know right now that I don't think that's a good enough reason to write. You may not get quantity out of me, you guys - but I hope you'll always get quality.

     If that doesn't work for you, good luck with those animal husbandry lectures. 

     p.s. this entry is dedicated to David Underwood. You, Sir, are a motherfucker. And I mean that in the most respectful, loving way you can possibly imagine.

Why You Probably Shouldn't Fu*k With My Family

Because I will drop your own house on you.

And then I will cause the earth to swallow up you and your house. (See that guy? He's your neighbor. He never liked you, either.)

And then I shall heap stones upon the ruins, and speak over the stones an Irish curse, that shall last a thousand generations.

And then I will go eat a sandwich. And drink a beer.

     Dear Person Who Said Ugly, Hurtful, and Untrue Things About A Member Of My Family: 

     You must be feeling pretty good about yourself. Especially after you said what you said in a public forum, and your two or three friends "liked" what you said, and commented on the righteousness of your position, even though not a one of them has a single fucking idea what is actually going on. 

     But you know what I love? I love this pious, self-satisfying quote that you posted on your timeline a little while ago: "The moment you decide to keep a secret from your spouse is the moment you step out of bounds. Marriage must be built on a foundation of complete trust and honesty." I love it, because I hope that what I'm hearing is the sound of you choking on your own hypocrisy, considering that the reason you are currently married to my family member's ex-spouse is that the two of you were fucking each other while they were still married. The irony of posting that platitudinal horse shit should be enough to at least give you a severe nose bleed. (I will pause here, to give you a few moments to look up the definition of "platitudinal." Go ahead. I'll wait.)

     What exactly do you hope to gain out of being ugly? Why is meanness your default position? Were you raised by parents who taught you to "hate first, and ask questions later?" Were you raised by wolves? (Because, seriously, if you WERE raised by wolves, I could almost understand. Wolves don't teach civility. Or vocabulary, or grammar, or anything that would help one to appear even marginally intelligent when using the written word. If anybody asks, you should probably tell them you were raised by wolves.) I suppose, ultimately, it doesn't matter. I can't change your heart on the subject, so instead I'll just tell you what is up. And what is up is:

     I can use words like the motherfucking weapons they can be. My words are arrows, war hammers, swords and cannons. And my arsenal is full. And I'm pissed.

     If you want attention, I'll give it to you. This ridiculous little space is read by thousands of people each month. I'll make you famous. And for all the wrong reasons. 

    Or, you can make a different choice. You don't have to like my family, but you might want to start being civil, if and when it's necessary to communicate. That's something we can all do, isn't it? I think that's the way to go. And, I think I've been pretty clear about the alternative.

     The Irish have a saying: Ná dhéanamh tinn le mo dhaoine.

  

     Translation: Don't. Fuck. With. My. People.

     I'm off for a sandwich. And a beer.

     

     

     

     

     

Turns Out I AM Kind Of Fu*ked in the Head. And That's A Relief.

This is not how I actually pour my tea, though. I'm more of a coffee drinker.

     Major Depressive Disorder. That's what they call it. Say it like a surfer, and add "dude" to the end, and it sounds pretty funny. (You totally just did that, didn't you?) Also, please don't think this is about to turn into a sad, melancholic, "oh-feel-bad-for-me-because-I-have-this-disorder" kind of post. I'm fucking glad as shit about this news. Because it's an actual thing. And because it's an actual thing, there's some actual stuff I can do about it. 

     The first thing is therapy. Now, I'm not new to therapy, but I do believe this may be the first time I'm working with a therapist who knows his ass from his elbow, clinically speaking. He's not telling me to do a bunch of Stuart Smalley-esque affirmations every morning. He's not telling me that, if I just believe in Jesus a little harder, the neurotransmitters in my brain will miraculously reconfigure to make me a better person. (And yes, I once paid a guy a lot of money to tell me precisely that. Or something to that effect. Jackass.) No, we're talking about my actual brain. About how it actually works, and how personality, intellect and self-image are created over time, by nature AND nurture (or lack thereof), and by genetics, and how deficiencies or abundances of one or more chemicals in your brain - sometimes in very specific areas of your brain - can enhance or distort beliefs you have formed about yourself and the world, which can lead to all kinds of things, like bi-polar disorder, or schizophrenia, or panic attacks, or a depressive disorder. It can also lead to really poor decision-making, precisely because the lens through which you are viewing the world is so distorted. So some people cut themselves, and others kill themselves, and then you have the dumbshits like me, who blow up their marriages. Repeatedly. And not even because I was unhappy in my marriage.

     It's because I'm unhappy with myself. Ain't THAT a bitch?

     I really thought I liked myself. Really. I talk like I like myself. I can be as self-deprecating as the next guy, but I don't think I've ever taken it to the extreme. But, as it turns out, I don't like Larry very much. I can actually start processing that now, because of the second thing I can do about Major Depressive Disorder, which is:

     Medication. Ho. Lee. Shit. Where was this stuff when I was thirteen? I cannot begin to explain to you how different the world began to look a month ago when this stuff started to kick in. I am a complete believer in better living through chemistry. Thanks to a pill that I take every day (quite possibly for the rest of my life), the serotonergic neurons of my central nervous system are able to synthesize a closer-to-normal amount of serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of well-being and happiness. No, everything isn't lollipops and unicorns. But it's better. So when my therapist tells me I don't like myself, and why, I can go, Oh, shit. Yeah. I can see that. Because no way could I have seen it before. The really hard thing about my current mental state is, I can see just how well and truly I have fucked up my personal life. I suppose, ultimately, it's better to see the dog shit on the floor, and know you need to clean it up, than just walk around it like it's not there.

     I don't sleep anymore, so my psychiatrist (that's right: I have a therapist AND a psychiatrist, and you don't) prescribed Ambien as well. If you've never used it or heard of it, everything you need to know about that particular drug you can learn in Patton Oswalt's awesome routine on the subject. (You should watch the second half of the video as well, to hear about his second favorite Christmas memory of all time.) Actually sleeping is the bomb. I'd do it all the time, if I could. 

     My point here, guys, is that this is some shit I'm not actually making up. That's a comforting thought, because otherwise I'd be in need of a rubber room, and a sport coat that ties in the back. I'm sure somebody has got one of those rooms reserved for me, just in case. In the mean time, I'm gonna write, and act, and take my medicine. And I'm gonna try and remind myself that I'm not actually crazy.

     Just slightly fucked in the head. And that's a relief.

     

Nobody Look At Me. I'm Writing. In Public.

Or looking at Facebook. Or playing Candy Crush. The important thing is, I look busy and thoughtful.

     I'm trying something different today, something I have always been averse to doing for two reasons. The first is, I'm not terribly comfortable in public spaces. The second is, I've had this tendency to think of people who work on their laptops in coffee shops as douchebags. I recognize this as completely irrational. I'm sitting in a coffee shop right now. Working on my laptop. So either I'm a douchebag (I can actually hear some of you screaming "Fuck yeah!" as you read this), OR there are actually good reasons why people choose to hang out in public spaces and do some work. 

     My problem is, I've never had an office job. (Actually, I've never really looked at that as a problem; I'm talking perspective here.) So I've never had that feeling of being cooped up, stifled, looking at the same cubicle or office walls every day, wishing I could just get out for a while, that I'd be so much more productive and happy if I could work someplace that wasn't HERE. That makes sense to me. It's also probably why you don't find a lot of free wi-fi in bars (because I've looked). 

     My actual problem with trying to work in a public space like this is I'm so easily distracted. Like the man and woman sitting at the table next to me, both in power suits, and when I first got here they were both working on their laptops, and I know they were working because I couldn't understand a damn thing they were saying, because I don't speak Spreadsheets or Power Point or Outlook. But now they're watching YouTube videos, and it's not like I'm eavesdropping, because they have the volume turned up to "Irritating," and I think they're watching every parody of Miley Cyrus' video "Wrecking Ball" that's ever been made ( two gazillion and counting), and now they're flirting with each other, but it's morning, and you're not supposed to flirt in the morning because you have coffee breath. But I notice that they're both wearing wedding rings, so I guess it's okay to flirt with your spouse, even with coffee breath, but then I immediately go to What if they're not married to each other?,  and now I really wish I'd gotten a better look at those spreadsheets, because what if they're hatching a plan to murder their spouses and collect the insurance and flee to Bora Bora? Two well-dressed people like that probably would use one or more applications in Microsoft Office to plan that out, wouldn't they? And they both just simultaneously looked over at me, and now I'm thinking, Shit. They know I know. Now I have to get the hell out of this coffee shop, before I wind up on their Excel Murder Plan.

     This was a terrible idea. I came here to get out of my comfort zone, because that's what you're supposed to do from time to time. And now I'm on the run from an attractive, power-suited, evil business couple, who have obviously added me to their hit-list, and just because I sat at the one table I could find near a fucking power outlet. I should have stayed at home and dialed up this website, which provides you with free coffee-house background noise, which is supposed to boost your creativity, without the risk of overhearing a murder plot, which probably didn't happen and I just made that shit up. 

     I'm not sure. I need more coffee.