“Poets,” by The Tragically Hip. Its a favorite of those of us from Lake Placid, so I decided to clean this one out of the old dust pile of cds at the bottom of my closet back home. Actually, truth be told, the favorite is “New Orleans is Sinking,” by the same band, but considering that song is well over (I think) eight years old, its kinda tasteless to say that’s my favorite, considering the current New Orleans situation.
August 27, 2008, 1:32am:
In a jazz club on Houston and Allen, I’m already driving myself crazy with the thoughts on what I was thinking about a title for this post. Now that I’ve taken so long, I have to waste your time with two sentences of trying to remember.
So: sorry, I was thinking about enriched. Here it is! And I tweet: at a jazz club on Tuesday night-why not?
Tonight was spontaneous: decided to go to the PIT for Comic Book Club to catch up with Tina since I haven’t seen her in forever, and this party moved from there to a jazz club at the aforementioned club, arguing crappy comic art, five of us crammed in a Nissan smoking out of a one-hitter on our way down. Jahfurry is the only of us that I know. The girl is a friend of a friend from home. She’s wowed me, all on a pretense to come to a jazz club and have a listen with a car full of total strangers. In the four years here, I’ve never been to jazz club. Real shame, I like the music.
I’ve been too afraid to head out of my comfort zone; the girl likes going out of the comfort zone hanging with total strangers. Why would she do that? None of the conforming girl exterior would suggest that she would do that kind of thing. I say exterior because she touts she’s in finance, but writes introspective life stories for Blackbook. Just cause she can, and now that she’s gotten this prize she wonders what else she can do with her life, but she’s not dependant on these matters. She’s okay with what she has, so, unlike me, she’s not restless. She thinks she can write at her leisure and it’ll magically see print. Perhaps that’s something I need to realize: I’m trying too hard, which was always a criticism of me, even though I have no problems getting published in a couple of outlets.
So tonight she took a chance and hung out with four total strangers, and I just went with it too. That’s one of the things that I’ve been challenging myself with lately, just going with it and doing whatever I want on any given night after doing the stuff that I should be doing.
I’m listening to this wonderful music and hanging with interesting people on a Tuesday night. I’m just smiling at the entire scene in front of me, there is only about eight of us in the bar. I don’t think the place could hold more than twenty people but there are people smoking outside and women looking in the window and kids playing Frisbee on the Houston median, and “Barricuda,” being played by the band.
That seems to be the goal of this trip around the globe–to be enriched. Everything I’m doing now pushes me to being enriched, and this experience has definitely enriched my life.
A new feature I’m doing here is a weekly round-up of things that I’ve blogged to Tumblr blog, which is really just an collection of articles, pictures, videos, music, events and whatever other bullshit I’ve liked on the web. Below is the result of the weekly gathering of things.
My friend Rick Marshall, formerly of Wizard and ComicMix, is now moving on to work with Casey Seijas at MTV News’ Splash Page. I’m really, really happy for Rick, he’s been nothing but a kindly gentleman, a true pro and a helluva writer, now he finally gets the rewards he should at a place that is a stable working environment. I’m also happy because it’ll mean I get to see him more as he now has to move from Sleepy Hollow into the city.
Last night, Brian and I started a marathon viewing of the cult hit Spaced. People have been recommending it and saying stuff about it for a while, and its something that I’ve been meaning to check out but until last night, never did. During a break, we would walk down to the East River where we talked about girls and their various birthdays coming up. Coming back I refused to go into a 711 because it was descended upon by about ten black and whites, and even though I have no reason to think that I would get into trouble I tend to think that a person who is made nervous by the presence of twenty cops in a 711 at 2am is reason enough for cops to hassle me. So, I didn’t go in but somehow came away with a leather chair. Which is totally fucking rad. Expect a future post on what I think about the series, after I’ve finished it. I’m about three or four episodes through the second and final season.
Tom Peyer linked me to a McSweeney’s post of H.P. Lovecraft’s short-lived career as a copywriter. I especially liked this one:
Caramel Chew
There is a dimension ruled by a blind caramel God-King who sits on a vast, cyclopean milk-chocolate throne while his mindless, gooey followers dance to the piping of crazed flutes. It is said that there are gateways in our world that lead to this caramel hell-planet. The delectable Caramel Chew may be one such portal.
Speaking of copy writing, I finished Mad Men season 1 earlier this weekend. I thought it was intriguing, but very dry, with a premise that isn’t exactly interesting in anyway. I mean a TV show about womanizing advertising men at the dawn of the Kennedy years, and one of them isn’t who he says he is, is not exactly the most interesting premise ever. Then again it was created by former Sopranos producer Matthew Weiner, and considering The Sopranos works on a very tired premise of gangsters and the mob, it became a cultural zeitgeist of character and made the show fresh and original based upon those fresh takes of tired gangster characters. That’s why Mad Men is as good as it is, the characters are intriguing and that continues to go to the old adage of writers its not about the premise its about how strong and interesting your characters are.
This week is a busy one. Tomorrow night, Jahfurry and Josh Bernstein are at the Comic Book Club, Wednesday is my first day of graduate school, and I’ll be going home for the first time this summer Thursday morning to hang with the family before my brother begins the cross country trip to Los Angeles after Labor Day. I guess now I’ll have a better reason to go out there rather than just to go.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngB7WAoP3tE]
The good sir, Brian Heater, has provided us with videos of the Cory Doctorow/DJ Spooky talk last night at the Helen Mills theater. Those who were unable to make it, like me, are now able to view two of the most creatively intelligent and politically correct people on the planet talk such things as civil liberties violations, and using your art to comment on society. I’m not even joking, everyone needs to examine both Cory and Paul’s work, it will open your eyes and it should motivate you to spread their word around as it will make us all better for it. These two are two of the smartest social commentators on the planet and should be given the attention of presidential candidates–they talk about things that matter to creative and free people. So take twenty minutes and let them enrich your life.
Myriad Issues has more on the talk.
For short story writers in his class, the requirement was one story, ten to fifteen pages in length. For people who wanted to write a novel–I think there must have been one or two of these souls–a chapter of around twenty pages, along with an outline of the rest. The kicker was that this one short story, or the chapter of the novel, might have to be revised ten times in the course of the semester for Gardner to be satisfied with it. It was a basic tenet of his that a writer found what he wanted to say in the ongoing process of seeing what he’d said. And this seeing, or seeing more clearly, came about through revision. He believed in revision, endless revision; it was something he felt was vital for writers, at whatever stage of their development.
From Raymond Carver, in the forward of John Gardner’s book “On Becoming a Novelist”. With Grad School starting next week, (I have orientation tonight), I’ve been reading this book to get me in the mind set. I found this book being given away in my apartment building while heading downstairs to meet Bee for a smoke after her date the other night. I think this quote is especially something that I really need to ingrain in myself–the patience with revision, because I hate doing it. I like getting it right the first time, and I often make stupid mistakes because of this mind set.
“Selina said, ‘Being taken out for dinner does not mean that you have to put out for a guy’. ” Bee says this as she walks from her room to the living room petitioning me to look up Mexican restaurants near the Cosmopolitan Hotel.
“I agree with that, but there is a thing that after the third date where you either–”
“Put out or shut up?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, I shouldn’t have to do that.”
“You’re right.”
“Should I wear this dress–?”
She’s wearing a black dress that closes like a bathrobe.
“Yes, you should, because it’ll make you appear like you’re–”
“willing to put out this time?”
“…did I almost say that out loud?”
“Yeah you totally did.”
“Jesus Christ.”
She sighs as she walks out the door. “I just want to get this thing over with so I can come home, and go to bed. Listen to me with my dating priorities…”
A new feature I’m doing here is a weekly round-up of things that I’ve blogged to Tumblr blog, which is really just an collection of articles, pictures, videos, music and whatever other bullshit I’ve liked on the web, and random moments away from the computer.
Welcome. Imagine you are being pushed aside left and right by Mexican nannies with their eighteen-wheeler strollers, corporate powerhouses and Madison Avenue Men who wear pinstriped suits with brown crocodile loafers for no other reason than because Esquire says “it’s the style.” You see, these people in this city are just trying to get ahead in life: to be the first, to be the front-runner, the moneymaker. Fifty years ago, before women were allowed to vote, they would have been the first to be happily content to spend the rest of their lives in the kitchen. Now they overdose on the thought that they can have the lives the men always had. That’s fine, I’m okay with that, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t, but now they make it impossible for guys who don’t match their incomes to have a chance with them. That’s why movies like The 40-Year Old Virgin, and Superbad are as popular as they are. People relate.
Copyright (©) 2008 by David Press.
On the 5 train heading to Brooklyn College, I keep thinking of that opening scene in the first episode of Mad Men, with Jon Hamm’s character Don Draper looking around the bar for influence on his cigarette campaign ad.
The moment was something that I relate to because its something I do. Sit in a quiet place at the bar and look back on all the things around me. People watching, taking nuggets of life, of everything, for inspiration. There are a couple of things that I’ve seen on this ride that are intriguing, and make me reflect back inside.
The beached whales across the row from me, literally in this sense, because they’re talking about their Cuban heritage.
The old man with the FDNY shirt pointing and shaking his head at the Tropic Thunder poster at the 2 transfer at Borough Hall. I wonder what his deal is? Why is he upset by that poster? We got on the train and he starts mumbling to himself. Perhaps he’s a veteran and the parodies of war movies, like that movie, cause him to flash back to seeing his buddies dying. Horrible.
Then there is the tweener with red highlighted hair, filling out forms on the other side of the train. There were only a couple of people on the train before and after DeKalb there is only she and I. I’m listening to Sigur Ros and she’s bobbing her head to something that is probably a bit harder. I’m waiting for her to get off the train to cry.
Why am I going to cry? Because I’ve been thinking a lot about myself these five years after college and the constant shenanigans I get myself in financially, professionally and fortunately those things haven’t leaked into my social life in an adverse way by losing friends. That’s what this birthday has been all about, my friends are the most amazing group of people on the planet and I feel so fucking lucky to have them. I don’t know how I could still be plugging away like I am now, punching the keys like I am in this moment without them.
My birthday party invite on Facebook headlined with: “Let’s all get together in celebration of me finally getting my shit together as I begin my 28th trip around the planet.” And while thinking about these words, and heading down to the place that is one part of the step in regards to that birthday headline, I think about the other things that also round out that headline. Talking to my Dad, telling him not to worry, not give any more money, that I’m going to figure it out. Because I have to take total control, no more crutches, time to make it happen.
All this week, I’ve been more disciplined, focused, angry with my words, with purpose, being tenacious, making choices that are better for me rather than fucking off and doing the social thing. All with a vicious grin of pure fun, and discipline that I feel super-charged. This all began last Saturday, at around 9pm at LeSouk, an Egyptian Restaurant/Hookah bar/night club in Alphabet City.
I had requested a table by the bar, so the party guests that would be joining the five of us after dinner could easily find us. Did we get it? No. They, of course, seated us by the dance floor, where we spent the evening yelling over the music while trying to have a conversation. To say the least, not my kind of place. I detest having to yell over music to talk with someone. The latter statement was essentially the truth throughout the entire LeSouk experience.
There were five of us, but it was originally supposed to be six but BT couldn’t make it up from Baltimore. Scuba, Sureshot, the Singer I’ve been seeing and her friend the Publicist enjoyed our food and drank two bottles of wine and a couple of mojitos. There’s a funny story in regards to the Singer but this isn’t the place for it. We’re not even dating anymore as of this post, she dealt with this via email last night, so I’m not entirely sure the repeating of the story is even worth it. I find myself not caring at all. With mostly my friends telling stories about me, and chatting all kinds of things. The four combined to get me to dance with a belly dancer. (There is photographic evidence of this fact, to which I do not have in my possession. Plus my own camera battery is dead, and I can’t even find my charger).
People began arriving around 11, including Tendency, Signine, Lurie and her friend Fritzy, Nobody Fucks With and his girlfriend came along with Jason. We quickly decided to leave LeSouk for a less crowded, noisy place, as we’re not that kind of crowd. We walked across Avenue B to what appeared to be a corner store, but was actually a bar. There was about fifteen people in there with Golden Tee, Big Buck Hunter, a jukebox, and Atari Space Invaders. This was our place. We all like the idea of a club, but detest crowds, we like to have a conversation where we can hear what the other was saying and don’t like being crowded. Space is needed when trying to get someone drunk for their birthday.
Games of Buck Hunter, catch up (in both the life and the liver sense) were made and it was nice to hang out with people that I hadn’t seen in a long time.
We all split up eventually with the Singer’s sister, who came with Nobody Fucks With, getting sick from working all day. The Singer wanted to take her sister home. I wanted to go with them but another friend was coming down for the Bronx and we decided to stay behind. So, Sureshot, Groucho and I stayed until our friend Brian got there and then we went to meet the Singer at a bar in Turtle Bay, but she had departed by the time we got up there.
This place was crowded as well and went in search of a quiet surroundings, since it was just us guys now. Upon wandering around my old late night haunts while working the graveyard shift, my phone rang at about 3am.
It was Kiel Phegley, he was at LeSouk and wanting to know where I was. I told him to come up to Turtle Bay and come drink with us, and he said he would.
This was massively unexpected but a completely welcome and pleasant surprise. I hadn’t talked to Kiel for anything more than a few emails since he had been let go from Wizard. I hadn’t even seen him since New York Comic Con in April, but found myself exceptionally glad that my wishes came true in my previous post regarding his dismissal those being he would end up at a site or a publication much more appreciative of his talents. I’m happy to say that I’m glad that he ended up with Comic Book Resources.
He arrived quickly at the Pig and Whistle where we closed the bar. We talked comics, San Diego and talked about the shit that had gone down at the Hyatt Bar the Sunday night after Comic Con International closed down.
We were thrown out, and spent the next couple of hours walking uptown, having some forties and smoking joints while continuing to talk about a whole range of things. Comics, politics, and many other things that I was too drunk and too stoned at the time to remember. We all eventually dwindled as we found ourselves near convenient subway stations that would take us each separately home.
I reached my house at about 7am, knowing I had to be somewhere at 11am. I would be there on-time, and I would go through the day still drunk and with the hang over coming around 3:30, where I put head to pillow and slept through to Monday.
I woke briefly in the middle of that night to finally take a look at my computer, and answer various happy birthday wishes. It was then, in the early Monday morning that I said I know the best people on the planet.
I know, I know: who doesn’t say that? But I am one hundred percent convinced of that, the people in my life, my circle of close friends to the people outside that circle that I’ve met through comics and other things are seriously the Best People on the Planet. To the close ones who have been with me throughout my life, who still pull me up and slap me around when I’m either in financial, emotional or creative lows; to the fantastic people that I’ve been able to meet and talk about stuff that I love, like Kiel and many many others, and that wouldn’t have been possible if I wasn’t writing for Comic Book Resources. Also, to the wonderful people that I’ve met through the internet (God, that sounds awkward), who have supported me and read my stuff and liked what they’ve read. You all fucking rule.
So, I want to say thanks to all of you for pushing me every day to get better and pay back all the support you all have given me. I’m where I am today because you all showed support and held me up when I’ve been down, and you all fucking rock for that fact. So, thanks, this trip around the globe is going to be spent showing all of you that I’m worth the support you all have given me.
52. Dear Don Draper, I just started smoking and find that it calms my nerves as well as making me appear mature and sophisticated. I know you’re a Lucky Strike man, but what’s your opinion of Pall Malls?
Pall Mall has a slogan: “Wherever particular people congregate.” It’s fine for the converted, but their campaign needs a punch. Look at the coat of arms printed on the front and back of every package of Pall Mall cigarettes. A Latin phrase on the shield, “Per Aspera Ad Astra,” translates as “Through Difficulty to the Stars.” Underneath the shield, a banner reads “In Hoc Signo Vinces” or “In this sign, you will conquer.” Pall Malls are never uncertain - they’re with you in difficult times and in victorious ones. They’re the familiar something you carry with you or follow into battle. A sign, an honest code. A package of Pall Malls is security in your pocket: always there and waiting for your return, like home, wherever it may be. Pall Malls are a taste of home.
