Sympathy? For this guy? |
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Hi.
I'm J.
First off, about the byline pic: I don't like it. Makes me look like I'm soft, weak, passive. A wuss. I regret letting them run it. Admit it, my pic resembles someone you would flake on, right? Pathetic. I'd flake on me. And I wouldn't even expect myself to punch me in the neck the next day for doing it. Come on. Confess. I look like the kind of guy who wouldn't make a stink if I got stuck with the tip, no? That pic totally screams, "Don't worry, fellas. I got it this time." doesn't it?
I hate that pic.
Why did I pick that pic? Why didn't I use the one of me biting the head off of a squirrel? It's terrifying. The little squirrel head is crammed into my mouth as I pull the body away from it, flesh and vein stretched to its maximum extent, just before it gives and tears apart. A stripe of blood paints my lower lip and chin, running onto my "MeForPresident" T-shirt, which, coincidentally enough, depicts a picture of me biting the head off of yet another squirrel. My eyes are locked in a piercing death stare that says, "Back the hell off! ALL of you are squirrels to me!"
Oh great. Now I'm pissed off. Figures. Happens all the time. I mean, I'm not always pissed off, but I usually am. Give me one good reason not to be. Rainbows? Rainbows, you say? Ha! Screw 'em. Flush all the rainbows and all the smiling children and all the gourmet imported organic free trade coffee in the world right down the fetid drain. I'm not afraid to admit it: I'm a grouch. It seems as if everything pisses me off these days: iPhones, grocery stores, holidays, chickens, issues, candidates, batteries, hand grenades, iced tea, business cards, people over 21 who have birthday parties, non-football fans who win office football pools, banana flavoring, Justin Timberlake's career, sleet (what the hell is sleet, anyway?), unfrozen intellectual cavemen, people who whistle in elevators, people who talk to me in elevators, elevators, and this...
So a couple of weeks ago my older brother buzzes through town. Because he has this insane need to flash his hipster badge, he makes dinner reservations at this swankhouse in the heart of Portland's aesthetic-intellectual-highbrow-yet-alternative-but-really-neo-yuppie district in some unfounded attempt to expose my poverty. It's my brother, wife of my brother, friend of my brother, wife of friend of my brother, and me. My wife stayed home because she is smarter than I am.
A female jazz vocalist sings to an audience of none under the lilt of soft piano as we tuck into our table at the center of the dark dining room. To my chagrin they order a pricey bottle of wine. I decline to partake because I don't want to drink my paycheck in one glass.
Noticing this, my brother leans into me and whispers, "Don't worry about money. I can help." and I feel like plunging a fork into his eye.
"Naw, man," I say. "I'm on an anti-wine kick since the grape-picker strike."
Note: As far as I know, there's no grape-picker strike. This is what you laymen might refer to as a lie. Losers use them on occasion to throw the scent off their tail.
But it works. The table sends the wine back and orders cocktails. I stick to beer for no other reason than frugality. In continuance of this thrift trend I order a fifteen-dollar appetizer salad as my entree, hoping I can Jedi mindtrick the table into thinking that I'm just not that hungry. No go. All through dinner people keep offering me "tastes" of their food, thinking that I am a step away from being featured on "Feed the Children".
"Here, J, you must try a sliver of my sixty-dollar rack of lamb."
"Oh, J, please take some of my forty-three dollar free-range chicken. I can't possibly finish."
"This is the best thirty dollar pasta in town, J. Take half of it, I beg of you."
I sit before a precession of appetizer plates filled with delicacies donated from other people's meals. I'm dying to dive into them, to devour these uptown morsels as if I had been adrift on a makeshift raft with nothing but rotten coconuts and a volleyball over the past three weeks, but I play cool to save face, only nibbling off of a dish here and there as I feign interest in a conversation that's not only out of my league, but perhaps in a different galaxy altogether.
Friend of Wife of Brother: Our new au pair lives in the guest house. She's teaching Piper and Dakota conversational French.
Wife of Brother: Ours enjoys Hendrix so much that she said she'd take care of him for free. We pay her of course.
Friend of Brother: I support Candidate Four in my spare time.
Brother: Even with his stand on That Controversial Issue?
Friend of Brother: Because of his stand on That Controversial Issue.
Wife of Brother: Summering in Mexico?
Friend of Wife of Brother: No, Thailand this year. We're part of the "Plant Palms for Peace" campaign.
Wife of Brother: Isn't that where your sister adopted from?
Friend of Wife of Brother: Poor Sunee hung onto a tree for nine days after that terrible tsunami. Dear Hubby used his connections in Paris to help her land an audition with the World Famous Ballet Academy.
Wife of Brother: We're sponsoring a public school teacher and his family.
Friend of Wife of Brother: We're building a library in Cambodia.
Brother: Have you read that book that no one knows about except for people who are extremely cool?
Friend of Brother: Of course, mine was signed personally by Brilliant Author at an engagement run by the company I work for three days a week and make $$$.
Wife of Friend of Brother: Piper about threw a fit when Jamie Lee Curtis couldn't design her new rumpus room, but we flew in an expert in Pediatric Feng Shui and the director of TOY STORY to finish the space.
Wife of Brother: Hendrix will be attending The Gene Simmons School of Pretentious Arts in the Fall.
Brother: Don't you agree that Band X is the only 
What they don't know is they're BOTH assholes. |
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truly ambitious rock project at the moment.
Friend of Brother: What about Band Y?
Brother: Please.
Friend of Wife of Brother: Have you seen that new film that's so avant-garde and pretentious that you have to be invited to it?
Wife of Brother: I was sent a copy. I'll wait for the hype to die down so I can screen it on a clean palate.
Talk about humbled. The last vacation my family and I enjoyed was to my mom's farm in Washington State. We drove. The car only broke down twice. I helped her fix a fence. As for supporting Some Great Cause, we did give a couple cans of organic pumpkin pie filling to a local food drive the other day. I also donate plasma as often as I can, or at least when we're behind on the electric bill. And as far as the accomplishments of our children go...well, I can tell you this: My seven-year old could kick the crap out of your nine-year old any day of the week, and my two-year old figured out how to break out of his car seat recently, and no longer paints his crib with his used diapers.
A galaxy apart.
As I sit, drowning in the conversation, I try my best to keep pace by Rolodexing topics in my head that might win the table over: What should be done with the elderly? No. Too Nazi. How come we don't see George Burns much anymore? Oh, wait. Right. Dead. The Gout epidemic? Think, man! Why not 4-ply toilet paper? Best so far...Nose hair? No! Just say something!
Me (finally, timidly): I saw SQUID AND THE WHALE on television the other night.
Screeeeech!
Cue that ridiculous record screeching sound byte that they use during previews for cookie cutter "fish out of water" films starring The Rock or Queen Latifah as everyone stares at me like I was just thawed out from some Arctic Circle ice age glacier. I feel that condescending vibe radiate from their stares as they mentally wish me wrapped up in some conversational doggie bag and left in the back of the fridge for a decade.
Friend of Brother: Did you just bring 2005 into 2007?
That's when I realize that not only am I financially broke, but culturally as well. That's when I realize that the "cool" world has passed me by. I am no longer on top of my game. Not as of that moment, though, but probably for like five years or so. Fatherhood has shaken my priorities, and while the well-informed keep tabs on the Coen Brothers and Wes Anderson, I log my viewing minutes under anything with "Sesame" and "Street" in the title, or anything that begins with a hopping table lamp in the opening credits.
I don't know anything about anything that was going on anywhere at anytime for any reason, and in that picosecond of truth lay an eternity.
As the rest of the table guffawed at my faux pas, I fixate on a tiny speck of matter that materializes in front of my face. Thank Jones! A savior! I know it immediately as my escape vortex: The place I like to go to when I need to get away from situations that I cannot solve. It is here that my best ideas often come from, like meat staples to help sloppy sandwiches stay together. This is where I store memory, triumph, nightmare, and epiphany. I poke a finger into it, tear the hole bigger, and skee-doo like Blue into the thing, leaving my dinner partners behind to discuss the sequel to that documentary about the people who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.
As soon as I land in my escape world, I'm not surprised to see it has taken form in a row of tree-lined brownstones full of children and puppets. It is tranquil, sublime, happy and breezy. It is a child's fantasy come true, yet it is the very adult prison that had taken me out of the fast lane. I feel angry to be here; uneasy and frustrated. I have jumped out of one frying pan only to land in a deep fryer. This place is my enemy. This place has held me captive. This place is an evil place. That's when I see the nine-foot yellow bird half a football field away, pacing toward me with a directness that cannot be ignored.
"Wanna sing the alphabet song?" Big Bird asks, a wry smile cut into his beak.
"Can the smalltalk, Bird," I answer. "I know you've come to kill me."
With that his eyes narrow to reddened slits as he footclaws the pavement, readying his charge. "So be it."
It was the realization of a dream that I'd had since my fledgling youth: Big Bird was trying to kill me, or kiss me, or both. He would chase me all over Sesame Street, lust in his eyes, hatred in his heart, and I'd flee like a Pomplonian bull dodger until I awakened in a pool of sweat with yellow feathers in my mouth.
But he made a mistake this time. Like Freddy Krueger, Big Yellow only had the edge over me while I slept. But this is a daydream, and I hold sway over this world. As he approaches, I slowly reach over my right shoulder and behind my back, where I have ensheathed a Hattori Hanzo-wrought samurai blade. In one right-to-left ascending diagonal sweep, I pass the blade cleanly through the lower trunk of the mutant bird's neck. Its beaklips purse as if to "ooo" a sudden surprise, and its eyes pop and bug in sheer terror as the head finds itself detached from the rest of the body.
Like a mighty redwood felled in the forest, the head-heavy neck falls off to the side, much to the shock and horror of the other muppets. Just like that, I bury the nightmare of my youth. All is quiet for a moment, as a two-foot spray of puppet blood fountains from the yellow freak's neckhole. The decapitated thing buckles to its knees, then teeters forward to rest and bleed out in the middle of the road.
First on the scene is The Count. "One! One dead monster bird! Ack, Ack, Ack!" and with that he sinks his face into the open wound and begins to gorge on bird blood. I let him enjoy his meal for a moment, for it will be his last. I then cut him in half widthwise, like a Ginsu through a tomato. Undead, my ass. I snatch off his monocle and slip it into my pocket. Always wanted one for some reason.
I 
Rest in pieces. Now give me my life back! |
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then wipe the bloody blade on my sleeve and return it to its house. "Bring me the one called Elmo!" I scream as I stand my ground. The neighborhood beats to their homes in haste. I case the block for signs of movement, searching out a new victim, but only quiet prevails. Timid eyes bead down on me from upstairs windows. Faces stare through curtains in the dark. Man and puppet make their peace with Jim Henson as they count out the final minutes.
Then faintly, but with growing sound, I hear a marble-garbled deepish voice singing "C is for Cookie" around the bend at the north end of the block. Moments pass, then a blue-furred googly-eyed cookie tweeker innocently corners and approaches with an air of absolute aloofness as he sucks down an oversized Nutter Butter. As soon as he sees me he knows that it's over. His jaw drawbridges open, crumbs tumbling from his lips as he freezes in his mortality. Before his cookie hits the pavement I mindthrow a concentrated heat at him that bursts him to flames like a hamster in a microwave. He burns to charred dust. 'C' is for cremated.
Once again I throw my face into the sky and call out my foe.
"Ellllmooooooooooo!"
Finally, there is a rustling from one of the doorways, a few muffled curses, then the door opens and out comes Ernie and Bert, a raggedy red ball of fuzz dragging behind them, pleading for leniency.
"If we give him to you," Ernie questions, "will you leave us?"
"No promises, rubber duckie."
His captors scurry back inside, locking the door behind them, leaving the damned one to scratch and paw at the wood in futility. I close in. He turns to face me, his eyes well with terror tears that mat his fur around the cheeks.
"What have I ever done to you, man?" he says in a broken sob.
I breathe in and out, in and out. It is because of him and others like him that I became so culturally aloof. It is his fault that I've only seen THE LIFE AQUATIC once. It was his fault that I never get to see movies rated PG-13 or above. It is his fault that I don't know what Crispin Glover is up to. And it would be his fault that I won't get to see that movie TEETH when it comes to town.
"Please..." he begs. "Who will feed Dorothy?"
But it is too late. My mouth has already opened, and out from it pours a billion bees which bifurcates the bi-curious beast to bits. Death by the letter of the day: B.
"La-la-la-la motherfu@#er!" I say in my best DIE HARD impression as I turn back on the street, catching the eye of a raggedy green cabbage head that peers out from behind a cluster of garbage cans. I nod to him slightly, sparing my kindred spirit brother the horrors of my wrath. For now.
Slowly the doors begin to open, and residents slowly pour out onto the street. They've had enough of this, and have now armed themselves. Bob has a lead pipe; Telly sharpened his claws; Maria with a baseball bat; Harry carries a club with a rusty nail on the end; Grover pimps a glock; Mr. Hooper rises from the dead and zombie-stares me down like a dirty water hot dog. They weren't going to just sit back and let me slaughter them. Like the ghettos of Warsaw, the prisoners would rather die fighting. I respect their bravery, and so I climb back through the window of my vortex and return to the here and two weeks ago, leaving the residents to fix upon a flashing green cube that suspends in midair like a beacon.
Boom.
I don't see this, but I sense it was that curious Kermit the Fool who finally touched it. It's not easy, seeing green. Sorry Oscar. Maybe in the next, my brother from another Brooklyn mother.
They are just finishing dessert as I return, and are sifting through the bill with the meticulousness of a rat gnawing at a scrap of moldy bread. When it comes to me I pony up my share of thirty bucks, a small dent in the six-hundred dollar namedrop, and pass it on to my brother, who counts us short by seventy-five easy. I don't care. I paid my fair share. I went as no-frills as possible to avoid this very scenario. They finally hook it up, and as they all wait for the valets to roll their hybrids out front I asked them, "Have any of you seen the one about the guy who drops on Sesame Street and slaughters all the puppets?"
Them: What?...No...Is that real...?
Me: Real...? Of course...(in my mind)...It's pretty exclusive, I suppose.
I say my goodbyes, and walk two blocks in the cold to the crappy green battle-scarred sedan that I bought from a former police snitch for nine hundred dollars. As I wait for the motor to warm, I muse my station in life. Should I be this guy who I've become? The father who would rather play with his kids than figure out why Spike Jonze is directing a McDonald's commercial...? Or should I shun my family so that I too can engage others at the dinner table with my cultural verbosity...? Do I really want to hire some lightheaded teenager to baby-sit the most precious human beings in my world so that my wife and I can dine fine, snip cocktails, and see what Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are up to this time on the big screen? Will this night on the town actually be more entertaining than wrestling with my boys or telling them a story? Is there a way to work at both? I don't know. I guess I'll keep my path clear and hang a sign around my neck that says "Work In Progress" until I figure it out.
But not knowing...well, it pisses me off, frankly.
That said, I'll try to relate my life to this site's cause as best I can, even though I don't think I'll ever amount to any type of mainstream movie review master or Hollywood eyespy. I'll leave that to those who appear better qualified. I'll stick to biting the heads off of squirrels, dreaming of giant yellow birds, making up silly songs with my kids while driving to the grocery store, and otherwise pissing myself off at every three ticks of the clock. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pop my hood to see why my car isn't starting. Pisses me off...
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Every other Tuesday
I'm pissed off because you're NOT pissed off. That pisses me off. What else pisses me off? Piss off! Or read this...
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| Jay Ashkinos |
I am an undousable spark; I swear at people in Olde English; I am a phone number on the bathroom wall; I'm shorter than you, but I can kick your ass; I cry at beauty as fervently as I do with sorrow; I have a piece of paper that says I'm smart, yet I lock my keys in my car twice a year. Go figure.
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