Adios

OK, Ultimately I've decided to start a new blog. If you are one of my former readers and want to read the new blog drop me a line for the URL.

Thanks,

J

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I'm back on the tentative tip. I miss this exercise profusely but the last few years have been a deeply personal and somewhat tragic time and writing became a low priority. I'm curious who, if anyone, reads this blog these days.

Ben walked on despite his exhaustion. Today was especially hot. It was miserable in a way only a crowded city could be at the height of summer. This city was certainly crowded and summer was flexing her muscles this day more than Ben could remember feeling in his 24 years. If the heat wasn’t overbearing enough, the knowledge of what the next few weeks had in store was a heavy burden to carry. The sun blazed off the asphalt and reminded Ben of an old saying, but sunlight isn’t always the best disinfectant.

This journey took Ben through what surely must be Chinatown, although it also looked Korean. He’d have to research this later. The sidewalks were lined with vendors selling everything from movies to deep sea carcasses. As he weaved through the open air markets, he saw things that would offend any first world palate. Eels, eyes, genitals, these were all fair game for purchase and consumption. Surely at the epicenter of first world capitalism, no one was buying this to feed their family. Ben became nauseous.

It was not the first time his stomach protested today. Earlier he found himself wandering around Battery Park gripped with anxiety and fear. He went to see the one site he absolutely couldn’t miss on this trip. Yet when he craned his neck to stare up at the Towers, he knew immediately he could never bring himself to enter them. He also knew he couldn’t do the one thing every fiber of his being told him was the moral, just and appropriate thing to do. As much as he wanted go to Time’s Square and scream “the end is near” he also realized he would just come off as another schizophrenic seer. Those actions could set off a chain of events possibly more tragic than the ones already set into motion.

Ben had to find somewhere with a bathroom and AC. The heat was too much for him, as was the weight on his shoulders. As he sprinted past a store front, he caught a few seconds of a song. He remembered it well as one his father loved. It had something to do with faint transmissions and one-armed scissors. What was crystal clear were the shouts of “get away.” Those pleading words brought back flashes of how his parents died and brought his anxiety to an all time high. Whatever his assignment was, he knew it didn’t involve stopping the hand of history. Perhaps failing just this one time would be worth the repercussions.

Happy birthday Anne Frank. By my math you would have been 80 today.
It seems we have such a fickle memory for things as a nation, people and species. Granted we cannot become fixated on the past and let that hold us from the future, but we also should not be so quick to jump from one crisis to another. That is the world of cable news. One week it is swine flu, the next it is the economy and then its Sarah Palin and David Letterman going at it. I barely remember a world before 24 hour news coverage, but that doesn’t stop me from longing for it.

So is it perception that we “move on” so quickly these days? I doubt many people will remember the shooting this week at the Holocaust Museum, much less the Holocaust by next June. I think Mel Gibson, that wacky Bishop who was just un-ex-communicated and the Iranian president Beardonotiewearamahjad need to get three riffles and shoot each other in the head. Is that too harsh? The fact that we live in a world where PETA can compare factory farming to the holocaust or W could claim Saddam was another Hitler is revolting. I’m sure Saddam was an evil tyrant, but (hopefully) Hitler was one of a kind.
The one visit I made to the Holocaust Museum taught me two things. The first is that the deli out front is amazing. Why such good food is available at such a sad place is confounding and the second is that whatever we are told about the Holocaust does not so it justice. At one point during the tour, my wife and I had to leave. We vowed to come back later (which we did) but what compelled us to leave was the disrespect of the visitors. A group of African American school kids were joking, laughing and being vocal and obnoxious. I would hope no one would ever go to the Slavery Museum with that attitude. It was at that moment I realized that time may heal all wounds, but it can also cover up what should never be forgotten.

I don't know if it just me or this state but sometimes my life is an exercise in contradiction. I do know this much, I can probably safely say I'm the only person on planet Earth who spent long night drinking Sangria and shooting a .22 into a retention pond and then got up to commute in a Prius blasting ABBA. I could be wrong.

The local news rag once famously declared in front page bold type it had “100 Years of Pubic Service.”
Yup, you read that right. Pubic. It was on Leno and everything. So now seems as good a time as ever to explore blogging again. Maybe, maybe not. I miss the opportunity to write any chance I get. Doing it on the regular was taxing though. Internal dialogue, monologues about current affairs and general rants seemed like a waste of my time and energy (and yours too dear reader).

Now more than ever, it looks like newspapers might not make it. I use to curse those lucky enough to get paid to write. I almost got onboard that grave train twice. The first opportunity was working as a writer for my hometown paper. The only problem was the position was for a sports writer. I probably know more about arthroscopic surgery than football. Not to mention spending my weekend surrounded by drunk rednecks, mosquitoes and fighting a raging case of swamp ass just to write about something I care not even a tiny bit about would have been hell. Plus ,I let my radio station manager convince me to stay in broadcasting. Um, yeah, the choice between radio and newspaper is like picking between the Titanic and the Hindenburg. It was pretty clear where both were heading, even way back in 1997.
Flash forward to a few years later, the hometown paper interviewed me several times for an online editor position. It would have been the perfect job for me. I had masters in Technology and an undergrad in English and Journalism. Yes, I’ll wait while you critique my writing style and grammar. OK, glad you are back. I don’t know who finally was hired. By the time I was no longer in the running, I had to stop caring. It is pretty heartbreaking to get rejected by a paper best suited as birdcage lining, but I was. At least we now get to hear all about this lady and her cats. Fingers crossed this corpse of a publication will drop long before the New York Times. I always wondered what happened to “Mimi” from “The Drew Carey Show.”
http://www.staugustine.com/staff/heymen-anne.shtml

Everybody here comes from somewhere that they would just as soon forget and disguise!

Today on my lunch break, as I tend to do on every lunch break, I sat in my car and listened to music. It helps me escape for a few minutes from all the noise and chaos that goes hand-in-hand with being a grown up *. “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” popped up on the IPod and it got me drifting back in my nostalgic reflection. I can honestly say REM has always been there. Well at least since I discovered them somewhere around middle school.
They were the first band I allowed myself to like without anyone telling me I should. Believe me there were no kids pushing “Life’s Rich Pageant” on me in 5th grade. I just discovered the band. I don’t honestly know where, but in the world of late 80’s pop crap I came across something worth salvaging. It was what I imagine being in a fraternity is like. I knew something few other people around me discovered. Of course it didn’t take long for that to change, but there is still a passage way or two I can duck down in their REM repertoire.
Stipe et. all was there on an otherwise lonely trip to go skiing with my scout troop in middle school. A trip, I might add, in which my step-dad adopted the other more athletic kids to hang out with. REM was the inspiration for countless conversations with nerdy strangers who were also in on the secret. A few years later they even won me some points with the cool kids. They were also there when I had my first job pushing carts around a Publix parking lot and some douchebag surfer boy nearly ran me over while blasting “Losing My Religion” out of his I-Roc Z (or some other equally offensive vehicle.)
REM was right there on my t-shirt when one of the too cool for school stoner kids told me how much they dug “Radio Song.” Of course I snidely remarked “that’s my least favorite song on my least favorite album.” It wasn’t necessarily true, but it did end the unwanted conversation. REM was in the background of a pizza joint in Gainesville when I realized for the first time how much cooler college would be than high school.
REM was definitely there a few years later when I snuck backstage at the Orlando show reluctantly following my friend Jesse who claimed to know Stipe personally. To my surprise, he did. They were also there a decade later I was the only person standing during “Life and How to Live It” while every other soul at the show made a beer run. REM was there when I would hide on the back porch to escape my fiancé who couldn’t stop dragging me into an unwanted argument. They also created a perfect song to encapsulate that destructive relationship months later when they recorded “Leaving New York.”
REM carried me through the W era with songs like “Bad Day” and “The Outsiders.” During the “Up” era I lived alone in a strange city and spent most of that year with the CD on repeat. I didn’t have cable or internet, but I did have that one really spectacular album. With any luck REM will be there at my memorial service with “Pilgrimage” to send me off into the great unknown with some PowerPoint slide show. With any luck there are plenty of great songs and albums left from REM, but I can honestly say no other artist has so thoroughly created the soundtrack to my life.
*Which for the record totally sucks and I do NOT recommend it

Oh Seattle. I guess it is time I officially broke up with you. I still love you from afar. Yes our love has always been that of a Morrissey tune. Perfect. Unconsummated. Distant. Unacknowledged.

It has rained here for 2 weeks straight and I can not take it anymore. Sure it gives you your super cool post-grunge edge. People sit around and sip coffee with names the rest of us wouldn’t recognize. Somewhere in all that fair trade liquid sunshine must be some Paxil because otherwise I don’t see how you stay afloat. Each day I’ve starred into the steel gray sky here I’ve realized I could never pull this off full time. Throw a couple of Elliott Smith CDs into the mix and I’d be a goner.

I guess we’ll never know now will we.

I wonder if there is a pill that helps you stop giving a damn. I seriously doubt it, but some days I’d gladly take it. I can get distracted for a little while by a new car, job, or a really cool pair of sneakers. These things never quit fill the hole. I’d imagine this is how people get hooked on something like heroin. It probably fills that gap…for a little while. Then you’re right back to square one and a drug addict. I’d imagine ditto for alcoholism or gambling. There’s always something that appears to give a little relief…at first.

I guess it is in quite moments like this when no one is around and I’m not distracted by work or the needs of others that I get reflective. The days of existential crisis are few and far between lately. I thought for a while they may have gone away all together. If only I’d get motivated, I could lose 30 lbs, write the great American novel and get proficient on the guitar. The excuses for bowing out on these feats are numerous, but the most glaring reason. The one reason that fire never gets lit. The tiny little nugget of truth is this…these are only distractions. I’ve gotten pretty far along all those roads and realized being a skinny published author who can play a mean guitar isn’t really going to change a whole lot.

I know I’m not alone on this, or else every therapist would go back to school and learn to fix car engines. Every pharmaceutical company would shut its doors. Every bar would sit abandoned. No songs would be written. Emo kids would join the debate team, fat people would stop eating sugar, George Carlin would cease to be funny, tobacco crops would dry up and irony would be stricken from the dictionary. If it helps you sleep better at night, then just go ahead and pretend this in my problem and not yours.