parkLife

SAAB - R.I.P.

Ok. So not yet—but the forecast is for snow… and lot’s of it. I’ve been deceived before… but this one looks like it’s going to hit. Unfortunately, it’ll be a weekend hit so no fun snowday but still…. enough to go play with my mammoth snow blower and pelt Paula with some big snowballs. There’s even enough snow in the forecast to make a decent snowman. I haven’t made a snowman in years and definitely think Sunday afternoon should be spent making a perfect snowman. Where does one find coal nowadays, anyway?

It’s another one of those not quite cold, now quite warm, miserable gray days – the kind where you’d stay in bed and curl up with a good book and your dog/cat if you knew you could. Unfortunately, you’re forced to be at work, sitting at your crappy Dell running Windows XP writing motions and letters and having phone conferences and putting out fire after fire. Mind numbing boredom begins to set in around 3pm in the post-lunch crash.

I recently watched “Funny People” with Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen. It was good but not funny. It’s one of those movies where after watching it, I say to myself that I definitely could have done better, given the proper effort and resources. It’s really a shame that certain movies are given the greenlight and thrown vast budgets. Somewhere out there, there is a barely employed brilliant writer trying to pawn his/her screenplay off on anyone willing to give a damn and chances are, it’ll have much more effort.. much more passion and way more story and character than 85% of the regurgitated crap that’s being released. Cinema is no longer an art and is now nothing more then a disposable commodity. It’s a shame. And for the few fine examples of cinema that do get made, there isn’t a real effort at distribution or marketing. I still can’t see MOON because no theater would play it around me. It’s only now coming to DVD and thankfully, Netflix is there to save the day. Meanwhile, I can watch Transformers all I want and Michael Bay keeps making movies.

You know what I miss? Good storylines – good characters. I mean the kind of characters where you feel their emotion when watching the movie. You get teary eyed from a few lines of dialogue. Here’s an example:

My dad died almost ten years ago. The dreams are the worst part.
The first few years, I had these dreams where he was still alive,
and we would talk about “wow, you had a close one there. Good thing you
beat that cancer.” I would always wake up feeling so cheated, realizing
that he really had died, and that my subconscious was just playing
tricks on me.
After awhile, I started having dreams where, once again, he was
alive, but in these dreams I remembered being tricked before. I didn’t
want to be tricked again. But then we would talk about those dreams,
and about how this time it was real. This time, he really hadn’t died.
And I would always believe it. I can’t really tell you how I felt when
I woke from those dreams.
Lately, it seems like I don’t dream about him very often. I dream
about work, or my girlfriend; things that are happening in my life
these days that he’ll never get to share in. Every now and, though,
I’ll still have a dream about him. We don’t talk about how he beat
cancer, or whether I’m just being tricked again. We don’t really talk
much at all. Now we just do things together.
Last night we played Super Nintendo.

The first time I read that, I got a great visual image. I took on the narrator’s emotions and I felt what he felt. When I finished reading it, I had a tear in my eye. That’s what is missing from cinema today. Passion and emotion. Now, like everything else, it’s all about the bottom line. How many movie tie-ins can we have? Product placements? If I see another g-d closeup of a glowing apple in a movie, I’m going to bitchslap Steve Jobs. The show on Showtime, Californication—good show.. but enough with the Apples. You would think all of Southern California uses iphones and imacs and macbooks and ipods and NOTHING ELSE.

Anyway, enough about this for now…. if you want to build a better mousetrap…

Bobby is the “quiet type,” hard working coal miner, doesn’t talk much, and CERTAINLY never talks about his past with anyone, not even his family, except his wife.

Bobby was raised as an orphan. Literally, spent the first 16 years of his life, from birth, in an orphanage starting in the 50’s. She told me about how, back then, there were so many kids living in the orphanage, and conditions were so rough, that maybe only 75% of the kids would get even ONE Christmas present each year. On the years when Bobby was fortunate enough to be one of the children who received a present, he was so awestruck at the IDEA of being given a gift, that he wouldn’t tear into it to quickly procure the toy the way most of us did on the Christmas mornings of our youth… quite the opposite. He would very carefully and meticulously undo the bindings, tape, bows, et cetera, then barely unfold the paper away from the gift to look inside and see what he received. Then, he would carefully re-wrap his gift, put the bow back on, et cetera, and take it upstairs and sit it next to his bed. It would sit there for months before he actually got to the point where he would completely unwrap it and PLAY with his toy.

You see, the IDEA of having a gift, something for free and extra given to him, meant MORE to him, brought him MORE joy, than having the toy to play with itself.

Soooo… point of all that is, that saying, I think, hearkens to the idea that you can’t have a beautiful cake AND eat it (which makes it disappear), just like Bobby couldn’t have a Christmas gift AND play with it, which would also make it disappear.

I’m having a kid. Seriously. It’s kind of cool. You’re never really ready for fatherhood. It just kind of sneaks around and bites you in the ass—kind of like this one dog named Pinky.

When I was a kid spending my summers in the mountains, this one house had this nasty ass white dog with a pink nose. All the kids named him pinky. This little bastard would chase kids on their bikes down the street all while nipping at you and biting and growling and scary the ever-loving shit out of little 10-11 year old me. I rode that black and gold BMX faster than it was meant to be ridden just to make it past the little bastard on the way to the lake to go swimming. No one seemed to know who Pinky belonged to. He was just there… and everyone feared him. One summer, my friend and I went riding down Pinky’s street to go swimming….I made it. My friend lost control of his bike and wiped out. In addition to laying in the street with bloody palms and bloody knees, he now had this little bastard dog attacking him. Like the good friend I am, I got off my bike and ran toward the scene to try and help my friend. I ran as fast as I could down the street to get to my friend. However, when I got there …. it was too late. My friend was crying and covered in blood… Pinky was furiously licking my friends face and wagging his tail. No biting. No growling… nothing. You would think this scary ass dog would have eaten my friend by now….but instead, it was licking my friends bloody face.

I never feared Pinky again after that day. It was as if we stared evil in the face and it backed down. The rest of that summer went on by and we still flew past Pinky on our bikes – but we weren’t scared this time. It was as if Pinky and my friend and I had come to an understanding.

The following Summer, when we arrived back at the mountain cabin, the first thing we did after unpacking and having lunch was riding our bikes down to the lake. We rode around… but Pinky was no longer there. We later learned that Pinky was run over by a car some time in the Fall and didn’t survive his extensive injuries.

I’m glad I got to know Pinky when I did… and somewhere somehow as you’re reading this…. Pinky is off—chasing kids around on their bikes and nipping at their feet.

Damn script kiddies—messin’ up my shit.

It’s May. The Spring is here. The flowers are blooming. The birds are chirping and all that other Spring bullshit is happening. You know what else Spring means? Allergies. GubbaJillions of fucking spores and shit flying through the air irritating the shit out of my nostrils and eyes. I look like a fucking coke addict some days when I come to work. Claritin is a myth. I’m averaging a box of tissues every 3 days. I never had allergies when I was younger. Fuck being old. It only gets worse… just wait until there’s arthritis and god knows what growing on my wrinkly old man ass. Well… thankfully I have to report that my ass is doing quite fine and as far as I know, it’s neither wrinkly nor harboring some growth of unknown origins. Spring also means having to mow the lawn. Having lived in a condo for a few years and before that having landscapers, I forgot how much this sucks. No it truly truly sucks. Never mind the fact that the lawn is 75% weed… it is also the kind of weed that release many of the spores mentioned above. So, mowing the lawn is essentially a form of slow and tedious torture wherein I push this brightly colored motorized object in the path of some nairy weeds (and grass) and release the army of spores and filth to assault my nasal passages. And the big payoff at the end? I get to do it all over again a week later. Like I said… getting old sucks. Coming home after dinner on a Friday by 10pm after 2 bottles of wine and finding yourself sprawled out and sleepy by 10:30…. that’s being old. Granted, I usually am in good company when this happens, it still isn’t what you thought you would be doing on a Friday night when you were 23.

Aside from allergies and being old…. I now spend my weekends trolling Home Depots and Lowes for bath fixtures for my bathroom renovation. Now how’s that for an exciting weekend? It was kind of like the time when I found a seller of clawfoot bathtubs and spent about 45 minutes on the phone with him discussing the arrangement of drains and shower heads…... whatever happened to the kid that could talk about punk rock music for 93 mins or the kid that had a vast working knowledge of the porn industry and the key players….. or better yet… the guy that drove a painstakingly-hand-restored bright red VW Beetle (albeit briefly, it was kind of a piece of shit) who then drove the shittiest of them all Chevy Cavalier that was worth roughly $300 only to be replaced by the ultimate in swedish style and speed…...to be ultimately let down and screwed into driving a Toyota Rav4. Seriously, this Rav4 is a major girly SUV. It has the towing capacity of like 1 dead horse. Unfortunately, given my situation, I’m stuck with it…for now. It gets me from A to B and can haul plumbing fixtures like nobody’s business. Soon enough, I’ll buy myself something fun to play with…for now, it’s the RAV.

Strangely enough, I feel young some days… young as in immature…. and then the reality of it all hits you. You have a wife. You have a house. You have responsibilities….you have gray hair (a fuckton of it, actually)... and worst of all… the fear of death. Because that’s what happens… you get old… people around you get old… those people you thought were young and invincible… they get old too.. they get cancer… they die. It’s depressing…. it’s sad… and it’s reality. However, you can always choose to hide from reality under the cloak of not giving a shit.. but deep inside…. you know. They know… we know.

WHERE WERE THE TOUGH QUESTIONS FROM THE PRESS THE LAST 8 YEARS?

Oh that’s right, I forgot, there WERE no tough questions from the press for the previous “President” for eight fucking years. The tough questioner, Helen Thomas, was HIDDEN from view, banished, physically removed and forbidden to even enter the room to ask your retarded ape highness anything.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, not only were tough questions absent, softball questions were asked by male prostitutes posing as reporters, and then the idiot ape would give inarticulate, rambling, crack head non answers, peppered with giggles and smirks and unfunny jokes all while thousands were dying horrible deaths.

Hey all you hard hitting, objective, concerned members of the press who are hitting President Barack Obama with gotcha questions, WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU FOR THE LAST 8 MISERABLE WRETCHED YEARS YOU ASSHOLES?

Oh yeah, that’s right, I remember now, you were right up Dick Cheney’s monstrous ass.

THIS president has a brain, this president isn’t brain-damaged from decades of whiskey and cocaine, this president doesn’t need speech writers or a hidden ear piece and directions from offstage, this president won’t suffer fools, so fuck all of you ‘journalists’, we know who you work for and who you represent.

After the ice has melted and they begin to unearth the remnants of “our” civilization….I certainly hope we are not remembered for shit like this. I know I’ve become old… because not only have I become more and more jaded and cynical than I was in my twenties, but because I think the “youth” of today that is going to be leading us tomorrow is helpless and hopeless. Growing up in the 80s/90s, I certain had my share of dumb shit but what is happening is absolutely ridiculous. Just recently I overheard a conversation that went something like this:

Twenty-something female – VERY attractive as: HotChic
Twenty-something male – Complete meathead as: GuyPaulaWouldHaveDatedInCollege or “GPWHDIC”
The location: a Pizzeria in a well-to-do town in Northern NJ
The time: 7pm – Wednesday night

HotChic: Hey, don’t I know you? Aren’t you one of Joey’s boys?
GPWHDIC: Yeah, bitch.. That’s me. ‘Sup?
HotChic: I’m chillin’. Eatin’ a slice. Trying to sober up. I’m soooo wasted.
GPWHDIC: It’s Wedz – where did you get wasted?
HotChic: I drank all day. I don’t work. They fired me. They’d rather pay a bunch of “ni**ers” and “sp*cs” to do my job.
GPWHDIC: That’s beat. Yeah. I don’t work either. I got laid off by the gym. No one is hiring trainers no more.
HotChic: How’s Joey?
GPWHDIC: Who? Oh yeah. Joey is good. We went out last night.
HotChic: What? How? Isn’t Joey in the hospital? Bike accident or something?
GPWHDIC: Oh um. Yeah. Maybe that was last week. I’m still fucked up too.
[Note: He looked really frazzled as he said it there was NO way this guy knew the “joey” she was talking about—and I was getting anxious while waiting for my damn pizza to cook.]
HotChic: Yeah… whatever. Joey’s a playa.
GPWHDIC: Don’t be hatin’.
HotChic: What are you doing tonight?
GPWHDIC: My boys and I were gonna smoke. Wanna come?
HotChic: Shit yeah.
GPWHDIC: I gotta go lift but I’ll be back later. Where are you gonna be?
HotChic: I got nowhere to go. I’m locked out.
GPWHDIC: Where do you live?
HotChic: Washington Township but lately I’ve been staying with friends.
GPWHDIC: Don’t worry. If you get too fucked up, you can crash on my couch.
HotChic: Yeah. Thanks. Don’t think that means I’ll suck your dick though.
GPWHDIC: Yeah. We’ll see about that. What’s your #?
HotChic: [GIVES HIM HER FUCKING #]
GPWHDIC: Later bitch.
HotChic: Byeeeeeeee!!

At this point I get up to pay for my pizza and the HotChic standing behind me goes “hey—can I borrow a few dollars. I’m not from around here and I’m locked out.”

I ignored her and gave her a big smile as I walked out. That same girl—- she also works at a 7-11 around here. I got a Slurpee recently and there she was. I almost wanted to ask her if she ended up passed around and used up by GPWHDIC but I didn’t. I ended up driving back to work and thinking about how great it is to NOT be like either of those two.

I don’t know exactly what it is. Who’s at fault here? Is it the schools? Is it the parents? Is it “society”? Is it the media? Is it the manufactured idolization of dolts like Britney and Paris and Chris Brown/Rihana?

It’s all very scary. What if I have kids….. what if they turn out that way? What do you do?