Blank Day

Nudged awake by a
Uniformed morning
Rolled into an oyster
Fitted, organs replaced
Carried limply by shell
Selected a soundtrack
Trying to identify a scent
Gave up
Head retracted
Fart
Content for now

The State of Pop Music

In the wake of the VMA Miley Cyrus thing, I have overheard a plethora of conversations about "the state of pop music".  What follows are select clips from these conversations, except I replaced "pop music" with "room temperature", and took some creative license with the adjacent factors.


"I don't know, room temperature seems to be out of the hands of the people, it's really all about what 50 year old Jewish men in LA think 15 year olds want the thermostat set at when they go jerk off."

"It's true, it's totally true!  You gotta- if you're on a first date, the best topic of conversation is room temperature.  You gotta work with the shit you got in common, y'know?  You don't want to scare someone off..."

"That's always been the case though... good room temperature is all about gettin' it on.  Room temperature is a safe bet for setting the mood."

"I can't go out anymore.  They just, these places just turn the room temperature up so I can't even talk to someone.  This current room temperature is like, made to be turned up and like, suck the conversation of the room."

"Room temperature was great until around 1994."

"I think people these days, y'know they need their room temperature too warm. I don't want to go into those rooms, y'know? Hahahaha!"

"Oh I let the kids control the room temperature in the car once... it got so cold, I wanted to wear earmuffs."

"All the room temperature feels the same these days. I can't tell if I'm at my girlfriend's house, at work, at the bar, or even in my own room.  I do like me some room temperature!"

"Person 1: All room temperature has always felt the same, relatively I mean.

Person 2: How can you even say that with a straight face? Room temperature meant something back then... I think I'm dating myself a little here, but back when I was into room temperature, it was about 72 degrees Fahrenheit."

"Well now that wasn't really room temperature, was it? That was heat, which would later influence room temperature because it was rebelling against cold. Your typical person back then wasn't comfortable at those temperatures.  (some mumbled rebuttal, I think Velvet Underground was mentioned)  Yeah, I'm sure my dad has never even heard of those temperatures."

"I just shake my head thinking about what room temperature will be like in the future."

Halfway Through the Wood

I take steps on my walk through
like a scalpel
wearing cake shoes
And every sound startled
another slice out of me
Until I was 196 seagulls
I escaped them
each
Lord, what I had to do
Escaped and reached
an island
it was desserted
ok it was Manhattan
And I was living comfortably in the middle of a large busy cake
Then I learned it was a sponge
And I kept asking folks to squeeze exact change for my thoughts

Happiness is
Built from
Everything
Left or right of the tight rope
But our hands are tied
And the people before us are
tie dyed and
walk-thru
I am amazed
Every time
I need to find a transparency provider
The paradox thus exposed
When sweating polish remover
It's best to keep ones' eyes closed

Laundromat

There's mud
in the washer there's mud
in the dryer
If I wash our clothes there will be
mud no matter what
If I don't wash them, they
will just keep getting dirtier, and when
I get home, my spouse will be mad, and what
will the neighbors think when
they see the kids in dirty clothes?
Everyone is fighting
Why am I even here? Sucksforthesepeopleandall,
but why am
I
here? Oh right, my reliance on foreign
groceries. Let me
explain, the supermarket is in
the same plaza as the laundromat. Oh,
and there's also that
woman who folds, she
sucks my cock
My wife won't
swallow, she holds
it in her mouth until
I'm asleep

I could buy a washer/dryer, but
there's a cost up front, and
the machines are
wasteful, at least
according to my fucking son, who is going through a phase.
My wife is on his side. Sorta.
She knows
who's in
charge. He'd have us hand wash, but
Who's got time for that? Certainly
not Mr. Up at the Crack
of Noon.  And line drying? I don't want
anyone
seeing my underwear.

There's
so
much dirty laundry, how
did it get this bad?
Normally I just throw
everything in the machine
and walk away. These people
keep arguing.
Who put that mud in there, anyway?

NYC Fringe Festival

I was reading the capsule descriptions at NYC Fringe Festival a couple weeks ago, and I noticed certain recurring themes and gimmicks, so I decided to write parody ones and present them to the general public and see if people could tell the difference.  I have provided a list that includes both sincere summaries of plays that are actually being performed in NYC for $18/ticket right now, and shit I made up.  See if you can tell the difference.  Answer key in comments.

1)  SLUT

SIXTEEEN. Pre-gaming. Empty ABSOLUT bottle. Luke, GEORGE, Tim. Back of a CAB. RIPPED underwear. HANDS everywhere. NO! Through the eyes of NYC teen girls, FACE the choices and EXPERIENCE the fallout from ONE life-altering Friday night.

2)  Snakes I Have Known

On my 16th birthday I find myself buck-ass naked and snake-bit outside my front door in Nowhere, TX. There are all kinds of snakes in my life. Some are reptiles. It's my journey from DFW to JFK, y'all.

3)  The Rise and Fall of the Kinky Wizards
Skateboarding. Pop culture references.  Kleptomania. Box after box of hair dye from CVS.  Come witness the tale of Vince and Justin, the skateboarding shoplifters from cult classic film High Fidelity as they nearly redefine the sound of the 90's.

4)  Next

Having lived on a boat for 3 years and published a hit novel inspired by it, Holly struggles to find anybody to deeply relate to. Former Gilmore Girls writer Julie McCullough takes you on a journey into loneliness and confessions over mojitos and explores difference between relief and real passion.

5)  One Way Out
What do you get when you throw a neurotic Jew, a retired Filipino stock trader with high functioning autism, a heart surgeon who is a single mother of three, a Parisian cartographer from 1850, and James Joyce and trap them in an elevator?  Not much, until Friedrich Nietzsche starts speaking through a one-way intercom and reveals that one of them has a gun.

6)  PUSSY

A lesbian couple whose love is on the rocks, their overly curious landlady and one very opinionated cat ... this love triangle is starting to get crowded. 

7)  Stanton
OH NO'S! Looks like the playground has been taken over by bullies!  But not just ordinary bullies, vampire ninja bullies. Stanton has no choice but to team up with a band of warthogs to fight the battle against not only the bullies, but mutants and cultural hegemony.  

8)  The Order of the Cape

From the ashes of a mysterious apocalypse that wiped out most of mankind, a new society forms with comic books as the guiding template. Fanfic is the new Shakespeare, Superman vs Batman is the new holy war in this deep examination of the influence mythology has on society that draws thought-provoking parallels to the world we live in.

9)  HORSE PLAY The Musical 

Horses place the bets as a NYC carriage driver falls in love with a woman intent on banning horses from Central Park. A rock score drives this universal tale about life, freedom and how love of horses brings people together.

10)  Ex Machina

Two Smartphone factory drones must learn to coexist while under threat from fascist anti-union politics, drunk guards, and a sexy anarchist unfettered by the laws of physics. A dystopian dark comedy about dancing, Nekko Wafers, and the thrill of rebellion.

11)  See Jane Give Up Dick
See Jane. See Jane Give Up Dick. A highly sexual Manhattanite attempts to give up ‘giving it up’ for one full year. See Jane discover if putting an end to her slutty ways can be more rewarding than multiple orgasms.

12)  Manic Pixie Dream Girl: A Graphic Novel Play
The darkly comic story of a struggling artist and his mysterious muse, told in the style of a graphic novel. MPDG is a beer-drinking, pop-culture referencing, punch to the theatrical gut—more High Fidelity than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

13)  Katie Broke Up With Me       

Guys, Katie broke up with me again, and it's for real this time. So I sold my DJ equipment and wrote a puppet show about our relationship and how bleak my future is without her. I asked Bill Oldham to do the soundtrack, but he didn't get back to me in time. I'd describe the puppets but I'm almost out of sp

14)  The Rufus Equation

Nerd + Math = Sex. What's love got to do with quantum physics? Professor Bert Rufus is awkward with women – especially with the alluring physicist Alys Smith. Bert invents a secret device that will shock the world...and might even get him laid. 

 15)  MONOCULAR MAN

In the era of Viet Nam, Woodstock, and dot-matrix, everyone's making bombs, including our long-haired, short-winded, one-eyed hero. "Explosive," "literary," and "comic," MM travels suburbs from Swampscott to Miami, taking on race, privilege (his), manhood, and fried chicken.

16)  Stretched Thin
Carolina's years working the donkey show are behind her, but the bare spot on her resume has relegated her to lousy retail jobs. Her roommate Julia has a masters degree in comparative lit and has found herself in a similar position.  Join this unlikely pair on their journey of learning what really matters in a tough job market.

17)  Step Three
Floyd is a jaded Vietnam vet who recently came out of the closet and lives with his ex-wife, their unemployable son... And a trampoline that can predict the future. Get rich quick schemes collide with old grudges and the result is hilarity, emotional healing, and the time travel paradox sometimes all at once!

18)  Just a Minute

Freddie Burks is a struggling playwright who is on the verge of a breakthrough that would save his career, his relationship, his credit score, and his dog Muffin. All of this relies on one phone call, but he hasn't paid his bill and may lose service any minute as he argues with his fiancee and his mother keeps calling.  Oh, and there's someone holding a cocked bow and arrow in the background.

19)  A Fallopian Fairy Tale
Maligaya is on a mission "to take the pink out of Princess and put it back in the pussy." With her pitch for a Disney meets "Girls" children's book at stake, stories from her life expose a less charming reality. 

20)  Mind the Gap

Have a seat as a table full of New Yorkers and Londoners hash it out over whose respective countrymen are the more insufferable tourists.  The true setting, however, is the real mystery in this cerebral comedy driven by witty dialogue and geographical minutia. If you can correctly guess the location at the end, prizes include gift certificates to local restaurants.

Galore

Every few steps
I see myself
Find
Everything
more than everything else
Pile verb
Albatross ring toss
Pile noun
And it's all free
Decisions pass like a hula hoop
Concentripital and forced
I don't know how I
Get away
with it
And always left with
Empty hands
Feeling
full
Feeling
full
Groping
clever
Between the stroking
and the pile

I sprouted
From a cave seed
It's immaculate if I stay away from the walls
Dancing with shadows
Of vagina dentata
If touched they stop growing
That is why I support this hula hoop*

*Paid for by the Campaign to Re-elect Hula Hoop to City Council.

A Letter From the Atlantic

Dear Ian,

I am writing to humbly request that you stop trying to use me as inspiration for poetry.  Yes, I know that I let you pee in me*, but I have to draw the line somewhere.  It is not that your verse in inherently bad... I mean, it is, but that is not what I take issue with.  Were I to address every line of awful poetry put forth on my account, I would be constantly writing notices and would probably just draft a form letter.  No, yours is especially intolerable because it is fraught with precious concepts ensconced in banal inaccuracies. I would like to point out a few of them.

First of all, you were musing wistfully about whether you were standing in the essentially same water as the Pacific Ocean.  The answer is "No, you're not." Water molecules are all unique, regardless of their similar chemical reactivity.  I am certain that if I heated you to 212 degrees, you would react the same way most people would as well.  I am going to go ahead and anticipate your wanky post-modern rebuttal of "But there is no essence that marks water as 'Atlantic' and 'Pacific', humans made up those handles, all the water is one."  You clearly followed this logic as you spoke your desires underneath waves, as though this "unified water of the world" is your personal messaging system.  Did you receive a response?  No, you did not, so stop reading Buddhist texts summarized on people's blogs.  Or is this that David Foster Wallace graduation speech again?  Ugh, that keeps popping up, and whenever it does I get people staring at me saying "This is water. This is water.", while estimated figures of their student loan debt flash through their mind.

And then, as though completely unaware of how this contradicts the thought you just had, you started trying to phrase the process of how the specific water that heard your words will spread them gradually until all the water carries your message, a thorough display of both narcissism and poor knowledge of geography. Watching you try to weave metaphors from that was like trying to watch someone build a sand castle with an empty soda can.

Also, that butterfly did not land on your head because you were born of the universal salt waters an hour prior and it wanted to grant you new life, and it was not lured by the traces of life-giving sea salt.  It was lured by your shiny bald spot.  If you want to write a poem about that, be my guest, but keep me out of it.

I know that you heard a song called "Dead Sea" last night and you may feel like the Dead Sea or that you are wandering the Dead Sea, but guess what? I consulted the internet and discovered that neither of us are the Dead Sea.  If I was the Dead Sea, then that crab that punctured your toe would not have been there (because, as you acutely observed, very few creatures can live in the Dead Sea), and if you were the Dead Sea, you would be several thousand miles away and full of people with nasty skin conditions who are too cheap to buy ointment.

Your version of "if you love someone, let them go, etc" adapted for the ocean was nothing short of hackneyed, not to mention full of human privilege assumptions.  First of all, way to go for the first and most basic concept of the tide.  Second, do you know who decides whether something returns from the ocean?  Me.  I know that from your perspective, it may appear as though people are acting of their own agency, that is a very carefully performed act.  If the ocean was involved in that saying, it would read "If you love someone, let them go, unless it is in the ocean, in which case you should hold on to them until they are safe on dry land."

In closing, your pathetic meandering thought process is not only amateurish and full of fallacies, it is boring, and that says a lot coming from me, my favorite show is "Continental Drift".  Good luck continuing to compose verse that is a Wes Anderson parody of thought provoking or deep.

Fuck you and suck my balls**,

The Atlantic Ocean

*Actually, that's kind of a turn-on. Oh god, don't tell anyone I said that though.

**Of course I have balls. If you didn't go to a Catholic school, you'd know this.