Pool & Pizza

Pool is for the rich.
Pool is for the poor.

In the grimiest, rat-infested, warm beer, lousy food dive, you'll find a pool table with a couple of guys playing.

In the Central Park penthouse apartment, in the living room with an oriental rug, original Van Gogh and hundred-year-old wine, you'll find a pool table with a couple of guys playing.

It's a magic game to say the least, and I don't even like playing that much.  But respect is given where respect is due.  What else exists to serve the richest and the poorest simultaneously?

Enter the pizza place on 49th and 2nd.  The pizza isn't religious conversion epic good, but it's good and it's close to my office.  A quick look around and you'll see one of the two UPS drivers for this area.  (The other prefers the cookies at subway next door).  A couple of construction workers have every spice known to man at their table, but they keep passing the shakers to the suit&tie boys next to them.  Both tables are so engrossed in their lunch/conversation that they don't notice how profoundly different they are despite more-or-less sharing a meal.

Only in a place with a sensibly liberal attitude and a diverse population could you find a perfect (multi-cultural) salad at a pizza joint.  From the Italian who served it to me, the Mexican who made the pie, the Romanian girl who rang up the sale, the black guy who paid before me to the U.N. rep who held the door for me and the Albanian driving the cheese delivery truck... I am a happy New Yorker.

The Early Program Coordinator Catches the Elbow to the Ribs

There are two breeds of morning commuters in New York City: the early-birdies and the later-losers.  I'm not talking about the commuters chosen at birth - the type-A personalities down on Wallstreet who get to work around 5:30 in the morning - I'm talking about the 9:00 a.m. crowd and the 9:30 a.m. crowd.  A few years or decades ago, New York decided that some offices would open at 9:00 a.m. and others would open at 9:30 to ease the transit congestion.  Generally, the 9ers go home at 5 and the 9:30 peeps bounce at 5:30.

Although genetics doesn't guide the 9/9:30 distinction, something else certainly does although I'm not sure what it is.  When I come in to work at 9:30 (yup, I'm a later-loser), the people on the subway next to me are relaxed even when we're packed in so tight that someone else is holding the newspaper I'm reading.  We roll towards Manhattan, reading books, sipping a latte and listening to Coheed & Cambria.  Yes, all of us on the subway listen to Coheed, didn't you know that?  But on a morning like today, when I come in to work early... holy shit.

It's as if someone put just a pinch, a smidge, a dash of crack cocaine in everyone's coffee.  And it's not what you're picturing - no no, it's not a twenty-something throwing elbows and cross checking people in his way.  No, it's a seventy-year-old woman with an umbrella, a granny cart and a serious case of gout ready to throw down and whip the ass of anyone and everyone for the hell of it.  When we lined up to get out of the train, I swear I caught the glint of brass knuckles or a rusty chain on the other side of the door.  Picture the Giants and the Patriots facing off at the line of scrimmage: steam jetting out of our noses, sweat dripping off our chin, ready to pull the head off the animals on the other side.

Sitting here at my desk, safely typing away, I thank God for delivering me safely.  My bruises will heal, cuts will dry up and I'll never come in to work early ever again.

Deja Vu

I'm completely caught up at work.  I went in yesterday (Saturday) morning from nine to noon and decimated the pile of papers that's been sitting on my desk since August.  Destroyed 'em.  And I knew I would.  I knew I would do exactly that because on Friday afternoon, as I was telling my boss I'd be coming in over the weekend, I was overcome with a feeling of Deja Vu so strong that I could've sworn we were reading off a script.

There are a lot of instances in my life where I act on my instincts twice as fast as it would've taken me to stop and figure something out.  There are a lot of instances in my life where I'm blown away by the feeling that I've had the exact conversation a year before.  Same room, same people, same clothes.  What if this wasn't a neuro-glitch?  Supposedly, Deja Vu is your brain making too many associations releasing chemicals of familiarity.  What if those feelings were based on memories?  Meaning you did do exactly what you remembered a year before.  And for some reason, someone hit rewind on the world and made you live it all again?

It would certainly explain why the answers come so easily sometimes.  If you'd already solved the problem twelve months ago, it would take you no time at all to solve it again.  But this is really just a fantasy, right? It's not possible to hit rewind on time, is it?

Inside Out

Angelina Jolie is ugly.  Angelina Jolie is beautiful.  Angelina Jolie rides the line between insanely irresistible and mannishly robotic like a pro surfer turning on the crest of a tsunami.  She's like the stinky cheese of women.  The smellier the cheese, the better it tastes.  In fact, I've definitely smelled food and thought it was shit and the other way around.  The Wagon wheel effect.  You know, where the spokes are moving in such a way that it looks like the wheel is turning in the opposite direction of it's true motion.  (You know why that is?  It's because essentially, your eyes are taking twenty-four pictures of the wheel every second.  When the wheel is slowly turning forward, you see the spokes moving in the appropriate direction.  But you can move the wheel so fast that by the time your eyes "take another picture of it," the spokes are slightly behind where they were a 24th of a second ago.  Prego! Wheel turning backwards.)

So Angelina Jolie smells.  Wait, I mean, she's moving so fast that she's ugly.  No, she's a wheel.  Shit.

You've got the hot water so hot that it feels cold.  Your senses are all fucked up.

Glass is a liquid - old stained glass windows are thicker at the bottom then they are at the top.  Go look if you don't believe me.

Try to play too fast without practicing and you'll end up playing slower than if you relax and try not to play fast.

Oh fuck it, you're not even listening anymore.

Why I Hate Facebook & Why I Hate Celebrities... I don’t.

Two for one, you lucky lucky people.

Okay, I don’t hate Facebook. Actually I don’t hate celebrities either but that’s in the second half so just be patient.

What I get upset about is how busy everyone is all the time and how plugged in we all are. I love technology – I love cars that go fast and speakers that play loud and my retina-display iPhone. But when everyone is linked in sending notes to each other about what they’re doing, they’re absent from the physical reality around them. It takes too much of their time and no one can come play in the sandbox with me! And it’s a balance, no doubt. On the one side, you want to send a quick note, a picture, or say hello to someone far away (temporally or geographically). On the other, updating your status as you walk is fucking dangerous. Find a balance, people.

And celebrities.

Do something really well and get famous. I’m for it. Do nothing and get famous. I hate you. Honestly, I don’t think I have to explain it any more than that but if I don’t write at least two more full paragraphs, Microsoft Grammar Check tells me my Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level is negative forty and I should take up another hobby. If someone is famous for their craft, I think, "Gosh, I gotta work a little harder and quit watching movies all the time. Look at how big that guy is!" Apparently, he spent all day, everyday finding the best note for the song. (See: Beatles in Hamburg, Mozart’s father dragging his four-year-old son around Europe to play piano, and Tyler Perry living in a car before he broke out).

But I don’t know what the Kardashians have done to merit their attention. The idea behind reality television is that people are acting like themselves. So the Kardashians are famous for acting like themselves… in front of a camera? Son of a bitch! I act like myself twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and I’m not famous. What gives?!? It’s the camera! Shit, I gotta get a camera crew on my ass, stat.

So yeah, find a balance between tech-connecting and real-connecting. And work hard if you’re gonna get famous. Then I won’t hate you. Cause I know you were worried about it.

Flashing Lights

In their simplest form, video games are flashing lights that you control. Obviously, Modern Warfare XVII (including real human blood spraying out from the TV when you shoot someone) is a little beyond basic. There's a great Neil Gaiman story about video games. Basically, people spend all of their time staring at the screen, making different colors do different things to the point that they are over-steamed vegetables. Society collapses and everyone dies.

As it happens, I like simple video games... a lot. Move the flashing lights from A to B. Or shoot a few pixels at lights of another color. Magnificent. I let my mind wander as I play Doodle Jump, Tetris and Snood. The next thing you know, I'm Confucius sitting on the can at work, tapping away at my iPhone.

Take DoodleJump, for example. If you have an iPhone and you don't have DoodleJump, kill yourself. The game is beautifully designed. If you play it enough you'll start to see that the game layout is a series of elements and patterns that mix in different ways to present you with familiar-yet-new obstacles. Once you know all the elements, the trick is not to worry about the score. Stay calm. After a certain point, things don't move any faster, so all you really have to do is keep your focus. How is that not a metaphor for everyday existence? Your brain stores the visual information about your surroundings so as not to distract you every time a picture frame moves a millimeter. This is a survival thing. One blade of grass is the same as lots of blades of grass = good. Tiger in the grass about to each you = bad. And voila, Darwin! See that, video games are responsible for the theory of evolution.

Lessons from games: 1, stay focused. If you can do it playing a game, can't you do it practicing the drums? Or sitting at your desk? I wonder these things as my little Doodler jumps from platform to platform. 2, stay calm. The score is an illusion - you focus on it and it makes you think the stakes have been raised. Adrenaline pumps and the platforms are moving too fast and the bad guys come out of nowhere and AHHHHH! Nothing was moving faster except maybe your heart-rate. 3, make sure you take a break. Every few minutes, I pause to take a breath, stretch my hands and relax my brain. Same way I make sure I take an hour for lunch each day at work - I'll perform better in the afternoon if I've rested and recovered after the morning.

Other analytical folks will find the same truths as they jog or work in the garden. For me it's in between the flashing lights.

Snooze Addicts

Addiction is when you keep doing something even though it makes you feel like shit. Yeah, that's Websters, wanna fight about it?

So how is the snooze button a good thing? I bet the same guy who invented 'snooze' invented light beer, light cigarettes and diet Coke. And he invented it for addictive personalities like mine who wanted to do something without doing it because it feels so good even though it is so bad for you. He probably justified it by saying, "Look at my new invention! It will give you a few extra minutes of time to relax before getting out of bed!" This is a little like saying Joe Camel commercials were directed at adults. Seriously, what marginally sentient adult human being would think a fat cartoon camel is cool and more to the point, what child wouldn't? So the counterargument, that snooze is a pleasant relaxing cycle, is ridiculous. If I am asleep, get woken up by a buzzer and then lay back down, I won't relax... I'll sleep. For nine minutes until my ears, nay, my soul is raped awake again! Snooze = evil invention for addictive people.

Friends! Brothers! Nappers! We don't need the snooze button! It's not real sleep! If you're going to sleep until 7:48, then set your alarm for 7:48!

Goal: for the rest of the alarm-puked week, I will get up as soon as my alarm goes off. I will walk around my apartment naked (boner, optional) until I feel it's safe to stop moving. Safe meaning I won't fall back asleep leaning on the kitchen counter (done that), tying my shoes (done that) or sitting on the toilet (definitely done that).

You know, there's a huge whole in this rant. If the snooze-inventor didn't invent the feature for our benefit, then why did he invent it? Send guesses to jamesguimaraes@me.com. Most creative answer will win an alarm clock. And if you think I'm kidding, why not submit an answer to try me out? Remember: the snooze button is not our friend. It is our enemy. And your task is to come up with the purpose behind its inception.

Pay for Your Human Nature

I am twenty-six years old. I grew up in the wealthy suburbs of New York City. I went to a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. From these three sentences, you can safely assume that the first time I was drunk was long before my 21st birthday. You could also assume that I smoked cloves then cigarettes (more than assume for the latter seeing as I smoked for a couple of years before quitting).

I don't find anything wrong with pointing people towards these facts and assumptions because I don't see myself running for any public or political office. Not to mention, only a dozen people dig into this little diary of mine (it's a journal, damn it!) and they all know these things already. Still, in the last ten years, with the Internet in everyone's pocket attached to a camera, linked to a network of other people, we can safely say good bye to any and all forms of privacy.

I was very drunk on Thursday night. Oh, before I go on, I should also point out that whenever you open your mouth, you're bound to piss someone off with even the most harmless statements. So to my under eighteen audience out there, let me remind you that I'm not in high school, college, or fresh-out. I'm an adult with dental bills, a girlfriend who knows my social security number, and a metro card. As I was saying, I was drunk on Thursday night. And I was rowdy. Not violent and hopefully not obnoxious, just rowdy. I had been sleeping a lot lately and upon seeing some friends for the first time in a few months, the laughs fed the tap which filled the glass that coated my stomach with hops and barely.

But I didn't do anything wrong. In fact, I didn't do anything embarrassing. But if you snapped a picture at just the right moment as I was trying to swallow a pretzel and laugh at the same time, you would have seen a James who looked like a red-in-the-face about-to-vomit mess.

You won't find me on Facebook. Sure, I loved it the first year after College. It was fun to stay in touch with people and post random gobble-dee-gook on their walls. And the picture sharing was easy and cool. But then a twelve year old tried to friend me. And my mom. In the same day. So I untagged everything I could and left Facebook.

Did someone take that picture of me on Thursday night? You can't link it to me on Facebook but if you write my name beneath it, will it appear when you search for James Guimaraes?

We gave up our privacy so that we could all know what's going on at exactly the same time. Better, we gave up our privacy so that we could convince ourselves that we were connected to people in a meaningful way while driving a car, eating McDonalds and listening to the latest album Pitchfork Media told us to. When we all get fired in a month because those assumptions you could've made anyway now have documented evidence to back them up (posted on Facebook, tweeted on Twitter and fed to your pocket via AT&T), I'll ask the world a simple question: was it worth it?

I might be a Jerk

Here are just a few examples:

Today, as I sat comfortably on the bench of my train-car, a woman shuffled onto the train, barely squeezing between seventy-three other people all standing next to her. And my first (and only) thought about her was: God, I hope she doesn’t breathe on me. Hahahahahahahaha. I’ve re-read that like six times and it gets funnier and funnier – I’m a really really bad person.

Last night, at a bar, a tight-jeans, clean sneakers, mustache with thick black glasses began to talk in our conversation and for some reason, I said in my best southern accent, “Scuse me sir, we don’t take kindly to freaks and weird-o’s.”

This morning, as I was crossing the street, a van pulled past the white line at the red light. I stared the driver in the eye doing my best to convey: hit me! I’ll sue your ass, make $500k and never work again. Go on, hit me! Learn how to drive, asshole!” I then looked down at his license plate, saw it was from New Jersey and looked back up at him eye-yelling, “Go fuckin figure. Jerk.”

The kid doing gymnastics on the subway car. Or better yet, the parents who are too wrapped up with their cell phones to notice.

The fifteen different girls/women talking on their cell phones on the way to work. And straight up, it’s not men. It’s girls. Like they think they’re still in the bar with the music blaring but the rest of us in the real-world are sitting in a coke-can with wheels begging her to S.T.F.U.

I went into the bathroom last night and thought: wow, a black light bulb and seventeen rolls of toilet paper on the wall. Brooklyn. Bleh. But honestly, why should that bother me? Why does the ugliest-man-alive competition among hipsters irk me? Why do I look at the people around me and instantly hate all of them? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me? And ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at the beginning: I might just be a jerk.

Two months later, I still love coffee

Hey Scottie,

Yesterday, I had like two tablespoons of a medium-roast left in the jar but decided to make two or three cups of it anyway. It was watery, but passable. I go into the fridge to put a little whole milk in it and what do I find? Out of whole milk - all that I have is skim. Shit. So now I'm drinking watery, milk flavored, coffee flavored peepee juice. It was lame.

Last night, I set out to correct the problem. French Roast and Whole Milk. I'm not fucking around.

I make the F.R. this morning with like 8 scoops ground and 8 ounces of H2O. The coffee that came out could be used to re-cauk a bathtub except it's black... and smells like coffee. Grab the whole milk, pour about six cups of that into the cafe-O-blackhole that is my thermos and head out the door. Everytime I take a sip, I feel like I can taste in the back of my eyeballs.

Anyway, I know how much you appreciate the 'joe' so I figured I should let you know.

Love,

Yaps

Nature Boy

So here I sit, sifting through random bits of footage, trying to find the gem that seals the deal on a sequence. And there's a folder on my hard drive. It's just sitting there. It was there yesterday and the day before but for whatever reason, I hadn't noticed it. "Mellowfest." Sure, I thought. Whatever. I'll look at it. None of the clips in it have names - they're all labeled by their date and time. Back in the old days of analogue tape, you had reel numbers and time code. Now, it's all dates and minutes and other bullshit. Well, I get to the last file - the last clip - in this folder. It's label is "clip-2010-08-06 20;22;13." That means it was recorded on August 6th, 2010 at about 8:30pm.

8:30pm on August 6th. I know exactly where I was. That was the night that we all woke up.

58 degrees, dark as February, and 600 people sat on Main Campus at Camp Dudley. We were all there and each one of us took something different from the man on the stage. He had three words for us, followed by three songs. But it wasn't until "Love," that it all fell apart at the seams.

You see, we spent the summer running around, playing sports, dancing for our friends. We laughed off cruelties and dished out support like it was the free wind around us. We were boys and our kingdom was Camp Dudley.

But at 8:30pm on August 6th, the man on stage reminded us all: The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

Love you, Mayo.

From Matt

A buddy of mine had a funny car ride and decided to write stream-of-consciousness to me. I hope he doesn't mind me posting it here...

"I stopped at the Sloatsburgh rest area on 87 to hit up a bathroom and get something caffeinated. I locked my car with my keyless entry. When I got back out the keyless wouldn't unlock the car which is a problem because the key I use only starts the car, it won't open any doors due to old locks and the fact that it is a $3 replacement key I got from the local hardware store instead of Subaru because I did the math and $3<$55ish. So even though I have my keys in my hand I'm locked out. I call AAA. They send a dude over and he essentially coat-hangers (Verbing weirds language) my locks open. This sets off the security system, however since the key doesn't open the locks and the keyless is dead I can't shut off the security system to start the car. After 10 minutes of looking like assholes or thieves depending on your perspective he pulls something out from under my dash moves some shit around and the car starts... yay? he hands me a yellow chip looking thing. We say our goodbyes and he's gone. I stop to get gas at the same rest area. I'm a little worried about having to shut off my car but figure I have to do it eventually. Shut off the car, get gas, turn the key in the ignition, nothing. Shit. So I have the barely english speaking guy at the A-Plus help me roll my car out of the way. He offers to help jump the car and even though I know that won't work I allow him to help because he's just being a really good dude and trying really hard. I call AAA back and say that the service I received has made my situation worse. They say they're sending someone back. I pass the time by trying to get on government watch lists by googling "How to Hot-Wire a Car" on my iPhone. Then something occurs to me. Put the yellow thing back... I spend 10 minutes trying to figure out where the thing goes and eventually I figure it out, no alarms go off and the car starts. I call AAA say "thanks, but no thanks, I'm a man and I fixed my car myself." Off I go, I lost 3 hours.

PS. None of this email has been proofread."

Sankofa again or as usual

I had this fantasy; a ten-second thing like Mayo’s lamp at the end of Hymn-Sing. It went like this:

I walked out of my office at the end of the day and saw a small, black plastic bag on the sidewalk. I picked it up and dropped it in the trash on the corner. Gently but quickly the bag poofed into a black crow. The crow hopped up to the rim of the trashcan, shook her head and ruffled her feathers. She turned to me, eyed me up and down and said, “Thanks!” And then she flew away.

Ideas like these pop into my head on a near-hourly basis. Not useful for a full story or song lyrics but certainly fun to think of. The worst and best part is that I know they are only as real as steam on a coffee cup: there one minute, gone the next and your coffee stays exactly where it is.

But sometimes, the dreams aren’t fun. Sometimes, the cute crow doesn’t say thank you. And worse - these dreams are a lot longer than ten seconds. On the train-tracks of nostalgia, emotions and pictures fly into my head at 150kph. They dig in like ticks, infecting the nearby neurons like wine spilled on paper and even when I’ve cleaned everything up, the stain of angst is left as a marker of my two or three day neurological journey.

It’s a person that triggers it. Always a person. And I get a glimpse of what my life would be like if I had stayed working at Race Rock, or played in that off-Broadway show, or dated that girl. And for the next few days, I could be batting a thousand on the outside and churning fudge on the inside. Maybe admitting it out loud will help it go away. No, not go away, just soften a bit. Because I sort of like it – I mean, it’s a book I didn’t read, a movie I didn’t watch. I empathize with the protagonist because the protagonist is me!

Your life, my life, anyone's life: One story leading into the next. Chapters, verses, rungs on a ladder. “Edges” as Mark Vinci might say. It’s all part of the game.

In the End, an Education

From Scott, I learned to keep it cool, to listen before you speak. Never underestimate the power of an easy smile and a gentle, insane sense of humor to get you past the Lazy Daisy. Yeah, I put him on a pedestal but Instead of standing, he sits with his shirt off, playing his guitar, drawing no more attention to himself than a wind-danced tree branch.

From Tim, I learned to be open to any activity at any time. A run? A sail? A fire outside Roe? It’s all great provided you’re with the right people. What was he about to do before I asked him to drive to Port Henry with me? What was he up to before I was ready to leave the Marina?

From Matt, I had a friend. A ‘other half’ to match my nerdy curiosity, an artist who I look up to endlessly.

From Jane, I learned to be elegant and eloquent. Stick to your principals and work hard. In a world of testosterone and immaturity, a proper cocktail and an intelligent conversation can act as a lighthouse guiding you back to respecting others.

From Peter, I learned that it’s okay to have fun, especially late at night. In fact, fun might be necessary to coincide with amazing work. Watching him through a Canon Vixia HF20, I saw the kind of teacher I wish I had and the kind of teacher I hope to be.

From James, I learned just how hard I’d have to work, just how big I’d have to become, to earn the Last Whistle Dedication. More than a man, he embodies the Dudley spirit every day.

From Ryan, I learned not to sit down. Sitting down lets you fall asleep where standing lets you get the job (all the jobs) done. It’s okay to be amazing; especially when your presence raises everyone around you.

From Tom, I learned to relax. It’s all good. Without him, I would be a spinnaker in a tornado.

From Lauren, I learned to be consistent. If you’re the same person in January that you are in July, everyone can count on you to be true to your word and true to yourself.

From Corey, I learned that all the googling in the world doesn’t hold a candle to strapping the kite to your wrist and figuring it out as you go. Sometimes, you have to get up, get out and go for it.

From Wilbur, I found an oasis in confusion and intensity of working at Camp. Always there in his E-town Castle, ready to take me in.

And from Wendy, I learned how to be a friend. True friends love you unconditionally: the good, bad, and everything in between. It’s hard work, and she makes it look easy.

But hey, it's Burlington!

There's a bird flying around the boarding area, keeping everything in order, making sure that all the people heading up to Burlington, Vermont are legit. Annnnnd that's about it as far as security goes in this peninsula of Terminal 3. You'd swear you were in Pleasantville: “There's old Bart, the lovable black security man who spends his days napping just inside the door in the bank.”

Spread across two bags, I have enough camera equipment to shoot the next James Cameron movie. Combine that with my outside appearance. I look bad, I smell bad and I'm giving off a bad-air as if to say, “Get close to me and I'll infect you with Polio.”

If I was a security guard and some douche-bag with an arsenal of gizmos was walking through my line, I would search the shit out of him. Shoes off? Nah, I'd make him strip for a human physiology checklist. And then I'd go into his bags and take apart anything with an on/off button that weighed more than 3 ounces. I'd make sure he missed his flight to do an interview with the Grand Dragon of Airport Security (whoever the hell that is). Annnnnd I'd break his gear.

But hey, it's Burlington! Look like shit and have a cache of detonators in the form of Flash-Cards and USB cables? Welcome aboard!

Okay. Okay. I think we can all agree that Burlington, Vermont is not a high-priority target. No offense B-town, but even the security guard at the tunnel of gamma-rays was falling asleep checking passengers through the line. “What's that sir? You want to leave your shoes on? Well, you look old and friendly so you go ahead and do whatever you like.” I'd say Burlington's most valuable asset is cheese but I'll bet most of it comes from other towns. Sorry Bur, looks like you're fucked.

As I sit typing this, there's a flight attendant reading over my shoulder, giggling. Apparently, she thinks that Burlington is just as important as I do.

It sounds like I'm complaining, doesn't it? It sounds like I'm complaining about a relaxed security team and comfortable flight attendants. Whatever. I'm just salty. Time to go to Dudley.

Rich Loves Science

“If you asked the little boy what he’d be when he grew, he said I’d rather be a fireman than paint.”

-Mr. Oysterhead

How does it work? Apparently, that’s what I asked Mrs. So-and-so when she brought an Apple IIe into our nursery school. I vaguely remember the rooms of the school, goldfish (the crackers, not the vertebrates), and the computer. I do not remember asking how it worked but I’m not surprised that I did. Mrs. S turned to me and explained again about the mouse and the keyboard and a bunch of other bullshit. I looked back at her and repeated, I know, but how does it work?

She was stunned! She called my parents after school and told them I was a brilliant four-year-old who’d probably end up working for NASA. Twenty-two years later, I wonder whimsically if my parents are disappointed. Thing is, I always want to know how it works, whatever the “it” is. As soon as I read about a boy who took things apart, I realized I could take things apart as well. And so I took shit apart. I’d unscrew any screws, pop off lids, dig around inside trying to understand what was going on, and then put it back together again.

There was another thing about nursery school: I was in trouble a lot. I was always running a little too fast when I was supposed to be sitting quietly. And biting people. I did that too. Maybe I’m part wolf or something. Wouldn’t that be funny? Call National Geographic. Anyway, my teachers and just about everyone in my life are divided about me. Half of them think the energy is great and want it around. The other half want to lasso me into a spiky pit at the bottom of the earth.

As the great chemist, Hughch Von Chuh pointed out: it’s the combination that makes the lolly pop stay on the stick. We take a little insatiable curiosity, mix in a few drops of explosive tenacity and…

An obsession with solving problems and answering questions. Especially tangible, mechanical queries. Can we paint it? If we put a support rod here, will it hold up the camera? Does the weight balance out? But go a little further and… Does this file work when you load it to YouTube? What type of compression is it? What is video compression? Why does the screen show these lines when the action moves too fast?

If I’ve got a “problem” in front of me, it doesn’t matter if it’s hooking up a stereo or taking apart my laptop. I won’t eat. I’ll push past tired and fall asleep at the desk. Trying to answer questions and get at a finished, working product is an addiction.

And my favorite question still remains: How does it work?

(drums)(breathe)Cerebellum(walk)(blink)

Apparently, the Cerebellum is sometimes called our “reptilian brain.” It’s old. It plays a big role in rhythm and is thought to hold emotional value for music.

When I execute the ‘build’ in They Promised You Life, I never sway with the exact meter of the eighth-note-triplets I’m playing on the snare. The triplets are the product of motor cortex, vision, thought, consciousness, and a fruit salad of other neuron bullshit that people hear as neat-o. The loving, patient, inhaling/exhaling rhythm of my swaying is my cerebellum. The magic trick for the non-musician is that they think it’s the triplets giving them an erection. Machines are sexy; alive is sexy; cerebellum is life-rhythm.

Bicycling in New York City is probably eighty-seven times as dangerous as motorcycling in New York City. Yup, this is coming from a whopping two months of motorcycling and you know what? I’m right. On a motorcycle, you are a loud, heavy package with turn signals, a horn and enough girth to command a lane of traffic. Although drivers are as stupid as endo assholes (the dickboxes who give motorcycling it’s bad name), a biker can keep up with traffic by rolling his wrist and accelerate out of trouble by rolling it a little more. On a bicycle, the only way to move like cars is to push your legs into the pedals as hard as humanely possible. Braking is shorter but skidding is more likely. And the cars? They don’t see you and don’t want to see you. You couldn’t command a lane of traffic if you were Jesus and moses riding a bicycle built for two. Anyway, my cerebellum is probably the only reason I’m alive here today writing this. Taken as a collective, the cars swell and flow like tree branches. There’s a brief inhale as a light turns green before a car exhales itself into an intersection. Just before a car cuts me off, I can always sense the anxious anticipation of a car about to turn. If my Cerebellum couldn’t tap into this rhythm, I’d be dead.

Ain't Karma Grand?

The following isn't true, but it makes me laugh to imagine something like it happening to someone.

I pulled up to the club on my Sportster, guitar strapped to my back. Outside, a gorgeous girl sauntered up to me before I'd cut the engine.

"I like your bike." she said, with a southern accent that would melt the honey out of a beehive. "Are you playing tonight?"

"Yyyyup."

"How's about taking me for a ride when you're done with the show?"

"I think that'd be just fine - I'll meet you right here in about an hour."

Now, I have rules about riding and going out. Actually just one rule: If I'm on two wheels, I'm not drinking anything, period. So I I hang out for a half-hour, hop up on the stage and plug in. Before the first song ended, a fat guy with an enormous cowboy hat yelled up at me:

"Why dunt you grab a beer en let someone else play, asshole!?!"

I replied to the crowd through the mic, "Well, you can't please them all, right?" A good chuckle, some applause here and there, but this guy wouldn't let it go:

"I dunt see you drinking none - what are you, some sort uh homo?"

"Wow, well, I guess we'll just move along to the next song then, shall we?"

And I played through the set with this guy yelling at me anytime I wasn't making noise. He was convinced that because I wasn't drinking like everyone else in the bar, I was "a bitch that ought to be stretched out on the subway tracks." It was painful as hell - every minute of the gig stretched on to an hour with this jerk-off screaming up at me.

After I packed up, I walked back outside and my southern bell was walking down the street towards me. Apparently she had missed the show - what luck! And better yet, she still wanted to go for a ride. So I started the bike, hopped on, and let her sit behind me, hands around my waist.

Then she said, "My brother is staying with me in the city for the weekend - I have to wait for him to come out of the bar so that I can tell him how to get home." About a minute later the douchebag from the show walks out of the door towards me. Perfect, I'm thinking. This is all I need - this guy is gonna ruin everything. But before I had a chance to say anything, she said to him, "Clarence, you walk on down the block and take the L-train to Lorimer. Walk three blocks to Jackson street and you'll know where you are. I'll see you in the morning."

He knew exactly who I was and I knew exactly who he was and neither of us said anything for a beat.

I shrugged and added, "Have a nice night on the subway, asshole!" and rode off.

Sankofa

Nostalgia: Pronunciation: \nä-ˈstal-jə, nə- also nȯ-, nō-; nə-ˈstäl-\

Function: noun

Etymology: New Latin, from Greek nostos return home + New Latin -algia; akin to Greek neisthai to return, Old English genesan to survive, Sanskrit nasate he approaches

Date: 1729

1 : the state of being homesick : homesickness 2 : a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition; also : something that evokes nostalgia

The danger of wistfully yearning for a return is that you might fool yourself into thinking that you can travel back in time and relive or (oh God no) change the past. Enter the most beautiful print the world has ever known.

It's hard to bring the magic of Dudley home with you. It's harder than working for your Cub Emblem or Senior Flag because once you leave the campus, your support system of leaders, staff, and campers isn't condensed into forty+ cabins surrounded by the Adirondaks. I spent last weekend cleaning up the Witherbee Theater. To say the building is sacred space is a gross understatement - it holds nearly everything wonderful I've done in the fourteen summers I've lived and worked in Westport, NY.

On my drive home, the nostalgia not just of past summers but of the past forty-eight hours is already eating at my heart! I wish I could go back to Friday night when I walked down the Dudley road and Davo drove up to me blasting some funk/horn tune out of his station wagon; when I met Matt Storey for the first time that evening. I wish I could go to Saturday afternoon when I vacuumed an entire summer's worth of grass out of the stairwell leading up to the office; when Ryan Joyce showed up for lunch. I wish I could go back to Saturday night when Ben Schloat surprised me by showing up for s'mores and a fire; when my sister and her girlfriend broke out guitars and screamed lyrics at the surrounding woods...

There isn't an easy answer, solution or magic machine that can let you go back. But there is an Adinkra symbol. I guess that'll have to do for the time being...

Re-Introduction

Apologies for my month-long vacation. I began working for a new website geared at revolutionizing the way kids access education. As a professional musician (am I a professional musician? Sometimes I am. Other times I'm a film editor. A lot of the time, I'm a program coordinator. A lot more of the time, I'm a manager for a band, albeit a defacto one.) I wrote mostly short paragraphs about pitfalls and triumphs in the music scene.

Now back to the show...

I work at a non-profit. I take in applications and forms and responses and I do things with them. Important things. Mind-altering things. Lemme ask you, the general public, a question: Do you live in two places simultaneously? When you get mail, do you have two addresses that each letter/pkge/magazine gets sent to? No?

Why in Christ's name would someone put down two email addresses on a form? Why? I want to know. I want to know right now. Why would they do this? Why would they do this to me? Someone tell me. What the fuck am I supposed to do with john.doe@gmail.com and jdoe@blowme.edu? If I were to put that into a field and try to use it in any sort of data analysis, the program would call me an asshole and crash.

I hate this shit.

He Went to Work

As soon as he closed the door, I ran around the apartment opening drawers smelling everything. I know we rely on our eyes and ears and fingers for the present but smell connects us to the past. The blanket in the library: popcorn and deodorant - we used to watch movies on Sundays in the basement. The tennis shirt on the dryer: ick! sweat – he used to hang it on a table in the laundry room.

Every new drawer was a mountain of memories. His hairdryer. How many times did I stand in the doorframe of the bathroom watching him dry his hair? Surely I must’ve had something better to do. Towel around his waste, he’d run the dryer with the comb attachment straight back over his head. At the end, he’d either get a drink and sit watching tennis or he’d part his hair to the side and finish getting dressed.

My mother's dressing table didn’t have the curlers and alligator clips I expected. Instead, it was modernized to carry what she needs nowadays. Further evidence that the concrete foundations I set my world upon were made of dust and duct tape. That’s not a bad thing, just a disorienting part of growing up I guess.

Take the pots and pans we had when I was young. They felt eternal, like they were the only pots and pans we would ever own. I’m sure my parents have always bought new pans every few years but the years when I was young lasted forever! When I see new cookware in their kitchen, I have to remind myself that it's normal to replace old pots with new ones.

So lucky to have had dinner with him. If he died tomorrow, I had dinner with him tonight. There will always be questions that I want to ask him - I want to spend more time with him now than ever before. As I grow closer to his age, experiencing more of what he has experienced, any chance to ask questions and get answers is a gift from the heavens.

Smile, and know that you know nothing about the world. He’s laughing at himself as he answers your questions, knowing that he asked the same ones for the same silly reasons… Life is a crazy parade.

Three from Flight 27 (and San Francisco) part 2

The first time I ever road a motorbike was in 2007. Ilana and I were living in Ghana, working at an NGO when our Director told us about the “largest Film Festival in Sub-Saharan West-Africa,” FESPACO. We took a 20-hour bus from Accra to Ouagadougou and found a place to stay with some people we met in a taxi crossing the boarder into Burkina Faso. It sounds insane now, three years later, to say that we quite literally hopped on a bus in Ghana with no set plans or preparation for lodging or the road home, but that's pretty much exactly how it happened.

In addition to the amazing food (Burkina Faso is a former French Colony) everyone owned a two-wheeled something or other. Bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, motorcycles… it was dizzying to watch the traffic race by, Muslim garb dancing behind the riders.

Naturally, I had to get my hands on one. We found someone to loan me his bike for a few days in exchange for an absurdly small fee. With a top speed of forty or fifty miles an hour and a marijuana leaf sticker pealing off the front, you’d never guess that it had the heart of a Harley. Riding the bike, we explored all that the Film Festival had to offer: Films (obviously) cafés, West-African grub, and an enormous crafts market. At every outlet, there was hundreds and hundreds of bikes parked next to each other. It was paradise surrounded by the Sahara.

One night, on our way home, we decided to ride around a lake near the house we were staying in. I opened the throttle as wide as I could - racing us through cool air from the lake. A boy riding a motorbike with his girlfriend’s arms locked around his waste at midnight next to a lake in West Africa.

In love?

Last Saturday, at 7:30 a.m., I held the front brake of a Suzuki such-and-such 250 and swung my leg over the saddle. It had started pouring the day before and wasn't going to stop anytime soon. Worse than the rain, the wind lurched up in gusts strong enough to knock over the porto-potty at one end of the vacant lot. Although waterproof rain-gear covered my entire body, the water quickly soaked my hands and feet and then climbed my arms and legs towards my chest. Whenever we were lined up, I hunched over the gas tank and touched the engine block with my gloved-hands to keep them from going numb. We rode for about four hours, barely going above ten or twelve mph, learning how to manipulate the clutch, throttle and brakes.

In love.

One thing I hate; one thing I love

I hate when a rockstar complains... about anything. Rumor has it, Neil Peart complains about shows, band members and his riding buddies throughout his three books about motorcycling, travel and music. Really? I mean, really? If you don't like it, don't do it! But to sit inside a 360° drum kit in front of thousands of fans and piss and moan about it? He wrote the lyrics for most of the songs the fans are singing along to.. and he's upset? What a douche.

I have a fantastic record player, as I've mentioned a few times. And I've got some fantastic records. One album that isn't so fantastic is one of my dad's old Howlin' Wolfe records. The music is amazing, but the record itself is in rough shape. As he and I were driving around San Diego last week, I told him he had played it out. He laughed and said, "Oh yeah, I played that one plenty of times. Plenty of times drunk, too." My dad is about as cool and collected as they come so the image of him stumbling over to the record player, attempting to massage the disc onto the plate, scraping the needle across the surface, and then stumbling back, closing his eyes, ripping air guitar moves, all at three a.m... it's priceless.

Three from Flight 27 (and San Francisco) part 1

Every Friday, junior year of high school, I drove straight home at three o’clock after a week of class, rehearsals, practices and nagging teachers. As soon as I turned the lock on the kitchen door, my dog would go nuclear and practically piss herself with anticipation of, well, going to the bathroom. I grabbed her leash, tossed my bag on the counter, and ran her around the block as fast as I could.

Coco inside, water-bowl filled, money in my pocket? Check, check and check. Diving back into the car, I blasted the radio and drove north on I-87. Usually, the traffic would back up miles before the Tapan Zee bridge and I’d have time to review whatever I was supposed to have practiced the week before – A Nirvana tune, a Chilli Peppers tune, a Police tune.

Finally, head bouncing with anticipation, I drove down my drum teacher's driveway, grabbed my sticks off the passenger seat and headed into his basement. The smell of stale cigarettes still comforts me years later. We would sit side by side, striking a drum pad to a metronome, perfecting technique and warming up for the main event: playing the kit along to rock and roll. His drums were loud and obnoxious and he had me playing with tree trunks to get all the power I could out of them.

Our lesson was supposed to last an hour but I usually stayed for two or three. He’d show me more tracks to learn and beats to play; we’d talk about drumming philosophy and try to justify our mutual obsession with the instrument.

Around six or seven o’clock, I would drive home with no traffic. The drive home only took about forty-five minutes. Anything I put in the CD player sounded amazing after my musical neurons had been ignited all afternoon but one time, the amazing happened. I started “Dark Side of the Moon” in my teacher’s driveway and as the closing heartbeat faded away, I pulled into my own driveway. I couldn’t move for a half hour. It was as though my life was choreographed and had an amazing soundtrack and all I had to do was keep playing, keep drumming and keep studying music.

Fast forward nine years and we are standing in the doorway of my apartment after our last show. It had been raining to that Eeyore point where everything indoors was damp and moldy. Any person you spoke to was wet, tired and grouchy. And the gig? The stage monitors were lousy (venue’s fault), I brought the wrong snare drum (my fault), and the room had barely enough people to cover the club’s overhead. You have to laugh as you say it out loud: We made $5.00 from the door that night. Our lead singer almost missed the show and I played like shit for no discernable reason. It was a rough night to say the least.

In love.

The War Below

Every day, every few minutes: battle.

It is not a balanced fight. Each time the opposing sides rush each other, there is a strong faction and a weak one. I am not King Leonidas but I encourage the morale of my fellow warriors. It’s a subtle game: showing strength in the face of unavoidable destruction.

Wave after wave of enemies flood the turn and if you’re not careful, if you’re not quick and cunning, you may get beaten twice in one morning. The riders above show no mercy. Their strength is the inertia of their numbers.

Until Spring unveils her bosom of light, we will remain below; trapped in this frozen anus jockeying for the best position on the transport vessels to another battle in another station.

Oh, but if I could only cry out to both sides! I would join them in an alliance worthy of the majestic underground pythons we ride so thanklessly. It does not have to be this way! We could form lines and be patient and maybe even delay the train from leaving without our fellow man………

A dream that will never be made manifest.

I Don't Look That Old

A guy at the deli used to sell me beer in high school – I wasn’t tall enough to put the money on the counter yet there he was, filling my prescription. He’d charge me like twenty bucks for a sixer of bud light or something and I’d go off into the woods with eighteen friends and sip it down and… wow, I’m off track.

So on a Monday, I’m rested and happy. Usually, I spent the weekend taking long showers and sleeping in. By Thursday, I’m seven different seasons of exhausted and the only color in my cheeks is reflected off the dried coffee stains on my shirt. This particular Thursday, I left work around 8:00. God hates me for missing Ash Wednesday.

As I trudged home from the subway, cold air slapping my beard, tugging my tie, I turned into the market to do my grocery shopping: a quart of whole milk, a six-pack of bud light and a can of tuna. Two people have that grocery list: crack-heads and musicians. Holding cash, expending all of my energy to stay vertical, I heard the guy at the register whisper into a pillow at the other end of a tunnel. “Sorry?” I said. And he said, “I.D.?” Thoughts lined up in my head:

Was he talking to me? And for that matter, where was I?

Look down at my items to make sure he was ID-ing me for some sort of weapon: A gun or perhaps a Samurai sword. Nope, just a can of tuna, a quart of milk and some bud light.

Oh! The bud light! Shit. Right.

Wait a second; it’s nine-thirty on a Thursday night. Does he think I’m going to somehow make amphetamines out of my groceries and smoke them behind the gymnasium before calculus?

Dude, gimme my fucking tuna and bud light so that I can eat dinner and cry myself to sleep listening to old Cranberries albums, wake up, dump the milk into a carafe of coffee and go back to work.

A half-groan, half-sigh. It’s alright, I get it: Despite my vibe, my rhythm, half-wearing a tie and fully wearing exhaustion, I just don’t look that old.

I was a man

It wasn’t raining outside, but it may as well have been. I was slumped comfortably on the couch with my hands around a mug of tea and my feet up on the table. Next to them, my laptop was playing the West Wing. By anyone’s standards, I was in heaven: comfortable, relaxed, entertained and without deadline or due date. After an episode or two (I was in one of those television series DVD marathons), my girlfriend came to lie next to me on the couch. Like a koala using her parent as a soft extension of a tree, she clung to me and promptly fell asleep. As the West Wing ran faster and faster, racing between camera angels and jokes and political pitfalls, her breathing slowed and drew deep.

I know what I looked like in the mirror before going to the couch: I was a boy with short brown hair and a scruffy beard. But now, after just a few minutes, I was a security blanket, a fireplace, a house, a fence, a guard dog, a hero, a friend, and all I had to do was keep lying there. In fact, if I did anything else, I’d transform back into a boy on a couch. Measured in whiskers, bills to pay, and children, we climb on this mountain. At the bottom, a boy fights and wins. At the top, a man has fought and lost. You always thought it was about getting laid and making money and you didn't realize until it was right on top of you (or next to you on the couch) that she had to decide you were more than a human; that you were a superhero. And she did it by falling asleep. What power. What grace!

That’s why it’s all so damn funny. All the slammed doors and broken relationships and people you never hear from anymore. Lost battles and dead soldiers that crease your eyes with grey wrinkles. I was a man.

Ladies Man

A few years ago, a girlfriend accused me of giving her Mono.

“Hey hun, how was class?”

“I just came back from the hospital – he say’s it’s Mono.”

“Whoa! God, that sucks but at least I’ve already had it so I can take care of you without fear of catching it.”

“James you gave it to me.”

“I, uh… what?

“You gave it to me. You gave me mono.”

“I gave you mono. I gave? You mono? I had mono in high school – like, four years ago.”

“Yeah, well the doctor says it can come back and you could’ve given it to me so you did.”

On a sunny but not-too-warm day in April, the same girlfriend wanted to take a nap together. She loved taking naps. I have no idea why she stayed up all night and napped for hours during the day although there is a very real possibility that as a fetus, the doctor injected her with some bizarre Middle Eastern bat DNA. Unlike our typical daily coma, she insisted this day that we sleep outside. But not on main campus. No no, she wanted to sleep on a smaller field near one of the dorms. As I said, it wasn’t that warm so naturally, she slept on top of me. We were like a beached-whale sandwich. Imagine trying to relax with 150 pounds of girl putting your diaphragm through Dolph Lundren’s workout.

Do you think people in their dorm rooms saw us down on the ten foot patch of grass below? I wonder if they thought, like I did, “What the fuck are they doing out there? Is he about to get laid at three in the afternoon outside of Skidmore Hall?!?” And what do you suppose the tour walking by thought? “Wow, if I send my kids here, they too can pretend they’re sea lions during mating season. Gosh, I can’t think of a better way to spend one hundred and sixty grand!”

When I was sixteen, a girl I’d been dating for a few weeks told me she loved me. Naturally, I said it back. Sixteen. I think I had located a whisker a few days before. Wait, no, it was an eyelash.

There was the girl who spent an hour trying to find me in the hallway just so that she could slap me for something that she heard I did. (I didn’t do it.) The girl who looked like Kermit the frog. The girl who ten years later realized she likes girls. There was the girl who only wanted to be friends. There was the girl who told me that muscles mattered and seeing as I don’t have any…

I wonder: If I wasn’t in my present situation, would all of this be so damn funny? Stay tuned…

Fail

One of the best dreams I ever had ended. I was skiing and flying and people were in awe of all my power. Occasionally, I knew that it was a dream but I fought back the little voice imploring logic and reason so that I could stay dreaming as long as possible. And it wasn’t perfect. It was far from perfect. But it was a dream and like all of my dreams, it was wonderful.

When the alarm clock bashed on the door, I tried to ignore it knowing that I was being flushed down the toilet. And that’s really what waking up feels like, don’t you think? You went from swimming on a beach in southern California to floating in a toilet with paper and hair and piss. Round and round and no matter which way you swim, you’re out and it’s over and “good morning, Sunshine!”

I hate my alarm clock. I mean, I love my alarm clock and my job and my girlfriend but if I could just go back for a second… just a brief moment… no. It’s over. I’m awake.

The question now is whether or not I should go back to sleep. Try again for the unattainable: the perfect, never-ending dream. If this were a movie, the last shot would be me closing my eyes. A happy ending where we all agree that the point is to try and keep trying and life’s a journey.

Sorry to break the fourth wall but at this point, both in writing and in reality, I don't know what to say next.