when it rains…

you get wet.

so much is going on. so much is happening. i can barely hold it all in my head. after what felt like an eternity in some kind of creative purgatory, the muses have begun to accept my calls again. i won’t go as far as to say they’re happy to hear from me, and time will tell if i’ve earned any smiles, but at least they’re talking.
i’ve ghostwritten a book. this received the void of fanfare it deserves. it’s not technically my book after all. but i’ve sent query letters out to literary agents in hopes of publishing my own work. speaking of which, i have one book in the hands of an editor and another awaiting action. i’m back in the business of corporate training and i’ve partnered up with a brilliant like-minded fellow humorist in an effort to develop a TV pilot. the script is written and we go into production in just under two weeks. i’m teaching improv classes at a local theatre, i live in a cottage on the beach, Della is good, we’re eating like plumping kings, and so on.
there is even talk of improv troupes and sketch shows and who knows what else. i’m excited. i’m thrilled. i won’t lie, i’m buzzing.
but i’m leery. life has taught me a few lessons that i ignored for a long time. but finally, at long last, the knowledge has pierced my thick cranium.
first, everything is exactly what it seems. too good is usually just that and the silver lining may be shiny, but it’s probably not sterling.
second, there are exactly two types of people in the world. you and everyone else. we are all the stars of our own sitcoms/soap operas/late night talk shows, and contracts get renegotiated everyday. i’m just saying. the kindness of hearts doesn’t get near as much done as we’d like to believe.
third, the top of the mountain is covered in clouds for a reason. we climb and we climb, but if we actually knew that the view from up there is not nearly as appealing as it is from right here, we might enjoy the climb a little more. i’ve been working so hard to get back on the rock face, i almost forgot that the view from base camp is spectacular.
don’t get me wrong. i’m glad to be busy doing something other than keeping myself so, but i don’t want to get swept up in the moment and forget what i’ve learned. i don’t like who used to be. i’m happier now than i’ve ever been and these moments, everyone of them, from teaching thirteen year olds the secrets to improv comedy and one-on-one brain-storming sessions to freezing cold walks on the beach just me and the dog and quiet nights watching movies with Della asleep on the couch next to me, these moments are the ‘why’. the reason for everything else.
sure, i’d like to accomplish something. i’d like to have a whole shelf of my own first editions, and wouldn’t it be great to find seasons of your own show on DVD at Target? i’d like to pay my bills without compromising on the produce budget, i’d like to sit on a porch of my own (not one I rent) and listen to the waves, smoke cigarettes and drink my whiskey without rationing out all three so the supply doesn’t run out before payday.
i’d like to make the people i love proud of me. i’d like to be so proud of myself that i could get over what they think in the first place. i’d like to write something important.
i’d like to write something important.
but i want to remember writing it. i want to remember to enjoy every keystroke.
i know, i want a lot. i’ve got what i need. i know that too.
i live in a 400 sq. ft. cottage by the sea. i’ve got a beautiful girl, a dog, a tortoise that will outlive us all and three birds. i’m happy.
yeah, i said it. i’m happy. and you know what? it makes me nervous. i’ve never been good at this part. but i’m working on it. for now, i wait. i keep going and i wait. i check the mail, i listen for the phone and i wait.
it could be worse. i could be me and not know these things, right? that would be worse.

I’ve developed a weird hang-up…

at some point along the way the notion that a story has to have a murder or paranormal experience or righteously unexpected twist ending in order to deserve the privilege of being written. no so regarding what i read. whether it’s a young english dude of a bygone era or wayward fisherman or a kid looking to ind his place in a world that wants nothing to with him, i except all of these as justified. story-worthy primaries, but when it comes to my own… i don’t know. a fresh if not jaded look at the everyday, a sadly romantic struggle against self-realization or a beautifully constructed rant against the age of the normals seems… done. dumb, even. weight comes with a talent i don’t believe i have, and interesting is twisted and shocking and easy. i’m stuck between a rock and sociopathic hooker with tourettes, a two year old and the bubonic plague. everything that is merely amusing or ponderous has to fight to become more than a screenplay, or worse, a blog.
i have acquired a palpable fear of the quintessential. my writing matches my life to the point of lunacy. i have no direction, no permission and no drive. my life is perfect save the lack of purpose. in my darkest hours i pine to be like the quiet-minded masses. how simply they waddle away from the trough, pleased and appeased. the role of the self-loathing, cocksucker is so overcast as it is.
the words are there, i see them, i taste them, i can’t get away from them. sentences and paragraphs, stingers and cliffhangers around every corner. but where is the art in editorializing about falling stars and cracks in the sidewalk. yeah, yeah, we get it. fate and abusive parents and the one that got away. but then why do we watch re-runs? even the ancient greeks knew there was nothing new under the sun, so why do we try so hard. like they didn’t have murder mysteries, like they didn’t have plot twists. i read oedipus in high school like everyone else, but lysistrata still cracks me up.
i’m looking to be epic. i don’t immortality, besides, you know you have to answer for that shit in the after life. i’m just talking about a hundred thousand words in a row that i can feel good about.

chicka chicka

you don’t want to know what I think. i was speaking (texting rather) a dear friend of mine just minutes ago and an unsettling idea occurred to me. with so many of us without gainful employment, we should start a union or an organization or a disgruntled army of ‘has-been’s. In my case it might be better termed ‘almost was’ or ‘never was’, but I would be open to including ‘should’ve been’s or ‘might one day be’. we represent this mass of self-involved, near geniuses who should not be facing the total emasculation that we are.

now I know that what I have contributed to the world debatably amounts to little more to a handful of chuckles and a dozen or so ‘ah-hah’ moments, but I feel that my short comings shouldn’t reflect badly on the masses of creative masses that either have or will still contribute a great deal more than I will ever. as the ecomony of our country continues to tear balls off the bold of our great nation (and it is important that we not confuse  the ‘bold’ with the ‘ruthless’ or the ‘opportunistic’). the bold are the ones among us who have something to contribute not the hordes of abusively agressive critics that make a living by tearing down.

it seems to me that if we take this moment, these moments of indecision and soul searching reflection to count the blessings we have recieved by knowing these articulate fools who try so desparately to enlighten or merely entertain that we will realize that their words are the ones that rang true before there was an echo for them to get lost in. everyone seems to know now what went wrong or who we should blame and everyone has taken sides either with the whistle blowers or the sunshiners, but what about those of us who were already pessimists and tried to smile through the pain when we were the only ones who were hurting.

crazy and conspiratorial are too easy a set of labels to libel our ranks with. you swigged you swill and laughed as we made fun of the future, and we could see your eyes roll from the spotlight, but now that the lights have gone out and there is no one to pay the utility bills, who do you blame first.

a fire burns within the minds of a few and we need not look far to glimpse our redemption. why? why, in the midst of all this tragedy, do we forget to laugh and learn and read and know that imagination can set us free, even is only for a moment. but that moment of release from the disappointment of our everyday may be all it takes for us to realize that our path out of the mire of our own decisions is nearer than we think.

in these times, we become isolated from one another. we barricade ourselves behind illusions of self-preservation and block out the voices of those who knew and will alway know, thick or thin, that esape (even if only for a moment) is always possible, and that these brief reprives may be our only vacations from the vocation of survival. do not discount the wreckless and wild savages who populate the fringe of your own social reality, for we may be the only ones who have not been blinded by false optimism and dooms day prophets who wish only to profit from your misery.

seek out the thinkers, the crazies and the creatives you already know, ignore and avoid the ‘normals’ who led you astray and relax in the company of the ‘has-beens’, the ‘never-was’ and ‘still might be’s, for, at the very least, they know they don’t know and won’t lead you down an unknown rabbit hole. they know what happens down there when you drink the ‘drink me’, dine with the hatter and finally meet the red queen. do you? do they? i think not. either way, our tea party will be a lot more fun.

The What Of It… a poem.

I’ve seen a thing or two or three.

I have felt both great oceans run.

Wind and waves and rocks and light,

Seen it start… seen it done.

I’ve stood ten thousand miles.

I’ll stand ten thousand more.

Time… is my bully bitch.

And destiny, my whore.

I’ve lived and lost and laughed and loved.

And known the will men.

I have kissed the devil’s cheek at dawn,

And lived to lose again.

I’ve bled from wounds I ripped myself,

Broke bones to amuse mere fools.

The stage is cruel and dark at night,

And lies and dreams are tools.

We build a bridge to span our scope.

To see where we might be.

And when it lights, we marvel still,

Burning them and you and me.

We look and say and know the truth,

And hold our tongues for now.

Pretending that forever lasts,

And will stave off our final bow.

In me you see, not one but two.

And maybe even more.

Times my bully bitch again,

And destiny’s my whore.

Dreams are not just airy figments,

Meant for staying in our head.

But paths of journeys walked or not,

The regret or pride of dead.

You see, I’ve stood in the rain for a thousand years

And still not gotten wet.

I’ve felt the pain of a thousand years.

Scars that bleed and bones won’t set.

I’ve cried the cries of thousand tears.

And laughed a thousand more.

Now I know, yes now I know.

And destiny’s my whore.

I refuse to bend, or bow or break

Before judge or king or priest.

For you cannot kill the walking dead,

Nor deem them imprisoned or released.

For I have seen the ends of days,

Stood before the fallen dove.

And can serve no man or wicked beast,

Save the demon angel, Love.

And she can wield my will quite well,

And take and leave and steal.

But in all the dreams of women wide,

There is no dream so real.

Gossamer want and tallied sins

and too many desires to name.

My innocence is long since lost

And I’ve never known much shame.

Tainted, jaded, twisted and wrecked.

Made whole and torn asunder.

The pain of breaking hearts and minds

Screaming, whispering thunder.

And if by chance we know her grace

And love is ours to lose.

Will we run and bar the door once more,

When noble truth is ours to choose?

Torment is not preferred or sought,

but a loveless life is wasted.

And while so many close their eyes and mouths,

I’ve seen and known and tasted.

And time, that bully bitch, is rank.

His stench drips from the floor.

But “Caution” wails the wild wise,

For destiny’s a whore.

So we drink the fruit and eat the wine,

And grow warm in colder seasons

Nothing done can be undone,

And every event has its reason.

Coincidence holds no ally here

And we will what will become.

And to the spark of loves new flickered flame

We stay blind and deaf and dumb.

So love and lust and live and leave,

But know this much is true.

I’ve loved and lost and loved and left

And now my loves for…….. you.

holed up in my zombie bunker…

…hundreds of feet underground, stocked piled for survival, entertainment and communication to last a thousand years and armed to the teeth; I wait for the first undead to rise, for the first of the flesh-eaters to begin gnashing their teeth, for the end when all my preparations will be rewarded by the sweet ecstasy of watching the un-living masses that blindly wander the crowded streets of this intellectual wasteland eaten so unceremoniously by the living dead. zombies will be my vindication, and deep beneath their daylight tombs I will build anew in the catacombs now under excavation. a society of the truly living, wise enough to know that life has a way of righting itself and the mindless, droning, slack-jawed, mouth-breather idiot parade would only be tolerated for so long. flesh be damned, let pestilence eat pestilence and blood pool in the potholes of the rust belt. i have endured the stupid, the rude and the weak-willed nearly every second I have been here and nothing would please me more than to watch them all flayed alive on the monitors down here that have been spliced into their traffic cams, atm feeds and security cameras. i hope to edit together one of the first documentaries of the apocalypse. while money will be worthless, I’ll be rich with accolades for my foresight and timeliness.

So anyway, my eye is mostly healed (though the white hasn’t filled all the way back in), I have stripped the trim, lights and hood ornament from the Ghia in preparation for her new paint job and I have survived another week in the service of the normals. Tomorrow I take a break from participating in the village festivities of watching paint peel and actually scrape it off the exterior walls of my mother’s building. The work is more annoying than difficult and I’m curious to see how the natives will respond. My guess is they will all gather around and watch the paint chips fluttering to the ground as if hundreds of years have passed in mere minutes. They will proclaim me a time traveler and make me their king.

I witnessed a pastoral phenomenon I think worth mentioning yesterday during my binging. Looking out over the valley well after midnight as an angry thunder storm blew itself out, I watched fireflies (hundreds of them) cascade across the glen behind the house while lightning danced across the sky in the distance. It was quite moving, a powerful series of thoughts and ideas unraveled and wove themselves back to together in one of those divine revelation sort of moments. clarity I have not know in ages tore through my mind. then it dissolved into the background as tuna casserole changed its flight plan at the last second on the funshine skyway and crash landed into yarksville.
I think the strange, yet intense, contradictive themes of my pre-bed activity contributed to the strange-ness of my dreams. what started as an innocent test drive of a car I will never be able to afford, spun through a second act where I was trapped at a buffet with a thousand yodelers and ended with me trying fruitlessly to have sex with a giant, rather guile-less, marble statue of a beautiful, deity. she whispering encouraging words and making as to let it happen, then moving in such a way that the nearly impossible feat became infuriating. the cruel coy act felt vaguely familiar and when I woke up I was both frustrated and exhausted.

and the record changes, tonight my dinner consisted of nothing but pan-fried perogies & onions sided by sour cream and apple sauce. it was amazing. nearly perfect. ended by homemade brownies. thanks ma.

I am not writing. I feel like I am mourning the death of a pet or preparing to get bad news from the school principal. an angry badness lurks nearby, misery is with him.

the taste of love lost still ingers on my tongue. it is bitter and dry way back in the back of my throat.
i smell change, but it reeks of unwanted familiarity. i’ve stopped and enjoyed these roses before. more thorn and bee sting than longstem lovely.
i have buried so many treasures as of late that my map is mostly x’s.
my art knows my playlist by heart and refuses to listen to the wails of sad sacks and their broken promises while my promise is being broken and stuffed in a ziploc baggy full of children’s aspirin.
ka is a wheel that keeps on turning, but my fate seems to have gone flat.
i’ve been on this ride before, it wobbles a lot, goes around in circles for a while then the bar goes up and you can buy a picture where you’re the only one not smiling.

i’ve got a quarter and a turkey leg is a dime, i don’t need your two cents. save it for that tease of a goddess, you’re next, good luck.

whoa!!!

it’s time to be proud

feel the virus tickle your brain stem

man. i can’t believe how easy it is to get all wrapped up in mish-mash, hodge-podge, riggamarol of the everyday. how easy it is to get all caught up in the ‘who thinks what?’, ‘what if they don’t care?’, ‘who will be my friend?’, ‘what if i die and this is all i’ve done?’ back hole-ejector seat idealism of this infected world we live in.

don’t get me wrong, i love so many of these moaning lost souls with all my heart, but i’ve got to quit letting myself get swept up in the wake of my own insecurities. so what, i moved, and i wrote a book, two, in fact. i’ve written two screenplays and gathered intel on a dozen more. i ‘ve seen the error of my ways and i’m undoing the damage. sherri said i should be prepared for the fact that most of the people i held so near and dear would have filled the tiny hole in their lives left by my departure. i certainly hope so. i am the echoing voice of a forgotten god, who cares what i say or what i said. fill in that hole. the true believers believe, it’s what they do. and when the religion returns so will they. the rest, well bully for them, we’ve all got items to tick off on the list of what needs to be done and i am not one of them. my friends, few as they are, know that i’m unstable, fickle, prone to wandering and easily distracted. eeeww, blue, i wonder what would happen if i poked the sleeping bear. oh my god, run, he’s angry, run dammit run.

here i am, hurling through this so called life and i find tiny bits of myself being seared off at regular intervals. i can’t help but be personally offended that Jason Lee might be lookng for work. Orlando bloom hasn’t signed onto the new pirate movies and the gods be damned if Miss Ricci doesn’t get her due. how the hell did i get so invested in the lives people i will never know? sure, i had lunch with the fonz and dinner with jewel. but these were fleeting moments in their lives, they are not a high point of any given day. the fact that i keep coming back to them is an indication of how deep my insecurity has festered.

i have got to get over myself. more importantly, i have got to get over the perceived slights that i carry around. so what, i fell in love with a self-involved primadonna who took me for granted and then left me high and dry pretending like we never even dated. now i know what it must be like to try and date me. karma sucks. i got kids who barely know me, whose fault is that? well, lisa could stand to return an e-mail. anyway, so i’ve failed. big deal. who hasn’t?

i’m sitting here packing books into egg boxes, trying to decide which of the eight duffel bags i own i should stuff all this rockband crap into and somehow i’ve convinced myself that any of this matters. now i’m used to living a relatively pointless life, i’m an actor, we lie and rationalize for a living, but come on. some of my prized possessions are the heads of long dead artists i can never hope to be. i have got to achieve some perspective. i write novels and screenplays that are little more than creepy sketches drawn out for a few hundred pages. this is not rocket science and we are not curing any diseases people. stop. have some fun. inspire some more people to have some fun. that’s the best you can hope for and there is nothing wrong with that.

okay. no more ultra serious. i am a twitchy geek with a pension for the supernatural and a gift for the humorous turn of a tale. love it, live it, be it.

if i can stay drunk enough, i might just be able to hold onto this perspective. i’ve got boxes to pack, pages to write and lives to disregard. love you all, see you soon enough. >SSMMMAACK!!!< ew, you taste like sweaty fish, take a shower, will ya? g’night.

confessions of a moron

i am an idiot. most of you would agree, i’m sure. i have done quite a few astonishingly stupid things. like many people, i have fleeting moments of clairty and can claim a handful of legitimately clever, if not ultimately ‘good,’ ideas.

some of my less than retarded inspirations have included contributions to a better bridal show, a handful of fairly witty sketches and a detailed design for a self-guided car/automated transit system.

while some of the gilded dolt awards adorning my mantelpiece keep company with such polished gems as buying a 50 year old car when i can’t change the oil on a lawnmower, most of my fashion choices in 1989, my first marriage and moving here.

this is to say, i am openly aware of how stupid i can be. we all have moments where it would appear we left not only our common sense, but are entire brains in the stash pocket of our other jeans. we are, of course, also the ones burdened with knowing that things are not right with the world and all we can hope to do is change our little corner of it enough so that when the fecis hits the air handler mom will yell at jimmy and we can stay up late and watch johnny carson in peace. ha, ha, jimmy is stupider than me.

here’s something i can’t figure out. why do some places just seem to attract the lowest common denominator?

i have recently found myelf faced, once again, with the ‘walmart delima’. somehow, walking through walmart makes me feel both superior and dirty. i’m too good to be shopping here. but i am shopping here, so i am clearly not too good to be shopping here. how many of the people i walk past think the same thoughts about me as i do of them? does anybody else get dressed up when they go to walmart so in case you do see someone you know you’ll look like you got lost and ended up at walmart intead of going there on purpose? no? just me? okay, whatever. as so many of us, i would rather not give my money to the evil conglomerate that has put so many of our entrepeneureal brethren out of business. we seek out the little mom and pop places when we can and only venture into the chaotic aisles of wally world when we cannot find what we need, or it is simply too close to sunrise to wait any longer.

the problem seems to be, especially in this neck of the back woods, that mom stayed home sick today and dad couldn’t give a damn if you shop here or there or just stick it up your ass. the nearest place you could call a town to where i live sports a 24 hour testiment to the dedication to wholesale distribution and global domination. try as you might to avoid shopping within its unhallowed walls, but the hardware store, nearly in its parking lot, never has what you’re looking for and these folks have trouble changing their pants, let alone offering advice on how to change out a faucet. there is barely a street that doesn’t boast a barber or hair salon and if you are in the market for a crew cut or bouffant than you are in luck, anything else and you can suck it.  you’ll pay two or three times more for groceries down the street and every other store in town closes at 5. a full hour before you get off work. they are not open on weekends, mondays, holidays, weekdays starting with m, t or f and 9 times out of ten, the person you need to talk to is out of town, the item you are looking for is out of stock and the service you require is no longer available. customer service is for sissies and if you don’t like it, well, you know where you can go.

which, as it turns out, is the multi-national supercenter department store you were trying to avoid to begin with. by this time you are flat out of patients, that’s cool, someone is always wandering around who can help you, they have at least one of every device, gadget and doo-dad known to man and now that you’ve burnt up all the daylight of the one day a week you get to run these errands, they don’t ever close, not ever, not ever, ever. if you’re lucky you find a stock guy who seems to know every inch of the store and prides himself on walking you right to where you need to go and hone in on that cashier that is always in a good mood and never loses her temper when you want to chop up you purchase in to 9 pieces, pay with 4 different kinds of plastic and absolutely must have your bread in a brown, paper bag.

you stroll in, a man who looks like he might be an out-of-work catholic priest rolls a cart your way. you get a haircut, do your banking, have a small asian man grate callouses off your heels, update your contact prescription, rotate your tires, eat a big mac and get an afghan with a picture of your softball team embroidered on it. you wander up and down 7ooo aisles. you find everything you have ever thought that you might one day want to have and decide it would be prudent to buy two of them so you can avoid coming back to this horrible place. a wiry haired welfare whale that has beached itself into a hover-round gums a wet grin at you as you puruse the deli counter and when you at last decide to that the expedition is at an end, you hike back up to the front, scan two carts of merchandise yourself (because you can) and head out to your car hoping your clothes haven’t gone out of style while you were away.

it’s like a religious experience. not the ‘saved your life, let’s tell everyone we know so they might see the glory and the light’ kind, but the ‘two jehovah witnesses have decided that you are the poor schmuck who will fill their salvation quota for the day and keep banging on your door refusing to leave until you take one of their creepy little pamphlets even after you threaten to call the cops’ kind. god, i hate that kind.

exhausted, defeated and demoralized, you drive home trying to remember what all the fuss was about and as you’re sitting at the light waiting to turn left and back into your life you see that the pet store across the street is going out of business and you have to restrain yourself from saying out loud, ‘serves ‘em right.’

twenty minutes later you’re unpacking the tangle of white bags in your kitchen you’ve been wading through and realize you forgot to grab the sour cream. completely overwhelmed you give up on taco night and decide to order a pizza.

this, or some similar trial,  happens to me almost everytime i go there. but i still put myself through it, convincing myself each time that this time will be different. this time i’m ready for it. this time i won’t cry. but this time is just like last time and that stupid price slash guy gets the better of me again. maybe i deserve it.

i don’t know. i need a can of yellow spray paint, a package of kosher hot dogs and an umbrella stroller, you need anything?

Do you smell something burning or is that just my brain?

Summer makes an appearance. It was hot today and spent the afternoon tearing a rotted staircase off the side of a building. I love demolition. I also started dismantling the thirty some-odd bookshelves lining the walls of my abandoned bookstore. I think we’re turning it into an art gallery. While no one reads here, it is now my belief that Della could make a living painting pictures of rusted mining equipment. I also think there is a market for pictures of biscuits.

The sun beat down, there was a light breeze which carried on it the faint stench of raccoon poo. I have new blisters on my hands and a new appreciation for the value of a claw hammer. I also discovered that it is more difficult to smoke a cigarette, operate a power saw and answer the phone than I would have suspected. Giving the choice, I will apparently ignore the phone. We must have our priorities.

I don’t know if it’s this place or this time of year or just the incessant whining of an impatient muse, but something is eating away at my soul. Like a constant gnawing sound in the walls, splinter in my brain, fleck of pepper in my eye, rock in my shoe sort of festering ache. Something big has got to give. Whether I know it or not, changes are afoot. And not a slender, alabaster pad, but a gnarled-nail, bone spur, hairy-toed, old guy foot. Mean and mostly useless.

In this time of strange transition I have found it difficult to write. I am eager to get back to the supernatural Oprah book I’m currently writing, but it requires a level of concentration I simply do not have at my disposal right now. So to keep my fingers busy and my inkwell draining I have decided to write a one-sheet (sort of a treatment) for all the screenplay/story ideas I’ve got banging around inside my head. Partly because it makes me feel good to do so and partly because I have the memory of goldfish with Alzheimer’s on a bender.

Thumbing through old journals and landfills of post-it notes I’ve discovered a few things. First, there is, apparently, no shortage of ideas rolling around inside my head.  Second, most of these ideas are rubbish. Third, the ideas that are good represent a very long list of things I have not been doing with my time. Fourth, in order to utilize these ideas properly I should categorize them by what I could sell, what I could make myself and what I should write simply to entertain myself or as a cheap form of therapy. Fifth, I use way too many post-it notes.

They range from shorts and episodes of a baffling rendition of Twilight Zone meets Saturday Night Live to feature films and (in one case) an absurdist trilogy. Nothing would please me more than to write them all, but, alas, I have only the customary 25 hours in a day. So I present an abridged list of my favorites and submit them to you for a vote. In lieu of a signed confidentiality clause from all of you I will twist the story lines here and there to add both humor and a modicum of security to this exercise.

There are twenty six in all, but I have narrowed it down to 6. You get to pick which is next. The remaining twenty-five will have to wait.

1.  A post-apocalyptic coming of age story featuring a human/zombie hybrid and graphic novel sensibility. If zombies are real and prejudice is a universal theme, can we overcome our differences to save our own hides? Action. Feature.

2. A boy meets girl story where the main character’s imagination manifests an unlikely cast of secondary characters who wreak mayhem in the world around him, but ultimately serve to lead the guy through troubled times. Romantic comedy. Feature.

3. A cynical buddy movie where a guy and his best friend try to capitalize on the fact that he has inherited an ancient deity of creativity. Selfishness, greed and painful truth abound as they struggle to turn a dime without lifting a finger. Comedy. Feature.

4. A very cynical look at everyday life through the eyes of a tired, everyday schmuck who sees everything as if it were a zombie movie. Girl trouble, job dissatisfaction, best-friend conflict, arch enemies will all compete for this guys limited attention span as the plot revolves around him not accomplishing his goals. Dark comedy. Television series.

5. Hard-core seventies style mockumentary of a guy traveling the country to find the America’s best chili. Committed, driven, perhaps even obsessed he sinks his life savings into buying a motor home, hiring a film crew and embarking on this noble quest. Within the first months he develops an ulcer, an allergy to cumin and irritable bowel syndrome. Comedy/mockumentary. Feature?

Okay. I narrowed it down to five and the twisting proved harder with some than others. Pick one. Whichever gets the most hub-bub I’ll write next.

I suppose it’s important for me to point out that I don’t hate this place or very many of the people in it. There is a resignation that I find deeply and personally unsettling; a blatant acceptance of the status quo that I find infinitely discouraging, but I’m sure under the apathetic, snaggle-toothed, cow-eyed exterior there are some fine people here.  In fact, I’ve met few of them. When I build my zombie proof ark and sail off in search of intelligent life, I will invite them to go with me. I’m sure they will decline, but then I’ll feel less guilty about leaving them to drown in their neighbor’s stupidity. Lord knows I don’t need any more guilt. Between the kid, that lady and whole thing with the puppy, I’ll be in therapy forever… I’m just kidding, there was no thing with a puppy.

And so it begins…

This is the first post on the new blog and I wish I had something happy and inspiring and full of sunshine and goodwill to share, but frankly, it is, quite literally, not in me. I’m five days into a new relationship with a stomach parasite that is intent on turning my inside into a Pollack painting. I spent a small, yet demoralizing chunk of yesterday afternoon having a wholly pointless battle of wits with the toothless, brother lovin’, hillbilly crone across the street. And I still don’t have any idea why I moved to this forgotten ass dimple of America.

For those of you who don’t know and wish to, here’s the quick update. I was living in Jacksonville, Florida, had been for more than ten years. Twice divorced, father of three beautiful boys whose mothers have done well to move on, and in some cases, far, far away (i.e. England). My career had consumed itself in the face of my arrogance and naivety and my love life had become a sick combination of penance and promiscuity. So, by manufacturing an opportunity to open a bookstore in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, I effectively delivered myself from one sure misery to a fresh, unsure misery. Belly of the beast to his colon; if you will.

The bookstore idea was shelved for all the obvious reasons, the economy tore the balls off the improv comedy corporate training by which I was sustaining myself and this flicked booger of abandoned industry occupying the space under the ‘you are here’ sticker of my life, has little else to offer besides the dust of fleeing twenty-somethings and the brain droppings of the genetic remainder of America’s population equation.

I have secured a minimum wage job shoveling popcorn into the gaping stew holes of morbidly obese movie-goers who neither understand the difference between entertainment, art and mere time-consumption. Nor do they aspire to be anything more than the relatives their kin no longer visit for fear of being infected by idiot. I have discovered that most of the people here are more than content to embrace, even celebrate, the status quo. Those who are inspired to fight for something more, find that the fight offers infinite more purpose to their lives than they have ever known and work hard to make sure that the fight continues in eternum, somehow intuitively knowing the goal is the same empty mind shaft they’ve been staring down their whole lives.

I have met a handful of people who are not from here and seem to realize that this place is evil stagnate. I am working with a couple who are committed to producing a movie or television series this summer, we only need to zero in on the project that holds their interest.

And not every moment of my time here has been pointless. If I don’t leave the basement/cerebral bomb shelter I call home, I can almost pretend I’m someplace else, anyplace else and move along the path of the beam toward the goals I scattered out before myself before coming here. I have finished the first draft of my first novel. It is a tale about a girl, her past, a bunch of ghosts trapped on Earth and driven mad and the small, crap-hole town in which the girl finds this purgatory. I have finished two screenplays, both comedies, one marginally good. I am working on another novel that is so depressing it makes even me sad, I love it. And the business book I’ve been talking about writing is finally finished and sent off.

So, this place hasn’t been a total bust, at least, creatively speaking. As soon as one of these projects catch and I can scrape together enough money to pay off the monumental debt I incurred getting here, I will buy an rv, pack up my things, my lovely and utterly forgiving girlfriend, her adorable, stinky dog and drive far, far from here. Before I go, I need to repay my mother’s kindness by making sure her yarn shop is open for business. It’s not that I don’t have a plan, or even a reasonable hope of pulling it off, but in a place where things already move in slow motion, in a time when things seem to moving backwards, and when I’ve caught the swine flu, I have to wonder if I’ll live long enough to get any of it done.

Well, I guess that’s a sufficient first entry, not a happy one, but accurate nonetheless.