oh hey Monday

“Oh Monday, you saucy whore, why must you be so miserable?” This is my first thought most Monday mornings. And today was no exception. I stretch, groan, roll over, and smack my alarm clock across the room. Bastard is in cahoots with Monday. They are wily, formidable opponents, and I do not like them at all.

But I’m up! I’m showered! I’m moving! I take a cold shower, just to spite Monday. Monday wants to play rough, I can play rough. I’m much harder than Monday could ever aspire to be. I’m dressed, I’m packed, I’m out the door. Down a rickety elevator and onto the street, Monday, you got nothing on…mother fucker!

It’s pouring. Absolutely monsooning. Well played Monday. I see what you did there.

Back up the rickety elevator and into my apartment, quiet enough not to wake up my sleeping roommate and his boyfriend, because its still early and I’m a nice guy. I grab my poncho and curse myself for the thirty eight thousandth time for not owning a real raincoat. I live in Portland, Oregon, and I don’t own a real raincoat, I am a moron.

Down the stairs this time, because its only four flights and I’m feeling feisty. Crash onto the street, into the rain, on a mission. Put the hood up and hunker down, its cool, but not really cold, its fresh and I can dig this, even on a Monday. A truck barrels past, splashing water at me. I jump, manage to avoid most of it, but it still catches my boots. Really Monday, was that absolutely necessary? Jerk. I turn to cut through the alley, the same alley I cut through everyday on my way to Floyd’s and stop.

I cannot believe my eyes.

There are three men dancing. Sort of. There is a bum wearing a pink suit and a floppy hat with a small battery operated boom box, blasting some sort of drum beat at full volume. Tribal jungle drums in the rain. And this man is dancing and jumping and spinning in the alley. There are two dreadlocked hippie men jumping around beside him. Legs kicking, arms flailing, faces to the sky. All of this in an intense Porltand downpour. What. The. Fuck.

They notice me standing there and stop their dancing. I’m staring, not sure what to make of it. I need to cross that alley, but it seems rude to interrupt such a display of pure emotion. These are clearly True-Believers. And then one of the dreadlocked hippie men smiles and waves me in. And it seems like the best idea I’ve ever heard.

So I join. I dance and I spin and I smile. I get soaked. I stomp in puddles and I laugh. This is exactly what I need. This is what we all need. My boots are wet, my jeans are wet, my hair is a wet, matted mess. My smile is uncontrollable. We notice a group of tourists at the far end of the alley holding pink Voodoo Donuts boxes, staring. They have no idea what to think of four grown men, dancing in the rain to a tribal beat. We smile and gesture them in. They look away and hurry to cross the street. We laugh, they have no idea how much fun they’re missing.

Thanks Monday, maybe you’re not so bad after all.

Oh hey Monday

Lovely Spinning Brown Eyed Pixie

She spins and dances and whirls and smiles. She is radiance and music and youth. She is energy on fire. She is alive. We are alive. This scene is alive. A hidden dance party in the hidden part of the city, full of true believers just getting high on life for the night. Just getting alive for the night. We all smile at each other as if we are in on the joke. And I suppose we are. We are on the inside, the sixty or eighty or maybe a hundred of us. We’ve come together in the basement of this house in blue collar north Portland for a night to forget about everything else. There is only the bass and the beat and the rhythmic stomping of bare feet on a concrete basement floor. There is only the spinning and dancing, whirling and smiling.

An hour earlier, I had been sullen and withdrawn. Caught up in deadlines and rewrites at my local coffee shop, I had just settled in for a long Friday night with strong black coffee and my laptop. And then she walked in. A cute little brunette pixie, full of energy and life. She burst through the door masquerading as the embodiment of promised mischief. Her and a couple friends. Three young cuties out on the town; youth in action. I tried to ignore them and go back to my writing, but girls like this demand attention. I couldn’t help but glance over my computer, and inadvertently lock eyes with her. Beautiful brown eyes, alive with the fire of fantastic possibilities on a Friday evening.

You look bored. Are you boring?
No, and yes. Errr…
Do you dance?
Not really.
Too bad, it’s going to be a riot.
Wait, can I?
Can you what?
Can I come too?

She grabbed my hand and told me to loosen up. We are the dreamers and believers; we are those who inspire others. We are the ones they tell stories about. It is us other people aspire to be. Young and fun and out on a Friday night making memories. They need us to show them the way. Their need to be inspired is just as great as our need to inspire. She told me to smile more and worry less; things have a way of sorting themselves out.

We rode together in the backseat of her friend’s twenty-year-old Volvo, still hand in hand. She told me I had a kind face, built for smiling. I told her that I had never met anyone like her before, she said she got that all the time. I wanted to kiss her, quick and flirty, but I didn’t know how. She looked at me and laughed, called me silly, as if reading my thoughts.

So now here we are, laughing and dancing and whirling, spinning away our cares, making memories on a Friday night.

Incestous Blogger Love

Yo, the beautiful and crazy talented Lindsay, over at Birdykins did me the solid of putting up a guest post about Portland. Fitting as we’re both visitors in this strange fantastic city. Go. Read her stuff, its amazing.

Zombie Santa Saves The World

Give Us A Kiss Sweetheart

Well Zombie Santa, it all comes down to this. This is your two down, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, clinging precociously to a one run lead. Three balls, two strikes at Yankee Stadium on a crisp autumn night. Seventy thousand mutant New Yorkers screaming for the blood of infidels from Lost Angeles. Life, death, and fate of humanity rests on this next pitch Zombie Santa, better make it a good one.

Perhaps not quite as serious as all that, this was still a big one. Tied at one game apiece in the best of three series, the noble and mighty Minnesota Missiles looked to defeat the lowly and depraved Superhero Boys and thus claim Supreme Champion status at Jesse’s Annual Halloween Party Peer Pong Tournament. With a two cup to one advantage and both balls to shoot, the Missiles hoped to settle the eternal question of who would win in beer pong contest between Jesus and Chuck Norris versus MacGyver and Zombie Santa.

A hush settled over the crowd as MacGyver took a hit off his Camel Light and slowly calmed his breathing. Touchdown Jesus was the picture of cool, behind his massive beard and dark aviators, robes flowing with the confidence of a True-Believer. Chuck Norris (Walker Texas Ranger style Chuck Norris) seemed slightly more nervous, but still confident. Chuck Norris had been a sniper all night, crushing hopes and dreams like bad guys with round house kicks and deadly accuracy. MacGyver settles in and nails it. Calm and cool, his demeanor doesn’t change after such a huge shot. He shrugs, notices that his cigarette has gone out, and fishes another out of the hard pack. The man is a Professional Murder.

Across the table, I notice Wonder Woman, a saucy little brunette Trixie, has taken a keen interest in this epic battle of good and evil. Firm, young, beautiful. She licks her Wonder Lips and smiles at me. An invitation perhaps? A distraction maybe? No time for superhero loving right now, I must make this shot.

I step back and breathe, I settle in and focus. Not only does the fate of good versus evil rest on this shot, but the very real chance at removing Wonder Woman’s top later on in the evening…I must make this shot. People are getting louder now, they know this is the big one, the grand poobah of beer pong shots, and they want to stand up and be counted. When their children ask, someday, where were you the day Zombie Santa sank the most epic shot in the beer pong history of the world, they’ll be able to respond: I was there. So I let that orange little jack o lantern fly in the cool dark night, and let my thoughts drift towards other, unrelated matters. I thought about that girl I’d met at that wedding a couple weekends ago, and whether or not she’d call me, I remembered that I needed to book my flight back to the Midwest for the holidays, and above all, I decided that I was definitely hungry for carne asada fries from Javier’s.

A soft prayer slipped through Touchdown Jesus’ holy lips as the orange sphere disappeared into a red keg cup with a satisfying clunk. I winked at Wonder Woman across the table and smiled as I high-fived MacGyver. The world was safe for another day.

Create Yourself

We should be all True Believers in the righteous possibility of our own Greatness. To aspire to great heights while staying true to yourself, and to where you came from; That is The American Dream. That is the great golden ring in the sky.

Go out and achieve, little Lebowski, but in the same vein, do not demand that our definitions of success are the same. A nine to five with a wife, a couple of honor students, a dog and a beamer in the suburbs sounds nice to some, and I wouldn’t ever begrudge you that. That’s the safe, that’s the secure. The Normal. That’s golfing on the weekends, and nice holidays in Mexico, and little league, and comfortable. At the same time, that’s not me.

Success is taking off for a month or a year in Peru. To skydive on mushrooms in Bali. To wrestle a hammerhead shark, and come out unscathed. To shoot dice after filming a music video in Des Moines, Iowa with a bunch of East African immigrants who can’t quite grasp this white terror and his silly Mohawk. To muck around LA with emerging stars, going bowling with dinosaurs, dancing on the counter at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank at 4 am, after they’ve politely ask us to leave.

To mock conformity, and dance in graveyards. At Midnight. With mescaline and wine. To hold hands on the beach at sunset with that special girl who’s so full of life and love and wonder, and to know that it couldn’t ever possibly work out. For your friends to have the reasonable expectation that you could appear at any major music festival anywhere in the country at anytime. To secure backstage passes when you get there. To romp with locals on New Years in New York or Chicago or Boston or DC. As long as it’s someplace where you can see your breathe in the air in the cold clean night. To confidently give directions to a cabbie in any major city, leading into the heart of the industrial section, because you know of a party.

To know a guy who knows a guy who gets us floor tickets to the Lake Show. To eat crawfish gumbo in a shack somewhere outside of New Orleans. To truly enjoy a cheesesteak in the only city in America that knows how to make them right. To shoot guns with cowboys in the High Desert. To drink Maker’s Mark from the bottle at 3 am, downtown Chicago, 27 floors above the street on the second night of Lollapalooza, and to truly understand that Life Isn’t About Finding Yourself, Life Is About Creating Yourself.

Joe Understands.

Photo courtesy of Joseph Isaacs — True Believer

A Merika! On The Rocks

So at the bar, right now, I am watching two girls dance. Slow dance. I just heard the words, “hands north of the nipples.” Go fuck yourself Rush Limbaugh, because tonight, this night tonight, I win. I didn’t have to buy it. I didn’t have to give them drugs. I didn’t have to take any drugs myself. This just happens sometimes. This is America, Rush. It’s a beautiful and weird place, and I don’t know that you’d be comfortable here. You could come along with me, maybe for a time, for a couple of beers and see it, if you’d like. Being homeless is a crime. Cute girls, and ugly sweaters Rush, its all a part of the scene. Dance music and classic rock, Whiskey on the rocks, rock steady. We’ll bum cigarettes from hobos under the 405 bridge. So close to extreme, over the top style abundance and wealth; and here we have depravity. We have sad stories and cold feet that won’t dry until May. We have mobile tent cities and sit-lie ordnances Rush. And we get by.

This is Life

Last night was a good night. Yesterday was a good day. I got a lot done, and also found time to sneak away for a movie and some drinks. At the bar, I got the excellent news that a short story I wrote was to be published in a lit magazine that I hadn’t been featured in yet. Smiles and high fives were exchanged with buddies, good feelings were shared. No money, of course, but they say that will come.

The buddies went home and I moved to a corner booth in the back. Time to go back to work. They know me at that bar, and they don’t care if I hang out for hours and type and drink water instead of beer. They remember what it was like to be young and poor and have big dreams. They smile sadly sometimes, I am part of that scene. They know I’ll type until bar close, and that they’ll see me again the next day.

My walk home is not through a nice area. I’ve come to learn that staying out a little bit later makes it slightly safer. At midnight, I run into the crazies, the junkies, the baby thugs. After two on a week night, most of them are passed out, and I can walk home without being bothered. I know that when I get back to my charmingly run down building in a charmingly run down part of the city, it will be alive with bartenders and strippers and musicians, all young and poor and full of dreams. This is where we can afford to live, and it unites us. We are all going places, but we know that most of us won’t make it. We are the have-nots, but we keep our heads up; our dreams keep us alive.

I’ll go bed with a sad smile and try not to wonder how long my money’s going to hold out, how I’m going to make rent in a couple months, whether this is truly worth it. I will wake up in a panic 45 minutes later, convinced that I’m wasting time with sleeping when I should be writing. I’ll rationalize that I’m too tired to write, and that sleep is absolutely necessary. I’ll toss and turn until six when I decide that no more sleep is happening, and that its time to get up and get moving, get back to work. I’ll throw on the same ragged black hoodie and broken black shoes that I wear everyday, that has become my uniform.

I’ll leave my building before the sun comes up, and while the decent people of the world are eating hot breakfasts with loved ones, I’ll walk through the rain back to the coffee shop. Back to the place where they know me, and don’t charge me full price. Where they’ll smile sadly because they remember what it was like to be young and poor and have big dreams. Along the way I’ll pass homeless men huddled in storefronts, trying to stay warm and dry in their sleeping bags, and I’ll wonder where their dreams went. Is this what their big dreams did for them?

I’ll sit down with hot black coffee, the main part of my diet these days, and I’ll write. Because my dreams are still alive. This is the part they don’t tell you about when they tell you to follow your dreams. The hot coffee and sad smiles from strangers. The struggle and the grind. The sleepless nights and the endless hours. So I guess this is life.

Mr. Chips Goes Missing

She looked like a Death Cab for Cutie song. She had those eyes that someone gets when they think too seriously about life. Knows it’s not good for her, but does it anyway. Beautiful, in a tragic way. It can’t always be Fear and Loathing and Madness. Sometimes there are also words like Truth and Beauty and Love that need to come into play. They told us to be well rounded when we were young; I’m just starting to understand what they meant. I read it on her face.

We got drunk and played ping pong, and I smiled when she beat me. She looked quite cute with her competitive scowl. I told her about it months later as we laid in bed, she punched me in the arm for letting her win. I laughed and made her pancakes, she smiled with her eyes at me as she ate them, still wearing that competitive scowl.

We took Mr. Chips for a walk in the rich neighborhood next to ours. He pissed on a BMW and we smiled like proud parents. She grabbed my hand like she used to do, back when we were new. I looked at her and wished I loved her like her face loved up at me. I held her hand tightly, comfortable now, but not really excited anymore.

She makes fun of my Chucks, telling me that I should grow up, wear grown up shoes. I make fun of her coloring books, the ones she pretends to keep around for her sister’s kids. She doesn’t understand why I like hip hop. I think her hippie music is silly. We both love Bob Dylan, but in completely different ways. She says she doesn’t really understand where my writing comes from, but she thinks it’s beautiful anyway. I tell her she’s the best associate director of photography that this city has ever known. And I meant it. She’s beautiful when she sleeps, a peaceful smile and a quiet existence. Maybe this is love.

Which was why it was such a shock to come home one day to find her engagement ring on the table, on top of a note that just said, “Sorry.” She left her ring and took Mr. Chips with her. Well played Cutie, I always loved that dog more than you.

Mr. Chips

Go Doyers!

My love affair with Los Angeles started almost exactly six years ago; she was a saucy bitch, and I dug her style. Trading the snow of Minnesota for a week in sunshine with an old friend opened my eyes to a beautiful new world of Hollywood Stars, amazing Mexican food, and sipping beers on the beach in the moonlight. There was sushi and bacon wrapped hot dogs and The Lake Show. There were writers and actors and The Industry. An unbeatable music scene populated by beautiful people. And there was Dodger Baseball.

Broke college kids pounding beers in the parking lot at Chavez Ravine, smuggling flasks up escalators to sit in a sea of Dodger Blue in the left field bleachers. Tickets surprisingly cheap to a Midwesterner on his first trip out, it felt like the Dodgers cared about their fans, and though the team back then wasn’t the most talented, it felt as though the fans cared about their team. More than just a baseball game, Chavez Ravine exemplified the laid back, accepting west coast attitude. Drinking beers in the warm late summer night, the buzz of being out, exchanging jokes and high fives with strangers, being a part of something together, we were Dodger Fans, and it felt good.

Which is why I need The Dodgers to beat the Phillies, and then the Yankees. I’m tired of the East Coast. Don’t get me wrong, I love the culture and the vibe. I regularly dream of Cheesesteaks from Pat’s. I’m a big fan of Sean Carter. I’m just tired of ESPN pretending that the world revolves around the Northeast. I’m tired of the Yankees buying an all-star team on a yearly basis and their arrogant d-bag fans. And Philly, you got yours last year, and I salute you, but its time to bring the glory back out west.

A Dodger’s World Series Championship would turn into a city wide block party. Beers and food, music and dancing with strangers. High-fives and hugs. People will smile at each other. New friends will be made, neighbors will be met, and a new generation of Dodger World Series babies will be made. It will be glorious. If the Dodgers get to the World Series, I’ll get there. I’ll dance in the street with a fifth of whiskey and the Ghost of Bukowski and Dodgers past.

And so, today a man can stand in Portland and look south and dream of sunshine and glitz and glamour, he can dream, he can believe. It’s time Dodgers, do your thing.

Also, check out Zack at Lost Angeles, this dude has been speaking the truth about The Dodgers, and baseball in general all year.

Dockside Saloon Madness

Of course it would all come down to this. I knew that when a trusted friend unexpectedly handed me his cell phone during the third quarter of a Monday night football game a week back, that there could only be one man on the other end. There is little in life that can surprise a man who keeps a close eye on the migratory habits of large water fowl, as I do. And as sure as the mighty and noble Canadian Goose flies south in the winter and returns to Mankato in the summer, so too would my attorney return from his exile in Denver. I just didn’t know it would come to this.

So there we were, at the Dockside Saloon, sipping Wild Turkey backed by tasty Northwest Microbrews at 10 in the morning, when a gang of heavy tourists walks in. 17, maybe 23 of them, all Samoan. Thick dark sunglasses and ill fitting suits, they seemed to be gangsters of some sort. Degenerates at best. I felt the best bet was to play it cool, to finish our drinks and move on, but as usual, my attorney would have none of that rational talk. Finishing his beer, he looked at me with the twisted eyes of a criminally insane monster, and I knew that our peaceful coexistence with the Samoans was about to be shattered.

“Junior Seau is a fag,” he said, quietly but firmly, to no response. “JUNIOR SEAU IS A FAG!” No mistaking it this time. Those were clearly fighting words. It’s one thing to be offensive, but another thing entirely to insult a cultural hero to the Samoan people. A hostile murmur rippled through the crowd of large tattooed men, before a deathly silence settled over the bar. Well, this is it, I thought to myself. The Dockside Saloon, I was 27.

A smaller, immaculately dressed Samoan stepped forward, a leader perhaps. But my attorney was in no mood for negotiations as he smashed the empty Bud bottle on the smaller man’s head, crumpling him to the floor. Sticky, dark blood gushing from the fantastic lightning bolt shaped gash on the unconscious man’s forehead. Faster than a mongoose assassinates a King Cobra, my attorney pulled a menacing looking .38 Special from some unknown pocket and pointed it toward the remaining 26 men standing. They flexed and grumbled, but made no move forward.

“Let’s go,” he said. Turning to walk out, gun in hand before he looked back and added, “and Troy Polamalu is a goat fucker.” He took another step forward, and hit the juke box before ushering me into the cool late morning air, and a waiting taxi cab.