The Long Hello - A Decade In The City of Big Dreams
It’s that rock-bottom feeling, and some new Chicagoan is working thru that feeling right now. I am here to tell her that there is magic and warmth and good things to come on the other side of it. Use your bravery, and your pluck. And stay.
Notes from the Post-it Wall – Week of July 16, 2017
• I have a sex playlist on Spotify called “David’s Sex Playlist.” It’s all break up songs.
Close Enough for Jazz
Jazz is about self expression and intent. Orchestral playing is about precision and perfection. Perfection scares the shit out of me. Jazz is about listening and composing and riffing. Orchestral playing is about becoming a cog in a larger clock and nailing your small piece of the composition at exactly the right time in exactly the right pitch.
A recital is about all of that fucking perfection except all by yourself.
And triple tonguing is killing me.
My Friend Ken Manthey Couldn't Handle Pineapple Pizza
Last week, Ken was admitted to Elmhurst Memorial Hospital for pain in his stomach and back. Monday morning, Ken died from pancreatic cancer. It was fast. I spoke to him briefly on Friday. He knew was going to die. We agreed that he would wait until Monday (when I could visit him to say farewell) but he exited almost exactly 45 minutes before I got there.
I Believe...[We Love Our Guns]
...that arts education teaches empathy on multiple levels and sports teaches competitiveness. Is it any wonder that we have churned out two generations of people who see empathy as a competition?
San Francisco's Race Problem
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, which serves the San Francisco Bay area is having some problems. In the last 90 or so days, three attacks on its riders have been perpetrated by a group of teenagers. The attacks have included robberies, beatings, harassments—you know, general mischievous teenage behavior gone terribly awry.
The hooligans haven’t been caught. And part of the reason for that is BART’s fault. It’s not releasing the surveillance videos.
My Wife Hides Ice Cream Sandwiches from Me
The beauty of freelance, working-from-home life is that I can type this right now wearing a pink thong and lipstick on my nipples and no one is the wiser. The ugly is that there is a refrigerator with food I chose to stock a mere 15 steps from my desk.
A Push from the Thin
Dylan encouraged us (through his fog and haze of liquor) to 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light" and we interpret the light as our corporeal mortality. Perhaps the light is the ideals of humanity that make us bigger than our days. Perhaps the light is a compilation of the gestures that make our lives bricks of a cathedral we're all building, one life at a time, a legacy of civilization that transcends our individual flickers that points to a beacon for all who come after to follow.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of July 9, 2017
• If you’re mad that Patton Oswalt is engaged a little more than a year after his first wife died, you’re a jerk. Simple as that. Who are you to understand one person’s heart and how it heals and what it needs and how it loves? You need to reduce your desire for outrage and leave people alone.
Acknowledging the Duality of Man | Applying Puritanism in the Modern Age
As both the Extreme Right and Extreme Left truck in moral outrage (Rage Profiteers) those left in the middle have to walk an increasingly cautious line. Any step or joke in the wrong direction results in personal destruction. And any human creative and ingenious enough to make something or do something notable better be perfect in every way.
This apparently includes those long dead as the need to revile those who made differences in times past are now held to the same revisionist scrutiny and Puritanical confines as anyone today and without the ability of defense. You know, cuz they’re dead.
On Recognizing My Own Hypocrisies | Fallor Ergo Sum
I write a lot. A lot.
Quite a bit of it is of the Socratic solipsistic nature, gazing hard into the ignorance of the world and commenting on how the collective we can do better. Not a bad preoccupation but presenting itself with certain limitations that bind the brain like a too-tight corset squeezing the blood in opposite directions until both your feet and your face get puffy.
I believe that every once in a while, in a ‘take myself down a peg’ sort of way, it’s necessary to look hard into oneself and catalogue one’s own bullshit a tad. Perhaps in an effort to know thyself, perhaps in efforts to change the self before leveling accusations at the collective, perhaps just as an exercise in seeing past the narcissistic image in the mirror and recognizing who one truly is. I dunno but it seems valuable and I’m going to be writing anyway, so why not?
I Believe...[The Safest Space]
...that the safest space of all, removed from micro aggressions and ideas that conflict with your belief system, is in your parents' basement with a padlock to keep your sister from snooping.
Is This What the Revenge of the Nerds Was Destined to Be?
It all amounts to a race to the bottom - seeking out insult, assigning blame for one's unhappiness on an oppressor, hoping for the sympathy of the crowd, and turning to the power of the mob to obliterate anyone who might lightly tread on the toes of what used to be self esteem.
The Opening Campfire: An (alternative) Introduction to "A Camp Story" – Author's Cut
My biggest concern, beyond not knowing anyone and just generally hating camp, was that I was going to spend a summer in the woods surrounded by swarms of big, disgusting, loud cicadas. It was 1990 and the 17-year cicadas had taken over Chicago. I had killed so many with such bloodlust that I convinced myself the winged beasts in Decatur had gotten word of me and were plotting their revenge for their brethren.
Dragging Dad, Kicking and Screaming into the Future [A Repost But Worth It...]
The mental picture (provided by my wife) is that the kids are taking dad to the future and want to get there now but can only move as fast as dad can move and he is slow and confused. Being a white man in his fifties, I guess I'm the dad in the metaphor and while I'm confused I'm also not about to cede the discussion to people still living like seven-year-old children and hoping their laundry gets done when mom comes down to the basement. A millennial who has never held a job or lived away from his or her parents doesn't get to lecture me on jack shit.
This is not a blanket condemnation of millennials, merely an old white guy's assertion that 98 percent of everyone under 25 hasn't lived enough actual life to know what the fuck he or she is bloviating about.
So, instead of lectures, let's ask some questions, cuz dad needs some clarification, or he's turning this station wagon around and heading home.
Notes from the Post-it Wall – Week of July 2, 2017
• Liberal rage confuses me. From day-to-day and outrage-to-outrage, I’m less and less sure about who is pissed at what and why. I’m thinking about joining the Klan. At least I know where they stand.
I Just Fixed Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean Ride
If Disney wants to make up for any wrongdoings, it can stop making Prates of the Caribbean movies.
What the Fuck Are We Celebrating Again?
Today is the 241st anniversary of the beginning of the country called The United Stares of America.
I’m in Marion, Kansas (arguably ground zero for the horrifyingly Monster Shit Experiment known as “Trickle Down Economics” in my lifetime) with my family as we eat too much food, drink lousy store-bought beer and blow up shit designed and manufactured by the Chinese.
I take it for granted why we do this until we are doing this. On this day, my question, in between sips of Miller High Life and carelessly lighting fuses with a tiny blowtorch, is why? What exactly are we celebrating today?
I Believe... [Small Minds]
...that the quote that goes around that posits "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."? Yeah, I believe that.
The Hard-Earned Lesson I Learned from Lydia, Molly, Ian and Hedy Weiss
I swear to Gawd and All That is Holy that this will be my last word on two specific issues: the public shaming I endured this time one year ago AND Hedly Weiss.
The second voice arrived on Thursday morning while Monte was attempting to make toast.