The Screaming Machine

September 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment






(This is part of my effort to write a little bit each day towards a novel.)

So today we went out to pick up some last minute things for dinner. Stuff to make a cake, peanut butter cookies, stove top. All the comfort foods you would want should Hurricane Earl be as bad as the news is calling for.

The grocery store we went to has those weird little kid cars in front of some of the carts. Cart Cars? Car-Carts? Whatever they are I’m sure some kids are having a blast thinking they are driving around the store weaving in and out of aisle traffic.

We hear it coming from around the corner. A kid is in one of these little cars and is screaming so loud it just stops your brain. I couldn’t finish my thought and just stood there in stunned silence. People turned there heads because in your head you hear screams like that and you expect to turn and see a child being beaten, or at least trapped in some kind of terrible machine. Maybe he put a quarter in a candy machine and a King Cobra came out and spit poison in his eyeballs.

Everyone was making the same shocked face, but no one said anything. What could you say really? I mean, I really wanted to just walk up to the kid and scream “Shut the F*ck up kid!!”. I like to think I’d be applauded, but probably not. I’d somehow be made the villain. I’d be the guy that yelled at a kid that wasn’t his. I’m not really sure why that’s such a crime but it is.

I think the Cart-Car is a terrible idea. When I was old enough not to have to sit in the cart I could walk around and pick things off the shelves to help my parents out. Like I was a helpful member of the family. I’d assist in the hunting and gathering and feel good about myself. The brown sugar cinnamon pop-tarts? Yea, I got those. I saw them. I grabbed them. I threw them in the cart. Walking tall.

Now I’m sure the mom was trying her best. She seemed to at least be going as fast as she could. We sat there asking ourselves what could make the kid scream like that. My girlfriend thinks it was that the wheel of the Cart-Car didn’t actual do anything and maybe he was freaked out. A driver with no control just zooming past carts that could crash into him at any moment. A good theory, but I don’t think that could lead to the massive freak out this kid was having.

My answer is a little more complex. Since it was just the mom there I guessed that the father was murdered and the boy was the only witness. And somehow the killer was there in the same grocery store and they kept passing each other in each aisle. The boy flipped out but couldn’t tell everyone what was really going on for concern for his mother’s safety. Better to just throw a tantrum and make his mom leave the store as fast as possible. That boy’s a damn hero!

Bloveling

August 31, 2010 | Leave a Comment






I once heard of something called NaNoWriMo that really captured my attention. It stands for National Novel Writing Month in which (you guessed it) you write a novel in a month.

In theory this sounds great, but I can’t help but think something that rushed could never live up to what everyone hopes to write, a great novel. So instead I am going to Blovel.

Blovelling is writing a blog until you have enough material to put out a novel. This seems much more realistic a goal to me. I’ve thought about just taking a weekend off and writing a novel for years. Shutting myself off from family, friends and the internet to just SIT DOWN and write. But if I have enough time to post little witty remarks on Facebook maybe it’s time to just redirect that small amount of work to something I actually want to do.

Taking time off just isn’t realistic. Between making music, comic books and short films I’m needed in too many places at the moment. A cabin in the woods for a while might just drive me crazy like Kerouac too. He famously went out to a cabin in Big Sur for a few weeks and when he came back, just couldn’t write anymore. He kept putting out works that he had lying about, but the muse, and maybe his mind, had gone.

If I did just up and go I would fly to Puerto Rico. I haven’t been there since I was a kid and maybe that would be a good place to just go be inspired. I’d like to stay in a hotel room all day wearing a robe and set up an  old fashioned typewriter in the room. I’d punch the keys until my fingers were bruised. Whenever room service would come into the room I would burst into a tantrum screaming “I’m an American writer!!” and throw wine bottles against the walls until they left. I’d scare other guests in the hotel so bad I would be forced to leave and sleep on the beaches or maybe El Junque, the rain forest.

I would most definitely grow out my beard like my friend Doug. He has a huge puffy red beard that makes him look like a Ginger Terrorist. I like to imagine that if it gets any bigger a pirate will appear to him in the night and name him the honorary first mate of a ship that is cursed to forever travel the heavens.

As you can see, any novel I write will probably be strange and disjointed so I think what I’ll do is combine some short stories with some small essays or rants. Just to get the whole “Write A Book” thing out of my system and off of the obligatory to do list.


May Day Disaster

August 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment






So here’s a sad one.


When I was a kid I was asked the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” that I actually started looking into it in the 5th grade. That’s right, I was a little kid trying to find the best career choice by looking through the library and even the Sunday newspaper (both barely exist now, how weird is that?).

Finally one day it hit me. We owned a lot of Muppet movies when I was a kid. My favorites being The Great Muppet Caper (never got it’s due) and The Muppet Movie. I think I even said it out loud when it hit me, “I’ll be a Muppeteer”.

The Muppet Show came on a lot (in reruns) at my babysitter’s house. Fraggle Rock was around as was Muppet Babies. I watched all things Henson and I even liked the weirder stuff like Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. To this day I believe in order to make sure your kids don’t grow up to be goths as teenagers you should limit the viewing of both those movies to once a year.

I checked out books on Muppets, made at least a few dozen god awful franken-creatures with old socks. I found articles about Jim Henson and Frank Oz and my favorite, Dave Goelz who was the voice of Gonzo the Great. Talk about a role model, the guy started by making a frog out of his mom’s sweater and went on to educate millions with Sesame Street and entertain everyone with The Muppets. There’s a moment in The Muppet Movie when Kermit the Frog is talking to an agent named Bernie and Kermit becomes overjoyed at the idea of making “millions of people happy”. Not millions of dollars. Show me anything today trying to preach THAT message.

Whenever a teacher or parent would ask me what I wanted to do I would quickly respond, “I’m going to be a Muppeteer”. Beaming with pride. My head held high. None of the other children had a life track plotted out. But I did. This meant a lot to me. I had my shit together. I had a plan.

On May 16th, 1990. Jim Henson died of a severe strep infection that tore up his lungs in just days. I got told in class and it was like hearing the president had been shot. I’m not going to sugar coat it in any way. I lost it. I fell apart. I collapsed onto my school desk and cried my eyes out in front of everyone. The teacher sent me out of the classroom 3 or 4 times but it didn’t matter. The day became one big blur. I was sent to the guidance counselor but never made it back to class that day. I just left the school and walked home. No one stopped me. They just let the crying kid keep walking.

I didn’t cry cause I had lost my plan. I cried cause in my head I had built it up that Jim Henson had to be one of the coolest people in the world. And all evidence points to that being true. And for him to just die out of the blue was just heartbreaking. I never knew anyone that died. No one in my family had died to that point. It was this crazy concept that here’s this guy, doing a great job doing what he loves, and now he’s just gone. Sorry kid.

I remember an article I found said in his final hours he was coughing up blood. Back then I couldn’t separate the man from his work and for weeks would get this random image in my head of Kermit the frog hacking up blood and screaming.  It messed me up for some time. But eventually I got over it. People forgot the incident. Life moved on.

I found some comfort in a song from The Muppet Movie. It’s not a Kermit song, But I like it a lot and it always takes me back to that day in 6th grade. “I’m Going To Go Back There Someday” sung by Gonzo (Dave Goelz)