One day, KROQ in Los Angeles, which is a much better station than KROQ in New York, was hosting a party for the movie “Swingers” and they were playing a lot of that Zoot Suit Riot kind of stuff. It was ’97, it was the time for swing music to pendulum back in to national consciousness sort of like “Latin” music (actually Latino good looking musicians singing white music) made it’s small mark in the summer of ’98. As I listened in the car, I heard and then remembered the Squirrel Nut Zippers from a few years hence in the Happy Chap, so I went to the mall to buy their record.

As I was buying the record, the girl in the store glowered at me with disdain. I *obviously* was only buying this record because of the KROQ promotion. Then the girl I was with said, “Do you know if Swingers is playing anywhere?” The movie had, of course, been out of the theaters for about a year. The girl behind the counter said as much and then said “The corporate heads at KROQ are just milking it to sell albums…”she picked up SNZ and said, “like this one.” She smiled and shoved it in the bag.

Last year, we went to Otto for dinner. Otto is one of Mario Batali’s restaurants here in New York. I love Mario because of his cooking show, I wrote a blog about it some time back but since I don’t have the capacity to link, you’ll just have to find it or trust me. Anyway, I love several things about his ethos, he believes that simplicity is key, he believes in buying the best ingredients to begin with and fucking with them as little as possible, and he is knowledgeable about *why* something is made a certain way.

That being said, I have his cookbook and I’ve eaten at his restaurants a couple of times and I’m not a huge fan of his actual food. But I adore him.

At Otto, I was talking to the waiter, and as I talked I could feel Michelle shrinking in her chair. “We came here because I’m a big fan of Batali’s TV show.” “Oh. Really.” said the waiter. “Sure,” I blabbed on. “No matter how stressed out I get, it’s nice to watch a guy cook who really knows what he’s doing. I watch it as much to relax as to learn any recipes or anything.” “Yes, well,” our waiter said back, forcing a smile, “I think most of the people in this restaurant are here because of the TV show. You’ll be uspet, I’m sure, to learn that Mario isn’t here tonight.” Michelle was mortified.

Okay, here’s the deal. I don’t care if you serve food in the very best restaurant in the best foodie town in the country, you’re still a fucking servant. I know there are skills behind what you do, you have to have tenacity and strong forearms in order to carry those trays, and sure you have to know the program at the register. But you are a servant. You serve. You *butle*. You butler me when I come to your store.

You may think you are privy to something special and important, but you aren’t. It’s just food. Soon, it will be poop. Yes, there are people who have more refined taste buds, but loving food is like loving sex. You’re supposed to. If humans didn’t love food, we’d be goddam dead. Do you mean to tell me that you have been thinking about *FOOD* all this time?

Why aren’t we sitting around discussing the finer points of cunnilingus? God I would love to stumble across the group of people snearing at one another because they haven’t discovered the latest masturbatory techniques. Food and sex are the *basest* things we deal with in this world, they are the guaranteed home runs. Sure, you can have a crappy meal and a bad amorous encounter, but to live your life with some sense of superiority because you have good onion technique is insane.

In a fit of pique, my father once said something to me at a dinner party. I was about seven or, I don’t know, twenty, and I mentioned that the guests were all wearing tuxes and so were the waiters, and my dad said, “Yeah, we’re all wearing tuxedoes, but the waiters and the musicians show up for the performance at the back door, the guests all come through the front door.”

I don’t know if that’s an exact quote, but it’s nice to know, in my heart, the a symphony orchestra job is a blue collar job. A shi-shi waiter is a glorified errand boy. That guy at Otto? He’s getting better and better at his job, spending day in and day out refining his waiter technique, years spent bringing food from a guy who can cook it out to a guy who can afford to eat it, never getting any closer to being either of those guys.

Oh, and if you’re working at a chain record store in a mall? Just kill yourself. Take as many other employees as you can with you.

The blog world seems to move in waves, between a colorless sniping hatred on the one hand and a mutual admiration association on the other. I’ve got some mad props in the last few days which I hope doesn’t mean I’m about to get another missive from an old friend telling me I suck.

In order to pass along the good will, let me give you the address of my favorite blog outside my family. I wish I could just post a link, but that requires some kind of written out stuff with slashes and hrefs and stuff that I don’t know.

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

There are two guys in Iraq who are keeping this blog going back and forth and finally, this morning, one of them changed the colors so we know which is writing what. Despite the fact that you can tell they aren’t American, the talk of queues and liters, they also have a young person’s voice. They write in such a way, with an ironic and angry eye, that I know if I hung out with these guys I would be friends with them.

They don’t constantly condemn the Americans, they are certainly annoyed at the inconvenience and feel like this war is completely wrong, but they don’t seem to be big fans of the way Iraq was before either. I just love reading what they write to one another, it’s refreshing to know that the young American voice might actually be a young international voice, that you don’t have to be raised on The Simpsons to have a refined sense of irony.

One other thing. I just read the lead article on Salon about Lewis and Tolkien’s relationship, and although this is something I’ve read about a thousand times before, I also have the kind of mind that forgets every little detail moments after I learn it, so it was cool to read again.

When you read something like that, you find yourself really wishing you could be one of the three guys on that walk. You wish you could be one of the roommates with the Coen Brothers and Holly Hunter or whatever. You always wish you could be part of this great collection of minds going back and forth inspiring one another to further greatness.

It then occurs to me that I might actually already be in a group like that. When I think of the writers and artists who want to be associated with me, I realize that we are actually quite extraordinarily above the fold and that it’s possible that I am the weak link. It’s possible that if I can just get my ass in gear and hold up my end of the brilliance (if I’m capable) then we might actually be a group of brilliant artists instead of all of them being brilliant and me hosting dinner parties.

So, y’know, I’ll get right on that.

I had to try a couple of different usernames just to get on this site. Maybe I should post more.

You look at Salon.com today, and apparently, the government is warning about possible attacks in both Kenya and Saudi Arabia. Also, the “terror threat” is at, y’know, *yellow* or some such thing. “Elevated”, to be sure.

It’s become the new “what about the children” hasn’t it? Every time someone suggests a better way of running the country, some dumbass yells “but the *children* are gonna suffer!” No-one dares to say what’s on their mind, that children are supposed to suffer, that makes them hard and smart instead of insipid self-help obsessed little shits who finally mature in their mid thirties. When do you think they’re gonna change the terror threat thingie from yellow? Never. How could they? “We’re basically okay now, don’t worry about it, a terrorist attack might happen, but as far as we know it won’t.”

No politician worth his salt is ever gonna lower the fucking terror threat index back to safe. No country in the history of man has ever been safe, everyone is always under attack, and the truth is we are safer living in America today, with a rational rule of law and the most refined military in human history, than any other person has ever been since Adam shtumped Eve. But, sure, I gotta admit, there is the threat of someone who hates us attacking us.

I mean, let’s be honest, the threat of massive plague should be “elevated” right now. Flu season, you know. God knows when those microbes will attack next.

I walk through bed-stuy without any problems, my neighborhood is mostly Mediterranean with a lot of Arabs, the studio where I work is filled with death metal wannabes, and you know what I’m actually scared of? I’m actually scared that my friends don’t like me as much as they pretend, that my wife tolerates my bad behavior, that my parents are going to be too old to help me raise my children. I’m afraid of doing bad to other people cosmically, and I am afraid of being alone for too long. I act in accordance with these fears, and regardless of what Tom Ridge keeps saying.

There was a time when our leaders told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, when we were brave. Now, we are soft children, yet to mature.

I promise, I’ll write a few days in a row and talk about stuff other than this. I don’t actually even care about this. I mean, I think that’s what stopped me writing, I realized that blogs are mostly lies, even when the writer is telling the God’s honest truth. The second you post it, you realize that your feelings are actually duplicitous and that there is no way to keep a journal that makes sense.

But, I’ll keep writing if you will. And you know who I mean, Mac, Sean, Michelle, Margaret Cho, etc….

Ian posted a blog a few days back about Times Square and the Subway and although I couldn’t disagree more about the content, the writing was fantastic and his rants are basically what we pay him for, so I’m not going to try to pick apart his loathing of Manahattan. He once said to me “you can’t go to a whorehouse and expect to be loved” and if he said it to me, I’m sure he’s also said it to himself at some point.

Anyway, there is an aspect to New York that I hate. Everyone here, your neighbors, your friends and people you don’t know at all, feel free to discuss their opinions of your behavior in the rudest terms. Ian complained about the group silence in the subway terminals, and I have to say, I enjoy this a thousand times more than the casual observation.

If you are walking in to your house with an overflowing armload of groceries, someone you don’t know will feel free to holler, “Yo! You ought to make two trips, you’re gonna drop something!”

They feel okay about pointing out what you’re doing wrong, they go so far as to postulate a way you could be doing it better and yell it, but an ice age could come and go before they held the door open for you.

I spent some time yesterday making business calls. Only one person did I have to leave a message on her answering machine. She called me back, we spoke for ten seconds while I gave her the information she already had on her answering machine, and as she was getting off the phone she said, “I wanted to call and check because some of us didn’t get the message.”

I mean, a) we changed the time by half and hour to help the people I called, not me, b) all of them got the message from me and c) if none of them got the message from me, *you just got it*. I *just* told you. What improvement on anyone’s life is it for you to try and make it seem as if I am doing it wrong?

I just popped into a CVS to pick up some bridal magazines for Jordana. A guy? Leafing through bridal magazines? Hey, what do I care, I love my girl, I’m helping her out. I picked out two magazines and my eyes began to linger on the heavily aerobicized young ladies on the cover of the Men’s Magazines. “Attractive ladies”, I thought to myself. “Seductively attractive, I would go so far as to say.”

A 180 year old woman was suddenly standing next to me. “Would your bride want you looking at that?” she said. I was holding bridal magazines in my hands, but she had a gnarled witch finger pointing to Maxim.

“Oh, right,” I said, laughing. “Um, yeah, no, yeah…”

“If you’re looking at these magazines,” she said, completely straight faced, “maybe you shouldn’t be buying these magazines” pointing at the ones in my hands.

“Ah,” I said. “Well.” She stared at me. Forcing me to say, “ha ha!” then she walked away.

I am, in fact, marrying a *woman* for chrissakes. Is there some alternate reality where you find only *one* woman attractive? Seriously, I could see if I had “Nuns Weekly” under my arm, or “I Like Boys” or something, but I am marrying an attractive woman. Through some failure on my part, I’m not so attracted to her that I am unable to notice any other beautiful woman in the world, that’s what I did wrong.

Sure, I went out of my way to try to help my confused bride find some kind of way of making this wedding okay, the wedding that I asked her to have with me, but this frickin’ New Yorker found a way to make me wrong.

Man, I don’t know. You want good writing and coherent ideas, go read Ian’s blog.

I have been working with a group of 11-13 year olds over the last week, teaching them music that they are going to then turn around and record for me in the studio, starting this Friday. I’ve been driving down to their school in order to work with them.

My relationship to “school” isn’t terribly complicated. I’m not one of those kids who did poorly and suffered because of it, I didn’t realize one day that my grades were slipping or tearfully admit that I never learned to read or anything. I have hated school since montessori. Apparently, I sat in the driveway, arms and legs folded, a normally rational and quiet kid now screaming his head off, and my mom would lift me in to the front seat, drive me to school, carry me out of the car and leave me on the front step and drive away. She would circle the block and wait for me to finally get nervous and go in.

My ADHD was profoundly misdiagnosed as anything from Epilepsy (because I would be lost in daydreams to the point of not responding to my own name) to OCD (being unable to stop blurting out unrelated information several times in a row) to bipolarism (the manic phase looks like ADHD). But all of these were casual uninterested diagnoses, I was the kid each teacher had to put up with every day, any day I wasn’t there was easier for them, and most of them probably advanced me because I could *always* do *everything*, reading-math-everything, on a high school or college level, and they just didn’t want me in their class anymore.

So, I have a really clean hostile reaction to showing up at a school. I look at the hallowed halls and I see cockroaches and hostile bitter adults cornered into a lifetime of medicority. No-one decides to teach school. In California, the teachers were paid worse than the garbage collectors, but it takes a certain chutzpah to get up at 3 in the morning and drive around picking up trash, so the teachers were even lazier, shittier people than the trashmen.

Even once I failed out of high school and lied my way into college, I found incredible disdain for my friends who talked about their schoolwork. One of my best friends has been close to me since the beginning of his freshman year, and he is now a doctor. I did my damnedest to get him to not go to class, and he found a way to rise to the top. He has the highest board scores of anyone I know, and when he was a freshman I *mocked* him every day for paying any attention to his work. I hated that he went to class, I still hate the idea that doing that work will help anyone.

So, I’m at this junior high school working with these kids and laughing at all the teachers. Fucking teachers, looking beaten down, hardly raising their heads enough to be confused by my smiling face. I walk through these halls knowing a) none of these teachers is good enough to smell my farts and b) I could kick every single punk’s ass in that school. It’s like I’m returning to school, only this time I get to have this 220 pound body, I get to be a handsome man, terrifying the other teachers and students with my devil-may-care attitude.

I sat down and started singing with the wonderful kids. So talented. These little burgeoning fountains of possibility, discovering the same thing I discovered at their age, that music was a passion of mine, that creating phrases and circumstance out of thin air, out of nothing, gave me a chance to feel whole for a moment.

The songs are for meant for younger children, 6 through 9 year olds. I explained to them that we use kids slightly older to give younger kids someone to emulate. “We’re trying to make little kids fall in love with singing at a very young age” I say, and the kids laugh. One of the girls says, “did you record songs when you were young?”

“Yeah, I did,” I said, remembering a recording my mom through me on when I was in 7th grade. “I sang songs for younger kids to learn, and then I started working with kids your age in ’89 or ’90. They have grown up now and a lot of them are working in the industry or on stage.”

“So, you got them to sing, and now they’re performing and then kids like us go see them and want to sing and now we’re singing these songs for kids, and they’ll want to sing…” her face lights up. “That’s awesome!”

I mean, what can I tell you. Kids, especially choir geeks, are into the larger meanings really early, they want what they are doing to have deep mystical meanings. But it seems silly at this point to wonder how I was failed by the system, when in fact the system seems to be working for so many other kids, and I get to be a part of that system. Sure, I was failed by every single teacher I ever had, but I currently have a life that is pretty close to what I always dreamed it would be, so maybe they actually did it right.

I really do want to get back on the wagon here in a number of ways. I keep setting myself deadlines for getting a personal trainer and getting back to the gym, and yet I haven’t done it. Even after seeing the videotape of Lucretia where I look, in a word, tremendous.

Two things. One, my freinds Anthony and Scott have created a show called “Gutenberg: The Musical” that is as original and entertaining as anything I have seen in years. A double bill of that show and Lucretia would be a hell of an entertaining night.

Second, I was watching the cast of The Simpsons on Inside The Actor’s Studio. The host was doing his usual last set of questions, and asking the actors to answer in character which is just insufferable (these people are the *actors* not the *writers*. They just read what they are given, for fuck’s sake…) but for the last question, “If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say to you at the gates?”, he had each person answer as themselves. Each said something lovely, it’s the kind of question that inspires lovely answers, and finally they got to Harry Shearer. His answer; “Show starts in half an hour.”

You just never hear someone describe the experience of half-hour call as heavenly, especially someone who is famous as a film and voice over artist, but that’s how you know the real deal. That would be great, to always have that feeling of the Stage Manager leaning in while you put on make-up and calling “Half-hour to places!” and hollering back, “Thank you, half-hour”.

Ah, so much is made of the theater-family, the whole joining the circus, smell of the greasepaint bullshit. People are so full of crap they get “I can’t, I have rehearsal” bumper stickers and have star2b@hotmail email addresses. So the less the said, the better, maybe. But to hear a multi-millionaire, who is part of The Simpsons and Spinal Tap, say that heaven is the moment before the show starts… it just really touched me.

All right, I’ve been trying really hard to be civil. Jordana and I have spent the last two months making a great play and then the last two weeks watching bad ones. That’s unfair, some were quite good, especially the fantastic “Gutenberg: The Musical”, which I would option and try to mount myself if I had any idea how to do that.

But man, I had no idea how off the curve we are. And so, I can’t really say anything. It’s all gonna be in code, but eventually, I hope to talk about the theater I’ve seen in the last week. I just can’t right now.

It was supposed to pour down rain all day today and it hasn’t at all. Sometimes it’s the little things.

Several Christmases ago, I called my brother Ian “the laziest mother fucker on the planet”. He responded by telling me to go fuck myself, and a session of shit talking on both sides ensued. Then, we forgot about it and moved on.

We never apologized. Do I regret it? I mean… honestly, no. I don’t really care and neither does he. To say I regret it or to apologize or whatever would be a wholesale sell-out on what guys have to do occasionally. Maybe it’s because we pee standing up, but every once in a while you lean back and see how far you can make a stream of urine go. When that happens, you end up peeing on people. It sucks, it’s unpleasant and the women who share our lives with us have to deal with us ranting and raving about what assholes we all are, but there you go. It has to be done.

Plus, how could I possible claim that Ian is the laziest mother fucker on the planet. There are lots of lazy mother fuckers, and I’m willing to bet Ian isn’t even in the top 25%. Also, I like Tessa’s assertation that there is no such thing as laziness, only fear. That appeals to me, as a lazy mother fucker, so I’m gonna hold on to it.

Anyway, bearing that in mind, this will not be the blog it was going to be. It was gonna be a blog about how I just can’t be a Lakers fan anymore. Malone breaking people’s teeth, Devean George not living up to his huge contract, Shaq being an immature jerk, Kobe, aside from raping a girl, being a jackass, Phil Jackson usurping eastern mystical ideas for a completely western experience, Jerry West long gone, my own conflicts with the idea of Los Angeles, etc.

But last night watching the Lakers play was just so gorgeous. To see the very best players in the NBA at three positions, and to watch the role players score at will when their defender was defending everyone else was wonderful. It could be that I have been a fan too long, that the gold and purple jerseys rubbed my eyes the right way. But it was great basketball, and it’s fun to watch. So, let Kobe and Shaq call eachother lazy and fat and selfish. It isn’t anything worse than what Ian and I say about eachother.

However, if anyone talks shit about Michelle, I will kill them. If you hear me talking shit, don’t even fucking agree, I will kill you.

I hate that people use the “boys will be boys” excuse, and I know it offends a lot of people. (These are many of the same people that feel like saying “women understand these things” is totally inoffensive.) But the fact is, Ian and I adore each other and we still can say terrible things, even behind eachother’s backs. That’s why we have brothers, to talk shit out of one side of our mouths, and then jump down outsider’s throats when they agree.

We contain multitudes and apologizing for that would be hypocritical and insane.

My sister once said, “everyone always knows the truth about everything, we just choose to believe the lies we tell ourselves.” To my great disadvantage, I’ve held this to be true for most of my life, even though Michelle said it quite flippantly when she was thirteen.

The problem with it is that I like to make jokes about this guy I play, this big jerk who constantly talks shit and treats people badly. It’s a fun character, and one I’m sure shares something with who I really am, but still, I do it with the understanding that everyone knows the truth about who I am.

Here’s a little play I sent to my freinds yesterday.

*****

Sean And Jordana, Act 76, scene 12

Sean is in the kitchen eating Hershey’s kisses as fast as he can, Jordana enters with cleaning supplies. Jordana moves around the kitchen during this scene while Sean stands in one place with the water running absently into an already full mug.

S: I knew you were gonna clean the whole bathroom, so I didn’t give you any shit.

J: What do you mean?

S: (piling chocolate in his mouth) I told you we should go to bed, but I knew you wouldn’t be comfortable unless you cleaned the bathroom, so I figured I wouldn’t give you any shit.

J: Give me shit?

S: (mid-chew) Y’know, for staying up later.

J: Let me get this straight. You stayed on the couch eating chocolate while I went in to the bathroom and cleaned it entirely, and you would like me to give you credit for not giving me shit?

S: (pause) Well, I mean, I didn’t give you shit, right?

J: There’s chocolate spit on your face. It’s really gross.

S: But not as gross as the bathroom would have been if I hadn’t stopped giving you shit long enough to clean it.

J: It was pretty gross. I just felt like it should be clean, y’know. Nothing’s grosser than a gross bathroom.

S: (eating more chocolate) How ’bout a severed human head? (pause, looks at her with eyebrows raised pointing at her) Seriously. A severed human head. S’pretty gross (goes back to eating chocolate.)

J: I think Jon and Mac’s bathroom might actually be grosser than a severed human head. (she leaves)

S: (calling after her and playing with the full mug in the sink) If you want to clean their bathroom, I won’t give you shit…

******

And here’s what actually happened. I was washing dishes in the kitchen. I had eaten one Hershey’s kiss, but any more than that would have made me sick. There was a large stack of dishes (tech week and a roommate who teaches 4th grade in Harlem manifests itself in the kitchen), and I was trying to get through them because Jordana really wanted the house cleaned.

Jordi came in, saying, “I’m sorry, I know you want me to get more sleep, but I just need to get the bathroom clean before Mike gets here…”

I said, “Dude! Why are you apologizing? You just cleaned the bathroom. I knew you wouldn’t be comfortable unless it was clean, and I didn’t want to give you shit about it.

Jordi: “There’s just nothing grosser than a gross bathroom.”

Me: “How ’bout a severed human head?”

Jordi (not missing a beat): “Um, Mac and Jonathan’s bathroom is probably grosser than a severed human head. I’m gettin’ in the shower…”

See? The real story is so frickin’ pollyanna, you don’t want to read it. Nothing happens, it isn’t funny at all. But, when we’re with a group of people we hardly know and Jordana says, “Sean’s always trying to make sure I’m taking care of myself, he’s the one who is manic about keeping the apartment clean”, if I don’t interrupt her and say, “Did I give you permission to speak?” then we’re just another annoying couple.

But I’m sure there is a whole group of people who hear that and think I’m being serious. I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that. I have a job, and that job is boobery, and if I don’t do my job, I don’t get paid back with the kindness and devotion of my friends.

And plus, sometimes, I beat her. Not because I’m bigger and stronger or just because I can, although that is true. I beat her because she disobeys.

I watch television sometimes. Usually I do it with a touch of guilt… actually, that isn’t true at all, I don’t feel guilty at all, but sometimes I worry that other people think I’m wasting time. I’m like a bear, I have to relax while I can, I’m storing up energy for, y’know, the seven lean years.

Anyway, I was watching television and an advert came and this poor businessman is getting hassled. There is someone at the door, knocking, and our businessman locks the door and hides. Someone is saying “how much software would you like to buy?” The guy eventually tries to break the window and can’t and crawls into the false ceiling to get away from the guy trying to sell him software.

I had no idea that door-to-door salesmen were creating such anxiety in the world of business.

This ad, the one that interrupted my television watching, was trying to sell me software. I think. I don’t know, I was so mystified at the apparent rash of inter-office door-to-door software salesmen.

I mean, here’s the problem with spam and at-home calling and all of that. Television advertisers have figured out that you don’t actually need to sell a product to sell a product. You have to make people laugh, or make people feel something, and then mention the product’s name.

You can say “two thumbs up” all you want when advertising a movie, but even better is if you show all the jokes and then mention the movie’s name. Everyone gets so pissed that previews give away the movie, but if they don’t make you feel like you’ve seen a movie, you won’t go. Studies that I can’t cite have proved this.

Two previews out right now, one starring Jessica Alba (a relative newcomer and B-list star) and the other starring Meg Ryan (an established superstar). The Alba movie has all of this footage of her dancing and looking hot as frickin’ hell. The Ryan movie shows her, out of focus and in a bath-tub, and the word “Sexy!” (from a Jeremy Lyons review or something) keeps popping up.

I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that the Alba movie does better in the theaters. And I’ll give you double or nothing that the Ryan movie is better and gets better Oscar buzz and better reviews.

If it is possible to send me spam that I enjoy, I’ll enjoy your brand. I can’t imagine what that would be, but you should do that instead of offering me guarantees about how much I’ll enjoy my mortgage or breast implants.

Advertising plays is therefor damn near impossible. All we can tell you is what other people say about it, we can’t make ads that make you feel the way you feel when you are in the theater. Kinda weird, and kinda cool, but the only way you will know if you want to see a show is by going to see the show.