Toilet Wisdom

Che's Lounge men's bathroom stall, Tucson, AZ. 5-23-2005

One evening in Tucson

A story based on actual events

A Jew, a Palestinian and a guy in tie-dye were alone in my living room when I got home, none of whom live here. They were sitting around the coffee table in the dark, with barely audible music playing.

"Hey guys, what's going on?" I asked with kind of a what the fuck are you doing in the living room tone. I'm really just a houseguest here, sleeping on the couch, but I still feel somewhat territorial.

"Not much man, not much. What'd you do today?" asked Mort, a New Yorker who'd been substitute teaching in town between benders. I couldn't really give him much of an answer because I was really confused by their presence in the house on a Monday evening. Mort was sitting with Yosef, an angry Palestinian who works with my roommate.

Yosef's visits come way too frequently and often end with a tirade of words that are mostly unintelligible. "The only people I fucking trust are people from Qatar, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates. None of the other people." or "They kill my fucking grandfather right in front of me." or "I not angry with him, just fucking disappointed, you know?" or "This country move too fast. Too much knowledge, information. Everybody fucking miserable."

The third undesirable in the living room was my neighbor Eli, who is often banned from the house. He was wearing a tie-dye shirt, filthy cargo pants. His complexion is that of a middle-aged man who has spent his entire life drinking and taking drugs in intense heat and sunlight.

Yosef was apologizing frantically to Eli like he was the Godfather.
"You don't have to be sorry man. What are you sorry for?"
"I sorry to make up for the DVD player," Yosef was saying.
"Okay, that's cool man."

This was too much to handle. All I wanted to do was read this book I was almost done with. I went into the bathroom to hide and shave. When I came out, Eli was gone and the others were still lying on the couch, passing around a Playboy. I walked past them and took my book to the porch. Outside it was the kind of hot that is best described as offensive, but I didn't want to talk to the Jew and the Palestinian in my living room. Not because of the international tension, but because they're annoying. I was reading on the porch for about five minutes when Eli walked up again, this time with his roommate Tom, a drug-addled yardworker who wears the same clothes everyday and doesn't appear to have showered in years.

"Hey man, what you reading?" Eli asked.
"Oh, just some short stories," I said, certain he wouldn't know the author.
"Yeah man, who?"
He took the book from my hands. It turned out that not only had he read the author's novels, but we have very similar tastes in fiction. I felt like a jerk for assuming that because he was missing teeth he wouldn't be well read. He handed the book back, with my place lost. Shit.
"Is Yosef in there still? I gotta talk to him. I don't think he's telling me the truth," Eli said and went inside.
Tom, who had been eating a sandwich and twitching until now, asked, "You ever read any Louis Lamour?"
"No, not really. You?"
"Only a couple. Most of them don't come in Braille."
"You have to read in Braille?" He didn't seem blind.
"No, but I do sometimes. It's faster," he said.
"So you know Braille?"
"No, just four letters."
Pause. I had no idea what to say.
"That's not true. That was a bad joke," he said, and laughed as if it were a good joke.

Eli came out again. Tom got up and left. Eli sat and rejoined our conversation. Offering to lend me several books that I'd like to read. He said he wanted to stick around and see if someone showed up. Someone did show up.

Two men in a glass delivery van pulled up, bass pounding. The driver was the fattest Mexican I'd ever seen, spilling out of the window. The passenger was about 6'6", wearing warmup pants a tank top and a ball cap. He looked like a bodybuilder and had a braided ponytail down half of his back. He walked in without saying anything.
"Who's that?" I asked Eli.
"Lots of powder. A lot of bad energy. I don't like that guy."
"Huh."

Eli went nextdoor to get a book he thought I'd like to read. I told him I'd lend him my book as soon as I finished it. He was excited. Across the street a little Mexican kid in a red Mariachi outfit stood out front of the elementary school. His parents came and picked him up. The braid guy came out again.
"Did you come for Yosef?" Eli asked.
"He just owed me some money," the guy said, and drove off in his van.

I poked my head into the house and the others were nowhere to be seen. The door to the back bedroom was closed and music was playing. I didn't want to know what the hell was going on. I could have pushed Eli to tell me, but I just didn't want to. I wanted to finish my book. The sun was starting to set, and it was slightly less hot. Still hot though. There was a full moon in the middle of the purple-pink sky.

"Interesting, very interesting," Eli said. "You know I saw this comic in a magazine the other day," he said. "The caption was 'Alice in Wonderbra,' and Alice had these huge boobs. She was talking to a friend and saying, "You know, ever since I got this thing men just get curiouser and curiouser," and then he left.

Mort and Yosef surfaced. Mort left to buy curtains. Yosef told me a poem about my roommate, and retold the story about when he saw his grandfather killed in front of him. He fell asleep in the living room.

My roommate came home from work shortly after.
"What'd you do today?" he asked.
"Just trying to finish this book."

###

Yosef's poem

Dan is a man who is destined
to be hunted like an animal
Because he has no money
and cannot accept this
So he will run
His honor has been restored

Random thoughts and memories.

When I lived at home, it was my job to clean the dog run. Every morning, I’d put on my shit shoes and go into and eighty square foot cage and clean up whatever the dogs left. When I got my first job at PISTOL PETE’S PIZZA, the manager asked if I had a problem cleaning vomit. I told him, “At home I clean up dog poop, so anything out of a human must be a step up.” He laughed and I got the job.

There’s a girl that lives upstairs from me. She has a job, a boy friend and sunny disposition. She just came back from jogging and I was on the porch smoking. She waved and I waved back. I wonder what she’s doing tonight.

The other day, I was driving to go get a carton of smokes. The guy next to me was jamming out to the Violent Femmes. It was the Hallowed Ground album. I felt a sudden kinship toward him, until he drove away and I say a fraternity sticker on the back of his car. Then I felt like I’d been lied to.

I sometimes drink at this house across from a school. I was sitting around with some guy that I’ve known for years, but never caught his name. We decided to slowly organize the house and drive the residents sane.

I have this empty frame hanging on my bedroom wall. A friend saw it and asked if it was some “post-modern statement on art.” I said, “No I just really like the frame.” He looked at it for about five minutes and said, “What is that, teak?”

For one of my classes, I had to follow a TV reporter. We started talking about school and I found out she graduated high school in ‘97. I graduated in ‘96.

This one night at work, a couple bought me some cheese cake. I was their waiter so I just sat down with them and ate it at their table. Later that night my manager asked if they were my parents. No. Your aunt and Uncle? No. How do you know them? I just waited on them. That’s it? Yeah. I got written up for eating on the clock.

I told a friend of mine that my ten year reunion is next summer. “Are you going to start working out?” “No, I figured I’d just eat more chicken and only drink on the weekends.” “That should be good enough.”

The windshield of my car has a huge crack in it, but I’m waiting for some place to offer 50 free meals at Chili’s before I get it fixed.

Trainwreck: A photo essay of bad decisions on a Wednesday night

11:47 PM: Lonely Jedi at midnight show



4:07 AM: Drowning Lucas-induced sadness on the porch



4:14 AM: Dork hair



4:24 AM: Marc's underwear in a tree



4:26 AM: Me getting ornary



4:48 AM: Mohawk sunrise



5:37 AM: Dustin strolls by and decides to stop for a beer



5:49 AM: Atypical objects for a kitchen in the morning



6:02 AM: Going to the Buffet for a pitcher



6:03 AM: Bar opens at 6



6:04 AM: Kate needs a quick nap



6:56 AM: An epic walk home

Rolling over Jack Kerouac

Here's a new feature, in which I post selections from Dr. Chung's old collection of beat poetry:


God’s Only Son

Jesus is God’s only son
I bet that
when Jesus got home
late at night
car out of gas
reeking of cheap perfume and whiskey
God was pretty pissed off.

Catfish at the late night cinema

Before:
For Halloween when I was in kindergarten, I was Yoda, complete with a dime-store plastic mask and felt feet my mom sewed, green, stuffed with foam and velcroed over my feet.
It was one of the man Star Wars costumes I constructed during my childhood. I was Luke on Hoth, Luke as an X-wing pilot and a storm trooper – I made rubber-band gun blasters of wood, painted black.
Return of the Jedi was my favorite because I lived in the woods – a perfect outdoor backdrop for Endor as I sent figures on crucial missions.
I read endlessly once George Lucas gave his blessing for other writers to fashion tales in his universe.
I caught late opening night shows for each of the rereleases in 1997, taking the latter-day changes and additions as nothing more than what I had to pay to catch them on the big screen.
All-in-all, I was nothing more than a mid-level dork – a Star Wars fan for all the right reasons. In an amazingly visual trio of films, the stories always took richer tones in my imagination. I filled in and refilled in all the cracks in the narrative with my own creations. I imagined all the other Rebel outposts, the fighters who never got screen time. And I used my own imaginary Jedi powers in ways far different from Luke, Obi Wan or Vader (for example, I applied them liberally in my mind to baseball).
When a prequel trilogy was announced, I thought I’d be perfect for any number of different roles.
And then the prequel trilogy hit – with such a shitty thud I couldn’t even understand how bad Phantom Menace was until I saw it a second time.
He needs an editor – and a director, actors, something – I thought. How could George Lucas have gone so wrong when any one of his millions of fans knew precisely what needed to be there? I barely accepted it, thinking he’d focus-grouped it to death and couldn’t possibly make the second one as bad. And not-as-bad he made it. There were at least promising moments aside from the brand name in Attack of the Clones. Yoda being a badass, if nothing else. But again, I was certain that in my hands the story and direction would have been so much better.
So that leads us up to Revenge of the Sith. If nothing else, I like the title. And of the dozens of reviews I’ve read, just one is outright bad. The rest take either an optimistic or pessimistic middle-ground. They all carefully outline the universally agreed upon strengths (scenery, battles, Darth’s birth) and weaknesses (horrendous dialogue, unbelievable acting, plot holes and a never-quite convincing descent for Anakin). And I’ve boiled it all down to this: if you still have faith in the final installment after all the bullshit, if you still hope for the conclusion, you’ll enjoy the picture. If you skepticism is stronger, it’ll be a disappointment. We’ll see – at the 12:40 a.m. show.
I’m catching opening night for the spectacle of it if nothing else – that and it’s the very last chapter of Star Wars, a phenomenon that’s spanned my entire life and fueled my imagination as much as anything.


After:
Some of it kicked ass, a lot of it sucked - but at least Revenge of the Sith surpassed it's predecessors in every way. And despite being the capstone of a horrendously disappointing trilogy, it's decent.
My single strongest impression is that Yoda kicks ass. But, to paraphrase the cowboy stranger in Big Lebowski: Yoda Dude, I like your style, but do you have to use so many durned awkward phrases? Sure it's our little green friend's trademark, but back in the day he never talked so much, and now that he's a major character, hearing him
awkwardly twist every phrase is downright annoying. As the general said at one point: "Wake up, I did."
So we got Yoda. And aside from perhaps the General Grievous nonsense, every lightsabre duel kicked ass.
And the Wookies really kick ass - though they were criminally underused. A couple battle scenes? C'mon. They should have been a major force.
The Emperor was impressive. In the trilogy's only convergence of good acting and character development, watching Palpatine grow in power as evil devoured his soul was amazing. The snarls he unleashes when he's fighting Mace Windu and then Yoda are perfect.
The final hour, at least when people weren't talking, at least felt like classic Star Wars. Battles raging in far flung corners of the galaxy, all conveniently ending almost simultaneously.
The various worlds look amazing and the action is beautifully done.

Plot holes are generally much more forgivable than a story that sucks to begin with. And I know it would destroy the fabric of the entire Star Wars universe and make the stories completely pointless, but why didn't Obi Wan make sure Vader was dead when he had the chance? The scene easily could have been redone, with Obi Wan seriously injured himself and barely escaping with his life at the last possible second, unsure of Vader's fate. Walking away is bullshit.
General Grievous is also bullshit - not only is he a slapped together character in the weakest sense, but his name may forever throw negative connotations on a perfectly good Gram Parsons song.
Grievous appears to be some combination of life form and machine, which is illustrative of how far Lucas has fallen. Remember the machine-man villain from the first film? We went from the chilling menace of Darth Vader to the wheezing, stumbly battle-droid-on-'roids of Grievous. Another wasted opportunity for an interesting character.
I never liked the concept of an all-droid army anyway. It's bad storytelling and only serves to as more Lucas digital masturbation.
Perhaps the dialogue between Anakin and Natalie Portman (Padme is a stupid name) would have been better if it were spoken in some made-up Star Wars language, then subtitled, so we wouldn't know how bad it sounds.
My kingdom for a Count Dooku backstory. He could be far and away the most compelling new character of the entire trilogy and should have emerged at the end of the first episode.
I never liked the fact that both CP30 and R2D2 were along for the whole ride.
I would have liked to have seen Degobah.
Maybe it's just fan-boy stuff and actually would have been a misstep, but I'd have liked to see at least a foreshadowing of the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian characters.

Taken as a whole, the Revenge of the Sith's most redeeming quality was simply the fact it was a Star Wars film.
And while that may be enough, just imagine how awesome a good prequel trilogy would have been.

Mr. Chair's comic book/download advice of the financial quarter

Ugh. Poor posting habits from the posting police himself. Regardless, here's a couple of books I read recently that I'd recommend to folks in the Lounge.

Warren Ellis' Desolation Jones is one of the better things he's done recently, which is saying a lot for the chronically exhausted Brit. Jones was underordered, as is common for stores to do since Ellis does most of his marketing through his Internet empire of subculture. But there has been rampant buzz and steady sales, so expect it to become a presence on Wednesday shelves. It's a British noir detective book set in LA, but really about someone isolated from his home and all that he finds familiar. It's about a hopeless person basically. Buy it for J.H. Williams' (Promethea fame) art at least. Don't know what Ellis has planned, but this could fill the gap on the shelf that he left with Transmetropolitan.

Morrison's Seven Soldiers series continues to impress. I'm particularly fond of Shining Knight, but each book maintains a distinct style and look.

In Batlin's continuing attempt to prove to me that superhero books are where it's at, he's warmed me up to Bryan K. Vaughan's Ex Machina. Tony Harris of Starman draws this book about a NYC mayor who also happens to be a superhero responsible for saving one of the Twin Towers in a parallel universe. It's about a third political drama, a third comic book action, and another third fascinating historical trivia about the history of New York City. What a blast to read. Always read Vaughan's Y: The Last Man, by the way.

In the non-picture book category, Jonathan Lethem is quickly becoming one of my favorite contemporary authors. Critical hit Motherless Brooklyn was great, but his short stories, which border on sci-fi, mystery and horror, prove that genre fiction can be character based layered in ways that "serious" stories can't often manage. Check out the quick read, Wall of the Sky, Wall of the Eye for some of his short work.

Back to the Ellis front, he puts out an occasional podcast called Superburst Mixtape. For those not down with the Pod, you can easily download all 15 of them at his website. I did it in two coffee shop visits and they're mostly great stuff. I think it's safe to say that I had never heard of any of the musicians on the mixes, despite the fact that I'd buy almost all of their CDs having listened. Many of the bands are unknowns who gave their music directly to Ellis or were discovered through Myspace accounts.

It's over!

Textbook vagina in Mexico

I found it strange that Marioni was drunk and reading a textbook on the beach in Mexico, but even stranger that the page he was studying had three close-up photographs of vaginas. "What the fuck are you studying, Marioni?"

"It's for my human sexuality class. I have a final Monday," said Marioni, a borderline mental case who was part of my small excursion to Cholla Bay a week ago.

"Gimme that," and I yanked it away. His final couldn't possibly be more important than me finding out what other gems this psychology textbook might hold. Gems included:

• Schoolyard vocab words in the margin such as "dildo." Yes, "dildo" is a vocabulary word in a college level textbook.
• Illustrations of spiked medieval devices that strapped onto penises to prevent erections among adolescents tempted to masturbate.
• Several full-color photographs of genetalia, including those of hermaphrodites, people brutally afflected with alien-looking STDs. Penises that look like moonrocks. Then there was the above-mentioned vagina trifecta, which was illustrated to demonstrate that "Vaginas look different."
• Photos are acceptable for genetalia, but in the case of sex acts, a brilliant artist was commissioned to portray positions, techniques to conquer impotence, and so on. My favorite drawings are "Fig. 9.1: Gay men hugging," and "Fig.9.2: Lesbians embrace."
• If I ever have a band and release a CD, the cover will be the book's cutaway illustration of a prostate exam. It's a scientific, fully labeled drawing of a man with a finger up his ass.
  
• Another masterful illustration is the rear entry position. All other drawings were fairly generic men and women. But in this one alone, the man was given a moustache, and the woman's face is distorted into an expression that can only be described as intense discomfort. Anyone who reads this book will never ever perform this position again.
  

My friend who majored in Psychology says it's the "science of making common sense extremely confusing." In the case of the psychology of sexuality, I'd say it's more the science of making the common sex act extremely funny. By the end of the afternoon, we were huddled around the book like immature 6th graders looking at the PE sex ed book. Where had this book been all of my life? In my drunken laughter, I offered him $50 for the textbook, but he said he needed it. Jerk.

At Cannes

On my second day of the Cannes film festival. It's pretty fucking awesome and the perfect weather and the beach are really great. One celebrity sighting so far: Samuel L. Jackson.

I bumped into a producer friend of mine from Paris. He managed to scam an extra pass for me, so I'm walking around here as Charles Weinsstein. Charles also found me a friend of his to let me shack up in her aunt's seaview apartment cause she didn't want me out on the street. But I gotta leave when she leaves tomorrow, so I'll have to find a new place to sleep.

I saw my film down here. I met up with the director, too. She said the film showed on Italian television. Assloads of free food and alcohol, though none here at the American Pavilion where I'm currently writing from, so I'll have to find my next party to leech onto.

Wish you were here.

Shameless whoring

There's some new stuff on mrchair, for those of you who wrote the site off as dead or dying, including a new Life in a Dormant Volcano post after ages of ass-dragging. I monkeyed with the LIaDV index, making it up to date and easier to navigate. Also, today is my birthday. Send roses, Singapore Slings and endless adoration.

Club 505

Screw timeliness. The Mathematicians rocked my living room and everybody’s gonna hear about it.
I’m still a little confused about how it all happened, but this crazy Upstate New York band – Dewi Decimal, Pete Pythagoras and Al Gorithm – christened what is against all logic likely to become a series of shows played at the house.
These guys are a little strange, to say the least. They’re all dressed in checked slacks, bow ties, mismatched checked suit coats and either lab goggles or clunky-framed glasses, sans lenses.
They took nearly an hour to set up, toting in all sorts of electronic gizmos, drum machines and the like.
And then proceeded to rock. The drums-keyboard-bass trio sails on Devo-ish new wave waters in a Beastie Boys inspired team-style-shout-rap boat. All the songs are about math, from Binary Girl to Subtract My Life. They justify one about the child of Satan with the simple 666. My favorite lyric of the night could more or less be the band’s slogan: “We don’t care if your suit clashes, we’re no dance floor fascists.”
I can’t say enough good about these guys, though. They’re inspired musicians, tight as a rope together and surprisingly all decent rappers.
They jumped around the room, each one in turn knifing into the crowd of 30 or so, long microphone cord trailing and jumping behind.
The Mathematicians are the most unlikely, against-all-odds awesome band I’ve ever seen. You’ll groove, you’ll marvel and you’ll be highly entertained.

And come by the 505 sometime, ‘cause who knows, maybe the Little Morts will be playing.