About the author

Sure, this is really just one of those facebook / spam e-mail surveys that rightfully become lost and gone forever. But I’m always looking for material, and if I write something once, I need to circulate it twice. Three times. Anyhow,

25 Random things about David Simons

1. One time David and his baby sister were taking a bath together and they heard the ice cream truck bells. They ran out into the street with no clothes on and got some free treats from the ice cream guy who almost needed an ambulance truck, so hard was he laughing. This was a couple years ago.
2. David never flosses. That’s the dental hygienists’ job.
3. David once got in a taxi, went through airport security, got in his seat, then five seconds later bolted off the plane and returned home. The taxi ride home was free because the numbers on his Visa card were too worn out for the manual card reader to pick up. Suckers.
4. David wears a seatbelt but only when he’s a passenger.
5. David was an English major in college but anymore he probably only reads 10 books a year.
6. David liked it and put a ring on it. He lost the ring on his 37th birthday when a couple in his row left in the middle of I’m Not There, obliging him to stand up and drop it. It’s Bill Brazell’s fault.
7. David was insanely jazzed up to see this one movie and there was this really long line and right when he got up to the ticket window a guy comes out and says “Clash of the Titans, sold out!”
8. David can think of three things he’s taking to his grave. Secrets, David means, not, like, an ankh and a jewel and a mummified cat.
9. David commandeered the cafeteria microphone once in ninth grade, belting out eight bars of a show-stopper. The teacher shook David’s hand and pointed to the principal’s office, turning cheers into boos. David earned a week’s worth of detention along with a side of infamy.
10. Sharing a ride back to school one semester, David and his passenger were playing some type of game where you had to say different letters aloud until they formed a new word… David doesn’t remember the particulars. He does remember winning by cheating by saying “No, no, that’s a real word, it’s a type of nautical equipment.” David doesn’t think his passenger was fooled so much as he was too polite to disagree. Sorry Ted.
11. David doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, to be honest.
12. David was filling out a 9th grade vocabulary test and couldn’t remember the definition for chagrin, so he went with “a piece of fried chicken.” His example sentence was something like “You work on the potatoes and I’ll get started on the chagrin.” His teacher didn’t notice and David got an A.
13. David was so happy working as a broker at Morgan Stanley he typically drank a bottle of wine every day at lunch. Not a .375 ml bottle either.
14. In his younger days David figured he would live to be 100 easy.
15. In another life David worked in a brokerage house where he had to take orders from assholes. He exacted revenge on the prick who screamed at him by waiting for him to go on vacation, sneaking into his office and emptying a bottle of patchouli oil into the drawers of his desk. Prick came back Monday and couldn’t breathe, the stench was so bad. He tried airing out the drawers one by one, but there was no use and the entire desk had to be replaced. David 1, Prick 0.
16. David counts going to grad school as one the three fatal mistakes in his life.
17. David always assumed he couldn’t get anywhere with women because he was smart but not physically attractive. As he ages he surprises himself with his vanity, thinking he has a good-looking face. His horror at the circles under his eyes is downright womanly.
18. Then again, David did grow up with three sisters and his mom, so he could be excused for leaning toward the effeminate.
19. David feels his last two years at Newark Academy and the first two years at Oberlin College serve as his four-year undergraduate learning, the two years at U.M.K.C. being okay but not really teaching him anything new.
20. David can’t decide whether to go for serious revelations or cheap gags with the final 20% of this list.
21. David thinks the cliché “He’s his own worst enemy” applies to the majority of people, but not to him. David can easily think of five people off the top of his head who score higher on the enemy scale.
22. Born in New Jersey, David always wanted to live in Manhattan. David now remembers hearing a phrase along the lines of “Be careful what you wish for.”
23. David is clearly shifting into “Get this over with” mode.
24. David expected Missouri would be a cultural void made up of redneck hillbilly homophobes, but that turned out not to be the case. Missouri’s okay.
25. David didn’t write this.

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A record you can count on, like that one from Sesame Street

Folks, I don’t need to remind you reliable this blog has been. We told you ages ago there wouldn’t be any war in Iran; there hasn’t been. We told you that Obama would win;* he did. And we told you there would be a bottom in U.S. equities last October. The S & P 500 Index is down about 16% in the three months since, but as the saying goes on the Street, “It’s better to be early than wrong.”**

You want to talk results? I posted an immature Lazlo Letter about a certain company on a Sunday; Monday morning I had a call promising a refund. Then I pulled down the post. Then I waited two weeks and nothing happened. Then I put the post back up, which clearly intimidated them further because a check arrived the same day! Then I took the post down again. Then I hired a marketing firm to e-mail the post to 5,000 people like that woman who married Kavalier and Clay did. With the money left over I bought a tall latte. The sweet smell of success!

In fact, this blog has become so powerful, so influential, that it can rock the world before a given entry is even posted. Case in point? The end of the PT Cruiser. You might think it’s getting the axe because the new owners of Chrysler have a new attitude about profits.

Interesting theory.

It just so happens that I rented a PT Cruiser the weekend before last. You say that was after the kill shot had already been announced? Clearly you weren’t paying close enough attention to last week’s season premiere of Lost. I rented the car, hated it, went back in time, made this post & post-dated it and just days later the PT gets a mercy killing. Got it?

Why was it such an odious car? Well, the one thing it had going for it (in theory) was its stylish retro looks. I wonder how many PT buyers out there could identify which decade they were supposed to be feeling nostalgic for here. “Oh man, I wish I could be drivin’ this thing around in the…. Fifties? Is that right? Didn’t one of these run over Fonzie?”

Yeah. Thing about those cars back in “yesteryear” — they were the size of a planet. I’ve seen Harry’s ride at the Truman Library — that thing was big enough for Bess to run over his piano and send Lauren Bacall into another universe. The PT might have the same proportions as a car from “days of yore”*** but it looks shrunken. It makes as much sense as Apple bringing out a laptop styled after the ENIAC.

Not only did the PT’s design look flawed, it had design flaws on top of it. Need to open the window? No button on the door; that would spoil your chance to play hide and go seek on your first drive. Makes you a popular guy at the tollbooth. Scouring everywhere, I half expected to see a manual roll-down door handle before my wife found the button on the stereo console. Right were it should be, of course.

But here’s what rankles the most. The PT comes with an electronic key system. You press and go beep and you pull on the door handle with confidence. Psyche! The door handles on the PT require you to press your thumb on a knob you haven’t seen since the Eighties. The handle is also positioned in a way that requires you to approach awkwardly from the front, or from the back if don’t mind fumbling with it so long you like you’re plastered.

The PT was sold as an “old-timey” car. But you see, there’s a reason we use the word “old-timey.” It’s because things that are old get replaced by things that are newer and better. Should we fly on old-timey planes? Should we go back to old-timey landline phones so you can’t call from the scene of a car crash? Should we get in a crash with our old-timey Cruiser that handles like a dream, a de Chirico dream, because it doesn’t trust that newfangled ESC? Should we choose the hospital that uses old-timey medicine where doctor’s don’t wash their hands?

The PT Cruiser was ugly, small, and unsafe, much like Ann Coulter’s backside. I’m glad it’s behind us.

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*A month after saying he would lose.
**That’s not how the saying goes.
***I concede I have seen an episode of Friends.
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BREAKING (Bad)

ZOMG! Just when I thought I was running out of material it hits me. I could blog about getting chemo… while getting chemo! Brilliant! I’ll bring the iPhone with its easy to use keyboarpt and off we fly!

7:45 a.m., leave the apartment and bust out the ice scraper.* I must not have busted it out for long enough, seeing as how I can’t see out of any of the windows. This I learn after I venture into the northbound lanes of Wornall and open the windows to see traffic approaching from the south, and from the north. A tail-tucked blogger hits reverse to reclaim the safety of the apartment parking lot. (Ed. — Is there a gas station between here and the end of this story?) So I’m like who is this guy Ed, amirite?

8:00, emerge from the Jetta, brave the single-digit temps to fill up and clean off the windshield. There’s your fuckin’ gas station Ed!! Are you happy now? I hope you just DIE of happiness! (Ed — And if I was still married to you I’d drink it!)

8:30, arrive for my 8:30 appointment

9:00, dum de dum de dum

9:10, go to the infusion suite, not to be infused but to donate blood. On a side note, the nurses here are great and they joke around some, but the lab ladies? They get into the nitrous oxide early. I just watched one of them go back to the lab room and close the door. Five seconds later I heard an eruption of laughter. What could be that funny after five seconds? Settle down, Apatow.

9:30, meet with the doctor

9:45, and they come in with the heavy stuff! Access the port, boom! Atropine comin’ in at ten o’clock, boom! Saline, Irinotecan, Sarge they’re hitting us with everything they’ve got! Mayday, mayday! Fall back! Fall back! Rufus from Gossip Girl, get in there and relieve Captain Dike!

10:30, am warned by one of the nurses that the Talker is going to be there. I actually remembered to bring my earplugs (sic) but instead I go for Abbey Road on the iPhone. Guy is so loud that for a minute I think Paul is singing about the Baltimore Ravens.

11:00, I don’t feel so good. But I’m doing better than my neighbor, an older woman who asks, “Martha, is this supposed to burn?”

11:30, the Talker won’t stop bugging this younger African American patient that he can’t believe he (the black kid in the Talker’s argot) has gout. “British people get gout! Rich British people.” What’s he supposed to say to that? “You’re right, I don’t have gout. I was just fronting so I would look more like Boswell.”

12:00, spilling popcorn pell mell, ask the nurse if I’m going to get charged a cleanup fee, like I was when I moved out of my 55th St. apartment, the security deposit on which PETER ASHE REAL ESTATE has STILL not returned to me THREE MONTHS after I moved out. Right, back to the popcorn I spilled in the infusion room. Nurse: “Don’t worry, the mice will take care of it.”

12:30 p.m., leave, drive home, pick up some chow on the way, neglect the drink, figure “Well I’ll just get it at the McDonald’s near our place. How long could that take?” Turns out it could take 15 minutes and did. Here’s your lukewarm omelet honey!

2:00, head out for a bit. As it happens the equestrian supplies store is fresh out of my size.

4:38, finish writing the historic never-before-tried** LIVE CHEMO BLOGGING post! I know, I know, writing half of it from home is cheating. But the iPhone keybaore takes really long and I couldn’t finish my homework on time because this guy keeps bugging me and I was molested when I was five. Totally not my fault. Okay maybe I was asking for it with the molestation, but the post being late, not on me.
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*One of my better half’s underground classmates once asked, in class and with no irony, “What’s an ice scraper?” At another juncture she asked, “What’s a leather dyke?” I’m just hoping for everyone’s sake that didn’t mix the two up.
**Leroy Sievers probably did it forty times
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There’s always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you

In the bookstore this afternoon (Ed: Noooo, you? Adventurous you are now*) and I overhear a ten-year-old’s take on the latest Denis Leary book**:

“Why We Suck” — Hey Dad, there’s a book on the Chiefs!

All right, kid, who gave you permission to be funnier than I am without signing up for my Learning Annex Kansas Komedy Klass, the KKK? The one where I stress that made-up acronyms are never funny***? To paraphrase Erykah Badu, who gave you permission to upstage me? Certainly not me.

It’s all right, it’s okay. It’s something to live for, Jesus told me so. Sometimes you need a slap in the face from a ten-year-old to get you to step up your game. Sometimes you need a ten-year-old to whip your hide at Scrabble to send you back to the books. And let’s face it, sometimes you just need a ten-year-old.

Comedy is not pretty.
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* Yoda voice engaged
** The one where he points out that autistic kids are fat and lazy and don’t have the get-up and go to steal material from Bill Hicks
***For instancde, “I think T.W.A. really stands for ‘To Wait Around.’” See? Not even in the same zip code as funny.
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That’s what she said

Anyone else in the mood to complain about what was happening four years ago?

——PRESENTING—–

21 GRAMS: ORIGINAL SHOOTING SCRIPT

STARRING:
Benicio Del Toro as “Born-Again Hothead”
Sean Penn as “Bad-Ass Mathematician”
and
Naomi Watts as “Peroxide Rich Bitch”

Interior:
BORN-AGAIN HOTHEAD (BAH): Jesus saves me $400 a month in car payments – I won this pickup truck at a church raffle.
LONG-SUFFERING PARTNER OF BAH: Yeah, well, I hope Jesus is gonna save our house now that you got fired from your job at the golf course.
BAH: Fffffff. That job didn’t fit my gritty ethos anyhow.
Mrs. BAH: Gritty or otherwise, it paid the rent. How are we supposed to live?
BAH: Trust in God. Listen, if He can get me through Excess Baggage, He can get us through this without breaking a sweat.
Mrs. BAH: I hope you’re right. I’m worried about our kids.
BAH: Is there a rod around?

Cut to:
BAD-ASS MATHEMATICIAN (BAM): Yecchh, I’m dyin’ ova heah. But look at me go, I’m on a respirator and I’m still sneakin’ a smoke in the bathroom. Heh heh heh, Phillip Morris has a friend in us bad-asses.
LONG-SUFFERING PARTNER OF BAM: Are you smoking again!? You’re going to kill yourself!!
BAM: Hey, how ya ’speck me to be a bad-ass if I don’t laugh in the face of death and support the tobacco companies?
Mrs. BAM: Your doctors said –
BAM: Hey, fuck the doctors. I’m from the streets, I don’t care about rules.
Mrs. BAM: How can you be a rebel from the streets and be a math professor at the same time?
BAM: I teach my kids the new math. Rules are there ain’t no theorems.

Cut to:
PEROXIDE RICH BITCH (PRB): My life is awesome. I got a big house. I got two blonde daughters. I got a husband who’s loaded. The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades, etc.

Cut to: FLASHBACK! of PRB in $80,000 kitchen baking cake with daughters.
BLONDE KIDS: Yayyy, we’re making a cake in a kitchen, yayy!!
PRB: Yayyyy!! Daddy’s gonna love this!
BLONDE KIDS: Mommy, do you love Daddy?
PRB: More than liquor itself, kids!
BLONDE KIDS: Then how come you and daddy are never in the same scene together?
PRB: Scheduling conflicts.
BLONDE KIDS: Mommy, will you eat this cake with us?
PRB: I can’t – it’s got 21 GRAMS of fat.
BLONDE KIDS: Mommy, what is your deal? Are you like a soccer mom? Do you have a job? Where are you all day?? Why are we always with dad and not you? Are you getting a divorce? You’re acting like everything is so perfect but this whole set-up makes no fucking sense!!
PRB: That’s it, no more TV for you two.

Cut to:
Mrs. BAM: I love you, bad-ass math professor. I wanna take care of you. I wanna nurse you back to health. I wanna have your baby.
BAM: God, I hate you.

Cut to:
Mrs. BAH: Born-again hothead, what took you so long? You’re late for your own birthday party! Say something, you look more intense than ever!
BAH: Some serious shit went down. I just killed a man and his two little girls. And it’s killing me inside. Are you listening, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters!?
Mrs. BAH: You got in an accident with your God-given truck? Guess that makes you a real holy roller!
BAH: God, I hate you.
Mrs. BAH: Yeah, well, so what kind of car were they driving?
BAH: No car, they were walking and I ran them over.
Mrs. BAH: Come again?
BAH: They were walking across the street and I ran them over.
Mrs. BAH: You ran over three people at the same time?
BAH: Gritty enough for you?
Mrs. BAH: That doesn’t make any sense. How do you hit three people square on the nose in one blow? Were the two kids standing on the dad’s shoulders or something?
BAH: C’mon I’m trying to be intense over here.
Mrs. BAH: And why were they walking, anyway? This is America, people don’t walk twenty feet to the mall entrance if they can help it! Where did all this happen?
BAH: In the beautiful part of town where rich bitches and architects live.
Mrs. BAH: Whaaaa????? But we live in the gritty part of town!! What were you doing in the beautiful part of town?
BAH: Well I was having a drink with my boss, celebrating the fact that he fired me. The bar was in a second gritty part of town, and I thought even I couldn’t take the intensity of driving from one gritty area straight through to another, so I took a two-hour detour through Cherry Hill, got off the parkway, and proceeded to meander through residential areas block by block.
Mrs. BAH: Hmmmmm. I still don’t get how they were walking around in the suburbs. They wanted to take in the scenery on the way home from Pottery Barn?
BAH: Long story short, three people dead, no witnesses, I’m turning myself in because God says so, and I’m gonna have matching statues that read “Best Supporting Actor.”
Mrs. BAH: Right.
BAH: Right.
Mrs. BAH: Right.

Cut to: A FLASHBACK! with
LONG-SUFFERING PARTNER OF PEROXIDE RICH BITCH: Jeez, this is awful. I can’t stand the Peroxide Rich Bitch anymore. I know she’s my babies’ mamma but she’s so phony and self-absorbed. She’s always hittin’ the sauce. And whenever we make love I feel like I’m going to get impaled by her protruding hip bone! You’d think her ass only weighs 21 GRAMS. No wonder I look way, way older than my 37 years. But what can I do? A divorce would really hurt the kids. How can I get out of this? Hey, there’s a truck speeding through the intersection, now’s my chance!!

Cut to: Hospital, with
PRB: My beautiful babies are dead! Oh my God, oh my God!!! Are you listening, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters?

Cut to: Hospital, second floor
BAM: Look at me, I’m a bad-ass math professor with a new heart. This is gonna give me renewed energy, a new outlook on life. I’m gonna go take on the day.
Mrs. BAM: We did it!! You’re alive! All that work, all that suffering, it’s over! We can have a beautiful life together and raise a child!
BAM: Jesus, do you EVER stop?? First I need to track down the donor.
Mrs. BAM: The donor’s dead, you fucking moron.
BAM: Oh. Well maybe he left some heirs lying around. I need to do this, I need to go on this journey, find out who I am, this is a part of me, I need this.
Mrs. BAM: How many of those painkillers did you take again?

Cut to: Wake of Mr. PRB and the BLONDE KIDS
PRB: Thanks for coming.
COOL CHICK FROM CARNIVALE WHO SHOULD BE THE STAR OF GREAT MOVIES INSTEAD OF HAVING TO TAKE SLOPPY SECONDS FROM IDIOTS LIKE NAOMI WATTS IN PRETENTIOUS MOVIES LIKE 21 GRAMS: You know I’m here for you.
PRB: I’m not going to press charges against the born-again hothead. Nothing’s going to bring back my two little blonde kids.
CCFCWSBTSOGMIOHTTSSFILNWIPML2G: You’re a strong woman, you’re handling this really well.
PRB: I’m heavily, heavily sedated. I’m gonna go on a rampage in a reel or two.
CCFCWSBTSOGMIOHTTSSFILNWIPML2G: I’m here for you.

Cut to: Dirty, gritty prison cell
BAH: I’m a born-again hothead in jail. All this grit is making me question my faith. What kind of God would give an ex-con a truck and then let him drive it around in the suburbs for two hours just so a depressed architect could throw himself and his two little blonde girls in front of it?
PRIEST: I’m going to pray for you.
BAH: There is no God, only grit, etc. etc.

Cut to: a FLASH-FORWARD! Ho ho, I’m a sly devil
BAH: I’m gritty and I’m in jail.
Mrs. BAH: I sold the truck and hired a lawyer. He’s gonna have you out of here in two hours!
BAH: God, I hate you.
Mrs. BAH: What about our kids!!
BAH: I hate them too.

Cut to:
BAM: (Watches PRB from a distance)

Cut to:
BAM: (Watches PRB from a distance)

Cut to:
BAM: (Watches PRB from a distance)

Cut to:
BAM: (Watches PRB from a distance)

Cut to:
BAM: (Watches PRB from a distance)

Cut to:
BAM: (Watches PRB from a distance)

Cut to:
BAM: (Watches PRB from a distance)

Cut to:
BAM: Hey.
PRB: Ack!! Who are you?
BAM: Just a cute guy trying to hit on you with a totally stupid line about eating alone being bad for your kidneys.
PRB: Yeah, well…
BAM: Look, it’s been almost an hour and a half, and we’re still not even in the second act. Let’s try and wrap this up before the next ice age.
PRB: All right, I’ll fuck ya.
BAM: Whoa, whoa, give me one scene where I can be a romantic little bad-ass math professor.
PRB: I’m still heavily sedated, so you call the shots.

Cut to: Restaurant that charges $20 for a glass of wine
BAM: Yeah, math, you got your sine waves, your cosine waves, your calculus… it kind of makes me think of you. It’s beautiful that way. Oh, and I memorized a couple of lines from this one pretentious poet, I picked some guy from like Valenzuela or somewhere, there’s no way anyone’s used this on you before.
PRB: How does a math teacher afford a place like this? And how did you know that this restaurant would be right by my house?
BAM: Have another glass of wine. It only weighs 21 GRAMS.

Cut to:
BAM/PRB: (Kissing, moaning, panting, shoving)
PRB: Come upstairs.
BAM: I have your husband’s heart. They transplanted it on October 11.
PRB: WHAT!?! YOU FUCKING FREAK, YOU FUCK!!!!! GET OUT, YOU MATH GEEK!! GO JERK OFF ON M. C. ESCHER YOU BITCH!!!

Later that morning:
PRB: I love you. Don’t ever leave me.
BAM: I can’t live without you.
PRB: Let’s make love and look agonized.
BAM: And let me read Sam Shepard while you rest afterward.
PRB: Then let me look agonized some more while you have a nap.
BAM: We’ll sleep in shifts in case bin Laden comes for us.

Cut to:
Mrs. BAM: (Packing up, leaving)
BAM: You can’t do this.
Mrs. BAM: The hell I can’t. You hate me, you don’t want to have my baby, and my reward for nursing you back to health is to find you in bed with a rich bitch.
BAM: This has to end.
Mrs. BAM: Uh, duhhhhhhh!!!

Cut to:
BAH: Relax, folks, I’m still in the movie. I haven’t forgotten about you. I left my long-suffering wife and my crummy kids so I could get an even grittier job – seriously, I think I’m literally working with grit. I cut my hair and I look almost African, I’m that dirty. And I live in an end-of-the-line motel. This rocks.

Cut to:
BAM: Thanks for meeting me.
TOUGH UNDERWORLD GUY: No problem. Most of my customers are math professors, really.
BAM: Did you get everything?
TUG: Here’s a background file on the PRB, the dead guy, and the guy who killed the dead guy. I had to work extra hard on that last one, seeing as how he never got charged and lives in the gritty part of town.
BAM: Yeah, and…
TUG: Oh, right, the totally untraceable gun, with six bullets at no extra charge. Your total today is $349.99.
BAM: Put it on my bar tab – I’m feeling gritty.

Cut to:
PRB: You have to kill him! We have to kill him!!
BAM: Okay. (Pause.) I killed him.
PRB: Hooray!!!!
BAM: By the way, your husband’s heart really sucks, I’m going to die again.
PRB: By the way, I have a cocaine problem.
BAH: By the way, the bad-ass math professor was lying when he said he killed me. I don’t know why, considering I actually want to die.
PRB: Coming right up, bitch!
BAH: Bring it on, bitch!
BAM: I’m going to make everyone happy and kill myself. (Everyone in the audience, anyway.)
BAH: The bad-ass math professor killed himself! MAN, thass gritty!!! Guess the cops won’t charge me for this, either. By the way, PRB, sorry I killed your whole family.
PRB: It’s cool. He had a $5 million insurance policy. I used the proceeds to buy some more coke. I just snorted … 21 GRAMS.

(Fade to black, roll credits)
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If I may be so bold

Let’s face it. I am a latent homosexual It’s easy for me, with the luxury of time afforded the unemployed, to pick on minor errors of grammar and style in articles written by journalists working on a strict deadline. Fair enough. I’m going after bigger game this time, picking on minor errors of editing in two films that seem unimpeachable.

First, The Shining. Could just as easily be named The Chilling — this is a spooky classic that really gets under your skin. If you haven’t seen it, well, you’re a moron. Sorry to break it to you. But I’ll tell you the plot revolves around a family hired to look after a hotel in the dead of a Colorado winter. The father ends up going boing-koo-koo and two people die. The end.

It’s a two-hour film, but it is taut as a hanging and gives you just about as much room to breathe. There’s not one shot in there that doesn’t belong.

Except for that one.

During the film’s climax, the demons of the hotel reveal themselves and help terrorize the long-suffering wife/mother, played to perfection by queen weirdo Shelley Duvall. At one point she sees a sex act between an industrialist and what seems to be history’s first furry. A bit later, she runs into the lobby, which is now chock-a-block with skeletons and cobwebs, and shot with a purple filter.

In between, racing through the hallways of the hotel, she comes across a dude in a tuxedo who raises a cocktail glass to her and says, “Great party, isn’t it?” Did I mention he has an axe wound in his head and blood all over himself?

That’s the bit I would snip, not only because it’s bad, but because it’s redundant. First, the wife/mother has been victimized enough. Second, it’s just not that scary — we’ve already had a few scenes in the movie with tuxedo-clad bald guys who speak in eerie British accents. And fifth, it’s pretty weak, a bit obvious in its irony. Hey, wait a minute — this isn’t a great party at all! He’s lyin’!!

I am now officially better than Stanley Kubrick. If he doesn’t like it, he knows where to find me.

Another gem of a film with a tiny flaw? No Country for Old Men. Now, nobody is a bigger fan of this film than I am. I’ve watched it enough times to act out the scene in the gas station in its entirety, calling on two of my lesser-known personalities to do so.* The Oscars are as arbitrary as baseball’s MVP awards, but I was still pleased to see NC4OM clean up. So what kind of jackass thinks he can improve on the Coen Brothers?

This kind!

Here it is: There’s a scene where Woody Harrelson’s character, Carson Wells, is hired by (wait for it) the “Man who hires Wells.** It becomes clear right away that Wells is a maverick (and a goofball) when he sits down without being asked, because his employer strikes him “as a man who wouldn’t want to waste his chair.” This is also the scene where Wells is asked how dangerous the Javier Bardem character is: “Compared to what, the bubonic plague?”

In a word, Wells is insouciant***, a point further underscored by the last line in the scene, where he asks his employer to validate his parking ticket. At least that’s the scene’s last line in the universe where I have final cut, because I find the next exchange superfluous:

Carson Wells: You know, I counted the floors to this building from the street.

Man who hires Wells: [sighs] And?

Carson Wells: There’s one missing.

Man who hires Wells: We’ll look into it.

It’s a nice enough exchange, taken straight from the book, but it’s redundant. Everything prior to it has established that Wells is independent and not intimidated by authority, nor by Anton Chigurh. Watch it a couple times and you can see that it slows the pacing down just enough to be a problem. A problem for me at least, seeing as how I need to trim those seconds from films so I can spend hours complaining about them.
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*To the delight of, em, the rest of my personalities.

**Awfully imaginative, that Internet Movie Database.****

***That’s Woody Harrelson, insouciant all over.

****You’re still not David Foster Wallace — Eds.
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See how they get you?

Tuesday morning, January 20th, 2009. Wake up at 8 a.m. Freshen up, brave the early morning frost and head out. Because today I am gone bloggin’. Takin’ this shit seriously for a change. Daily updates, links to reddit, oh it’s on, baby. As a wise man once said, “Watch out, Doogie Howser!”

Get a bagel and coffee. See the doctor for 50 minutes (clue). Head over to Starbucks and buy a coffee so I can hang around there while I write those magnificent octopi.

Oh fuck – the inauguration!

Starbucks doesn’t have free wifi.The $2 coffee becomes a sunk cost. Maybe I can write it off on my taxes? In any event, it’s time to go home and witness history being made. But after that?

Goin’ bloggin’!

I tell you this is some serious business now! Where can I get this done. I know – the Dunn Brothers on the Missouri side. They have free wifi so I can write and post in the same place. Get there, buy a venti latte, dig out the laptop, look for a place to plug it in, power it up, pick up the latte from the counter, fire up firefox…

Firefox can’t find the server at en-us.start2.mozilla.com.

Ohhhhh kay. Stay calm now, remember what the doctors told you. It’s going to be all right, there’s a library right near here that has free wifi. I’ll have to guzzle this latte down or chuck it, but it’s a small price to pay for citizen activist freedoms like BLOGGING! Maybe I can take the $4 off on my taxes?

Pack everything in, get back in the car, drive off. Oh, shit – that branch is closed for renovations. (After all, there is such huuuuge demand for reading materials and local governments have a ton of money to spend on capital improvements. Of course they‘re fixing it up!.) Let’s see, ah, er, ah, could try the Panera at College and Metcalf, but I’m getting weary of buying $2 coffees just to not post anything. Maybe I could write it off on my … sorry.

I guess I’ll have to go to that other library branch. It’s a bit of a hike but at least I’ll be able to post. Freedom of speech is at stake here! First I just have to finish this self-guided tour of Leawood’s amber and red traffic lights. Okay, made it. Get everything together, brave the snow, get inside, find a spot, get out my library card so I can get online and spread the song of FREEDOM!*

That’s strange. Why can’t I get from one application to the other? Why does that cursor have a wheel that won’t stop spinning? Why is the screen going black? Laptop, are you conspiring with the cafes and traffic lights to thwart my efforts at productivity? Is this about your feelings of inadequacy, being a Windows Vista sub-notebook instead of my usual ride, the MacBook Pro? You’re not helping your cause here. The only one you’re hurting is yourself.

Still, I will not be denied! Restart the thing, launch Word, wait a few days and start up that browser and

Firefox can’t find the server at en-us.start2.mozilla.com.

In closing, I’d like to thank my wife for following the wishes expressed in my will and posting this entry after my suicide.

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*Freedom to make random complaints about strangers’ grammar
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We apologize for any inconvenience caused by our bombing

A list of mistakes that were made by a certain someone in the epic journey of MCI-BWI on Friday, January 16th, 2009. This list is not meant to be exhaustive.

Mistake 1: Booking seats on the 10:20 a.m. one-stop flight to begin with. Breakfast, shower, drive to the airport, pretty soon you’re talking a 7.30 wakeup call. Being unemployed, sick, and having cancer, I’m not eager to see the wrong side of noon at the best of times. And mid-January with a high of eight degrees is not the best of times.

Thing is, as events unfolded I wound up getting two seats on a nonstop flight departing at six p.m. How did I miss that? I always take the nonstop flight. If I have a choice between an American Airlines one-stop for $129 and a nonstop flight on Bubba’s Graduated from Trucking for $800, I’m riding Bubba all the way. (Ed: thanks for the mental picture, Simmons.) The only explanation is that they hid the nonstop flight when I made arrangements for Hell Weekend. Yeah, that’s how they operate. You know them.

Mistake 2: Placing an order for a blizzard to arrive in the Kansas City area right at the time we were due to kick off the 50-mile drive to the airport. The timing meant that cleaning crews hadn’t had a chance to do their thing, slowing up the traffic just a tad. In retrospect, summoning the blizzard was an error in judgment on my part. If I had it to do over, I’d drop the blizzard. My bad.

Mistake 3: Spending a good hour or so on the highways driving thirty hours a mile before realizing that maybe we weren’t going to get to the airport before our flight left. A keener mind might have turned the car around thirty minutes earlier.

My wife has a keener mind.

Mistake 4: Driving by the cancer shop to drop off the 5-FU pump that I had disconnected myself a few hours prior without taking the time to go in and have the professionals flush the port-a-cath with saline and heparin. This decision meant that I would later have to drive back to the cancer shop just for the flush, eating up a precious half hour or so. Objection, relevance? See post below; overruled. In retrospect, this was an error in judgment on my part.

Mistake 5: Assuming my wife was asleep when I came back from an afternoon haircut. Hoping not to wake her, I goofed around online for half or maybe a full hour until she came into the living room and asked if I had thought about, you know, swinging by to make sure she hadn’t moved out. That seemingly innocent hour pushed our afternoon nap to a 3:45 starting time, making the Chocolate phone’s 4:00 p.m. alarm even more jarring, strange, and pathetic. Someone remind me again what happens when you assume?

Mistake 6: Getting in touch with my inner Dad. Just after we boarded the plane, my wife and I looked at each other with amazement as a woman wearing a pin in the shape of Missouri trudged by the aisle. Hey, that looks like — it’s Senator Claire McCaskill! She’s so cool! Why don’t I yell out in a voice so loud you could hear it in Pittsburgh, “Hey, you got my vote!” She turned back to look at me.

“That’s my sister.”

At that point, I began a quick search to see if I could fit in the overhead compartment or beneath the seat in front of me. I believe my better half was scanning the immediate area for a flotation strangulation device. In retrospect, screaming like a groupie at Senator McCaskill’s sister was an error in judgment in my part.

Mistake 7: Going to the wrong rental counter. While my wife waited in the baggage claim area of BWI, scanning the departure screens and looking for “Anywhere,” I boarded a shuttle bus that would drive me the 400 miles to the rental car building. The Thrifty agent weirdo couldn’t find my reservation, probably because I had made it with Dollar. “Well, no big deal,” I thought*. “How much longer could it take to make a new reservation?” Answer: Long enough for my wife to develop frostbite in enough fingers to [gag redacted as author still values his life].

In retrospect… well, I’m not going to say whose fault it was, but mistakes were made.

Did I mention that when we finally arrived at our hotel for the big “Ahhhh thank God that’s over” relief, we found that the air conditioning in our room had been left on, the thermostat reading a cool 55 degrees? You win, Murphy.

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*Whether I was capable of rational thinking at this point, or ever, is up for debate
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You just kind of wasted my precious time

So I rented a Manhattan apartment last year for a couple of reasons. One, I had plans to get treatment at the big fancy cancer expert hospital there. Two, I have a “thing” about owning money and I strive to unload as much of it as possible as quick as I can. And fifth, having been born in New Jersey, I’ve always wanted the complete “Living in Manhattan” experience to permanently bolster my street cred. “You say you need to get to 15th and 5th? I can tell you how to get there — on the subway.” Whoa! You’re like the coolest dude ever!!

Bad things happen, darkness descends, and “Living in Manhattan” becomes just another travel piece in a random Conde Nast rag. The lease ends on Hallowe’en and a new tenant moves in that night, equipped with a gag about the real estate market being so scary.

Class, what do think the chances are that I would see my security deposit returned unprompted, sometime during early November? You are correct, sir! What do you suppose the chances are that I would see it coming my way after 60 days? Would you say “Slim and none, and Slim just left town?” You would reveal yourself to be spending too much time around 60-year-old barbers, but you would be right again.

See, this is what’s wrong with the world today.* Nobody can just, you know, do what they’re fucking supposed to do on their own. They have to make you feel like a nudge, forcing you to call them and write them and throw bricks through their windows, asking “Please sir, I hate to bother you, but could I have that $8,000 that you were supposed to send me three months ago? Right, the one that you couldn’t send that one time I called because you were out of the country, and that other time I called because you were paralyzed from eating exotic fish while you were out of the country, and that last time I called because you had spent it on a cruise that takes you out of the country to eat exotic fish? Right, that $8,000. Could you pleeeeeeeeease send it to me pleeeeeeeease, pretty please with an AK-47 on top?”

I mean, on the one hand, how can you blame a landlord for wanting to squeeze a little extra cash out of a sunk cost? At today’s robust interest rates, clutching on to $8,000 long enough to put it into a three-month CD at Bank of America would earn you at least, what, twenty bucks? And maybe a priceless education on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to go with? (Is B of A the one going under this month or is that Citi? I never remember. I’m not as sharp as the guys who run these places.)

But on the other hand, can’t you just live up to your obligations without wasting your time and mine, when the time I have left is measured in months?

Guess not.
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*Just this one thing.
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The Last 48 Hours — NDE #7. Last in a series?

July, 2008, Kansas City. It started harmlessly enough. Around 10 in the evening or so I ate some diced pineapple. It felt a bit soft, a bit squishier than normal, but it tasted fine and I didn’t worry about it. A few hours later I started to vomit. My wife was so alarmed she called 911, which I found ridiculously unnecessary.

I don’t remember anything else that happened over the next two days.

When I regained something close to consciousness I was convinced it was Saturday, only to be told it was Sunday. I was sure at least that I needed to get up out of the hospital bed and take a leak, only to be told they’d put in a catheter. I tried to fathom why my father was in the room and why I had a vague idea that I had just seen two of my sisters passing through. Then it was back to bed.

According to first-hand reports, it was during a routine transfer to the MRI room when I surprised one and all by busting out a new dance move known as The Seizure. (New to me anyway.) They say I was then shipped back to the ICU, my home away from home that summer. Cribbing again from the official report: “He does have some speech, in fact he says complete sentences, but does not make sense*… Unfortunately, the prognosis appears poor.”

How poor? Put it this way, just about everyone in my immediate family came to visit. Except my brother — They told him he wouldn’t make it in time. Dr. Sunshine gave me 48 hours.

But as it happened, he ended up giving me quite a few more hours than that, seeing as how I somehow pulled through and lived to blog the tale. I spend the next week in a nursing home, where physical therapists marveled at my ability to stand and walk, a further testament to how far I’d gone. You would think after Dr. Sunshine saved my life and all I would at least have the decency to drop the sarcastic nickname. But then it’s not sarcasm any more, is it?

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*The reader is permitted to make a joke about how little sense my sentences typically make.
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