In like a lion, out like a punk-ass bitch

Faithful readers of GITGAW may have noticed the slowdown in activity around these parts. Hey I just follow the economy as far as that goes. It was while I was processing refund requests from subscribers irate over the low post total for March that I began wondering why I’d been so reticent the last few weeks. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living, so the more I gaze at my navel the more fulfilling mine must be. My life I mean, not my navel — that’s actually undergoing an existential crisis of its own, poring over the pages of Sartre’s seminal text Belly and Buttonness.

A thousand pardons. Anyway, I went through a bunch of excuses theories for my diminished output of late. Was I just uninspired? Evidently, but why? Was nothing interesting going on? As interesting as anything else that happens to a guy whose big night out is a trip to the all-night Walgreen’s. Were things just going so well I had nothing to complain about? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, stop, you’re killing me! That’s somebody else’s job and they still aren’t getting it right.

Only this evening did I figure out the real reason I haven’t written a day’s worth of new posts over the last fortnight. Brace yourself for one of my patented, penetrating observations into the human soul, i.e. me.

I was tired.

I must have been tired, considering the astounding performance I put in today. It started round midnight, when I fell asleep easily despite my recent anxieties about death and taxes. Marrying some Ativan and Ambien will do that for you, with the added bonus fun of periodic sleepwalking, or sleep-jumping-up-and-down-and-giving-the-wife-a-heart-attack as I did around three a.m. Still, got in a solid nine hours before my internal alarm clock (that’d be the anxiety we just mentioned) had me bolt upright at nine. “Sorry I’m late boss I’ll have that earnings report on Sprint ready in an hour!! Where did I leave — oh wait, I’m only dying. Phew!”

So after some lunch I headed off 30 miles east for my 30th guitar lesson with a 30-year-old man. He was teaching me how to fingerpick Eric Clapton (gross) which I probably would have picked up on more quickly if I hadn’t been busy resting my head on the acoustic. The snoring helped to drown out my fumbling on the six string, itself a distraction from my knocking over a couple of the dozen guitars he has in his basement. To make nice I bent down to pick them up and proceeded to flip over a stool and two music stands. He sent me off with a book of sheet music where he had written down the day’s lesson, namely, “Acoustic guitar is not a contact sport.”

At least I think that’s what he wrote — my memory of this six-hour-old event is foggy because I crashed my Jetta on the drive home on the sofa the minute I got back. An hour later I heroically fought the brainy blurriness by ordering a pizza from Minsky’s. Even more heroically, I ate it and then passed out again, making it three hours with Morpheus over the prior seven, or twelve over the course of a busy, exciting, blogworthy day.

Time for bed.

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April 15

So last week my favorite instructor from the University of Yellow Kiosk sent me a link to a story about AIG in the NYT — OMG! Turns out our favorite corporate scofflaw, not content with the $200 billionish it’s received from the U.S. of A., is actually suing the feds in an effort to lower its tax bill by $300 million. The article is crisp and direct and points out the many ironies here, notably that “A.I.G. is effectively suing its majority owner, the government,” and that the company is using taxpayer funds to pursue the case. Think about that when you’re filling out your 1040, right?

The moral outrage is so thick you could cut it with your high dudgeon. Normally I’d be right there with you, fighting the good fight — and any fight that has capitalist pigs on the receiving end almost has to be a good fight. But as time goes by and I see more and more stories like this one, I’m increasingly seduced by the suggestion floated by the Economist a while back as to what the U.S. tax rate on corporations should be.

0%. That’d be your zilch right there.

I swear I haven’t been kidnapped by Steve Forbes, nor have I been watching too much (i.e. any) Larry Kudlow. I still think the supply-siders were practicing voodoo economics, which you could maybe tell from the fact that Reagan never did put a dent in that federal debt, despite the rosy talk about gold coins trickling down from the skies. (That was actually nuclear fallout raining all over the U.S.S.R. when we — for God’s sake Rush quit touching yourself!) The Laffer curve doesn’t do it for me — I’d like to see the top personal income tax rate back up around 90%, where Eisenhower had it, the commie. Why did he hate America?

No, Grover Norquist and the gang are kidding around when they say that that everyone benefits from a tax cut on the wealthy; doesn’t do a thing for the economy other than widen the deficit and put upward pressure on interest rates. But on the corporate side, I can see how a lower tax rate might actually deliver a wider payoff. Suppose Apple’s tax bill for fiscal 2008 wasn’t $2 billion but zero; that’s $2 billion more Apple has to spend on R&D, right? More jobs for geeks, more iPods for the stores, more sales tax revenue for the states when more geeks buy more iPods? You feel me? It’s no different from pimping single-payer health insurance as a way to reduce the burden on businesses, shaving $1500 off the cost of that Chevy and giving GM a fighting chance to compete with Toyota. Or just throw $25 billion in the general direction of Detroit and hope for the best, whatever.

The other notion in that Economist article that got me rocking was that corporate taxes are so difficult to enforce, they’re almost not worth pursuing. If the war pigs at Halliburton are looking at a tax liability of $500 million, how much will they pay their lawyers and accountants to dodge it? Maybe $499 million? That just goes against the German in me, the one who’s always striving for a dirndl that fits efficiency. Instead of seeing the illegitimi move their headquarters to the Bahamas, just let them keep what they earn. I hope that’s not just my world-famous defeatism talking.

But Simons, how are we going to pay for this $370 billion giveaway, my imaginary liberal friend asks. I won’t pretend it will “pay for itself,” but I do think we’d see some benefits that its true cost would be, say, $200 billion. Then I get rid of the capital gains tax — I mean, get rid of the capital gains tax rate. Screw this 15% nonsense — if you made $500,000 selling your Lehman last year, you still owe us 39%.

The same as if you had actually earned it.

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I didn’t take this job to make friends, and believe me, I haven’t!

So my better half wanted to rent Twilight, and I didn’t want to watch it, but I figured, “Welllll, she did come to the hospital for me on forty separate days last summer, so I guess I could do this for her.” The film proved to be so entertaining that I was moved to say so on Facebook, whereupon I was openly mocked by my own cousin. Rather than fly out to Brooklyn to slap him around set him straight in person, I’m saving the brass knuckles frequent flier miles for later as I explain to y’all in tale-of-the-tape style

Why Twilight Was a Better Movie than The Dark Knight, aka The Steaming Pile

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT / STORYLINE:
Twilight presents us with Bella, a high school senior who splits from her mother and stepfather in Phoenix so she can move in with her father, whom she hasn’t seen in ages and who lives in a small town in Washington state. She meets Edward, who falls for her hard but can’t commit to her, seeing as how he’s a vampire and he’s liable to get overexcited and drink all her blood. (Same excuse my brother gives women to this day, come to think of it.) So the two men in Bella’s life want to care for and protect her, but they’re not quite sure how, and the general awkwardness between her, her parents, her new schoolmates, etc., makes you sympathize with the character and draws you into the film.

Steaming Pile gives us a guy who dresses up in black and talks funny (that’d be your hero there) and a guy who wears a jacket that clashes with his vest (that’d be your villain there). There’s a third guy who starts out good but then turns bad because half his face gets blown off and a woman dies. I think he should just be grateful he doesn’t bleed out through the open wound on his face but that’s just me.

ADVANTAGE: TWILIGHT

ACTION / SPECIAL EFFECTS
Twilight gives you some razzle-dazzle shots of the vampires scattering through the forests of the Pacific Northwest, scampering between treetops like six-foot-tall spider monkeys. (They can fly, these vampires can.) The highlight there was a memorable intramural vamp-versus-vamp baseball game which went a little something like this. There are some okay fight scenes where bodies get thrown about in the manner of Superman II, which is always nice. But probably the most impressive was a shot early on where a van spins out of control in the high school parking lot and is about to crush our Bella, but Edward swoops in out of nowhere and pushes the van away with one hand, leaving a gigantic dent in the side door. The shot gets maximum impact because it’s just the two actors and the near-fatal van, no CGI nonsense — it really looked like they both should’ve been killed. There’s that character development payoff again.

Steaming Pile gives you some combative car chases impressive in their waste of pyrotechnics, but it’s nothing that Doug Liman hasn’t done better twice in one decade with Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity. Steaming Pile also gives you some fight scenes between Goodguy and Badguy which would probably be real exciting if you could see what was going on at all and figure out whom to root for.

ADVANTAGE: TWILIGHT

CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Twilight was filmed in the Pacific Northwest; loaded up with blues and greens, every shot looks invitingly rainy and cool.

Steaming Pile was filmed in the second circle of Hell, the better to hide the plot holes.

ADVANTAGE: TWILIGHT

ACTING:
Twilight has a bunch of unknowns putting in credible performances.

Steaming Pile has a bunch of overpaid fatcats picking up a paycheck.

Oh, okay, okay, we all love the Heath Ledger, and it’s really a shame that he was a jackass who continued to abuse drugs even after he became a father and who probably deserved to die young and alone taken from us too soon. That being the case, I don’t think anyone can give a fair assessment of his portrayal of Purplesuitbadguy just yet. In a few years people will be able to see the performance for what it was — the best part of the movie, but that ain’t sayin’ much.

ADVANTAGE AND WINNER BY TKO: TWILIGHT!! TWILIGHT UBER ALLES!! TWILIGHT FTW!!

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Any Progress Since Then?

Folks, here’s the deal. I’m as sick of looking at that last post as you are and I have to get it pushed down quick. But I’ve been busy and not real inspired to write anything new. So, I scurried through the archives and came up with this, written about two years ago, presented to you in its original, unedited format. It actually might become sort of pertinent since I’m working on something that could look back to this; or it might not. If someone could get Desmond to wire a note to Sawyer and have them pass it on to me that’d be a help.

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It’s usually about 120 minutes after noon before I can finally manage facing the day. I dress myself — I’m a prodigy that way, something that potential employers seem to have overlooked. I choose from among three or four pair of Urban Outfitters trousers that always stay in heavy rotation, jauntily set off by a plain T-shirt in three-guesses-or-less-yes black. The last thing to go on are my Adbusters Blackspot (TM) Shoes.

Did you catch that? That’s right, my shoes are from Adbusters, the magazine / nonprofit whositz that’s been a thorn in America’s fascist big business war-mongering side for close to 20 years now, baby! These guys don’t just hate the Republicans, they hate Clinton and Gore even more! You think John Kerry is going to solve anything? You’re so naive. My shoes know better than that.

The shoes themselves? Here goes. Black over their entire surface with the exception of a silver-dollar-sized circle that’s entirely white: a parody of a corporate logo. They’re made from hemp, providing not just a grainy texture but also the impression that I’m down with the stoner lawbreakers who flout the laws that make marijuana against the law. Laws? Your laws mean nothing to me. Watch me jaywalk on out of here, you square.

Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up. The sole looks like it’s made from an old automobile tire… because it is! I’m walking around on a pair of Pirellis! My footprints leave people guessing: Man or Car? And you call crushing your Pepsi cans “recycling.” Pffft. You’re probably just getting around to installing those low-energy light bulbs, right? That doesn’t impress me. I don’t even use light bulbs. I live in the dark.

Oh right, the shoes. They’re about as tall as an iPod nano and just a little bit longer than a foot. Size Nine, if you please. The heel and toe are capped with additional recycled rubber while the rest of the shoe is made from that eco-friendly hemp I was talking about earlier. The two pieces of fabric that form the shoe are patched together roughly with the stitchwork exposed, giving it a raw, do-it-yourself, I’m-not-from-the-suburbs look.

But wait, there’s more! The tip of the right shoe has a red dot on it, reminding the wearer to “kick corporate ass.” Seriously! It says so right on the Adbusters.com site! A warning that I’m not just alternative and underground and politically cynical, I’m violent as well. Dangerous, even.

I hate to act like I’m attached to my possessions — that’s way too Ugly American. But I have to admit these shoes mean a lot to me. They remind me that I’m an outsider. I may be a friendless, jobless, hairless underachiever living on money from home, but at least I have interesting shoes.

They can’t take that away from me.
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The Bad Guys Won

So yeah, I must have been fourteen when I first became a Mets fan, if for no other reason — no, for the sole reason that they were favored by my older brother, whom I idolized at the time. In fact it was only a couple years after becoming a Mets fan that I wrote an essay outlining what an icon he was for me. The essay was part of the application process for the private high school I attended junior and senior year after I washed out of public school by cutting class for days at a time and skipping final exams in hopes that somebody would pay attention to how screwed up I was inside. Guess it worked.

Anyhow, in the intervening years I gradually became disenchanted with my brother, whom I came to view as an underminer. Our relationship was pretty complicated for a few years there but now it’s a lot simpler: We don’t speak to each other. HA HA HA HA, just fuckin’ with you bro. Kind of. But that’s not the point. The point is, I had become a Mets fan for life! and it’s all his fault!

So I followed the team and watched closely as they triumphed on Page Game Six and then took their potential dynasty and pissed it away into the expectant cups of the random drug-testing program. I was more or less paying attention up until 1991, when I got what scientists call a “girlfriend,” who in short order became a “fiance” and “incredibly unfortunate wife.” At that point I went, Hmmm, sex with a blonde, baseball. Sex with a blonde, baseball.* The title for this chapter is “Sorry Darling, You Lose.”

So I pretty much skipped the Mets in the 90s — good decade to miss it turned out. But then we head over to 2000, we got the Subway Series, this is my ‘team,’ I have to watch, right? The blonde still hadn’t come to her senses at that point (still hasn’t actually) and she’s still the one that [REDACTED -- We get the picture, whether we want to or not -- Ed.] but it’s the Mets and it’s the World Series and how can you not want to see baserunning errors by the immortal Timo Perez? How can you pass that up? That’d be like passing on the future of Scott Kazmir for ten innings out of the wrong Zambrano! Who does that?

The Mets again went from penthouse to shithouse with shocking speed and, loyal fan that I am, I dropped them to spend more time cooking up paranoid fantasies about the Bush Administration. Then in 2005 right before I was diagnosed with cancer I got hooked into following the team again based on an offhand comment in an e-mail from, wait for it, my brother! This guy pops up everywhere! Because of him I went online combing through the partisan blogs in search for intel and perspective about a trade that didn’t look so good for the good, sorry bad guys.**

I have to thank him for that at least, because that’s what led me to join and eventually write a daily column for Metsgeek.com, where I have been lucky enough to make some of the best friends of my life. And yes, they do exist in real life and I’ve seen them, unlike the plenty of my own friends that are all above me. Deez guyz (and galz) have been an incredible source of support as I grapple with dying too soon. Last week they went so far as to send me a carepackage that moved me to tears as I tried to reconcile their kindness with my lifelong belief that I am fundamentally unlikeable. In addition to the weeping the silliness of the gifts eventually lead to some giggling and laughter.

Best medicine.

* For those of you listening at home you may want to pantomime with your hands as you figuratively “weigh” your options
** Mets sent Kris Benson to Baltimore for John Maine and Jorge Julio, who turned into Orlando Hernandez. Score one for Omar.
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What a Waste it Is to Lose One’s Mind — NDE #6.5

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t get this picture out of my mind, the one of the lousy tennis player with the gigantic tits.

You know who I mean – the one that never really could play tennis, but she was so hot* that she went on to star in music videos made by the Church of July Jr. ? That one. I came across a photo of her online on June 27, 2008. And no, for your information, it wasn’t a “porno” site, I haven’t looked at those in months in years ever. It was a site where Met fans can follow a game as it’s going on and post insightful comments like “Delagdo! El esta en fuego!!” or “Nice job Castillo, almost got it out of the infield this time.” In some ways that might be considered more embarrassing than checking out a porn site, but you know I’m not here just to look good.

Anyhow one of the jokers on this one site had that personality disorder where you always need to be the center of attention, what do they call that again? bein’ a dick? The dick’s dick would feel feisty sometimes and during the course of the game he’d post a hot** picture or twelve and on this night it was of the aforementioned tennis lady who’s better known for her set than her game and match. Picture went up, I saw it, woo woo, all right now let’s go back to the game and see if the Mets have learned how to get a runner in from third base with one out.

Problem was, after about a half hour I noticed that I kept seeing that picture of Big Blonde everywhere I looked. I was trying to follow the game but her carcass kept popping up, getting in between me and the diamond. I’d look away from the computer screen and she’d disappear (or maybe not, it’s hard to remember) but when I came back so would she. It was like Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, except that while the gremlin on the plane had the decency to keep still, Ol’ Busty McBreakPoint had started to bounce around all over my field of vision like Mario dodging barrels in Donkey Kong.

I quit watching the game — I couldn’t see it anyway — and tried to solve the problem by going to bed. That worked out great until I began having a dream that I was in my own kitchen crawling on the floor in search of Vicodin. I couldn’t even see the kitchen properly because there was a throbbing black dot taking up half my field of vision. I’ve heard that some concussion victims have headaches that feel like there’s a heartbeat on the brain. That’s exactly what it felt like as the most brutal head pain in my life woke me up and sent me to the kitchen for 1 no 2 no 3 no 4 Vicodin. I’m living the dream!

I hoped without reason that things would be all better the next day. Nope. I was still getting some image persistence, but now I was having problems integrating images as well. I’d see you right in front of me, but when the two halves of the brain had a conference to integrate Right Eye and Left Eye, they reconciled the info about as well as Arthur Andersen. You’d only have 3/4 of a face by the time I was through with you. Might have been cool if I was a Picasso fan or peaking on acid, but I wasn’t. That goes double for what happened at the dry cleaner that afternoon, where the cashier I’ve seen over a hundred times had the face of a gargoyle and wouldn’t stay in one place long enough for me to hand her my $Twenty.

It doesn’t sound like this guy should be driving, does it? My wife came to the same conclusion riding shotgun while I weaved around whichever traffic lane looked like it was in the middle. I seem to recall her hair turning white as she screamed that I needed to “slow down” or maybe even “stop” — I was too busy bouncing my ball of confusion to notice that we were about to hit the car in front of us at a cool 40mph.

I never would’ve seen it coming.

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*She’s not hot, she just has ridiculously large gazongas that will probably require back surgery when she hits her 40s
**Hot should be read as “hot” throughout but I haven’t budgeted for enough quotation marks in this piece

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TESTY? WHO’S TESTY??

Oh man, oh man, people I am freaking out over here! I’m freakin’ out! I mean I am just about to hit the CEILING folks, it feels like any second there is a going to be an eruption so violent that I’m going to explode into Dr. Manhattan only to have that Alien burst through my electric blue six pack. Anger! Anger! Kenneth Anger! Rage against the Kenneth Anger! Smash dishes, gnash molars, bash brothers, Crash Davis! Pick up the first thing handy and hurl it at the television screen! Remember you don’t own a television! Worry about visual disturbances caused by brain tumors! Panic about mental confusion! Forget what chemo fog does to your whachamacalit! Fall off the stool and land on your guitar and hope the wife didn’t hear that noise! Fall on your way to the bathroom and sprain your leg and get a blood clot! Captain we are sitting ducks here! FALL BACK, FALL BACK!!

Jeez, what’s he so worked up about?

Well, there’s that whole dying of cancer thing, that’s listed in this one book as a possible source of stress. Possibly. And I am going under the knife, the CyberKnife, in about five hours, so that’s been kind of on my mind, seeing as how if that doesn’t do the trick it’s only a hop skip and a jump to doggie heaven. I admit it, I’m a little distracted here.

And I have to admit a lot of this PMS daylong panic attack is my own fault, what with my drinking 20 ounces of French Press every morning brewed with, I don’t know, four tablespoons of beans. (Followed on by the daily venti latte and the continuous IV drip of iced tea.) Makes a guy a little short SHORT jumpy JUMPY WHO SAID THAT!!

And here again, I can only blame God myself for having such poor motor skills and coordination and balance that I instantly fumble just about anything I grasp, as if my fingers were coated in olive oil. I mean, when you drop the soap three times in one shower, that’s just an invitation your own fault. Why I ordered the tumors specifically to grow on the cerebellum I’ll never know. I must not have been thinking clearly. Chemo brain: Also my fault.

So yeah, your man here would be ready to snap in two by his ownself, without any help from the demons. I don’t need the demons right now, you know? This would be a great week for them to take a holiday and go pester someone who really deserves it, someone like Mugabe or Madoff or Alex Rodriguez. Cut me some slack for once demons, cut me some slack.

But no. They’re working overtime the last few days.

I don’t mean, like, personal demons, like regretting everything I have ever done in my life since I was nine and not being able to tell anyone about how I killed some guy once but he totally deserved it. I’m talking about, you know, the Car Key Gnomes from the Far Side. The imps who make the laptop crash right before I have a chance to save what I’m working on. The leprechauns who snatch away the one file that I know has always been there, right there in that same folder for seven years, right until the time I actually need it for this year’s 1040. And the pixies who move my cell phone from the coat pocket where it always is to the one where it never is, keeping me fumbling for it long enough that I miss the call from my doctor, which to be fair is just as well because I would probably have dropped the phone anyway and there’s never a rush to get bad news.

Still, demons, fuck off and give it a rest. I can lose my mind on my own.

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