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Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em Archives

June 6, 2010

Collaborative Effort

Here’s the problem: I’m an impatient, impulsive person. Stories come to me in two different ways: in a slow trickle, or a Niagara Falls-like gush. The slow trickle, for me, isn’t even that slow — a number of disparate ideas will enter my brain over the course of a few months, and I’ll realize these pieces form a single, cohesive story. That’s usually how stories and characters come to me, which is handy because I’ll usually be working on something else, so I’ll be jotting down notes for the next project. Maybe that’s just a short attention span working for me instead of against me.

By necessity, I’ll let that story germinate until it’s ready to be written. I hate writing things like that. Hell, I hate writing anything about my creative process because (a) everyone’s process slightly different, so there’s no real advice or insight there, and (b) every time I write something about “letting a story germinate,” I feel like such a pretentious asshole. At any rate, it’s easy to let the slow trickle story rest, because plowing headlong into a story that’s not fully formed is a recipe for disaster. The gusher is totally different — for me, it’s like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. When an idea comes to me that complete, I have to capitalize on it as quickly as possible before my aforementioned short attention span causes me to lose interest and start working on something else.

I guess you could call this “inspiration.” The story drops in my lap, and I crank out a draft in a week or two (as opposed to the story taking a few months to figure out, then taking another month on a first draft), and believe it or not, these first drafts usually turn out as good as a third or fourth draft of the “slow trickle” stories.

Why does any of this matter, and what does it have to do with my impatience? Let’s set the wayback machine for February. Amelia, one of my pals at Murdstone & Grinby, made a dubious claim: “I’m going to write a romantic comedy.” This claim has a number of problems associated with it: (1) although his favorite movie of 2009 was Easy Virtue (I wish I was kidding, especially now that I’ve seen Easy Virtue), Murdstone has never produced anything even close to a romantic comedy; (2) although she’s sorta funny, Amelia has never written a comedy; (3) maybe I shouldn’t say this, even keeping her real identity a secret, but it’s relevant: Amelia has never been in anything resembling a relationship; and (4) as a result of this lack of experience, Amelia has decided to take the robotic, logical approach to love: it’s the result of a combination of chemicals that fade over time, so why bother giving in to it? I’m not kidding — when Assistant Jim announced he was getting married, she scoffed, “The average relationship only lasts four years. Know why? Because love is just a bunch of chemicals that get people to have sex, and those chemicals wear off after four years.” Which is an awesome theory if not for the fact that an “average” includes relationships that last 80 years and relationships that last three months (I’m going to go ahead and assume it doesn’t include three-day weekend sex romps, which aren’t really relationships — there has to be some mild level of commitment before it fails).

After her proclamation, I said, “That’ll be an interesting change of pace.”

“Stan,” she said, “you’ve written romantic comedies. Would you mind if I ran some ideas by you? I have a few rom-com —” God, do I hate that term — “ideas, so I need some help narrowing them down.”

“Sure,” I said, always willing to help out a writer in need.

She pitched me six ideas. Four of the six were rooted in goofy fantasy — and I’m not talking about “this relationship is far-fetched,” I’m talking about gypsy curses as the inciting incident — which I automatically dismissed because, I dunno, that’s as interesting to me as a judge sentencing a couple to stay married for 30 days. The circumstances that force the relationship to exist are needlessly convoluted and impossible to believe. Maybe that’s a nugget of advice: if you can’t think of a non-supernatural explanation for your couple to be together, maybe you shouldn’t be writing a romantic comedy. As a contrary example, The Purple Rose of Cairo, probably my favorite romantic comedy of all time, hinges on a fantastical turn of the plot. The difference there is that Woody Allen has fun with the fantasy element. Most of these romantic comedies use fantasy to start off their story, but then it doesn’t mean anything to the story itself. With the exception of the inciting incident (and usually some lame machinations in the third act, because the writers finally remember that supernatural element from the beginning), the story is played straight. As opposed to, say, a fictional character taking a real-life woman to a fancy restaurant, then trying to pay with a wad of stage money, then trying to flee in a car that he can’t start because “in the movie, it’s always going.” God, I love that movie.

So the two non-fantastical ideas were okay, I thought. One would have followed a character who uses romance novels to woo women, but when he meets a “tough nut to crack,” he’s forced to befriend a famous romance novelist, whose new book features a similar tough nut. (Originally, I hated this idea, but it occurred to me there’s a lot of comedic potential to the idea of showing a woman’s realistic, terrified reaction when presented with a “romance novel” situation in real life.) The one I told her to go with was, I felt, the one she felt the most passionate about, just based on the way she described it. It’s basically a remake of It Happened One Night featuring a Rolling Stone reporter and an American Idol winner. Through convoluted circumstances, they have to get across the country so he can launch his tour. They hate each other, but they fall in love. It’s not art, but it takes a classic storyline and a simple conflict that allows for characters and a relationship to develop. To quote something I read a few days ago on an old Christopher Lockhart post, “Simple done well is better than complex done poorly.”

Things went awry almost immediately. See, Amelia thought maybe we should base the American Idol character on a modernized take on John Lennon. When she tried to hash out the story with me, it suffered from an extreme lack of conflict, because she refused to portray “John” as having any flaws. I have a lot of theories on how romantic comedies should work, and maybe I’m full of shit, but one of the most important ones is that both characters need to have big flaws that the eventual partner can complement. If he’s portrayed as St. John, the journalist looks like a bitch for hating him. I thought maybe some comedy could be mined from an irrational hatred of a comically nice guy, but that’s really hard to pull off when she’s supposed to be the protagonist.

So she hit on another idea: what if it’s about a journalist and a Ringo-inspired character? Amelia thinks Ringo’s a tool, a hanger-on who just follows his bandmate around without contributing anything to his success. Maybe, she thought, in the context of this script, the journalist could get stuck with the dorky “Ringo” character and not “John” himself.

And that’s when the story dropped in my lap. Yes, she came up with the premise, but the moment she said that, everything clicked into place. It’s like when you get lost, then you finally turn down a street you recognize, and you’re not lost anymore. I knew the exact route to take, but… It wasn’t my story. When she, after discussing the story with me for a couple of days, begged me to punch up the dialogue when she finished the draft, I readily agreed. I wanted to collaborate on this story, because I knew how to make it good. Plus, if she let me develop the story with her, I could push her in the right directions. That’s the thing about punching up dialogue: if the story’s not situationally funny, no amount of amusing dialogue can fix that. She’s not a comedy writer, so she doesn’t know how to structure scenes (or even overall stories) in a comedic way.

I know this makes me sound like an arrogant dick. I don’t think I’m the funniest guy alive, but I’ve been writing comedy almost exclusively for over a decade, and I’m not just writing in a vacuum. Not everything works, but in general, I know how to get laughs, and I know how to structure a story in a way that maximizes comedy. People who haven’t developed these skills just can’t pull it off. I know: I’ve read a lot of comedies by people who gleefully announce they’ve never written one before, and it’s always a disaster, even if they’re funny people who enjoy comedy films. It’d be the equivalent of me deciding I can win the Indy 500 because I’m a good driver. I can drive, but I have no specific training in racing. You can’t win on cursory knowledge and enthusiasm, no matter how good your instincts are. This might sound contrary to my usual “all you need to do to write a good script is to watch a lot of great movies and read a couple of good books on the screenwriting craft” advice. I guess it’s a corollary: you can write a good script based mostly on instinct (but let’s not forget the value of reading a couple of screenwriting books), maybe even a great one, but it takes a lot more skill and experience to master a particular genre. And I say that as someone who hasn’t even come close to mastering a genre.

Hey, earlier I had some kind of point. Ah, yes. I was pushing Amelia in a certain direction because she doesn’t know how to structure comedic scenes or a comedic story, so I wanted to minimize the frustration (for both of us) by having to just rewrite everything the way I wanted it. I was trying to play it subtly, nudging her so she felt like she came up with the ideas on her own and I was just there for moral support. Maybe that’s a dick move, but it felt nicer than just saying, “You need to do this, this, and this, and if you don’t, this script will fail.”

After really getting thorough on the story over the course of a weekend, on Sunday afternoon, she gleefully announced she was off to write. A few hours later, she e-mailed me the first seven pages.

Every single page was backstory. I’m not kidding. Yes, we hashed out the backstory of the characters, but it never occurred to me that she’d open the story six months before it actually begins to set everything up. I read them and said, “Okay, I’m not 100% sure we’re on the same page here, so what I’m going to do is write up an outline of everything we talked about, so we both know exactly what story we’re trying to tell. You go through it and argue with me and make changes or add anything you think I missed.” She said, “Okay.”

It took the rest of the evening, but I had a solid nine-page outline. It explained, in detail, why these scenes needed to be structured in this way, how they develop the story and characters, etc. It reminded me a little of John Hughes’s scriptment for Home Alone, where he spelled everything out in blunt terms to accommodate his eight-year-old star. It felt really condescending, but it seemed clear to me that Amelia was going along with the story I was shepherding without exactly understanding why these choices were being made, and all she wanted to do is write a script about John Lennon, full of heart-shaped doodles and variations of “Amelia Lennon” written in the margins. In my conception of the story, “John” is a MacGuffin who drives certain aspects of the plot but really doesn’t figure much as a character.

She took a look at the outline, said, “Wow, this is great,” then set off to work on more pages. We agreed that she’d write the first draft, and I’d polish it into a funny script. On Monday, she told me she’d have the first act done and e-mail it first thing Tuesday morning. I was pleased, because typically Amelia is an extremely slow writer. I thought maybe the fact that she had a solid outline to work with gave her the confidence to work more quickly than usual. Maybe I should have taken it as a sign when she complained that she “can’t write banter” and that she left several of the opening scenes “blank” for me to fill in with banter.* When the pages finally arrived at around 2 p.m. on Tuesday (maybe that’s “first thing in the morning” in her world?), there were…four of them. I may not be an expert on screenwriting, but I do know that first acts are usually longer than four pages.

This was not because she left everything blank for me to write. It’s because she just wrote two or three early scenes, and that was it. A couple of weeks passed where she just stopped working altogether. She talked a little about it after sending me those four pages, but before long she stopped even doing that. Had the project died before a first draft was finished? I didn’t want to be the sort of dick who browbeats people — I figured, if she wasn’t going to write it, I might as well write it myself rather than force her to do everything exactly the way I wanted anyway.

She had a self-imposed deadline looming: Murdstone takes a pile of scripts with him on plane trips. This is the only time he actually reads scripts himself, but he doesn’t take many plane trips. Cannes was approaching, and Amelia wanted a decent completed draft so she could toss it on his pile. This meant we had to have it done before work ramped up in anticipation of Cannes. She only works on a temporary basis, during “busy” times, so she wanted it done by the time she went back. That didn’t happen, but she didn’t seem particularly concerned, even though she announced to Murdstone the day she came back, “Stan and I are working on a romantic comedy.” To my surprise (and hers, as well), this actually excited Murdstone. He’d read Amelia’s previous script and said something fairly generic like, “The writing is strong, but it’s not my cup of tea.” Apparently he meant that, because the idea of her writing in a more commercial genre thrilled him. He was very excited to read it, and assured her he’d read it on the plane.

This meant we had a new deadline: get it done by the time he leaves. Yet, she wasn’t writing.

“Fuck it,” I said. “I’m already getting distracted with new ideas. I need to get this down on paper. I won’t even tell her about it — I don’t want to steal her thunder. I’ll wait for her to finish her draft, see how well it matches up with mine, make a few changes, and give mine to her as the ‘polished’ draft.” And I started writing. And had a finished draft four days later. Not fantastic, mind you, but a solid start, and certainly better than the combined total of 11 pages Amelia had sent me. Amelia’s actually lucky the volcano fucked everything up temporarily — I did not have nearly as many scripts to read as I usually do this time of year, which sucked for me financially but was great in the sense that I had free time to work on the script.

The week before the deadline, Amelia finally admitted she hadn’t been working on the script because she was depressed. She didn’t tell me what it was about, but I could take a guess (realizing it’s harder to write a romantic comedy without experiencing romance than it is to write a serial killer thriller without having killed a bunch of people, perhaps?). So I took a gamble: presenting my finished draft would either upset her further, or it’d allow her to breathe a huge sigh of relief — again, not a perfect script, but at least there’s something there to work with. I told her about it, and I’m convinced she lied about her reaction. She said it overwhelmed her and surprised her, but she was relieved. She did sound overwhelmed, but she didn’t sound relieved. She sounded a little pissed that I’d stolen her thunder, which was exactly my fear.

You might be wondering why I did this — why I wrote the draft, why I presented it to her, etc. Much as I’d love to keep rambling about “lightning in a bottle,” I had an ulterior motive. If nothing was riding on this script, I would have just written my draft to get it out of my system and then put it aside. We had a tenuous deadline that could either mean nothing or everything: Murdstone would read it, love it, and want to buy it, or he’d read it, love it, and work his ass off to help us get an agent, and suddenly we’d be stuck as writing partners working on romantic comedies. I could think of worse fates, but I’m guessing Amelia couldn’t. Nevertheless, this is what she wanted: a commercial script that would impress Murdstone enough to stick his neck out for us. I can’t wait for life to happen. I need to make shit happen, and this was an opportunity. If Amelia was going to spend five years writing this script, like she spent five years writing her last script, I was not interested in hitching my wagon to that horse. I’d rather her be a little pissed but realize how much I saved her ass than just not do anything and hope she pulled a script out of her ass before the deadline.

Amelia read the script, said she had to excuse herself from the office several times because it made her laugh so hard, and although she had “a few” notes, she thought it was a solid draft and would spend the rest of the week “editing,” at which point we’d argue it all out and come up with a compromise-based draft to submit to Murdstone. Then, Murdstone announced — surprisingly apologetically — that, because of the volcano, work was mounting, and he’d have to finish it on the plane instead of his usual routine of reading scripts. I did not witness this, but Amelia described him as sounding genuinely upset, which is really surprising if you know him (P.S.: he’s a dick). She runs the office while everyone else is off in France, so he told her to leave a copy on his desk the Friday before he comes back, and he’ll read it. The following day, he told her to schedule a meeting for one week after his return, so we can have a meeting about the script.

“What the hell is going on?” I thought, shocked at how seriously he was taking Amelia. I read her script: it’s good, but it’s not that good.

Because of the delay in the deadline, Amelia naturally delayed her “editing.” I was sort of dreading it. I don’t mind getting notes and then taking them back and incorporating the ones I like but throwing away the ones I don’t. This was different — I’d be expected to incorporate all of her ideas, and although I hadn’t heard any of them, she did tell me one frightening thing: she wanted to trim out the dialogue to keep it under 100 pages. The draft was a solid (maybe a little bloated) 118 pages, but here’s the thing: it’s a screwball comedy. I know that film is a visual medium — and don’t worry, I put in a lot of broad physical schtick and visual puns — but screwball comedies live and die on their dialogue. In a screwball comedy, the characters’ personalities are defined as much through what they say (and how they say it) as what they do. I knew there was material to trim and revise — I’d already been regretting a couple of choices I’d made, and simply cutting them would have freed up at least five pages — but I really couldn’t see us getting it down to 100 pages without turning the characters into what I rather harshly described as “exposition-dispensing robots rather than human beings having conversations.” Half the character and comedy was rooted in the dialogue, so chopping things or rewriting them to rob them of all personality or rhythm would pretty much ruin the script.

And that’s when Amelia launched into the “general” notes. This was just last week. Because there was so much, she decided to separate the “general” notes from the nitpicky notes. About 90% of the general notes were “Add, add, add.” The other 10% were “change.” What the hell was she planning on cutting, if she wanted to take a 118-page script and add at least 10 pages to it?

As a last-ditch effort, I spent Thursday revising the script based on those notes. To be fair, I did like many of her suggestions — but some I hated, and hated them even more when her only defense for them was, “All romantic comedies have [insert irritatingly cliché-based scene].” So I took our conversation on Instant Messenger, streamlined the notes, and ordered them based on priority — stuff that was essential to the script, down to stuff that I both hated and deemed unnecessary. I also trimmed out as much unnecessary dialogue as I could find, and attempted a variation on cheating the margin by rewriting certain lines of dialogue and action to keep them from carrying over to the next line. The end result was a stronger 113-page script. I also wrote a long e-mail defending my decisions to not incorporate some of the ideas. She accused me of being angry about things collapsing with Dentist Chick (short version: she had a boyfriend, but was still more than willing to go out with me — I’ve been down that road many times, so it’s time to break that fucking pattern) rather than simply not liking the goddamn ideas. Man, is that annoying.

I also included a passionate defense of the dialogue, but it didn’t move her. On Friday, after I stalled her for days with (legitimate but solvable) cell phone problems, I’d been backed into a corner. I already regret that decision. If we’d done it earlier, we wouldn’t have come up on the deadline, but look: she has this obsession with doing notes over the phone, which makes zero sense to me in an age of e-mail and IM. We’re writing shit down, so I see no purpose in describing over the phone what needs to be changed or cut, when it could just be written into an IM window and pasted into the script. I’ve tried to convince her of this in the past, but she insists on doing things over the phone. So, because I kept putting it off, we ended up staying up until 4 a.m. working on the changes.

I don’t want to say she tricked me, but initially her dialogue cuts didn’t seem too bad. Better than that, she’d come up with a few additional ideas that I really thought were great. It put me in a better mood, and I was happy to keep working — so happy, I didn’t realize she was slowly stripping the edginess and satire out of the script.

See, I have this thing… Why bother writing a fucking story if you’re not going to say anything more interesting than, “Aww, these two people fell in love”? I thought American Idol was the perfect metaphor to make a rather harsh (and, let’s be honest, fairly unoriginal) statement about pop music. Maybe I’m a dick, but I don’t care if she wanted it to be about American Idol discovering a latter-day John Lennon — I see that show as a shortcut. Ambitious, hard-working musicians don’t need a karaoke contest to find success. (And if you’re thinking it’s hypocritical to go for screenwriting contests while saying American Idol is a waste of space — in the first place, I’m not a big fan of contests, but even if I were, you have to contribute something resembling a personal artistic statement to screenwriting contests. Even if you’re just writing some hackneyed shit to make money, a part of you believes in the story, even if all you believe is “it’s commercial.” What do American Idol contestants contribute, creatively? Other than a hard-luck story that’s largely made up by the producers, they just do bland renditions of other people’s songs, “owning” it by adding a bunch of shitty Mariah Carey vocal runs. Is it any surprise that they’re beloved when doing karaoke but fall flat on their asses when singing awful songs written by even worse record producers?) Wow, I hope you enjoyed that mini-rant, because I just lost my train of thought. Yeah, so the script ultimately turns into an indictment of big media conglomerates owning both news and entertainment outlets. The line blurs, so the main character (who is shown as passionate about music and disdainful of the American Idol/pop music assembly line) thinks she’s going to submit this tough exposé about what a sham it all is, when she learns her magazine is owned by the same media conglomerate that owns our American Idol surrogate. She has a choice: resign, or keep going with an article that humiliates the man she’s fallen in love with. Guess which one she chooses?

More than anything else, her character arc hinges on that scene. To some extent, so does the plot. It’s the moment where this hard-nosed career woman realizes everything she’s been working for is a lie, and the choice she makes shows how far she’s come. Her job no longer matters to her — he matters. Yes, it’s trite. Yes, it’s pat. But to quote Amelia, “All romantic comedies are trite and pat.” At least there’s some grim corporate satire, which I have decided is commercially viable in our current state of economic disarray.

“We don’t need that scene,” Amelia said. “It’s long and it doesn’t really accomplish that much. Besides, she goes and meets the love interest and explains every single thing that happens in the scene.”

My take: “I’d rather go back and work on making her dialogue with the love interest less redundant.” There’s a little rule of screenwriting called “show, don’t tell.” What she wanted to do was write a brief scene leading up to the main event, then cut to her explaining what happened to the love interest. No main event. I get the idea, and I’ve seen that sort of thing in movies, but all it says to me is “tell, tell, tell.” She’s explaining what she’s going to do, then she’s explaining what she did. Isn’t it more interesting and dramatic to see her doing it? It’s a long scene because it’s basically the moment the narrative and character arcs collide. She’s tested with a decision that will show the audience whether or not this experience, or her feelings, has changed her in any way, and — yes! It did! Huzzah, she can be taught! So why excise it?

I sat there, in dead silence, for about 10 minutes, contemplating, rereading that scene, reconsidering everything we’d changed and everything we had yet to change, realizing it was 3 a.m. and my fight was gone. All her dialogue edits had dulled the edges. The satirical content had turned into a basic Scooby Doo-esque “overhear shady producers laughing as the plot the demise of their latest Idol. The Big Scene no longer fit, and we didn’t have the time to work on it until it did fit. Besides that, I liked too many of the other changes to say, “Let’s go back and reinsert all the hostile, satirical humor to justify this scene.” So, ultimately, Amelia was right, but she was the architect of her own righteousness. I felt duped, but it’s my own fault. I could have argued more about keeping the dialogue. Part of the problem is with me: I just wanted to get it over with. Part of the problem is with her: I sort of hate to admit it, but she’s a captivating speaker who’s incredibly self-assured despite not really knowing what she’s talking about. The sort of person who can lead 10,000 men into battle without having a plan, so they end up resembling an electric football set. (Yes, I’m that old, or maybe just that poor. Also, I have The Simpsons to remind me of my horrible childhood toys.)

I did go on record as saying I hated this change, and the first thing we’d need to address in the rewrite is making it a dramatic confrontation instead of a series of bland “tell, don’t show” scenes. But we we were gaining daylight (by the time I went to bed, I was annoyed because the rising sun was creeping through the sides of my window shade), so we didn’t have the time to argue about it or rewrite it as something retarded. It was bad writing, but for the moment, it was easier just to cut it.

I still hate the change, but I have to admit, the script turned out better than I expected. It’s not what I’d call good. If they started shooting the script we submitted tomorrow, I’d toss around phrases like “mildly amusing” and “relentlessly mediocre” while hoping the actors’ chemistry redeems what doesn’t work on the page. Again, I fall back on my general philosophy that a script should be required to say something about the human condition or the state of society. If you don’t think a romantic comedy can sustain such high ideals, let me point you back to The Purple Rose of Cairo, or Defending Your Life or The Hammer**. I got depressed over the weekend and watched a bunch of movies I love. Those were three of them, and in all cases, I just kept thinking, “This is what our script needs to be.” But the more depressing thought is: That’s what it was, until that Friday night note session. (Not that I’m comparing the quality — just the fact that it conforms to the romantic comedy genre while attempting to say something insightful about the state of things.)

As I view it, our collaboration is over. I don’t hold out much hope that Murdstone will like the script. Maybe this is crazy — after all, he did love Easy Virtue — but I’d like to think he has slightly higher standards. He won’t buy the script, he won’t help us in any way, so to that end, what’s the point of continuing to work on the script? At the end of the day, Amelia and I wanted to tell two completely different stories. It frustrates me because, I realized, she never read that nine-page outline I sent her six weeks ago. It’s not just that she had problems with what’s on the page — it’s that she didn’t seem to know why it was on the page, which is all explained in the outline.

Look, I’d love nothing more than to fall on my sword and say, “Yes, I wrote a script in four days, and it sucked. It didn’t make any sense, so it needed all the changes Amelia suggested and I was crazy to think my version could work.” However, I sent it to two readers who have never led me astray, and they had some good notes but deemed it pretty solid. So I get confused and annoyed when the end result is a worse product. I understand that this is a business that’s interested in making money. I just don’t understand why peddling a shitty product is the only way to make money. And when Murdstone says, “Nobody will want to see this crappy script” while suggesting a number of changes that previously existed in the script, maybe I’ll be proved right. Or maybe not, if his chief complaint is that it’s still too cynical.

Update: I wrote this post over two weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure about posting it. As of Thursday, the verdict is in: Amelia texted me that Murdstone read the script. However, while she’s convinced herself that both he and Assistant Jim loved it, everything she told me is contradictory: he found it “impressive” and “very well put together,” but he won’t reach out to any agents he knows to help us get it read. He considers the storyline — which, I’ll remind you, combines the frequently abused It Happened One Night storyline and a satire-free homage to American Idol, the most popular television show in the fucking world — “of limited appeal and not terribly commercial,” but in the same breath he says the script is “ready to be shopped around.”

There are ways to interpret the seeming contradictions in a positive way. For instance, maybe what he meant about it not being commercial yet ready to be shopped around is that it’d be good as a writing sample, but it’ll never get made). The positive takes are optimistic at best. I know everyone in Hollywood is a pussy and afraid to admit anything is good (yet, ironically, they’re all pretty okay with turning horrible scripts into worse movies), but people don’t say, “Wow! Impressive! Anyone would want to snatch this up… Except me and everyone I’m on good terms with, so you’re on your own.” I really think he was just trying to politely (and, let’s face it, generically) compliment the script while shoving a little bit of realism down Amelia’s throat. Message received on my end, but as I said, she’s convinced he loved it.

After I groused with a lot of (justified, I think) pessimism, she IM’ed me today saying, “Just re-read our script. I’m pretty damn proud of it.” More pessimism: I tried to re-read the script earlier this week and got so angry at the first three pages that I had to stop. Yes, I agreed to the cuts she wanted. It’s my fault for trying to compromise. I know this. But the fact remains: even the cuts I deemed “not so bad” really kill the flow. I want the characters — even the minor ones, who only appear very briefly in the script — to breathe a little and feel as much like real people as a character who’s only in four scenes can. Is that so wrong? And all of that is gone. It’s exactly what I said I didn’t want to happen: they’ve turned into exposition-spewing robots instead of humans having conversations. Worse than that, Amelia added a joke that is sort of funny — but at the expense of our protagonist’s intelligence. It’s exactly what I frequently rail against when I examine comedy scripts: no internal logic.

I know it’s my fault for giving up and not arguing with the appropriate level of passion and gusto. I can’t say I’m proud of the script we submitted. I wish I could.

*Maybe I’m alone, but I’ve never been able to write a script this way. I think — but I can’t really remember, so I can’t dig up any evidence to back myself up — some people say it’s okay to skip past a difficult-to-write scene and continue with the story. Maybe it’s okay for one scene, but look at it this way: if the scene isn’t easy to write, that probably means it’s important. If it’s important, doesn’t it seem like a bad idea to gloss over something that sets up the scenes you’re skipping to? I don’t know about you, but when I write an outline — even this solid, nine-page outline — I end up deviating from it.

I know I’ll sound like Captain Pretentious here, but when my characters actually start interacting at a human level (rather than the general overview of an outline), things change. My conception of them and their interactions change, and that, in turn, changes the story. Maybe in small, subtle ways — or maybe I have to stop and completely change the outline. If you skip over a scene and come back to it later, you’re stuck. You can’t let the characters surprise you in the scene, because it’s gone from a pivotal scene to something to bridge the gap between Scenes A-D and Scenes F-L. If you follow the natural pull of the characters, you’ll just have to rewrite Scenes F-L, anyway — or you’ll end up with a dull Scene E. [Back]

**This is a great romantic comedy from 2008 starring former Loveline host and current podcast kingpin Adam Carolla. It’s mistakenly marketed as a sports movie, I assume to bring in Carolla’s Man Show audience. It operates on both levels, but it has a lot more in common with Annie Hall than Rocky, and I mean that in a good way. More people should see this movie. [Back]

Posted by Stan on June 6, 2010 10:17 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (2)

June 12, 2009

The Fake Fiancé 3: Not Fake But an Incredibly Confusing Simulation

Check out the first two volumes in this epic trilogy.

Immediately after intensifying my investigation, I hit a roadblock in the form of Kelly. We started to talk, to bond, and it seemed like old times — what remained suspiciously absent was talk of the fiance, wedding plans, living arrangements, etc. She limited herself to either old stories about high school or new stories about teaching high school. As usual, whenever I steered the conversation in a wedding-related direction, she changed the subject. I tried to rationalize — maybe she didn’t want to bring it up because the plans weren’t to her satisfaction, or maybe she knew I was trying to score an invite but knew she couldn’t — but it looked grim.

Flash-forward to two weeks ago. After essentially abandoning her MySpace profile roughly three days after creating it, I didn’t expect Kelly to give social networking another chance. However, she came back with a vengeance on Facebook — adding me right off the bat, and posting tons of “can’t possibly be misinterpreted” photos from the three bridal showers she’s had (one for her family, one for his family, and one for friends). Only one thing made me suspicious: why the hell was the groom at the bridal showers? But hey, it’s not completely unheard of, and like I said, these photos clearly indicate a bridal shower, and clearly indicate them both as a couple, almost to the point of overcompensating — seriously, maybe they’re cute, but do we really need photos of them awkwardly kissing?

So it appears all is well on the fake wedding front —

But something is still amiss. Something I can’t quite put my finger on… Wait, my finger just landed on a giant, boldfaced word: LIES. Right, right — all the unnecessary lying. If, indeed, this relationship is real, as it appears to be, why’d she make up at least one (possibly more) fictitious story of his proposal, and why’d she lie about them buying a house? More than that… Put aside the lies for a second and allow me to pat myself on the back for my surprising yet impressive ability to size up a character and/or situation almost immediately. (Keep in mind that, just because the logic centers of my brain accurately assess a person or scenario, doesn’t mean I’ll make good decisions.) As I’ve mentioned, when Kelly discussed this guy… Basically, I knew she was lying because I knew when she wasn’t lying. To put it in a way that makes some small amount of sense, she would mention certain things about this guy, and I knew it was true. I could feel it. Then she’d launch into lies, and her tone and body language would change completely.

Add to that another tiny inkling of uncertainty — on both her MySpace and Facebook profiles, Kelly does not count her fiancé as a “friend.” It’s not because he doesn’t use the sites — he has a profile on both. Yes, I checked. I don’t know what this says about their relationship, but compare it to her former best friend/current nemesis, Sarah, who’s also my Facebook friend. She and her husband are not only friends — they regularly exchange syrupy, almost obnoxiously cutesy banter on their respective walls. I can dig the notion of not wanting to be so publicly affectionate (except for the part where she posts a bunch of photos of them kissing at the showers), but not wanting to be “friends” at all? Just seems a little weird…

While perusing Kelly’s new pictures, I remembered Lucy’s assessment of her earlier photos: based on the awkwardness and clear disinterest in her fiancé’s eyes, it suggested they were not in a relationship at all. Even in the new kissy-face photos, I got the same impression. I started to wonder if maybe I was right about the lies — but wrong about what they signified. If they aren’t marrying for love, but they are marrying — what’s the story?

Bear with me, because I’m about to test the tensile strength of reality. Now, I know they aren’t marrying for money, because neither of them have any, and they aren’t headed down career paths that will yield dollar signs. Let’s consider some broad stereotypes for a moment… She’s 6’2” and bulky, with a voice deeper than mine. She never dated in high school, which isn’t that unusual, but she also had zero interest in guys, aside from briefly making up a story about a guy kissing her on the swingsets near her church. Although she tries to deny it, she’s a strict Catholic, which spells out its stance on marriage and sexuality in few uncertain terms (the pedo priest thing makes the message slightly confusing). He’s a small-town, Bush-loving redneck from downstate, obsessed with body sculpting but not actual fitness.

I’d be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that, yes, when faced with the reality of the alleged relationship, I thought, “Maybe they’re gay.” There are dozens, maybe hundreds of possible reasons for them to enter into a loveless marriage contract. I just leaped to the most obvious conclusion, based on the stereotypes and generalizations laid out before me.

No matter the explanation, the fact remains: something about this relationship stinks to high heaven. Maybe it’s none of my business, but I really don’t like it when friends — especially longtime friends I once depended on — start lying incessantly about significant things. Kelly always lied, but they were usually tiny white lies, fodder for behind-the-back shit-talking more than anything else. This… Whatever this is, I don’t like it.

Posted by Stan on June 12, 2009 5:44 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

March 6, 2009

Podcast: Worst Moviegoing Experiences

Today’s podcast is brought to you by this article. As usual, excuse the choppy editing. The unedited cut ran over 50 minutes, and let’s break it down: if you listen to this version and think, “It’s kinda boring,” imagine how it would sound if it were nearly twice as long.

In case you decide to skip around or break it up, here’s the “table of contents”:

1:16 – Paulie
9:19 – Apocalypse Now Redux
16:24 – Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
25:07 – Death to Smoochy

Be warned that this podcast contains a rainbow of obscenities, so consider this not safe for work.

Click the Play button to listen to Podcast #6: “Worst Moviegoing Experiences” (64kbps MP3, 28:42, 13.1MB)

Posted by Stan on March 6, 2009 5:12 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (6)

January 16, 2009

The War Room

Things went sideways on Monday night. You see, my old confusing pal Laurie crept out of the woodwork for her annual attempt to throw my life into upheaval. Technically, this time I invited the upheaval. I’m sure that doesn’t say anything good about me, but I just don’t know what the hell is going on anymore. I need to blog, because then maybe someone will drop a mocking comment explaining why I’m such an idiot.

Here’s how things went down: I’ve been on Facebook for awhile, and I’ve been “friends” with a few ex-professors for awhile. So I happened to notice, on Monday night, “[Laurie] and [two of Stan’s ex-professors] are now friends.” Now, I’d searched for her on Facebook before — around the time she added me on MySpace — but I didn’t find her. Now, she was very clearly there. I debated for a few minutes, then decided, “Okay, I’ll add her.” I figured, at best, she’d take a week or two to add me, maybe write something polite on my wall, and then I’d never hear from her again (true to the pattern).

Instead, there was a flurry of activity that, I shit you not, reminded me of that first-season episode of The Wire where they get the murder of Brandon (Omar’s love thang) via pager and pay phone intercepts. Probably not a good sign, but that’s how my mind works, I guess.

I don’t check Facebook much, so I just added her and clicked off the site. As I trolled the Internet for the freshest and finest pornography, I noticed two e-mails pop up instantly: first, a confirmation from Laurie, then a seemingly sincere, apologetic comment on my wall about how we used to be really good friends, and we should bury the hatchet and start over. I got back on Facebook and stated the obvious: okay. She invited me to do a Facebook chat, which I’d never done before (and was a little creeped out by, to be honest), and we ended up talking for over an hour.

Here’s something you should know: I’m 27 years old, and I’ve reached a point in my life where I can carry on conversations with my penis and we have a reasonably simpatico relationship. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I found Laurie extremely attractive, but when I asked her out and it went nowhere, I settled for friendship. In accordance with that, my penis and I have made the following arrangement (I need to give Li’l Stan some hope): if she’s relatively sober, and something happens, my penis has the all clear to move ahead (in more ways than one) with one regrettable night of passion. It’s a thought that lingered distantly in my mind while we were good friends and evaporated when Laurie disappeared off the face of the planet. Who needed an agreement like that when I’d moved on to more attractive, more readily available women with no interest in me?

It’s important to note that agreement when I describe our long bout of catch-up, arguably the longest I’ve talked to her since maybe February of 2006, maybe even as far back as August of 2005. At least she didn’t pretend to lose my cell phone number like Gina. Laurie did me the courtesy of not only dropping off my own radar screen, but she made me feel slightly better by dropping off the radar screens of everyone I know. She just vanished.

Then she was back, and after a brief back-and-forth, she launched right into the big news: she’s moving to L.A. at the end of January. I was appropriately enthusiastic but secretly bitter. For about five seconds, at which point I made a joking comment about her letting me crash on her floor, and she said, “You got it.”

One of the great things about Internet chatting is you can do a thing they do in movies and sitcoms that rarely happens in real life: keep running off at the mouth as if you’ve heard one answer, when in fact they’ve given another. She gave me a green light, and I continued to make self-deprecating but entirely true remarks about how rough it’d be to live with me.

This took things to an interesting new plane. Here’s what I have a tendency to do when women…basically say or do anything at any point in my immediate vicinity. I overthink everything. I have battle maps (i.e., blow-up dolls) that I cart out and pore over, laying out the best possible strategy with the help of tiny plastic Army men and an old back-scratcher to move them around.

I ruminated over whether or not she had officially accepted me as one of her “woman friends.” Maybe she had entered into some sort of unspoken agreement with me: here we would be, the two of us, together. Alone. In an apartment. In a new city. Full of limitless sexy possibilities. With my previous experience in Hollywood, I’d act as emissary and guide, exuding a surprising amount of charm and masculinity for somebody with such a spongy midsection and pliant ethical framework.

Yes, this was bound to be an interesting experience, and I’d take things as they’d come, so to speak, but I had high hopes that —

“Do you know [Mike]?”

“I’m aware of him,” I said.

“That’s who I’m moving with,” Laurie responded.

Oh.

And suddenly the strategy had to be completely reconstructed. At one point, I asked if they were dating. She said no and theoretically has no reason to lie. Her relationship status may say “In a relationship,” but that doesn’t mean anything; mine says the same thing.

If they are going out, why would she allow for this invitation? Sensing the badness, I attempted to back out, but — I shit you not — she wouldn’t back down, twisting it to the point that she insisted she invited me, even though I really invited myself and she agreed far too quickly. So what is that, if she’s dating this guy? Does she see so little possibility for a relationship that she’s deemed me harmless? So harmless that not even this guy whose name I’m only vaguely aware of will feel threatened?

Honestly… I wouldn’t mind that. As stated above, I would definitely take any sexual opportunities that may arise, but I mainly want to get back to L.A., and this is the cheapest ticket I’ve had offered to me. I can crash on their floor for a few months, no matter how awkward it is. And if I’m perceived as non-threatening, and my penis has agreed not to act without authorization in the form of a naked woman diving onto my lap, how awkward could it be?

The answer, I’m sure, is “pretty fucking awkward.” But like I said, unless he’s wielding knives in the middle of the night because I dared look at his woman askance, I think I can endure. Besides, I have maybe 18 inches (in more ways than one) and 80 pounds on him. A knife could do some damage, but any attempt to start shit that doesn’t involve weapons will end with him in a teary full nelson.

So, okay, let’s say they aren’t going out. What’s the deal here? I can think of two possibilities:

• He’s gay.
• He wants her but is too pathetic to make a move.

If he’s gay, fine. In fact, that’d make life easier — having a neutral third party would ease whatever awkwardness might exist between Laurie and me after several years.

Unfortunately, I got a “straight” vibe off of him, and I’m usually pretty good at reading people. If he’s straight, that’s when the knife-wielding trouble begins. I’m old and defeated at 27, able to reason with my ever-flaccid unit, but this guy is 22. Based on my very, very, very brief awareness of him, I got the immediate impression that he’s a pale, friendless virgin. Well, now he has a friend, at least, and maybe he’s not a virgin (or not anymore — I met him, briefly, more than a year ago), but if he’s not with Laurie, I’d bet the farm on him having lost his virginity with someone other than her. Still, based on my sizing-up and his current behavior, and Laurie’s insistence that they aren’t dating, here’s how I picture the scenario:

He wants her, and bad. About as badly as I wanted Laurie at the tender age of 22. Maybe he did defy the odds by asking her out, and she treated it the same way she did with me asking her out: a cheerful smile, followed by acceptance, followed by never following up. So now, their timing is synced up — he’s graduated and ready to go to L.A., she’s been out a few years but finally got the nest egg to go out there. He brought out his own battle map and Army men to engineer this cozy cohabitation plan. She bought into it out of a sincere, doubtlessly misguided belief that they are now just normal friends.

Meanwhile, his plan involves playing it cool for maybe a month, then making a move that will either bring them together forever or, more likely, cause her to flip out and spend an awkward 11 months with him until he lease runs out and she gets the fuck out. That’s actually the best case scenario for such a plan, but maybe he’ll get lucky. You never know. Whatever the case, Mike is not going to be happy with a guy like me sauntering into his perfect plan.

Once I put all this together, I began to realize that maybe — maybe, mind you — Laurie has an ulterior motive of her own. Nothing salacious, unfortunately, but something supremely safe — because, remember, I’m harmless. Eunuch’s Choice™. So maybe they are friends, maybe she does suspect the unsubtle machinations of a man four years her junior, and maybe, now, she wants me there to make sure things don’t get out of line. Maybe.

Lucy’s take was less optimistic: in her mind, they are going out, and Laurie wants me in the mix to reproduce…something. Based on the fact that I’m attracted to her, I can buy into the notion of chaos in Laurie’s life. I can buy into the idea that something — likely involving her parents, or maybe siblings or local friends — is causing some kind of endless, chaotic static that she senses will dissipate when she moves, so she’s stringing me along to make sure things remain chaotic to some extent.

What do I do when I lay out all the angles and find a big, fat battle map that tells me, no matter what I’m up against, all my troops will likely die, and I still want to go for it because of the possibility that I’ll get to plunder the king’s riches (in this case, the opportunity to stay in L.A. for an extended period, paying a very limited amount for rent)?

I mean, why not? I’ve lived with worse.

Posted by Stan on January 16, 2009 6:11 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (5)

January 2, 2009

The Fake Fiancé 2: Fake Harder

When we last left off, more than a year ago, I was desperate for advice on how to solve the problems with my friend Kelly. None of you jackasses came through. I did try Lucy’s suggestion to grill Kelly hardcore about the wedding details, and she immediately changed the subject to her teaching job. The only thing I could think to do was just back off. I’ll be honest: we’ve only talked two or three times in the whole of 2008.

Why did this happen? The answer happened in December of 2007. I never blogged it because, at the time, I was embroiled in a bunch of job bullshit that prevented me from blogging as much as I would have liked. God, what a pain in the ass. I hate that I’m making no money, but I’m so fucking glad I got out of that goddamn sty, and I’m so glad that — even though it took a year — my “replacement” has fucked up so hardcore that she’s gotten the attention of the man who runs the entire corporation. That’s an epic level of retardation.

What was I saying? Oh right, December. I hadn’t talked to her for awhile because, she explained, she got busy teaching by day, pursuing a Masters at night. Combine that with the various after-school activities she was involved with, and she had zero time for me. Or to plan her made-up wedding or ensure her made-up relationship stayed healthy. Nonetheless, when I did talk to her, she mentioned something very, very confusing and important: she and her fiancé were moving to an apartment in Lombard. Now, for people who didn’t go back and read the original post, here’s the thing: she already told me she bought a house.

Now, let’s say she and the fiancé had bought a house. How would this conversation have gone?

Instead, the conversation was actually little more than a long tirade against her fiancé for going out of town at such a bad time (and she didn’t even make it sound like it had to do with business), leaving her to do all the packing and running around before the movers showed up. Instead of bringing up the house thing, I waited for her to mention it. It was yet another of my not-so-clever litmus tests — I figured, at a certain point, she had to bring it up. She brings it up or it never happened, I thought, and she never brought it up.

So I took my distance-keeping into overdrive. I remember two distinct times we communicated with each other: once, early in the year, when Jive’s father passed on, and we expressed mutual surprise and dismay before getting bogged down in whether or not we should coordinate a time to meet at the memorial service; and a second time, in July, when she e-mailed to tell me this jackass we went to high school with threw himself in front of an el train. I said “two or three” because I have to believe there’s at least one conversation I’m forgetting.

And then there was Christmas Eve, when I received an out-of-the-blue MySpace friend request…from Kelly.

To my knowledge, she had no MySpace profile. I discovered a mostly barren, hastily filled out profile that had only one friend — not, I’ll cautiously point out, her fiancé. I came to the logical conclusion that she had just created this profile, perhaps realizing that she’d lost touch with certain people and thought this would be an easy way to keep in contact.

After glancing at the information in the profile and finding nothing useful about the fiancé (other than “Engaged” set as her relationship status), I clicked on the pictures link. I figured I wouldn’t find anything useful, but holy shit did I ever! Four distinctly non-Photoshopped images of herself and the fiancé, one photo of him by himself, and several of Kelly alone, including one that showed her in tropical climes, wearing a tanktop, classily clutching a plastic cup filled with beer, captioned: “Just a few hours before [the fiancé] popped the question on the beach at midnight. I am totally clueless.”

Well, I guess that about wraps it up, right? She’s clearly with this guy, he clearly proposed, and they’re clearly getting —

Wait a minute.

Here’s where I correct a mistake: in the earlier post, I mentioned the too-cute scenario where he proposed to her on Christmas Eve, as if on a whim. That was actually the too-cute story of him asking her to move in with her, way back on Christmas Eve of 2005. The story of the proposal goes like this:

In early December of 2006, the fiancé took Kelly to a fancy restaurant downtown, got an elaborate dinner, and proposed like a proper gentleman.

Restaurant. Chicago. December.

Beach. Tropical. Tanktop.

Does not compute.

How can I let this go, goddammit? There may be photographic evidence suggesting a relationship between the two of them, but why is there still a barrage of inconsistencies? What the fuck is going on here? I feel like if I ask Kelly for clarification, she’s going to make me watch the test film from The Parallax View and make me assassinate her ex-best friend.

I had to know more, but I didn’t feel safe asking Kelly. I mean, I’d tip my hand if I provided a log of a two-year-old Instant Messenger conversation as evidence of her lies. How do I confront a situation like this?

To find out, I asked Lucy. She surveyed the photos and said, “I…don’t think they’re involved.”

“Um,” I replied.

“No, look at them!” she snapped. “There are only four pictures of them together. Three of them are on vacation, the fourth is at a wedding. The only picture of him alone, he was out of town [on a trip Kelly wasn’t on]. So…who’s taking these photos, and why don’t they have any pictures of just bumming around the house? There’s only one of Kelly on her birthday, and it looks like she’s alone and took it herself.”

I didn’t scrutinize the photos to this level, but when I looked again…she was right. More than that, in all the photos with Kelly, he’s not smiling. He doesn’t have an arm around her waist or shoulder. In fact, his uncomfortable, distant body language suggests he barely knows and doesn’t much like her. Meanwhile, she has a wide grin in every shot and is leaning in to suggest a closeness that he tries very hard to counteract.

What’s the story here? Going from the one kernel of truth I still recognize in this story — their initial meeting, down in St. Louis — Lucy speculated that maybe he hit it off with one of Kelly’s other friends, so Kelly has waited in the periphery this entire team. This group of friends has met up at random time for vacations or reunited at weddings, and she’s managed to snag a few photos, but they are most assuredly not together.

This seemed unwise, on a public profile on a popular website. If this guy is really involved with someone she knows, and he has a MySpace page, doesn’t it follow that he — or someone who knows better — will find her, will find these publicly available photos, and her jig will finally be up.

Right now, I’m clinging to the publicness of this profile as the only shred of legitimacy to this relationship. Kelly’s not an idiot — if this were really an elaborate work of fiction, she’d have privatized the profile or, at least, these particular photos… Right?

I want to believe, but I still have the fake engagement story and the fake home purchase leaning me hard to the side of “100% bullshit.” Combined with the myriad other inconsistencies and oddities involved in this drawn-out relationship, the only thing I can say is, “How could it be real?”

Kelly’s profile insists that they’ve finally set a date. I feel like my only option is to jump back into the fray to either score an invite or score a reason why I’m not invited.

I’ll keep you all posted, but I hope to God what I report is, “It’s all true.” I don’t have much left but hope.

Posted by Stan on January 2, 2009 10:19 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

December 29, 2008

Screwing the Pooch

Amelia called to warn me that work was about to dry up. It’s like having an inside man at a company I already work for, but it’s helpful. She told me nobody at the company would tell me when scripts dried up, and she was right, but at least I had some warning. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but they don’t even soften the blow by easing off. It went from a steady three scripts a day to a steady zero scripts a day.

Amelia mentioned that, because of the dealings Murdstone & Grinby has with other companies, they may help me find freelance work elsewhere when our work slows down. It sounded great to me, so I told her I’d ask as soon as they stopped sending scripts.

“Hang on,” she said. “That might not be such a good idea.”

Zuh?

She gave me more warnings: if Murdstone & Grinby like me — and they do — they won’t want to lose me. If I asked for help, she said, Jim Taggart (the Director of Development, a.k.a. my boss) would be cordial and understanding and promptly do nothing, because they don’t want to lose me. She added, “They’ll probably just come back at you with the excuse that if you’re reading scripts for, say, Endeavor, and they get an Endeavor script they want you to read, that’s a conflict of interest.”

“But wait,” I retorted, “couldn’t they just send those scripts to someone else — like you?”

“Yeah, but they’d forget and —”

“Trust me,” I said, “I wouldn’t forget. Couldn’t I just reply to them that it’s a script from a place I’m working for, so they should send it elsewhere?”

“Well, yeah,” Amelia said, “but it’s just an excuse they’ll be using.”

“But if they give me an excuse and I tell the same things I just told you, wouldn’t they be a little more understanding?”

Amelia sighed. “I think maybe I should talk to Jim for you.” Initially it sounded like she was changing the subject, but it occurred to me that she was not-so-subtly suggesting that me talking to Jim myself would end badly. I mean, I guess it makes sense: if they want to make up excuses but I have an answer to all of them, it’s just going to piss them off. They want me to swallow the shit and slink away. Amelia was a little more tactful than that, mentioning that she’s worked with them longer and more closely. She felt if she broached the subject — not asking directly but just feeling out how they feel about it — she’d come across as someone concerned about a friend rather than someone trolling for information or asking on my behalf.

The following afternoon, I got an e-mail from Jim. The first paragraph thanked me for my hard work. The second paragraph said that Amelia mentioned I had some scripts she thought he should look at, and he’d be more than happy to once things settled down. Everything was going according to —

Wait — what?!

I called Amelia and asked what the hell happened. She told me that, when it came time to talk to Jim, it occurred to her that the business all but shuts down during the holidays, so Murdstone and/or Grinby could troll around for people to hire me and it wouldn’t amount to anything. She told me I should wait until the post-holiday flurry dies down and then ask. I started to wonder why any of this strategizing mattered when she insisted they wouldn’t even help me.

That was neither here nor there. Where did this script thing come from?

“I’m trying to help,” Amelia said. “I was straight-up honest with him. I said you have a great sense of characters, dialogue, and comedy, but you write horrible, tedious second acts.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

“It’s true,” she grumbled.

I don’t know that it is true — she read what many others regard as my best script and hated what she felt was a “pointless diversion,” even though in my mind it’s essential to the protagonist’s development from stunted manchild to adult. It works for others as well as it does for me, but I don’t dismiss her point. It makes sense, but the only ways I can think of to “fix” it are really contrived and hacky, and since nine out of ten readers agree it works, I just left it alone. I do love how, in her eyes, my entire body of work suffers from second-act problems when she only griped about it in the one script. Although I guess she griped about the whole story in another script, so that’s two bad apples. Anyway…

“So based on that rousing recommendation, Jim sent me an e-mail saying he wants to read ‘some of my scripts,’” I said.

“Are you shitting me?”

“…no?”

“What a fucking asshole,” she snapped. “I talked you up for at least 20 minutes, and he acted like he could give a fuck. And then, as soon as I leave, he turns around and e-mails you.”

“Yeah, so… What the hell did you think I should send him?” I mean, she hated one of my scripts and has been a bit more critical of the others than anyone who’s read them. I like that — maybe the others who read them are lobbing softballs, or maybe she just has a different point of view. Either way, I haven’t had someone as tough on my work since Callie, and I’ve always held the opinion that that’s the way to make someone a better writer. But it left me wondering what, exactly, she thought the company would like.

“Send them your most commercial script,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be good. They hate good. It just has to make money. I know Jim says to send him more than one, but it’ll take him forever to read one. It’ll take him even longer to read more than one, and he’ll just feel guilty about it and resent you.”

What? This is one of those things I’ll never understand about the industry. I know nobody has any respect for writers — especially writers with no credits — but why ask someone for something and then not read it? Is this some sort of perverse power trip, or has it become so ingrained in the industry that I should just roll with it? I mean, when I send them coverage, they don’t wait six months to read it — they read it as soon as they get it. Because it’s time-sensitive. Well, what if I’ve written the glossiest, most commercially appealing piece of shit on the planet? What if they sit on the script for so long that, before they know it, a bidding war has broken out to get this script, and they could have had it for a rock-bottom price? I know I’m not a great writer, but they don’t know that. They think I’m a great reader, which theoretically translates to great writer. It’s not like I’m some asshole off the street. I do related work for them, and they claim to love it. So why do I have to wait? And why does Jim get to resent me because he feels guilty for not doing something he should have done instead of just doing it?!

None of this matters much. I just think it’s retarded. I know it’ll take forever to read my script, and I don’t care. I thought about the right script to send, and seeing their track record with action (including one action-comedy), I elected to send my action-comedy script. It may not be my most commercially viable, but it seems more up their alley. I don’t know what I expect, though. Not to get it sold or even optioned. Maybe they’ll respect me 5% more. I don’t know.

I have this lingering fear — the reason I felt so apprehensive when I received Jim’s e-mail — that he’ll read the script and decide it’s so terrible, they should question my skills as a reader. In their mind, I’ll be the guy who can build a compelling case about anything but is so clueless about all the important elements of a screenplay, who cares how compelling my case is? I’m just full of shit.

I’m sure it won’t go down that badly, but I’m not exactly pressuring Jim to give it a read.

Posted by Stan on December 29, 2008 2:29 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (2)

August 4, 2008

Pitched

Last week, Amelia sent me a series of e-mails that went from interesting to scary faster than anything I’ve experienced recently. If you’ll remember, I’ve known her for awhile — so long, in fact, that she was a main character in this story before we were what you’d call friends, and definitely before she received an officially sanctioned Stan Has Issues™ fake name — instead, she got the less impressive Stan Has Issues™ generic description. Observant readers will also note that yes, we know each other personally, although obviously we haven’t seen each other personally in a few years. In fact, the bulk of our contact has been through e-mail, for no other reason than its convenience. We exchanged phone numbers while I was in L.A., we exchanged phone numbers once again when we reconnected after I’d left, and we exchanged phone numbers a third time that I don’t remember. So the phone never seemed like a scary thing…

…until now.

In general, I’m not a big phone-talker. I end up talking on the phone a lot, for long periods of time, by virtue of the fact that I’ve befriended people who ramble as endlessly and incoherently as I do, and by virtue of the fact that most of those people have either moved out-of-state or are just as lazy as I am when it comes to making a 20- or 60-minute drive, and by virtue of the fact that they’re too lazy/incompetent to just type it up in an e-mail (and are too lazy to read it when I do that). I guess what I’m saying is, it’s a double-edged sword. I don’t have any problem with the phone, but if given the choice I’d rather talk in person or write an e-mail.

This has worked pretty well with Amelia, the only person with whom I’m currently on speaking terms who enjoys my long, tedious e-mails. She sends equally long e-mails with the added challenge of never, ever using paragraphs to separate her ideas. It’s not hard to read, but it makes it very difficult to reply. I always feel like I miss something as I scan the original while writing a response.

E-mail became a problem last week, because she had a pitch meeting with Murdstone & Grinby coming up on Friday that she was ready to shit her pants about. For some reason — I don’t know if I should feel good about this or not — she believes I’m really smart, so she wanted to bounce some ideas off me and get some feedback. She asked me to play “studio exec” and try to assess not if the ideas were good so much as whether or not they’d make money. I flashed on William Goldman’s classic “Nobody knows anything” bit and thought, Hey, I am nobody! So I agreed to her little game, with some mild reservations because I feared her ideas would disappoint in some way — whether they seemed commercial or not — and it would diminish my respect for her.

She wrote back, asking if I wanted to do this through e-mail or over the phone, but something about the way she phrased it made me think the phone made her a little uncomfortable. Even though I’m lazy and just wanted her to type up all the ideas so I could think about them — I hate being put on the spot, especially if the ideas are terrible — I decided to keep the ball in her court. She wrote again, saying the phone would be easier because her fingers would explode before she could finish typing the thousands of ideas rattling around in her brain. But, she added, she “didn’t know if our relationship was ready for that step.”

I honestly still can’t tell whether or not she was being sarcastic. My immediate thought was, “But I’ve talked to you in person dozens of times,” followed immediately by, “What relationship? Are we dating and I just didn’t know?” I did the long-distance relationship thing before, but at that time I seemed to have a clearer idea of where things were headed. This came so far out of left field, it seemed to come out of right field (in actuality, it was so far left it had traveled the entire circumference of the planet).

So I tried to play it cool by completely ignoring the bit about the “relationship,” smoothly saying, “The phone’s fine with me,” and giving her my number for the fourth time in our relationship.

After some more awkward exchanges about when the best time for this conversation would be, I played the waiting game. Normally, waiting for a phone call would have made me more annoyed than nervous, but she tossed out the “R” word, so suddenly it felt like a first date — an excruciating, long-distance audition for some kind of future dating in the event that I move back to L.A. I sat in silence and tried to get into a relatively zen state so the stress didn’t cave in my skull, and when she called, I felt a strong urge to just not answer and make up some elaborate, far-fetched excuse as to why I had to miss her call and never, ever call her back.

Instead, I picked it up…

After an initial “I haven’t actually heard your voice in three years” moment of unease, we slipped back into our old routine. It’s amazing to think we even had an old routine, but I had forgotten how easy she is to listen to. You heard me right: she’s one of those people who can just talk, and I’ll just sit there listening and not giving a shit that I haven’t said anything for an hour. Compare that to Lucy, who frustrates me when she won’t give me a word in edgewise after five minutes. It’s just a difference in personality or articulation or something.

We didn’t have a one-sided conversation, though. We could have with no problem, but she forced me into an active role — she pitched these ideas and wanted to know how I felt. Her ideas… I don’t know if I want to say “to my surprise,” because I didn’t expect badness and I wanted them to be good, but I do tend to plan for the worst. Anyway, most of her ideas were…really fucking good. Commercial but not retarded, dense but cinematic, and a few of them really brought out some passion in her. In defense of my fawning all over her, while many of her ideas impressed me, some of them were kinda “meh” and one of them was a total dog (although she even admitted that).

Meanwhile, if this was some kind of dry-run phone-date, I flopped big-time. I had a hard time forming any kind of cogent argument for or against these ideas — I tried my best to stammer through my vague notions. Without having any clue what she intended to pitch, I couldn’t do any preliminary research. I just had to go with my gut, which said, “Awesome,” but chose not to elaborate.

The downside is, neither of us have a clue how her pitches went. I can’t/don’t want to go into details on all that, but she described the Murdstone meeting and one casual pitch session with an assistant she knows, and in both cases, things seem a little strange.

Posted by Stan on August 4, 2008 5:33 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

July 18, 2008

Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

My friend Mark usually writes horror/suspense stories. I could never write shit like that, but he does it really well. When he sends me short stories, they remind me of Night Shift-era Stephen King (and if you know King’s work, that’s pretty much the sweet spot for him in terms of quality short stories); when he sends me screenplays, they remind me of a slightly-less-schlocky Brian De Palma. The only exception to this is when he sends me comedies. He’s a really funny guy, but somehow it just doesn’t end up on the page. It’s like what happens when I try to write suspense.

Maybe it’s just a different method to the madness or something. It’s a comedy, so he’s trying to be funny, as opposed to his suspense/horror stuff, almost all of which is thoroughly entertaining and funny without feeling so…derivative. Because, to me, it looks like he just has his set of favorite comedies and is content to imitate them.

The first one sent me was a Clerks knockoff that, at least, tries to define itself by taking place in a totally different workplace environment. Unfortunately, it’s the exact same conflict (20-somethings struggling to cope with their directionless lives and learning something about themselves over the course of one crazy day; he even includes an equally unnecessary “main character gets shot” ending) and the same basic “more obscenities and pop-culture references = more funny” formula that has made Kevin Smith rich.

The second one is Office Space with a lot of tired political satire instead of sharp corporate satire. He grew up as a liberal in a rural, conservative area, and in many cases his writing seems to work out the issues he has with the ignorance and foolishness that causes the agro-poor to support the men who made them poor. It’s a fair point, but there’s always a Michael Moore-esque “preaching to the choir” mentality about it; no ignorant farmboys would go to see this movie. Only yuppie liberals who spend their weekends at the “arts cinema” would seek it out, and they’d laugh knowingly and wonder why these rednecks don’t adjust their attitudes.

When he works in a medium (gory horror) that his chosen demographic might actually watch, and the satire is a little more subtle, it’s much more effective.

So it surprised me when he sent me the first few chapters in a novel he’s started work on. I figured it’d be a long-form horror novel that I could really sink my teeth into.

It was not.

In fact, in many ways it reminded me of Juno, which is a fate worse than death. I can understand it, though; he cited Juno as one of his favorite movies of last year, and I can see Diablo Cody’s awful, blunt satire appealing to him. That’s the main problem: in the five chapters he sent, every single person is a cardboard cartoon character. The big TEEN PREGNANT-style “tackling taboo issues” portion involves a suicide-bombing at a high school, but there’s nothing close to fully realized characters and 3D shading on anybody.

On the one hand, I can see it not mattering; one of the things I like to do is portray these grossly over-the-top caricatures, then slowly ladle on the shading until they go from hilarious to tragic. So I only have 25 pages, most of which consists solely of character introductions. We learn of their ridiculousness and, one hopes, will soon learn harder truths about them.

The thing that bugs me is that he told me specifically that he was inspired by the style of my novel, Cedar Point, which he read throughout the process and gave me dynamite feedback to help with the rewrite. And I can see it, but I don’t like what I see.

In character and plot (what little there is so far), I see the repugnant stylings of Ms. Cody, but in terms of sentence-by-sentence joke-building, I see…a poor-man’s me. It’s like looking in a horrible funhouse mirror, but it makes me wonder: is this a distorted picture of what my writing looks like, or am I really bad? Is he a poor-man’s me, or has he done a spot-on job of aping my poor-man’s Raymond Chandler-cum-Woody Allen style?

It’s making me question everything: was I hard on his comedies in the past because they remind me of myself? I don’t dare ask questions that compare myself to Diablo Cody, because much as I want to say something like, “Maybe my unnatural hate of Juno comes from a secret belief that Cody’s manipulation of the system to produce an offbeat, Midwestern brand of comedy to the mainstream has ruined my chances to do the same thing,” really, at the end of the day, the movie just fucking sucks. The offbeat, Midwestern brand of comedy doesn’t involve quite so much rhyming.

I don’t know what else to say. On one hand, I’m flattered that he thinks enough of me to try to imitate my style; on the other, I can’t be objective enough about my style to know whether his imitation is so accurate I should be flattered, or so grotesque I should distance myself from him. I’ve never had to deal with something like this before. I want to be proud, but I’m mostly just embarrassed.

Posted by Stan on July 18, 2008 9:08 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

June 23, 2008

Reader

Ugh… Well, I hope it works out, but I haven’t heard anything all weekend. Amelia e-mailed me on Friday to tell me Murdstone & Grinby is looking for paid readers — decent money for the scripts, but no details on volume or whether or not this will come close to being permanent. She just wanted me to send her some coverage samples to give to her boss, Jim; I did, and I’m hoping for the best. Also, of course, preparing for the worst.

Posted by Stan on June 23, 2008 1:19 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

June 20, 2008

Mark’s Site

Immediately after the porn review site incident, my friend Mark e-mailed me with a website idea of his own. He e-mailed less about the idea (which he believes is solid) than about the technical background required to create/run a website. I told him, shit, if I can do it, so can he.

But here’s the concept: defending movies that are universally bashed (most often by people who haven’t seen them) and arguing against movies that are universally loved. It struck an immediate chord with me, a closet Hudson Hawk fan who enjoys a great deal of tasteless, lowbrow entertainment that I find contains more substance and artistic merit than many critical darlings. What I’m trying to say is, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets is 1000 times better than Juno. The sad thing is, Juno is so bad that that only puts Book of Secrets at “fun but forgettable.”

But beyond my own tastes, it sounded to me like the kind of site that can take off. The Internet has become a magical place where you can find people of similar mind, band together, and take over the world. Or, at least, get movies like Snakes on a Plane released. My most-read and most-commented-on post of all time is my analysis of Juno, 2007’s most overrated movie. It’s only partly because I’m so damn smart and insightful; mainly, it’s sought out by people looking for a comfortable environment to dislike something that’s beloved by all their friends, coworkers, family members, the media at large, etc…

The one hitch I could see is that he, apparently, wants to write all the content himself. That’s fine, and that’s his prerogative, but I think it’s a serious limitation. For instance, he loved Juno, and he’s part of the reason I went to see it. The previous year, he loved Pan’s Labyrinth and was the only reason I went to see it (I hadn’t even heard of it prior to him telling me of its profound emotional effect on him). I’m not saying he has bad taste — these two are probably the only movies where our opinions have differed — but, like I said, his love of those overrated crap factories will limit the success. I didn’t want to be presumptuous and toss my hat in his ring, but I’d gladly volunteer for it if he decided he wanted more writers or a broader perspective.

As I said, I don’t know much about the commercialization of the Web, but he’s a smart guy, a great writer, and this concept could take off. I’ve seen several sites with occasional dissenting-from-mainstream opinions or regular columns devoted to unsuccessful films (Nathan Rabin’s great My Year in Flops column at the A.V. Club is a good example), and I’ve seen sites like the Agony Booth that revel in badness, but I don’t think a site exist that’s solely devoted to defending supposed bad movies.

I’d like to see it succeed. I’m sure I’ll mention its progress in the future.

Posted by Stan on June 20, 2008 5:18 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

June 9, 2008

“You’re Better Than This…”

I have this friend, whom we’ll call Amelia. We go back a few years; in fact, believe it or not, she’s the infamous “coworker” mentioned here, but we remain friends in spite of that. But, you know, you can sort of glean from her behavior in that post that she’s both blunt and concerned more with commercial aspects of a movie than anything else. Admittedly, she has pretty good tastes in movies, and she’s sort of like me in that she wants better movies, but she’ll work within the system she’s stuck with until she has the power to make better movies.

That said, I sent her a copy of Dying Proof a few weeks ago. She expressed some interest in reading it after I told her I had a producer interested, although “I had a producer willing to read it to make me go away” is probably more accurate.

She finally read it, and her analysis was spot-on in some areas, unintuitive in others, but hostile overall. One statement in particular jabbed me like a warm butter knife (which are more painful because they are not meant for stabby-stabby): “Stan, I’ve read your stuff, and you’re better than this.”

Ouch.

This especially stung coming from someone who has a sharper eye for the market than I do. I was insecure enough working outside my normal comfort zone — it’s a straight thriller with what I think is a glossy Hollywood sheen, far from the traditional unsellable comedies I write. Before I sent it to the Big-Shot Producer, I sent it to a group of four people go gauge as many disparate opinions as I felt I needed. I sent it to:

• Mark, who has turned into my “first reader,” I guess — we’re always e-mailing back and forth, although seeing each other in person is a rarity, so he’ll e-mail me anything from a screenplay he spent five years on to a short story he banged out in 10 minutes. I do the same with him, and I guess we trust each others’ feedback. He’s a great horror writer, and while I don’t think I could write any legitimate horror, I guess I’m enough of a fan to understand the conventions and judge his work accordingly; he has a great sense of humor, which I imagine helps with my weirdness. In fact, I don’t think we’d be friends today if not for one comment I made in a class we had together. We’d read the original screenplay for The Parallax View. One of my favorite movies ever, this early draft (which adheres to the novel more rigidly, I guess) isn’t what you’d call good. My comment on the ending made us friends for life: “It feels like a CHiPs episode!” At which point I mimicked the final line — which is Frady, having uncovered another layer of conspiracy, shaking his fists and yelling, “Aw, hell!” — followed by the trademark CHiPs credit freeze/unfreeze gimmick. Because I am that awesome and shameless.

  Anyone who can respect a good CHiPs reference is like a blood brother, so there you go. Among other things, we also share a peculiar fondness for ’70s conspiracy thrillers, which in large part inspired Dying Proof. So I still think he’s a pretty good judge, but maybe he’s a little too close to it.

• A female writer who I hoped would tell me whether or not I’m hitting the right emotional notes with the “feminine” aspects of the story. She’s also someone who has no interest in male-oriented action movies/thrillers.
• A female movie fan who has no real interest in writing or screenwriting. I just gave her the script and asked her to try to imagine it’s a movie, something she’s watching on the screen instead of reading on paper. This was also beneficial because she got on Instant Messenger while she read, so I actually got realtime reactions to the story — that honestly helped more than her overall feedback. I could tell which surprise moments worked, which frustrated, whether or not the characters stayed consistent, etc.
• A guy, also a non-writer, but also someone without much interest in the movies. I actually told him the opposite of what I told the female movie fan: read it like a novel and tell me how it comes across.

I’m always told not to get perspectives from non-screenwriters, for reasons like “they don’t understand the form” or “they can’t judge whether or not something can go from the page to the screen.” I split it with two screenwriters and two non-writers to get a wider perspective, but I say fuck any asshole who doesn’t think a non-writer can give a valid opinion on a screenplay. They may not give you something specific to the business, but it’s foolish to think their input is invalid.

I’m not ready to put too much stock into the opinion of one person when four others thought it was pretty damn good. It’s interesting because some of the time, she had valid points that were well-reasoned — and that I mostly agreed with and will address in the next draft — but more often, she stumbled into poorly reasoned “this didn’t make sense, so it sucks” territory. I don’t want to find too much fault with that, because the fact that a reader — even if it’s one of five — misses valuable pieces of the puzzle, it means something. It means I’m not getting certain things across. Part of me wants to champion subtlety and mystery, especially when the subtlety was understood and the mystery didn’t annoy other readers, but another part of me says, “Yup, she’s right; I should explain the whole thing right off the bat and have the rest of the script be about getting away from the pursuers.”

There’s yet another part of me that’s really irate with the fact that she glossed over enough of the script to not understand the basic purpose of the conspiracy. Granted, it’s my job as the writer to keep a reader interested enough to pay attention and well-informed enough to have a clear picture of the story, but what if I did all that and it’s just not her thing? She doesn’t like or understand the genre, the characters don’t interest her, so she gets bored and skims and gives negative feedback. Should I listen to that?

But that’s kind of defensive, huh? I’m mostly just smarting from the “you’re better than this” comment and want to dismiss everything else she said — legitimate or not — as crap. Yet I can’t — separating the wheat from the chaff, she did have a couple of ideas so indisputably good that I’m chomping at the bit to incorporate them into draft five.

Does this mean I’m turning over a new leaf? I’m taking the time to think hard about a person’s opinion and considering the many shades of gray before developing a clear but complex reaction. A new leaf, or just worn out and malleable?

Posted by Stan on June 9, 2008 8:08 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

June 6, 2008

Battle of the Sexist

As a longtime purveyor of filthy music, I guess it didn’t seem all that offensive when I came up with my latest idea, part of a personal project I’ve been working on for too long. The genesis is pretty simple: a few nights ago, I ran into an ex-girlfriend, who had ballooned up in weight to a staggering degree. Now, I’m not one to talk, but I couldn’t help inflating with as much glee as she had donuts. Part of it was schadenfreude — it made me happy to see that she no longer possessed the physical attributes she once held so dear. But I won’t deny that most of it was pure egotism: I wanted to believe that I was the cause, that her dumping me had as much of an impact on her as it did on me, that it so devastated her that she started binge-eating, which is actually what I do when I’m depressed.

I’m certain this isn’t the case, although I can’t exactly figure out a better cause. When we dated, she was always body-conscious and fitness-obsessed, and I was usually the frightening, doughy albatross who made it seem like she was “dating down”). At any rate, I started to think about this as the subject for a song.

It’s kind of rare that I think of songs in serious, vaguely literal terms. I know song lyrics are poetry (really shitty poetry, in my case), and poetry is mainly about imagery and symbolism, but I almost never write what you’d call a “personal” song in a literal sense. They’re always under the guise of a third-person character (or a first-person character who is not me), so while deep down they’re rooted in something very personal, they don’t appear to be. This is also how I approach straight fiction and screenwriting — I’m a big believer in “write what you know,” but it’s also not terribly hard to merge what you know with shit you’re just making up. I know what it’s like to feel trapped and isolated; I don’t know what it’s like to have every person I’ve ever known killed, or what it’s like to be on the run from the government, but I can imagine.

So before I even got the chance to gussy this up with metaphor or obscenity-laced sexual-inadequacy diatribes, a chorus popped into my head while I was trying to fall asleep last night — fully formed and annoyingly catchy. So catchy I thought I ripped it off from another song, but I’ve spent days thinking about it and can’t come up with one. (Ironically, when I fleshed it out with a verse, I discovered that section was completely ripping off “The Ascent of Stan” by Ben Folds.) I leaped to my guitar plunked out the melody, figured out the chords and the various fills and harmonies I kept hearing, wrote it all down, and went to bed.

Once I got the chorus, I started thinking about the real meat of the songs — the true thrust of my emotions. It’s mean-spirited and bitter, obviously, but at the heart of it, the idea of the song is first about how people handle breakups in different ways. It’s also about misplaced hostility, the aforementioned egotism and schadenfreude, really portraying the first-person narrator (i.e., me) as much, much worse than the ex, whose only crime (other than breaking up with “him”) is plumping up — to the extreme!

So when I talked to Lucy and she asked what I was up to, I mentioned the song and the whole idea behind it, and she said, “That’s sexist.”

Which is 100% true. Not that it’d ever get airplay because (a) I’m nobody and (b) the chorus contains liberal use of the word “fuck,” but if it did, I’d imagine a significant chunk of the female demographic would tune out as soon as they realize the chorus also contains liberal allusions to such large, balloon-like objects as the Goodyear blimp and the Hindenburg. Beyond the general sexism, it reenforces body-image dilemmas among chicks, as they like to be called. I don’t like doing that. I wouldn’t want some chick who looks into my sunken, crooked eyes and falls in love to listen to my shitty song and say, “Huh, time to develop bulimia. Where are the empty mason jars?” Which, again, is more egotism on my part. On so many hilarious levels.

So what do I do? I could say, “Fuck political correctness,” because I know I’m doing my damnedest to portray the narrator as the bad guy. I could say, “The underlying point of the song is the sexism, and the fact that this person feels — because of their own personal quirks — that her getting fat, when fatness (or at least extreme sloth) may have contributed to her pulling the plug on the relationship, is a minor victory in his eyes.” It’s not about right or wrong; it’s about the emotion of the moment, and the reflection on the moment and realizing that, even though he knows he’s a total dick, he still feels awesome that she’s a gargantuan lardass.

And then it makes me wonder crazy shit, like, “What if Springsteen’s ‘Used Cars’ was originally about running into a fat ex-girlfriend, but he rewrote and rewrote and rewrote until it became a bittersweet, semi-nostalgic snapshot of working-class life, with the fat ex turning into a used car but both of them representing something once desired and currently rejected?” Which leads me to the obvious conclusion:

I’m overthinking it. I should just write. Let the amateur-night crowd at that hippie coffee shop separate the wheat from the chaff.

Posted by Stan on June 6, 2008 11:01 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

May 29, 2008

The Only Good Thing About Social Networking

I think it’s pretty clear that, while I’ve signed up for a number of social networking sites, I don’t like them. They have a massive number of flaws — for every site, the top two are inept design and the security issues associated with tossing a shitload of personal data onto a very impersonal website, but those aren’t the only two — that aren’t quite outweighed by the positives. In fact, I can only think of one positive.

I don’t enjoy the neurotic self-reflection caused by something as meaningless as someone you never hung out with in high school and/or college sending you a message or friend request, considering the social ramifications of ignoring or denying as heavily as you might consider ditching a legitimate friend’s birthday party in favor of hanging around a porn shop. I might be taking the whole thing too seriously, but I know I’m not the only one — and that’s the problem. These are people I know, personally. Whether I like them or not, they’re real people, and actions — even those as simple as clicking a button on a web form — can hurt.

I’d have to really hate a person to flat-out deny a friend request (and I have denied several, so if any of them are reading this blog: now you know), but that’s just the tip of the emotional iceberg: there’s the sadness and meanness felt when you receive a friend request from somebody you obviously knew at some point but don’t remember at all, the frustration and irritation felt when you decide to accept a friend request and find yourself inundated with ads for the person’s band or horrible, horrible standup comedy and realize they never wanted to reconnect — they just want you to come and cheer them on. Worst of all, there’s the lack of grudge-based masturbation (or grudgerbation) when somebody you distinctly aren’t friends with privatizes her profile, stripping you of access to her collection skanky photos. Not that’s that ever happened to me. Repeatedly.

Social networking unleashes a torrent of high emotion and endless confusion unlike anything experienced outside the hallowed halls of your average junior high school. Why do people want to expose themselves to that?

Here’s the only reason I can think of:

Dateline: Chicago, Autumn of 1997. My sophomore year of high school. Here’s the setup (similar to the setup from a few days ago, but here’s the refresher if you missed it): over the course of my freshman year, I got to know a teacher I’m calling Mr. Hart* pretty well because of my writing and obsession with gaining approval from pseudo-authority figures. At the end of the year, the teacher in charge of the school’s limited “creative writing” department moved to a different school, and Hart was given the opportunity to take over. He convinced me to join up with the creative writing club (Write-On, a name I certainly hope was created when the school opened in the mid-’60s rather than when I attended in the late ’90s), and there I met a group of weirdos and outcasts who greeted my writing with the most terrifying response I’d ever experienced: respect and encouragement.

Another member of the club was Phoebe, a quiet senior named who rarely spoke and always had this expression on her face like she had better things to do. As someone who also has that expression on his face at nearly all times, I can tell you that this didn’t mean she had anything better to do. She was one of those people who had that look, even while reading her own work, that somehow combined consternation and boredom, and then when called upon to give feedback, she’d dazzle you with insight and understanding, and she knew more grammar rules (by name, at that) than anyone I’ve met before or since. It’s kind of a nerdy turn-on, and she was pretty cute in a frumpy kind of way.

So that fall, when I barely even knew her (we got to know each other much better over the course of the year, and in fact the incident I’m about to describe is most of the reason why), we went to the University of Chicago with Mr. Hart, Mr. Battaglia, and a few other members of the creative writing club and AP English class. Kurt Vonnegut was speaking there, and although I barely had him on my radar at the time, the level of excitement and reverence from Hart and Battaglia made me think this was a man I needed to check out.

Phoebe and I rode in a car with Mr. and Mrs. Hart, while the rest of the kids piled into Battaglia’s SUV and one of the other students’ cars. She was typically taciturn, so I overcompensated by yammering without end. But something fairly amazing happened — for the first time in the two months I’d known her, she shed her seeming mild annoyance and started to smile. Then I got a few laughs out of her. And before I knew it, an actual two-person conversation was taking place.

Afterward, on the ride home, she pretended to fall asleep, leaned her body against mine, rested her head on my shoulder. I knew she was pretending because, even though I was too dumb to realize she was sending me the strongest signal a woman had ever sent me, I wasn’t dumb enough to think she’d actually fallen asleep. This was the first time a woman had ever touched me in a way that didn’t involve beating the shit out of me (thanks for the memories and emotional scarring, sis!), and while I didn’t understand the high-intensity signal and did nothing, really, beyond befriending Phoebe, I’ll never forget that hour in the backseat of a high school teacher’s car. (Try to take that statement out of context!)

And here’s the thing: I had the amazing opportunity to watch Kurt Vonnegut participate in a Q&A in the autumn of his life, and I remember almost nothing about it except the ride there and the ride back.

I lost track of Phoebe after she graduated in ‘98. My sister — in Phoebe’s class — ran into her a few times and kept me updated, but I had no contact information at all. This was just before the social networking/easy stalking boom of the early ’00s. So the one tiny thing MySpace blessed me with was the ability to reconnect with her a decade later. Since she found me** and things have kinda been like we never fell out of each others’ lives, I have to believe she never forgot that night, either. It may have happened without social networking, but I doubt it. Also, if it had, I’d be running around screaming about how fate is real and true and start rambling all kinds of zodiac bullshit. So I’m grateful to MySpace for getting me reacquainted with Phoebe, and you all should be grateful that MySpace spared you that crap.

*Not his real name. [Back]
**It’s my awesomely narcissistic social-networking policy to not send any friend requests whatsoever; if someone wants to contact me, they have to do the legwork. [Back]

Posted by Stan on May 29, 2008 1:15 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

May 9, 2008

Lucy: Source of Unending Disappointment

So Lucy texted me yesterday to tell me she’d be coming into town for Mother’s Day weekend, so I was to clear some time to hang out. Fair enough.

Then she called me this morning — actually, she frantically sought me out by IM, text, and VoiceMail, although I was wandering around town and didn’t take my phone with me, so technically I called her (back) — to let me know she wouldn’t be coming into town. She does this often — any time there’s a light rain or something, she’ll cancel the trip because she doesn’t want to drive in it. I can relate, so it’s not a big deal, but it does get a little old.

Of course, I can’t say anything because it leads to the inevitable “Well, you can always visit me” conversation. It’s not that I mind the drive to Iowa, or that state’s delightful manure-caked-on-popcorn stench; it’s really a lot more personal and depressing. She keeps the most disgusting place I’ve ever seen. In my life. I shit you not. I’ve visited her at three separate apartments (and now she’s officially in a fourth), and each is more disgusting than the last. The last time I went out to see her, I refused to show. I had a hard enough time just sitting on her toilet. When I glanced into the shower and saw brown-black grime in the basin and soap-scum clotting the tile grout…all I gotta say is “yuck.” I’m not a dude known for thorough cleaning, but even I have my limits.

On a shallower note, I don’t like visiting her because, more often than not, when she comes out here, she’s officially on my turf. We do what I want to do. Not that I don’t mind giving her the option, but her option is almost always “let’s go to a bar so I can chain-smoke in your face and take the edge off your rambling with a few light beers.” At the very least, since Illinois is now delightfully smoke-free, even if we did go to a bar, she wouldn’t be inflicting that shit on me. (Hilariously, last summer she came into town with her boyfriend, and the three of us plus her brother went to a pool hall in Schaumburg that was actually really awesome, but I only thought it was awesome because it was, like, a real pool hall. Not a bar with a pool table. They were all freaking out about the “giant” pool tables, which meant I won despite seven years passing before I retired my hustling cue, and were so blindingly enraged by the lack of smoking — Schaumburg had already imposed a ban. They were so disappointed, we ended up going down the road to a shithole Hanover Park — with no pool table — because you could smoke there.)

Anyway, this cancellation had nothing to do with weather or laziness; it had everything to do with her brother acting like a dick. He recently separated from his wife. His grounds were that she’s an awful mother — in fact, his main goal is to fight for custody of their kid before she destroys his young life. Unfortunately, his wife comes from a well-off family who have both the financial and physical means to support the kid. He doesn’t have that luxury; plus, he’s a dude, and somehow that always hurts in custody battles. Oh, and also, the moment he got separated, he ditched the kid with the wife and started dating three women at once. And, yeah, Lucy’s pissed because he made a date even though he knew she was coming into town, and he wouldn’t cancel it when she said the only reason she was coming into town was to see him. (She omitted the part about seeing me, or maybe I’m not a reason. I’m just there.)

I feel kind of bad, because when I talked to him that night last summer, it sounded like he was really hurting over this stuff with his wife and son, but now…he’s just kind of acting douchey.

Also, this means I don’t get to hang with Lucy. She insists she’ll be coming into town “in two weeks.” She said that two weeks ago.

Posted by Stan on May 9, 2008 2:22 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

March 20, 2008

Ultimate Prank

For the past few weeks, I had reason to believe one of my Internet nerd friends was in a military jail for unknown crimes. An important distinction: having reason to believe doesn’t mean I believed it — not at first, at least. In fact, I was first told this by another friend, who said he was IM’ed with the news by a close personal friend of our li’l Marine. She signed on, said, “Oh my God, Peter’s in jail,” then signed off — and never signed on again.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “He was just online, like, yesterday. I don’t think they give you online privileges in jail.” Still, it made me wonder. It’s perfectly reasonable for somebody to be online, then go out and commit a crime, then be found out and jailed for it. Or, perhaps, commit a crime many weeks ago that has just now been traced to him.

I remained cautiously optimistic until he fell of the face of the planet, and everyone kept going back and forth about what could have possibly happened. I found myself looking up news articles involving Marines, and when I couldn’t find any I wondered briefly if he had given us all a pseudonym (and since he’d sent nearly everyone in my online nerd hovel a package at one time or another, that would add mail fraud to his list of charges). It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.

After all, my name isn’t even Stan.

[Cue dramatic musical sting.]

I do have issues, however. No denying that much.

After a few weeks of Peter disappearing, I didn’t know what to think…until tonight, when somebody using his moniker signed online. He remained for a few minutes, didn’t acknowledge anybody, then left. Was this a practical joke? FBI agents playing around with his seized computer? What the hell happened?

Then came the big reveal: he had sent one of us a letter. He didn’t want to mention it because he was afraid to even open it. It bore the typewritten return address of a USMC brig in San Diego.

Finally, he opened it, and…what the fuck? Baffled, he scanned its pages for the rest of us to try to understand.

That is some big-time craziness. I can’t argue with it.

If you’ll notice, page three has a reference to myself and this blog. For those too lazy to read, here it goes:

I am sure once that the Stanley cousin obtains the word of my situation thus it will launch and to then disseminate a diatribe of million-word on his under-ground-tighten the bulletin…

For a little while — too long, actually — I believed it, and I fully intended on posting the letter as some kind of plea for understanding. We spent far too long poring over the pages, trying to assess whether or not it was written in some elaborate code (and whether or not we could crack said code) or just the product of a drug-addled and possibly insane mind.

As uncomfortable as it made me, I still thought there was something off about it. On his worst day, Peter could construct a coherent sentence. Plus, certain parts — the section about iPods running from the bottom of page one to the top of page two, for instance — screamed “prank!” to me, but enough of it disturbed me and I suddenly started feeling guilty for shrugging at the alleged charges.

After awhile, Peter’s handle signed on yet again. This time, he started to talk. Plus, his IP checked out. It was him, and the whole thing was an elaborate, goofy prank. It was mostly just a matter of timing it with a period when he knew he wouldn’t have any Internet access for a few weeks.

How’d he get the appropriate level of crazy for the letter? He initially wrote out a “crazy rant” but decided it didn’t sound crazy enough. Solution: use Babelfish to translate it into French, then translate the French back into English and transcribe it onto note paper.

Why? Why not? I love a good prank, and this is probably the best one I’ve seen pulled since the time, several years back, that Jive “came out” to a couple of our friends.

The world needs more high-quality pranks, so Peter, I salute you.

Posted by Stan on March 20, 2008 10:47 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

March 17, 2008

Laurie

I’ve been friends with Laurie for awhile (now would be a good time to take advantage of the new Cast of Characters link on the sidebar), a friendship built largely on awkwardness and miscommunication. To wit:

When I first met her, I felt an instant attraction, so I asked her to go to the movies. Now, ordinarily, I could understand why, in film-student circles, this wouldn’t be instantly seen as a date. But when I asked Laurie, I could see from the contortions on her face that she knew what I was asking — she took the time to process it, then broke into a wide smile and said, “Yeah,” all fake-shy-like.

And then we never, ever went to the movies. Ever. See what I mean? It’s confusing.

The friendship kept going. Despite my inability to seal the deal (or even getting her to acknowledge there was a deal there to be sealed), I discovered she was a person I wanted to know. I also got involved with somebody else, so after awhile the romantic notions with her just dissolved like they did with Gina. We were just friends, like normal people, for a few years.

Then, I got on MySpace. Then, she found out I was on MySpace. Then, things got weird. Weirder.

She started to drop awkward comments on my MySpace page, there in public, for everyone to see. Things about how she missed me, but the way they were phrased (which I am not going to quote verbatim because I just Googled them and they’re comically easy to trace back to me) led me to the pretty clear conclusion that…she’s into me. For real.

But this just led to more awkwardness. She promised to call and didn’t; I promised to make definitive plans to see her and didn’t. After an ill-fated attempt to go to an Oscar party in a blizzard failed, we didn’t talk much anymore…

…until a month ago, when it started all over again, with another random comment, this one even more unusual and salacious than before. After calling herself “a fool,” she decided it was “imperative” that we get together. Written as if the world would literally crumble to pieces if we didn’t not drop everything and rush into each others’ arms, I elected to respond. I told myself, “This isn’t really worth the effort. I’ll respond, and if something happens, it happens. If not, whatever.”

Responding to the comment led to catch-up text-messaging, after which I didn’t hear from her at all. Out of the blue, a day or two ago, she sent me a private message on MySpace, explaining to me that her life has been hectic, she’s also unemployed, she’s had car troubles that needed taking care of, and she has neither forgotten about me nor of our plans to see each other. She closed by saying, “Just let me get things together, if you know what I mean.”

Somebody, please explain to me what that means. I don’t know!

But when I got this message, I was hooked again. I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s going to be a series of mishaps resulting in us seeing each other for maybe five minutes in the year 2008. And that’ll be that…

There’s just that small part of me that I can’t seem to kill, the one that listened to too much Cheap Trick as a lad and believes the main priority is wanting to be wanted. Even if it never gets to pivotal phases like “seeing one another on a regular basis” or “not crassly manipulating each others’ emotions” (I can’t claim she’s the only one guilty there), part of me is merely happy that there’s someone out there who wants me, even if it’s only for 15 alcohol-fueled sections prowling MySpace late at night.

Posted by Stan on March 17, 2008 5:52 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

September 11, 2007

The Fake Fiancé, or: Show a Little Faith?

I have an obsessive nature and a strong desire to turn into Jim Rockford. These personality traits don’t mesh well with my sea of largely dishonest friends. The fact that all but a small few of my friends are notoriously full of shit probably speaks more to my character than to theirs. Nonetheless, I want to trust my friends. It’s difficult when you catch them in lies; it’s even more difficult when you catch them in repeated lies, especially when they’re lying repeatedly about the same stupid things. However, I get some sick pleasure from grilling them on the lies and watching the whole fabrication spiral out of control until they either admit they are bullshit artists (but I’m better!) or run away. And by “run away,” I mean “hang up on me” or “sign off of Instant Messenger,” because many of them have a hard time lying to my face — that’s usually how I figure out they’re lying.

Such is the case with my old friend Kelly, who I’ve known since junior high, and since that time she’s been full of shit. On top of that, she’s loud and abusive, pathologically hostile and emotionally crippled. These things might make you wonder why I’d be friends with her, but if you’ve ever read this blog, you understand we’re two peas in a pod. Except for all the lying.

I accept many forms of lying. There are a lot of shades of gray to dishonesty, many purposes for deceit, and in fact quite a few acts of bullshittery can be considered morally just and ethically sound.

For instance, I recently watched the M. Night Shyamalan movie Unbreakable for the second time ever, and the ending was as shitty this time as it was the first. I watched it with my dad, who borrowed it from a friend at work. It’s this guy’s favorite movie. Ever. He’s watched it dozens of time and is so enthusiastic he lent my dad the DVD. We watched it and agreed that it was actually a pretty good movie — by far Shyamalan’s best, which maybe isn’t saying a whole lot — until that stupid ending. Even the melodramatic “You should have known because they called me Mr. Glass” monologue worked. The “twist” is the only Shyamalan twist that holds up under repeat viewings. But those stupid title cards just ruin everything. Everything. It’s like, “Bruce Willis called the cops, and Samuel L. Jackson spent the rest of his life in a nuthouse.” Did some studio executive get all freaked about its sequel possibility and add those? They come out of nowhere, they obliterate the “show, don’t tell” rule, and it’s just fucking stupid to end your movie about a superhero discovering his power with, “He pussied out and called the cops.” The fuck?

My dad and I agreed on this point, but then he did something I would have never done: he told his friend, who loves this movie, that we both hated the ending. There are really only two consequences to this unnecessary honesty: either the friend gets angry and decides you’re full of shit, or you get to watch the wounded look on his face as he realizes you’re absolutely right. Enter the white lie: “Oh shit man, I loved it — I wish they made a sequel.” Because see, then you’re subtly suggesting maybe the ending was a little off because it was clearly designed as a franchise if you ignore those title cards, but you aren’t ruining his life by dumping the cooler of icy Hatorade all over him.

Lies with purpose can be used for the powers of good. Sometimes they can be used to hurt and torment, and while that can be fun depending on the person, when the lies have no apparent reason to exist, I get frustrated. This brings us back to Kelly. She’s kind of had a habit of manufacturing boyfriends out of — well, “thin air” is an unfair assessment. Let’s say it’s like that heavy, humid air of midsummer, just before a storm, that seems to have thickness and a physical weight. Kind of cumbersome, but more accurate. These boyfriends are real people who exist on this planet, people she knows but assumes we’ll never know and never know anyone who knows them; so she’s doing what clever liars do, mixing reality with her bullshit to make it sound more convincing. She’s been doing this since junior high, when she told us this dorky guy kissed her in the playground near her church. We didn’t know him at the time; when we met him in high school and he vehemently denied it, she had the typical excuse of that era: “Of course he’d deny it — he doesn’t want anyone to know.”

Considering it happened with at least four people I knew at the time (and was the subject of at least 10 Brady Bunch episodes), I guess it’s fairly common to manufacture lies about dating at that age. It’s cool to date, but few people actually do, and the lies about needing to keep things a secret are pretty reasonable since many parents I knew of wouldn’t let their kids date until high school, and even then it was a risky proposition. So even in high school, the idea of “secret dating” was kind of reasonable, although if a person got caught lying they risked utter humiliation.

Other than the made-up kiss from junior high, I can’t recall a time when Kelly made shit up about boys. I have a foggy memory about her saying “something” happened with a friend at a dance, but hey, maybe that actually did happen. I don’t remember it well enough to know, but you better believe if I had confirmed the stench of bullshit I would remember and document it here.

No, Kelly waited until college to start a boyfriend-manufacturing assembly line. It’s an awkward “you’re way too old for this” type of situation, but with one exception I managed to confirm that every boyfriend she had was not her actual boyfriend. See, it’s easy to fool people when you’re going to school hundreds of miles away; problems arise when you ignore the fact that the people you tell these lies to might have other friends at that school. It gets even rougher when one of your friends at this school happens to be your best friend.

That’s right, I talked to Kelly’s best friend a lot. In fact, we were all part of the same circle-jerk of friends, so most everyone I was friends with from high school was some degree of friends with Kelly. The two of them lived in the same dorm (not in the same room, though), hung out a lot, moved into a house together in their second year — so she’d have the dirt. She was the one who confirmed most of the fake boyfriends; the only two she didn’t confirm were the “real” boyfriend and this guy who was friends with her brother (and still in high school), who some of my still-in-high-school friends mentioned she was stalking. It’s hard to blame her when I essentially did the same thing with a different girl, but at least I didn’t pretend like I was dating the girl. I was merely optimistic that we’d get together when she was telling all my friends she wanted to file a restraining order. (The joke’s on her — I was 250 miles away and still able to frustrate and terrify her!)

The thing about Kelly is, I can pretty much tell when she’s lying. There’s an indescribable difference in the way she talks, her body language (like I said above, it’s rough on her to lie to my face, so if we’re out and I ask questions, she gets a little weird), her tone — things you can only pick up when you’ve known a person for more than a decade — so when she tells me things, I can always tell when she’s being completely honest, when she’s exaggerating for comic effect, and when she’s flat-out bullshitting. When she tells me things about teaching, I believe her. When she told me things about many of these boyfriends, I didn’t. Confirmation is nice for the sake of proof and peace of mind (not that I ever called her on it; the situation makes me a little depressed rather than angry), but I could pretty much tell just from talking to her that she was lying.

With the case of the “real” boyfriend, even though they only went out once, the whole situation was a lot more believable because of the way she talked about him — ignoring the fact that she forwarded me e-mails and text messages for my expert “guy” opinion, there was a whole different vibe with this guy. She was detailed but not too detailed, didn’t strain or evade when I asked “tough questions,” and the barely perceptible differences in speech and body movement all showed me she was telling the truth. Either she became a much better liar, up to and including manufacturing fake evidence of this guy, or it was true. I never confirmed it one way or the other, because by this time she was in grad school with nobody I knew, but I believe it was all true.

The question lingers: why all the fake boyfriends? This is something I have a hard time understanding. I’ve speculated that it roots back to her best friend, who share what I’ve inexpertly taken to calling the “hot-girl/ugly-girl” dynamic, which is not to say Kelly is ugly — just, in comparison to the utter hotness of her best friend, she can’t compete. Not even slightly. Spending her adolescence watching dorky idiots like me have their hearts broken by her best friend, all the while ignoring her, can’t be healthy. Kelly has always had somewhat of a “keep up with the Joneses” attitude; when she finds out something about one of her girlfriends, Kelly has to do the same thing only better, even if it means making up bullshit to keep up. I kept up with this theory for a long time, until I realized she wasn’t telling her girlfriends about these fake relationships; for a long time, she was only telling me and my friend Jive. Now she doesn’t seem to talk to Jive much, so she’s only telling me.

What’s up with that? The new speculation, the only possible rationale I could think of, is that she harbors long-standing crushes on both myself and Jive, and she was trying to make either one of us jealous in a rather juvenile effort for us to step up and win her blackened heart. She lives in a world where the guy always has to do the asking-out, which is not something I do. And at the time she was at the height of this fakery, Jive and I were both in relationships. Maybe that had something to do with it. It would have been awesome if she had turned us against each other in some sort of blood-soaked battle royale to get her, but that didn’t happen.

Along came a new guy, about two years ago. Going back to thing where I can tell whether or not she’s lying, when Kelly brought this guy up and told me about their initial rendezvous, I believed everything she said. When they spent a weekend in St. Louis with a bunch of her college friends, I believed everything except the part where he left a Post-It note on her forehead saying “Call me” because she was still asleep when he had to leave (it was just a little too cutesy and Cameron Crowe-esque). I believed her when she said she didn’t think things would work out because he’s an ultra-right, Bush-supporting Republican who — gasp! — isn’t Catholic, leading to a rant about how she’d never marry anybody who wasn’t Catholic (hint?!!) so what was the point of getting involved?

That was that. Or was it? Within a few months, Kelly announced she and this guy were still together (after not mentioning him for weeks), and then I started to see a new side of Kelly. Gone was the morally confused “let’s drink and smoke weed but no sex before marriage” girl I had grown up with; in her stead, somebody who was spending all her time at her new boyfriend’s apartment — so much time, in fact, that he was trying to convince her to move in with him. This really wouldn’t surprise me, since the transition from “this sex thing is dirty and not for me” to “oh wait, it’s kind of awesome” happened to pretty much everyone after high school. It took her a little longer, so was this a sign of her first real long-term relationship?

Maybe, but I had my suspicions. Fortunately, I…just couldn’t give a fuck at the time. She was happy, or said she was, so I was content to be happy for her. I wasn’t quite believing the relationship was as perfect as she acted, but that’s not uncommon with most people I know; the only one who is consistently honest is Lucy (often too honest — when I’m hearing the intimate details of a vagina I am not interested in plundering, I start rooting through my desk for leftover painkillers). I also wasn’t sure I believed how “conflicted” Kelly was over whether or not to take the plunge; the source of the conflict, she said, were her uptight Catholic grandparents. Much as she enjoys denying it, I know she’s the only uptight Catholic in her family (at least when it comes to stuff like “living in sin”). I’m still not sure how that happened.

The whole thing grew steadily less believable around the time she announced her engagement. I’m not saying she needs my approval or anything, but it struck me as bizarre that I’d never even met him, despite us having been out a dozen or so times since they started “dating.” Any time I brought up meeting him, or of chillaxin’ in their apartment, she’d get evasive and say something noncommittal like, “He’s really busy, but maybe next time.” Wanting to believe in the honesty, or at least the positive nature of her lies, I thought maybe he was the jealous type and wouldn’t like her gallivanting about town with somebody as cool and latently homosexual as me. Suddenly she was engaged, though, and I felt my willingness to suspend disbelief near its end. Who, exactly, was this guy? When were they getting married? Why did she always seem so full of shit when she talked about him?

The engagement itself supposedly happened in a way that creates a “romantic for people who aren’t interested in romance” vibe; he proposed last Christmas Eve, seemingly at random, without much fuss (or a ring), just a whim-like thing. “You look lovely in the light of the tree — let’s get married!” It’s not that it’s impossible to believe; it just seems more like something Aaron Sorkin would write than something that would happen in reality. It could have happened, and I was prepared to believe it — until the practicalities of an impending wedding (or, at the very least, of repeatedly putting off the wedding date) never crept into her life. No complaints about his uselessness in planning. No complaints about coming up with themes or color schemes. No bitching about costs (though that, at least, could be explained if her parents decided to pay; considering her parents’ cheapness, though, you’d think there’d be bitching about them insisting they keep costs down). Not even references to negate all the potential complications with something like, “We want a simple ceremony with just a few friends and family members.”

And then, out of nowhere…they bought a house. A struggling teacher who barely found a full-time position for this fall — and doesn’t exactly have tenure — and a guy trying to hustle through DeVry grad school bought a $250-$350,000 house? Unless they benefited from the subprime mortgage clusterfuck, this was the lie that broke the camel’s back. All the little bits and pieces of bullshit I had collected over the past year and a half came flooding back, and I became obsessed with proving the lie, to the extent I considered tailing her from her school to see where she was living and who (if anyone) she was living with. I checked the public home-sale records, but they updated very slowly. I didn’t find out until July that their house, supposedly bought in mid-May, doesn’t exist. From the time period she gave me, nothing was sold in either of their names, nor any “corporate” purchases or anything from parents. Unless one of them has wealthy relatives with Latin or Indian names, she was full of shit.

I still felt uncomfortable using this lack of information as my “smoking gun” — it’s too easy to prove wrong, and besides, what if they did like a “rent-to-own” thing that I’m not sure would register as a “sale” at first? I didn’t really believe any of that because when I asked pointed questions (“When are you moving?” “How are you settling in?” “Should I send you a link telling how to match duvet covers to curtains?”) she entered evasion mode. I needed to dig up more dirt. I used all the Google-/Myspace-/Facebook-stalking methods at my disposal to dig up dirt on her or her future husband but found very little worthwhile information…

…until Sunday. You see, it had been a month since I’d heard from Kelly, so I punched her name into Google and found…a court docket from Phoenix, listing her name as someone who faced an arraingment the day after Labor Day. I decided it was a coincidence, but it seemed suspicious that somebody with the exact same first and middle name, coupled with her long Polish last name (spelled in exactly the same way), would exist. It weirded me out, especially when combined with the lack of communication from her, but what am I supposed to do? Ask her what she did in Phoenix and why? Like everything else, I decided to just let it go, assuming it was just an unlikely coincidence or maybe a relative for whom she was named.

But it did encourage me to continue the stalker quest. After the suspicious home sale, I looked up her supposed boyfriend on MySpace. I found a page for him that hadn’t been logged into for over a year. It stated he was single, despite the fact that this would have been after they were dating. Then again, there were no friends but Tom, so maybe that was just the default option. But when I looked up the name on Sunday — I found him, along with some suspicious differences between what he says and what Kelly says about him.

1. He says he still lives in Orland Park (where the apartment they supposedly shared was), not Flossmoor (where Kelly claims they bought their house). This is despite the fact that this page did not exist until after they would have moved. Oh, and for those unfamiliar with the local geography, this towns are not nearly close enough to be interchangeable.
2. Despite what I said above above him deciding to buy a house while he’s still going through grad school, I didn’t hear that from Kelly; she has claimed on more than one occasion that he finished grad school before she did, even though his MySpace page says he started it after she was finished and is still attending.
3. It says he is in the IT field, which makes me wonder why Kelly still comes to me for computer troubleshooting advice (especially when I’m so out of touch, technology-wise, that I haven’t had a clue what the fuck I’m talking about in five years).
4. He doesn’t have many friends, but the overwhelming majority of the ones he does have are hot chicks (real ones, too, not the fake porn-spam ones). To top that off, the only indication of personality on his sparse profile is that he’d like to meet Danica McKellar. This tells quite a different story than the girl who claims to have this guy on one of those dog-training choke-chains.

Smoking gun? Yeah, not quite. I talked it over with Lucy, who has been keeping up with (and in many ways perpetuating) my obsession, and while she’s believed ever since the house incident that Kelly is full of shit, she didn’t suggest I present this profile as my smoking-gun because it’s pretty easy to poke holes into:

1. Two points: first, maybe she only lied about the house, and everything else is true (or at least, if confronted she might admit the house lie but not the others). Second, she has made several big deals about the uptight-ness of their parents, especially his “downstate hick” parents. True or not, here’s an easy bluff: since his sister is a MySpace friend, he needs to keep the house a secret. Home ownership is a pretty big lie to maintain (what if they decide to come for a visit?), which makes you wonder why they’d buy a house if they needed to lie about it until after they’re married, but hey, it’s plausible as a lie.
2. For as long as I’ve known her, Kelly has seen level of education as a status symbol. I remember getting really pissed at her when she suggested one of my friends was an idiot because the friend’s parents didn’t go to college. She also, in a lot of ways, has a confusing 1950s mentality about relationships, so it’s plausible to me that she’d consider having more education than her future husband an embarrassing secret that must be kept hidden, like how my grandma is five years older than my grandpa but insists she’s five years younger even though everyone knows the truth.
3. It’s unlikely but possible that Kelly, concerned about us drifting apart, comes to me with bullshit computer questions because she’s afraid at some point we won’t have anything else to talk about. Also, since he’s an IT guy for the army she might think it makes him look like a pussy that he’s defending our country by keeping computers running at a VA hospital in Illinois. (Not saying I agree, but considering her obsession with classical masculinity, I could see her trying to hide this. Besides, Lucy was the one who came up with that sub-point.)
4. Lastly, while it’s hard to believe his only friends in high school were hot women, it’s pretty easy to believe that Kelly exaggerates the tightness of the leash she has him on. She can’t control who he befriends on MySpace, or who he ogles in “men’s magazines,” no matter how much she wants us to believe she can.

Most of these points are kind of flimsy to me, but Lucy’s point stands — if I present this “evidence,” it’s easy to come up with bullshit defenses off the top of your head. It’s harder to show someone a smoking gun when they can make a good case that there’s no powder residue and a still-burning cigarette in the room. Feel free to applaud the absolute worst metaphor I’ve ever concocted.

“Fine,” I said to Lucy. “The next time I talk to her, I’ll ask specific questions about what’s going on with her beau.”

“Yeah,” she said, “and ask about the wedding date.”

Oh yeah, that. It’s been almost a year since the engagement and, to my knowledge, they’ve bought a house but not set a date. If any of it is true, it’s still weird.

Turns out, I talked to Kelly last night. It’s weird, because somehow I ended up even more suspicious, even though in theory the conversation should have allayed my fears.

It started simply enough, with her complaining she wasn’t feeling well. I prepared myself for the “unceremonious breakup” section of her fake relationships; in the past, she usually breaks off contact completely for a month or two (maybe fearing I’m too close to the source of the bullshit trail I’ve been following), then reappears miraculously over a breakup that happened in her absence from my life.

Kelly shook things up a bit this time, perhaps realizing that an engagement and home-ownership make it harder to walk away from this fake relationship. But it was just…so weird. She started off telling me that she and her fiancé went to the beach for his birthday and stayed at a hotel in the city, and while she was there she hit her head on an awkwardly placed hand-rail in the shower, which required stitches and, when she started complaining of the worst headaches she’s ever had, she ended up having a CT scan.

I tried to play coy in an attempt to potentially shake up the situation and catch her in a lie. “Why’d you stay in a hotel? Did you go to the Indiana Dunes or something?” I marveled at my handiwork. I’m imagining this type of thing happens in other cities, but what the fuck do I know? I’ve lived in many major cities, but I’ve never really noticed this same phenomenon. If I’m wrong, here’s the deal: it’s pretty common for suburbanites from the Chicagoland area to go and stay “in the city” for a romantic weekend or a vacation or something, because most of them neither have the time nor the inclination to go into the city unless they absolutely have to. I knew all this but feigned ignorance to subtly prod more details out of her.

“Oh no,” she said. “We went to North Avenue Beach, had dinner reservations at [some restaurant whose name I’ve already forgotten] and booked a room at the Drake. Of course, we ended up spending around four hours at Northwestern Memorial and didn’t get to dinner until 9:45. After that, we went to a jazz club.”

Maybe this is because one of the rare occasions where I’ve taken interest in things she says and does (Jesus, that sounds so mean — guilty!), but she doesn’t usually gush forth with such specific, unasked-for details. The first clause of the first sentence would have sufficed, and yet, here I am knowing all her evening plans including the trip to the emergency room and the specific hospital she went to. I could pick apart minor details like if it was a crowded restaurant in the Loop on a Saturday night and they missed their reservation, there’s no way they could just show up and get a table, or that if I banged my head so hard it required stitches and complained of headaches for the next two days, the last thing I’d want to do is listen to brass instruments.

Making the conversation even more bizarre, she decided to go and get some rest, then signed online a few minutes later. She said she was on her laptop but didn’t think she’d be able to get on the wireless network her fiancé set up without a password (which she didn’t have), but he apparently didn’t secure it. This is the first reference she’s ever made, in the entire course of this relationship, to him having any interest in or knowledge of technology. Then, about four seconds later, she started talking about how great The Wonder Years is — raving about this long-finished show while she watched one of the nightly reruns on a local independent station. It seemed like weird timing to me that the day after I find the guy’s profile, she’s making sudden allusions to it. Maybe it was a coincidence?

For some reason that I can only assume was accidental (if she is toying with me somehow, I have to give her far more credit than I do), she initiated a “Direct IM” session, which flashed her IP address. Of all the things she could have flashed, this would have been near the bottom of my list, but it did give me some valuable information. I punched it into a geolocation service:

ORLAND PARK, IL

H…uh.

I’m not prepared to suggest she was still living with her parents. Living in an apartment, alone, maybe, but this took me by surprise. Still, could this be a coincidence? When we found the original MySpace profile, the one that hadn’t been logged into for ages, Lucy suggested Kelly made it herself. The timing of the last login matched the approximate time Kelly announced they were “still together.” But this new profile — could this be fake, too, but with a little more effort put into it? It’s sparse, but if Kelly has decided to go the route of “retconning” to add some new quirks to her fake future husband, an equally fake MySpace profile would go a long way… The only reason I find it hard to believe, other than the insanity, is that she doesn’t even have her own MySpace profile. Unless she’s just that good…

At the very least, I know she was lying about the house purchase. I’m not sure what to make of the rest of it. Unless she’s a mega-stalker, putting even my best work to shame, I can’t accept this as a coincidence. Would she really end up living in the same town as this guy, when there are places cheaper and closer (to her school) to live, for any other reason than that she’s dating him?

The past dishonesty prepared me for the worst, but now I don’t even know what to think. Lucy suggested the next time I talk to her, I really grill Kelly hard about the wedding plans. I can’t think of another strategy, but when I’ve made the effort in the past she usually just changes the subject. Where in the past that would have led me to assume she’s bullshitting me, now I can’t help wondering if maybe there’s a little more to it. Upset because he won’t commit to a date? Angry because maybe they settled on a date but he won’t help with the arrangements? I had a lot of circumstantial evidence that could just as easily point to honesty, if I’d just look at it that way. Then again, if she didn’t have such a lengthy history of big, pointless lies (including the house!), I’d take it all at face value.

If anybody has any advice on how to deal with this situation (even if it’s just “shut up, she’s not even lying, you retard”), I’m all ears.

Posted by Stan on September 11, 2007 10:26 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

April 22, 2007

Bulletin!

I’ve been on MySpace for almost a year at this point, and I’ve seen the following bulletin posted by at least four different people in just the past month or two:

You’re on my friends list. I’d like to know 25 things about you. Just hit reply. Thanks!

You’ll be surprised how much you didn’t know about your friends after this!

1. Ever punch someone in the face?

2. How old are you?

3. Are you single or taken?

4. Eat with your hands or utensils?

5. Do you dream at night?

6. Ever seen a corpse?

7. Have you ever wished someone dead?

8. Do You Like Bush, the president?

HERE COMES THE EQUALLY INTERESTING PART…

9. Whats your philosophy on life and death?

10. If you could do anything with me, and have no one know, what would it be?

11. Do you trust the police?

12. Do you like country music?

13. What is your fondest memory of me?

14. If you could change anything about yourself what would it be?

15. Would you date me?

16. What do you wear to sleep?

17. Have you ever peed in a pool?

18. Would you hide evidence for me if I asked you to?

19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?

20. What is your favorite thing about me?

21. Do you think I’m attractive?

22. What’s your favorite color?

23. If you could bring back anyone that has passed, who would it be?

24. Tell me one interesting/odd fact about you?

25. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

The first couple of times I saw this, it seemed pretty innocuous. I didn’t read through all the questions, and I actually think some of the early questions could lead to a little more insightful rambling than your average online survey. I’d start filling it out, and then I’d get to the later questions and get tripped up.

15. Would you date me?

How can you answer this honestly and elicit a positive response from the person who sent the questions? It’s a simple yes or no question, with enough of a gray area for you to say something retarded like, “Durr, I don’t know, maybe if the right cirucmstances presented themselves and blah-blah-blah, then I guess so, but it’d be complicated.” That seems like the only road to prevent awkward feelings.

If you answer yes, either out of honesty or politeness, the only way this will have a happy ending is if you are being honest, and if they feel the same way and both are unattached. If you say “yes” and you’re lying, but the sender is interested, that’s an unnecessarily rough situation to get into based on a MySpace bulletin. If you say “yes” and you’re being honest, but they don’t reciprocate the feelings, it’s just going to lead to awkwardness, especially if they’re seeing someone.

But what if you’re both into it and one, the other, or both are involved with someone else? What happens if you feel like this MySpace bulletin has caused the stars to align, and you can finally be with this person you’ve had a crush on since fifth grade, so you each dump your significant others to get together and…it’s the worst possible relationship in the history of time, and each resents the other for being forced into a corner based on something as stupid as a question on a MySpace bulletin?

Saying “no” is equally hazardous, but for the opposite reasons: whether you’re being sincere or not, telling someone “No, I’d never date you,” is offensive. I mean, how could it not be? It’d be way easier to go the half-assed “Gee, maybe if things were different, I don’t know,” staying wishy-washy enough for them to not do something crazy like dump their boyfriend of seven years for your middle-of-the-road non-answer. But then what if you say “no” and are lying, but you get a response like, “Phew, I’m so glad you said ‘no’ because I always thought you had a crush on me but you and me dating would be horrible!” And then you have to hide the hurt feelings and pretend to be friends with them, all the while resenting their casual dismissal of you as a lover and secretly plotting to break them up whenever they start dating.

13. What is your fondest memory of me?

18. Would you hide evidence for me if I asked you to?

19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?

20. What is your favorite thing about me?

21. Do you think I’m attractive?

These are all, to varying degrees, loaded questions that all seem to be fishing for the same thing: how interested are you in me and/or will we ever be “more than friends”? Give the wrong answer, and you risk ruining a friendship forever. Even a “funny” question like #18, depending on the answer, could speak volumes about how serious the respondant feels about the sender. It’s rough, but it reveals a bigger question that I’ve started to wonder every time I see this bulletin posted:

Why is this person posting this particular bulletin and searching for answers to these uncomfortable questions, buried near the end for people who aren’t smart enough to read ahead?

For this question, I have no answer. Sometimes I wonder if they’re looking for sincere answers from their opposite-sex friends, and if I had a crush on the girls who have sent it, maybe I’m missing the boat on something because I usually ignore it for fear of humiliating myself if I admit the crush, or humiliating myself if I don’t.

This is why online survey questions should never be more insightful than “Coke or Pepsi?”

Posted by Stan on April 22, 2007 4:36 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

October 29, 2006

The Accidental Hustler

After about 15 months of antisocial behavior (aside from a few quiet evenings with close friends), I decided it’s time to stop being a hermit long enough to remember why I became a hermit in the first place. I got an invitation to a Halloween party being thrown by a girl who I haven’t seen since high school and probably haven’t talked to since junior high or earlier.

Why? No clue. She found me on MySpace, and with nothing to back me up but a hunch and some strangely phrased messages, I get the impression she’s harboring — or, at least, harbored for longer than anybody should — a crush on me. I figured this would lead to awkwardness because she mentioned in several messages how much she talks about me with her boyfriend of seven years, and my initial thought was, “Gee, a party where I get to hang out with a girl I have no interest in and her jealous boyfriend? Where do I sign up?” But shit, it’s not like people are beating down my door to invite me to parties of any kind, so I thought I’d seize the rare opportunity to wet my beak in the social world yet again.

Turns out, the only people I’d know at the party is this girl and her hot best friend*. That was somewhat discouraging, even moreso when she subtly let slip that her immediate and a lot of her extended family would be populating the party. It was sounding less and less fun by the minute, but I was secretly pleased; it’d be easier to justify a life of solitude if my ever-decreasing forays into the world are rip-roaring wastes of time.

So I took a drive to where she lived, suspiciously close to the major technology company where I worked for several months last year and earlier this year, and as I rumbled down a street heading away from said tech firm, the road narrowed, the speed slowed, and the street dead-ended at a cross-street that reminded me way too much of Illinois’s Lake County, my least favorite county on Earth: cracked, narrow roads running through heavily wooded, faux-rural countryside. This was a little slice of Cook County for which I held immediate and extreme disdain, but I pressed on, following the confusing MapQuest directions to a side-street cul-de-sac that branched out into an even narrower road, barely the width of one car. Like the horror show of Lake County, there were no streetlights whatsoever, so I was fumbling around looking for the address in pitch black.

I finally found it, a gargantuan house with one of those U-shaped driveways that my dad always joked existed so that when realtors drove you up and told you the price, you could keep right on driving. The driveway was the only one loaded with cars, and the only one with a porchlight on, so I assumed this was the right place even though I couldn’t see the house number.

I went as The Dude from The Big Lebowski, because my wardrobe and current unkempt state allow for a reasonable and cheap facsimile. More specifically, I went as The Dude from the first scene in the movie, buying a quart of half-and-half from Ralphs in the middle of the night, wearing a bathrobe, a t-shirt, sweats, and sunglasses. I thought later, on the drive home, that I should have brought my checkbook and passed around 69-cent checks for everybody. It would have been somewhat appropriate because my “custom checks” are tie-dyed. But I didn’t think of this for the party. Instead, I fumbled up the driveway in a pair of sunglasses like an idiot. I had to take them off halfway up because I couldn’t see where the fuck I was going.

Even though I got to the party fashionably late, not many people were there. This was because, apparently, the hostess told everybody different times, between 7 and 9. The only people there at the time of note were her boyfriend of seven years…and the odd-girl-out they were very obviously and unsubtly trying to hook me up with. She was decently cute, but like most women, she had absolutely no interest in me, and I wasn’t about to flirt. Baby steps, cowboy. This is the first big, non-funeral social event I’ve attended in a very long time, so I had no intentions of running around flirting with every uninterested girl there. I didn’t plan to be there all night.

I didn’t want to mingle, either. I hadn’t seen the hostess or her hot friend — who didn’t show up for about 45 minutes — since high school, and it’s not like we were best friends back then, although the hostess seems to think we were. That’s neither here nor there; part of the reason I never go anywhere is that half my friends live out of state and the other half are married and use that as an excuse to avoid me. I thought maybe, since both of these girls were so excited they found me on MySpace, if their boyfriends weren’t jealous nutbars, maybe I’d have a new circle of friends to latch onto until I reveal myself to be the needy and neurotic mess I actually am and they suddenly find themselves too busy to “hang.” So I decided this party would be a good opportunity to get to know all of them and see how comfortable I was in this group.

The initial answer: not very. For one, the painful attempt to get me involved with that cute, uninterested girl would be annoying on a regular basis. If she’s not interested, stop trying to push us. I couldn’t care one way or the other. I wouldn’t turn her down, but I wouldn’t exactly see a lasting relationship coming from it. For another, I felt incredibly awkward and embarrassed around the hot girl. It’s kind of hard to get over the humiliation of stone-cold rejection, even if it did happen almost a decade ago. She really shut me down, and although my feelings toward her are completely different now, it’s impossible to not feel embarrassed or self-conscious. I feel like if I look at her too long or if I give her any more attention than I give anyone else, everyone will start thinking I still have the hots for her.

Their boyfriends were surprisingly cool, though. Well, actually, the hot girl’s boyfriend was kind of a douche to me, maybe because he knows The History and wants me dead. The hostess’s boyfriend was really nice, though. We didn’t have too much in common, but he spent the whole time trying to make me feel comfortable, so in return I pretended to be really interested in all his gearhead stories. Okay, I actually was interested in all his gearhead stories, but I barely understood what he was talking about, and I didn’t want to keep stopping him with questions like, “How much does it cost to rebuild the engine on a 10-year-old Blazer?” or “What’s an oil change?”

The only problems came when they would leave. The hostess would go off to mingle, the boyfriend would go off to “talk shop” with the hot girl’s ice-cold boyfriend (also a mechanic), and I’d be left pretty much alone. But, of course, the pool table had been beckoning me all night. Little known StanFact™: during my first semester of college, I hated life in rural Iowa and the college in particular so much that me and my friend Amanda would go to the commons and play pool together for 6-8 hours a day. Sometimes more. Every day. For more than three months. I wouldn’t exactly go pro, but I got good. Real good.

Then I left and never played again, aside from casual games where I’d be ruined by having to deal with those nonstandard baby tables or some other bizarre restriction. But here at this house was a regulation size table in pretty good condition, just sitting there unplayed. When the boyfriend suggested we play a game, I jumped all over it. The hostess put the kibosh on it, fearing that too many guests would show up and we’d end up accidentally cracking someone’s ribs with the cues. However, about an hour after that, when I was left pretty much alone to hit on the cute uninterested girl, an older gentlemen busted out the equipment and racked a game to play with the hostess’s next-door neighbor, a short, middle-aged single woman.

I watched them play for a bit and, realizing I was getting nowhere with my half-hearted flirting, I said I’d play whoever won. They were both agreeable enough. The older gentleman, who was pretty good, seemed to get frustrated by the total incompetence of the neighbor. I think he wanted more of a challenge and thought I’d bring it.

Then he lost. It was one of those stupid things where he cleared the table and then scratched on the eight ball. He seemed a little pissed and had no interest in playing me, under the guise of being a gracious winner. So it was me and the incompetent neighbor. Eh, I thought. Pool is pool. Maybe I’d crush her and she’d leave me alone. I had a pretty good run, nailing several before I just had no options but to clear out a small cluster. When her turn came, she just kinda rested the cue practically on top of her thumb and shoved it forward, with no control over the direction, speed, or english. I’m not exactly Mike “The Mouth” Sigel, but I was embarrassed just watching her. She was having fun, though. I tried to be encouraging, but it was kinda rough. She was very giggly and good-natured about her lack of ability.

After I crushed her for two games, we decided to play a third (nobody else was interested). This time, after her fumbling slaps at the ball, I decided to suggest a better technique for holding the cue. I gave her some pointers, and she looked baffled. “Show me,” she said. So I demonstrated with my cue. She watched, making exaggerated attempts at looking but really seeming like she wasn’t getting it. I sighed and came over behind her, took her hand, placed it on the cue, and as soon as she arched up, essentially sticking her ass into my crotch, I realized I had walked into something really, really moronic. Where are old, world-weary pool-playing men when you need them? Or, more importantly, why couldn’t Amanda have stuck her various sexy parts into my crotch so many years ago?

I gulped and felt a bit flushed, moreso when I felt an involuntary stirring in Li’l Stan™. But I pressed on, showing her how to hold the cue like a normal person. She glanced back at me, grinning skeletally. “I’ll give it a try,” she breathed. This could not be going worse.

I backed up as quickly as possible to give her room to take the shot. She did, like a total dunce, then turned toward me, arms outstretched like she wanted to hug me. She still had that goofy grin on her face, and she shook her head wildly. “I’m just not getting it.”

I suddenly felt like Jack Tripper during one of those moments when Lana Shields would come around and make some kind of really awkward plumbing-related sex puns. “You’re doing fine,” I muttered, trying to keep my distance. She could tell, and for whatever reason she didn’t want me to slip away. But slip away I did, inching closer to the pseudo-bar near the pool table, where there were more than enough witnesses for her to be cool — I hoped.

It didn’t stop her. She got very touchy-feely after that, always grabbing my shoulders, my wrist, my hand, winking periodically. As a result, I was playing even worse than a pool player who once was kinda decent but hasn’t played for six years. This made a game that could have been ended with a couple of simple runs stretch out way longer than it should have. Worse, it was loaded with stolen glances and awkward smiles and assorted lovey-dovey crap that, really, isn’t even okay with a woman who isn’t double my age.

Finally, it was down to me and the eight, and I had a pretty clear shot. There were a couple of stripes in my way, but if I got the right angle I could have nailed it. But just as I was about to ram the cue forward, motion caught my eye: the neighbor slid her hands up her torso, trying in vain to shove her breasts up even further than her push-up bra would allow. I jumped the cue ball, right the fuck over the eight ball, and right into the corner pocket, losing the game.

“Good game,” I said quietly, and she came over and gazed into my eyes and shook my hand for way longer than she should have, talking about how much fun she had had and smiling and just utterly thrilled to be somewhere near a swarthy idiot half her age who wasn’t “taken.” I told her I’d play another game but I was getting hungry, at which point I ran upstairs to the kitchen and found the hostess, the hot girl, and their boyfriends. A few minutes later, the neighbor came up and — looking over her shoulder at me much of the time — told the hostess’s mom what a wonderful time she had had and how sorry she was to leave so soon. She still seemed very happy and giggly, so I thought maybe I had made more of the situation than necessary.

Then she winked at me. Not for the first time that night, but it was very obvious and definite, and she turned around and sashayed away. Shortly after, my dog allergies (the hostess has two) started to ruin my life, so I decided to make some polite excuses and leave. In addition to not having much fun to begin with, the strain of having my favorite game ruined by awkward, MILF-y flirtations made me want to get as far away from this house as possible.

I went out into the darkness. and felt my way through the cars until I got the street, where mine was parked. As I sat there and waited for it to warm up, I noticed a light on in the upstairs of the house next door. I thought for a long, pathetically serious moment about the pros and cons of me stepping out of the car and knocking on the neighbor’s door. Because it’s not like she was hideously unattractive; she was just uncomfortably old, and I wouldn’t want to be accused of being “age-ist” or some other equally made up and stupid term.

I continued to think long after the engine was warm and the vents had been blowing hot hair long enough to make me a little sweaty. I cut the engine, and sat there for a couple of seconds in silence, eyes fixed on that lit window, one hand on the door handle. After an indeterminate amount of time (probably not more than 10 seconds, but I don’t have a clock in my car and time is funny when nobody’s keeping it), the light in that window went out. I started the car again, did a 10-point turn around the tiny road, and left this odd little neighborhood.

*This goes into my hilariously misogynistic “hot-girl/ugly-girl” dynamics theory, which states that when two girls become best friends, for whatever reason, it’s always a hot girl paired up with the ugly girl. And, invariably, a dorky and unattractive nerd like me will fall for the hot girl and make pathetic attempts to woo her, which will be ignored by the hot girl but embraced by the ugly girl, who will either witness with her own eyes or hear secondhand the sadness of my existence. I shit you not, in high school this happened to me every time I got a crush on an attractive girl. So in this case, the girl who found me on MySpace is the “ugly girl” of the scenario, and I had a crush on her hot best friend for, like, three years between seventh grade and freshman year of high school. [Back]

Posted by Stan on October 29, 2006 4:40 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

August 10, 2006

I’ve Made a Huge Mistake

It’s been a pleasant month, interning for The Manager, reading some of the worst screenplays in the history of mankind for no money. For me, it’s actually kind of nice. You learn similar things from bad screenplays that you do from bad movies. It’s nice to read a script and say, “Jeez, this was bad — but why, and do I have the same problems in one of my screenplays?” Even better, it makes me say, “Good God, this is a piece of shit — I can do better.”

This happened to me recently; reading an awful adventure script, I said, “Fuck, I can do this better,” so I dusted off an extremely old and awful script I wrote, gutted it, and rewrote it from top to bottom. I sent it to my friend Mark — the guy who told me about The Manager in the first place — who loved it. He said it “could be an Adult Swim series,” which insulted me but it was meant as a high compliment. It’s nice when something inspires me to do better, even if it’s “Adult Swim series” better. What would happen if the flow of bad-to-slightly-above-mediocre scripts dissipated?

This week, I almost found out.

Exactly one week ago, The Manager e-mailed me a new batch of scripts, one of which was — to my surprise — co-authored by The Manager himself. At first I wondered if this was a conflict of interest; would he really expect that I’d give a totally honest response to the guy who might very well make or break my career? Maybe he would, but I knew if I hated it I’d never tell him that. I’d give the feedback a sugar-coating so thick it would even repulse Krispy Kreme.

I read it almost immediately, and I didn’t like it very much. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever sent me — not by a long shot — but it had a lot of problems. Was it that it was bad, or was it not just my cup of tea? I decided it was a combination; the poor execution of what could have been a decent story really sunk it, writing-wise. Even if it was well-told, I’d be able to respect the writing without actually enjoying the script. Considering it’s about dance, there’s no way I’d enjoy it. I hate watching dancers in general, I especially hate hip-hop dancing, and there are few things less exciting than reading a bunch of pages that say, “He wows them with his great dancing.”

I told Mark that The Manager had sent me his own script, and over the weekend he asked how it was. I wrote him back, bluntly and honestly, “The Manager’s script sucked.” That’s an actual quote from my e-mail, and I can’t say it gets more direct than that. I went into details, explaining my specific issues with it, but that was how I opened the paragraph and that was my bottom line. I actually felt I had my work cut out for me trying to find something to latch onto to improve it. If I were being completely honest, I’d say to fly out a safe distance and nuke the script from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

I spent the weekend thinking about the script, wondering about its quality. Eventually I settled back on the characters, who I even admitted in my e-mail to Mark were interesting. They just weren’t developed as well as they could have been, and they suffered from typical commercial-character illogic that frustrated me. “This person, as established, wouldn’t react like this.” I felt I had some stuff to work with approaching it from that angle, so on Sunday night I decided I’d read another of the scripts he’d sent. I hoped it’d be worse (and holy shit was it ever) to soften the blow of feedback that tried to be positive but still didn’t work around the fact that it needs a lot of work, then I’d send the coverage for both on Monday.

There’s another layer to this story. Shortly after sending the scripts last week, The Manager sent another in an “urgent” e-mail, saying there’d be an opportunity to make money to cover a script. I’m hard up for cash, so I did it first thing Friday morning. I called The Manager, who was surprised at my promptness; he asked me to e-mail my address so he could cut a check and sent it out. He called back a few hours later and left a VoiceMail suggesting I e-mail him my bank account number so he could direct-deposit it. What the fuck? I sent him my PayPal address and figured if he didn’t like that, I’d be done with him. Until this setback, I had been very close to trusting him. My investigative work (i.e., calling production companies) was overwhelmingly positive. He’s as legit as somebody just starting out can be, so I was happy to hear that. But this worried me, and I sent a semi-annoyed, semi-paranoid diatribe about this to Mark.

Monday rolled around, and I awakened to an e-mail from Mark in my inbox:

Subject: I screwed up…

Uhh…okay? I opened it up to see what that was all about and found a rude awakening: Mark had written a reply to my e-mail in which he wrote some of the following:

• He was sorry but not surprised to hear The Manager’s script wasn’t very good.
• I should try trusting The Manager but if I have a problem, maybe I should set up a dummy savings account for him to deposit cash, then transfer it immediately to my real account.

Unfortunately, instead of sending this reply to me, he had accidentally sent it to The Manager. He didn’t even realize his mistake until receiving a response from The Manager asking him to call, with Mark’s original e-mail pasted below it. Mark asked for advice on how to spin it so he came out well. Him?! What about me?!

There was no way this could end well, I thought. At first I was terrified that maybe Mark had my original e-mail in his response. Had this been the case, damage control and spin doctoring would have been impossible. It’s very difficult to spin “Your script sucks,” stated so plainly. I sent a response to Mark with a few choice suggestions for spin, but I told him I couldn’t do anything without knowing exactly what he had written to “me” — he needed to forward me his message so I could see what he wrote, how he had phrased it, et cetera, to construct a plausible deniability scenario.

I dismissed the idea that my original e-mail had been in his response — if he had done that, he would have had to actively work hard to accidentally send it to The Manager. I figured he wrote a new message, with no original at the bottom, and just sent it to the wrong person. Otherwise, he would have realized his mistake right off the bat. Relieved by that, I suggested that Mark tell The Manager that he was just abbreviating things. In my coverage, I intended to state that it wasn’t the best thing since sliced bread, but certainly not terrible. Mark should just say he was exaggerating to paraphrase; saying “I’m not surprised his script wasn’t very good” is plainer than “I’m not surprised his script has a few bright spots, some interesting characters, but needs a lot of story work.” Aside from my “sucks” comment, this is close to the truth.

As for the banking stuff — fuck, he could pin that on me all he wanted to. I have no problem calling the man and saying to his face that I am immediately distrustful of a guy who’s asking me to give him banking information. Of course, by that time he’d gotten back to me to say PayPal was fine, so I was sort of embarrassed for even flying off the handle, but I figured that could be explained away easily enough.

Once I sent this off to Mark, I started immediately on the coverage for both of the scripts I’d read. I hoped that, at least, would buy some goodwill. I was actually more honest than I probably would have been otherwise, since I needed to go in-depth on its problems to justify Mark’s phrasing. I hoped he at least appreciated the honesty; secondly, I hoped he appreciated the fact that the other script I read was a total dog of a piece of shit*, thus brightening any negative impressions on his own script. As I went back over the script to write the synopsis, I felt kind of guilty about even saying it “sucks” to begin with. It really wasn’t all that bad — all the character and story beats are there; they just need to be stronger.

Shortly after I sent this coverage to him, I got a text message. This was a first from The Manager. “Hi. Did you read my script? If so, what r your thoughts”

Clearly he hadn’t received my coverage, but I knew he had received Mark’s reply to me. Either he didn’t know Mark had written it to me (perhaps he had sent his script to several readers?), or he was trying to set some kind of trap. Well, two can play at that game. I’d already sent the coverage, so there wasn’t exactly an elaborate series of lies to wriggle out of (at least, not yet…), so I wrote back honestly, “Sent coverage 1hr ago. Good characters, story needs work.”

Two minutes later: “thanks. ya, i read the e-mail mark sent you.”

The trap is sprung! Except, wait, what? I had no idea what he was getting at. Was he saying, “This jibes with what Mark wrote you”? Was he saying, “Ha-HA! I’ve caught you in a rare instance of truth-telling. You can’t pull anything over on me”? I had no idea, and without Mark’s e-mail to make sure our stories were straight, I did the only thing I could think of: I completely ignored it. I shut off my cell phone for the rest of the day, didn’t read that last script The Manager had sent me (if I was going to be “fired” over this, why bother?), checked my e-mail obsessively with the hope Mark would get back to me…

More than 12 hours later, Mark finally got back to me, not with a forwarded message but with a new e-mail subjected “Sigh of relief.” He explained he had had a long phone conversation with The Manager in which he explained away everything, convinced The Manager that he had phrased the comment about the script in his own words, and now The Manager was only interested in moving forward. He told Mark, “All is forgiven,” his way of saying things are okay but Mark is still a dick, and he liked both of our work enough to keep us on. However, I felt like this resolved things for Mark but not for me. I figured if The Manager didn’t get back to me by morning, I’d send him a note explaining my side of the story.

I didn’t hear from him, so I decided to read that final script as yet another peace offering. I also attached a note that was an elaborate series of lies — I didn’t get his text message until late the night before, by that time I already had explanatory e-mails from Mark (otherwise I wouldn’t have known what The Manager was talking about) that also said he resolved it, but I figured I should explain that I never said anything negative and I didn’t know where Mark was getting that. I did own up to the banking paranoia and explained I had just flown off the handle a bit and Mark was trying to calm me down, but by that time I was already calm because PayPal was fine.

The next morning, I had two scripts waiting for me in my inbox, along with a note: “No worries. I could have been a lot angrier than I was.” Again, his way of saying things are okay but I’m a dick. I’ll take it; I deserve it. My big regret is that I doubt I’ll ever see that money for the coverage, but things worked out all right for now. As Mark said initially, hopefully the worst thing that’ll happen is The Manager will realize we know each other (we’d kept that a secret because we both planned to send The Manager our scripts and thought it would be mutually beneficial if we were sent copies of each others’ work to cover). Mark explained that away by saying he assumed The Manager knew we knew each other.

Mark and I also made a pact: in the future, on top of triple-checking who we’re sending e-mails to (something I always do anyway), if we have any gripes about The Manager in particular, we’ll call each other. That way, if we accidentally call The Manager (doubtful), we’ll at least know right away and not say anything stupid. We decided we can still gripe all we want about the quality of the scripts we’ve both read, so long as they aren’t written by The Manager.

The main thing that disappoints me about this incident is that I feel like now The Manager has something to hold over our heads, and he’ll use it to fuck us around. “Hey man, I didn’t fire you and I could have, so you’ll clean my pool.” But hey, we’re struggling and we’re foolishly adamant about being 2000 miles away from where we need to be to succeed in our chosen industry. I guess we deserve to get fucked around.

*The blandest of bland romantic comedies, loaded with dumb clichés and what Roger Ebert aptly calls the Idiot Plot (i.e., the characters have to become total idiots for the machinations of the plot to work; if anybody was reasonably intelligent, the story would end on page five) with this painful running gag about “nuts” being synonymous with “legumes,” which might have been funny and in-character (the main characters are portrayed as idiots) if not for the fact that a supposedly intelligent surgeon explains that he’s allergic to legumes, which he says are nuts. Here’s the thing: they’re not, with the exception of the peanut. And I fucking hate scripts that make me look shit up in the fucking dictionary to make sure I’m right because they were too lazy to do the research. How hard is it to make sure that “legume” actually means the same thing as “nuts”? The “you got kicked in the legumes” stuff just falls flat because every time the author mentions it, he keeps reminding me that he’s as borderline retarded as his characters. This culminates in the characters scraping walnut shavings into the surgeon’s salad, provoking an allergic reaction.

Here’s how to fix this fucking joke and actually make it laugh-out-loud funny (at least, I laughed out loud when I thought of it, and I usually don’t find anything I say, do, or think very funny): the characters are fucking idiots, right? So the surgeon says, “I’m allergic to legumes.” He doesn’t say, “They’re nuts.” The idiots pretend they know what it means. Soon as he walks away: “What the fuck does that mean?” Retard debate on the definition, resulting in them agreeing it means “nuts.” It means all those stupid “kicked in the legumes”-type nut jokes could work because it’s showing how fucking stupid the characters are. It still peaks with them coming up with this elaborate, supposedly clever plan to scrape walnut into the guys salad, except this time — nothing happens. No reaction, and they can’t figure out why. I’d laugh, especially if they change the plan to something really simple like trying to kick the shit out of him (and failing at that, too). [Back]

Posted by Stan on August 10, 2006 11:41 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

June 6, 2006

“I Have to Stand in a Certain Spot in My Kitchen or It Cuts Out…”

So I’ve got this piece of shit of a cell phone that I bought a few years ago to replace my previous piece of shit of a cell phone. The old phone, after about two months, stopped holding a charge. The battery was fucked or something. It’d last me maybe six hours, so I’d have to keep it off almost all the time because I like to think I only carry my cell phone for vital emergency purposes. But I kept missing important phone calls. This is back when I used to get important phone calls.

So I got a new phone and had an awkward and semi-hilarious run-in with a guy I hadn’t really spoken to since junior high, but that’s another story. This new phone worked pretty well for awhile. It had better reception indoors, the capability of playing MP3s as ringtones (allowing me to realize my dream of having Europe’s “The Final Countdown” as a ringtone), good volume, and it was a flip-phone which meant I wasn’t scratching up the screen all the time by shoving it into a pocket full of keys, loose change, pens, etc.

It had one weird problem, though: once in a great while, I’d pick it up to check my missed calls and find, instead of “2 missed calls” or “1 new message” or whatever, there’d just be a timestamp. An old, old timestamp. Like, say, I’d get out of class at 5:30, and I’d check my phone for the first time since entering class at 1:30, and it’d say, “2:47.” It was frozen. I’d flip open the phone, but the screen wouldn’t illuminate. It couldn’t be turned off; I could only pop the battery out and then back in. Seemed like an easy enough solution to a fairly pointless problem that, really, wouldn’t happen any more than once every two or three months.

But it’s started getting more frequent, which has led me to this semi-pointless rant. Because, honestly, aside from potential jobs calling, I’ve had no use for my phone over the past several months. I usually don’t even have it with me, or if I do I have it off, or if I leave it on it’s sitting in my car or on my desk, and I’m shocked, baffled, and on occasion horrified when “The Final Countdown” blares. I have an instinctive reaction like, “I hate you, you damn phone, for being tethered to me and not allowing me to be free of communication with everybody I know.” Because, the fact of the matter is, I dislike most of the people I know. Fortunately, very few of them ever call me.

I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense to resent the cell phone even though I do, indeed, usually keep it at least somewhere near me. Somewhere that I’ll hear its desperate blooping that I’ve missed a call within a short while, so if it is a job — and let’s face it, at this point I’d have a better chance of being called by the Queen of England than getting a job callback — I can get back to them in fewer than six weeks. Because, yes, I do feel I need it for incoming important calls and outgoing emergency calls; I just resent the incoming calls that aren’t important. Not to split hairs or anything…

So Saturday, while I was nowhere to be found, I got a call from Lucy. She asked me to call her back; I didn’t. She called me yesterday and left me a message chiding me for not returning her call, but she was in a suspiciously gleeful mood because of some stupid promotion at Lowe’s that she’s all excited about. She told me she’d find out for sure if she got the promotion tomorrow, meaning today, and hopefully I’d actually answer when she called. I called her back and left a sarcastic message about how, for a change, I might actually keep my phone with me so that I can pick up when she calls…

Around seven this evening, when I realized she hadn’t called, I — for the first time today — looked down at my phone: “2:17 p.m.,” it read. And of course, when I popped the battery out and back in and turned the phone back on, I had a message waiting. Motherfucker.

Posted by Stan on June 6, 2006 9:24 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (2)

February 28, 2006

Lucy’s Roommates

I mentioned briefly several months ago that Lucy had some trouble with her new roommate. I thought, since I can’t think of anything else to write about and I had promised somebody at one point that I would tell the tale, I’ll go ahead and share the details now.

First things first: Lucy hated her previous roommate. Here was a girl she’d discovered by answering an ad, they teamed up, she (ever the poor judge of character) thought she’d be set with a super-cool roommate for the next year or more. One month after she moved into the apartment, her roommate started dating some “artist” (I use quotations because, after seeing a couple of samples, I can’t bend the definition of the word artist to include him) and quickly became infatuated. Artist was over all the time, and as a result the harmony of the apartment was destroyed: he was big on Eastern culture, so they’d constantly be preparing stank-ass Indian food or doing tai chi on the living room floor.

Did I mention Artist was also a big-time Iowa City pot dealer? So since, after a couple of months, he was basically living in the apartment, he started bringing over bricks — literally, bricks of marijuana — and while he wouldn’t deal directly in the apartment, they’d smoke it on a regular basis. And Lucy, who strangely wanted no part in being arrested for possession with intent to sell roughly 400 pounds of marijuana, didn’t quite know what to do.

She had been seeing a fellow Lowe’s employee for several months, and she decided to take the next logical step: staying over so much that before he realized it, they were living together. She’d go back to her own apartment once in awhile, usually to pick up things she needed, but often just to say, “Hi, I still exist, don’t touch my stuff.” She’d try to be in and out as quickly as she could, because she’s apparently become as paranoid as I am and as such believed that if she stayed there for more than five minutes, the cops would bust in and she’d be implicated.*

But then came a major lapse. She let four months go by. Four months, no shit. Just disappeared. Never called the roommate, never stopped by — nothing. By the end of the four months, the end of Lucy’s lease was approaching. She had agreed to simply move in with her boyfriend, Bob, since they were getting along quite well together and it, therefore, would be a perfect arrangement.

Shortly after they made this agreement, her friend Krissy announced that she desperately needed a roommate, and would Lucy please please please move in with her? Lucy reluctantly agreed, with one condition: they’d move into one of the available apartments in Bob’s building. Krissy agreed, and they were on their way to a new lease.

So back to the four-month lapse in visiting her old apartment. When she stopped by to take stock of what, exactly, would be required to move all her shit out, she came to a startling realization: roughly half of her shit was gone, Artist was now using her bedroom as his “space” with what remained of Lucy’s shit shoved haphazardly against the wall, and what hadn’t outright disappeared or wasn’t in boxes shoved on the wall was being used by Roommate and Artist as if they owned it.

Personally, I think this is horribly invasive, but not totally unreasonable. They had no reason to think she was coming back, so in their minds there was no harm in — for example — using her pots and pans, even though they never cleaned them so there was all this disgusting, crusted shit all over sides and bottom. I would never do that, but if I felt in any way compelled, I would at least call the person and ask if it’s cool. If they said “no, I’m coming in a few weeks for that shit,” I’d respect that. If they didn’t care, I’d do whatever the hell I wanted.

Which brings me to the even bigger disrespect: the stuff that Lucy didn’t find? They sold it to Goodwill. A whole lot of her stuff — art supplies that Artist hadn’t glommed onto, clothes (including the purple fur coat I told her to buy as a joke that had since become the cornerstone of her fashion), small pieces of furniture. Some stuff they just threw out, including a whole bunch of pictures Lucy had taken since she’d been out in Iowa, but it seems like they sold whatever they thought they couldn’t use that could make them a few bucks.

Lucy didn’t know this at first. She crept through the empty apartment, searching for the stuff — perhaps, for example, her clothes had somehow made it into Roommate’s rotation — and finding nothing. Anywhere. She went to the storage unit in the building’s basement and didn’t find any of the missing stuff — in fact, she found more missing stuff, since a lot of what she had put down there when they had initially moved in was now gone.

Finally, she called Roommate…whose cell phone had been disconnected. So she wrote a rather impolite, profanity-laced note to Roommate and left it on the TV screen. Roommate called her that night, faux-apologetically, and told her about selling the stuff to Goodwill because they “didn’t think she was coming back.” I thought that was somewhat reasonable, since they needed to move out within a week and they couldn’t just leave a room full of stuff — although, again, I would have at least called before selling somebody else’s possessions — but here’s when it becomes unreasonable: after Roommate’s apology and explanation, Lucy announced, “I’m coming over to get the rest of my stuff tomorrow. I don’t want to see you or Artist there.” Roommate agreed.

Since Roommate had said they’d only sold the stuff to Goodwill a day or two earlier, she and Bob went down to see if they could buy her stuff back. Some of it was too expensive — even after explaining to the typically discompassionate clerks that the stuff had been stolen and sold — but they reclaimed some of it. The purple fur coat was long gone, unfortunately. I spent most of the holiday season trying to track down another one that was within my gift price range; no luck.

After the bad experience at the Goodwill Store, Lucy changed her mind; she decided to go to the apartment that evening, whether Roommate and Artist were there or not, just so she could get it over with. When she arrived, she saw Artist and Roommate loading his pickup truck — with more of Lucy’s shit. This didn’t end well. Caught, they relented and gave Lucy everything she could cram into her smallish car, with the agreement that they would not touch any of her stuff until they could come back later with Bob’s pickup.

As insurance, Lucy called a couple of neighbors who lived in the building and told them to watch Roommate and Artist like hawks; they agreed to do that.

Here’s where I, briefly, enter the picture. A few days after this, they still hadn’t come back with the pickup. Rather than doing that immediately, they were waiting for a few concurrent days off to rent a U-Haul, so they could be sure they’d pick everything up in one trip, then drive it straight to the new apartment. I didn’t exactly want to drive 250 miles to help her move, but I hadn’t seen Lucy since I’d come back from California, and she doesn’t usually have many days off (not in a row, anyway). Plus, it’d only be for one day, followed by four days of fun!

Well, the day I came in, I got to see the carnage that used to be an apartment for myself. Actually, when she and I pulled into (Bob had a class to attend, but he would be around that afternoon) the parking lot, we noticed something strange: with the exception of her bed, all the furniture (i.e., living room and kitchen stuff) had been put outside, in front of their apartment door. Fortunately, it hadn’t rained at all (though it was supposed to the following day), so nothing was damaged. It was just an odd sight, to see furniture sitting out on a tiny strip of grass in front of the sidewalk in front of the door. They didn’t even put it on the sidewalk — I assume so that passersby could still walk — even though there was an awning over it that would have protected it from the rain. Whatever, at least everything that was supposed to be there was there.

The inside looked like a war zone, minus the corpses. The place was grimy, walls full of dirt and (I assume) food-related muck. Same with the carpeting, which was stained to hell (cigarette burned, too). Roommate and Artist hadn’t finished moving their stuff out, so there was shit strewn all over the place. The worst was the kitchen, which not only had Lucy’s food-encrusted pots — they had used them (I assume) the night before, and there were remnants of food floating in the water (they had filled them in a pathetic attempt to soak the scuzz). The less said about the refrigerator, the better.

We mostly avoided the living room and kitchen and concentrated on the bedroom, where most of her stuff was. It didn’t take long to move all her shit out, and we did a once-over of the living room to make sure they weren’t trying to take any of Lucy’s shit. We decided to leave the pots — they were pretty much useless anyway. And that was pretty much the end of the Roommate/Artist debacle, as far as I know.

We moved all her shit into the new apartment, and later that night I met Krissy and her boyfriend, as they started hauling stuff into the apartment. At the time, because I was bored and fairly depressed (for unrelated reasons, though the condition of her previous apartment was cause for dismay), Lucy set me up on her couch with some kind of electric massaging mattress. I’m not exaggerating when I call this the greatest invention of all time. So I spent a few hours on that, reading, while she arranged all the stuff she had moved in thus far.

In the evening, she got a call from Krissy, saying they were approaching with the U-Haul, which they had picked up earlier so she could move her stuff. After she got the call, she announced, “I have to go downstairs and get Krissy. Oh, and don’t help them move anything.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“For one thing, you don’t even know her — you shouldn’t have to,” Lucy said. “But mainly, I can’t stand this guy she’s with.” Lucy: class act.

So I got massaged for three hours while reading a book and, for the most part, ignoring Krissy and her boyfriend. Which is why it came to a surprise when they, loudly and hilariously, broke up with each other halfway through the moving process, after which he agreed to help her finish moving, but then he was “fucking out!”

A few hours after he was gone and they were done with the move-in, I started to have my doubts about Krissy as a decent roommate. We all sat down to watch Chinatown (incidentally, you don’t want to watch Chinatown with people who have short attention spans; lesson learned), and about an hour into it, she started pissing and moaning about how she had to call him. Lucy calmed her down, reminded her of what a failure he is, wouldn’t let her call him, et cetera. So Krissy didn’t call him…

…for 20 minutes, at which point she excused herself from the awesome conclusion of the movie, closed the door to her new bedroom, and called the boyfriend. They talked out all their problems, and he agreed to come over the next day to help them arrange the furniture.

What’s sad about this story, other than everything about it? This happened once a goddamn week. I mean, really, have some dignity. But according to Lucy, that was the whole problem: she needed to feel like he wanted her, so she’d pick fights so he’d dump her, then she’d make him beg for her to come back. And yes, even though she called him, he did all the begging. How fucked up is that?

Hearing all that made me uncomfortable, but what do I care? Lucy knew what she was getting into, so even though I knew I’d be hearing about it for the next year, I didn’t have much sympathy for her.

One week later: “Krissy dumped her boyfriend again.”

The week after that: “Krissy decided to just stop going to her job. Didn’t give notice or quit or get fired — she’s just sitting around the apartment.” Huh…that was a strange deviation from the planet.

Two weeks after that: “I don’t think Krissy’s going to pay any rent or anything. She doesn’t have any money, and she says her parents are tired of her bailing out.”

One week later: “Krissy disappeared. I think she went to her parents’ house. She sent me a message on MySpace apologizing and saying it’s no big deal — I can just pay half of everything and explain that she left. Is she fucking insane? You can’t do that!” No shit, Lucy. No shit.

The week after that: “Apparently there’s still a warrant out for her arrest. She never showed up to court.” Perhaps I should explain: I don’t know how long ago, Krissy got a series of reckless driving tickets, followed by a suspension of her license, followed by an actual forced court appearance (e.g., not like a normal speeding ticket or something where if you don’t show up, you’re guilty), followed by her not showing up, followed by Johnson County issuing an arrest warrant, followed by her begging them to give her another court date, followed by her not showing up for that court date, followed by the arrest not exactly going away…for months and months and months. Arresting daddy’s-girls who can’t figure out how not to speed isn’t high on the Johnson County Sheriff Department’s to-do list (“fishing on duty” ranks higher), but the warrant still loomed over her head. She didn’t do anything about it, though. This was back in September, and I still don’t think she’s done a thing about it. Maybe she drives more carefully, but that’s it.

Anyway, Lucy continued: “And I talked to her old roommate. He says she still owes him $1200 in back rent and utilities. I’m not gonna get anything — she’s trying to fuck me!”

It’s so weird. On the one hand, Roommate was doing some weird-ass shit that ran Lucy off, and then she was basically stealing and selling her stuff. In the meantime, one of Lucy’s closest friends begged her to rent with her, then disappeared before she had to pay any rent with a half-assed apology and really no rationale for her behavior. She just decided one day that she didn’t want to work and decided one day that she didn’t want an apartment. And fucked Lucy way harder and way longer — with worse repercussions — than Roommate or Artist could have dreamed. I mean, at least they paid rent. With drug money, but still — it got paid, right?

In the end, the issue got resolved. Her lease had some kind of clause where she could opt-out after three months, pay a pretty huge penalty, but it wouldn’t reflect badly on her credit and she could just give up the apartment she couldn’t afford. The problem, of course, was paying the other half of the rent/utilities and paying for the penalty. She talked her parents into fronting the money for the penalty charge, and she could just barely afford the rest of it on her salary, if she gave up perks like, um…food and stuff. But Bob was happy to provide that.

That’s the end of the story as I know it. Lucy said she tried to contact the police down in North Carolina (where she assumes Krissy fled to), but that was the last I heard of it, so I assume it either didn’t go well or she got the money back quietly and peaceably. I don’t dare bring it up, for fear of a six-hour tirade that will numb both my brain and my butt. But seriously…I’d say she’s had a run of bad luck, but we all know she’s just a terrible judge of character.

*I don’t know much about cops or police work, but for some reason I’m under the impression that if he got busted with that much weed, the investigation would invariably lead to Lucy, being that her shit occupied one full room in the apartment. I’m sure she could try to deny her way out of it, and they might let her go, but since she knew about it and refused to do anything, wouldn’t that make her an accessory of some sort? [Back]

Posted by Stan on February 28, 2006 11:21 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Weird Dream

So I’m down in the Loop, only it’s not really the Loop — it’s some kind of weird, ethereal place. Let me describe it this way: a few years ago I spent a great deal of time prepping a conspiracy thriller, and in one of the early drafts the protagonist discovers, not unlike The Truman Show, that his entire “new life” is a sham, up to and including a full-scale recreation of the city of Chicago — or, at least, the places he was likely to go in the city — that’s really nothing more than a backlot somewhere in Wyoming. And that is what it felt like — on the surface it seemed real, but somehow I could almost see the L-backings holding up the crappy building façades.

Point being, it’s the Loop, and it’s crowded as hell because it’s obviously rush hour. The sidewalks and streets are packed, and I’m trying to wade through the sea of people to get to the train, when out of the corner of my eye I spot a familiar face: my old friend Jive, who unbeknownst to me is in town for an undisclosed period of time. We exchange an extended, yammerful greeting and discover we’re both heading for the same train, so we walk up the stairs to the Adams & Wabash station. The platform, much like the sidewalk, is stuffed to the gills. People are overflowing to a dangerous extreme, so when the train comes it keeps bleeping its horn, but there’s nowhere for anybody to move so it just coasts in at about three miles an hour. And the train itself is packed — few people can get off, because where would they go? — and it doesn’t leave much room for anyone to get on.

“Come on,” Jive says, “I know a shortcut.”

One of those weird, dreamy smash-cuts, and suddenly we’re both in a dark, empty, wet-seeming subway tunnel. “Follow me,” Jive mutters, and he climbs up onto what appears to be an abandoned el train. It’s immobile and has no power, but apparently we have to walk through it in order to get to the real train. As we’re walking through it, I hear rats squeaking. About half a car ahead of us, I can see an older, stinking, bum-like gentleman using the same shortcut we’re using. We keep our distance.

Eventually we see the lights from the subway station (it looks like Clark & Lake to me), but we don’t actually hop up onto the platform. There’s no point, since the train is parked right there. Don’t ask me about the logic of an abandoned, immobile train on the same track as the train that’s moving.

We get on the train, and I’m rushing like hell to get a seat, but it’s pretty crowded. I leap to the only pair of seats left (and yet, for some reason, Jive is gone — he probably doesn’t mind standing since he’s not a lazy fatass), but for some reason as I sit down, an elderly woman in a bright-as-hell lime-green dress is sitting there. She pleasantly at me, and I nod awkwardly at her.

With that, I woke up. For some reason, I awoke with a sense of completion, like I had really finished the hell out of that dream, what with me getting to the train and getting a seat at rush hour.

Weird that I’m having train dreams since, aside from last week’s test, I haven’t ridden it in a long time, and I don’t plan to ride it for longer still.

Posted by Stan on February 24, 2006 7:37 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

February 19, 2006

Asshat

On Saturday morning, I checked my e-mail and found one from a friend of mine. Just a rambling, stream-of-consciousness “check-in” type of thing, since I haven’t talked to him in a week or so.

As I neared the end of the letter, a paragraph struck me: I don’t know if you’ve been in contact with Ryan or not. His script is being optioned* by Big-Shot Producer. He deserves it. That was a really good script.

It’s true: Ryan did deserve it, for many reasons other than his script being really good (it is). I imagine, being an unknown writer dealing with a small company, he didn’t get a huge amount of money, but he got something more important: a sizable chunk of his leg in the door previously held open by a few toes. Perhaps he’ll get an agent or a manager, or other production companies interested in reading his other scripts (he has one in particular that I think is the best script I’ve ever read, produced or not). It’s a good thing for him, which is why I sent two of my scripts to the same producer over a month ago.

But here’s why I’m a dickhead: in equal proportion to my happiness for him, I was both pissed off and obsessing over the details. I haven’t talked to Ryan since a week or so before Christmas, so I knew nothing about this option, and, in fact, he hadn’t said word one about even dealing with Big-Shot Producer. I don’t know if he was holding out on me, or just not bringing it up because what business is it of mine, or if he hadn’t sent anything to Big-Shot Producer, just like I hadn’t, but when I got him to reply to my e-mail, I told Mark (the friend who told me about Ryan’s script, who had asked about Big-Shot Producer), who possibly told Ryan that the door was wide open.

So was this a process of Ryan spending nearly a year — since we pitched to the guy back in May — or was this a rapid-fire process, where his script was so damn good they had to option it ASAP, but mine and Mark’s scripts suck ass and aren’t worth the hard drive space they’re stored on?

I felt like a total douchebag, because I just can’t flatly be happy for Ryan. Adding insult to injury was that, since it’s been over a month since I sent my scripts to Big-Shot Producer, I dropped him a line on Thursday to remind him (a) I exist and (b) nobody’s mentioned anything about the scripts. Thursday and Friday passed with no word, so I was getting frustrated. I felt like he was giving me the brush-off. And then I started to get a little jealous. I felt like my scripts were both better than his. And maybe they both are, but that’s just the way Hollywood works: maybe this particular producer thinks he can work better with a gut-busting comedy about terrorists than a dramedy about a failed rock-star.

And all of these things just made me feel worse, because I can’t help thinking them, but I really am happy for Ryan’s luck. But I’m an angry, bitter hermit who expresses his happiness for other people through abuse and manipulation. Some find that charming (Lucy); most find it disgusting (everyone else I know). I even sent a subtly worded e-mail to Ryan, not specifically mentioning that I’d sent him any scripts; even though he probably knew from Mark, the idea is that the scripts I sent weren’t important. What was important was, his script got optioned, and I was happy for him, and I wished him well.

How in God’s name could an e-mail like that be infused with negativity? Really, honestly, it’s not. It’s a very happy-go-lucky congratulatory e-mail that he does, indeed, deserve. Untarnished. The problem came from the thoughts boiling in my head, phrasing it to prompt a response from him in some way or another, something along the lines of, “Yeah, it took months of dealing with him to get him to option it, but I’m so glad it paid off.” Something with a little more information than Mark’s sparse e-mail supplied.

So far, I’ve received nothing in response. I’m sure it’s because he’s busy having a life and family, and he’ll respond to me in a few days, but deep down, I don’t feel like I even deserve any kind of response, because even a nice e-mail came from such a twisted place.

A few minutes ago, I got an e-mail from Big-Shot Producer:

Stan,

Thanks for the note - I’ve been in a crunch with the release of our next film and starting another one so I’m sorry to say I’m a little behind in my reading.

I’ll do my best to get to them in the next week. Feel free to bug me in a couple of weeks if you’ve not heard from me or my assistant.

Best,
Big-Shot Producer

*I’m sure I’ve explained this before, but for those who don’t know or don’t remember, the easiest way to explain an “option” is like this: it’s basically a “rental” of your script by a production company or studio. They pay you a flat fee to “rent” the script for a certain amount of time, with an exorbitant bonus (the equivalent of somebody renting a house you own for a year and then buying it from you) if they either produce it themselves or sell it to a studio that will produce it. If they can’t do anything, and it sits languishing in a pile of other optioned scripts, when the agreed-upon time elapses, the original owner retains his rights to the script. [Back]

Posted by Stan on February 19, 2006 5:34 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

July 11, 2005

A Brief Example of Why I Don’t Like Any of My Friends

I’ve known Kelly since we were 12-years-old, but I didn’t really get to know her well until sophomore year of high school. We were in an awful play together, during which we spent the bulk of the time mocking everyone and everything around us while waiting to rehearse the combined total of five lines we had in the show. We’ve had ups and downs, friendship-wise, because sometimes she can be uniquely unpleasant.

Gradually, though, as she’s gone through college, she’s experienced more of the world, mellowed out a bit, and become an actual decent human being. Except when it comes to making plans.

Thursday morning, she IM-ed me to announce that she, at long last, had a break in her schedule, so she wanted to know if I wanted to have dinner with her when she got off work at 8:30. I haven’t seen her in months, so I agreed. I haven’t seen many people since I’ve come back to town, mostly because nobody I know — in the area, anyway — is a chronically unemployed fuck-up with a lot of free time; it’s hard to be worked into others’ busy schedules, and it gets tedious trying to make plans that inevitably get broken because something else comes up at the last minute.

So this was good: not only did I have plans — I had plans with somebody who sought me out first. I didn’t have to call her up and beg…

…did I?

The day stretched into evening, and eventually, I realized 8:30 had passed, so I decided to give Kelly a call and see if we were still on for the evening; it went to VoiceMail, so I muttered some profanities and thought, “She’s gonna blow me off. She’ll either just flat-out ignore me, or she’ll send me an IM to at least make a half-hearted effort. But she won’t call.”

When I checked my computer a few hours later, I had an IM waiting for me:

9:18:05 PM Kelly: hey, I saw you called…..I just got home from work and didn’t have my phone on me

Argh.

She was still online, so I told her it was no biggie and maybe some other time.

“Sure,” Kelly said. “Hey, maybe we could have lunch tomorrow. I have a dentist appointment at 11, and then I have to work at two, but if I get done fast enough, we’d have enough time.”

“All right,” I said. “That sounds cool.”

Friday morning, I ran some errands, and when I got back home shortly after 11, I got on the computer (sigh) and saw Kelly sitting online.

“What happened to the dentist?” I asked, kind of irritated.

She explained she woke up really sick, and it was so bad she decided just to cancel her appointment and would probably call in sick from work. I automatically assumed lunch was off. She started rambling and implying she has this sinus thing that seems to be going around, so I was telling her about a really effective expectorant I found. Because I’m annoying and obnoxious, I would not shut up about this stuff (Mucinex, it’s called), so she finally said, “I have the flu. I can’t take anything for that.”

Oh…kay.

I wished her well and she signed off.

Saturday afternoon, she IM-ed me once again.

“Guess who I had dinner with last night,” she said.

I considered writing, “If it was anyone other than the toilet bowl, I’m going to be very upset.” Instead, I merely asked, “Who?”

A girl from high school who I didn’t much care about then and sure as hell don’t care about now. In typical Kelly fashion, she attempted to goad me into asking all sorts of questions about what, exactly, has caused this girl to become a major fuck-up; I didn’t let her, since I couldn’t even feign interest and was kinda pissed that she blew me off because she was so sick and went out to dinner with somebody who she, theoretically, didn’t know or like as well as me.

Later in the conversation, she informed me she was seriously considering driving down to Champaign-Urbana to visit some of her old friends and have some form of wild and crazy night. Gosh, sounds fun!

My response: “Gee, you should really be careful. I wouldn’t want you to have to keep pulling off to the side of the road to vomit since you’re SO SICK WITH THE FLU.”

“I was just dehydrated,” she explained.

Okay, that is a logical explanation as to why she’d feel inexplicably shitty for a little while and then get over it. Still, Kelly has a pretty extensive history of making shit up out of thin air for no real reason. I’ll never really understand why she’d go so far as to seek me out to make plans, then blow me off for no reason and stall for the next few days until finally I give up. I give up quickly because she’s the one who instigates it. If she doesn’t want to see me, why the fuck would I waste my time continually trying to hunt her down?

And, if you’ll allow me to get even whinier and bitchier for a moment, she reached new heights of obnoxiousness when she not only repeated this exciting cycle of faux-get-togethers, but she decided it would be a really great idea to tell me about all the other plans she had made instead of going out with me. I hate to sound so bitter, but when it’s something that’s happened at least a dozen times three or four years, it gets a little tiresome.

Posted by Stan on July 11, 2005 12:05 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

June 5, 2005

The Roxy

My friends have varying accounts of my sister’s friendship with Cameron. She always told me and my parents that they were just good friends, which didn’t explain some of his more bizarre behavior, so she elaborated to say they were good friends but Cam was madly in love with her and she didn’t feel the same way. However, in recent years I’ve come to learn from people who actually know my sister better than I do — among them, Lucy — that they actually were dating the entire time they were supposedly “friends.”

It’s not surprising she’d hide this from our parents. My dad has always been overprotective of her, and my mom never believes anybody is good enough for either my sister or me. When I was in high school, I hid a girlfriend from them until one of my sister’s friends called her up and talked about how cute we were together, so my sister called up my mom and ratted me out. I fucking hate her sometimes.

At any rate, Tracey and Cam are still friends, and as a result, he’s been kind of haranguing her for my contact info since I’ve been out here. She gave me his email, and I told him to give me a call, and all of a sudden we were going out to the Sunset Strip for reasons I still don’t fully understand.

He had a hard time when he first came out here, because he knew no one, and he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to me. Part of this, I think, is Columbia solidarity; the bulk of it, I’m sure, is the fact that I’m Tracey’s li’l bro, and because of their secret affair, I deserve more attention than I’d normally get. So he’s going to be dragging me to all sorts of things I don’t necessarily want to go to, and in typical Stan Fashion™, I’ll bitch and moan about it to anyone who will listen, then go and have a good time and wonder why I pitched such a major fit.

So last night we went to see this band play at a club on the Strip called the Roxy. It was a few doors down from the Rainbow Bar & Grill, the hangout of Guns N’ Roses. I would have preferred to go there, because of the allure of that sign (made famous in, among other things, the “November Rain” video) and the gargantuan, backlit Guns N’ Roses mural that still hangs above the club entrance. But yeah, we were to go the Roxy to see this band play. The lead singer/frontman was married to one of Cam’s friends, a documentary cinematographer.

On the way, we picked up one of Cam’s friends, Bruce, and then headed out to the Strip. We entered the club to find a band full of portly losers rocking out with some sort of NuMetal rap-rock crap onstage. On the mostly empty floor were…a bunch of 10-year-old girls? What the fuck? Well, at any rate, it explained why the bouncers didn’t seem to have any interest in seeing our IDs: this was an all-ages show.

After standing on the floor like idiots for awhile, Bruce spotted their cinematographer friend, whose name I didn’t catch, sitting in the VIP section, so we waltzed over and sat with them. It turned out the NuMetal losers weren’t her husband’s band — the husband’s band went on after them. That being the case, I was pleased that I wouldn’t have to make up fake compliments about the quality of the band.

As we continued to wait, a multitude of others came and went, many of them friends of the cinematographer, some of them ostensibly fans of the other people playing there. A middle-aged man with dark, curly hair, glasses, and a gray shirt waltzed into the VIP section like a king, complete with a strange entourage of young, Germanic women. They greeted the cinematographer, though none of us could hear what they were saying, and they sat in the booth with her (we sat at tables near by, purposely ostracized).

Bruce leaned over to Cam and me. “That’s Phedon Papamichael,” he said. “He shot Sideways.”

Cam was stunned and excited, which made me feel like less of a rube for being equally stunned and excited. After a few moments of watching the band, acting very cool, the three of us approached, shook his hand, and complimented his quality work. He was cordial and seemed to enjoy receiving compliments, but since we had nothing substantive to offer to the universe (plus the band was very loud), we just sat right back down.

Finally, the band finished their terrible Doors song and got offstage. We had to wait about half an hour for the real band to set up and get onstage. During that time, Bruce disappeared with one of his friends, Cam went out for a cigarette, and I made awkward smalltalk with a guy I didn’t know at all. Actually, I think what really happened was he said funny things and I laughed like an idiot while straining to think of equally high-quality quips. Even though I was laughing legitimately, my brain looked my human body from some omniscient perspective, and I could see myself giving that fake, horrible Tom Cruise laugh. I hated myself, so my brain went back into my body and stopped laughing.

Finally, the band went on, and we all sat in silence as they played. In the grand scheme of bands, they were slightly above mediocre. They played well together and had a tight set, but the songs — all originals — were pretty dull, and the singer was like a more nasal, more waily Chris Cornell. They all had weird, arrogant postures. I met them after the show, and they all seemed pretty nice, so I’m going to assume they are creating onstage “personas,” but they’re not really a good enough band to justify acting like they’re the kings of awesome.

As the set went from “eh, they’re not too bad” to being watch-checkingly tedious, they start playing this song that was, basically, about really slutty girls. In an attempt to go from bland rock show to performance art, they had hired some model to portray the girl they had written the song about.

How did she portray this complex character? By wearing a tube-top and a skirt that barely covered her ass, and gyrating comically throughout the song. This strange attempt at burlesque was made even funnier by the throng of children and parents watching the show, and also the fact that while she was all toned and full of washboard abs and legs, she was too scrawny to actually have anything resembling a figure that would excite me. Perhaps it’s my humble Midwestern roots, full of corn-fed-beef-eating tubbies, but a woman rattling skin and bones around a stage does nothing for me. What made it more irritating was the way the others were fawning over her unbelievable hotness. Alas…

The best part about this song was look of stunned horror the singer’s cinematographer wife gave him throughout this song, particularly when he started to dance in a semi-freak-ay way with the girl. The wife, we soon discovered, had no prior knowledge of this; they had played this song at other concerts, but never with the addition of live models. Occasionally, my horrible propensity toward schadenfreude makes me really enjoy stuff like this, but I hardly knew these people; what right did I have to find their misery amusing? I didn’t, but I thought it’d lead to an interesting night.

After the show, we were all handed little bracelets to get into the VIP lounge upstairs. This was good, because the next band, an “instrumental power trio,” made me laugh out loud with a song whose opening riff was the opening to Black Sabbath’s “Supernaut.” This was not somewhat similar — it was the same goddamn riff.

The lounge was like a tacky Miami Vice set, all blue lighting and low ceilings and dancer poles. Dancer poles?! Cam, Bruce, and I found the poles extremely amusing and somewhat useless, until we saw a bunch of bizarre raver guys doing odd, robot-like dancing to terrible rap music. One of them leaped onto the pole and straddled it with alll the authority of Jesse Spano, while we stood there and laughed. He tried to act very smug and superior, but his embarrassment was pretty obvious.

Out of boredom, the three of us started parodying their dance moves. Being that I’m from Chicago, I assumed some sort of rumble would occur at this point; unfortunately, no such luck. They all just kinda got embarrassed and slinked back toward their girls. I imagine they felt better because all three of them had girls, while we three stood in a clumsy male circle with no partners to speak of (not yet, anyway…). Still, dancing like that is uncalled for in 2005. They deserved mockery.

Eventually, the band came upstairs — and so did the still-scantily-clad model, much to Bruce’s excitement — and the sparks began to fly. The cinematographer saw her husband, brushed past him to the bathroom, while he stood there in confusion. He introduced himself to us; he only knew Bruce, who explained why she might have been upset. When he wandered off to make amends, the three of us had a discussion about the ethics of doing something that stupid. It’s not like she wasn’t going to find out, so the least he could have done is told her in advance, gotten the fight over with, and spared her the humiliation of discovering her husband is dancing with some three-quarters-naked floozy while she’s trying to hobnob with Phedon Papamichael.

Bruce said to me, “Man, you’ve only been out here two months, and you’re in a place like this.” He motioned at the rotting charm of the lounge. “It took me two years to get invited to a place like this.” This was the first time it dawned on me that this was anything special; I’m still not actually sure it was, and if it was, why is it so special to hobnob in a room that’s too dark and too noisy to really see and hear who you’re talking to? I did meet some people, but it wasn’t exactly life-altering.

Bruce decided he needed to go take a piss, but he came back a few seconds later and explained there was a line, and in that line stood the feuding husband and wife. Awkward.

Eventually, the verbal assault worked its way back into the lounge, where we couldn’t hear a thing, but we saw all we needed to. She yelled at him, he had no way of defending himself against whatever she had said, and they each slinked off to opposite corners of the lounge. We all secretly found this hilarious but pretended to be conciliatory toward both of them.

Because we were bored, unable to hear anything, and Cam and Bruce couldn’t afford anything to drink, we decided to head home. On the way — and it took about an hour thanks to Sunset traffic in the torrential downpour (in Chicago, we call it “misting”) — we chatted about movies and shit. It turns out that 23-year-old Stan has way more in common with 27-year-old Cam than 13-year-old Stan had in common with 17-year-old Cam, so suddenly I have more than a mere ally out here — I have a friend. It’s nice.

Posted by Stan on June 5, 2005 1:35 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (2)

May 8, 2005

Roots

Note: This was originally posted in the form of a comment at a blog I stumbled upon thanks to Google.

I first discovered the miracle of the boner in fifth grade. I had no idea what made it start, I had no idea how to make it go away. It would either just hang limply or suddenly stand at attention. Who was I supposed to talk to about this? I told my friend Mike, who had a sister in high school and consequently was pretty knowledgeable about sex.

“It’s a stiffy,” Mike said. “I get ‘em, too. You’re supposed to stick them in girls’ pussies.”

“They let you do that?” I wondered.

“My sister does, all the time,” Mike replied matter-of-factly.

“Cool,” I said, somewhat in awe. “I don’t know any girls. How do you make them go away?”

He shrugged. That summer, we often rode bikes to the Playboy factory in the industrial park, searching for discarded issues in the Dumpsters. We’d hide behind the bushes in Mike’s backyard and ogle these newfound sexual objects, these women. If a girl was particularly attractive or in a particularly erotic pose, we’d gladly drop our pants and show them our boners, but beyond that, we really had no idea how to get them to go away. We just knew, even in the fantasy world of Playboy, that women would be gratified by the mere sight of our 11-year-old units.

Something had to be done. I needed to consult with an expert. At the time, my father was working two jobs, so he was barely home. I decided to go to my mother. I told her that, every once in awhile, unprompted, my penis stiffened.

She looked at me for a long moment, then solemnly led me to a bookcase in the garage (where all great reading material should be kept, bookended by Chilton’s auto guides and a socket set) and pointed out a series of thin hardcover books, titled The Life Cycle, which dealt with the various, horrible aspects of puberty. “If you ever have any questions like that,” my mom said in that wise matriarchal tone she had, “just consult these books.”

In the 30-minute sex ed class we had in fifth grade, we men discovered a term called “masturbation,” but nobody really knew what it meant. We knew it was a way of gratifying ourselves — and, more importantly, making the boners disappear — but we didn’t know anything beyond that. Nothing about orgasms, very little about ejaculations, and most detrimentally — nothing about how to masturbate. The first thing I did when consulting the books was look up “masturbation.” It said something to the effect of, “You can stimulate yourself by encircling your erect penis. This is called masturbation.” I looked up “encircle” in the dictionary, and I was on my way.

As was often the case during this period, I snuck and watched late-night HBO. I had analyzed The Cable Guide’s subtle codification of nudity: BN meant butts, N meant boobs, and SSC meant everything. I had discovered a film that HBO often played called Husbands and Lovers (I often confused it with Woody Allen’s dramedy Husbands and Wives — this was a horrible mistake to make while in boner territory, and it led to my early and unwarranted dislike of his work), which not only had women on display at almost all times but also had a bit of male nudity. It was the closest thing to porn I had ever seen at the time.

Upon discovering how masturbation worked, I waited for two weeks before Husbands and Lovers was on again, and I was ready to finally try masturbation out. I huddled under a blanket in the dark, clicked on the HBO, waited until that nudity got my li’l guy going, slid my hand around my penis, and —

Nothing happened. What the fuck, man? I just sat there, hand limply surrounding my unit, until it got all warm and sweaty and finally shriveled back into oblivion. This was the first — but certainly not last — failure of my unit.

In the fall of sixth grade, I often spent time with a kid named Dave, who was the resident porn junkie of my little clique. We’d go and hang out at his house after school, listening to Pink Floyd and sneaking peaks at his dad’s ridiculously huge collection of Playboys. On a really overcast, windy day, we stood outside the school waiting for his mom to pick us up. I sat on my gigantic backpack, and he stood, keeping lookout.

He looked down at me and asked, “Do you masturbate?”

“No,” I said glumly. “I don’t know how.”

“Oh man,” he said, “it’s so easy. You just pull on it with your hand.”

Pull on it? Yes, I could see how that would affect things. This was the component I had been missing all along. I just sat there with my wet-noodle hand surrounding my dick, expecting something to magically happen. That weekend, I decided I was exhausted and needed to take my nap. Under the light of my extremely nerdy, illuminated globe, I removed a large, empty box from my top closet shelf, grabbed a Cindy Crawford magazine from my secret supply under my bed, and attempted this pulling concept.

I was slow and goofy at first, sliding my hand forward and completely off before I learned it’d save time and energy just to gently rub back and forth. The main thing I remember about these early incidents was the smell of semen. It smelled weird to me, and while I retain a sense memory of the odor, I can’t place it to this day. The closest thing I could say is it was something like salt and rubbing alcohol, but that doesn’t really do it justice.

Many a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode was defiled by my masturbatory tendencies, and I slowly improved in efficiency and technique. I wished it wasn’t such a private thing, because I could have bragged about many things that humiliate me now — number of times per day, disturbing locations that don’t involve my bedroom or home bathroom, the shortest time from grip to spurt.

While I’m no longer beaming with pride at my masturbatory habits, I will say that, as I’m currently alone and often a little depressed, waxing the poetic warlock really does the job of perking me up, and I’m thankful for that.

Happy night-before-Mother’s Day, everyone!

Posted by Stan on May 8, 2005 12:19 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (4)

March 22, 2005

I Still Exist… Don’t I?

During his mindbending chemotherapy, Harvey Pekar once wondered (and here, out of laziness, I’m paraphrasing), “Am I the creator of a comic book called American Splendor, or am I just a character in that book? If I died, would the character live on, or would he die, too?”

The nice thing about having written documentation of one’s life is that it’s always there. I forget things — I spend most of my life trying to forget everything that happened in my life before. And yet, it’s all there. I can go back to old entries (which I’ve done a bit of late as new people read the blog, pointing and laughing at my life and sending me links to the relevant entries) and essentially relive the moments of my life that I’ve kept in meticulous, anal-retentive detail over the past few years.

But there’s something weird about it all. I wrote maybe four or five entries during my trip to Seattle, and added maybe two or three with old stories from my time there, but that was an entire summer of my life. An entire summer of new people, new places, new experiences, and bad-neighborhood-related comedy. And yet, without detailed journaling of this experience, it’s starting to slip. Sure, the big stories like Krazy Kelly will probably remain forever, but the smaller moments, the quiet reflections I’d have hiking up to the Third-Cherry bus stop after a long and painful shift — these are slipping, because I was either too lazy, too tired (and therefore lazy), or too apathetic to document them.

So what happens then? If I find myself unable to remember, and I don’t have it written down, does that mean they never happened?

Much as I try to forget things, I still want to be able to look back at a time, documented for the ages, and say, “I was there. That happened to me.” The summer of 2004, for the most part, is gone. The fall semester isn’t much more there. In all my goofy ranting and raving and trying to get women to go out with me and just trying to get people to be nice to me, I hardly blogged any of it, and now it’s going away. It’s not irrelevant, because it’s my life, but when I forget about it, that means — in my crack-addled brain — that it never happened. Or my memory becomes altered, and 60 years from now I’ll be in an old folks’ home for failures, arguing with somebody about an insignifcant event that happened in the winter of 2004, and neither of us will remember what actually happened because our minds have mutated the event so much.

What happens to the people who are, however briefly, significant in my life? I used to write about Gina on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Now, I haven’t seen her in nearly a year, I only have a fuzzy, possibly pedestal-induced memory of what she looks like, and a few vague memories of our time together. Yet, it’s all here, on the blog. From start to finish, our relationship is chronicled, including the gory aftermath and a few awkward postscripts to our friendship.

There are, or have been, other people like that in my life. Where the fuck are they? They’re there for a semester, maybe two, maybe three, and then they pass into the periphery for one reason or another. Some of them, like the Token Articulate African-American Fellow or the Super-Hot Pothead, have their stories on this blog. But the detail, the true, horrible depths of our friendships aren’t here. The details, the small stuff, the moments — they’re not all there. They’re just sketches. And now those people are gone, and so are the moments.

I’ve been working at this bookstore café now for over a month. I just gave my notice, and I’ve only written one story about it. Annoying, obnoxious things happen there every day. I’ve made friends, I’ve made acquaintances, I’ve made enemies — so where the fuck are they? Will they just disappear as soon as I stop working there?

I’m moving to California in a few weeks. Hopefully it’ll be temporary, but what if it’s not? The truly significant players, the ones who were never supposed to go away — what if they do? What if I never see them again? What if we talk on the phone or online, but gradually the conversations get less detailed, less interesting, less frequent, and then they just stop? And what if, since I’m a neurotic shut-in who hates most people, I can’t find new significant players in the great state of California?

I don’t have memories to fall back on. I just have this. This, for all its comical exaggeration and infrequent updating, is closer to the truth than what’s in my head, and it begs the question: Am I the creator of a blog called Stan Has Issues™, or am I just a character in that blog? If I died, would the character live on, or would he die, too?

(Ironically, this post was just supposed to say, “Yo, I’m still here, and I’ll be writing some new stories soon.” Don’t you hate it when I smoke weed before work and get all metaphysical?)

Posted by Stan on March 22, 2005 10:28 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

February 10, 2005

‘The Terminizor: An Erotic Thriller?’

For the last several months, my friend Laurie has been working on an adaptation for a motivational speaker named Nathaniel Henry. He preaches a philosophy that he calls N.A.T.E.: “Never anything too easy.” This is also the title of his book, which from what I understand he has self-published to sell after giving his brand of motivational speeches. It’s essentially a jumbled, nonlinear autobiography about how he gradually learned not to be a junior thug and how his life experiences shaped the philosophy he extols today. The point of his lectures, and his books, seem to be, “Look, kids, I was just like you, and I rose above it to get to where I am today.”

And apparently he’s pretty high up, because he’s willing to personally bankroll a low-budget film based on his life (and the book). Of course, he may have cut some corners by, for example, hiring poor college students who are basically working for their name on the credits and a tiny, tiny, way-below-scale stipend. Which is cool for all involved: Nate gets a competent but cheap crew, and the students get their name on a movie that would hopefully turn out better than most graduate thesis films.

Laurie’s been struggling with the adaptation, and I’ve been helping her with story ideas, so really, we’re both struggling, because we have to do exactly what Nathaniel Henry wants, but what he wants is not entirely conducive to quality screenwriting. Not that I’m surprised, because the book isn’t exactly Dan Brown, but it’s a bit annoying because Laurie will come up with an idea like, for example, “What if, instead of flashing forward and back like the book, we just spend a single year or two in his life and concentrate the events and his point of view in that time?” I thought that was the best way of distilling the pertinent information, but Henry said, “That ain’t how it happened.” Which I suppose is the age-old problem with biopics, particularly when the subjects are personally involved, but you have to take dramatic license, especially with such a low budget. It’s not going to be easy to recreate the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s on a tiny budget.

I’m getting distracted from the main point, which is that she’s struggling with it, and it’s painful every time a reasonable idea gets shot down by Mr. Nathaniel Henry, motivational speaker extraordinaire. So it was exceptionally annoying when he brought a director into the mix. This director has never done a feature (or anything else that we’re aware of), but he’s well past being a student. I think “friend of Nate’s” is the highest credit he’s ever had. This is all right, since he’s not really throwing or concepts or insisting on changes to the difficult-to-manage script.

He is, however, working on somewhat of a contingency basis: his directing N.A.T.E.: The Movie depends on whether or not his own film comes to fruition. Nate agreed to kick in some money on this director’s own project, but until he gets more financing, it’s pretty much dead in the water. Unfortunately, it’s hard for him to lure potential backers when he doesn’t exactly have a script.

Enter Laurie. The first time she and the director met, he handed her some paper and said, “I got this script I wrote. I wondered if you could punch it up a little.” She was hesitant, but Nate (who is paying her) urged her to help him complete his script. And here’s where the movie business starts to suck: so many backs scratching so many others, and it’s inevitable somebody’s going to get screwed. Usually, it’s the writer, and this case was no exception: “Here, do a free rewrite of my script or I’ll see that you never get a film credit.” Not that these guys are particularly powerful, but you never know — Nate’s story could be the next Rocky, and Laurie’s in on the ground floor. She doesn’t want to fuck that up.

So Laurie took the script, read it, was baffled, and called me. “You wanna take a look at this script?” she asked. “I read it, but doesn’t make any sense.” Good thing she called me, the smartest man alive. The next time I saw her (this was a few months ago, back when I saw her multiple times a week), she had the script in tow.

This director’s screenplay reminded me a little too much of that Simpsons episode with Alec Baldwin, Ron Howard, and Kim Basinger. Homer writes that script about an evil robot driving instructor that travels through time for some reason, and they say, “Um, Homer, most movie scripts are 120 pages. Yours is 17, and most of them are just drawings of the time machine.” This script was 16 pages, and the last five were handwritten in a chickenscratch that makes my penmanship look neat. They say brevity is the source of wit, but I’m afraid this script wasn’t supposed to be funny.

Laurie was right about it not making much sense, but I attribute this to the fact that it just seemed incomplete, or that this was kind of a “scriptment” type of thing — the hybrid of the screenplay and the treatment, where you describe some scenes briefly but will occasionally write some brief dialogue exchanges to give a feel for what’s going on. Laurie kept insisting that the director believed that this was the actual script, 100% complete, no paraphrasing, but certain statements in the action blocks kept referring to previous events that happened, which is generally a no-no anyway, but even more of a no-no when the events to which you refer never happened.

On top of that, one of the characters comes back from the dead. This was in the handwritten pages, which say at the top “after page 11,” but it seems like all the disjointed scenes written by hand exist to fill in the many, many narrative gaps in the first eleven pages, which I suppose would explain the character’s resurrection, but the director didn’t exactly explain this.

What I got out of the plot was that it’s basically another one of those frenetic, borderline incoherent drug-dealer movies, full of dirty cops and explosions and two drug dealers (male and female) both literally and figuratively screwing one another, which eventually descends into a big, pseudo-romantic “are we in love or do we need to blow each other’s heads off?” kind of ending. Because of the poor writing, it was extremely difficult to follow, so maybe I’m wrong about what the story actually is. Of course, it didn’t matter too much, because…

“This director says he got Delroy Lindo to play a part,” Laurie announced when I was done reading. “He’s committed to 15 days of shooting a supporting role.”

“Who the hell is he gonna play?” I asked. I love Delroy Lindo and all, but there are three male roles: the young, studly drug dealer; the seemingly indestructible, terminator-type bounty hunter (Mario Van Peebles of Solo fame would be perfect!); and the dirty cop who ends up getting blown away in the middle of the movie before coming back to life for some reason. Now, he could play the dirty cop, except that he’s specifically intended to be a big fat white guy. Not that there are any hard or fast rules for characterization in a 16-page feature script, but it did seem like his whiteness and fatness were pretty important.

“He doesn’t have a character yet,” Laurie said, “but the director says he’s just going to ad lib everything, so it’s cool.” She laughed.

Good God. How’d she get involved in something this bad?

“Look, I don’t even know if I’m going to do this,” she said, reading my mind. “It’s a really, really bad script, and I don’t want to just write it for him because he’s not gonna give me credit and he’s not gonna pay me. I’ll do maybe 15 pages — a real 15 pages — and he can do the rest or find somebody else. I don’t like how he keeps hitting on me, anyway.”

I didn’t like how he kept hitting on her, either, though I had just found out about it.

She did end up quitting, she told me a few days ago. She didn’t feel obligated because, once this director got the Delroy Lindo ball rolling, apparently he no longer needed Nate or his movie. Ironically, shortly after quitting Nate’s film, Delroy Lindo and all the financing dropped out. I can’t really imagine why, especially if he showed him his well-planned script.

She told me she finished a draft of N.A.T.E.: The Movie, at long last, but she’s not sure how he’ll receive it. Her (logical) thought is to capture Nate’s philosophy through a series of largely fictional events, since there really is no cohesive narrative, and the few snippets of his life that are dramatically compelling (like the father who abandoned him as a child returning when he was a teenager) are mostly glossed over in the book, aside from a brief mention followed by pages of whining about being “hurt.”

So hey, good luck to Laurie. If this gets made and is even marginally successful, I can look forward to riding on her coattails.

Posted by Stan on February 10, 2005 10:47 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (2)

February 9, 2005

The IQ Test

Lucy may be the mistress of bad choices, a part of her psychology that I’ll never fully understand, but I’ve always believed she’s smarter than me. Always, unquestionably, no matter how dumbassy she sometimes behaves. Because, I know, when she actually takes the time to think something through, she’s really damn smart. Also, she beats me at Trivial Pursuit, which is the true measure of a man; seriously, it is. Even King Lear thinks so. It’s why he went crazy. Cordelia kept beating him at Trivial Pursuit. “NO LAND FOR THEE, HARLOT!” he often screamed after she got the final pie wedge. In those days, they played for actual wedges of pie, and Lear loved his desserts. His division of the kingdom into pie-like slices for his daughters came directly from his crippling Trivial Pursuit losses.

History, my friends, is a wonderful thing.

It surprised me a few weeks ago when Lucy started insisting I was “going places,” and I’d “be something great.” She clearly doesn’t read this blog thoroughly enough, but that’s neither here nor there. The point was, I started arguing that while it’s obvious that I’ll be the greatest television writer since Kevin Williamson, it’s not too late for her. Sure, she dropped out of school and is working at Lowe’s in Iowa City. Not the life any of us imagines at the outset, but she’s 22 damn years old.

This started an argument: who is smarter, her or me? She thought I was; I insisted she was, and then she, ironically, got upset with me for being such an idiot.

“What’s your IQ?” she asked after we remembered that we both got the same ACT score. (And as we all know, standardized testing is the true measure of a man. I was just joking earlier about that whole Trivial Pursuit thing.)

“How the fuck should I know?” I asked. I vaguely remembered taking an IQ test in school and not being told how I did. I assumed from the suspicious glares from administrators that I did pretty badly, but I guess it could go either way. Perhaps they were frustrated by my intellectual capacity, or maybe they just thought I was secretly laughing at their ugly ties (I was). I also took one of those Internet IQ tests, but I couldn’t remember how I did, which meant it couldn’t be impressive.

“We’re taking one right now,” she said, and sent me a link to the same Internet IQ test I took years ago. I gotta say, I love living in this day and age because, much like in a cartoon, you can say, “We’re going to do [something] right now,” and you can magically do it, or at least get the ball rolling on it, immediately. Yay for instant gratification — it seems the ’80s did pay off for future generations.

Fifteen to 20 minutes later, our results came back. I got a 152; she got a 138 (down from 146, which she got the last time she took the test way back when). Since she was basing her entire “you’re smarter than me” argument on numbers and test results, this made it much more difficult to argue that she is, in fact, smarter than I am, despite the fact that I guessed on most of the math questions. Apparently they were educated guesses, but I didn’t know what the fuck most of them were talking about. Plus, I was trying to answer them as quickly as possible because the top of the test said something like “if you take more than 30 seconds answering a question, your score will be lower,” so it’s not like I had the time to Google the answers.

So does this mean I actually am smarter than Lucy? I guess, but why does that matter? And why does the fact that I’m 14 points smarter than her mean that she has to settle with a life in which she’s unhappy? According to the little breakdown, 133+ is Mensa-worthy, and 130+ means she’d be smart enough for law school or medical school. None of this made her feel better, because the 150+ column said I’m so smart I should only be working in the mysterious catacombs underneath the Pentagon, learning to solve a Rubik’s Cube in eight seconds or something.

Still, I don’t understand why it matters. Look at how stupid most people are, and look at how successful they can be. If anything, being smart has cursed me, because I spend 80% of my life wondering why everyone is so fucking stupid all the time GAAAAAAAAAH. Consequently, I find myself drawn to people who are as smart, or smarter, than I am, so I’m always feeling intellectually inferior. I’m stick in the middle, and it drives me crazy. CRAZY!

I tried explaining these things to Lucy. She thinks I’m just using that as an excuse for misanthropy. Maybe she’s right…

I finally distracted her with the idea that we could turn this blog into a graphic novel, a Harvey Pekar-esque romp through middle-class suburbia, featuring classic stories from this blog, from Lucy’s life, and from our hilarious adventures together. She got excited about that, but then insisted she can’t draw “cartoons.” We argued some more, but at least she stopped believing she’s an idiot.

Temporarily, anyway…

Posted by Stan on February 9, 2005 12:59 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

December 21, 2004

Bruised Ego, or: HURT HUMAN FEELINGS

Lucy’s back online, so for the past two days we’ve been spending hours playing this stupid online Trivial Pursuit game. Here’s the problem: unless we do TV or Silver Screen, she wins. And she doesn’t just win: she whips my ass. The closest I came to winning was getting five questions right (out of seven), but I got the following question wrong (and she swooped down for the win):

Science & Nature: Which planet is closest to the Earth?

A. Venus
B. Jupiter
C. Mars
D. Pluto

That’s right, I am rock stupid. And she is smarter than me. And it makes me feel pathetic. It also makes me feel bad that she’s working at Lowe’s instead of putting her smarts to use doing something productive, like running a numbers house on the south side.

Update: I almost forgot that this game also yielded this hilarious exchange:

(23:43:40) Lucy: val may be watching and/or playing, don’t say anything stupid
(23:43:54) Stan: like what?!
(23:44:02) Lucy: i don’t know
(23:44:05) Stan: “i hope your friend val will have sex with me”?
(23:44:07) Lucy: don’t make fun of her

Posted by Stan on December 21, 2004 12:09 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

October 23, 2004

Lunch

Kelly, a friend of mine from high school, actually graduated college (fancy that) and has returned to the area for grad school. She and I had been meaning to get together ever since I got back in town, but we didn’t until the Wednesday after Lucy brought up moving in with Creepy Dan. I’ve been meaning to blog this story since then, but I kept forgetting.

Kelly and I basically shot the shit for awhile, and eventually, as always, Kelly brought up the subject of Lucy. Kelly can’t stand Lucy. She also can’t stand the fact that Lucy and I are closer friends than Kelly and me. She likes to bring Lucy up to mock her relentlessly. I used to join in, but for awhile I’ve been defending her; it makes it less fun for Kelly, but it doesn’t stop her.

Kelly asked, “Have you talked to Lucy lately?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I talked to her on Monday.”

“How’s she doing?” she asked. “I haven’t talked to her in about six months.”

“Eh, the same,” I said. “Shitty job, shitty friends, shitty life. But she says she’s moving back here.”

“Yeah?” Kelly asked.

“She’s gonna apply to Northeastern to finish up,” I said, “and she’s getting an apartment with Creepy Dan* near UIC.”

“What the fuck?” Kelly demanded. “That guy’s a fucking child molester!”

I started laughing.

“I’m serious,” she continued, “he’s a goddamn psychopath.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and there’s the problem that he’s in love with her. I think her moving in with him is probably the stupidest idea she’s ever had, and she’s had a whole lot.”

“You mean like quitting school to work at Lowe’s?” Kelly asked.

“Among other things,” I replied.

“Wait a minute,” Kelly said, a sudden thought hitting her. “Why the fuck are they gonna live down by UIC?”

I shrugged.

“Is she out of her mind? Northeastern is, like, up the street from North Park,” Kelly said. (North Park is where she’s going for graduate school.)

“Really? I have no idea where it is, but I figured it was down by UIC and Columbia because she said that’s where they were gonna live,” I said. “I guess that’s what I get for assuming she knew what she was talking about.”

“She’s so fucking clueless,” Kelly said. “It’s up by Foster. It’s, like, two blocks away from Higgins. She could probably walk there from her parents’ house.” This is a bit of an exaggeration, but the spirit is the same. Northeastern is way the hell up on the northwest side, almost to the suburbs. UIC is way the hell south. Columbia butts up on downtown, and UIC is several blocks west…living all the way down there would be way the hell out of her way.

Additionally, for somebody as paranoid as she was living in Lincoln Park, UIC’s neck of the woods isn’t exactly better for alleviating her paranoia. There are worse neighborhoods in Chicago, and pockets of that area are actually pretty nice, but if you stray too far in any direction, it won’t exactly lengthen your life.

Of course, she has no idea what the hell she’s doing but refuses to admit it. She’s going on what Creepy Dan, who apparently also plans to attend Northeastern, is saying, and he clearly doesn’t know shit, either. I assume they’re looking into that area because the rent is, generally, pretty cheap. There are reasons for that, but like I said, on the whole it isn’t too bad. Lucy will hate it, though. She’ll probably end up in worse shape than she did in Lincoln Park.

Bear in mind that I knew none of this when Lucy first talked to me about this. I neither knew nor cared where Northeastern was. I figured it was somewhere near UIC, because I assumed convenience would be the only possible explanation for her living in that area, especially since she specifically said she was worried being around that school would bring back bad memories.

None of this will end well. Creepy Dan is a bad start, and living way the hell away from where she needs to be for no reason is even worse.

“You shouldn’t tell her,” Kelly said. “She’s a fuck-up. She has to start figuring out some things on her own.”

“Eh,” I said, “even if I told her, she wouldn’t listen to me, anyway. She is a fuck-up, but part of the problem is she does everything on her own but refuses to learn anything from her fuck-ups.”

“That’s fucking depressing,” she said.

“Yup,” I said. It is.

*Yes, I actually called him Creepy Dan. Everybody but Lucy calls him Creepy Dan behind his back. It’s an easier shorthand, since Lucy used to date a guy named Dan who was much less creepy. [Back]

Posted by Stan on October 23, 2004 9:04 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

Junior High School Politics, or: Bad Blood Brothers

My cell phone is a goddamn piece of shit, as almost everyone who calls me will attest (mostly because I say, “Goddamn this piece of shit — can I call you back?”), so I decided to get a new one. I walked up to the Cingular store in town and was helped by a strange man who seemed to be looking above my head every time he talked to me.

While I was there, I ran into an old, old, old, old, old, old friend. And things got weird for me.

You might dimly remember me talking about my old crew from junior high. I mentioned them in at least one entry that I know of, but the hierarchy of friendship has always been sort of muddy.

In the Ben Franklin entry, I called Art the fearless leader, but some time in the midst of eighth grade, he allowed his leadership to be usurped by another friend, Joe. Most of us had been friends with Joe previously (I’d known him since first grade), but Art didn’t know him until we introduced him. They became fast friends, and eventually Art gave up his position as alpha-male to Joe.

Why? Simple: Art was promoted to “low man on the totem people with lots of high school friends.” At the time, very few of us knew high schoolers, but Art was a stoner long before it was trendy, and he had a lot of cousins in high school, so he invariably ended up making good impressions at high school parties. More often than not, he ditched us in favor of his older friends, which we found acceptable. We were in awe of his high school friends, because we weren’t in high school yet, so we didn’t realize that making friends with high schoolers is easy.

Bear in mind, when I break down the strange chain of command, all of this was unverablized but still basically recognized. It’s hard to explain, and I sometimes wonder if my group of friends was the only one to go through this (I sure hope not), but in retrospect, there was a leadership hierarchy that we all followed. The fact that we followed it is kind of the point of this story.

Other than Art, the major players in the Ben Franklin story were:

Mandi and Jenny: Girls who helped me with my assorted life issues by yelling at me and extolling the virtues of drug abuse to solve problems. Can you see why I ended up such good friends with Lucy?
Mike: A funny guy I knew since third grade, and one of the many guitarists in our terrible band.
Mark: An unusual, geeky Mexican guy I met during sixth grade. Most of the sixth graders went on a long trip to some camp in Wisconsin, so those that stayed behind fit into one class, so we all had different schedules and classmates. During that time, Mark and I bonded over mocking our math teacher and were friends ever since.
Nick: Art’s cousin. He was never really a friend of mine. Ever.
Steve: The bass player.

Now add to that:

Joe: While we all hung out with him independent of Art, he ended up becoming the leader rather quickly.
Jeff: Who was friends with all of us but was never quite in the band.
Dave: A strange, porno-obsessed dude.

There were more friends than that, but they don’t really apply to this story.

Here’s a little history lesson involving my life: after Art allowed himself to be unseated by Joe, Nick quickly and willingly disappeared from our circle. Mandi and Jenny mostly just hung out with me because they fucking hated Joe and really were fairly indifferent to most of my other friends — they just liked Art and me.

With Nick (the drummer) and Art (the fourth guitarist) gone, the band fell apart. It was better that way, since we only practiced maybe twice and spent the rest of the time just talking about how we wanted to be in a band.

Enter Dave. Dave had a guitar. Dave had a basement. Dave was reasonably good friends with Joe. Art out; Dave in. Furthermore, to maintain his leadership, Joe got a guitar. We weren’t a band, per se, but we would get together and jam.

Meanwhile, Steve and I started talking — really talking — about a band. He had a gotten a bass by that time, so we thought if me, him, and Mark (the only other guitar player who could really play) got together, we could really make it work. We shared the same musical influences, the same general interests, similar senses of humor, and we had similar philosophies about how to make a band work. We figured if we got a reasonably polished act together, we could find a drummer easily.

Consequently, around this time, Steve and I started hanging out a lot. We brought Mark in on the band idea. Then we brought in Jeff, who didn’t play an instrument but was enthusiastic about picking one up. He was there partly for moral support and partly because, at the time, the band was still all talk. We’d basically just hang out, only playing on the rarest occasions. My work ethic has not improved since then.

You’ll notice some people were left out: Mike, Joe, and Dave. First, none of us really liked Dave all that much; second, Mike liked Dave more than us; third, we all liked Steve more than Joe, so on the rare occasions we invited Joe to hang with us, we got tired of him usurping the leadership. Really, since we were all passive followers, the old, functional hierarchy was somewhat restored: Steve became the leader, and I became his go-to guy for ideas and information.

To give you an idea of how low Joe, our former leader, had sunk at this point, let me illustrate it through a song we wrote during a mega jam session with all of us but Joe (and began playing at every subsequent jam session). We called the song “Joe Sucks.” A rather simple shift from an A power chord to a B-flat power chord, the songs lyrics went as follows:

(Verse) Joe sucks Joe sucks

Joe sucks
Joe sucks

(Chorus) Joe sucks
Joe sucks

(Repeat verse and chorus until boredom sets in)

Virtuosos, we were.

So everybody liked the new arrangement…except Joe. With Mike and Dave hanging together, and Steve, Jeff, Mark, and I hanging out together, his usefulness waned. When we’d be at school, he’d still rule us like a tyrannical king, but after school and on weekends, we’d all ditch him and do our own thing. Joe was not a fan of this at all, so he got together with Dave and Mike and the anti-Steve propaganda began.

You have to bear in mind that Steve was partly his own undoing. He was handed a great position of leadership for no other reason than being extremely likable and intelligent. I don’t really know why he did this, or why he thought he had to do it, but he, essentially, made up a girlfriend.

I don’t know why; perhaps it was our mutual obsession with porn. At the time, though, none of us had girlfriends. None of us had ever really seriously entertained the thought of having a girlfriend. We thought about having sex nonstop, but we didn’t really understand at that time (and some of us are still struggling with the idea today) that there’s more to a relationship than nonstop sex.

Perhaps he thought he needed to make up a girlfriend to justify the reason for his leadership. We all approached hero-worship for a time when he told us just who he was dating, and that worship was legitimized when he announced at one point that the two had performed the dirtiest of dirty deeds.

But the shit hit the fan. I think Art, in one of his rare appearances, was the first to announce that Steve had made up this entire relationship. He actually knew the girl, Erin, that Steve was claiming to date. Art had asked her about Steve, and Erin had no idea what he was talking about.

Dave had already planted a seed of doubt after the infamous “We did it” conversation. When pressed for details, Steve said very little. Understandable, being that it was a very personal moment. On the other hand, he was the first of any of us to even come close to losing his virginity, so we wanted the details.

“What was it like?” Dave asked.

“It was…” Steve paused, searching for the mot juste. “…flowing.”

Flowing? Huh. We all accepted it. Our frame of reference consisted of seeing some porno movies and many, many pictures of naked women, so who were we to accuse him of lying? Plus, none of us even thought he was lying, until he had to go. The first thing Dave said when Steve left was, “Flowing? He’s making it up.”

We all shouted down Dave’s complaints, saying that he didn’t know what he was talking about anymore than we did. Dave believed he did know more than we did for two reasons: (1) he was the supply of all our porn, and therefore he had to know everything (clearly he had the extra time with the material to thoroughly read the articles), and (2) his older brother had supposedly had sex. We didn’t believe it, though; Warren was a whale and an asshole. We couldn’t imagine any woman having sex with him.

That was basically the end of it, until Art’s announcement. While most were hesitant to believe him, I kind of had to side with Art. I had made a personal discovery that I didn’t tell anyone until after the fictional girlfriend came out. Steve was, when you come down to brass tacks, my best friend, and I wasn’t going to use anything against him when I hadn’t even talked about it first.

Ever tactfully, Art made his announcement during a large-group summit in Dave’s basement. Even Joe was there, possibly because he was the svengali behind Art’s announcement. More importantly, Steve was there, so accusations came flying right at him, and all he could do is argue and hide behind the defenses of myself and Jeff (Mark stayed neutral).

Jeff and I believed Steve’s rhetoric; he claimed his relationship with Erin was secret, which was why they rarely acknowledged each other in public and only went out occasionally. In retrospect, this seems way too simple, but Jeff and I had very romantic mentalities, so we found the idea of a secret relationship more endearing than fradulent.

With the heat on, Steve decided to leave while everybody else went upstairs to get snacks and argue further. I went back to the basement with Steve to help him collect his bass and his backpack.

“I can’t believe them,” Steve said. “You believe me, don’t you?”

I looked him right in the eyes and said, “Yeah, of course.” I knew otherwise, though; perhaps that should have been the time to bring it up.

My personal discovery came in the form of song lyrics Steve had given me awhile back. It was kind of an unhappy breakup song, which he claimed to have written with Erin, but it was good. As was the nature of our songwriting collaboration at the time, he handed me the lyrics to set to music, and I stuck them in a desk drawer so I could work on my own stuff.

Maybe a month or two after that, I decided to listen to the Goo Goo Dolls’ album that was big at the time (A Boy Named Goo, har-har). I don’t recall who made that recommendation, but at the time, the general consensus was that the Goo Goo Dolls sucked huge amounts of ass (I still believe that; listening to the album did not change my impression of them much), so it was probably some girl I wanted to ask out.

So I’m listening to this album, and all of a sudden one of the songs strikes me as very familiar. I’d never heard the chords or melody before, but the lyrics were so familiar.

It hit me. I pulled the lyric sheet out of my desk drawer, rewound the song, and listened again. He’d just copied the lyrics of “Ain’t That Unusual.” It made sense, choosing a band he probably liked secretly and logically assumed we’d never listen to. It’s nothing more than a coincidence that I listened to the tape, anyway.

Does this mean he made up a relationship with a girl? No. I guess this is the reason I never lost faith or trust in him, even though in retrospect it all seems so obvious. I was going to confront him about the fake lyrics, but that wouldn’t necessarily lead to an accusation of fake girlfriends. I actually do recall thinking at the time I made the discovery, “Man, Erin and Steve made up song lyrics.”

But now, with the allegations starting to add up, I wondered. And I looked my best friend in the eye and bullshat him. I could have — and should have — told him about my doubts, but I thought that’d make me a bad friend, since at this point he had very little support from our nerdy clique, and at least I, the officially recognized best friend, could stay in his corner.

So yes, at the time, I firmly believed straight-up lying to friends was more acceptable than telling them truths they may not want to hear. Since this incident had a remarkably profound impact on my life, does it now make sense why I’m such a hardass with Lucy? Not that she listens to me…

I went out with Steve and waited until his mom picked him up before going back into Dave’s house.

Then, the idea that ruined Steve was pitched. I don’t remember who brought it up, but it was either Dave, Joe, or Art. I’m leaning toward Art, but I’m not even sure I was in the room when the actual pitch took place, or if it was relayed secondhand because I was outside with Steve. It’s beside the point, though. The point is the idea came out: let’s go to Erin’s house and ask her directly.

I live in a pretty small town, in the grand scheme. It’s not an everybody-knows-everybody place, but it’s pretty close to it. We all, merely by living in this town for our entire lives, knew where Erin lived. We weren’t friends with her or her twin sister — hell, we didn’t even particularly like them — but we knew.

So must of us trudged across town on a cold winter day, making the long walk (we didn’t all have bikes, so we all decided to walk) to Erin’s house. I know some people stayed behind, because my dad came to pick me up and was told by Dave that we had gone for a walk.

I believe it was Mark, Jeff, Mike, Joe, and myself making the trek. Art and Dave stayed behind.

We got to her house and knocked on the door. I can’t imagine what her mom may have been thinking when five guys showed up at her house asking to speak with one of her daughters, but nonetheless, she went and got her.

Erin, stunned that a group of low-class jackasses would show up at her door, wondered what the hell we wanted.

“Are you dating Steve?” we asked, point-blank.

“No…” she said, looking genuinely perplexed.

Mark said, “He told us all about you and how it’s a secret. You don’t have to keep it quiet. We just want to know.”

“I barely even know Steve,” Erin said, actually looking sorry at this point.

But there it was: our answer. Steve had made the whole thing up.

After that, Joe’s thirst for power was pretty much quenched. Mark, Jeff, and I were still overall willing to forgive Steve, although we were mad; I’m not sure if that says how likable Steve was or how much of an asshole Joe was. We mostly just wanted to talk with Steve about it, but Joe squashed that. After all, if we talked to Steve, we might understand why he did what he did, and Joe couldn’t let that happen.

I had little to no involvement in the rest of the story, other than giving Steve the cold-shoulder. Essentially, Joe made a plan for a literal attack (like, a random act of pussy-gang violence) on Steve. I don’t recall who was involved, except that I wasn’t, but they basically ganged up on him in a classroom, tried to attack him, he ran away into the principal’s office (inconveniently across the hall), but they chased him through it anyway and ended up knocking the shit out of him in the main hall before running away to avoid getting caught.

After that, a meeting was called to basically decide on a very open level who would be the new boss of us: Joe or Steve. I dimly recall being violently ill at the time, so I missed the entire meeting, but from what I learned from others, they were all gathered in the park across the street during the recess half of our lunch period, and Steve was confronted verbally instead of physically. Mark and Jeff aired our grievances, Steve accepted our distrust and apparent loathing, and skulked away all by himself. He ditched the second half of school and went home.

After that, we all ignored him, and he ignored us. This ruined my friendship with Mandi and Jenny, who pitied and befriended him for obvious reasons. They took the whole thing out on me; although I was willing to forgive and forget, they chided me for not standing up for him in the first place. While I could have stood up for him on the night we went to Erin’s house, it was more difficult during the subsequent bullying because I wasn’t there.

But hey, I made my bed…

I really found out very little about Steve after that. Our close friendship had ended. He started hanging out with Mandi and Jenny, obviously. They introduced him to tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, three things he was dead against when he hung out with us. I guess being betrayed by your only friends will do that to you.

A reconciliation of sorts occurred our freshman year of high school, when Jeff and I rebonded and became best friends once again (Steve interrupted that) and decided that Joe simply had to go. With Steve’s help, he went. But after that, even though things were “better,” they still weren’t the same. We were cordial and occasionally joked around, but we didn’t seek each other out. It was just too difficult.

I had a few classes with Steve later in high school, and we mostly sat in the back of the room mocking everyone and everything that happened. But that was as close as we got. It seemed like some kind of psychic mutual agreement.

A big step came when he moved. His parents divorced, and he ended up moving to Wisconsin with (I think) his mother. He tracked down Mark, who gave him all of our contact information. He got ahold of us and periodically let us know how he was doing.

The last I heard — and this was a few years ago — was that he was married and working in interior design in Wisconsin. It sounded happy.

Meanwhile, everything else fell apart. Mark and Mike sided with Dave and Joe’s thuggery, Art disappeared (which I explain in the Ben Franklin entry), Jeff and I remained great friends (mostly independent of them) throughout high school. We went through a rough patch during our first year of college, but we got past that. We don’t talk much anymore, though; he has his own thing, and I have mine.

Aside from Jeff and occasional snippets of Art, I haven’t seen any of those people in years, which is surprising since we all, by and large, live in the same place. I know Mark went into the military. He e-mailed me from a nuclear sub a few years ago, and I never responded because I’m an asshole. Of course, he supposedly tried to seduce Lucy last year and then turned out to be engaged, but I’ve heard about 30 sides to that story, so the question remains whether or not he’s as big an asshole as I am.

Today, though, I saw Steve. He’s back from Wisconsin, working at the Cingular store to pay to go to an architecture and design school. I think I was as surprised to see him as he was me. He was extremely cordial and friendly, but I know he was thinking about the exact same things I was thinking about; mainly, what happened during eighth grade. The aftermath and reconciliation don’t have the same resonance as the few weeks that marked the downfall of a great friendship.

And I know his strongest memories are not of our sophomore-year lit class or the rare occasions I’d see him at the smoking lot (visiting friends); it’s all about that year, when we were in a band, becoming the best of friends, and then it all went to shit.

He asked, “Do you still play guitar?” A reasonable question, since we were in a band together and I took the instrument very seriously (still do, though now it’s a hobby rather than an eventual career path), and I played at a few shows in high school, so obviously it’d stick out.

I told him yes, and then he chuckled and said, “Curmudgeon,” and that’s how I knew for certain that he was remembering all that bad shit.

At some point, we agreed to name our band Curmudgeon, partly for the junior-high-angst-filled songs we wrote together, partly as a reference to a B-side by what we believed was the greatest band in the universe (Nirvana). I didn’t even remember that until he brought it up, and when he did, I realized that he probably remembers all that stuff even more vividly than I do, because he got the shit-stained end of the stick.

I walked home, new phone in hand, feeling like the worst human being who ever lived. Should I have exchanged numbers or e-mail addresses with him? Should I have stayed and talked longer (they weren’t busy)? Should I have gotten down on my hands and knees, weeping, and beg for forgiveness?

I realized that I can never right those wrongs, but maybe we can slowly rebuild. He’s in town; I’m in town. Why not hang out? Why not stop into the Cingular store sometime next week and invite him out for dinner or a drink?

I may do that, but I may not. The entire conversation felt extremely awkward; I don’t know if he felt it, or if it’s just my guilt working overtime, but it just felt like trying to rekindle an ages-old friendship would never work. I haven’t had a lengthy conversation with him in about nine years.

We have so much to talk about, and yet I can’t seem to think of a single thing to say other than “Sorry.”

Posted by Stan on October 20, 2004 3:42 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (5)

October 10, 2004

Why I Went to Seattle

Lucy and I have, off and on, been bestest buddies for about five years. I say “off and on” because there were periods, both long and short, where we simply didn’t talk to each other for one reason or another. The best example of this was the time we had dinner together, not an unusual activity for us at the time, and we spent about three hours outlining every single thing we thought was wrong with the other person. We were both really tired of each other, so it was essentially a no-holds-barred “You fucking suck ass because…” session.

This happened in mid-May a few years ago. The next time we talked after that was in August, when I went to Iowa City to see Juliana Hatfield. We had a reasonably good time being passive-aggressive before and during the show. Afterward, I was to spend the night at her apartment, but we got into a huge fight, and I decided to drive home that night.

Funny how that happens, right?

This anecdote illustrates a key fact in my friendship with Lucy: it is relentlessly unhealthy. At this point, we do nothing but fight. Do we fight about anything worthwhile? Sometimes, but since our lives are both equally fucked up at this point, it’s usually a stalemate. Like this paraphrased excerpt from a recent fight:

Lucy: I’m sick of [current abusive boyfriend]. I think I want to go back to [previous abusive boyfriend]. He was an asshole, but at least he was a caring asshole.
Me: Don’t you dare get back together with [previous abusive boyfriend].
Lucy: Like I’m going to take relationship advice from someone dated a lunatic!
Me: She may not have been entirely sane, but at least I’m not afraid she’s going to kill me!
Lucy: Yes, you are!
Me: Why would you think that?
Lucy: Maybe because when you were dating her, you said, “I’m afraid to stay over at her place because I think I’m going to wake up with a knife in my chest.”
Me: …
Lucy: …

So, there’s that.

I have unhealthy relationships with the rest of humanity. Consequently, I decided not only to abandon the small chunk of humanity with whom I am personally engaged for three months — I decided to go right back to the very first unhealthy relationship I ever had: I went to live with my sister.

While there, my sister and I strengthened our familial bond. A couple of weeks later, we descended back into our normal pattern of petty name-calling, frustrated outbursts, and avoidance of one another. It was a great experience!

I also reneged on my loose guideline of “avoid everyone I’ve ever met at any time.” Very few people tried to get ahold of me once I let them know I was going away. The only people who called me were people who didn’t know. And, of course, people who didn’t care, notably Lucy. Oops!

So I spent the summer talking to her intermittently. Over the summer, Lucy leapfrogged from one abusive boyfriend to another; the second abusive boyfriend dumped her shortly after she fucked him because, well, that’s just what the guys she dates do. I’ve figured that out; when will she?

Posted by Stan on October 10, 2004 7:56 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

How I Ruined Maria’s Life

I made friends with this girl, Maria, when it turned out I was in every single one of her classes in the spring semester. Bear in mind that she was only in half of my classes, since I was taking twice the credit hours, but at any rate we got to know each other pretty well and became decent friends. Then, I left for three months with no word and came back as if nothing happened.

Unlike most of my friends, all of whom I was consciously avoiding all summer, I felt bad about ignoring Maria. Not bad enough to call her, mind you, but bad enough that she was one of the first three I got ahold of when I came home.

Turns out, Maria was in two of my five classes this semester. That was a reasonably hopeful sign, albeit not a surprising one, since the two screenwriting classes we’re taking is full of familiar faces. It was nice to have somebody to bitch with, though, when things get rough. I like everybody else, but I don’t know that I can trust them to keep the secret bitchings to themselves. Whether I like it or not (mostly “or not”), I’m apparently hilarious. People enjoy quoting the hilarious things I say. I hate it when they do that, because it inevitably gets me into some kind of trouble.

That said, I was looking forward to having some classes with Maria again. That is, until she didn’t show up to our Tuesday class, screenwriting practicum. Turns out she dropped it, since it’s not a class we really need to take, and she’s already taking 15 credit hours; she didn’t need the other three. My take on it is that, unless it was a financial thing (it wasn’t), she should’ve stayed in it, because it’s a really simple class, and the end result is a possible film credit.

Here’s the idea of the class: you’re handed a short story. You adapt it into a 5-8 page script so that it can end up being a 7-10 minute film. You work with Producing IV students to hone the script into the best compromise of your writerly vision and their producerly vision. In the spring, the producers go on to the producing practicum, where they team up with all the other practicums (practica?) — directing, cinematography, editing, sound — and assemble a cast and crew to shoot the film.

Unlike most Columbia films, they really deck the halls out on these guys. Everything’s 35mm, color, with legitimately decent sound and lighting. The practicum classes use the best equipment Columbia has (which is pretty fucking good — it’s just that we don’t usually get access to it without paying to rent it and having a thesis film to make), and the film department apparently pulls a lot of budgetary/legal strings that they normally wouldn’t.

Why? Because, arguably, this is the best undergrad work we’ll do. This is the stuff that will be submitted to festivals and actually get accepted.

And why is that important? Because, believe it or not, influential people go to festivals, watch shorts (especially student shorts), and rub their chins thoughtfully as they read the credits. If a short is well-made (and not many are — just watch IFC and Sundance Channel), it’ll generate a buzz, and that buzz will lead to opportunity.

So, say my name is on the “Written by…” credit of a short film that generates a lot of buzz. People suddenly know who I am. They think, “Goddamn, if this guy can create fully developed characters, put them into an interesting story, and really make me sit and ponder life for a few minutes, imagine what he can do in a feature-length screenplay!” Boy, are they going to be surprised and disappointed!

That’s why I’m taking this class — it’s purely for the glory and potential career enhancement it may give me. It’s not a required course for anybody, so I assume it’s why everyone else is taking it. On Thursday, Maria told me she decided to drop it, because less stress is, to her, more important than a career that she doesn’t seem all that interested in at the moment (more on that later).

So on Thursday night, we do have a class together. This one is a portfolio review. I actually like the way it’s structured — each week, we get a “canon” of one peer’s work, we read it, we give coverage, and the following week we come back and have an open discussion about the various scripts’ strengths and weaknesses. I think it’s great, because we rarely get opportunities to read one another’s work — partly because we don’t have time, partly because we loser writers are very guarded about our work, mostly because we all know it’s shit. Or maybe that’s just me.

You might have noticed the word “canon” in the last paragraph, in sarcastic quotation marks. “Why the sarcasm?” you’re asking, apparently after losing familiarity with the usual tone of my writing because I haven’t blogged much lately.

Here’s why: the professor is a jackass. I’ve heard so many scary things about him, from his hyper-criticism of trivial shit to his arrogance to his jaded pep-talks to the fact that he grades arbitrarily to the fact that he demands you either call him “professor” or “doctor” or, if you’re feeling informal, “doc.” I’ve managed to consciously avoid his classes as I’ve gone through the screenwriting program, but this class is the big hurdle. See, he’s the only professor who teaches this class. It’s the only session. There’s not enough demand for another session to open up, and even if there were, he’d probably teach that one, too.

So, as of right now, I’m screwed.

One other thing about this prof: remember Owen from last semester? Of course, you do. Well, take this as the biggest horror of all: this man is Owen’s favorite professor. And, after having met him, I know why: they are the exact same person.

Okay, not the exact same person. This professor does have a bit more of the all-important social skills; he has a bit more of a self-deprecating wit, rather than a wit that relies solely on insulting or alienating everyone else in the room. He also shaves regularly and isn’t gargantuan by any means.

But man, when they get talking, they’re exactly the same. In all senses. They talk and talk and talk about nothing, rambling in desperate search of a point, and when they run out of things to talk about, they just stop, whether they’ve found that point or not (usually or not). And, even with the professor’s occasional bonus of self-deprecating humor, he will still smugly insult every person in the room, as well as many people out of the room, for no particular reason. Meanwhile, he has absolutely no objection singing his own praises.

I don’t mind people who are confident in their skills. I wish I could be confident in my skills; it’d make me a lot less manic, I think. But there’s a big difference between being confident, like my other screenwriting pals Mike and Gray, and being unrelentingly arrogant, like Owen and the professor.

At any rate, the professor insists that we refer to our “collected works” by their proper name — “the canon.” I have a hard time doing that, because my particular “canon,” and the “canon” of everyone else in the class, defies the actual definition of that word. These aren’t works, completed and collected to be perused by scholars and producers (two very separate categories) — they’re works-in-progress, all of them, even the stuff that’s “done” still needs at least another draft or five before they’ll be ready to show to anyone without any embarrassment.

But anyway, “canonical” or not, here’s the bare minimum of what he was expecting: a wide sampling of our writing, limited to finished screenplays or treatments. No outlines, no step outlines, no works of fiction, no teleplays, and NO unfinished work. He made a couple of exceptions for stageplays, but that was only to examine the adaptation process, since those students had adapted their stageplays into screenplays.

From those rough guidelines, we were to assemble the “canon” in any way we desired: it could be all treatments, or all short scripts, or a mingling of treatments and short scripts, or a feature script and some short scripts, or a feature script and some treatments, or multiple feature scripts. And so on. We weren’t given a minimum or maximum page requirement, because theoretically we’re advanced enough to choose with few to no guidelines.

I went through most of my stuff and chose three scripts: one is the feature I wrote in screenwriting 2, another is a 31-page short script I wrote for my adaptation class, and the final one is an 18-page short script I wrote in my Screenwriting I class. In thinking about it now, I feel like a jackass for not including possibly the greatest screenplay ever written, The Effects of Gun Control and Wartime Situations as it Relates to Livestock and Rural Communities, or: How Bessie Got Her Groove Back. I feel like I should print that out right now and shove it into the professor’s mailbox so it can be included in my “canon.”

In choosing my “canon,” though, I was embarrassed about my feature, but without it, I wouldn’t have enough material to sufficiently call it a “canon.” The remainder of what I have is either worse than the feature, or it’s incomplete. The bulk of my “canon” is actually unfinished screenplays. So I had an option: rewrite a script where everything’s laid out (but really poorly), or finish one of my incomplete scripts, guaranteeing that it’d be either equally bad or worse than what I already had.

And my feature wasn’t really that bad, in the sense of terrible writing. My sister’s boyfriend Jack insisted that I read Angels & Demons, Dan Brown’s “prequel” to The Da Vinci Code; I gotta tell you, the premise is great, but it’s some of the worst goddamn writing I’ve ever seen. And he’s published. So I can say unequivocally that, whatever piss-poor shape my screenplay may be in, it’s still better than this book. And though it may be in the form of a cheap shot, that’s confidence talking (not arrogance).

So shitty writing wasn’t the (whole) problem. My issue was that I know a whole lot of the problems with my script in advance. What’s the point of handing it out for criticism when they’re just going to tell me things I already know?

While I know the only real way to fix the major problems in my script is to do a page-one rewrite, I didn’t have the time to do that in the week I had to prepare my “canon,” so I just went through, chopping scenes that didn’t work at all (or were repetitive) and reworking scenes that weren’t quite there yet but could be with some work. I think it’s in reasonable shape now, though it’s not nearly where I want it. As I said, time constraints preclude actual quality.

Hey, remember when this story was about me ruining Maria’s life? Believe it or not, that digression actually is related to the main idea of this entry (a first, I think).

See, Maria assembled her “canon,” too, and it made her drop the class.

She called me on Monday, when I was still mulling over whether or not it was worth the effort to rewrite my feature. I missed the call, and she left a rather succinct message: “Stan, Maria, call me back.”

I called her back as soon as I got out of class; she didn’t answer. I decided to cut senior seminar, because good God what a waste of time, and I went home. Maria got back to me shortly after I walked in the door, and she told me, “I dropped the portfolio review. I just wanted you to know, because I feel bad that now we have no classes together.”

“Motherfucker,” I thought, but I asked, “Why?”

She explained to me that she “just wasn’t ready.” Everything she’s written in college has been worthless jerk-off material, and she hasn’t had the spare time to write anything legitimately fulfilling to her. For my money, this always seemed like a bad move to me; I understand sometimes you don’t have the time to work with the best ideas, but at least it should be something you’re reasonably passionate about so you can re-work it later, when you either have more time or more experience.

Maria’s philosophy is almost the opposite; she’s just coasting through college, churning out shitty work she cares nothing about, and she’ll throw it all away as soon as she gets a diploma. And then what? Well, she hasn’t thought that far ahead. And I thought I lacked foresight.

But enough about me — were there any other reasons Maria dropped the portfolio review class? Yes:

“Plus,” she added, “you told me it was a blow-off class and they’d just waive the requirement, so I can still go to L.A. in the spring.”

Wait, what?

Oh, shit.

Did I tell her those things? Yup. But — and here’s why my professor, Callie, would slap me upside the head and remind me that she told me not to tell anyone about the string-pulling that was going on for me — there were completely different circumstances when I was supposed to be going. For one thing, I already had the credits in other areas of the film department to graduate with a general studies degree; for another, they thought that I really wanted to go to L.A. this fall. Most importantly, everybody in the screenwriting department knows and/or loves me.

This is problematic for Maria, who currently knows very few people in the screenwriting department, despite it being her concentration. I can’t fault her for that, since I didn’t even really start getting to know any of these people until last fall. You get the right string of bad teachers, and you’ll wind up graduating knowing nothing about anything. Plus, I’m fairly opportunistic, so as soon as Callie described her responsibilities in the department, I made it a goal to get her to know and like me.

So that was my story: they approved my semester in LA application without even looking at it. They didn’t even realize I’m not prepared to graduate and hadn’t taken all of the prerequisites for Screenwriting III (which I’d be taking in L.A.), which is when they offered to waive them. Partly for my benefit (because they thought I really wanted/needed to go out there), but also to ensure they still had enough people for the screenwriting program to run in L.A. this fall.

Maria’s story is much less glamorous; when she walks into their office, they don’t even know her by name. I hate to get all down on her because she’s a good friend, but if somebody doesn’t know you, how likely are you to stick out your neck for them? Everybody in the screenwriting department is nice, but all they’ll give is the “nothing I can do” routine if they don’t know they can trust you.

I told her as much, and she said she’d try talking to the head of the department anyway. I told her it sounded like a bad idea to me, because she’d basically be walking into the office and saying, “Hey, man, I dropped this portfolio review class because I’m really just not ready for it. However, I’m ready to go to L.A. in the spring if you just waive this class requirement.” For somebody he doesn’t even know, this message will be read loud and clear, because it’ll be printed in red, 64-point, boldface type.

Maria was regretting her decision, too, because she didn’t realize add/drop had ended; sure, you can still drop for a few weeks, but you can’t add after the first week is over. I felt terrible, because I was partially responsible; sure, she was kind of a dumbass for not talking to anybody before she just went and dropped the class, but she did it because of things I said and apparenty didn’t clarify.

So I did what any friend would do: I talked to the head of the department before she could get to him, and I told him I had a friend who dropped the class and asked what could be done to get her back into it.

He told me that she made a “tremendous error in judgment” in not coming to him before dropping the class. Essentially, his only option to get her back into the class is to go to the records department, get down on his hands and knees, and beg for them to correct the mistake. I thanked him for his time and ran away, crying.

But that gave me two ideas. In my four years (and counting…) as an undergrad, if there’s one skill I’ve learned, it’s the fine art of lying your way out of situations. Hmm, I keep thinking I should make some kind of joke about the President, but it just seems too cheap…

At any rate, here were my two solutions to Maria’s problem:

1. Go to the records department, kicking and screaming, and insinuate there was some kind of glitch in the computer system (which is extremely likely, anyway) and say that, since she hasn’t missed any classes, they should just stick her back into it, since it’s their goddamn fault anyway. Mwahaha.
2. If she really didn’t want to take the class (which seems to be the case), she should NOT talk to the head of the department AT ALL. When the time comes later in the semester, she should fill out a semester in L.A. application, which they will most likely approve, and then say, “Golly, I didn’t know I was supposed to take that portfolio review class.”

Posted by Stan on October 10, 2004 11:03 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

April 9, 2004

About Those Hot Chicks…

For reasons I don’t even understand, the majority of my friends are women. What’s more, the majority of these women are attractive. I’m not talking about my standards (I thought of making a Stan-related pun, but nah); honest-to-God, normal, non-desperate men find these women incredibly attractive. And this is not nearly as much fun as you might think it is.

For example, when one of my friends approaches me with boyfriend troubles (and yes, they’re hot, of course they all have boyfriends), it’s very difficult for me to give them objective advice; instead, I want to urge them to dump their boyfriends and pick me up on the rebound. Sure, it won’t last, but I’ll understand that she was going through a period of confusion and we’ll end up friends. But noooooo; they have to work it out.

Women. Go figure.

Plus, it’s hard to have a civilized conversation with your close friends, people whose lives you know very disturbing, depressing, funny, poignant, crazy things about, when you’re picturing them naked. So I’ve got the current conversation, all the past things I’ve ever learned about them, their nudity, and my guilt about thinking about their nudity, to juggle in my brain.

Sometimes it’s just hard being Stan. In more ways than one.

And that leads me to yet another in a string of awkward conversations I’ve had with my former* coworker, Eric. He’s a film student, so I end up seeing him constantly. Although it’s far enough in the semester that I’ve figured out when and where I’m most likely to see him, and I try to avoid it. Especially this week, since on Tuesday I ended up running into him, and he told me I had a check in the office to pick up, and if I didn’t, they’d mail it. I told him I’d go and pick it up, but I didn’t bother, so I thought it best to try and avoid him until after they mailed it.

So, after class, my friends and I went to this pizza place up on 8th and State. It’s sorta the best of both worlds: they have pizza by the slice for me and salads for them. I tried to convince them to stay and shoot the shit for awhile at the pizza place, but it started to get crowded (damn lunch rush!), so we went back to the film building and shot the shit in relative quiet, although I had a growing fear that I’d run into Eric, as I always do on Thursdays between my two classes, when I’m hanging out with my friends.

I feel awkward about Eric because of the way I quit. Basically, it went like this: Jenna started treating me like I was completely retarded, which started to get on my nerves. Then, she had me do this trained-ape job while everybody else worked on the U-Pass, so I decided to quit. Instead of formally tenuring my resignation and giving two weeks’ notice, I handled it the way I’d handle any other shitty work-study job: I stopped showing up, which was followed immediately by nobody caring.

Actually, that’s not true. I’ve run into Eric a lot, and he seems really bummed that I don’t work there anymore (to the extent that it seems like he’s almost seeking me out, so I run into him even when I’m trying to avoid him; he also kept demanding to read the screenplay I wrote last semester, despite my accurate protestations that it sucks balls, and when I finally gave it to him, he gave it back to me the next day and said he read it in one sitting and loved it — wow!). I also ran into Gregory once, and he told me I should just call Jenna and straighten things out, and she’d almost certainly give me my job back. I don’t have the heart to tell either of them that I don’t want the job, although I guess they figured it out at this point.

At any rate, he approached me yet again on Thursday, when I was talking with one of my friends (arguably the most attractive; the rest of my friends had dispersed to either do homework, go to work, or sleep), to tell me that Jenna had, in fact, mailed my check. I was happy about this, since it was actually a pretty sizable check and I’m running out of savings. (I’m not getting another campus job, and I’ve (honestly) been too lazy to go out looking for a job, despite the fact that it seems every retail place in town is hiring.) We were sort of playing a game of chicken — would I come in to pick it up, or would she just mail the fucking thing? — and it appears that I’ve won.

Eric left after a couple of minutes, but I saw him again in the foyer as I was walking with my friend out the door. We parted ways — she to her class, me to a coffee refill — and when I got back, Eric was standing on the sidewalk outside, staring right at me. It was like he was waiting for me to get back. He wasn’t even smoking a cigarette, like he usually does. He was just…standing.

I figured this was it. He was gonna finally confront me about why I quit and how I quit, tell me I should’ve handled things better, tell me it’s okay to swallow my pride and call Jenna and air my grievances and hope she’ll be more understanding in the future. It was not a conversation I wanted to have; avoiding that conversation is why I’ve waited for eight weeks instead of calling and telling them to mail my last check.

I approached Eric, who was waving his arm to flag me down (like I was gonna ignore him and walk on by; believe me, I thought about it). I opened my coffee and took a sip. Eric licked his lips, shuffled his feet.

Finally, he said, “So…how do you get all those really hot girls to hang out with you?”

I giggled uncomfortably. I wanted to laugh hysterically at how wrong my thinking had been. He’d probably been saving that question up the first time he saw me walking around with Attractive Blonde Friend or Super-Hot Pothead, but I’d either been tethered to one of my hot friends or in too much of a hurry to stop and chat. And now that I was alone and had fifteen minutes to spare before class, he could finally ask that itching question.

“I dunno,” I said. I didn’t at that time; I had no idea how my friends all mysteriously happen to be attractive women. I would have attributed it to my sense of humor, which seems to be my only redeeming quality, but that starts to wear on people after they’ve hung out with me for a couple of weeks (or days, or minutes).

What really seems to happen, now that I’ve thought about it, is that I see these women, I’m instantly attracted to them because they’re, for lack of a better word, hot, so I go and talk to them. I’m gutsy enough to approach them, but not gutsy enough to ask them out immediately or even at the end of the first conversation. And then it turns out they’re really cool. And they have a boyfriend. And they want to hang one day. Do I want to hang with her? Yes. Do I want to hang with her and her boyfriend? Not really, but beggars can’t be choosers.

But seriously, folks, usually their boyfriends turn out to be pretty decent guys, as well. Surprisingly, all of my women friends are far more well-adjusted than, say, Lucy, so they aren’t, for example, nuts and they don’t date men who make her seem normal.

Ironically, it often turns out that when I end up dating somebody, it’s not one of these attractive women to whom I randomly say stupid things on a whim. They’re really not my type, except in the sense that they’re cool to hang out with and I want to have sex with them. No, the women I usually go out with tend to be more on the Lucy end of the crazy train, which makes me wonder if I’m just as crazy as any number of Lucy’s boyfriends.

So I suppose I can look forward to a lifetime of befriending unattainable women while having breakable objects hurled at me for any number of reasons by the attainable women.

As they say on the streets: a winner is me!

*Yes, at the beginning of this semester I unceremoniously quit my job and got a social life (despite me blogging on a Friday night instead of par-tay-ing down), which is why I never have any time to blog (social life + doing homework at home instead of at work = no blogging). [Back]

Posted by Stan on April 9, 2004 8:14 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

February 22, 2004

Skate or Die, or: Die or Die

I’m all achy and tired. Last night, I went ice-skating with some friends. Apparently I’m not good at that. Well, I mastered the fine art of clinging to the railing for dear life, but when I tried to mix it up a little bit by making my legs go frantically in fifty different directions at one time, followed by falling flat on my ass, the whole ice-skating thing got tiresome.

Ironically, though, the most painful things to happen to me last night didn’t happen on an ice rink. One happened at the restaurant afterward, when it turned out the girl I had kinda-sorta been set up with informed us all that she had a boyfriend (unbeknownst to the friends who attempted to set us up). I’m still not sure if she saw through the whole set-up ruse as easily as I did and made up the boyfriend so I wouldn’t be insulted that she didn’t like me (I wouldn’t, though; it’s a natural reaction).

The second happened on the train on the way home. This woman, who I really hope was homeless, because if not, she’s got some ‘splainin’ to do. Anyway, this woman got on the train and smelled worse than I ever thought any human being ever could. I mean, I’ve had issues with train-related body odor before, but this was unimaginably bad. Honestly, she smelled like raw sewage. And the worst part? The smell clung to the air for at least 20 minutes, during which I had to breathe very slowly through my mouth.

At one point, this woman maneuvered her way across the train car, and one gentleman sitting a little ways down from me accurately summarized the experience: “Daaaaaaaaamn, lady! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

The evening was rounded out in a way so stupidly ironic, it’s sorta funny. It wasn’t at the time, but looking back (you know, 18 hours), it’s hilarious.

When I got off the train, I went down to the parking lot toward my car. It was pretty warm — mid-30s to low-40s — all day, but when it got dark, it cooled off considerably. So considerably that the puddles dotting the lot had frozen over again.

There I was, crossing the parking lot at my typical brisk pace, trying to get to the car before the hundreds of muggers I often imagine hiding behind cars jump out and steal my money and soul, when I started across a somewhat large puddle. But this was no puddle: it was a large, slick patch of ice. I slid, reeled back, pinwheeling my arms to catch balance. I finally did and took a deep breath, standing completely still so I wouldn’t fall.

I took another step, outside of the slippery grasp of the ice patch, and somehow managed to step onto concrete that was as slick as the ice itself (damn you, black ice!). Unprepared for it, I tried to keep myself stable, but I failed miserably and fell right on my ass. I’m sure a few people saw me, but the lot is dark and empty that late. Despite the lack of witnesses, it was still the most humiliating thing to happen that night.

So now, I have bruises on my arms and hands, and every single part of my body aches in a wide variety of ways. I can’t wait to see what’s planned for next weekend!

Posted by Stan on February 22, 2004 5:45 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

February 10, 2004

The Misadventures of the Pothead

I was sort of excited about my experimental screenwriting class, not only because I’d be taking it with the Pothead, but because it’s being taught by possibly my favorite instructor of all time. Unfortunately, though, the Pothead never showed up. I was asked to call her, which I would’ve done anyway, to find out wassup. It turns out, she managed to fail a class last semester (and an easy class, at that). She adamantly refused to tell the story, but she said she’d talk to the experimental screenwriting professor and see if she thought the workload was feasible on top of this class she needs to repeat.

Sigh.

The topics in literature class is neat. It’s about Spike Lee and August Wilson in particular. As I already noted, Spike Lee is one of my filmmaking heroes. I don’t believe I’ve ever noted that August Wilson is one of my (many) writing heroes.

My sister originally turned me on to his writing; she’s a theatre major, so she reads all sorts of piddling crap that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. When she reads something good, she forces me to read it, as well. As such, I’ve managed to read the majority of Wilson’s plays and a few biographies, and he’s really fucking good.

I’m glad I’m taking this class, even though I have the feeling that when all is said and done, it’s going to have an ending not unlike the one featured in Do the Right Thing.

Small word about Spike Lee. Apparently he’s coming the first week of March, although nobody knows the specific dates. Also, apparently he “hates white people,” which is not at all surprising to me, although I think it’s an oversimplification of his feelings. Chances are, they’ll lock me in a cage before I’m allowed to meet him, but I’ve snuck word to a few people I know on the faculty in the film department, so we may sneak around somewhere.

Posted by Stan on February 10, 2004 7:36 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

February 7, 2004

The Search Is On

When I decided I needed to find a new job, I realized I had three options for on-campus jobs right under my nose (listed in order of priority):

1. Work in the English department’s writing center. I’ve been offered a job there before, more than once (but back when I was uninterested in a campus job), and I thought maybe now I’d try taking it, assuming they still remember who I am. Of course, even if they didn’t, my friend Anne works there, and she generally talks it up. I figured she could put in a good word for me.
2. Weasel my way into a job in the film department. I’m there more often than I’m in the Wabash building, and the atmosphere is likely to be less irritating.
3. I was offered a job last semester by a really desperate-sounding lady in the music department who really wanted somebody to act as her part-time secretary in the evenings. My schedule conflicted with hers, so it didn’t work out, but this semester is different, so I may be able to work something out with her.
4. Pretty much any other job anywhere ever. Honestly, the listing of work-study jobs is pretty huge, and a lot of jobs are offered that aren’t even on the list.

And this is just on-campus stuff! If I decide to get a dreaded real job, my options expand almost as far as the mall.

I decided that getting the job in the writing center was top priority, because it’d be really easy and a generally non-annoying place to work. Plus, Anne.

So, I called her up. She wasn’t around, so I left a message telling her I wanted information about hours, responsibilities, pay — basic stuff. She called back about half an hour later to inform me that they had just fired her, along with ¾s of the staff. She explained that there used to be a requirement for Comp I students to take their papers to the center, but the department dropped the requirement, thus eliminating the necessity for such a large staff. Even the people they kept have drastically reduced hours.

“Those fucking bastards,” Anne reacted calmly. I found it interesting how her rage about losing her job (and other bad things that have happened to her this week) managed to transform her from the free-spirit I often find myself attracted to into the seething cauldron of hate I often find myself really attracted to.

Anne insisted we find a job together this weekend. I didn’t really know what to think of that, because normally I’m the one pressing the idea that we should see more of each other, and she’s decidedly (and appropriately) stand-offish. Needless to say, I automatically knew the prefect job for our dynamic duo.

“We should become technical consultants for a porn studio,” I suggested.

She laughed at that, even though I was being serious. So, we hung up, and I said I’d call her back and we could look for jobs, but I haven’t done that yet. I’m sort of worried that, much like my epic adventure into the south side, I might be biting off more than I can chew, if you’ll excuse the disgusting imagery.

That phone conversation occurred on Thursday. Friday was another grueling day, although at least it was sorta different. Instead of being treated like a retard, I was mostly left alone. They made me stuff Valentine’s Day bags because I’m too stupid to do anything else. The bags, I kid you not, contain: one pamphlet on STDs, one pamphlet on why condoms are effective against STDs, two condoms, and two pieces of chocolate. The IT guy came in sometime that morning, and he looked at a desk covered with condoms and chocolates and joked that I’d be having a great weekend.

I laughed because it was funny, but then I got really depressed, because everybody’s having more sex than me, even the IT guy.

Over the course of the day, I got approximately 15 million papercuts. Gosh, the fun of my job. Not that I really care too much about papercuts; it’s just another of many annoyances.

About halfway through the day, an announcement came that made me want to stay at this job for at least another month. Over the course of black history month, my office is hosting a series of screenings, and many of the screenings are Spike Lee films. It’s not exactly common knowledge, but Spike Lee (and particularly Do the Right Thing) was the primary reason I went to film school. I’m sure he’d be ashamed to learn that.

At any rate, he called the office and said he’d be in Chicago, so he wanted to come to one or more of the screenings, which excited…well, pretty much just me. Everyone in the office seems to really not particularly like or respect his work, Malcolm X excepting. I find that odd, but whatever. The point is that at some point in the near future, I get to harass Spike Lee until he exasperatedly accepts a copy of my paltry reel and insists I be committed.

This made me unbelievably happy. I still hate my job, but in the near future, I get to have what might actually amount to a life-changing conversation with somebody I idolize.

This won’t end well.

Posted by Stan on February 7, 2004 3:02 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

November 29, 2003

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was dull this year. For a lot of deep-seated personal issues that burst violently to the surface a couple of years ago, our extended family no longer gathers to have a huge Thanksgiving feast. In fact, our extended family no longer really gathers at all, except at Christmas. We are required by law to appease the young’ns, despite the fact that nobody ever buys them anything they want (trust me, I was a young’n once, too — I know the look of somebody who is disappointed in his brand new sweater or her personally engraved Leatherman).

So, Thanksgiving was just me and my parents, as usual. My sister couldn’t get time off, so she didn’t even come home. Consequently, there were no fights or extended periods of food-flinging. How unfortunate.

I went out with Lucy on Wednesday night. We drove around for awhile and mostly sat in silence. It was late, I was pretty tired after having class all day, and she demanded that I stay home and sleep. I refused on the grounds that, since she decided to go home on Friday, I wouldn’t have a chance to see her again. I’m not really sure that inhaling her second-hand smoke in silence improves much on not seeing her at all, but in my own warped way, I believe it does.

I promised I’d call her on Thanksgiving to rescue her, however briefly, from her family. I didn’t call her, and I feel kinda guilty about it, even though I’m sure she didn’t care.

Posted by Stan on November 29, 2003 11:30 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (3)

November 24, 2003

Creepy Dan

There’s a guy Lucy hangs out with named Dan. Shortly after I met him, I took to calling him Creepy Dan because, frankly, he’s creepy. It’s hard to describe specifically why he’s creepy, aside from the fact that he radiates “OMFG CREEPY” vibes that can be felt from here to Kalamazoo.

He has this hunched-over demeanor that screams, “This is normal only if I’m a hunchback,” and the few times I’ve associated with him, all he ever did was sit there and stare at her. No, not stared. Leered. And, as a close personal friend and unofficial sworn protector of Lucy, I’ve often said things to her such as, “Would it be all I right if I pulled Creepy Dan’s lower intestines out via his mouth?”

She often says no.

The reason Creepy Dan always stares at her this: he’s in love with her. He has that faraway, sad, demented sort of love for her that most people get over sometime during the painful transition between junior high and high school. It’s that sort of pining-from-a-far, casually-leering-and-hoping-she-doesn’t-notice-even-though-clearly-she-does love. He puts her on a pedestal high above mere mortals, and being that I know Lucy a little better than he does, I’m gonna go ahead and say she shouldn’t be up there. He does stupid Milhouse things for her, the “If I do anything she says, she’s sure to notice me” method of getting a girl. And it doesn’t work.

In short, he’s me at 14. Except I’m pretty sure he’s 24. Which just makes it sad, as opposed to cute (although I’m positive it was sad at 14, too).

Unfortunately, Lucy has taken it upon herself to aid and abet his puppy-dog love, which she knows all about (him declaring it outright was one of the subtle clues). She has this magical ability to ignore everything she would rather not know about people and still go on associating with them. This is one of those things that I am not only unable to do, but I am also physically incapable of figuring out how the hell anyone can do that.

Of course, according to her, I’m antisocial and am prone to angry outbursts because I only confide things in her, and even then I keep the really bad stuff secret. I inherently distrust people, I’m paranoid, I’m misanthropic, and if either of us believed in a legitimate afterlife, we’d agree I’d probably go to the bad one. Also, even though she never says this, I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m the most boring person on the planet.

But at least I’m not creepy.

Lucy also has the tendency to manipulate and abuse people if she can get away with it. I know this because she used to do it to me until I shouted really awful things at her. Then, she stopped, and I have to believe she respects me more, if only for the creative profanity combos (I learned everything I know from my dad). Now, she does this with Creepy Dan (hence the Milhouse syndrome), and she gets away with it eternally because of his sunshiny, hopeful, unbelievably creepy love for her.

The reason I bring up Creepy Dan is this: we made plans when Bubba Ho-Tep first opened in Chicago to see it, but unfortunately she couldn’t make it in that weekend, so she missed it. As luck would have it, the film is still playing — albeit at a different theatre and only a late-showing — so we agreed to see it on Wednesday night, because I have nothing going on Thursday except for that whole Thanksgiving thing.

As luck would not even remotely have it, it’s closing on Tuesday night, and neither of us can make it. I called Lucy to tell her the disappointing news, and she suggested we go Friday. I got the impression at that point that maybe she was mildly drunk, so I just let it go and said, “Uh…yeah,” assuming I’d correct her later and make her feel stupid.

But then she said, “Is it all right if I invite [Creepy] Dan?”

“Uh…” I said, considering my options. My first instict was to shout, “GodDAMMIT, Lucy!” into the phone, which would imply a negative response. But Lucy is trying to make me a better person, which mostly involves not shouting negative things at people (by “people,” she means her). I couldn’t afford a slip-up like that, so I just said, “Uh…” again and hoped she’d take the hint.

“See, he’s really into Elvis stuff, so I thought he’d get a kick out of it,” she said. Gosh, did someone say “creepy”? Now, I enjoy Elvis. If I were in a Quentin Tarantino movie and therefore required to expound at length on my choice between Elvis and the Beatles, I would choose Elvis. I don’t dislike the Beatles; I’ve just never really found their music all that interesting. Not that I rush out to buy Elvis CDs, either, but his musical progression is much more interesting and appealing to me, personally.

But with that said, I’m not “really into Elvis stuff.” I mean, Jesus, all of a sudden I’m imagining Creepy Dan’s velvet-painting diner-sighting bedroom shrine. I’m imagining him in stained underwear, dancing around his room to “Blue Suede Shoes,” masturbating to the poster from Clambake. This is a mental image I don’t need to have. Ever. And I will never forgive Lucy for this.

Anyway, I grunted a couple of times, but then I hit on a good idea: if I just corrected her misconception about how long the movie is playing, then the point would be moot. So that’s what I did, and she seemed pretty disappointed. I’m not sure if it’s because she wanted to see the movie, or if it’s because she somehow wanted Creepy Dan to ingratiate himself with me.

This, of course, would never happen. I have way too many details about the things he’s said and done to prove his misguided love. Even if I ended up not completely disliking him, I’d still never have any respect for him. And this is me, the guy who trolls parents’ night at the elementary school to get a date.

As a consequence of our plans falling through, it’s unlikely that I’ll see Lucy much more during the Thanksgiving holiday. Last night was uneventful, aside from her smoking in my face long enough to note that not only is she harmful to me mentally and emotionally — she’s finally managed to figure out a way to be physically harmful!

Sigh. Will I never win?

Posted by Stan on November 24, 2003 9:18 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

November 1, 2003

One Time Lucy Thought She Was Dating a Tranny

About a year and a half ago, Lucy dumped her longtime boyfriend and decided it would be a good idea to fail at some relationships before getting back together with him. She went on a few dates with random guys before settling on some guy. Let’s call him Rufus, for a nice Bill & Ted reference.

Here’s the thing: she met Rufus online. She didn’t want to tell me that, because when she first broached the subject of “messing around” on match.com during a free trial, I warned her against the pure, unmitigated evil that lurks on the Internet. Trust me, I know all about [not work-safe — or, for that matter, human-eye-safe, you wusses] that. Lucy’s ordinarily a lot smarter than me, but sometimes she can be pretty naïve.

So, she told me she met this guy through a friend. I knew the friend in question; he worked as a server at Bennigans, where we spent the overwhelming majority of our time, so I saw him quite a bit. And that’s when her tangled web unraveled. She was worried about this new guy being a bit too needy, and she expressed as much to both myself and our server friend.

He called during dinner, while the server happened to be at the table. “Oh, is that that guy?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” she said.

“Where’d you meet him again?” he asked.

Lucy looked at him, then looked at me, then looked back at him. “Oh shit,” she was thinking.

“Um,” she said, “online.”

At this, the server laughed uproariously. I would have laughed uproariously, too, except I was too busy being enraged. Honestly, meeting a guy online — it’s stupid, yes, but it’s not a big deal to me. I would have made fun of her nonstop, but she was really worried that I’d get pissed off, overreact, and then say hostile things. So she lied to me. And then when I found out, I got pissed off, overreacted, and then said hostile things.

Two weeks later, when we resumed speaking with one another, we met again at Bennigans. Lucy was concerned about Rufus. They’d been spending a great deal of time together, and Lucy was starting to believe that Rufus not entirely male. She believed, actually, that he used to be a she and was in the process of changing genders.

“Why would you say that?” I wondered.

She had a number of reasons. The first, and most obvious, was that Rufus sounded like a woman. She played me some VoiceMails, and I can confirm the femininity in the voice. I don’t like to brag, or even really to compliment anyone in any way, but I know quite a bit about how the human voice works in both males and females, and I can pretty much tell insantly whether somebody is a male or female, even if they’re doing some sort of hilarious voice. It’s eerie but true, and I can say I was 95% sure Rufus was a woman based solely on his voice.

Another reason, which for some would have been a dead give-away, is that his friends referred to him with feminine pronouns. Not exactly subtle, right? When Lucy asked Rufus about this bizarre thing, he told her some story about how, when he was a kid he did something that made them all believe he was a woman, so now, more than a decade later, they still use feminine pronouns when referring to him. Or her.

Furthermore, Rufus looked androgynous. One could not tell by looking at him what specific gender he might have belonged to. Granted, the same could be said for quite a few people, but when you combine the many other reasons and then say, “Oh, and he looks genderless,” it sort of solidifies things.

Also, Rufus had a wide variety of medical problems. I had no idea what the specifics were, but I am aware that when people undergo sex-change operations, there are often a lot of complications, and even when there aren’t complications in the process itself, there are serious health risks. It’s just not really an awesome idea to change genders, to be frank.

…not that I’ve researched it at all.

And the final, most disturbing (if not most damning) hunk of evidence was Rufus’s overly stiff, somewhat unrealistic manhood. Now, the farthest Lucy had gone with Rufus at this point was a lot of kissing and rubbing, which generally makes the male of the species aroused (in my experience, the woman is usually bored). But Lucy liked to point out that it seemed like Rufus was aroused all the time. Which, ordinarily, is a good quality in a man, especially if he is in the porn industry.

Not when it feels like a wooden stick, though. Lucy described the unrealistic feel, the bizarre angle at which the prop-penis was positioned, and the fact that it was essentially immobile. It just hung there like a coat-rack, defying gravity.

I decided it would be a good idea for Lucy to set up a sting operation that in some way involved actual physical access with the unit. It was the only way to be sure, once and for all, what gender this person was.

Lucy decided, rightfully, that I am an idiot. She took a better course of action and broke it off (fake-penis-related pun intended). She consciously avoided him, and he called her constantly. That was another thing: he was (and this is her claim, not mine) needy like a woman. Men, she postulated, don’t obsess over women. They simply accept it and move on to their next conquest.

Random aside: Now, with her having formed an opinion like that about men, can you see why I almost always hate the guys she dates?

Anyway, eventually he stopped calling. I assume. She never talks about him anymore, so if he does, I don’t know about it.

In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a cautionary tale. Online dating services are very, very, very, very bad. The only tried and true method for meeting your perfect spouse is to hang around in bars and hope somebody will get drunk enough to sleep with you.

Posted by Stan on November 1, 2003 3:00 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (5)

Old Friend

After script analysis, I ran into a guy from my production class, John Q. Average American. He’s about the nicest guy in the world, and I hardly ever see him, so it was kinda cool that he happened to randomly be there while I was frantically checking my phone for missed calls.

“Where are you headed?” he wondered.

“Home,” I said.

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed.

“Why?” I asked.

“I was just gonna get some lunch,” he said, and I promptly agreed to go with him. It’s not like I actually had anything to do; I was just going home because class was over and I didn’t have to work.

So, it was cool. We sorta caught up and shot the shit and so on. I told him about the horrors of fiction II, and he told me the horrors of his optical printing class.

He invited me to a Halloween party I’d already been invited to but had no intention of going to, and he talked about how he always wanted to be a foot for Halloween because he thought it’d be really funny, but he never bothered to get the costume together.

This brought up Double Dare. Remember that giant foot that oozed green slime reminiscent of foot fungus? Which led me to the ultimate Halloween foot-costume pick-up line: “Hey, baby, how would you like to take the physical challenge?” This led Average to declare it the ultimate all-purpose pick-up line. He found it surprising that I have so much trouble with women. He must not read my blog.

That, of course, led him to the ultimate revelation of the day: I guess Marc Summers, the affable host of Double Dare has obsessive-compulsive disorder and is absolutely obsessed with cleanliness. I wondered if the OCD was mild at first but worsened by Double Dare, or if it was always bad but he was so desperate for work that he took the hosting gig despite his disorder. This led me to conclude that it’d be an interesting character to write about, so I put him in the stock of “weird screenplays based on real-life people” next to composer Robert Schumann and the adult-film director who tries to gain legitimacy by directing a children’s film.

He’s on work-study, too. He got a job in the production II lab, which made me obscenely jealous because he gets to work with the lab assistant. It turns out, he claims, that the job listings posted for the work-study are misleading, and you can pretty much get a job anywhere, whether they post a listing or not. This frustrated me, because I would’ve much rather worked in the production II lab than the activities office.

The good news, though, is that I have an excuse to visit that lab whenever the hell I want to. That lab assistant will soon be under my thrall.

In all, the lunch made me feel better about things. I had a really shitty week, and I’ve been pretty depressed about certain secret, horrible things. And, in fact, I was really depressed yesterday morning, to the degree that I contemplated leaving class.

I hadn’t seen Average in awhile, so he had a lot of amusing observations and so on that he hadn’t expressed to me. He also let me know that, apparently, I’m known among his circle (and others) as The Writer. Not a writer, but The Writer. Somehow, everybody is looking forward to scripts and stories I write, films I make, et cetera. I don’t have any idea why or how this happened, but it’s nice to know.

Plus, I sort of ended the week on an “up” note.

Posted by Stan on November 1, 2003 11:32 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

October 13, 2003

How to Piss Off Women and Apologize and Make Them Believe You’re Sorry When You Are, in Fact, Not Sorry at All

I had an interview today for a work-study job, so I went down a bit early and got ahead on some work. Around ten o’clock, Lucy called me up. I had set my cell phone to a different ringtone, so I didn’t know my phone was actually ringing until after it had gone to VoiceMail (damn you, violin sonata #2!). I called her back right away, excited as I was that she actually took time to call me (she usually calls me on the weekends, but I didn’t hear from her at all last weekend).

My excitement immediately turned to irritation when she brought her up her boyfriend, followed by dismay when she announced to me that she wouldn’t be coming home this weekend. I really wanted to see her. I had plans to surprise her with a movie that I thought she’d really like. She apologized about it, and then asked, “What was the movie you wanted to go to?”

“Bubba Ho-Tep,” I responded glumly.

“What is that?” she asked. Sigh.

“It’s about Elvis and this black guy who thinks he’s John F. Kennedy. They fight mummies,” I said, giving her the loosest plot summary I possibly could.

“Aww,” she said, sounding honestly disappointed, “that sounds like something I’d want to see.”

“I know.”

“Well,” she said, “if you want to come out here and visit me, I can figure out a good weekend for you to come.” By this, I assume she meant a weekend where she didn’t feel socially required to get completely hammered; she could just get slightly hammered while I furrowed my brow at her.

“But,” she added, “you have to be willing to come to the bars.”

“Gosh,” I said, the sarcasm in my voice approaching malice, “that sounds like fun.”

Silence on the other end. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that last.

“Stan,” she finally nagged, “there’s nothing else to do out here.”

“I know,” I said, “that’s why I don’t live there anymore.” Again with the saying things I shouldn’t be saying.

“Whatever,” she said. “If you don’t want to see me, fine.”

“I —” I defended myself.

“I’ll call you tonight,” she said tersely.

“But —” I continued.

“My break’s over, I gotta go.” Click.

Wow.

In recent weeks, it has been brought to my attention that I mostly sabotage my somewhat pitiful attempts at relationships by, for example, becoming really hostile, saying things I don’t mean, and then never, ever apologizing for the things I say and do while under the influence of my immense, soul-crushing ego and irritating superiority complex.

This realization has made me even guiltier than usual about everything I do in life, so I decided to make a change. From now on, there will be a kinder, gentler Stan. I need to tap into my sensitive, pony-tailed subconscious and pull out some lilac-covered bullshit in an attempt to be nicer when I say and do stupid things.

With that foremost in my mind, I called Lucy back about 30 minutes later. I was expecting her VoiceMail, since she was supposed to be at work. I could leave a brief, polite apology message and she could call me back and shower me with verbal kisses. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Instead, when I called her, she picked up. “What’s up, Stan?”

Well, she seemed less mad. That was a good sign. But it blew my whole polite, suave apology angle. I started stammering all over myself, but fortunately she didn’t really notice because she was talking instead of listening. Blah-blah she got off early blah-blah how awesome, et cetera.

“So, what’d you want?” she asked. Now, she seemed pissed again, like she couldn’t stand me calling back to further insult her lifestyle choices.

“I, um, I just wanted to apologize,” I said. She didn’t say anything, but I could somehow hear her perking up with astonishment. I’ve said lots of shitty things to Lucy, but I’ve never apologized for them. It’s the new me, bay-bee.

“See,” I continued, “I guess, you know, sometimes I can be a dick.”

“Yeah,” she agreed without even slight hesitation. Great for the self-esteem.

“But, I mean, I want to see you, so if you want to go hang out at the bars, I’ll go hang out with you,” I said. “I want to see you; it doesn’t really matter where.” This last was a big lie. It does matter where, and I really have no interest in going and hanging out at “the bars.” Lucy thinks this makes me a hypocrite, because I’ll hang out at dives for decades if they have decent live music or really awful poetry slams. Maybe it does make me a hypocrite, but I dunno. I don’t like drunks, even when there’s decent music to drown them out. But I’m willing to muddle through it, especially if I’m with sober friends. It’s a totally different environment than going to a place where everybody’s getting loaded and I have to tolerate their bullshit.

Aaaaaanyway, since I was compromising (and by “compromising” I mean “completely caving”), Lucy immediately reneged and said, “No, we don’t have to go to the bars. It’s just that, you know, everybody’s gonna know you’re there, and if I have somebody over but we just disappear for the whole weekend, they’re gonna think there’s something wrong with you.”

Notice how it’s not because she wants me to be social so she can introduce me to all her “sisters,” who I’m sure have heard so much about me (eyes rolling…), so I can finally truly understand the terrifying world of the Greek system, and so on and so forth. No, it’s just because they might think I have elephantiasis and porphyria and am not allowed to be outside. Lucy’s completely embarrassed of me, not that she shouldn’t be.

“Although there probably is something wrong with you,” she added pleasantly. What the fuck?

“Yeah, I know,” I agreed. Who am I to disagree (uh-oh, Eurhythmics in head… must… kill… self…)? “That’s fine. I’ll hang out with them, if you want me to. I mean, I just feel bad about it, is all. And I want to see you.”

“I know,” Lucy muttered and grudgingly admitted that she wanted to see me, too. “I’ll call you when I figure out what weekend would be good.”

“Fine,” I said, and we hung up amiably.

I’m not sure if the new me is working out all that well. If it’s gonna turn me into a liar and a phoney, maybe it’s not for me.

Or maybe I should just do what normal people do, and piss off all my friends, who know me and realize there is something deeply wrong with me and pity me enough to not completely disavow my existence, and just be a liar and a phoney with women who might have sex with me at some point.

Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Posted by Stan on October 13, 2003 5:47 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

October 4, 2003

Ben Franklin

When I was in junior high, I hung out a lot with a guy named Art and two girls, Mandi (she spelled it with the “i” to be ironic, see) and Jenny. In a time of my life where nearly everything that happened confused me for one reason or another, it was nice to have people like them around. Thanks to the magic of marijuana and LSD, they were able to cut through the bullshit and really help me understand what was going on.

I have a lot of stories about Art, Mandi, and Jenny (and others), and many of them are much more sordid than the one I’m about to tell. But this story has been in my head for the past few days for some reason, so I figured since I’m not planning on blogging about anything that’s happened to me over the past few weeks, I may as well throw my loyal readers a bone and write about something that happened many years ago.

So, unofficially, Art and I were in a band. Not a good band, by any means. In fact, it wasn’t much of a band at all. We had four guitar players, a bass player who couldn’t actually play the bass (but owned one), a drummer who didn’t own a drum set (but could play), and no singer. Needless to say, we played a lot of speed-metal, and we didn’t play it well (or fast).

On one of the three occasions during which we actually rehearsed — the last one, if I remember accurately; sometime shortly thereafter, we disbanded and pursued solo careers — we decided to take a break mid-way through and go up to our little “downtown” area to fuck around. We did this often, and despite the fact that we rarely did anything interesting, it never got old.

Essentially, our downtown area stretched over two blocks (it has since expanded to two-and-a-half blocks): on one side was a delapidated shopping center, and one the other side was a bustling strip-mall. Fascinating local trivia: the dilapidated shopping center thrived when I was a kid, and the strip-mall across the street was a wheat field. Jewel, which is owned by mega-chain Albertsons (a chain that people outside of Chicago may have actually heard of), was the shoppinf center’s — my God, am I actually using this pun? — crown-jewel (zing!).

At some point, they bought half of the wheat field, developed it, built a new Jewel, but kept the lease on the abandoned property so they wouldn’t have any competition. Because the Jewel was now across the street, along with several other new stores, the original shopping center lost most of its business, and most places closed down. Since then, Jewel gave up its lease, the shopping center was leveled and rebuilt as a Dominick’s (Safeway to out-of-towners), and it’s actually a nice little strip-mall now.

When I was in junior high, the focal point of the delapidated shopping center was a Walgreens drug store. Nestled behind it was the abandoned Jewel, an abandoned alternate grocery store (Michaels Finer Foods, my sister reminds me), an abandoned video store, a cocktail lounge that may or may not have been abandoned at that point, an abandoned laundromat, a Goodyear, a Ben Franklin five-and-dime, a clothing store, and an Ace hardware store. There was also a dollar movie theatre (formerly a dollar porn theatre) and a Burger King, but I don’t think they technically counted as a part of the shopping center.

We used to go and fuck around at the Walgreens, the Ace, and the Ben Franklin. We live in the suburbs; there’s really not a whole lot to do. If we were feeling ambitious, we’d go shoplift from Jewel, or the 7-Eleven down the street, but mostly we targeted the delapidated shopping center because it was just more feeble.

We mostly bought candy and soda and shit; if funds were low, we’d shoplift (OMG!), but mostly we were honest. Sometimes, we’d pull pranks, like taking the magnetic stickers out of wallets and attaching them to customers’ coats so they’d set off the alarm. Imagine the fun!

We also used to have quite a time at the Ben Franklin, which was independently owned and one of the very few Ben Franklin stores around. It was owned by this terrifying, elderly Polish couple who happened to live down the street from Art. They also owned the clothing store next door, which was conjoined via an open doorway. On a few occasions we’d rip stuff off and make our escape through the clothing store, which never had any business (and usually didn’t have any clerks).

Mostly, though, we’d just go there and pretend to steal stuff, just to harass the Polish couple. The husband would follow us around, watching us like a hawk (and not just because we were teenagers — my parents used to complain about the same thing happening to them), so we’d pretend to steal stuff, and then they’d try to catch us at the front door as we left and demand that we empty our pockets. When they found our pockets empty, baffled, they’d let us go.

When you’re 13, this is a rockin’ good time. Looking back, it all seems extremely silly.

So, on this final rehearsal day, we went down to Ben Franklin to fuck around for awhile. This was one of the times we had actually decided it would be in our best interest to do some shoplifting. We didn’t see the Polish husband, and the wife was lazily leaning against the checkout counter. We figured it would be a great day to grab some random shit.

I don’t remember what all was grabbed, but in particular I snatched a few Lego sets I didn’t have (I obsessively collected Legos until I was about 15). When we were all ready, purloined goods shoved under our puffy winter coats, we made a mad dash for the conjoining doorway.

And then we got caught. The Polish man, sunken eyes attempting to bulge out at his, leathery face melting as he leered down at us, stood blocking the doorway, hands on his hips in a Superman pose.

“Yoo haff tehngs,” he said. The comical Polish accent was somehow no longer comical. In fact, we were all scared shitless.

Art, our fearless leader, attempted to explain. “Uh…” he said levelly, his quaking body betraying the steadiness of the nonsense syllable.

“Gheff dem beck pliss,” the Polish man said. I looked around to find another method of escape and found his wife down the kitchenware aisle, blocking our only other path.

“What?” Art said dumbly. This was the first time I questioned Art’s leadership ability. Normally, he was the big alpha-male, dictating nearly everything we said and did. I was proud to be his second-in-command/best friend, but at that point, things started to slip.

“Gheff dem beck pliss,” the Polish man repeated, and added, “err I kohl peliss.”

“Oh, shit,” one of our bandmates, Mark, muttered.

“Yoo dahm rett,” the Polish man agreed.

Mark cracked immediately, pulling several useless trinkets out from under his coat and handing them to the Polish man. Imitating what my bowels threatened to do, I simply sucked in my gut and allowed the Lego boxes to drop to the floor with a dull thud. Art and our other band members also returned their almost-stolen merchandise.

“Tehnks,” the Polish man said. “Yoo dent came behck.”

“No,” Art said, speaking for all of us. “No, we won’t.”

“Yoo meh go,” the Polish man said, pointing at the front door.

“Yeah,” Art said. “Let’s go, guys.”

Bummed, we walked down to Ace and took advantage of their free Dum-Dum sucker policy. With approximately 780 million Dum-Dums divided between us, we solemnly walked home, contemplating the gravity of the situation. Sure, they weren’t gonna call the police — or worse, our parents — but the idea that we were caught made us all uncomfortable and…guilty.

We didn’t shoplift because we needed things. We did it because we wanted things (and even then, not so much) and because it was fun. There was no guilt when it was fun. Who really cared, and who did it really hurt?

But getting caught…it put a damper on the whole thing, and I don’t really remember ever shoplifting after that point. I may have, but I honestly think that was the last time.

By the time we got back to Art’s house, we were reliving the entire story mockingly. Art did a pretty dead-on impression of the Polish man, and it made the guilt ebb away a bit when we put a comical spin on it. We all sort of acted out the scene as we walked down his street, and by the time we got back to his house, all six of us were giggling like women.

We sat around the kitchen, drinking sodas and telling the story to Art’s sister and her semi-live-in boyfriend. As Art, Mark, and Nick (our drummer who didn’t actually have a drum set) acted out all the parts, I stared dully out the window. Art’s dog, Brandy (actually, I think Brandy was the name of our fourth guitarist, Mike’s dog, but I can’t remember the name of Art’s dog), wandered around the backyard, randomly shitting.

“What’s wrong?” asked Steve, the bass player who couldn’t technically play.

“I think I have an idea,” I replied.

In fact, I did. Not an original idea, but a functional one nonetheless. When the story was done, we went back into the garage and I unveiled the plan.

We followed Brandy around for at least half an hour as it shit. Seriously, the goddamn thing was a machine. It was really disgusting.

We filled up about half of a brown lunch-bag, which was more than enough. Once that objective was completed, we waited until nightfall. To pass the time, we listened and attempted to recreate Metallica’s Master of Puppets album. We failed miserably.

When it got late enough, Art went down the street and confirmed that the Ben Franklin owners were, in fact, at home. Vengeance was at hand.

The six of us snuck stealthily down to their house, all but Art hiding behind bushes, trees, parked cars, garbage cans, etc. Art was the daring one. He tiptoed up the front walk, placed the bag on their welcome mat, pulled out his Zippo, and lit the bag. He then tapped the doorbell and ran his balls off until he was safely hidden behind an oak tree.

The Polish man yanked the door open, and for some reason I vividly remember the strange, creaky chunk it made when it open. That’s about the only detail that’s still sharp in my head. Weird.

The old man was wearing an old robe that looked like silk (but it was night and he was pretty much backlit by the light inside the house, so I may be wrong). He stared down at the flaming bag and, instinctively, he stomped down on it with one ancient slipper. With a sickening, wet “pleck” sound, the fire was out, and shit was all over his feet.

I stifled a giggle, but Mark wasn’t so lucky. He started laughing out loud, but was still obscured by the bushes. Heard but not seen.

The old man looked around for a second, saw nothing. He stared back down at his shit-covered slipper. He looked like the saddest human being who had ever lived, and suddenly I felt extremely awful about the whole thing. What the hell were we doing? I mean, Christ, we were trying to steal from this guy’s business, his livelihood, so we decide to take revenge in possibly the most juvenile way possible. Whose idea was this, anyway?

Oh wait.

Fortunately, the Polish man assuaged my guilt (for a little while, anyway) immediately thereafter. He raised his arms, stared up at the heavens, shook his fists, and screamed, “YOU ANIMALS!”

We all burst out laughing, and as if in mental sync, we all decided it would be an extremely good idea to run away at that point. So, we rushed back to the relative safety and comfort of Art’s garage and continued to laugh for at least half an hour.

Later that night, the guilt set in once again. I wasn’t the only one who felt it, I know, but I was the only one who said anything. I was told by Nick to “fuck them; they brought it on themselves,” despite the fact that they really didn’t. Later, the non-sociopaths in the group agreed that we were being retarded, we shouldn’t have done it, we shouldn’t have even been shoplifting, and after that we dropped it.

I like to think this experience was a turning point. At that time, I was headed on a somewhat rough path, but when I actually had a brush with doing something that was really pretty retarded, I labeled it as such (after the fact, of course, but that’s better than nothing) and really made a concerted, overall successful effort to not continue down that path.

Art and I sort of lost touch after freshman year of high school, and after the end of sophomore year I stopped seeing him around school entirely. I always assumed he went ahead with his plan (which at one point was our plan) and dropped out. In fact, I was right. I started running into him quite a bit between my senior year in high school and sophomore year in college — sure enough, he dropped out, got his GED, and got a job in some factory or something. He was still waiting for his big break to come, so he could be a heavy-metal star.

He’s basically Jack Black without the tongue-in-cheek irony.

Sometimes I wonder, had I felt no guilt — or even a tinge less guilt — after the experience with the Polish proprietors, if I’d be on the same path Art is on. If I’d still be a directionless burnout waiting around to be a star, instead of trying (and failing — but, hey, at least I’m trying!) to make it happen. I think I probably would be.

Not entirely interesting side-note: The reason I kept seeing Art so much from 2000-2002 was because he was in a band in our senior-year variety show, in which I was an actor, and because he started dating some 14-year-old girl when the rest of us went to college, so I kept seeing him at local functions for the next few years.

Posted by Stan on October 4, 2003 4:38 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

August 16, 2003

The Party

I hate parties.

No, really, I do. I hate them a lot. I’ve been to many, many, many parties in my short, horrible existence, and I have never enjoyed any of them. Ever. They’re just not my thing. I don’t have fun at parties. It is not a good atmosphere for me.

So, if you’ll remember my recent lapse in judgment, I invited Lucy to attend this soirée with me. I was confused as to why I did it, and I was concerned as to what would happen, but now I’m incredibly glad I did. I don’t know why I was so worried.

She called me around 1:30 yesterday and told me there was a choral concert down in Grant Park. I dimly recalled this, because I had considered auditioning for that chorus since they pay actual money, but I didn’t have time this summer, so I didn’t. She wanted to go to the concert with her ex-boyfriend and wondered if I wanted to tag along, and then the two of us would go to the party afterward.

I did, and I didn’t. Mostly, I didn’t. I told her as much, so after several hours of arguing about whether or not we should go and all the various methods of transportation we could use to go to the concert, eat food, and go to a party without actually dying, she finally agreed that we were simply packing too much into the evening.

Instead of going to the concert, she and I went to check out this new Chinese place on Roosevelt, near Wabash (and my school). I’d heard it was good, and she wanted sushi, which I hate, so I figured general Asian cuisine was a nice compromise. It really was a fantastic restaurant, despite the fact that they gave us roughly five times as much food as we could actually eat. They will be receiving my business quite frequently. I will spend the next eight months living off crab rangoon and fried shrimp.

Afterward, we wandered around, trying to find a coffee place so that I’d actually be able to stay awake for this dismal gathering. Lucy was frightened and dismayed by the South Loop after dark, so we took the train up to the party apartment, which is in Lake View. The closest thing to a coffee shop we could find, other than a trendy and obscenely crowded café, was a Burger King.

The Burger King was nearly deserted, but that didn’t stop me from waiting 20 minutes in line. Either the guy running the register was a trainee, or he was really fucking stupid and incompetent. Maybe both. And all I wanted was a coffee. Several times, I contemplated just throwing a dollar at his face, grabbing a cup (they were stacked right next to the counter), and getting my own coffee. But I’m too nice.

After that, Lucy decided it’d be a good idea to pick up a six-pack of beer, so she wouldn’t be mooching off our hostess. Plus, she wasn’t sure what the hostess would have, since I don’t drink and therefore don’t give a shit and didn’t ask (I didn’t think, at the time I found out about the party, that I’d be going with anybody who did drink; I wasn’t simply being a dick).

She doesn’t like walking, and it turned out there weren’t any actual places that sold liquor, not even the White Hen Pantry. We decided to risk her spending a night not drinking and went to the party, which was difficult for her, I know. For those of you who don’t know me personally, be aware that it is quite difficult to spend more than an hour with me without hitting the bottle at some point.

So, we went to the party. We actually got lost because I am mildly dyslexic, and I was under the impression that the party was located somewhere within Graceland Cemetery. I called the hostess to clarify the address and realized it was actually two blocks west, in a non-mausoleum apartment. Then, Lucy made fun of me. I deserved it.

The hostess’s apartment was enormous and beautiful. And surprisingly inexpensive. She is also extremely attractive, and like most attractive women, she was pleasant for awhile because I actually showed up, but then she decided to ignore me. People started to show up, but none of them were from my class. I had been given the impression that this was sort of a class affair, to blow off steam as the semester winds down. Apparently, that impression was false.

Lucy talked it up with the party guests for awhile, and I sat around and contemplated existence. I don’t really like wasting the time talking to people I don’t know and will never see again. Some people consider that antisocial or some form of relationship sabotage. Lucy is among them, and she got sort of frustrated with my impenetrable reluctance to have a good time. She apologized for me when two attractive women, on two separate and remarkable occasions, attempted to flirt with me.

We stayed for about an hour and a half. I wanted to leave after an hour, but Lucy slapped me around for awhile, and then Fellow showed up. His presence didn’t really liven up the party, but he was the only person from class to show up. We chatted for awhile about movies, and I did get confirmation that he was, in fact, the guy who commented that he had no ambition to be a director. He also seemed like Lucy a bit. So, that was good.

We left around midnight, and Fellow went with us. He actually shaved off more than an hour from our commute by insisting we take the bus. I don’t ordinarily take the bus, because I’ve heard horror stories about it, but he essentially said, “You’re with a big black guy — who’s gonna fuck with you?” I couldn’t argue with that logic, so we took the bus straight down Irving Park to the Blue Line stop, which is only about 15 minutes away from Cumberland. All told, our two-hour commute dropped to about 45 minutes.

On the train, somebody who was either insane or on some sort of fun drug (my vote is the latter) decided it would be fun to crush a grasshopper in his fingers and then kiss it. Lucy and I found this amusingly terrifying.

Driving home, after the train ride, I expressed my disappointment with the party, especially since nobody from class showed up other than Fellow. I went to this shindig because I felt obliged, but there really was no point. Lucy implied that I am an idiot, and then politely informed me that if I just got liquored up, I’d have fun at parties. This, I feel, is a lie, but she explained that I’ll never know until I try it.

“That is true, but I don’t drink,” I explained, “so that won’t really ever be an issue.”

“You don’t drink,” she said, trying to catch me in some sort of moral hypocrisy, “but you’ll smoke weed.”

“Yeah,” I replied, politely.

“Why?” she asked. Lucy is genuinely confused by this, despite the fact that I’ve explained to her on more than one occasion why, specifically, I don’t drink.

“Because,” I explained, suddenly doing my best impression of Toby Ziegler, “I don’t have a genetic predisposition to become horribly addicted to weed and waste most of my adult life trying to recover.”

“Touché” is what she probably would have said if I hadn’t turned into such a dick at that moment. Instead, she was silent. I wondered what her eventually response would have been. I never really found out.

As I slid through the intersection at Mannheim Road, the car behind me suddenly started flashing blue and red, very brightly. Oh, Christ. A cop. And he intended to pull me over. I could tell because I was the only car on the road.

I believe my exact assessment of the situation at that point was, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHAT ELSE CAN GO WRONG?” Lucy, who is the only person on the planet who has the miraculous ability to calm me down almost instantly merely by existing (which is no small feat, being that minor dirt smudges on my kitchen counter make that forehead vein bulge and pulsate and turn red before exploding and spurting precious blood all over the place), simply said, “Don’t worry.”

I have no idea why that worked. It’s just her. Suddenly, everything was cool. I got out my license as the officer approached, and I had her go through my glove compartment to find my proof of insurance. Fortunately, my mother raised me to be polite, so I addressed the officer as “sir,” apologized profusely, and insisted that I had just checked my speedometer, and it said I was going 45, not 52. That is actually true; I’ve thought for awhile that my speedometer is a tad off, and I suppose this confirms my suspicion.

The officer asked me, “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

After having coffee and six glasses of water, my first instinct was to say, “Dude, I really gotta pee,” but I actually said, “It’s just late, and I wanted to get home.”

“Okay, wait here for a minute,” he muttered, and then he did that cop thing, where he disappears to his car for approximately 785 years.

Meanwhile, I started freaking out again. I was going to get another ticket, and I’d have to go to traffic school, and I can’t afford to pay for a ticket because I keep wasting my money on bullshit crap, and so on, and Lucy put her hand on my arm and said, “Stop being retarded.” Damn, she’s good.

The officer returned and handed me my license and said, “Okay, Stanley, you can go, but you’ll want to slow down a bit.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

Suddenly, I was elated, but I was still freaking out about what could have been. I don’t know why I do that. The guy let me off with a warning, and all I really had to do was just drive the speed limit, if not five under to compensate for what I think is a faulty speedometer, and nobody else would pull me over.

I don’t know why I was so freaked out, but Lucy was able to calm me down pretty quickly. She simply caressed my arm and then squeezed my inner thigh. This is a surprisingly effective calming agent.

We drove home, and with the perspective that always comes with being sexually aroused, I started to develop my sense of humor about the whole thing. We sort of replayed the entire pulling-over incident as I finished the drive to her house, making fun of my reactions and everything that was going through our heads.

When I dropped her off, I stopped inside for a few minutes so I could urinate. When I was finished, and I went back into her kitchen to leave, she was standing in the doorway to her TV room, just sort of standing. I stopped and just stood there, staring at her, suddenly filled with the animal lust that I am ordinarily able to keep at bay. I wanted to simply grab her, throw her on the kitchen table, and take her right there.

I suspected this would be a bad decision, being that her parents were in the next room, not to mention the fact that she would have slit my throat at some point during what would most likely be a fumbled attempt at passion. I decided maybe it would be a good idea to stop being friends with attractive women. Either that, or I should just started satiating my needs with prostitutes.

I never used to be this obsessed with sex. Lucy attributed it to the fact that once you have it, you gotta have it all the time or you wither and die. I guess this is something else I can blame on my Ex. Maybe I should call her.

Clearly, Lucy had the same sexual feelings inside of her. My overlong stare was cut off when she cocked an eyebrow and summarized those feelings: “Get the hell out of here, I have to pee.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Sorry.”

I simply said goodnight and drove myself home. I realized that, even at the party, I hadn’t thought of Gina the entire night. I started to re-think the way I feel, or the way I think I feel, about her. I really have no idea anymore.

In summary, prostitutes.

Posted by Stan on August 16, 2003 2:04 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

August 4, 2003

Fresh Meat

The last two nights, I’ve gone out with the girl I decided to name Lucy. We’re okay now — no need to fret, loyal fan — or, at least, closer to okay than we were last week. I apologized in my roundabout way, which mostly involved explaining in 50 words or less why I am a jackass.

It was nice talking to her again. It was like back in the olden days, when I could actually hold a conversation with somebody that didn’t revolve almost entirely around movies or video games. I don’t do that very often anymore. Oh well.

She told me some funny things, and I told her some moderately depressing things, and I gave her some really shitty advice, and she gave me some pretty good advice. For the first time in about eight months, I feel like I’m moving forward. It’s nice to be out of that rut. Actually, I’m still in it, but, much like a car trapped in the mud, I’m slowly but surely shoving my fat ass out of it while trying to soak everyone else in as much slop as possible.

It was nice to get some feminine perspective for once. Most of my women friends are a little too dykey to give a genuine perspective, or they, like Lucy said, just tell me what I want to hear. Fuck, if I wanted to hear what I want to hear, why would I ask anybody else? The world makes no sense. But she’s right about it.

She was also right about The Ex. I told her about the horrifying demise of that relationship last night. I haven’t really told anybody about it, at least not in any significant detail, since it actually happened. Bits and pieces here and there, or a sort of glossy, pleasant version of the way it went. But never the full, horrible dramatization of what occurred.

I guess it was nice to get it off my chest. It doesn’t really feel like I’m any more unburdened than I was before, but it’s nice that now I have a partner in crime. Lucy knows; therefore, the badness is spread around. It’s not all bottled up between The Ex and me. Maybe, if we go out together again this week, I can let her in on some of the more pleasant details of the relationship. Then again, maybe not. I dunno. It still makes me uncomfortable and miserable to talk about it, especially the good stuff.

I’m sort of tired and incoherent, and maybe still a little depressed, especially now, because I’m sort of rambling about the whole Ex thing. I shouldn’t have started writing about that, because all it does is make me think about it, and nobody wants that.

Fortunately, I’ve begun redirecting my rage and depression into a new novel, one that has actually held my interest for more than 30 seconds. By gum, I might actually get through this one, assuming I’ll have some time to write once my class ends.

I’m going to sleep now. I’ll try to update some more this week, but I’ll be vaguely busy, so if I don’t, fuck off and don’t e-mail me bitching. I’m really not that interesting.

Posted by Stan on August 4, 2003 11:18 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)

July 15, 2003

Film School Mayhem

We’ve reached that point in the semester where everyone’s dreams of making the best shitty 16mm film have been dashed, and now everybody is concentrating on simply getting the work done. I can’t tell you how many times since Thursday I’ve heard Production II’s new mantra, “I don’t care anymore; I just want it over with.”

That said, most of us have bonded together. The whole film school competition thing has been thrown out the window, and everybody is trying to work together as much as possible to get these shitty little movies made.

Yesterday, I went down to help the infamous Crush, who is not really The Crush anymore, with her film. For the sake of no longer constantly referring to her as such, I’m going to just make up a name for her. Not a cutesy nickname, but an actual, fake name. Note here that it is not her real name. From now on, she will be referred to as Nefertari Gundangamo, or Gina (as in “Damn, Gina!”) for short.

Let me start over. Yesterday, I went down to help Gina with her film. She was half an hour late, which wasn’t a big deal even though I was half an hour early, but it’s summer, so there were no lines in the film cage. We started shortly before noon, and we were done by 2:30. Ever a woman after my own heart, Gina’s work ethic is exactly the same as mine: get everything done as soon as humanly possible with as few inconveniences as can be managed.

Gina brought a girl down with her to act in her film. She was nice enough, although she’s one of those people who is just utterly flummoxed by life. She’s my sister’s age, shiftless, working in retail, trying to finish college after transferring twice and going to community college for a semester because she ran out of money.

I can’t chide her for wanting to finish college, which is noble, especially when you’re broke, but I can and will mock her for being 23 and graduating in a year, but still having no clue what she wants to do with herself. I don’t exactly have a career plan mapped out myself, but I at least have a general idea of what’s going to happen after college: forty years of unemployed, Speghetti-O-consuming, basement-dwelling fun, followed by death. She, on the other hand, is clueless. She doesn’t even know why she’s majoring in communications, except that she’s taken too many classes in that major to not major in communications.

But enough about her and me insulting her for shortcomings that I also have. Let’s get to the unimaginable seconds of fun involved in this film! Here’s what I did:

• Set up lights to Gina’s specifications.
• Metered each shot.
• Checked off each shot in her script breakdown.
• Stood guard for an hour and a half outside a women’s bathroom while she shot inside. This was even more uncomfortable than it sounds.
• Ran into my Production I teacher, who spoke at me in French for awhile but somehow had total recall of my entire life story, which I don’t really think I ever told her. Time to file that restraining order…
• Carried a printer to a construction site on Indiana Street for reasons I still don’t fully understand.
• Went home the stupid way and had to stand on the train until Jefferson Park.

That about sums up the experience. It was a fun time, as much as this style of filmmaking can be fun. Unfortunately, Gina can’t crew on my film because she has to work (a likely story…), but a couple of others will hopefully lend a hand.

Posted by Stan on July 15, 2003 10:02 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

January 23, 2003

Ho-Hum

Sometimes I get the feeling that my entire life would be better if I just packed up all my shit, got in my car, and drove until sunrise. And wherever I was when the first sliver of actual sun appeared over the horizon, I would remain forever. Things would be better, starting fresh, having no past, no identity.

That’s the fantasy, anyway; I know that wouldn’t be the reality. Unless TV has lied to me, I know that if I left, one of two things would happen: (1) I would get murdered by someone who preys on people who want to disappear, or (2) I would be sent to a brutal hell dimension where I would be enslaved and abused until I was no longer useful. Either way, that probably doesn’t seem like such a good thing.

Still, it would be nice to go to a big city or a small town and just get lost. It’d be nice to start over. No need to worry about the mistakes of the past; I could concentrate on making brand new mistakes.

A good idea was donated to me by a friend. Something he said brought back a memory from junior high, and that memory spurred dozens of other memories of that bizarre and hilarious time in my life. He said, “Hey, you should write about that.” Yeah, I should. I’ve got a vague idea of thematic elements that could loosely tie together a series of short stories about the most memorable experiences in junior high.

It’s pretty odd, though, how I don’t remember as much about high school as I do about junior high. Well, I do, I guess. I have memories, and if I strained hard I could remember vividly. And when people jog my memory, the specific icident becomes clear in my mind. But never as clear as junior high. I wonder why that is.

I’m gonna go read.

Posted by Stan on January 23, 2003 4:30 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

December 22, 2002

What a Fun Life I Lead

I went to see Adaptation tonight with Lucy. As I suspected, it was fantastic. Far superior to Being John Malkovich, which is kinda saying something. And I’m hearing that his next two scripts that are in the works — Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which I believe is coming out soon, and Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — are even better. My God, Kaufman’s on a roll.

But that’s not why I’m writing. I, of course, am writing about my first actual physical encounter (hey, let’s not get dirty here) with Lucy since the last time I saw her…which was after a Juliana Hatfield concert in Iowa City. I was standing, sweating, in a shithole of an apartment at 1:30 in the morning, staring at the television and wondering why I was still there and then suddenly deciding I needed to leave. And soon. And I left her puzzled.

And we didn’t talk at all after that, until I got dumped and turned completely pathetic. Not just my usual half-hearted patheticness. But the real, genu-wine, full-on pathetic that I had been hearing so much about. And, after working some things out in my head that had been addressed in a very lengthy, depressing, and hitherto-unmentioned conversation with The Ex, I realized that in order to continue my life in a reasonable way, Lucy needed to be let back in. And that’s all I’ll really say about that. I hope I was vague enough.

When I’m with her, though, I feel good. Few people have that effect on me. I generally feel uncomfortable in pretty much every social setting. But when she’s around, I’m totally at ease. That’s a good skill to have, and it’s really her only redeeming quality. I’m still trying to figure out, though, if she has that effect on me for any legitimate reason, or if it’s just because her life is so awful, it makes mine look like…I dunno, George Bailey’s Happy New Year to me — in jail!

Maybe I’m just being masochistic. I don’t really know. Maybe this is why I hate my life so much, because my brain does things like this: when I’m with her, I’m happy. Really happy, which is somewhat infrequent. But the downside, the poetic justice, the Twilight Zone-y irony assrape of the deal is that in order to be really happy, I have to be with someone that I really don’t like very much. Because don’t make that mistake — for all the frillies I’ve lavished upon her existence, I still don’t like her. I still find her personality barely tolerable. I still tune out 93% of what she says, only surface listening so I can find the correct spots in the conversational rhythm to toss in some “Uh-huh”s and “Mm-hmm”s.

So…what the hell? And that’s the big question of the hour. There’s something criminally wrong with this picture. Maybe it falls under the category of very, very bad things feeling very, very good (not like that, you fucking pervert!). Or maybe it falls…well, I won’t get any further into this. This is entry is already painting a portrait of me that would give psychologists wet dreams for the next six decades. I don’t want to cause any heart-attacks.

Let’s just say that last night, I was happy.

Posted by Stan on December 22, 2002 12:49 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

November 27, 2002

The Best Word to Sum Up My Week: “Hrm”

I ran into an old friend today. It’s weird that I think of her as an old friend, when I only met and befriended her last spring. I guess not talking for an entire summer and only seeing each other on occasions where the only thing to do was nod and continue walking will make a friendship seem more weathered than it actually is.

She was on the same train as I was on the way to school, believe it or not. She was with a friend who was cute, but she didn’t introduce me, and I was not nearly forthright enough to introduce myself. We shot the shit on the way to class, and it was just like old times. It made me wonder why, after our class ended, we simply lost contact. But that happens pretty much every semester with me. I’ll become roughly best friends with someone in class, and we’ll hang out and shit all the time, before class, after class, whenever. And then the semester ends, and I rarely see them. And, for some reason, we rarely exchange e-mail addresses or AIM info, even during the course of the semester. And we never call after the semester ends. Occasionally I’ll see people, and we may talk for a minute or two, but it’s nothing.

Of course, it’s not like I’m trying really hard to stay in touch. As close as we become during a semester, I still generally think of these people as casual acquaintances who I see in class and never again. That’s a mental block that I just can’t get past. I’m not sure why.

On an unrelated topic, Lucy has started calling my father’s cell phone looking for me. I called her from his phone once, and apparently she put it in her address book, even though I specifically told her at the time that it was my dad’s phone and this would be a one-time thing. I guess she tried calling my old cell phone and found it disconnected. She doesn’t have the new number, and even though we’re on speaking terms again, I’d still prefer it if she just thinks I don’t have a cell phone anymore. I don’t want her calling it all the time like she used to. Even when I liked her, it annoyed the piss out of me.

Of course, now she’s doing that to my dad, and that puts me in some hot water because (1) they don’t know we’ve resumed speaking to each other and (2) she shouldn’t know my dad’s cell phone number. That was an accidental thing, and I hope she just stops calling that number. I’d rather have her calling me at home than on a phone that spends most of its time in my dad’s pocket.

I screwed that up. Hopefully my parents won’t put two and two together if they decide to interrogate me on how Lucy got the phone number. I borrowed my dad’s cell phone a total of once in my life — when I went to Iowa City to see Juliana. My dad let me use his phone because it had free long-distance, and he had one of those cigarette lighter adapters so the battery wouldn’t wear down. Unbeknownst to my parents, I was also planning to meet Lucy down there.

We had dinner and went to the concert together, but as far as my parents know, I spent the entire evening by myself. I had to call her from the road — from my dad’s cell phone, because I didn’t want her having my number, though in retrospect that seems like a stupid decision — so she wouldn’t do something horrible like call my house and leave a long-winded message to the effect of, “Gee, where are you? I am waiting for you to arrive here in Iowa City. I hope you’re on the road.” Because my parents would have gotten that message, and that would have been bad. My parents are not big fans of Lucy, but they absolutely hate being lied to. It would have been safer to just admit that I was meeting her and take their crap for the next six weeks.

Ugh. Somebody told me that lies always come back to bite you in the ass — the bigger the lie, the bigger the bite. Suddenly I’m starting to buy that theory.

Posted by Stan on November 27, 2002 11:16 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)

November 19, 2002

Stop Making Sense

It’s fun how I can make people pissed off at me simply by doing things like, for example, existing.

Today I pissed Kelly off, and I don’t understand why. I believe she was mildly drunk, which might account for her baffling behavior. But I don’t know.

Apparently the root of the problem is that I started talking to an old friend, Lucy, from whom I was inseparable at one time or another. That’s changed somewhat…there’s been a rift between us for quite some time for many, many reasons that I shan’t go into because it’s inappropriate, but those of you reading probably know already, so there’s really no purpose anyway. And if you don’t know, you probably shouldn’t so fuck off.

I started talking to Lucy because, as a result of certain events highlighted earlier in this blog, I started feeling really, really depressed, and when I get like that, she’s the only one who has ever been able to make me feel better. And Lucy did make me feel better — I’ve felt great for the past few days, since I started talking to her again. I didn’t even go into the hoary details of my problems — just talking to her made me feel good.

But now, as a result of that, Kelly is pissed off and baffled. She talked to me tonight about it, but I was simply not in the mood to deal with it. I had a long day, I had just finished watching two extremely depressing episodes of Buffy (come on, she sacrificed Angel right when he got his soul back so she could save the world…if that doesn’t get you down, you’re a robot), and I really needed to concentrate on my homework. So Kelly got a whole bunch of shit off her chest during the course of about 30 seconds, while I was paying no attention to Instant Messenger, and I really had no legitimate response.

Kelly wanted me to stop talking to Lucy — she wanted me to talk to her instead. But I just can’t do that. I don’t trust Kelly. I’ve tried to, but I can’t, because invariably she tells everything to every single other living person within her immediate vicinity. And, thanks to the magic of the Internet, her immediate vicinity spans much further than the confines of Champaign-Urbana.

Believe it or not, I trust Lucy, this friend I haven’t talked to in months because — ironically — I lost my ability to trust her. She’s done absolutely nothing to regain my trust, and I have to tread lightly because chances are every word she says to me is a lie or at least some form of distorted truth…but I can handle that, and in the case of Lucy I can even understand it.

What bothers me is when I tell people things in confidence, and they spread them around to the other vultures, feeding on my misery in order to survive. Especially when revealing weaknesses and emotional problems and shit like that is invited by Kelly. It’s one thing to say, as an impossible for-instance, “Kelly, I’m pregnant,” completely out of the blue and not expect her to run out and tell everyone she meets. She shouldn’t. It’s not right. But if she did do it, I could understand that. Somebody just blabbed something to her, so she thinks it’s okay — even if I explicitly said it wasn’t — to blab it herself.

But when Kelly says, “Gee, what’s on your mind? You know you can talk to me about anything,” and then takes what you tell her, after she invites you to open up in the strictest of confidence, and blabs it to the world. They’re two totally different things. They’re both bad, but they’re different degrees of bad. One is bad in a stupid, forgivable way. The other is just malicious and evil.

At any rate, when she said that — “You can tell me anything” — I responded simply, “Okay.” I was less than enthusiastic, and despite the fact that she was reading streaming bits of electrons formed into visual information by these magical boxes we’ve all grown so accustomed to using, she could read my tone like a book. I guess she knows me better than I thought.

Kelly responded to this succinctly: “Okay, forget it.” Then she signed off before I could even attempt to get the last word. So now I’m in hot water…and why? Because I’m talking to somebody of whom she doesn’t approve? Last time I checked, she wasn’t my mother.

This whole thing of me not telling her what she apparently thinks is pertinent personal information has bugged her for a long time, ever since — way back when — I had a surgery performed on my eyes, and I never even told her about it. Meanwhile, I told Lucy all about it and even asked her opinion on whether or not she thought it would be beneficial. It eats Kelly’s ass that I talk about stuff like that with Lucy and not with her. Maybe it should. But until she stops treating my most private thoughts with the same amount of sanctity as used toilet paper, Kelly will know nothing.

It bothers me, and it sure as hell bothers her, but that’s the way it has to be.

Posted by Stan on November 19, 2002 11:52 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)