It is amazing how many people click on this blog weekly just because they googled "punk rock teddy bear." Try it in Google images; it's like the fifth picture. I've gotten almost two thousand hits thanks to that little guy, though I'd like to hope my writing had something to do with people checking in...
SO
Speaking of crafts, here is my newest project for this coming Halloween.
I'll be going as a vegan pumpkin cupcake.
Basically, I'll be wearing a fluffy tire around my waist, and pinning big, cloth sprinkles to my abdomen, only to have them ripped away at the concert I'll be attending Halloween night. Hopefully the "cake" will hold up for a little while, though; the fluffy ring will work to my advantage as a soft buffer between me and much bigger and much more drunk Inferno fans than myself. Petite lady at a punk rock show doesn't always end well (see: Hallowmas two years ago- head trauma and hospitals, but fun as hell).
Here's the result after my first night of experimenting (those are NOT the sprinkles I'll be using- these are just place-holders, everything pinned will eventually be sewn, and the fluff around the middle will be painted orangey-yellow soon):
Blurry and super close-up view of it being worn:
Still has a lot of work that needs to get done in...two weeks? I'm going to paint on a little sign that says "100% VEGAN" on top, just to differentiate it from all the non-vegan cupcakes out there. Lots of painting and sewing on top of senior thesis. At least I'm making better time than last year. Any advice?
Hello! It's been a long time, but now I'm going to try to commit to updating this more than once a year.
I was looking through old videos on my laptop yesterday, and unfortunately, a lot of them were corrupted. I posted one on facebook awhile back that I don't want to lose, so I'm posting it here, too, through facebook just in case something happens to it.
This is from when I was in a video for the song American Wedding with the band Gogol Bordello. The actual music video is terrible, and though I'm not into the band anymore, the few days of shooting still rank high on my list of good memories.
I'm doing two readings at Pratt Institute next week. One is for our school literary magazine, and the other is for my linked short story class. Both events are free and include refreshments!
UBIQUITOUS Pratt's Literary & Arts Magazine Reading Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Location: Engineering 371
Linked Short Stories Class Reading Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Time: 12:40pm - 2:00pm Location: Pratt's Alumni Reading Room (in the library)
I'm very excited for both, but I'm nervous since I've never done a large scale reading before and now I have two in a row! The piece for Ubiquitous is very short, and I'm reading a longer, ten minute story for the linked reading. I like both. I say "crotch" in the longer story, so come just for that.
I just finished revising a story I wrote earlier this semester. It started out at fifteen pages, I cut it to thirteen, then wrote seven more pages of scene. Twenty pages! Longest story! I am drained!
There's no way I'm posting the whole thing, but if you'd like to read it, let me know, and I'll email to you. It's about a high school rock band playing at a minor-minor league hockey stadium.
Josh wiped his hands across the carpet and stuck the front of his shirt’s collar in his mouth. He sucked on the cotton, and thought about the blood staining his good-kid shirt as he stared up into the ceiling light. It was huge and round, florescent but dim like the tubes had not been changed since the building opened in 1987 as Pet Toys And Joys And Cat Training Facility.
Big Brother staring down through cataracts, that’s what she would say, he thought.
Besides the light, the room was bare: white walls stripped of the old floral wallpaper; an outline stained in the wall from a cabinet housing wax and cotton balls; permanent indents in the carpet from one too many obese women lying on a cot getting their unibrows ripped away into two. The space was just big enough for the waxer to lean over these women with sticks of boiled wax and rip away hair and skin and grease attached to strips of cotton with new moustaches and curled chin hair. Lindsey sat across from Josh with her back against the wall, her Doc Martens laced to her shins positioned on either side of his jeaned crossed knees. The tooth rolled around on her palm.
“Smile for me.”
Josh did. A bloody gap split his bottom row of teeth into two almost equal sections.
“Aw, fuck.” She closed her hand around the tooth. “That one was my favorite.”
The gap was not as wide as his pinky. Hers could fit, but she wouldn’t think to try.
“Why’s that?”
“It was crooked. You have straight teeth except for that one.” She reached out and tucked her finger between his lips and guided the bottom down. “I do like the gap, though. It kind of suits you.” She rubbed his lip before pushing it back up. “I bet you could sue them for the dental bill.”
She cupped her hands around the tooth and shook. Josh licked the gap until the blood was gone and just the hole remained. Missing teeth did not look good on a resume, especially ones lost in prison or waxing room holding cells.
“We can sue them twice. Double jeopardy. Police brutality and discrimination. Why do you think that fucking clerk called the cops in the first place? He didn’t care about us loitering. He thought, ‘Oh no! Girl with a mohawk! Bad news! Spray paint! Malatov cocktail! Blah blah blah!’”
Lindsey slipped the tooth in her mouth and sprawled out on the ground. Her bleach burned hair fanned around the top of her head as she gazed up at Josh and sucked his tooth.
“The way I see it, we can use the money we get from the case to pay for our rent in Renegade House. This fucking town will finally be good for something.”
The tooth clicked against her own teeth as she spoke. Josh listened to the clicking, and when it stopped, he knew it had bonded to her gums in the scars where her wisdom teeth once lived. He wanted to dive in and yank it out, insert it back into his mouth in the hole where it belonged, and eat an apple just to prove that the tooth was his, not hers, and not Philadelphia’s. He did dive in, mouth first, tongue second, cutting off her clicking and searching to take back his stolen goods. Her tongue fought back, eager to keep its new treasure, and soon, their bodies were employed in the battle for the tooth. Their pants, however, were lost in the struggle.
When Larry opened the door, the tooth was gone, probably swallowed, but the war continued waging on a minute longer with the aid of spelunking commandos and weapons of mass destruction. The war was forced into a stalemate by the neutral party, and the soldiers were divided into separate nations, Wax Rooms C and B.
When the heat of battle cooled, Josh refitted his uniform and fingered the gap in his mouth, reopened and bloodied again by the fight. The tooth was gone, but a substitute made of quartz and enamel positioned as straight and white as all the others would make for a good, if not better, replacement than the original. The town orthodontist was a friend of his mother’s; he’d do it for a discount if Josh wore a crisp white t-shirt, a stain-free pair of well-fitting jeans, and a note from his mother promising that he really was a good kid, just ask the housewives.
The cops held their prisoners’ wrists- the county didn’t feel it necessary to invest in regulation handcuffs -as they were pulled from the police car and marched across the parking lot into the county police station, formally Roses and Thorns Beauty Parlor. A paper sign on the etched glass door not yet replaced with the move read, “Check out Roses and Thorns at our new location on Elmer Street!” The officer held Lindsey’s wrists in one hand and pushed the door open with the other. Inside, the hairspray still lingered above the men in uniform, and a rack of women’s out of date style magazines categorized by color was still propped up against a velveteen purple couch. The receptionist’s desk now bared the emblem of the Gopher County police station, centered under a small crystal bowl of individually wrapped red and white striped peppermints with a layer of gel and stray hairs stuck to the top. Construction workers chipping off globs of hair color cream from the walls outnumbered the cops inside the station. Two sat on the couch making paper airplanes from the style magazines. Another flexed in front of a wall mounted mirror smeared with hair product. An old man in uniform and eight gold stars on his lapel slept behind the desk. Young cop picked up a mint and tossed it at the sleeping man’s open mouth. The candy missed and shattered on the ground inside its protective wrapper.
“Larry,” yelled young cop. The old man’s eyes slid open. “What did I say about sleeping?”
“Nuthin’.” He eased his eyes closed again.
“Larry! We’re putting these kids in the holding cell for awhile. Wake your old ass up and keep an eye on them.”
The cops pulled Lindsey and Josh by the wrists down a hallway to a line of three opaque, white doors. Young cop opened the first labeled, “Wax Room C” and let go of her wrists. Old cop let go of Josh also, but not before pushing him into the empty room just hard enough to make him lose his balance and smash his face into the carpeted floor. Young cop guided Lindsey into the room with his hands on her shoulders. He patted her arms as he let her go.
“If you need to use the bathroom, give Larry a shout. He’ll be in to check up on you soon.”
Lindsey pushed her back against the wall and slid to the floor.
“Fucking pigs.”
“Whatever, Lindsey. We’re doing you a favor by not booking you this time. Just sit tight, and we’ll get your daddy to pick you up in a few hours.”
Old cop walked out. Young cop followed, keys in hand, but stopped at the door. He looked from Lindsey to Josh still face down on the floor.
“I don’t know why you’re hanging around with this girl,” he shut the door, but through the wood, Josh heard, “You seem like a good kid.”
A key scratched the doorknob, and the room was locked from the front. Lindsey kneeled down next to Josh and tried to push him onto his back, but he sat up with his hands at his mouth. He spit blood into them with a string of clear and red saliva sticking from his palms to his lower lip.
Lindsey picked his tooth out of the carpet.
“Police brutality. Proof is right here. Goddamn pigs.”
They sat on the curb outside the store, Lindsey smacking a new pack of cigarettes against her palm and Josh pinching a new pack of matches between his palms. The convenience store was owned by the development, allowing it to be built inside and intercepting the designated Walking Path. The housewives were grateful for the exercise and the ability to pick up a roast for dinner in the same trip out. Their husbands were grateful because their wives came home looking good and cradling meat.
“We gotta get out of this town,” Lindsey talked through her lips as they clenched the cigarette in place and took the matches to light the end. “We’re suffocating. Nothing changes here, ever. Kruzer’s will always be here.” She took the cigarette out of her mouth and pointed across the road, “That house will always be white.” She waved the cigarette at a man walking his dog, “He’ll always be old. The best change he could hope for is to die and escape this black hole of a town, sucking anything progressive down into its pit of fucking Levittown and suburban disgrace,” she replaced the cigarette and talked through the slit of her mouth. “We won’t be that man, I promise you that.”
The dog was a golden retriever puppy. Man’s best friend. It didn’t ask for money or rides, just belly scratches and bacon treats on days when it behaved extra good.
“He looks happy.”
She withdrew the cigarette and blew the smoke into the pavement.
“He’s not. He just doesn’t realize it yet.”
A police car pulled in from the road, circled the parking lot, and parked behind the curb where Lindsey and Josh sat. The emblem on the side showed a cartoon gopher with furrowed eyebrows and wearing a police hat, but no one made fun of the cops of Gopher County, Pennsylvania; the housewives loved the little gopher, nicknamed Scruffles, and the kids all cheered when he went zooming by showing off with his red and blue lights flashing. Two policemen, not gophers, stepped out of the car in regulation uniform with regulation donut crumbs dusting their regulation moustaches.
“Hello, Lindsey,” the driver walked around the teenagers and stood in front of Lindsey with his thumbs through this belt. He was young, maybe twenty-five, and fresh out of police academy with a cushy job in a small town where the biggest complaints he gets all week involve raccoons knocking over garbage cans, and the girl with the mohawk cursing at senior citizens or sitting around parking lots smoking cigarettes.
“We got a complaint that you’ve been sitting here too long,” young cop kicks at the pavement. “You guys should move along now.”
“Make me, pig,” mumbled Lindsey, and flicked her cigarette at him. It hit the ground a foot from his shoe, but the passenger cop, much older and fatter, ran from his post at the car to the curb and grabbed her arm.
“Watch yourself, missy,” he growled in her ear. Lindsey wretched her arm away, turned, and spit in his face. A moment later, both Lindsey and Josh’s faces were being pressed into the pavement, gravel making ditches of their pores.
This story is UNEDITED and ten pages long. Any comments or suggestions are welcome!
Digging Ditches, Burning Bridges
Part 2
“People like him are why the world hates America.”
Lindsey leaned against the street sign, one massive boot crushing half the flowers lining the base. She could have been tiny and plain and a good kid like Josh, but she chose to supplement her plainness by molding a five inch mohawk across her otherwise bald head, piercing her ears until they were more metal than flesh, and wearing boots made for construction workers, not ninety pound girls fresh out of high school. She wore the same clothes as him, white t-shirt and jeans, but hers came complete with holes patched with handkerchiefs and safety pins. Josh hadn’t been waiting for her on the bench, but he knew she’d find him. She always did.
“Did you know the United States uses 26% of Earth’s water for our own selfish needs? Household needs. Barely agricultural. That’s more than Europe and China combined. All so that guy can water his SUV.”
The mohawk shook as she dropped onto the bench. Today it was blond, a yellow-blond, the color of dyed hair after the pigment washed out and the same color as the muddied petals sticking out from under her heel. Yesterday it was pink. He guessed tomorrow would be a blue day.
“We’re also the fattest nation. Know who’s the lowest? North Korea. Surprise, surprise. We emit the highest amount of greenhouse gases, use the most fossil fuel, and waste the most energy. It’s the fucking cows, man. If everyone was vegan, there’d be more land for vegetables rather than cows. All they do is eat genetically modified grass and fart and pollute the atmosphere while they wait in line to die. What a life.”
In a small town, friendships are not often chosen as much as they’re forced. As the only two people left in town from their graduating high school class, there was little other choice than for them to see each other often. In this case, Josh’s apathy had backfired.
“Anarchy is the answer. I’ve been sayin’ it for years. No government means no law and no law means freedom to grow what you want when you need it to sustain yourself and your family. That’s all that matters. No money, just trade. Neighbors helping neighbors. It takes a whole village to raise a kid, yeah? Imagine whole cities raising kids as one united community living for nothing but the prosperity of its people. Best we got now are a few rooftop gardens and organic markets selling not-so-yellow bananas claiming that eight dollars a bunch is reasonable for dye-free fruit.”
“We?” asked Josh. The rooftops in the development were slanted in uniform black tile. Scarecrows would slide off and tomatoes needed dirt, not tar.
“I don’t mean we, we, obviously. I mean the collective movement, revolution, whatever. Here, we’d be lucky to find a bottle of orange juice whose first listed ingredient isn’t high fructose corn syrup. I swear in five years we’ll be in Philly smoking on our apartment roof drinking a glass of juice made of more pulp than liquid. Which reminds me: Ryan’s having a party next weekend at Renegade House.”
Josh hated Renegade House. The floors were always sticky, and no one used coasters, but there were people, not just Lindsey, available to talk to, though they were not much different from her. Once a girl threw up on his head, and she didn’t apologize. He hadn’t tried to make her, and the two hour drive home from Philadelphia forever stained the air in his station wagon with cheap beer and vegan cheese nachos.
“You know Jenny and Frank are moving out,” Lindsey elbowed Josh in the gut. “They’re going to need people to take over their part of the rent.”
Lindsey picked out crust circling the hole of a chrome skull earring weighing down her earlobe. Josh watched her fingers form an A-OK and flick the crust into the remaining yellow flowers circling the Abraham Street sign. There go the rest of them, thought Josh.
This story is UNEDITED and ten pages long. Any suggestions or comments are apperciated!
Digging Ditches, Burning Bridges
Part 1
Currently there are over seven million people in the United States living without dental insurance. Josh Meyers, who is one of the seven million, sat on one of the wooden benches set up on each corner inside his housing development next to a street sign embedded in a small pillar of concrete covered in flowers and stones. The sign above him read Abraham Road, a nice colonial name for a line of nice colonel inspired houses. Though they were boxy and lined in vinyl siding, the inspiration was there if only just implied by the name. Clean, white houses with one tree and one bush in each yard, doors painted muted colors and mailboxes shaped like mailboxes and not puppies or bee hives. Abraham Lincoln would be proud to live on this street. Josh was convinced the name was set here to let the second-coming of Lincoln know that when he decided it was time to come back and set things straight again, there was always a house, if not an entire street, where he could call home. Josh wanted to believe this and forget the development contractor’s name, Abraham Janowitz.
It was the first warm day of spring and every middle-aged housewife celebrated in matching track suits and wrist weights and walked the designated ‘Walking Trail’ together declaring they’d never seen a more beautiful day in all their years. Josh waved to every woman, and they waved back. They trusted his plain white cotton t-shirts and well-fitting jeans. He knew they appreciated the parted hair and tennis shoes, white and clean from winter storage. They’d pass and gush, ‘What a nice boy! How handsome! Such a good kid!’ Non-threatening youth fit their lifestyle, and he was more than happy to oblige. As long as Hanes sold t-shirts in packs of three, he would forever be known as a good kid.
Across the street on Nathaniel Drive, a man in short sleeved flannel turned his green garden hose on a Jeep parked in his driveway. Kids’ toys covered the lawn, and a flag shaped like a birdhouse embroidered with “Home Tweet Home” lagged in the new spring breeze. The house had the same bush and tree as all the others, and the mailbox that looked like what a mailbox should was painted blue to match the door. Josh knew that man had a wife inside that house cooking casserole for their daughters playing dolls, not watching filth on television. A man like that wouldn’t allow that kind of thing in his happy home unless the show was America’s Funniest Home Videos because watching videos of cats fall off tables and kids screaming over Christmas gifts is quality entertainment for the whole family. That man had his life together with a job and a mortgage that would be paid off in twenty-eight years, leaving just enough time to retire to Florida. People like him knew how to be happy.
Today, a few friends and I read all of thisiswhyyourefat.com, and after pages of pictures of fried smores and Happy Meal pizzas (and a meat boat...and bacon EVERYTHING), we all decided we were very hungry, though I was expecting an opposite effect. I went to the little convenience store in the school, bought a pack of hotdogs and ketchup, and boiled a pot of water.
What makes them special is that they're TURKEY hotdogs. They were much more dry, which I liked, and not very flavorful. Also, the insides were smooth and light pink. I'm convinced I ate a Therapedic pillow.
Also, I am clearly seven years old.
Moving on: New writing!
This was a quick write in which we had to incorporate a television commerical aspect to the story. -----
We decided to leave at nine. No one left the city after eight on Tuesday nights. My dad wanted to avoid the five hundred Hoboken businessmen sissoring into the two lane, double yellow lined Lincoln tunnel. Last time he picked me up, we made the mistake of leaving at five and coming home with a cracked windshield.
We passed through the six dollar toll without stopping. He had to buy Easy Pass because of me, but we all agreed it was necessary to keep him from complaining about his lack of quarters during every trip across state lines.
In the tunnel red dots of light lined the ceiling. On every other trip, they were green.
"Why are they red?"
He sped up.
"They mean we're heading the wrong way."
Both lanes of traffic headed in the same direction, opposite the way we were going. I leaned forward in my seat to get a better view ahead of the car, but he pushed me back.
"When I was in high school," he replaced his hand on the steering wheel. "I had a little red sports car."
I wanted to listen. I did. I'd never heard about his little red sports car because he never told me anything about himself before he married my mom. I didn't tell him I knew he was engaged to someone else in high school. My mom showed me a picture of her once in his yearbook and said, "Aren't you glad she's not your mother?"
I wanted to listen about the car, really, but I was too occupied with being a crash dummy waiting for the Ford Escort to ram into us to prove just how much faster American made airbags deployed before our little Toyota Camry's Japapnese ones could.
"I went into the city once, but my car overheated in the tunnel, so I had to turn around." We passed the line in the wall with the tiled New York/New Jersey marker. "Turned around right there, red lights and all. I made it though once; bet I can do it again."
He drove much faster than the tiled signs said he should. A light appeared ahead, growing brighter and bigger, but I didn't wait to notice if it was one beam or two before I tucked my head between my black and yellow checkered crash dummy knees and waited for the impact to break my hydrolic neck and plastic head.
"Yea," he laughed and sped even faster into the light. "I did a lot of crazy things in high school."
