Monthly Archives: August 2014

Sketches and stories

When I sat down to write something today, I wound up spending about an hour or so doodling on a legal pad. And now it’s close to midnight and I have to post something for the day, so here are a bunch of random sketches. This counts as a post, right?

sketch2

I’m naming this guy Greg. Grey just found out that his band is kicking him out. And this is a reaction shot. The band got together and nobody wanted to be the one that had to let him know the bad news. He’s a huge hotheaded jerk who blows a shit-fit at the slightest provocation. That’s part of, but only part of, the reason why they want to kick him out of the band. There are plenty of other problems, like he can’t play guitar very well, or sing at all, and yet he always insists on grabbing the mic mid-set and belting out a few off-key “Ah-ah-ahhhhs!” So the bassist Chris got the short straw, he pulled Greg aside, he was like, “Greg, listen, the guys … we … well, it’s not working out, you know, so you’re out of the band.” And this is Greg taking the news, he’s like, “Whaaaaat? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you seriously fucking trying to kick me out of my own fucking band!”

So yeah, you can imagine how well that went.

sketch1

Next up we have Tommy. Tommy has always been shy around girls, which, well, it’s just whatever, it’s how he is. But there is a bunch of really lame girls at his high school. They always make fun of him behind his back, about how he’s so shy and awkward. Tiffany, the meanest of the girls, she pressured Stacey to ask him out on a date, but as a prank. “So, like, do you want to go out some time?” And this is Tommy’s reaction shot. He’s like, “Really? R-r-really? You want to go out with m-m-me?” And then there’s a beat and then all of the girls start laughing. And Tommy’s face is stuck like this for like a minute or so, because on top of being really shy, he’s also kind of slow. So it takes a while for the joke to really sink in, and even then, he doesn’t stop smiling, and everything is really awkward and the girls walk away and Tommy goes home and spends the next twelve hours on the Internet.

sketch3

Finally we have Vance. Vance is super, super cool. But he’s also had a piece of popcorn stuck in between his left molars all day. It’s driving him nuts. When he went to lunch at the diner, he grabbed a bunch of toothpicks on the way out. And that’s what this drawing is, he’s on his like third toothpick, and he’s no closer to getting that popcorn shell out of his tooth. He’s in the bathroom, looking in the mirror seeing if he might not be able to pinpoint exactly where the debris is. But he stops, he pauses to admire how cool he looks with this toothpick just kind of casually sticking out of the corner of his lips. He decides to incorporate it as part of his image. But he finds that, even if he’s really careful not to play with it, as soon as his mind stops thinking about the toothpick, he starts chewing on it. And then like a minute later there are all of these wood fibers everywhere, some of them making their way to the back of his throat. It’s cool, yes, but it’s kind of a high-maintenance look, definitely not as easy as they make it out to be in the old greaser movies. On his way out of the diner, the cashier says to him, “Hey, toothpick boy, those toothpicks aren’t all-you-can-grab. Just take one or two next time,” because yeah, Vance took like twenty, twenty-five toothpicks. I don’t know why he thought that would have been OK.

What a good dog

I’m sitting here writing at my kitchen table and my dog, Steve, is just staring at me. He’s in the living room, he’s sitting on the couch, and his head is propped up at the armrest so he can stare at me without really expending any effort. I wonder what he’s thinking about, because he’s always staring at me.

steve

I’ll be watching TV and I won’t be thinking about my dog at all, and then for whatever reason I’ll look his way, and he’ll be lying on his back on the floor, staring at me upside down. I’m not thinking about him, but he’s looking right at me. And so, no, I don’t know if that means he’s thinking about me. I can’t tell what’s going through anybody else’s head, let alone a dog’s. But when I’m staring directly at somebody or something, I’m usually thinking of them, if not actively, then my mind is at least making its mental registry.

Sometimes I’ll get up in the morning and I’ll be rushing around, trying to get out of the house on time. Right before I go, I’ll take Steve for a walk and then feed him breakfast. But, and he does this a lot, if I’m not there, he won’t eat. I won’t come back until much later in the afternoon and when I go in the kitchen, his bowl is still full from earlier in the day. And he comes in right behind me, because all he does is follow me around and stare at me, and then he starts chowing down. I’m like, were you waiting for me? Please, Steve, go ahead and eat without me, I won’t be offended.

And even that doesn’t make any sense, because while he’s nothing but a gentleman when it comes to his dog food, if I let my guard down at the wrong time, I’ll look over and, yeah, he’s staring at me still, but from under the kitchen table. That’s Steve-speak for, I just did something bad, and I’m hiding so that when you find out what I did, you won’t be able to see me.

Except that I can totally see you Steve, and you’re making it even more obvious, just constantly staring at me. I always wonder, when he busts into the garbage to start eating old aluminum foil or browned banana peels, is he still thinking about me? Is his constant eye contact really as affectionate as I’m making it out to be in my head? Or is he spending all of that time looking at me for plotting purposes, not wanting to miss the smallest opportunity to sneak behind my back and cause some destruction?

And now that I think about it, the whole not eating breakfast thing, what else are you eating, Steve? Do you have like a secret stash of garbage somewhere? I don’t want to give him too much credit, but he’s showed feats of intelligence before. Like after we realized that he was getting in the garbage, we bought a new can that closed automatically, the one where you step on a pedal to open it up. Steve learned how to work it. For months I had no idea what was going on, and then I caught him in the act, pressing his paws on the pedal and sticking his head in to bob for treasure. And when I threw that garbage can out and bought a new one that locked shut, I came home from work that day and found the entire trashcan on its side, dragged across the room.

So either he loves me, or he’s just really, really interested in what I’m up to, probably for some sort of selfish game. Or maybe it’s both. Maybe he loves me, but he also loves garbage equally. It would make sense. One time he broke through the barrier preventing him from going upstairs, he dragged the bathroom trashcan onto my bed and rolled around in all of my dirty Q-tips and used floss picks.

That was the worst, because when I came home that night, Steve was sitting on the couch like everything was cool. So I came over and started petting him, telling him how good of a dog he was. I wonder what went through his head, like wow, I really did a good job here, he really loves it when I get upstairs and make a huge mess in his bedroom. And I’m just like, “Yeah, good boy Steve, what a good dog.”

What’s your favorite?

I don’t like it when I get confronted with questions about favorites. Like, “What’s your favorite food?” or “What’s your favorite movie?” Because I have no idea what my favorite anything is. One time I went on this job interview, and the guy handed me a photocopied list of questions, mostly about my relevant experience. But at the bottom, there were all of these questions, stuff like, “What’s your favorite song? What’s your favorite restaurant? Who’s your favorite writer?”

ffffvvrrrsss

And I sat there and stared at that piece of paper for way too long. Eventually the man came back in the room, and I had to tell him something, explain why I hadn’t finished those last several questions. “Listen sir,” I tried making my case, “These questions about favorites, it’s not that I don’t enjoy things like songs and writers, but there are lot of songs and restaurants and writers in the world, and to make me choose one, it’s like, jeez, I can’t choose just one. And if I had to, I can almost guarantee that that one answer is going to be different if you ask me two weeks from now.”

This guy nodded along, but I could tell it was over. I could all but read his mind, him, standing up over that desk where I was seated, he must have been thinking, come on dude, just write something down, I don’t care about any of this stuff. Do you think I came up with these questions? Do you think I’m really going to go over any of that nonsense? I mean, unless you wrote down “Raining Blood” by Slayer, whatever, I really, truly don’t care. And you’re not getting this job, because this is one of the most annoying interviews I’ve ever given in my life.

I mean, I can’t read minds, so I don’t know for sure if that’s exactly what he was thinking, but I never heard from them again, even though he definitely said, “Thanks, we’ll be in touch,” after he assured me for the third time that it wasn’t a big deal that I’d left the last few questions blank.

What’s the point of a question like that? Sure, people want to get to know you, maybe in an interview setting it could be seen as something to lighten the mood, maybe lower your defenses somewhat. But all questions like that do, to me anyway, are to put me on the spot. It’s like, “Hi. Nice to meet you. Quick, tell me your favorite band.”

And it sets off a thought process in my head that’s too much for me to deal with in real time. My favorite band? Like, if I could only listen to one band for the rest of my life, is that the band that you want to hear? Because even if I were able to narrow down my top three favorite bands, whatever that even means, I promise you that if I were forced to listen to only those three bands, I’d get really sick of them in almost no time at all.

Like, did you ever go to school with one of those kids that ate the same exact packed lunch every day? Doesn’t that get old? You really don’t mind the taste of baloney and cheese over and over and over again?

There’s too much, all right, there are too many good bands for me to pick a favorite band. If you ask me who may favorite author is, I have no idea what to tell you, because I’ve read tons of different books, and they all say different things to me at different times. And the favorite restaurant question, come on, what are you trying to take me out to lunch? Because after I eat something like four or five times, that’s it, I won’t crave it for another year or two.

Did anybody see Guardians of the Galaxy? I loved it. I thought it was such a cool movie. But one thing kept bugging me. He’s listening to this cassette mix-tape that his mom made him, and that’s cool, I get it. But he’s dancing around to the songs, like he’s really into them every time he hits the play button. You expect me to believe that a human being is able to listen to the same twelve songs for twenty years without getting sick of them? Don’t get me wrong, it was a great soundtrack, and it fit the movie nicely. I even left the theater with a bunch of those tunes playing on repeat in my head. But after like three or four days, that was enough, how many times can you listen to “Come and Get Your Love?”

Come and get your love, come and get your love, come and get your love now.

Come and get your love, come and get your love, come and get your love now.

Come and get your love, come and get your love, come and get your love now.

Over and over and over again. No way. I’m not buying it.

Plan F

If things ever get too out of hand here, if the stress of my life for some reason swells to the point of unmanageability, I have an escape plan already laid out, a series of careful actions I’ll take in case of an emergency. Because you never know when life is going to hand you lemons. It could pelt you with something like forty-five lemons at the same time, really gross lemons, full of seeds with a really thick oily skin. And when you reach for your sugar to be all positive and make lemonade, life might replace your sugar with salt. And the salt might be cut with white sand. And the water you use to mix everything together could be from a well that’s been contaminated by a chemical spill.

Screen Shot 2014-08-13 at 1.10.10 AM

Like I said, I’m ready for that. I have a Plan B, I’ve even got Plans C, D, and E all laid out. But I’m talking about Plan F, where something terrible happens in my life and I can’t even talk about it, that’s how bad it is. Plans A through E aren’t really options at this point, and I’ve got to split. I know exactly what I’ve got to do.

Because when the going gets tough, well, that’s when I’m out. You won’t even know it. I’ll tell everybody that I’m going on a three-week vacation, which is what I like to think of as a three-week head start. “Where’s Rob?” nobody’s going to ask, because I’ll set up my Facebook account to start posting random pictures from travel blogs, “I’m having such a great time on vacation!” I’ll have them all scheduled to post in advance at random times throughout that window.

And then when I never come back, when my boss starts calling my by now defunct cell phone number, I’ll be totally gone. I’m going to grow out a huge beard and shave my head so that way I won’t be immediately recognizable. I’m definitely going to move away to a different state, if not a new country altogether. Or maybe that’s what I want you to think. Maybe this warning is all a part of my plan, to make you believe that I’ve headed somewhere far away. Maybe I’ve set up a new life down the block, all of that hiding-in-plain-sight business.

Either way, if I ever disappear, just assume that I’m OK, that life here spiraled out of control, that I have a plan, and that plan is very detailed and intricate, that I’d like to explain more, but if I really went ahead and told you the nuts and bolts, then you’d be able to find me, and why would I do that? What’s the point of having an emergency escape plan and then telling everybody where to find me?

Just, if I disappear, and years from now you’re out traveling somewhere far away, or close to home, and you think you see somebody that looks like what you think I’ll look like years from now, it’s not me. It’s just someone that happens to look like a future version of me. Because once I set Plan F in motion, you’ll never see me again. Poof.

I’ll never say whom, and semicolons are unnecessary

I hate when I’m trying to write something in Microsoft Word and it tells me via that super passive aggressive green squiggly underline that I shouldn’t have written the word “who,” that what I meant to say was actually “whom.” Nope, sorry Microsoft Word, sorry English language, but I refuse to ever, ever use the word whom. Except for that last sentence. And I guess any future uses of the word whom in this blog post are exempt as well.

wwwwwwwwmmmmm

I’ve never said whom in real life. And if anybody ever says whom to me, I’ll walk away in the middle of your sentence. “Rob!” you’ll yell at me as I fade away in the distance. “Where are you going? What did I say?” You said whom. Nobody says whom. It doesn’t even sound right. It sounds like you have something stuck somewhere on your tongue, and you’re simultaneously trying to speak in English while getting that thing unstuck from your tongue.

It’s the most unnecessary wordage in the English language, its sole purpose being to give word snobs a reason to talk down to people when they don’t use it. But like I said a million times already, nobody uses it. If my boss ever came over to me and said, “Hey Rob, I want you to send out this gift basket.” And if I said to my boss, “Hey boss, to whom should I send it?” He’d probably fire me. “Stop being such a smart-ass dick,” he’d shout to me before slamming the door to my back. Because really, you don’t sound smart. You just sound like that person who doesn’t get it, that real people don’t talk that way anymore, that languages evolve, and that the written word follows in step. It’s like, you don’t hear people saying thine and ye and shan’t and giveth. See, well, you can’t actually see it, but Microsoft Word didn’t underline any of those old English words as being misspelled. Because they’re technically words. But nobody uses them. And nobody uses whom. So stop. Just stop.

And while I’m at it, I’ll never use semicolons, I don’t believe in them. I’ll give the same exact argument that I gave for who and whom, they don’t serve a purpose in modern anything, not modern writing, not modern literature, Internet, nothing is better off thanks to a semicolon. It’s a poseur’s trick to make it look like you know how to write, and that’s what it comes down to, I guess, that just because you know the rules doesn’t necessarily make you good at the game. “But Rob, all of those clauses simply must be separated by a semicolon!” Why? It’s outdated. It’s stupid. It prevents the natural flow of words going from page to head. Having clauses separated by commas does the same exact thing, it’s easier on the eye, and you don’t need semicolons. Because they’re lame. You don’t need this symbol ^ either. What’s it called, a carrot? Yeah it’s for old-school style corrections, right? Yeah, sorry carrot, computers have made you obsolete too.

Chu wanna rite like dis? Go ahead, just do it, just write something, anything, because English is a language that’s constantly evolving. It’s why old English and middle English are barely legible to modern readers. It’s why we’re arguing about what the Founders meant when they placed that comma over there when writing the Second Amendment. And this is a good thing (not the Second Amendment part), because rules are important, sure, but you learn the rules in school and then you move on. If anybody’s criticizing grammar outside of a high school classroom, for real, that’s super lame. Just stop it. Super, super lame.