raising a puppy is easy

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just so long as you're willing to hold, entertain and/or watch him like a hawk 24/7, of course.

by day three, the invader had pretty much consolidated his complete and utter takeover of the household, and i decided it was time to bring in the enforcer--you know, lay down some rules, establish discipline, show him who's boss.

i'll let you judge for yourself how that went.

what the well-dressed fashionista will be wearing this season

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had a couple of these made up because i'm toying with the idea of a new banner.  meantime, looks rather smashing on v, n'est-ce pas?

a totally unauthorized post

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welcome to the world, little ciro--and tell your uncle v not to be mad at my drunk ass for posting your first picture which i can't tear my eyes away from, ok?

v again

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outta the blue, he calls

if he hadn't, sooner or later i would have

and invites me downtown to see his new place, on the fifth floor of a grand old residence hotel on spring street that had once been home to the cream of hollywood's golden age.

he makes me knock twice

i knew he'd be nervous, just like i knew i wouldn't be

and before he even has time to show me around the apartment mary pickford had once called home--and outta the 7,000 or so songs from which i know his ipod has to choose--a song i had sent him comes up on shuffle.  as the banjo twang fills the room, he turns to me, wide-eyed, says, "i swear to god i didn't plan that."

i know, babe--and if the same damn song hadn't come up on shuffle tonight, i probably wouldn't be writing this

over dinner i warn him that being around me's not much fun these days.

he says, "was it ever?"

and just like that, we're back.

*     *     *     *     *

for those of you who don't understand this post, lemme just paraphrase tolstoy and say that, while most easy relationships are all alike, every complicated relationship is complicated in its own way, and leave it at that.


or you can just listen to the music.

friend of bill

"ok, mike--ease it out like i showed you, reeeeeeal easy."

my first driving lesson. i'm 14, nervously hunched behind the wheel of bill's spotless '68 impala coupe which was [unfortunately] equipped with a three-on-the-tree.

instead of easing it out, i pop the clutch, the car flies backwards outta the driveway and across the street, bounces over the curb and mows down a grove of tender saplings in the neighbor's yard before coming to a stop.  i cringe, await the inevitable.

bill's response:  "hmm...maybe i shoulda backed her out for you."

any wonder i loved the guy?

my mother never remarried, but of the two men she dated seriously after my father's death, bill was the first, and by far my favorite.  a special agent for the IRS [i.e., the gun-carrying kind], bill was suave, smart, easygoing and funny as hell. oh, and he got me.

for our second driving lesson, bill took me out in the country in his old chevy pickup, drove up to a big tree, popped the clutch and slammed into it, turned to me and said, "see? you can't hurt this one."

great as he might've been in my young eyes, bill was a tortured soul. he'd recently left his bible-banging frigid wife after twenty years of misery but he couldn't get past leaving his kids, and it ate at him.

so he drank.

at first it was innocuous.  he'd pull into the driveway in that impala and get out holding a can or a glass--if it was something new, i'd ask for a taste and he'd usually indulge me.  the alcohol didn't seem to affect him much; if anything, it enhanced the dry, sardonic aspect of his personality i loved so much.

problem was, bill's problem, as it usually does, got worse.

one sunday shortly after the driving-lesson fiasco, bill, my mother, siblings and i go walking around downtown after a movie and end up at the local pontiac dealership.  bill watches in bemusement as we all go apeshit over the grand prix featured on the showroom floor.

the next day, there's a honk in our driveway and we walk out to find the impala's gone and bill's waving out the window of his new car.

any wonder i loved the guy?


of course i probably wouldn't have been nearly as enthusiastic about said new car had i known then that one late night a couple months later he'd use it to attempt to kill my mother and himself by drunkenly and at insanely high speeds running every red light in town when she picked the wrong moment to try and break it off with him.

how did it finally end?  with me taking the phone away from my mother one day after school and telling bill's by-then irredeemably drunken ass, "don't call here again--it's time for you to go away and leave us alone."

to his credit, he did just that:  took early retirement, crawled off to dallas and drank until he died.

i remember the day--we got the call, my mother broke down and i turned to stone.

*     *     *     *     *

there was my uncle huby before him, my uncle don after him, my mother's friend billie and her new husband fred--and, of course, the club.  object lessons all to young mike of the pitfalls of alcohol.

and they stuck for a long time--i got drunk exactly once in high school.  at college parties, i'd have one or two to be sociable.  when in my mid-thirties i finally came out and hit the bars, i'd buy a drink and carry it around all night just to have something in my hand.

why i waited this long to go from basic teetotaler to falling-down-drunk in five short years has already been dealt with in this blog--mostly pseudo-lightheartedly, 'cause god knows i didn't wanna scare my readers.

now that this blog is dead and i no longer have readers,  i can of course write whatever the fuck i want.

*     *     *     *     *

after four years, v and i hit our first rough patch this summer and our relationship folded like the cheap card table it apparently was.

i miss him every day, and can only hope that's what he really wanted.

*     *     *     *     *

invited myself over to kenny's the other night, asked him what was new in his life--it had been awhile.  he didn't disappoint.  eyes shining, he regaled me with tales of his recent trip to central america volunteering for doctors without borders, among all sorts of other gloriously selfless shit.

when he was done, he asked me what's new in my life, and i told him the truth.

he then tells me what i knew he would, which--fuck the sex, i realize later--is why i'm there.

i protest.  i'm not like him--i'm not warm, i don't do groups, i hate people and people hate me, i don't have charisma and i can't hold an audience in the palm of my hand like i've seen him do--i'm not like kenny, i'm not like anybody.

he looks me in the eye, says it again: "90 meetings in 90 days, mike.  you do it, i promise you'll come across someone who's story's just like yours, and when it happens it'll change you just like it did me.  i wouldn't have the life i have now if i hadn't done it, and you can do it, too."

yeah?  i'll have to drink on that one.

_________________

sober update: somebody asked me why my memories of people are always wrapped up with cars.  i dunno, they just are.

the other screamingly important thing i need to talk about tonight

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his new schedule sucks, my new schedule sucks--what can i say, i miss my baby

[and yeah i am totally shitfaced and yeah i will totally deny i ever posted this tomorrow and yeah i can't wait to see you sunday night no matter how late it turns out to be what's your goddam point?]

semi-sober update:

(1) all things considered, the fact that i could even find and open photoshop, much less locate the three necessary pics, crop, re-size and competently combine them into the above image and subsequently upload same and triumphantly hit "publish" before stumbling off to bed is testament to...well, something.  and i demand points from the universe for this accomplishment, goddammit.


(2) getting home from my new job at 1:30 am and starting to drink is, i'm finding, materially different from getting home from my old job at 9:30 pm and starting to drink; in fact, you might call it an unsustainable trend.

i got nothin'

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except--since (a) i've been under the weather this week and missed seeing him; and (b) this blog seems to have become my personal scrapbook as of late--this shot of v from the early, heady days of his nascent career as a practicing homogay which somewhat recently came into my possession and which i can't even begin to tell you how much i fuckin' adore.



i wish i'd met you back then, too.

and it's good to see your smiling face again, too

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first, he was gone for a week, and then just as he got back i took off for a week, and then work got in the way, and then...whatever--it was too long.


i took this picture yesterday with my crappy iphone at the papa john's in westwood as we waited for the crappy pizza we took home and ate curled up in fronta some crappy movie we'd picked up at blockbuster.

it was great.

3

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it's playing at the egyptian theater along with paper moon on saturday, the 12th of september--a perfect double-feature if ever there was one.

soon as i find out, i ask v if he wants to go. seeing as how i know he knows it's one of my favorite movies of all goddam time, i'm quite frankly surprised by his mini-hesitation before he says, "yeah, sure--let's go."

later, i'm even more surprised at his somewhat-less-than-disappointment when i tell him it sold out before i could get tickets.

all becomes clear this past tuesday night when he hands me the dvd he'd ordered for me ages ago, smiles big and says, "happy anniversary, babe."

we met three years ago september 1--he remembered, i didn't.

* * * * *

if you haven't seen it lately (or ever), then for god's sake do it soon--and if you can't make the show at the egyptian, at least make sure you watch it curled up at home with a bowl of popcorn and someone you love and don't deserve.

trust me, it'll be just as good.

I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

[figuratively speaking, of course]

___________________

update:  as someone just reminded me, i did the same goddam thing last year.

with me, it's always the little things

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the terrain of my coffee table rarely changes: there's always the magazines, the pile of unpaid bills, the car keys, the coasters, the remotes, the old powerbook i shoulda sold long ago but can't let go of, the arne jacobsen salad bowl full o' crap, the ever-present mkf cocktail in its cheap plastic cup--i.e., the usual.

which is why when something new shows up there, no matter how small, even i, from the drunken vantage point of the eames chair into which i invariably sink at the end of each day (and from which sumptuous depths all guttermorality goodness flows), tend to take notice.

the first thing was a little speck of brown plastic i caught outta the corner of my left eye one night--out of all the crap among which it nestled, i zeroed in on it, realized what it was, knew why it was there, smiled to myself and left it exactly where i found it.


at some point later, the following appeared on the side of the coffee table next to my chair:



at first, i just thought it was something that had crept under the glass--an irregularity that needed to be cleaned. upon closer examination, it turned out to be



tonight i did what i do on most nights when i miss him--i moved the two together and just sat there and looked at 'em.



i love you too, my broken monkey, even if it's only in my own, weird way. i hope to sleep next to you this tuesday night.

happy second, baby

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over the course of labor-day weekend 2006, i met somebody very important. self-absorbed as always, i forgot about it; v didn't.

yet one more reason i don't deserve him.

a plug

so one night not long ago, v and i are watching a certain episode of jeopardy (again, it's like millionaire; tivo a week's worth, you can speed through to the parts that matter in no time), and final jeopardy comes up: "best picture winners." i groan, v rubs his hands together and, after the inevitable 30-second midas ad, the answer is revealed:

2 movies whose 1-word titles are cities;
they won the Oscar for Best Picture, 59 years apart

before i even start to turn over the possibilities, v unhesitatingly blurts out, "what are casablanca and chicago?". i turn and look at him with my mouth open, he smiles and says, "1943 and 2002--easy." [easy? hell, even with 30 seconds, none of the contestants got it]

and i sigh, chalk up one more for v in the movie department.

see, v is a film buff of the first water--even at his relatively young age, he has more knowledge of and/or passion for movies in his left pinkie than do most of the industry types i've met in the almost-20 years i've lived in this city.

i could go on and on about v and his love for cinema--like how, for instance, he'll happily curl up with me and watch any goddam movie i want, no matter how old it is, how many times he's seen it or even whether he likes it or not--doesn't matter to him because (a) if it's important to me it's important to him; and (b) he'll learn something from it either way.

or i could talk about how he spends hours searching obscure movie-spoiler sites before he ever sees a movie for the first time so he's not distracted by plot elements while he watches, deconstructs it and puts it back together in his mind.

i could go on about lots of things, but the reason i'm writing about v tonight (because i haven't gotten anywhere near this personal on this blog before) is because he's decided to start blogging about his passion--about movies past and movies to come--and i wanna give him a plug.

his blog is new (and who knows if it'll last because, as i've found out, this shit is hard) but what's there is worth reading and i urge you to check him out--and, if you're lucky, he'll continue to write and thus enrich your cinematic perspective as he has mine.