Saturday, December 27, 2003

purposeless blob Today again, I am a purposeless blob.  I have hit the send and receive button on my e-mail about a thousand times.  Only a couple of messages long since answered.  I have had my phone with me all morning.  It is has been dead silent.  I'm trying to leave Matt alone since I know he has family in town for just a couple more days.  John Vitale works 8 days a week and doesn't like to go out anymore even when he's not working.  Rodney is in New York.  And that's it.   That's all the people I know. Finally, around one o'clock I left my house and went for a bike ride.  I brought my camera in case I saw anything really neat.  But there wasn't anything really neat.  There was just people walking around. I tried to take some pictures of this "co-existence" art exhibit in the park downtown.  This collection of paintings and digital art on portable billboards was supposed to convey a message of unity and brotherhood and peace between all races and religions.  The first day it was put up in St. Pete, it was vandalized.  Someone or some people ripped holes in most of the paintings at the bottom (where they could reach) and spray painted some racial slurs.   The curator of the exhibit made a curious decision with regard to the hate crime.  He decided to just leave the damage as a testament to the hatred and racism that still lurks in our society. Anyway, I took a couple snaps of one of the ripped up coexistence murals and then my camera's battery went dead.  I really wasn't in a picture taking mood anyway. Now I'm debating about whether to get a hamburger.  Hmmm, what should I do? 3:22:21 PM    comment []

the infamous pete jay I went out with Matt and his brother Bo last night to Mastry's.  We were meeting up with the infamous Pete Jay who is back here from Seattle for the holidays.  That's Pete on the left, Matt in the middle, and Jason Craft on the right.  Pete Jay was the guitarist for a couple of hard core punk bands here back in the day.  (Whenever "the day" was.) I was never really close with Pete Jay back in highschool, but some of his artistic endeavors left a big impression on me.  For instance he did this video skit where he blew up our higschool.  One scene shows him with one of those Buggs Bunny style TNT detonators, with the T-shaped handle that you push down.  Then he spliced in footage of a nuclear exposion. I thought that was pretty neat.   9:08:13 AM    comment []

Jason Herring (aka, Hairball) Jason Herring (aka, hairball) was also hanging about for the third or fifth of seventh night in a row at Mastry's.  "I've been in town a week now and this is the only bar I've been to," Jason testified.  I tried to get people motivated to go to a bar up the street, just for a change of scene.  But nobody's feet would move.  Then I found that the back gate between Mastry's and the Green Room was cracked open and you could walk twenty feet to a whole 'nother big exciting situation.  Still nobody's feet would move. So we stayed and got plowed at Mastry's. 9:07:17 AM    comment []

goddamnit thee swinehunt!! At some point somebody came back and announced that they were about to light up a joint on the back patio.  Because I was pretty buzzed, I thought it would be fun to get high too.   But pot for me is like taking 50 hits of bad acid. Within sixty seconds of taking a drag I tend to think that I'm dying and going insane.  I usually pace frantically around running my fingers through my hair.  If I'm home I'll call people at 3am and ask them to come rescue me. But anyway, last night smoking pot seemed like a great idea.  I tried to hide my plan from Matt since he's often the one that gets called at three in the morning to hear about me dying and going insane.  I couldn't sneak past him, though. "Mark!  Don't do it!" he warned sternly. "It'll be fine," I said.  "I feel lots of good energy." Back on the patio everyone was bunched up in the corner, waiting for the joint to be rolled.  I stood eagerly at the front of the line.  The aroma of good Christmas bud filed the air.  I was the third person to hit the joint and I took a deep drag and held it in as long as I could.  Then I blew the smoke up into the air. Within seconds, I could feel myself getting high.  Its kind of like an out of body experience where I check out of my head and experience the world from somewhere else.  At the same time I feel like I'm a little person sitting inside the control tower of a giant body.  As I walked about the bar it felt like my clumsy robot body could fall over and crash hundreds of feet to the ground.  I felt the weirdness of my heart beating in my chest, my paranoid brain whispering, heart attack, heart attack.  But I managed not to run screaming from the bar.   9:06:17 AM    comment []

goddamnit thee swinehunt (cont'd) Instead, I became fixated on a past encounter with Pete Jay at a party about ten years ago.  I had gotten high on that occasion too and became very paranoid and nervous.  This was back when I was always writing in journals, wanting to be the next Jack Kerouac.  So, I busted out my journal at this party and started scribbling all sorts of psycho babble in it. Then i think I must have showed my journal to Pete Jay.  He took my pen and wrote, "goddamnit thee swinehunt!" in my journal and gave it back to me.  Pete Jay also drew a mean looking cartoon face with his inscription.  I wasn't so sure what "goddamnit thee, swinehunt" was supposed to mean, but it sounded like something a nazi would say to a jew before shooting him between the eyes. So, anyway, last night while I was high, I became rather infatuated with this swinehunt memory.  Suddenly, I felt compelled to go jot the phrase down and return it to Pete Jay.  I wrote the phrase down as I remembered him writing it and took it back to him on the patio.  I tried my best to explain this memory without sounding like some sort of weirdo. "Really, I wrote that to you at a party?" he said. For the rest of the night the swinehunt thing was stuck in my head.  I kept saying "goddamnit three swinehunt" to Pete every time I saw him.  Probably, long after it was no longer funny.  I said it one more time when we were saying good by.  This time I caught the attention of Pete's girlfriend.  She's a tough looking girl with tatoos that seems like she could kick your rib cage to bits with a pair of steel toed doc martins. "Schvine-hunt?!" she said in a thick German accent.  "Did you say schvine-hunt?!!" 9:05:11 AM    comment []

Christmas wasn't all that bad.  My relatives seemed to accept my improvised gifts of beer and candy graciously.  I remembered everyone's name.  And since I hadn't done anything shocking to embarass my parents in the last few weeks the mood was relatively relaxed. We ate a honey baked ham buffet style, so we didn't even have to say grace.  I wolfed lots of the ham down after dousing it with boar's head spicy mustard.  Four heineken's kept the time moving along easily. But after the long drive back to my place, my mood began to dive.  I was alone in my rental house, with nothing but two cold blooded lizzards for company.  I didn't have a girlfriend to watch a movie with or make love to and my daughter was off with her mom on the other side of the state.  I contemplated going out, but the notion repulsed me as much as it attracted me.  It would just be another zombie like routine of pouring alcohol into my veins and trolling for ellusive loose women.  Just as I was about to sink into a steep solitary depression on my couch there was a knock at the door. Who could that be? I wondered.  I thought maybe it was the yoga lady next door.  We had fooled around the other day.  I told her to drop by anytime. I pulled back the curtain on my door.  It was Peyton.  And there was some dude with him with glassed and dreadlocks.  "What's up?" I said. "Can we hang out?" Peyton said. "Sure," I said. I let Peyton and his friend in.  I instantly didn't like Peyton's friend.  He seemed like someone Peyton would only hang out with because he was doing drugs with him. "What's going on?" I said. "Oh, we're just riding around....doing drugs," Peyton said. "Great," I said.  "Make yourselves at home."  When the dreadlock dude walked by I saw a bottle in his hand, held sideways.  Crack, I thought. "Can I use your bathroom?" Peyton asked. "Sure," I said.  Peyton went to the bathroom, leaving me alone with the dreadlock dude that I already didn't like. "You play guitar?" the dreadlock dude asked, looking at my guitar. "Kind of," I said.  "Not very often." The dreadlock dude picked up my guitar and started strumming and playing little licks. "What kind of music do you like to play?" the dreadlock dude asked.  I hate being asked that question by anybody.  I feel like I have to come up with a list of cool types of music that I play.  I hated the question even more from the dreadlock dude. "Oh, this and that, you know," I said. The dreadlock dude started talking about the Beatles and Neil Young and other bands that aren't any fun to talk about or hear any more.  "I've got a nice strat for sale if your interested," he said. "Nah, I'm fine," I said.  Pretty soon Peyton came out of the bathroom and the sat down on the couch.  Then the dreadlock dude got up and went in the bathroom. "So, what kind of drugs are you doing?" I asked Peyton.  Peyton's eyes were rolling back in his head like some sort of crib toy. "Ku-rack!" he said. "Are you smoking crack in my bathroom?" I asked. "I figured you wouldn't want us to do it in the living room," Peyton said. "That's true," I said. 2:05:56 AM    comment []

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