Monday, January 05, 2004

11:10:44 PM    comment []

were off to see the wizard A lot of the people I worked with at Bob Evan's were kind of frightening and strange.  I remember this one manager looked like a cadaver.  He was pasty and gaunt and was always chain smoking.  To make matters worse he had a glass eye. It used to really depress me the way he always sat at an empty table and smoked and griped about how many hours he worked. "I've been here sixty goddamn hours this week already.  I might do seventy or eighty by Sunday," he would say, sucking on another cigarette.  I didn't know how he could stand it.  I worked fifteen or twenty hours and I wanted to kill myself. Then there was this other bus boy with thick, coke-bottle glasses.  He might have been thirty-five years old or so, but he had the IQ of an eight year old.  I mean, he was literally retarded.  He worked really hard though.  I remember one time we finished our shift at one in the morning and I was dead tired. "Well, at least its over now," I said to the retarded, thirty-five year old bus-boy, just trying to make conversation. "Not for me," he said.  "I got to go to my other job." "Other job?" I said.  I couldn't belive that anyone could keep going after hours of busboy misery. "Yeah, now I do my newspaper route," he said.  Then he got in his big rust bucket and sputtered away. Probably, the most frightening of all was the dishwasher.  I can't really tell much of a story about him since I don't think he could talk.  All I can do is describe him.  Basically, he was the Elephant man.  He had a terrible hunch back, and these awful boils and bumps all over his skin.  And his face was always dripping with steam and hot water from the dishwasher. Of all the jobs there, dishwashing seemed the most like torture, because the water was so scalding hot and you never got a break.  It didn't matter how fast or hard the elephant man dishwasher worked, we just kept dumping trays of dirty dishes in front of him.  Every now and then I would make contact with his eyes.  They reminded me of some poor suffering beast.  And then he would just disappear into the scalding steam. It was kind of a strange environment to get used to.  I looked around at everybody and thought, do I belong here?  Are these really my peers? There was this hostess that worked there too.  She was actually kind of cute, and I think I had a crush on her. One day the cute hostess came in with a huge zit on her forehead. "Jeez, that zit looks like a third eye," the cadaverous manager said to her. "You wanna borrow it?" the hostess said. 11:05:47 PM    comment []

everything is just fine Every morning I wake up by myself and I'm lonely and horney and I want to fuck some girl.  All day long I drive around by myself and I'm lonely and horney and I want to fuck some girl. Every night I go out to eat by myself and I'm lonely and horney and I want to fuck some girl. At the restaurant, the cute little waitress always brings me my supper and sets it down before me.  "Is everything all right?" she asks me. I'm lonely and horney and I want to fuck you, I think. "Everything is just fine," I say. 9:03:12 PM    comment []

8:31:45 PM    comment []

tripping out When I was going to USF in the early 90s, I was always kind of tripping out in my own little world.  I would write constatnly in my journal and then do little eccentric projects to reveal my "genius." One time, I made a pair of lungs out of cigarette butts that I found outside of the English building.  I crawled around the bushes in front of the building and picked up all these cigarette butts and put them in a plastic bag for the project.  While I was on the ground like this, a stoner friend of mine came up and said, "What's happened, Mark?  Did you get in trouble or something?" I looked at him kind of puzzled for a second and then I realized his silly mistake. "Oh no, you see, I'm just doing a project.  I'm making a pair of lungs out of cigarette butts." My stoner friend just nodded and smiled. Another time I decided to make a giant pyramid out of plywood and canvas.  Since I didn't have any money to buy materials for the project, I had to steal them all.  I stole the plywood from a construction site near my house one night.  Since I didn't have a car, I had to roll the plywood beams back to my place on my roommate's skateboard.  I duct-taped the beams to the skateboard at one end and then held the other ends in my arms.  I was pushing eight beams along on this skateboard in the dead of night and they were really heavy.  After a while they started crushing my arms and I had to stop and rest every ten feet.  But at last I made it home. I stole the canvas to surface the pyramid right from the univeristy.  They were painting several of the buildings, so I found these great painters' tarps made out of some heavy material.  They were a lot easier to steal.  I just rolled them up and stuffed them in my backpack. Then over the next couple of days, while other students were studying to be accountants or science teachers, I built my  giant pyramid behind the rental house I was living in. The hardest part was getting the four beams of the pyramid to meet up at the top.  Since I was doing this project all by myself, it was very tricky.  I would get two beams to lean against each other about ten feet in the air, and then I would real quick jump down from my step ladder and pick up the other two beams and try to make them join up.  I failed this procedure about a dozen times, and each time the entire pyramid structure would come crashing down and I would go, "god-damn, fucking shit, mother-fucker!" I was vaguely aware that one of my neighbors was home next door and probably watching me.  But at last I succeeded in building my pyramid.  The final touch was spray-painting the number "1037"  on it, which has long had a somehwat real, somewhat tongue-in-cheek mystical significance for me. My roommate Devon, who actually was a fine arts major, had an art show at the house a week or so later and the pyramid was a big hit.  Another eccentric practice I had for a while was cacauphonous piano playing.  I found this old upright piano in the lobby of one building at USF, and sometimes I would go in there and just bang on it like a maniac.  I would pound it with my fists on one part of the keyboard and then tinkle it with my fingers on another part and then rake my hands up and down and up and down and then maybe mash both my forearms along the keys.  If I ever found myself at a party with a piano I would demonstrate my cacauphonous piano playing.  Some people thought it was pretty cool. But one time I went to a blues bar with my friend Bobby Doyle.  He was real, honest to god black blues musician who could play any instrument and sing like a motherfucker.  For some reason, Bobby Doyle was always talking me up and building up my ego with compliments and support.  When his other blues musician friends asked if I could play anything, Bobby volunteered what a gifted piano player I was. The next thing you know this crusty old blues man was wanting me to play for him.  So I gave him a couple minutes of my cacauphonous piano playing. The crusty old blues man just scrunched up his face and then laughed. "Man," he said. "You be fuckin' them chords UP!" 7:56:01 PM    comment []

the full range of motion When I flunked out of FSU, one of the first jobs I had was being a bus boy at a Bob Evans.  I had to wear an apron and a name tag and a black, southern style string-tie around my white collar.  I only lasted there a couple of months. One day while working at Bob Evans, a short little manager guy gave me remedial training on how to use a carpet sweeper. "Mark," the short manager said, "you're not using the full range of motion when you use the carpet sweeper.  Here, let me show you." The manager took the carpet sweeper from me and demonstrated on the proper technique.  He pushed the carpet sweeper way under the booth as far as he could reach and then pulled it all the way out again. "See how I use the full range of motion," he said.  "All the way in.  Then all the way out.  The full range of motion."  The manager kept showing me again and again.  "To get all the crumbs you have to use the full range of motion," he said again.  "Understand?" I nodded and took the carpet sweeper back from him.  As soon as he walked away I took my name tag and my apron and my string-tie off, put them on my tray and walked out the door. 6:27:21 PM    comment []

throw him over a waterfall! I used to play with my big sister a lot when I was a little kid.  My big sister had this doll she called baby David.  Baby David had a plastic head and plastic arms and feet and a cloth body.  His eyes would roll open when you sat him up and roll closed when you laid him down. One time my big sister said, "Baby David has been bad.  We need to think of a punishment for him." "Throw him over a waterfall!" I blurted out excitedly without a moment's thought. 6:03:43 PM    comment []

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